A 17-year-old girl in Texas has been starting a business since she was 4 years old. She boldly founded her own brand with special formula of lemonade. At a young age, she is now worth $11 million.
Mikaila Ulmer, a young girl, began to start a business with her honey lemonade brand at the age of 4. The brand was founded by her fate with the bee, when she was stung twice a week, which made her legs weak when she saw the bee.
But Ulmer’s mother, D’Andra, led by this terrible experience to guide her in-depth research and encouraged her to understand the causes of bee stinging, its important role in nature, and the survival crisis faced by bees.
Therefore, Ulmer wanted to do something to help the bees. At this time, she received an old 1940s recipe from her great-grandmother, in which she found a refreshing and healthy “linseed lemonade” recipe. She decided to try adding honey instead of sugar to the recipe to make lemonade, and now Be Sweet Lemonade, the predecessor of the well-known brand Me & the Bees Lemonade, was born.
Since then, Ulmer has sold lemonade on the roadside and markets on weekends and holidays, and donated part of the profits to several organizations specializing in saving bees. As the business developed, her parents also participated in it, and she was very helpful because of her parents’ background in marketing and business studies.
In 2015, 11-year-old Ulmer and his father Theo participated in the American entrepreneurship competition “Shark Tank”. With their unique honey lemonade business plan, the two successfully won $60,000 as a venture fund. It is worth mentioning that when she was still in the sixth grade of primary school in Texas, she was already a social entrepreneur, public speaker and philanthropist.
Later, she signed a $11 million contract with Whole Foods, a well-known chain that specializes in natural and organic food. At present, up to 1,500 stores in the United States can buy her products, including World Market, Kroger, H-E-B and other chains.
With the successful experience of lemonade, Ulmer, who is now in high school, has also expanded the company’s product line and increased the production of products such as lip balm made from beeswax. In addition, she has published two books about her entrepreneurial story.
Speaking of advice to entrepreneurs, Ulmer said that people always think that if you want to start a large-scale company and develop successfully, you must have a specific gender, age or education, but she believes that the key to starting a business is enthusiasm. “If you are not enthusiastic about your own ideas, it is difficult to continue to invest in it, and you have to overcome many trivial things before starting a business.”
Her mother said in an earlier interview with the media, “What makes me very proud is that she is not only a smart entrepreneur, but also a good person who is very friendly to people, which is more important than the business itself.”
