This week we got the opportunity to travel to Canada! Well, actually, just over video conference because Canada’s far away and Coronavirus has us all on lockdown. We interview Stacey Piersey from KIDS 2 MARKET. She is an entrepreneur that helps youth between the ages of 6 and 18 start small businesses. In this episode, we discuss Stacey’s journey, her business, and her advice for entrepreneurs.
P.S. You’ll have to listen till the end to hear our “gawk” portion and find out what infestation free zone Alberta is known for!
Welcome to Business Talk Sister Gawk! I’m Ruthie and I’m Bekkah! And today we’re joined by Stacey from Kids2Market! Thanks so much for being with us today Stacey! Tell us a little bit about what you do!
Teaching Kids How To Start Their Own Business
Stacey: Well, Kids2Market is an entrepreneurship program for kids and teens. I have essentially taken what I’ve done in a classroom environment for the past four years with hundreds of kids and moved it online. I teach kids how to start their own business. The businesses are usually small businesses or a micro-businesses, but there have been some that have, kind of, skyrocketed and taken off. I take all the business school out of it and make the material really simple, really consumable and fast, so that the kids can get their product idea out in the world and start selling it. That’s the gist of it.
Ruthie: Yeah, okay so you’re joining us today from Canada. Since we’re all in quarantine, Bekkah is joining us on our zoom call over the phone. So her audio is going to be a little bit different and she might have a little bit of like lag, just so everybody’s aware. Tell us why you started doing what you do now.
What Caused You to Start Your Own Business?
Stacey: First, here’s a little bit of background. I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and I was in IT. I started out as an employee consultant. I was a computer programmer and when the “.com” rush came. That’s sort of ages me a little. Anyway, when all that crazy happened, I ended up as the senior producer of a travel start up. That’s like Travelocity or Expedia or that kind of thing. Those two companies were actually our competitors and through that process I learned what it looks like to start a business from scratch.
I had to sit in on venture capitalist meetings for funding. We were a small tight-knit group. I had to learn things on the fly because we were such a small team. When it looked like somebody needed to know how to do better advertising online, we would learn those skills quickly so that we could go ahead and do it. Or when we had a huge shopping cart abandonment issue – customers weren’t completing their shopping cart transactions – that was a problem that I took on.
I went back to school to earn another degree. I have a few. I decided to go to the local university where they, actually, had a human-computer interaction lab. I talked to the professor there and said, “I want to audit a master’s degree so that I can apply it to the .com startup that I’m working for around usability.” He thought that was a brilliant idea! So the foundation to my becoming an entrepreneur was sitting inside this a start-up. It wasn’t my business originally, but we all took ownership in it. We all had shares and stocks in the company. We had an invested interest in seeing it succeed and watching everybody learn in real-time to be successful. And the speed with which that had to occur was intense. You know business plans are written on napkins and I thought, “I don’t care if I get the master’s degree! I’ll just go and take and cherry-pick the courses that I need to accomplish the tasks.”
Before long I was doing user studies for the business. I was having to bring people in and compensate them, and I was having to deal with testing ethics, right? When you bring somebody in to complete tests to collect data off of, you first have to ask, “how do you do it ethically and make sure that there’s privacy?” It all just mushroomed from there. The learning curve at the company was so steep that I learned more there than I learned from the master’s program that I took. I learned more being part of that startup than I would have in probably eight or nine years of university. I did other work. I mean I worked for Deloitte so I wasn’t with small consulting companies. And I worked with Arthur Andersen – again I’m dating myself, because I think that’s Accenture now. I worked with a lot of different companies and a lot of big software companies, but it was working with a start-up, working in an entrepreneurial venture… It just changes the way you learn.
Why Did You Decide to Homeschool Your Kids?
Fast forward from there. I had kids, I got married, and we decided to home-school after my first finished kindergarten. The reason we decided this was because my kindergartner threw himself on the ground in the parking lot and said, “There’s no way I’m going back to school full time in the fall.” He thought that was a horrible idea and he went to an excellent school! They had art inspired by Waldorf and Montessori trained there! There couldn’t be anything more lovely about the school that he was in, but being away from us all day long really seemed to stress him out. We both worked from home. By this point I’m an independent contractor and I have started my own business bringing teams together to do usability for other companies because the .com crash America had died and my start-up got bought out. So now I’m homeschooling my kids and I’ve been doing it for over 10 years.
