Get Your Lemonade, Here! And Business Tips from Mikaila Ulmer
The lemonade stand, a favorite activity for enterprising kids who hope to make some cash selling a cold refreshment during the hot summer months, scored a victory in the U.S. state courts a few years back. Gregg Abbott, the governor of Texas, signed HB 234 into law – otherwise known as the “Save Our Lemonade Stands” bill. With the new law, Texas joined Utah and Colorado in allowing young entrepreneurs to operate a temporary business without a license.
Testifying in support of the bill was a teen entrepreneur from Austin, Texas, who was only four and a half when she set up her first lemonade stand — a true startup that has since grown into a family empire.
Mikaila Ulmer, 14, is the founder of Me & the Bees Lemonade, a company that makes and sells bottled lemonade (from a family recipe that uses honey and flaxseed) and donates a percentage of the profits to help save the honeybees. The recipient of many small-business honors, including a $60,000 investment from Shark Tank star Daymond John and an $810,000 infusion of capital in 2017 from a group of NFL players and businessmen, Me & the Bees is sold in Whole Foods Market, as well as restaurants and other locations.
A self-described social entrepreneur, educator and student, these days Ulmer frequents spots on entrepreneurship panels and leads workshops to talk about her business and her passion to help save the honeybees.
“My biggest lesson about money is simple and has not changed since I was four and a half. Give, save, spend — in that order.” — Mikaila Ulmer
KWHS recently caught up with Ulmer after she wrapped up a trip to the Social Innovation Summit in Los Angeles, where she closed the two-day event talking about her insights into brand purpose and the power of Generation Z purchasing. Ulmer has undoubtedly become a resounding voice for youth-inspired entrepreneurship. With that in mind, we asked the ‘Bee CEO’ to provide us with some valuable lessons from her past decade of business development and ownership.
🐝 Brand. “The beverage industry is very competitive and difficult to succeed in,” observes Ulmer, whose mom D’Andra leads the company’s marketing efforts. “I compete by being authentic to the brand and never, never forgetting why I started my business: To save the honeybees. Honestly, I would like my brand to be known around the world and I would like to create a Me & the Bees line, very similar to the Hello Kitty brand. Besides my lemonade, I just started with a new line of lip balms.”
🐝 Scale. Scaling a business means finding ways for it to grow while still controlling costs and other expenses. A turning point for Me and the Bees came in 2015, when the company won a contract to supply Whole Foods Market. This followed many smaller, yet significant steps, says Ulmer. “My first scale up was when I was just five and decided to upgrade from a hand juicer to an electric Juicer,” recalls Ulmer. “My second scale up was when I was nine and decided to purchase already-squeezed lemon juice. I learned at an early age that scaling is important to grow your business. Each decision to scale allowed me to produce more lemonade faster, which allowed me to have more customers. I went from one store in Austin, Texas to over 1,000 stores in 40 states across the U.S. Today, my product is manufactured by a large co-packer and we produce thousands of gallons at a time.
🐝 Finance. “My biggest lesson about money is simple and has not changed since I was four and a half. My dad taught me lessons about money,” notes Ulmer, whose father, Theo, is CFO of Me and the Bees in charge of operations and finance. “Give, save, spend — in that order. Give: donate money to make a difference. I also give to my church. Save: I set aside money for college and the future. Spend: I love buying my own things and not having to ask my parents for money…all the time.”
🐝 Mission. The bees have always been a part of Ulmer’s business. When she was four, she was stung by two bees in a week and started to research them. “I learned that they were incredibly important pollinators and dying at an alarming rate,” says Ulmer, who has grown into a true bee ambassador, often educating groups about how bees pollinate crops, help flowers to grow and face diseases and other global threats. The Beelieve Blog on her website addresses bee conservation and other environmental topics. “When I have a challenging day, if I know I saved a bee or inspired someone to be an entrepreneur, I know I am making a difference. I’ve been working hard not only to donate a portion of the proceeds [from lemonade sales] to help save the honeybees, but also speaking to Gen-Z who have, in my opinion, a more social/activist mindset. Two years ago, I started my own nonprofit called the Healthy Hive Foundation, where I help save the bees through education, preservation, and research. And currently we’re working on a pretty cool project with Microsoft to add technology to the mix!”
🐝 Funding. Mikaila is also a big advocate for women in business. “There has been an increase in women taking the leap to start selling products and services,” she says, noting that Inc. magazine reports that every day in the U.S., women start about 849 new businesses. And in the past 20 years, the number of women-owned firms has increased 114%. “Yes! I wish it were not so hard for women to fund their businesses. I have difficulty funding the growth of my business. So, there needs to be less bias in the investment industry. As a result, I would like to become an angel investor and help fund women and minority-owned businesses.”
