She went looking for a problem to solve.
Her dad, Jamey Ice, is an entrepreneur. He wrote Kid Founder, a book for kids about how to find an idea, build the thing, put a price on it, and sell it to somebody who says yes.
The first rule in it is that a business solves a problem for somebody. So Justice went and found one.
People get bored. People get sad. That’s a real problem, and she already knew the fix.
“Businesses solve problems. People are bored or sad. Jokes make them happy.”
That is the entire business plan, and it is a better one than most adults write.
Why jokes, out of everything? Her answer:
“If you have a bad day, you can always listen to jokes, and they’ll make you laugh and they’ll get you on the right trail again.”
Then she did the actual work.
She spent months collecting and writing jokes. She read every one out loud to her dad, wherever he happened to be, and kept the ones that worked. The rest got cut.
She sat in on the cover design and told the grown-ups what to change, and they changed it. When she asked for caution tape along the bottom, it got caution tape along the bottom.
Some of it was slow. Some of it she had to do twice. Here’s what she says she learned:
“Mistakes can happen, and frustration can happen, but you can still keep your eye on the book.”
What came out the other end is a real paperback with her name on the front, in a real store, at a real price.
Why this counts as a business and not a craft project.
A business is a thing you make that somebody else wants enough to pay for. That’s the whole definition, and it doesn’t have an age limit attached to it.
So there’s a product. There’s a price. There’s a cost to print each copy, which means there’s a margin, which means Justice is going to learn what a margin is by watching one happen to her. And there will be a first customer — a real person, probably a relative, who hands over real money for a thing an 8-year-old made.
That moment is the entire point. Not the money. The part where she finds out the loop actually closes.
What she’s doing with the money.
Her plan, in her words: save it, go to the mall with her friends and her sister, buy squishies, and save the rest to help people who are homeless.
That covers spending, saving and giving. Plenty of adults never get all three.
What she hopes you say.
That it’s good. That you want to read it again. And that you hand it to somebody else and tell them, “You should read it, because it’s a really good joke book.”
Her advice to any kid who wants to make something of their own:
“Go for your dreams. Do something, and have fun.”
A few things about Justice.
- AgeEight
- Lives inTexas
- DogBaby, a French bulldog
- Does for funDraws
- Wants to beAn ice skater
- Best joke“Put a little boogie in it”
A note from her dad
I’m an entrepreneur. I wrote Kid Founder for kids because I wanted mine to know how to build something real, not just hear about it.
It would have been a little ridiculous to write that and then not let my own kid try it.
So this is hers. I did the parts an 8-year-old can’t legally do — the publishing account, the files, this website. She did the parts that actually matter: what goes in it, what it looks like, and whether it’s funny.
If you’ve got a kid who wants to build something real, that’s the book I wrote: kid-founder.com.
— Jamey Ice, Fort Worth