Teenagers Shown How to Succeed in Business by Trying

Newport Beach businessman Don Herman, 35, has a lesson he wants high school students to learn: Whether it’s green nail polish or snowboards, secret-recipe salad dressing or handmade jewelry, any passion or hobby can be the key to a successful business.

And he’s taking his lecture to the classroom--specifically, to high school classes throughout Orange County, backed up with an offer to help budding entrepreneurs with the coaching and the money to help them get started.

Herman is the founder of Southern California Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative, a nonprofit educational organization. As part of the organization’s work, he keeps a heavy schedule of speaking engagements at high schools and addresses almost every economics class in the county twice yearly.

Using material culled from magazines and newspapers, he shows students examples of businesses born of hobbies and interests.

“It’s one thing for them to see Bill Gates at 40 being a billionaire, but I really try to get down to their level and show them younger people who have succeeded too,” he said.

Teenagers are asked to write down their passions, and Herman urges them to turn a penchant for shopping or pet-sitting into a moneymaking venture. He also promises to give up to $1,000 in start-up money to teenagers who present him with workable business plans.

He doesn’t immediately write a check for $1,000 and is not necessarily prepared to handle a blitz of say, 1,000 proposals.

But he said high school students who prove their zeal to him will receive financial help as they need it to start a business, and hands-on mentoring from him.

His first recipient is Isaac Hayman, a Fullerton High School student who plans to make and market braided bracelets and necklaces made of industrial hemp.

Herman has advanced him $20 for supplies, but has also given Hayman the homework assignment of researching similar businesses at the Fullerton library for his business plan.

“Don Herman came to my school and spoke for an hour and a half about turning your loves and talents into a business,” Hayman said, and he was instantly intrigued. “I’ve been making hemp necklaces since I was 5 years old.”

His creative drive needs no stoking, but developing a sense of business discipline to match Herman’s is a challenge for him, Hayman said.

“I’m in the last semester of high school, so I’m trying to focus on my classes and my studies and at the same time he’s like, ‘OK, we’ll make 100,000 bracelets and sell them all,’ ” Hayman said.

He has found that although he now has a quota of jewelry to make, the creative process of braiding and beading is still fun--which is the main lesson Herman hopes to teach.

When he decided to begin a business, Herman said, he thought of something he enjoyed as a boy.

“I looked inside myself, back to the sixth grade, and I remembered that I thought selling candy was fun,” he said. “You see a Sweet Factory store in every mall, so I created a candy cart and put it next to a movie theater in Costa Mesa.” That was in October 1997.

The first year, sales were $50,000 and now Herman has four carts, with sales steadily increasing.

“Don’s a dynamic speaker and relates really well with the high school kids,” said James Reames, a careers and life skills teacher at Foothill High School in Santa Ana. “I didn’t have a class in the last three years that did not pay total attention to him.”

Herman’s message also helps to counteract an adolescent tendency toward indolence, another teacher said.

“A lot of the kids have the attitude that all they want to do is ‘kick back,’ ” said Don Orr, an economics teacher at Cypress High School. “They don’t understand why Bill Gates doesn’t just kick back or Donald Bren doesn’t kick back, since they have so much money, and just not do anything.”

Orr said he tells his students that the trick to working hard at a career is to enjoy the work.

“Bill Gates actually enjoys what he does, I tell them,” Orr said. “Entrepreneurship takes that creative spirit that people have and allows them to create a whole new field for themselves.”

Entrepreneurship, however, also appeals to the spirit of teenage independence.

“When you work for yourself you can work as hard as you want or as long as you want,” Orr said. “Also, it’s especially good for people who can’t work for others--and they like that.”

Ultimately, Herman hopes his venture will encourage business owners to work with teenagers.

Entrepreneurship is the warp and woof of the country’s economy, but it rarely is presented as an option to teenagers, he said.

“It’s so important to teach kids that they have more opportunities in life than working for somebody else,” Herman said.