The home school program that I was part of asked, “Can you do a co-op? Can you teach a class?” I said yes, so I taught analog coding and I taught dance because I used to be a dancer. I had also been approached by a few parents saying, “I don’t know if my child’s going to be successful!” So I was coaching a lot of homeschool parents through the “I’m worried that I’m ruining their life!” moments. A lot of homeschoolers go through this sort of trust issue. A lot of the issues sounded like starting a business! Homeschooling felt the same as deciding to start a business. It’s all trust and this leap of faith without know if we’re going to be successful. There are going to be a lot of failures along the way.
How Did You Discover Your Business Model?
It dawned on me through all of these conversations and coaching that what these parents really wanted was something that would show them tangible evidence that their child was building the skills they needed to be successful.
And that’s just when it clicked! I was like, “Well, why don’t we teach them how to start their own business, because there is no better learning opportunity than that! Now I didn’t really think that they would want to do it, right? I expected some push-back, “But they’re as young as six and I don’t know if it would work!” But I still thought, “Awh! It’s no problem! It’s no problem, six year olds can totally do this!” You know, I actually worked with the younger kids first. I didn’t even have teens in the program to begin with. It could have been a hot mess! I had no idea if my first girl was going to be successful! Sort of a shot in the dark, you know.
How Did Structuring Your Business Adapt to Meet Your Market’s Needs?
I have a captive audience. Their parents pay for them to be there, you know! I couldn’t teach them like I was taught. I had to think, “Okay so how do I make this consumable so that kids can take it in?” At first I would throw things at them literally the first year and go, “Well, let’s try to do it this way,” then you find out some things would just make the kids go catatonic. They’d actually look like they were in real school daydream. So, I started changing how I taught the material and what information I brought forward. The end result was, “You’re going to come up with your very own product idea or service and you’re gonna sell it for money. ” So I started to switch the program.
I started the very first class with, “Who here would like to make some money?” Okay, now I have their attention! Right? And the teens – by the way, those are the ones that have the most difficult time with this – would ask, “What do you mean I can make my own money?”
I’d respond, “I don’t know! You’re going to make your own money! We’re going to start your own business!”
“Okay. Hold on a second. How much money can I make?”
“Well, I don’t know! How much money you can make! That’s entirely up to you!”
We continue to argue, “Okay, what’s the upper limit? What’s the upper limit that I can make?”
“There is no upper limit. The sky’s the limit! You can make as much as you think you can make! It depends on how hard you want to work at this!”
It’s like Benjamin Zander, If you’ve ever heard of that pianist. He talk on a TED talk about how the kids will plunk away, he shows you at what age and stage, and then shows you how you can tell that they’ve persevered through learning to play piano through that difficult, uncomfortable stage when they’re leaning in and sitting on one butt cheek. If the kid is one-butt-cheek-playing now, then you know that they’re learning. And not one of them didn’t do it! I didn’t have anybody who didn’t go through the steps to start their business. this isn’t like a science fair project, “Would you like to be in a science fair?” Then when you go through the projects, only 10% of them actually go ahead and submit their project, have logged hours, and actually get to be part of the science fair. Every single year, every single one of them comes up with a business idea and takes it to market and sells it now.
I make it easy. I create a children’s business fair. What’s interesting about those markets is that I’ll get kids who weren’t part of the class wanting to come and be part of the market, so it’s very attractive. Some kids come in and participate in the fair, but all of them come up with a business idea. The model that I created to help kids come up with a business idea really focuses on the idea that their business should come from their own passion and their own interests. That’s where they can provide value. Maybe that value is solving a problem for somebody else or maybe the value is just in bringing a little bit of joy to others.
For example, I don’t know about you but cupcakes definitely bring me joy! If a kid wants to create a business making cupcakes, you can’t say, “Well, you’re not curing cancer. But you are bringing joy!” I hate baking, so I am a big fan of bake sales and bakeries. My cookies look like cow pies, you know? I’m not that good at it! I’m an IT professional, you know. Despite being a stay-at-home mom and homeschool parent, I’m not that good at all those crafty things! So I embrace the idea of outsourcing those things! When you explain that to these kids 6 to 17, that their own ideas and their own passions are valued, and that they’re valuable, they stand a little taller and they smile a little wider. I hear things like, “I didn’t know that my stuff would sell! I wish I would have made more! I could have made more money! I had so much fun doing this! I’m shy and I wasn’t really willing to talk to people, but when I get to talk about my product because I’m so proud of it – it’s easy for me to talk to other people!”
