If you harbour the ambition to own your own successful business, you could learn a few things from this fearless 11-year-old.
Mikaila Ulmer of Texas has impressively built a successful business with her family’s homemade lemonade recipe while protecting endangered honeybees in the process. This has led to a multi-million dollar deal with Whole Foods, which has enabled her to distribute her product to the retail giant’s 55 stores nationwide.
At the young age of four, Ulmer was stung by two bees twice in one week. But instead of letting her initial run-in with the winged pollinators hinder her, she turned her fear into motivation and began researching the importance of bees in the ecosystem. She found that their numbers are vastly dwindling and are in danger of going extinct.
This sparked her idea for BeeSweet Lemonade, a lemonade brand that was inspired by her great-granny’s flaxseed lemonade recipe and donates a portion of its profits to help local and international honeybee organizations.
The pint-sized entrepreneur first began by educating customers about the state of bees at her lemonade stand, which led to promoting BeeSweet at youth entrepreneurial competitions. What started as a small idea quickly bloomed into a highly lucrative business, as she was awarded with $60,000 after appearing on Shark Tank.
If Ulmer’s story can teach entrepreneurial hopefuls anything, it’s that you can’t let meaningless things like age hold you back. And if you find what scares you, you can turn it into something sweet.
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