It Takes a Village

Hello! This is Scott Donnell, Founder of MyFirstSale. I want to share some secrets that will make you incredible kid entrepreneurs and ensure your business is highly profitable.

If you want to know the number one key to becoming a successful lifelong entrepreneur, it’s community and commitment. You have to commit to this, and you have to bring in other people around you that can support you and encourage you. You need to commit to a group of entrepreneurs if you’re going to be successful. You need to find your tribe. You need to be supported by people who love you, who encourage you, who can help you get through tough times in business.

There’s always tough times. If you don’t do anything hard, you’re never going to learn. We always strive to help each other, and we need to be in a community. The absolute best thing you can do, no matter what age you are, is be in a community. Learn from each other. Share best practices. Listen to rockstar entrepreneurs like the ones we feature on our blog. You have to join a community, and you have to commit to it.

This is a lifelong learning process. I haven’t learned it all. None of the famous entrepreneurs you admire have learned it all. In fact, I’m learning more today than I’ve ever learned before. I’m reading more books. I’m asking more questions. I’m listening to more podcasts. I’m talking to more experts. I’m trying to learn faster now than I’ve ever learned before because it helps me so much in entrepreneurship.

You can’t do it alone. You can go fast alone, but you can go further together. You have to commit to business, and you have to commit by being accountable in a group of people. You can’t just turn on the light bulb or switch on the business and then stop. You’ve got to keep learning. You’ve got to be consistent. Do whatever you can to stay in a community like we have at MyFirstSale. Stay connected.

Be Profitable

Profit is the end goal we’re all chasing. Without profit, businesses fail. Without profit, we’re back at square one. How can you create a profitable business as kid entrepreneurs?

First, let’s make sure we’re clear on the term itself. Profit is the price of your product minus the cost. That is your profit. If you don’t know your profit, how are you ever going to make it in a business? The profit is what’s left over after the sale.

Let’s say I’m going to sell you a brownie for $3. Well, I don’t take those $3 and just put them in my pocket. That’s not my profit. That’s just the money I received from the sale. I still have to pay my expenses. You have to know what your expenses are. Everything that’s required to create your product is your expenses.

For these brownies, I have the brownie mix, some eggs, chocolate chips, coconut oil or butter or whatever my ingredients are, right? So maybe that’s 50 cents or 75 cents of the $3. It also takes me a few minutes to make the brownies. For every brownie I make, I’m going to add 25 cents to my list of expenses as the cost of my labor. There’s costs to doing your business.

I’m selling the brownies for $3. It costs me 25 cents for the mix, 25 cents for the eggs and chocolate chips, 25 cents for my own labor, and 25 cents to put it in a nice little package with a bow that has my business logo on it. All of that adds up to $1. What’s my profit? What’s left? $2. That is what I get to put into my pocket as profit after every sale.

Profit is the lifeblood of your business. Without blood, you wouldn’t be able to live. You need profit to make your business run. If I sold my brownies for $1, I wouldn’t have anything left over. I wouldn’t be able to reinvest in my business. I wouldn’t be able to grow my business. I wouldn’t be able to market my business. I wouldn’t be able to find more customers for my business or buy ingredients to make more brownies. This is how businesses grow. You have to have profit.

Make sure that there’s something left over at the end for you to live off of. This is how you pay yourself. This is how you provide and help people. You can give money away from this. You can save money for college or a trip or a boat or a bike or whatever you want. You can only do that with profit.

Profit is what will make you impact the world. When your business is profitable, it can expand and touch more and more lives. If you make money helping other people, that’s the best service you can ever have. Don’t sell yourself short. Set up a system where you have great profit.