hello wonderful humans welcome back to the Bliss Bean and as you can see from the title of this
video I was featured in a book fun fact the B in Junie B Jones stands for Beatrice but no not
that book I was featured in a book called Business Insider Teen written by a fellow teen actually I'm
turning 20 this year so I won't even be a teen anymore but this book compiled stories from a
bunch of teens who started businesses before age 18 the book features a lot of interviews
with a lot of very successful people who made me wonder why I was interviewed and it gives a ton
of advice for getting a job as a teenager how to present yourself professionally in the real world
and how to deal with adults who underestimate you because of your age so if you are a teenager and
you're the kind of person who's super ambitious always dreaming up of business ideas the link to
order the book is in the description so you know what to do at the end of this video we're gonna
have an interview with the author who is 15 years old which is mind-blowing but first I know a lot
of you came to my channel from the how I started a photography business video and by this point
I would consider my blog a business as well and through the years that I've been doing all this
I think I've picked up a few things that you don't normally learn in high school classes or anything
like that so in this video I wanted to share five lessons that I've learned as a teen business owner
voilá number one you have to be confident in what you're doing and if you're not confident you have
to pretend to be confident so at this point almost everyone in my life knows about my youtube channel
all of my friends know I wrote my common app essay about it I really milked it in all of my college
interviews but it wasn't always like this at the beginning of the bliss bean I was so terrified
of anyone finding anything that I was doing on the Internet and it was the same kind of thing
I'm doing now like it wasn't anything weird or anything to be embarrassed about but I started
blogging in middle school in seventh grade which is not a great time to confidence neither is early
high school so throughout all that time I hardly told anyone about the creative projects I was
working on after hiding for a long time finally I wanted to put together this 30-day productivity
email challenge as I was putting it together I was pouring so much time and energy into it that
on some level I started realizing that in order to grow I needed to stop hiding so when it came
time to release my challenge and promote it I posted it on my personal Facebook account in my
recent video where I read through my old journals I actually read the entry from that day but that
entire day I was so terrified of checking the comments to see what people were saying about
my blog but obviously everyone was super kind and encouraging about it and afterwards I was
just like okay that wasn't that bad it was like the less I resisted people knowing about my blog
the more confident I felt in it the lighter I felt and the more my blog could grow I think it's good
to think of it this way when you start anything like a blog or a business whatever you want it to
get big and successful right just nod and say yes and logically you realize that if it does
get as big and successful as your wildest dreams it'll be impossible to hide and everyone will know
about it so even if you aren't currently at that level of success if you're keeping it all under
wraps and all hush-hush you're kind of sending a message out into the universe that you don't
intend to ever reach that level of success I know it's really scary trust me I know you have to just
accept that you have to accept that you're gonna be taking scary little jumps so with each step
that you take to put yourself out there you're just gonna get more and more comfortable and it
will get easier number two yeah just gotta start I think one of the downsides of the internet and
having access to all of these examples of really successful people people much younger than us
doing much cooler things is that we're always observing people who are much farther along down
their path and it makes it hard to see where the start of our own path even is if you're prone to
overthinking / planning all of these are just nice ways to say procrastinating I am here to
tell you that it is actually so simple if you want to start a blog write a blog post if you want to
start an Instagram account post an Instagram photo if you want to sell t-shirt designs on
Etsy sit down and sketch out some designs watch a video to learn from someone who has done the
same thing at this point with my youtube channel I'm pretty organized about it I have a detailed
content calendar a workflow for each video that I put up but I didn't start like that when I started
I knew so very little about what it takes to run a YouTube channel with my photography business I
didn't even use a contract in the beginning yikes I was organizing and planning everything through
Instagram DMS and to keep track of what clients I was working with I just had a note in my Notes app
on my phone now I have contracts PayPal invoices a Trello board to manage clients everything is all
super nice and organized i'm very proud of it but you can't expect to have all of that laid out from
day one I guess you could theoretically spend lots of time studying planning setting up but in a way
you're just procrastinating the actual doing the actual execution instead of waiting until you're
all perfectly set to go you can start now and then build as you go I guarantee that you'll learn more
from going out there and actually doing the work than you would from just reading about the work
after you start lesson number three you just have to keep going I hope the stuff I'm saying about
these lessons is actually helpful because if you just look at the lessons themselves this video is
kind of stupid it's just like be confident start keep going starting a business is as easy as 1-2-3
anyway so number three keep going you might get instant success with whatever you're doing and
if you do congratulations that's honestly very impressive but it's more likely that growth will
take time and that's where mental part of this comes in I shared this on Instagram but recently
I was checking my analytics and I found that to get from 0 to 100 subscribers took me 7 months
and 25 videos someone actually left a comment saying that they were discouraged from starting
a YouTube channel after seeing my channel and seeing how hard I worked on mine and how little
came out of it that's me discouraging people from following their dreams hopefully at this point my
story is somewhat of an encouraging one rather than a discouraging one I want to share a little
anecdote I've read in a book called she means business by Carrie Green which is another book