🐝 Passion and Purpose. While building a business has been a lot of work, Ulmer has had many memorable moments. Among her favorites: a trip to Cape Town, South Africa with Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network, and introducing U.S. President Barack Obama at the United States of Women Summit in Washington, D.C., in 2016. “The most successful companies are those where the founders are truly interested and love what they do,” suggests Ulmer, who plans to attend college and leverage all her entrepreneurship skills during her life after high school. “Find something you love to do and figure out a way to make it a business while also giving back to your community. The more passionate you are about your company, the more fun you’ll have while running it.”
Related Links
- Me and the Bees Lemonade
- The Social Innovation Summit
- Gov. Bill Abbott Signs the Lemonade Bill into Law
- Gov. Abbott’s Twitter Video
- CNBC: What This 13-year-old CEO Learned from Her Triumphs in Business
- Lemonade Day
- Where to Find Me and the Bees Lemonade
- Mikaila Ulmer on Shark Tank
Conversation Starters
As a social entrepreneur, Mikaila is passionate about both profits and the environment. Why is she driven to champion bee conservation? Using her website, as well as the “Bee Economy” article in the Related KWHS Stories tab, research honeybees and discover the purpose behind her business mission.
Mikaila says, “There needs to be less bias in the investment industry.” What does she mean by this and how does she plan to be part of the solution?
Mikaila has visions of making Me and the Bees as popular as brands like Hello Kitty. Do you think she can succeed? How would you help her build her brand awareness, brand identity and brand loyalty?
It’s all about purpose! We’ve all probably watched Simon Sinek’s video, and just like Apple, Mikaila really works from inside the circle to out. Considering the purpose first is arguably the most important in businesses today. The purpose/mission is absolutely the core to everything that is done related to the business and can really distinguish the business from similar products (in this case, lemonade, which is nearly a homogeneous good). Without purpose, competition would be really different and it’ll be harder to distinguish between products.
Of course, this is not to say that the good itself and quality of good doesn’t matter. They do, as these are the first things people notice. However, when you move on from that initial superficial thought and actually seeing the impact of your actions, that’s when the purpose for the firm really kicks in. And yep, consumer loyalty is easily captured this way. (Well, for me at least – that’s why I use Ecosia for tree planting instead of other search engines. I’ve read the financial reports for Ecosia carefully & spoken to sustainability educators and evidence has shown Ecosia is legitimate with donating lots of profits to trees.)
Honeybee conservation is quite popular in society today as we slowly start to research & realise honeybees’ tremendous contributions to society. Positive externalities of scale and ‘free labour’, some put it this way. I’m an advocate for all service/sustainability issues, and would definitely like my honey!
You make a marvelous point, Harry! A dedicated mission provides the driving force behind a successful business, and it can generate a positive wave of change. A thoughtful mission manifests itself in the product, and it reflects a certain authenticity. It’s very fortunate that so many people & organizations are raising awareness towards the importance of honeybees, as well as the endangerment surrounding them. The fusion between a quality business & an earnest pursuit on behalf of the honeybees is definitely worthy of all the buzz!
I found Mikaila’s business to be very inspirational. Mikaila is very passionate about conserving the bees for many reasons, mainly because of her personal connections to them. She got stung by a bee twice when she was very young and feared them. She became convinced that she needed to overcome this fear. Starting her lemonade business increased her interaction with the environment. Her family encouraged her to learn more about bees. She realized that bee populations are severely declining. Every winter, a stunning 45% of their hives are lost due to Colony Collapse Disorder caused by pesticides, climate change, and parasites. Colony collapse disorder is when most of the worker bees in a colony disappear. What’s left behind is the queen bee, some food, and some immature bees to be taken care of by a few nurse bees. The bees have been losing their habitats. Once Mikaila had learned more, she knew that they needed saving. Additionally, her grandma’s lemonade recipe would not be unique if it did not contain flax seeds and honey. Bees are necessary for honey to exist and pollinate many important crops, contributing greatly to the economy and helping their offspring survive as well. Consumers have a large demand for honey and because of colony collapse disorder, beekeepers cannot meet their demands. Humans all over the world will not have enough food to eat, especially since bees pollinate ⅓ of food. World hunger would increase if it wasn’t for bees. Farmers are being forced to pay 20% more just to rent a certain amount of bees for pollination services, so they are losing a lot of money. Mikaila’s businesses would not be successful if bees weren’t there. What’s interesting is that bees pollinate lemon trees and help other species survive. The agriculture industry globally is worth $2.4 trillion and bees contribute to $16 billion of it.
