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MONEYMMAKING OPPORTUNITY

To brainstorm a possible moneymaking opportunity (MMO), you will want to open your mind. Find a quiet, safe place where your brain can fill with clouds of ideas, the wind can blow them around, and you can let your ideas rain down.

To get just the right conditions for your moneymaking brainstorm, here are a few buckets (or questions) to think about. The buckets will collect your ideas.

BUCKET 1: WHAT DO YOU LIKE TO DO?

What are your interests? The great Italian artist Michelangelo was interested in painting and sculpting. Famous electricity inventor Thomas A. Edison was interested in machines and electricity. Whatever work you choose, your success will depend on how interested you are in what you do. If you like doing something, you'll most likely keep doing it—and even try to get better at it.

Business sections of newspapers and magazines are filled with news about entrepreneurs (people who start their own businesses). And they all share one thing. They share a great love or enthusiasm

for what they do. You can bet Confucius (551-479

your sneakers that Yao Ming TALK _B.C.),a great loves basketball, that Jessica Chinese teacher and thinker,

once said, "Choose a job you

Simpson loves to sing, and that

love and you'll

computer genius Bill Gates and never have to

—

computers still click. work a day in your

life." Can you

Your turn: Get a pencil. Make a dollar list of all the things you like to do. imagine that?

BUCKET 2: WHAT ARE YOU REALLY GOOD AT?

Spill it. Don't be shy. You are one of a kind. There will

never ever be anyone exactly like you (even if you're an identical twin). Your interests, talents, and skills are unique to you. Let your ideas flow. "Don't rule out something that you like to do—that you could be better at," says Tom Ehrenfeld, business writer and author of The Start-UP Garden. "You can always learn more skills."

16 EARNING MONEY

Your turn: List your talents and skills. Draw a circle around your top five.

BUCKET 3: WHAT NEEDS

DO YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS, OR NEIGHBORS HAVE?

Look. Listen. Sniff around. Ask questions. Are there things you could make or do for family, friends, or neighbors? Keep your eyes and ears peeled for opportunities. Read your local newspaper. Take walks around the block. What do you notice? Do you spy any needs that are not being met? Are there opportunities staring you in the face? It's time to do something about them.

"Take advantage of needs and opportunities, like selling refreshments and cookies at a yard sale or snacks at your neighborhood pool. They can

be simple things," says Janet Bodnar.

Cooking, baking

Writing stories, poems, ads

Good at school

Love arts and crafts: jewelry, T-shirts, pottery, handbags, ornaments

Good with kids

Hungry people, garage sales, baseball games

Magazines, local businesses, neighborhood organizations

Kids who need help with schoolwork

Garage sales, art fairs, craft lovers, quick gifts

Lots of kids in area

Bake sales, baked goods company, lemonade stand

Freelance writing, write for kids magazines and local businesses

Tutor kids at home or at the library

Sell crafts at sales, fairs, or in own business

Babysitting; party, play group, or park helper

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Bodnar is an expert on kids and money and the author of Dollars & $ense for Kids.

Finding these things will take some time in the rain. Don't be afraid to get wet! (That's what happens in a brainstorm!) Soon enough, it just may start raining dollars and cents.

Your turn: Keep a list of the needs and opportunities you discover. Next, see if any of your interests and talents match the needs and opportunities that you listed. Some probably will.

BUCKET 4: DO YOU HAVE

BIG IDEAS, OR DO YOU LIKE TO INVENT THINGS?

Text Box: Like twin sisters Allie and Maggie Cawood-Smith from Auburn, California, you might be one idea or invention away from something big. When Allie and Maggie were nine years old, they wanted to wear

Allie (left) and Maggie Cawood-Smith (right) make and sell their own lip balm.

A ovac...•‘. I MAKING OPPOR I %UNITY i 17

lipstick. Their mother said, "Only if you make it!" With the help of their mother, who is also an herbalist (someone who collects and grows herbs), Allie and Maggie set out to make lipstick. They gathered lip-healing herbs from their garden and red beets to add color.

"When we mixed all the ingredients, we got red from the beets everywhere but in our lipstick. We ended up with a lip balm instead of lipstick!" says Maggie. Soon afterward, Allie and Maggie started wearing their lip balm and giving it as gifts. Then one day, they got an unBEETable idea.

AWE AND MAGGIE'S “UNBEETABLE” BIZ TIPS:

1. DO what you love, and the money will follow.

2. DO check out stores, mail-order catalogs, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. See if someone is already making what you want to make (or sell) or offering the service that you want to offer. Make sure that your product or service will be well received.

3. DO make a plan and set goals.

4. DO go into business for yourself, because YOU want to do it.

5. DON'T get burned out. Get away from the business from time to time. Your MMO should add to your life—not take away from it.

6. DO whatever you want to do! The sky's the limit. If we can do it, you can too.

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"Maggie's cello teacher said that we should sell it!" said Allie. And that's just what they did. With a little money from their mother, word-of-mouth advertising, store-tostore selling, hand-painted tins, and a website designed by dear Uncle Dave, Beet Lips was born. Fast-forward six years. Allie and Maggie, by then fifteen, were still in business. Their lip balm business allowed them to learn about both herbs and business, while they earned extra spending money, saved for college, and invested in the stock market (kids under the age of eighteen may only invest in the stock market with the help _____________

of an adult). "Having Beet Lips has given me the ability to create something," says Maggie, "and to believe that I can do anything that I put my mind to."

Your turn: What are you waiting for?

ANSWERS 108

GAME ON PAGE 12

1. George Washington

2. Thomas Jefferson

3. Abraham Lincoln

4. Alexander Hamilton

5. Andrew Jackson

6. Ulysses S. Grant

7. Benjamin Franklin