I recommend if you want to start a business no matter what age you are she talked about
attending an abraham-hicks event where they gave the analogy that if you get in a car to drive to
San Francisco now I live in Wisconsin so I don't know why I would be doing that but even if there
was a lot of traffic on my way from Wisconsin to California even if it was standstill traffic
I wouldn't get out of the car and be like well guess I'm never getting to San Francisco it might
take a long time might take less time but I know that eventually I'm gonna get to San Francisco
that's just how roads and cars work so you need to apply that same mindset to whatever it is that
you're pursuing maybe it'll take longer than you expect to get there there'll be times when
you feel like you're making no progress but you need to firmly believe that you will inevitably
get there and that you're just getting closer and closer number four no you're why I think a
big part of the reason why I was scared to tell people about my blog or my youtube channel was
that I just felt like it was kind of cliche to want to be a youtuber but anytime that feeling
hits I just have to remember why I am doing this yes there are a lot of misconceptions about what
it means to be a content creator like we're all greedy and lazy and we just want to get people
to buy stuff by posting fake pictures of our fake lives and I just have to be like no I am
making a positive difference in people's lives the stuff i put out there is valuable and I believe in
this so whatever it is you're doing you have to get clear on why you're doing what you're doing
because there will be lots of challenges it might take longer than you think it might be harder than
you think people might not believe in you but none of that even matters because you know deep
down that you're on the right path number five you have to take charge of your time right now I'm on
the gap here so I haven't thought about homework and so long but in high school I created a rule
for myself the rule is that in order to leave time for vlogging and photography and other things that
mattered a lot to me aside from school I would not do any homework from Friday to Sunday which
meant that I either had to get it done at school or squeeze it into those four nights between
Monday and Thursday obviously if we had like a group project or something and we all agree to
work on it over the weekend I would do that like I wasn't a shitty person but as much as I could if
I had the power to decide what I did something Friday to Sunday we're off limits I feel like
what a lot of people hear that rule they're like putting less time into your studies hmm tisk tisk
but the idea of not bringing work home with you is a pretty common thing for people working jobs
to strive for like establishing that clear work home boundaries so why not establish those same
boundaries with your school responsibilities this might be bordering on controversial but
school isn't the only thing in your life I mean in college I think you narrow in your academic focus
and what you're studying more directly impact your career but a lot of high school is just you got to
get through it like I wasn't learning biology or chemistry because I want to be a biologist or a
chemist I was doing it to get the grade and so my point is that if you are in high school and there
are other things you want to pursue like starting a business you have to learn how to do school in
a smart and efficient way you shouldn't just quit school or not care about it I did not say that so
don't don't tell your parents or your counselor that some girl name the bliss bean tried to tell
you to drop out of high school but you just have to realize that putting more time into
homework and studying isn't necessarily going to yield better results you have to learn how
to invest time into each of the buckets of your life very carefully okay surprise I have a sixth
bonus tip I couldn't decide whether I wanted to add this but this is my video and I can do
whatever I want so number six is that you don't have to know what you're passionate about right
now I think that's often one of the things that keeps people from starting is they don't feel
like they have a clear passion for any one thing I would argue though that one of the best ways
to figure out your passion is to start exploring some passions my first blog was kind of a craft
blog slash personal life style mishmash I did some coding tutorials even like HTML and CSS
stuff that's what I was interested in in middle school then in high school I got really interested
in health especially healthy cooking the Bliss bean was originally like a wellness blog and as
I kept growing and changing as one does in high school one grows and changes I found that the few
blog posts that I've written about productivity those are the ones that got me most excited and
so now my niche niche niche is productivity and self-improvement but it was a long and winding
journey to get there alrighty as I promised I got to interview the very impressive author of this
book Shirley Wang we talked a little bit about why she decided to spend her time in quarantine
writing a book at age 15 I just can't get over the fact that she's 15 I'm sorry we talked about some
of the challenges that teens face in the business world and yeah I don't want to give too much away
so enjoy I'm gonna say bye now so please subscribe to my channel and give this video a like you can
order to release book in the description and I'll see you on Friday bye first of all can we have
you introduce yourself ok so my name is Shirley I'm 15 years old I'm from China but originally
from Taiwan so I've recently been writing my own book called business inside of the teenager it's
basically a business book that teaches teenagers how to dominate the business industry and teaches
them like basic things like how to get a job how to write a CV how to write a resume and basically
how to defy stereotypes surrounding teenage entrepreneurs I also have like little stories
and interviews from teen entrepreneurs such as like Jade Darmawangsa Brend Agranov um Apelocha in
their that they're really interesting and I just hope that people really like it ok first of all
let me just give you a round of applause because that's crazy that you're doing all of that at age
15 like I feel like at age 15 I was I had no idea like what my path in life was and I was just kind
of feeling lost so I think it's really cool that you've started all these things at such a young
age so let's talk about the book now because that's why I brought you on here what inspired
you initially where did you come up with the idea to write your book and what was your purpose with
it I'll tell you a little story so my mother would take me to the library the local library every
