11-Year Old Launches Multi-Million Dollar Business

(Photo: Austin American-Statesman, Rodolfo Gonzalez/AP)

You have a lemonade stand? That's cute. Mikaila Ulmer has a multi-million dollar lemonade empire.

This 11-year old girl from Austin, Texas took her great-grandmother's lemonade recipe from 1940 and turned it into a business. She appeared on the TV show Shark Tank last year, where she secured $60,000 of capital for her Me & The Bees brand lemonade. Now the Whole Foods supermarket chain has decided to sell it in 55 stores across the United States.

What makes Mikaila's lemonade special is that it's sweetened with honey instead of sugar. She hopes to not only sell a healthy, profitable product, but to also promote beekeeping.

Mikaila is now famous. But she didn't start that way. She's been working on this project for a long time. NBC News reports:

Mikaila, who started her lemonade business in 2009, said the operation takes organization, commitment and energy.

"I work on the business after school, after I do my homework, and on weekends and during spring breaks," Mikaila said in an interview with NBCBLK. "There are not too many times when I feel stressed." [...]

"I think she is a pretty hard worker," D'Andra Ulmer, Mikaila's mother, told NBCBLK. "I'm impressed with how she gets her homework done during her travels. She has a gift for public speaking but what makes me very proud is that she is not only a smart entrepreneur but she's a good person and she's kind to people. That's more important than business."

-via Ace of Spades HQ