Beyond the Lemonade Stand: 7 Kid Entrepreneurs Share Their Secrets of Success
Connor Bruggemann, Founder
InvestorsCorner.org
At age six, Connor Bruggemann was running a lemonade stand. By age 16 he had created multiple blogs and networking websites. Now, at the age of 17, this self-taught Wall Street whiz kid who has already turned $9,700 into over $350K, has launched InvestorsCorner.org – an online community that features webinars, chat rooms, trading alerts, weekly conference calls and educational tools for young traders.
Connor has always enjoyed the rewarding feeling of making his own money versus having his parents pay or everything. At age 14 he got a job at a local restaurant and worked every weekend his freshman and sophomore year. After two years, he had saved up $9,700 so his father helped him open a custodial E*TRADE account where they invested in safer, dividend yielding stocks such as Verizon, AT&T, etc. and experienced modest gains.
But that wasn’t enough for this ambitious and driven entrepreneur. He started reading up on penny stocks, highly speculative companies trading under $5 per share and in September of 2013, he went behind his father’s back and liquidated his account (just shy of $10K) and put it all into a penny stock with an upcoming share buyback and many other catalysis. While on paper this seemed crazy, for Connor it was something he had to do – a gut feeling that he had to follow and take the risk. By December the stock was worth $91,000.
It wasn’t all glory for Connor, though. Over the next many months, he experienced some lows and lost close to $40K of his earnings. He had become a bit overconfident and careless and not diligent in his research. So he locked himself in his room, spent 18+ hours doing research on new stocks, identifying his mistakes and how to move forward. From March 2014 to September 2014 he was up $310K in profits.
“I was on the brink of giving up something that was my passion due to some failures in trades,” said Connor. “I knew I had to make it work so devoted all my time to it and refocused my efforts.” Connor is currently one of the top 50 traders on Profit.ly, which counts 44K traders.
Hoping to help other young traders in the same position, Connor started InvestorsCorner.org., with the goal of sharing his knowledge with other young teens and college students so they too can become successful, disciplined traders. His company is currently in talks with partnering with Tim Sykes and Profit.ly.
Connors advice to other kid entrepreneurs:
“Go for it! Having an idea or a passion for something is hard to go out there and chase due to fears of being judged or not accepted amongst your peers. But being an entrepreneur is all about breaking out of that social norm and striving towards your goals. People are going to try and say you can’t do it, discredit what you do and when you achieve success the same people will call it luck. So strive for your goals, chase your dreams and follow your passions.”