From a schooling standpoint, you’re hearing development of those oral communication and presentation skills that are constantly trying to be worked into the curriculum. You’re hearing kids talk of perseverance. Some are saying, “Man, I tried six different businesses, I had to change businesses and it finally worked!” In business, we call that a “pivot”! That’s resilience. Instead of, “I’m a failure,” it’s “I’ve failed and I can get up and try again because I will experience success eventually.” As soon as they experience that success, their whole outlook on who they are changes. They’re flexible thinkers, they’re critical thinkers now! They’re problem solvers and it doesn’t matter what gets put in front of them! When I audited a .com startup, I asked, “Can I audit that class over there. That one’s too “school.” I don’t want to take that. I don’t need to learn C++ programming. I already know how to do that. I don’t have to prove to you that I’ve done it.”
When the kids go through the cycle of starting a business the learning, what happens in their brain is so phenomenal, but more importantly, it’s emotional! What happens to them it’s that they develop a can-do attitude. I can do anything! I can learn anything! I think it proves that! So now I’m taking all of that development and I’m moving it online. That was a really long explanation, too. That’s how I’ve got this whole business online now so I can reach more kids.
Were There Any Barriers To Entry To Start Your Business?
Stacey: No, there weren’t because I had a captive audience, like I said. No, I have to admit it wasn’t hard to start up. Barriers for entry for me… you can probably tell by now my personality is very gregarious and I’m an ask for forgiveness person, so I just go ahead and do it and then if it wasn’t the right thing, I apologize and move on and do something else, right? So it’s in my own personal nature to do that, you know. But I think that’s actually part of the benefit of the class. My can do attitude comes attached to the teaching. It’s the, “Oh you totally can do this. You can rock this! You got this, like it’s no problem,” right? It’s the perspective of the attitude. I already had a captive group because of the home school program I was in. The parents came to me and said, “Can you teach class?” I was allowed to teach whatever I wanted. So I hadn’t – I had a green field! I could do whatever I wanted! So, no, I didn’t have any barriers. Online a little bit more, yes.
Do Parents Come to The Kid’s Entrepreneurship Class Too?
Stacey: No! They don’t come into the class. Oh okay, you’re on the clock 24/7 when you homeschool so we look for opportunities to have 30 minutes to ourselves. There’s a lot of butt drop and run for the coffee shop that goes on. So, yeah. I mean that’s the reason I was asked to do the co-op, because I can handle the classroom management, right? They knew that I could do it because I had taught some other classes. I had taught kids analog coding or taping and little kids dance. If you don’t have kids captivated with a whisper, they’re going to be running out the hallway for snack within seconds.
The transition into online has been a challenge because I’m not surrounded by a community of people. It’s a little bit different not relying on word of mouth. I can’t say that it’s been difficult yet because I only launched at the end of February. It’s still brand-new! Even though it’s new, I already have a bunch of students in the program. I have been getting some interesting feedback though. I have a self-paced course that students can go through but I get a lot of people emailing me saying, “I just would rather have a live class.” There doesn’t seem to be as much enthusiasm for, “Here’s a pre-made curriculum.” I do it all in videos so it’s like me teaching the class, but a lot of people – Maybe it’s because of COVID-19. Maybe, it’s because of the situation we’re in right now. People are starved for interaction, right? – a lot of people want to talk to a live person so I can’t really tell if this is going to fly.
Ruthie: So what is your website called? Can anybody join, or…?
Stacey: Yeah, absolutely! Well, it’s meant for kids under 18, but I’m not going to stop you from buying the class. I get a lot of moms saying, “Geez! I wish you would do this for us!” I do get it but there are probably better schools than me for that. I mean, they’d probably need a lot more detail and so I send them good suggestions, because I, myself, have taken a lot of those classes and those online programs. The website is kids2market. So it’s the number” two” instead of “t” “o”. Kids2market.com.
