By Kate Lohnes

If you think the only entrepreneurs living in Dublin are adults, think again.

From computers to babysitting to lawn care and pet-sitting, there are multiple teens in Dublin offering goods and services to their community. Dublin Life spoke with several of them about their respective businesses and what they’ve learned …

Cory and Kelsey Eversole, 14, Grizzell Middle School
Identical twins Cory and Kelsey began their own lawn care service at age 13. They have approximately 10 regular clients in their Muirfield neighborhood with lawn-mowing, leaf raking, snow removal and other outdoor chores. They’ve also expanded their services to include pet sitting.
Why did you start your own business? Kelsey: “We had just moved (to Muirfield from the other side of Dublin) and we started making friends.” Cory: “We found out that teens need a little spending money to spend time with friends. We thought, ‘We’re good at working, we like to work,’ so we started going around to our neighbors when it snowed and asking if they wanted their driveway shoveled, or we’d go around and rake leaves or mow lawns.”
Did the business take off from there? Cory: “It kind of started off slow, and then people started talking, sort of like word of mouth.” Kelsey: “Then we made brochures, invoices.”
What do you do with the money you earn? Kelsey: “We put half of what we make in the bank. We buy our own clothes and shoes and stuff.” Cory: “Our parents like for us to know and understand the value of a dollar.”
Do you use the money you earn to pay for supplies? Cory: “We use some of the money to buy gas (for the lawn mower or snow blower). Our dad buys it and we give him a couple bucks.”
What have you learned from running your own business? Kelsey: “Before we started working we thought we’d just spend money and it’d be nothing. Now we actually think about saving and how much we pay for something and what’s on sale. We don’t just buy. We bargain shop now.”
Has any part of running a business been challenging? Kelsey: “Just the overflow of business. Having eight calls a day to come and shovel the driveway, it’s very confusing.” Cory: “It takes good time management.”
Do you plan to expand your business in the future? Kelsey: “When we can drive we’ll probably have more business. We’ll be able to transport items instead of carrying them through a foot of snow.” Cory: “It kind of hinders motion when you’re walking through a foot of snow with a snow blower.”
How do you deal with days when you don’t want to work? Kelsey: “You just have to tough it out and go.” Cory: “In the summer, when I’m mowing lawns after school, I want to get my homework done and go hang out with some of my friends, but I’ve learned that postponing isn’t the best.”

Josh Strange, 17, Dublin Coffman High School
Josh troubleshoots and repairs computers for individuals and businesses around the Dublin community. He also has designed several projects for his school, including a library attendance program and an online voting system (which students used in February to select the court for the school’s sweetheart dance).
What are some of the problems you deal with in your computer services? “The biggest thing I hear from people is, ‘I think my computer has a virus.’ Or, ‘My computer runs too slow.’ Sometimes I get, ‘My computer won’t even turn on,’ or ‘I can’t access the Internet.’ What I do ranges from reinstalling the operating system to removing a virus to even, if the hardware is broken, helping someone pick out a good new one to buy.”
Do you have any regular clients? “There’s a hair salon (for whom) I’m kind of their IT department. They had two computers that were running really slow and I went in there fixed them up for them and got those running faster. Then they decided they wanted new computers so I showed her which ones she needed to buy to make it work the right way and put all the software they needed on them. If anything goes wrong, I usually get a call or a text message.”
How do you use the money you earn? “I’d love to tell you I was saving it all, and I do have another job (bussing tables at Mary Kelley’s), but most of my money goes where most teenagers’ money probably goes, to food and entertainment. I do try to save, and I’ve been more successful at it once I started working at a steady job. When I get money for computer work I try to save that and then budget my money from Mary Kelley’s a little more evenly. A lot of it goes into computer tech stuff that I buy (for computer repairs).”
Do you have other extracurricular activities? How do you juggle work and fun? “I run cross country, and I’ve run track the past three years. When I had cross country, it was a lot harder. Since starting work at Mary Kelley’s and fixing computers, it forced me to keep a calendar, which is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever had to do. I’ve been using it for everything now.”
What has your computer business taught you? “Time management was probably the biggest thing, because before I played everything by ear. The other thing was learning how to deal with people. I had to learn how to communicate what exactly people need.”

Colin McDonald, 18, Dublin Coffman High School
Colin began CMAC Digital Video in December 2007. He works as a videographer and editor on various projects throughout the year, from infomercials for companies to sports highlight videos to wedding videography.
When did you first become interested in videography? “When I was in elementary school, a friend and I enjoyed making little movies with an analog camera. We would shoot scenes back to back. We had fun making little movies about stories we came up with. When I was in middle school, I had a really good teacher who was also interested in videography, and we worked together to learn how to use the equipment (from the schools).”
What was the first project you did for your business? “I did a wedding for somebody who was a friend of a friend. That was probably the first time I was asked to do a project and got paid.”
What’s one of the biggest projects you’ve completed? “Last month I finished a highlight video of the UA girl’s soccer team. I would say I spent six hours a week just shooting (the games) and importing video on the computer. Their last game before their banquet was on a Thursday, and I had to finish the video by the following Wednesday. I spent 24 hours that weekend working on editing the video.”
What do you enjoy most about running your own business? “This is really the best business I could be in. I don’t have to go to Target every day and check in and be there from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. or whenever. I have more flexibility and I have more time to do what I want, plus I really enjoy it. It’s like getting paid to have fun and not have a hectic schedule.”
What aspects of running your business have been the most challenging? “Working with different types of people: they’re not always going to understand how a video works and what I need to do to make a good video. I have to be able to explain what I can do and the possibilities for them. (I have to remember) it’s not just the computer I’m working with.”

Mark Mahaffey, 18, Dublin Jerome High School
Instead of finding a summer job, Mark began mtek media Inc. in 2005. The company converts VHS tapes to DVDs, preserving home videos originally recorded on VHS tapes. The company also uploads videos to a private YouTube interface, which is accessible with a username and password. Mark’s work was recently recognized by TechColumbus, which awarded him a 2008 High School Student Innovation Award in February.
What made you think a service like this would be in demand? “I thought it was a need. For my family, as an example, I know we have a lot of tapes, and when you have kids, people videotape and take pictures. I thought it would be in demand because a majority of people do that kind of stuff. “
Do you deal mostly with home videos? “Yes, but we also had a sports agent that has given us tapes of high school and college players – high school players that want to play in college and college players that want to go into the NFL –and we make highlight videos with music and transitions.”
Did you have experience with converting tapes before? “No, I just picked it up and learned about it while I was doing it. It was ‘on-the-job’ training, as they call it.”
Has the amount of work for your company been steady? “I’d say it’s grown over time. At first it was one, maybe two to start with. Now we’ve got multiple orders that we’re doing where people want those done, and they’re coming in (to us).”
Do you have help with your business? “(My dad) helps with it, but we have three people right now, including me. We have two other people. One is a friend, one is a family relative. We all work out of (Mark’s home).”
Are you involved with sports or other activities? Is it hard to juggle those activities with running a business? “I give pitching lessons, and I help coach the seventh grade baseball team at Grizzell (Middle School). It can be (hard), but that’s the advantage of having your own business, setting your own schedule. We got a calendar since we have all these orders coming in, and I will look at the calendar and say I have to get X orders done by X date and shoot for that.”
What has been the most challenging part of maintaining a business? “Whenyou have to troubleshoot. That’s challenging. I think with anything there’s going to be road bumps or problems and you’re going to have to figure them out. Also, there’s a lot more things you have to manage. I don’t think kids my age really think about that kind of stuff because they’ve never done it. But now I realize how much work it can be.”
What do you enjoy most about running a business? “It’s a great learning process. It’s taught me time management. You have to know how much time to give things.”

Kate Lohnes is assistant editor of Dublin Life.