Her business mission also focuses on increasing people’s awareness about the significance of bees to our daily lives and funding of “women and minority-owned businesses.” Bees are very important in preventing the increase of world hunger. Most people don’t realize this, and I think it is an important factor for Mikaila to consider when growing her business. Overall, I really like Mikaila’s idea. I think she will definitely be very successful given the numerous resources she has, such as the deal she made with Daymond from Shark Tank, her blog, and the Healthy Hive Foundation. However, I think that all of us collectively need to play our parts in saving the honeybees.
Great reflections, Phalguni! I agree that Mikaila’s bee-conservation mission is truly inspiring. It’s so much more than the lemonade sales that will go to help the honeybees; it’s about raising awareness of this problem so that future leaders are able to brainstorm meaningful solutions. Already—after learning Mikaila’s story—I find myself more attuned to the plight of the honeybee. I was excited to read recently that France has banned all five pesticides that threaten the bee population. I’ve also been following the headlines of how politics are reportedly impacting honeybees in the U.S. Trump budget cuts are being blamed for a winter with the most U.S. honeybee colony losses in decades. This could just be political rhetoric. But the more I learn, the better equipped I’ll be to consider all sides of the honeybee dilemma.
At a very young age, Mikaila was drawn to the bee cause, which helped her to develop her business and made a great change in her reality and a considerable impact in the conservation of bees throughout the world. Faced with my low-income family’s situation in a developing country like Brazil, I felt the need to provide also from an early age. Unlike Mikaila however, it wasn’t bees that drew my attention but my own family’s need. As an 9-year-old during school break, I saw my mother taking a chocolate cake out of the oven and wondered why not start selling it. With her approval, every morning I would cut the cake she had made and take dozens of slices to sell at school and sometimes go knocking doors in my neighborhood selling cake in order to, at the end of the day, acquire some money to help my family and complement my allowance.
This activity made a slight difference in my family’s income and had a huge impact on my life, leading me to develop the entrepreneurship skills that were not inherent to me but encouraged by my needs. This feature in my personality grew within me until recently I was faced with another income shortage. As the vice-secretary of finance in my school’s Student Council this year, we were presented with a challenge at the very beginning of our mandate. The uniform of the school’s soccer team has reached an unsustainable state after 6 years of use. Additionally, a new soccer team was created, and so the need for a whole new set of uniforms was brought to my attention. Due to several reasons, my school was reluctant in providing the full money needed to buy new uniforms, so I had to think fast in order to find a financial source to address this obstacle.
As Brazilians studying in an all boys school, sports, especially soccer, mean a lot among the students. It is the time during breaks when we have the opportunity to play, interact, and most importantly: connect. Due to this vital importance of soccer in my school, I saw that enabling our teams to play was not only a matter of entertainment or athletics but also of education. The connection established by the sport frequently defines the students’ relationships in every other area at school, impacting friendships and academic performances. My goal was simple: finance to advance. I needed to establish a financial source to purchase the uniforms in order to foster academic, athletics and inter-personal achievement in my school.
As a result, I had the idea to approach local companies and try to establish partnerships. After months of negotiations, I managed to achieve a deal in which two local companies would finance our uniforms and in exchange for their sponsorship, we printed their logos on the back of the uniforms as a form of marketing.
One of the main things I believe that makes true entrepreneurs resourceful is their creativity, which in this case was the solution to my mission. Entrepreneurship is an activity that can evolve into a lifestyle. I intend to have further experience in this field, to help not only my family or my school, but also my whole country.
Thank you Mikaila Ulmer for sharing your quote: “The most successful companies are those where the founders are truly interested and love what they do.” Do you know what made this quote stand out from the others? Passion. Passion was the first word that popped up in my head after reading the quote. Passion and enjoyment for me creates a strong feeling of motivation which helps push me past obstacles and tough times along the road into the finish line of success.
I resonated with this quote because I strongly believe that anyone, no matter where you came from, what your race is, or you beliefs, by being passionate and enjoying whatever they want to do can help them become successful. You are maybe wondering how would a high school student like me know that being passionate and enjoying makes you create successful companies, but I have learned from some of the most famous people and even from myself that passion can lead to small successes.
Steve Job. Many people know him as the guy with stylish glasses, a black turtleneck, jeans and sneakers or as one of the creators of Apple. Apple is known all over the world as a popular brand with products such as the iPhone and even you are probably using one too, but not many people know the hard work, effort, and love that Steve Jobs put into creating and perfecting Apple products. He dedicated most of his life trying to work on improving functionality of his Mac and also in 2007 he created the most innovated touchscreen technology that anyone has ever seen, the iPhone. Steve Job is one of the many successes in the world that became successful through passion and love.
