It’s finally here again: Applications are open for the Children’s Business Fair of Port St. Lucie!
CBF was my first real interaction with Acton Academy. I attended the October 2019 fair in Austin as a judge while completing my MBA at the Acton School of Business, a now-discontinued graduate program that functions the same way Acton Academy does — learner-driven contracts, none of my instructors answered questions, and transparency and accountability via running partners and publicly visible work submitted.
The Austin fair is the OG, and it showed. There were over 200 booths on the lawn of a historic governor’s mansion. Some of the children had clearly been running these businesses for a long time. There was one 15-year-old who apparently had struck a deal during this fair to sell her shampoo products at a major home and goods store in Austin!
There were so many booths that my wife and I, who were participating as judges, could just barely get to every single booth during the 3-hour period. We were judging the 11-14 year-old category. There were filmmakers who charged $5 for you to enter their “theater” and watch a 3-minute movie they made, all kinds of handmade creations, and even authors.
Some booths were obviously suffering from Helicopter Parent Syndrome, with the parents being the actual salesman and mastermind behind the business rather than their child. A shame, especially given the one business I will never forget.
We came to an 11-year-old boy’s booth, which had a lot of 3D-printed creations. Many were templates that you could get online, but just as we were leaving, I noticed a stand with little rectangles that had dog bones engraved in them and a velco strap wrapped around them. We asked, “What’s this?” He said, “It’s a peanut butter feeder for dogs.”
“How does it work?”
He explained that his grandma used to smear peanut butter on her knee in order to get her dog to be distracted while she cut his nails. He noticed that this was very inconvenient and would leave a mess. He tried different things, like (if I remember right) tying cupboard around his knee and smearing the peanut butter on that. But one day, as he was 3D printing with his dad, he realized he could print a plastic version of his great idea.
We bought one right away, and not even out of the “cuteness factor” that gets adults to buy a $1 cup of lemonade from the local neighborhood kids. We were planning on getting a dog when I was done with my MBA, and the story was irresistible.
He embodied entrepreneurship 101. He saw a problem — inconvenience and a mess — and created a profitable solution. He has a story to tell, one showing his helpfulness to his old grandma and ingenuity in developing prototypes.
It was that original fair that sold me on the whole premise of Acton Academy, and what led me to start one. Seeing a child create a solution to a problem was awe inspiring. I couldn’t believe it. And he didn’t talk to me like I was an adult and he a pre-teen. He talked to me as an equal. That’s why he earned my money as an equal.
He was a hero on a journey to find his calling and change the world. It was undeniable.
In 2021, my wife and I left Austin for Port St. Lucie to seek better opportunities for her in marine biology. We attended another Children’s Business Fair in Fort Lauderdale, and I was again blown away. It was not a 200-booth event. It was at a little paved area at Esplanade Park, with roughly 20 booths selling homemade jewelry, pencil-drawn artwork, and even something called paint-filled egg art. Most of the kidpreneurs were selling something for the first time ever.
Yet, the effect was the same. Here was real-world experience in entrepreneurship that you just can’t get in a lemonade stand. Some booths were completely sold out, and some of those children opted to play while others were frantically rushing to create more products. Other booths had hardly sold anything at all.
One thing that stood out to me was one 11-year-old boy who had business cards and was enrolled at an Acton Academy in Miami, and he was even selling himself as a consultant who could help us set up our Acton Academy in Port St. Lucie! He even followed up with us over email right after the event!
After that Fort Lauderdale fair, I knew it was time to bring it to Port St. Lucie. Everywhere you look, there’s all kinds of entrepreneurship taking place. Everything from the neighbor with the lawn care or pressure washing business that’s run with some bare equipment in his truck to new restaurants and storefronts popping up in shopping centers seemingly every week. Facebook groups that are booming with ads and requests. Even having brands that sell worldwide like BugBiteThing are set up here. Entrepreneurship is everywhere.
But how are we developing this in the next generation of heroes? I wasn’t aware of anything, nothing that actually let children be entrepreneurs. The city is booming, one of the fastest growing in the state and even possibly the country. How could we not be fostering the next generation of job creators and value creators?
So that’s why we host one. We hosted two fairs in 2023 and learned so many lessons about everything from event management to the best ways to advertise (guess what: it’s letting the kidpreneurs do it). And we’re excited to be bringing it back at a bigger venue. We’ve already had several applications and people reaching out with interest. Hopefully we can grow it to be a 200-booth, “mini-mansion” worthy affair.
For now, I’m just happy to know we’re providing an avenue for the next generation of heroes to find their calling and change the world.
