Everyday I feel like I hear more and more stories of young people taking charge and starting their own businesses. And when I say “young people,” I don’t mean people in their thirties (which is still young by the way); I’m talking about tweens, teens and twenty-somethings. I’m talking about kids who are still students in various stages of school, be it middle school, high school or college. This burst of young entrepreneurship astonishes me, but with technology and the Internet it’s becoming more plausible for people to develop entrepreneurial skills at an early age.

I listened to a podcast on Small Business Trends the other day, and on the program they interviewed Gregg Blanchard, a former student entrepreneur (recently graduated) and host of the Teen Biz podcast. According to Gregg, college is the perfect time for someone to start a business. Why? Because college students are suddenly thrown into this world of freedom and independence, which helps them to really start seeing the world, becoming self-motivated and putting their creativity into practice. When you combine all of these things, you have a great recipe for entrepreneurial success, Gregg says.

Because of their age, however, student entrepreneurs face a whole other set of challenges, namely earning credibility and respect. They don’t typically have vast business and life experiences, causing anyone from investors to clients to judge them negatively and not focus on their actual talents. In addition, young people don’t have the extensive networks that someone with years and years of experience does. Because of this, Gregg likes to emphasize the need for students to start working extra hard on their networking skills and start early.

The podcast resulted in a really interesting conversation between Gregg and the two hosts. If student entrepreneurship is something that interests you at all, I encourage you to check it out.

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