Even though I didn’t have successes at such as large scale as him or have a biography written about me, I was still able to direct my passion of finance into small successes. I was first introduced to business when my dad talked to me about stocks. I would read the Wall Street Journal every week and he would quiz me on how the overall market would perform the next day or week based on the news I read. When I first started, I would, like you would expect, fail many times in my prediction, but after many weeks of practice, I eventually got the hang of it and improved on my predictions. I started to enjoy my first taste of finance and I was passionate to explore and learn more about finance. I wanted to teach people online about finance and help give them some tips about what stocks and bonds to buy so I created my first successful blog and continue to expand it because I enjoy and feel really motivated towards writing about finance tips. Even though a blog isn’t much, I feel really accomplished and feel successful because this was the first time I did something that could impact people worldwide. Because I was so passionate about finance, I did hours of research online for business related competitions and I eventually found KWHS. I feel that finding KWHS was a small success for me because it would be a perfect fit in helping me practice my finance skills through their investment competition and even articles.
“The most successful companies are those where the founders are truly interested and love what they do.” Just a simple quote by a smart and successful young lady resonated a lot with me because I could relate to how passion leads to success on a small scale and on a large scale. Passion. This small, but mighty word could change your life. Thank you Mikaila Ulmer.
I think not
These days, many youths with ambition are starting their businesses. Mikaila Ulmer and I are among them. Reading about Mikaila’s journey reminded me of my own experiences as a young entrepreneur. Like Mikaila, who started Me & the Bees Lemonade with a mission to save honeybees, my schoolmates and I launched a fashion brand to support students in the Philippines. While our paths are different, we both combine business with a social mission.
Our brand’s initial goal was to sell goods to our school’s student body. Our school operates a mission school in the rural Philippines, named Valor Philippines. Therefore we wanted to gather money to donate to it. Noting that the school’s construction work only cost a couple of hundred dollars, the impact we would convey to the children thrilled us. We were first thrilled that we had raised a little over a thousand dollars. We did, however, reach a limit. We understood that selling to our other students wouldn’t be sufficient to raise the necessary funds. Although it was a little setback, it inspired us to think more broadly. Since I’ve always been interested in business, I recommended that we introduce our brand to non-academic audiences. We thought that by doing this, we would be able to contact more people and get more money.
The ‘one-to-one aid’ program is an important aspect of our business. We give one t-shirt to a student in need for each one that is sold. This program demonstrates how business can be a force for good and reflects the basic principles of our brand. Mikaila demonstrates how incorporating social concerns into business may result in success and positive change through her dedication to contributing a portion of her revenues to conserve the honeybees.
Working together has been critical to our growth. Motivated by Mikaila’s partnership with Whole Foods Market, we approached a local company about a September launch relationship. These collaborations increase our brand’s appeal and validity in a way similar to Mikaila’s expansion.
Mikaila’s ‘give, save, spend’ mentality has also taught us how to manage our finances responsibly. We set aside monies for charities, save for future expansion, and reinvest in our company. This strict strategy guarantees that we stick to our objective while remaining sustainable. Learning to handle funds has been difficult but necessary for our long-term success.
It has been challenging to manage schooling and a business. There have been times when juggling obligations to both work and education has felt too much to handle. There were insufficient hours in the day at times. But what keeps us going is the encouragement we receive from our school’s community and the desire to improve the lives of youngsters in the Philippines. It is quite admirable how Mikaila manages to juggle her company, advocacy activities, and education. We are on the correct track because of her perseverance.
Looking to the future, we aim to increase our impact. We plan to exceed our current sales so we can extend financial aid beyond the number of students in our mission school. This mirrors Mikaila’s growth and innovation. We constantly seek new ways to scale our business and deepen our social impact.
To sum up, my experience as a young entrepreneur has been gratifying and demanding. I’ve learned much from it about strategic growth, financial management, keeping true to our vision, and the effectiveness of fusing business with social good. The tale of Mikaila Ulmer demonstrates how youthful businesspeople can be successful and have a beneficial influence.
I encourage other aspirational students to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams and include social responsibility in their undertakings. Consumers value and reward genuine efforts to effect positive change, as Mikaila did. I hope to expand our company and make a difference in Mikaila’s footsteps, and I wish her the best.
I’m dedicated to creating a company that prospers and has a long-lasting, beneficial influence on our community as I move on with my journey. One small step at a time, we can work together to build a future where entrepreneurship propels significant change.