once a week and then since I'm really fascinated with business I'm always like you know I want to
be a business student when I go to college so I always look at the leadership section the you
know the management genre and then I would look at all the books about like Steve Jobs and like
you know Facebook google startups stuff like that then there were always books that you know taught
adults how to you know dominate this industry how to start their own business all that stuff
but they never taught teenagers how to do it there wasn't a specific handbook that taught teenagers
how what you know what the business world was about and I think that was something that a lot
of people still want to know they want to know how you know you know teenagers can utilize
social media as a source of revenue and how to gain profit through you know like YouTube stuff
like that so people want to know something that you know teenagers would want to learn about and
not just adults wait what do you think the biggest challenge are like obstacle that a teenager who's
interested in starting a business is gonna face and how how does your book address that I think
the most difficult thing is to like get a job and you always you know to talk to the adults
and to you know talk to your boss and say that why you are more competent than a 22 year old
that might have you know professional skills and stuff you know that's the biggest struggle for
teenagers is their age and then people think that they are having a lack of maturity or like a lack
of experience or a lack of knowledge um so the next question that I wanted to ask you was who
is one content creator that you personally have looked up to jade darmawangsa I've watched I watch
her videos when I wake up when I go to sleep because her content is just authentic first of
all authentic and second of all oh she is she gives really good business marketing content
and I love marketing if you look marketing is the base of everything if we don't have marketing then
your product you're really really amazing you know million dollar product can't get out into
the world people can't see it so I think marketing is the base of everything and she says she tells
it really well she tells you about social media marketing and how you can use the like utilize
that as a source of revenue and like I've been trying to learn that as much as I can from her
so I did an interview with her yesterday and she had she said some of the greatest stuff about you
know her career and how she's an eighteen year old but she runs three businesses I think that's crazy
but you know that is absolutely incredible and I look after that 100% the first time I heard of
jade was back in high school I was doing FBLA have you heard of Future Business Leaders of America
oh yeah yeah yeah i have okay I was thinking of doing believe the digital video production event
and I wanted to see what other students had done and I stumbled upon one of her videos like her
submission for the competition and then after that I did I kind of forgot about her and then I think
I just stumbled upon her on YouTube and like her last name I've never seen anyone else with that
last names I was like oh my god like that's the FBLA girl and I was like just just amazed that
someone from FBLA like actually made it in the real world you know oh are you currently at school
is your school closed down for the moment no April so my school has been closed probably for like one
month or two months already during that time I was the most unproductive person in the world I was so
motivated I did not do anything I woke up at noon and then the rest of the day I was like drilling
around and then i was kinda tired and kinda moody and then my mother would just like lecture me
every single day for being unmotivated not you know no not being on like not doing my tasks
or something like that or not helping out around the house it was like the worst time ever like I
was just so I felt so bad inside so I stopped probably two years ago for writing and then I
didn't like ever pursue it again but then like the week before we came back my mom was like okay
so you know you really like business you really like write really really like writing why don't
you just write like a business book or something like you know something you know help you relieve
the stress and help you know have a little you know fun for now and just like keep your mind on
something and do something for once because I was not doing anything and I'm like yes sure I started
planning out a schedule like I have an actual schedule of you know having a thousand words
a day and then for week seven thousand seven thousand words a day so that had like a due
date and then I was like I really like writing this like I really like writing this is this
is something I'm really passionate about while you were still at school and you were working on
other things like your photography business and making some YouTube videos how did you manage to
balance your time between your studies and then the other things that you were passionate about
so I think I was always able to because you know I I was alwaus the person that was like I finished
my work really fast and I did it really well I wouldn't like go home get my get my work done
from school and then I would do whatever I wanted to do so because that was like really important
to me like I always wanted to you know make time for things that you know either it was you know
having a little bit of downtime or just doing something like reading or writing like those are
the things that I want to do so I would always make time for it so I think if you really like
doing something you'll always make time for it even if you have like ours exams so always ship
things around and organize your time maybe you can say like okay so I'm gonna do math for one
hour I'm going do English for one hour and then I'm gonna take you know either it's like 15 or
20 minutes doing you know whatever you like to do but either it's like playing sports or you know
writing a book so like that it's always gonna like time is gonna build up so I think if you always
spent like a little bit of time every single day it could be like five minutes before you
go to sleep like a little bit and then that will eventually build up and then you'll eventually be
you know you know going for what you love going for your dream basically and where can people
follow along with the book on the internet or on social media on Instagram you can find at Business
Insider Teen so that is a business account that I have for my book but then in the bio of
business insider teen you can find my name as well it's um it's spelled it's really easy I feel like
it like link it or something it's really easy yeah I'm seeing your post on Instagram they're all so
cute that's you oh my god thank you so much for coming on here and answering some questions for us