If they go on now, they’ll get a pop-up right away saying, “Try the first module for free!” That’s the idea generation module. The biggest question I get is, “How do I start? I want to start a business, but I don’t even know how to come up with a business idea.” That’s the genuine gift of this course. Over five years of testing this on children as young as six, the method that I use to come up with an idea works for everyone. When they go through the exercise and they see work , there’ll be a lot of “ah-ha” moments.
When I give live classes some kids are kind of mad, you know, “My mom made me come and stand here and listen to this.” But by the end of the class where I walk them through the process of coming up with their own business idea, they’re not even… I’m talking to mom by the end, because the kid has run off off the screen to go come up with their own ideas. And so I’m sitting there by myself thinking, “Okay well, I guess we’re done.” That lesson is free online right now. I did that just so people can try it out, see what the videos are like, and see what I’m all about. A parent can definitely sign up and just watch it before giving it to their kids. And when you buy the full course, you’ll have access to that course forever. The first module is on paper, so print it for your kid and they can give it a try.
Does Entrepreneurship Look Differently in Different Countries?
Ruthie: I wasn’t sure if I was going to ask this next question, but one thing that I was just curious about and think other people might wonder about it too, is since you’re in Canada what does entrepreneurship look like there? Are there any other differences that you know of?
Stacey: It’s pretty much all the same. It’s identical. My prices are in US dollars. The cost translates to anywhere that would use a dollar sign. I don’t actually change it for USD or Canadian. The step after building the class material was setting the price. How do you determine the base cost for your product? It’s not specific but if you were in the UK or you were in Italy then, yes it would have to change. My prices are listed as dollars and since I’m not talking about pounds and pence it’s obvious that I’m not in Europe. Plus my accent would tell you that I have to be somewhere in North America.
Ruthie: I ask because when I was talking with a friend of mine who’s from Taiwan… Bekkah and I were helping a friend of ours in their adoption process by selling jellies. We were going door-to-door and selling jams and jellies and stuff and one of my Taiwanese friends who was helping us told us, “This would never fly. We would never do this,” That’s why I was curious if entrepreneurship looks different in Canada.
Stacey: Yeah it doesn’t. I think that the process and tools work mostly if you’re in North America, though I’m not sure that they would work in Mexico. They might though, because Mexico… it might actually! My program would actually work in Mexico. I’ve been to Mexico many times. They would have a lot more freedoms for children setting up their own market cart, right? There’s a lot more freedom when it comes to curbside selling there. Many of laws around those things are no different than yours. Of course that does change from city to city, province to province, and from state to state. I mean there are plenty of states where lemonade stands are illegal. Kids can’t have them where I live without actually having a business permanent that costs over a hundred dollars!
Legally things are going to be different everywhere, and the course addresses legal issues in the final module. I’ll tell the kids, “You need to do some research to find out if you can run your own little market stand.” And I say, “You need to think in terms of lemonade stand but with your own product. It’s usually okay as long as you’re on private property.” And usually, that’s okay, right? Then there’s issues around food, if you’re going to sell food. We have what’s called “bake sale rules” in my province. Typically these apply to charities, but as long as what you’re selling doesn’t have raw milk or raw eggs in it – you know like royal icing or cream puffs or stuff like that – as long as it’s baked first then you can go ahead and sell it without actually using a commercial kitchen and needing a food license.
There are tons of rules and restrictions around selling, and I address that everyone is going to have to do their own research for their own town and their own county. I make that really clear and I provide a few links North American wide. I’ve done some random research around the United States, across Canada, in the UK, and in Australia because those are probably my most targeted audiences. As an example, I have links to Maricopa County in Phoenix and Ellensburg in Washington. I don’t know if this would work in Hungary. I’m not… India! I get a lot of kids from India and the program works fine there.
What Resources Would You Recommend to An Entrepreneur Starting Out?
Bekkah: Wow so one question I have is with entrepreneurship, in general, what resources have you used or would you recommend someone to use when they’re first starting out? Were there any free tools or anything that made you say “Wow! This really helps a lot of people!” For example, a design software maybe. What do those things look like? Do you have any that you would recommend?
