Earning money is the furthest goal from many teenagers’ minds. After all, why take the time to make money when you are busy buying food, trendy clothes, and the latest gadgets?
While many teenagers supplement their incomes by getting part-time jobs, others rely exclusively on the allowances their parents give them.
However, what many young people don’t realize is that they have the power to become more than just paltry earners.
Young adults possess a curiosity about the world, unblemished optimism, and a parental safety net. They therefore have the potential to be wildly successful while they are young.
Sadly, however, many teenagers are oblivious to their potential, thinking that the only path to wealth is through academic qualifications.
While this is no attempt to diminish the value of a good education, more young adults need to be exposed to the truth about wealth. Acknowledging the inherent capability of teenagers is just the first step.
Understanding how young people can realize their potential is the next. So how can teenagers claim their share of the American dream and become wealthy beyond their wildest imaginations?
Explore Technology
Exploring the world of technology is one of the quickest paths to prosperity. Silicon Valley is littered with people who began programming at a young age only to create the next best innovation.
Learning to code is quickly becoming one of the world’s most bankable skills. The great news about coding is that kids can begin learning the fundamentals of programming from an early age.
Nowadays, many elementary schools offer programming classes as a serious option.
In addition to this opportunity, there are a large variety of free online courses available on sites such as Codeacademy.org and Code.org.
Kids can even take free classes from legitimate universities, such as Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
However, if free is not your thing, there are many other websites that can instruct you in a number of programming languages for a fee. Lastly, if your teenager prefers it, books are also a viable option.
Dabble in Business
Becoming a millionaire can mean exploring a multitude of business avenues before finding out what works for you. Very rarely do people become millionaires after their first attempts.
For instance, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban got his start by selling garbage bags just so he could afford to buy expensive basketball shoes.
Later as a college student, Cuban took to offering disco lessons to female college students. However, Cuban isn’t an anomaly.
Before he became the founder of the Dell Corporation, Michael Dell was a high school student at Memorial High School in Houston, Texas.
Making extra money by selling subscriptions to the Houston Post, Dell soon realized that the people most likely to purchase subscriptions were those who had recently moved to the area. For this reason, Dell began collecting names from marriage and mortgage applications.
Dell cleared $18,000 that year, earning more than both his history and economics teachers. Of course, selling newspaper subscriptions didn’t turn Dell into a billionaire, but his desire to make money and his willingness to dabble provided a stepping stone to his billions.
Take Your Hobbies Seriously
Many people tend to view hobbies as quirky activities that occupy our leftover time once we’ve taken care of our major responsibilities.
This perspective might be mostly true. But if you love an activity at which you excel, you should consider the potential of your hobby to make you wealthy.
Many billionaires got their start by taking the hobbies of their youth to the next level.Click To Tweet At the age of 14, future Twitter founder Jack Dorsey took a keen interest in the niche topic of dispatch routing.He went so far as to develop open source software that is still in use today. Dorsey used his knowledge to create a company that would dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services using the internet.
Later on, enthralled by the applicability of short message communication services and aided by some associates, Dorsey created Twitter. People would end up using Twitter to share messages among friends and acquaintances.
Baked goods magnate Debbi Fields has a comparable story of turning a hobby into a million-dollar business. After retrieving balls for $5 an hour at the Oakland A’s baseball games, Fields used her earnings to buy ingredients for cookies.
She took to selling these cookies in order to maximize her earnings, and so was born her multi-million dollar company, Mrs. Fields.
Become an Authority
Knowing the ins and outs of any subject can be yet another path to millionaire status. Knowing your area of interest means more than just treating it as a hobby. It has to become an obsession for you.
When you become an authority on any subject, you can then use a variety of outlets in order to share your knowledge with the world.
You can create your own website, make YouTube videos, or even write a book. The possibilities are endless.
Through these channels, you can get ad revenue, demand speaking or appearance fees, and acquire sponsorships. Evan of EvanTubeHD started a YouTube channel to review toys when he was just eight years old.
Now the channel brings in a reported $1.3 million a year in YouTube ad revenue. So whether you want to become an authority on video games, guitars, accessories or even cookies, the opportunity is there for you to create a following.
Teenagers have an untapped, phenomenal ability to become wildly successful. Regardless of age, the most important qualities that all millionaire entrepreneurs possess are the desire to make money and the hope to make their mark on the world.
Thus, in whatever way teenagers choose to accumulate money, people should be instilling these values in them from the beginning of their lives.
These are the desires that will fuel young people’s actions even when circumstances get tough and favorable outcomes are doubtful. Once children have that unquenchable fire within them, success is sure.