Youth entrepreneurship lessons from 11 year old Ashton
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Ashton didn’t sign up for a youth entrepreneurship competition. He didn’t enter a hackathon or watch countless YouTube videos on sales strategy. He just started by taking trash bins to the curb. Getting that first yes in a Canadian suburb turned into a bin-cleaning business, 53,000 followers, and a reel with 2.7 million views.
He’s 11.
The idea for Your Bin Cleaning didn’t spring from nowhere. Ashton’s parents had been having conversations with him about where he could help people and how he might earn money doing it. Those conversations taught him to look at himself as someone who could solve problems.
1. Youth Entrepreneurship Starts With Problems Already Around You
According to a Junior Achievement survey, 69% of teens say they have a business idea but don’t know how to start. In Ashton’s case, he started right in his neighborhood. He had neighbors who needed their bins brought to the curb. Ashton offered help. Then he looked at those dirty bins and asked a different question: would someone pay to have those cleaned?
They would.
In more than 15 years of working with young entrepreneurs through WIT (Whatever It Takes), I’ve found that the youth-led businesses that succeed aren’t the ones trying to solve a global problem. They’re the ones solving a local one. A neighbor’s overgrown lawn. A gap in tutoring for a specific subject. A dirty bin on a residential street. The simpler the mission, the more likely a tween or teen will carry it out. When the idea gets too big and too complicated, it stalls — almost every time.
A Junior Achievement report found that 12% of teens interested in entrepreneurship gravitate toward service businesses like lawn care or childcare — the kind of businesses where the need is visible, and the barrier to entry is low. Ashton didn’t need a product, a patent, or a platform. He needed a hose.
The Skill It Builds: Opportunity recognition — the ability to spot a need others overlook. College admissions officers and employers alike cite this as a marker of initiative and creative thinking that no standardized test can measure.
How To Apply: Look at your own street, school, or neighborhood. What do people around you complain about, pay someone else to handle, or leave undone? Write down three problems you’ve personally noticed in the last month. Start there.
2. In Youth Entrepreneurship, Just Start
There’s real value in entrepreneurship programs, camps, and courses. Some teens need that structure — a place to test ideas, get feedback, and build confidence before going out on their own. Programs like WIT exist for exactly that reason.
But programs aren’t prerequisites. Ashton learned pricing by asking people what they’d be willing to pay. He learned marketing when his content went viral. He learned operations by figuring out what he could actually do during the time he had free during that day.
That kind of learning doesn’t happen before you start. It happens because you started.
The Skill It Builds: Adaptability and real-world problem-solving. These rank consistently among the top skills employers say new hires lack — and they’re exactly what a college essay needs to show. A teen who can describe how they figured something out on their own has a story worth telling.
How To Apply: Pick the smallest possible version of your idea and try it once. Offer your service to one neighbor, sell one item, or take on one client. Don’t wait until you feel ready. The feedback from that first attempt will teach you more than any amount of planning.
3. Youth Entrepreneurship Doesn’t Require A Complete Roadmap
Ashton began with one task: move a bin. He didn’t have a five-year plan. He didn’t know he’d be cleaning bins, let alone that strangers across the world would be watching him do it. The expansion from bin-moving to bin-cleaning happened because he stayed curious about what was already in front of him.
Young entrepreneurs often wait until they have a complete plan before taking a first step. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that young people are 1.6 times as likely as adults to want to start a business — but intention without action is just a wish. Ashton’s business didn’t grow from a plan. It grew from a question he asked after the first job was done.
The Skill It Builds: Tolerance for ambiguity and decision-making under uncertainty — two qualities that distinguish strong college applicants and future leaders. Teens who can act without having all the answers develop confidence that shows up everywhere, from interviews to the first week of college.
How To Apply: Set one goal for the next two weeks — not a business plan, not a brand, not a logo. One goal. Your first customer. Your first sale. Your first completed service. Do that. Then ask what the next step is.
4. Sustainable Youth Entrepreneurship Means Staying True To Yourself
Two point seven million views sounds like an overnight success. The business existed before the views — and the real test is who Ashton is after them. His family is already thinking through what comes next in practical terms: bin-cleaning doesn’t work in a Canadian winter, so he’s exploring snow blowing. That’s not a pivot deck. That’s a kid figuring out his next move based on what he knows, where he lives, and what he can actually do.
Young entrepreneurs face pressure to scale, to post, to perform. The ones who last stay connected to the original reason they started — the problem they noticed, the thing they were good at, the neighbor who said yes first.
The Skill It Builds: Self-awareness and resilience — what colleges increasingly call character. Admissions essays that resonate aren’t about achievements. They’re about who a student is when things get hard. A teen who has run a real business knows that answer firsthand.
How To Apply: Write down in one sentence why you started or want to start your business. Not the pitch version — the real reason. Keep it somewhere visible. When things get noisy, that sentence is what you come back to.
Youth entrepreneurship rarely begins with a perfect idea. It begins with what’s already in front of you — a problem, a neighbor, a question worth asking. The 2.7 million views came later. First came a kid who genuinely loved the work. “I like going door to door and talking to people,” Ashton said during the interview. “I also enjoy reading the kind comments from people all around the world.”
