About myself
I’m a twelve-year-old girl from Singapore. I learn English, Chinese, Math, and Science in school. These are the main subjects. There are Physical Education and Art lessons on top of the main subjects. However, my father believes in preparing me for the future.
He believes that I will learn the most by doing something real. By learning some basic tech skills, he feels even a kid can start a real business.
This was why I started a business as an eleven-year-old.
Starting a business
I have always loved reading and writing, so I decided to apply what I’d read and learnt from school about writing and decided to use it in marketing my products and writing product descriptions. I also learnt how to design my own website and create designs. I researched different quotes and used them in my designs creatively. I created a few accounts on different websites, to begin with. I used the video references my dad sent me and observed how they set up the foundations of the business. The niche chosen was print-on-demand, mainly designing T-shirts.
The tools and skills I needed
After doing some research on the following niche, I first went to Placeit and started playing around with the tools for design. My designs were mostly inspirational quotes. I started setting up my own website on Teespring, where I could upload my T-shirt designs and choose which colours and prices to set for each tee. I then went back to Placeit and uploaded my design onto a mockup picture, as if actual people were wearing T-shirts with my designs. I then took these mockups and posted them on my small business’ Instagram.
Learning from the experience
I took quite a while to figure out what my business name should be, but I finally settled on Enspired Quotes, as my name has an “En” in it. It was a clever play with words.
I have to admit, I wasn’t the most professional with the captions of my Instagram posts, as I was still an immature eleven-year-old. I didn’t exactly put the best tags to get the best insights, but I have long corrected my earlier mistakes.
Unfortunately, even though I tried really hard, my business was still unsuccessful. Furthermore, once the school holidays ended, I didn’t have the time to manage my business, so eventually, I closed shop. One of the other reasons was that I had found other interests and lost the motivation to continue an unsuccessful start-up.
Conclusion
However, even though I had given up on Enspired Quotes, I have gained invaluable experience on how to start a business, run a website, and more!
Your efforts are commendable though the business did not work out eventually. I think the experience you go through will definitely help you to prepare better for the future.