If there is any indication or evidence that the campaigns to encourage girls to dream big and become whatever they want are working, 11 year old Detroit girl Asia Newson is the prime example.
She started a company called Super Business Girl, which she actually created when she was 5. No big deal. Her journey was the subject of an episode of ABC News’s ’20/20′ show, which ended up becoming their most viewed news story in history on Facebook with over 3 million views in only 3 days!
Her business sells homemade candles so that she can help homeless people in need, and also pay for her school and business supplies. She doesn’t use any tricky tactics, instead she relies on her confidence, tenacity and go-getter attitude to approach complete strangers when selling the candles.
“Since I was about 4 or 5-years-old, I’ve always had, like, the vibe, or, like, I don’t know, little power ball that keeps me going,”she told ABC.
That statement is nothing to skim over. It shows her parents have been instrumental in encouraging her entrepreneurial spirit right from the time she could walk and talk, it seems. It emphasizes the vital role parents and guardians play in their kids life in setting an example in terms of showing them what is possible for them to do in the future.
“Detroit is a wonderful place. It’s been a lot, a lot of negative things on the news and stuff like that. We even went through bankruptcy,” Asia said. “But Detroit is still a great place to start a business. We have wonderful people. They’ll encourage you. I mean, I sell my candles here, like I make pretty good money.”
She runs Super Business Girl with her parents who help Asia with her sales pitches and support her every step of the way. But it is Asia who is the source of all the entrepreneurial ideas.
“[I want] to have Super Business Girl stores, and, you know, just different places, like the Walt Disney store. They can buy my Super Business Girl merchandise, mugs, shoelaces, backpacks, notebooks, candles, everything,” said Asia.
“My ultimate, ultimate dream is to have schools all over the world, not just in America, that have professors and teachers in them that teaches at risk youth how to become entrepreneurs and empower themselves.”
Asia is a bright spark who may be an anomaly in a society that is largely still male-dominated and in a culture where girls see role models like Kim Kardashian as the “standard”, but that is slowly changing.
Authors and businesswomen Jamie Brown and Meg Seitz spoke to us back in December about their new book series for young girls called Bea is for Business, which they created to encourage girls with basic business principles from a young age.
“Business can be simple. We believe that starting the conversation about business and business principles with children at a young age will help them establish the skills necessary to think, plan , and solve problems more strategically and creatively,”they say about why they believe their series is going to impact the life of girls in a greater way than a Disney Princess.
Every bit of research that exists today pretty much all points to how early adoption of anything is going to impact the life of a child in a big way.
If you have a daughter and want to show her what is really possible in life outside of the narrow examples that often exist in mainstream media, take a look at Asia’s story on ’20/20′ below: