I started a business
at 13 with no idea
what I was doing.

When I was 13, I decided to start a jewellery business from scratch. I bought beads, charms, chains, and tools from Amazon — spending money I didn't really have yet — and sat at my desk making products one by one. I photographed everything, wrote the descriptions, set the prices, and listed it all on one of the big online marketplaces.

Then I waited.

Three months. No sales. The fees were still coming out every month even though I hadn't sold a single thing. I was losing money just by existing on the platform. I almost quit.

“Then one morning, the notification came through. Someone had bought something I made.”

I was completely overwhelmed. I wrapped the order in tissue paper, added a handwritten note, threw in some stickers and sweets, and posted it with more care than I'd given to anything in my life. A few days later, two more orders came in. Real people, strangers, had found something I made from scratch and decided they wanted it.

A few months on, I joined Instagram. I started sharing my process, my products, my story — a young person building something real. A community grew around it. People wanted to support a young entrepreneur, and other young entrepreneurs found me too. Eventually I had over 7,000 followers. One video reached 1.2 million views. Sales started coming in consistently.

I made over 600 sales in the end. But then the platform blocked my shop — no warning, no explanation, nothing I could appeal. Everything I'd built, gone overnight.

Here's the thing though: it wasn't the money that mattered. Even when sales were steady, a huge chunk disappeared before it ever reached me — listing fees, transaction fees, payment processing fees, promoted listing fees. Fees I didn't understand and couldn't control.

“What mattered was the pride. The passion. The feeling of someone choosing something I had made from nothing.”

That feeling — of building something, putting it out into the world, and watching it actually work — is something every young person deserves the chance to experience. Not on platforms built for adults, designed to extract as much as possible. On something made for them.