Stacey: Taking a course was helpful, because usually what they’ll do is make recommendations for you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be my course but most courses out there are going to be adult courses. And if they’re marketed a courses for kids they probably look like Junior Achievement or Young Entrepreneurs of America. They’re heavy. They’re by application process. So it’s kind of hard to find entrepreneurship classes that are geared to kids. I would say that first and foremost you need to make use of what’s called a “tech stack.” A tech stack is the technology you need to be able to be successful. So for example, free marketing material, now I say this in my class, like Canva is a good example of a tool that you can use to make social media images and posters and stuff like that.
Because I work with children as young as six, you don’t want to undervalue a hand-drawn poster. There is marketing appeal to it. People don’t want to admit it, but I say it in my course, “You’ve got a kid factor going on here and you don’t want to miss that opportunity!” It’s so true, right? If I were selling energy gummies at the side of the road, no one would stop. I mean, I’d have to have some professional-looking marketing and, honestly, I’d probably hire a child to sell it. I’m kidding! I’m kidding! That’s the example I’m using here because there was a young girl that did that. She actually made energy gummies. We go through an exercise of defining your customer avatar, your ideal customer. For her it was sports, kids and sports. Then she narrowed it down even further to hockey players, because she played hockey.
So that would be the next step, by the way, people need to know who their customer is. Very succinctly. They need to know who that customer is. The girl from my example went and sat outside of an arena to sell her gummies because she couldn’t sell in the arena legally. She opened her mom’s hatchback, put up a sandwich board, and sold her product out of the back of the car. She sold out because there was a tournament that weekend so people kept coming in and out of the arena, right?
I would say use the free marketing tools to learning a little bit about marketing in general. When you use a tool like Canva, you learn what the dimensions are if you’re going to take your advertising online. You’ll see what an Instagram post dimensions should be. You’ll see what a Facebook post dimension would be. What are the dimensions of a poster? Why is that interesting? It’s interesting because, the next tool I recommend finding, is a really good printing company like Vistaprint. You definitely want to find somebody that does nice bulk printing so that you can make business cards with those people. I have a business card that cost me about $7 for the box. Bekkah, I know you can’t see this, but this is a box of print cards that’s seven bucks. You just need to design it online, right? I did that very easily and I don’t have a background in graphic design or marketing.
So a good printing company would be very helpful. The next thing you need to do is to become a master online researcher. That would be the next suggestion I would give you. You need to know who the competitors are. And who’s not really competitors.
How Do You Study and Research Your Competition?
If somebody is already selling your product, it’s a proven product in the marketplace. You don’t have freak out and say “oh my god somebody else had my idea.” Being proven is actually a good thing, right? I mean how many coffee shops do you see on one street? You see so many of them because it’s proven that people go to that street in order to buy coffee. That kind of competition is a good thing. That’ll help you define your price, right? If you’re a good online researcher you can find out how other people are doing it, and set your price point accordingly. It’s like Picasso said, “Good artists copy, but great artists steal.” You need to go out and figure out how other people are doing it. I mean that, legitimately!
Children have a very difficult time with the “cheating” idea. I want to communicate that if somebody else is doing well with your product, you are what you bring to the table. You’re the unique factor. You’re the differentiating factor in your business. So even if you model it after another business, you’ll still be unique. The online courses I have taken as an adult to build my business will tell you, “I want you to do exactly what I do, because I did all these steps and I did it this way and I make a lot of money now. So I want you to do exactly what I do and you will make a lot of money.” That’s all the same for course creation, in marketing, in launching, in self-publishing, and in selling a physical product. There are gurus out there that say, “Look how much money I made, so do it like me.” That would be my last suggestion, go out, find somebody else doing what you’re doing well and copy what they’re doing.
Bekkah: Yeah, well, I can definitely see how that is something you learned very quickly in a startup. Especially, for something online because, if you look at how like major companies have changed so many things – Amazon for example – since when they started with even just the user experience of their shopping cart there’s huge advancements. Everyone else was like, “Look at Amazon! Look what they’re doing! I want to do that, too.” You look at who the best of the best is, and then you imitate them on a smaller scale if you’re able to with the resources you have.
Stacey: Absolutely, yeah! That’s absolutely right.
Ruthie: Yeah so as we kind of come to a close here, I’m just thinking about what people can be doing during this time of isolation and it sounds like taking your class would be an incredible opportunity to just optimize the time that we have at home. I definitely think that that would be good for people to utilize during this time. Thanks so much for joining us we will see you next week!
