I woke up stoked this morning.

I bet Rhett Jones did, too.

That’s because today, this 17-year-old entrepreneur welcomes his first customers to the world-class mountain bike park he built — from scratch.

Read on to learn more about Rhett and his experience in BETA Camp.

But first, some tips for how to sneak career exploration for your kids into daily activities. 🛒

In today’s issue:

1. Future Friday: Turn your boring errands into opportunities for your kids to explore exciting careers.

2. Something to inspire you: Holy crap, this teenager launched a business most adults wouldn’t even attempt.

3. Ivy’s takeaway: The simple formula you can use to help your kids view the world through the lens of entrepreneurship.

The future of retail is full of problems your kids can solve

I bet you wouldn’t have guessed that you can prepare your kid for a lucrative career by…

…taking them shopping. 🛒

With so much focus on how technology is impacting e-commerce and virtual shopping (we’re looking at you, Metaverse Albertsons), it’s easy to forget that in-store buying experiences are still a thing.

And retailers are looking to technology to enhance that buying experience — and their bottom line.

So why not take advantage of your next trip to Target to get your kids excited about developing and applying new technology?

Play the perspective game

It’s easy for kids to view in-store operations through the lens of a customer – after all, they are the customer.

So the next time they accompany you on a shopping trip, assign them a worker to observe the operations through. This could be the stock attendant, the store manager, or even the security guard.

Pose these three questions to them on the ride home:

1. What’s the most difficult part of that worker’s job?

2. Is there a way for technology to make it less difficult?

3. Is there a way for technology to replace that part all together?

This exercise carries the added benefit of inspiring empathy as it encourages kids to put themselves in the shoes of others.

Discover the story of the products

Select a few different products from different origins.

🍊 Oranges from Florida?

🍅 Tomatoes from Mexico?

🧸 Toys from China?

Walk through the steps that product took to arrive on the shelf:

1. Where was it grown / made?

2. Who picked / packaged it?

3. How did it get from where it was packaged to the store?

4. What technology was likely used?

Your kids probably wouldn’t guess that blockchain is now being used for supply-chain management and food traceability.

Way back in 2016 (seems like a lifetime ago), Walmart’s VP of Food Safety challenged his team to trace the origin of a mango that he had purchased in one of their 4k+ US stores.

It took his team a shocking six days to trace the source.

Imagine if that mango, and others from the same source, carried foodborne pathogens. That’s a lot of sick people.

So Walmart partnered with IBM to build a food tracing system on hyperledger blockchain, and they repeated the experiment.

That time, it took 2.2 seconds to trace the mango. 👊

Whether it be blockchain supply chain systems, robot shelf-stockers, or advanced security measures, there is no shortage of opportunities for kids to explore interesting careers during seemingly mundane errands.

You just gotta think outside the big box. 😉

The teenager who built a world-class mountain bike park

Today is the day.

BETA Camp alum, Rhett Jones, is opening the gates to a new world-class mountain bike park.

Station Mountain Bike Park offers 20 adventure trails, bike rentals, a bike shop, lodging, and food.

Over the last seven months, Rhett secured $3m in funding for the land, and $350k in investment for the park development from 19 equity investors.

Then he hired a team of 10 full-time staff to launch his vision into reality.

And today, he’s expecting 500 riders to christen the trails.

Did I mention that Rhett is 17 years old? 🤯

How the heck?...

You might be wondering how a teenager pulled this off.

Most adults don’t have the skills and work ethic to build a business from scratch – let alone something as ambitious as a mountain bike park.

“Downhill mountain biking is the only sport I’ve ever truly loved,” Rhett told me.

Passion: check. ✅

But passion alone isn’t enough. A project like this requires skills, endurance, and incredible work ethic.

That’s when Rhett turned to BETA Camp.

“Before BETA Camp, I always had the mindset that a high school kid raising money from private investors was literally impossible,” he admitted.

That’s why the first lesson at BETA Camp is to ditch those limiting beliefs. 

Kids are capable of remarkable things, like disrupting a $3 trillion market and starting a career in medicine while still in high school.

They just need to be given permission to not only dream big, but to take action on those dreams.

Dude’s got skills.

Once Rhett learned that a simple shift in his mindset could lift the curtain to a world of possibilities, he threw his energy into learning the skills required to get the job done.

He and his BETA Camp teammates built a startup that connects expert instructors with students. He enjoyed working on the project, but realized that it would be hard to make real money with it. 💸

With that foundation, Rhett set his sights on a much more ambitious project: a world-class mountain bike park.

“BETA Camp gave me an entrepreneurial perspective and confidence, and taught me the essentials of starting a business. Now I realize it is actually not that hard.”

Not that hard?

It’s freakin’ hard, Rhett. You just make it look easy.

Congratulations on your opening day!

Kids can do it

Rhett is a great example of what can happen when kids are taught to view the world through the lens of entrepreneurship.

They interact with businesses every day.

Whether it be through mundane errands like grocery shopping, or activities they enjoy like mountain biking, opportunities surround them.

Just guide them through a simple formula:

🔎 Identify a problem. Rhett saw that fellow bikers were taking 12-hour trips out of Texas to access bike parks in nearby states.

🏘️ Identify a market. He then discovered that Texas has one of the world’s largest mountain biking communities, but did not have a world-class bike park.

🧠 Become an expert. This is the hardest step, and where most people give up. Rhett visited the top 20 mountain bike parks in the US and learned everything he could about bike park design, operations, and even dirt composition.

💰 Propose a solution. Rhett pulled together the problem, the market, and his expertise to create the optimal solution – then he had investors lining up!

I truly believe that all kids are capable of far more than we give them credit for.

Until next time,

Ivy

CEO Prequel, BETA Camp, Apollo

Follow my journey on LinkedIn