Teenage Millionaire: Brains + Ambition + Work
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I read about Ashley Qualls over a year ago. Her story is amazing. At 14 years old she borrowed $8 from her Mom to purchase a website and over the last three years has turned it into a business that brings in over a million dollars a year. Really.
Her website is whateverlife.com, and it provides cool images, designs and layouts for myspace pages. All the stuff is free to her visitors. The income comes from advertising. Ashley’s passion was graphic design. The target audience were girls her age. Combining her interest with hard work, she now has a a million dollar business from a website that now attracts over a million visitors per day! All within 3 years.
What a great example for today’s youth. Although, I read recently she had dropped out of high school at 17 to run her business. Now, I personally did not think twice about that. Ashley was an A student, obviously talented, ambitious, responsible and mature beyond her age. Yet, and I just knew this would be there, when I looked at the comments in one of the articles I read about her, I found this comment:
School drop out? Not good. Hopefully she gets her GED or finishes high school.
ARE YOU SERIOUS!?
This is a perfect example of what is wrong in education today. Ashley Quall should be awarded a Masters of Business degree. She is a doer. A GED or high school diploma pails in comparison to her accomplishments. She should be asked to speak to kids her age and challenge them to start spending their time finding and pursuing their talents and passions. Wouldn’t it be a great class to attend if she were teaching what she has learned? She has proven herself able and capable to succeed in life.
Her story is an encouraging one. How cool to see a kid doing so well not only financially but character-wise as well. I wonder what she will do in the future without that high school diploma?
April 18th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Sorry, I’m not buying this.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I don’t mean to be too negative here, Phil. But seriously, I need to read/hear more about this before I believe it. I visited her web site. How did she make all her money in the millions? Through adsense ads?! I don’t think so!
April 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am
I’ve had similar thoughts. But her story has been reported by major news agencies. Yahoo finance section had a recent story. Check it out.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Encouraging? This makes me want to kill myself when I see people less than half my age -in a flash of luck- succeeding. Bitterness? Jealousy? You bet!
I had quite the head start on Ashley when it came to graphics design and website building, yet I have not made any money from it, much less millions. I have put ALOT of work into what I did, but it has not translated into dollars no matter how hard I tried and worked. I cant stand success stories like these. Honestly, I WISH I could pump my fist in the air, and say something like “Yeah! Good for you Ashley!”, but I cant. If my life was any good, if I was content, if I had some money in the bank, if I had a decent roof over my head, if I had a good satisfying life, I could. But I cant.
When you’re a failure in life, when no matter how long and hard you work, how hard you try, you’re still living in poverty, you’re still living a lousy life, its hard to read success stories like Ashley’s and not have thoughts of putting a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger.
Damn it, I had quite a few years head start ahead of Ashley, and out of the blue she starts her own website, and only a few months later begins collecting checks worth thousands of dollars month after month. She now earns more money in one month than I have in the past ten years.
Where was I three years back when Ashley got started at 14? I was working in an office building as a janitor, scrubbing toilets (among other janitorial duties), for little more than minimum wage. Where am I now? I lost that job, and am on food stamps. All the while, I TRIED (God knows I’ve tried!) to make just a few bucks at the very least over the internet, but it all came to nothing.
Have you ever seen the 1968 comedy movie “The Producers” starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder? In that movie Mostel is a once successful Broadway Producer (Max), now a complete failure who romances little old ladies in order to trick them into investing their money in his failing plays. Gene Wilder is his accountant (Leo Bloom) who finds that Max raised more money, two thousand dollars, than it actually cost to produce his latest failure of a play. This amuses Leo who points out that under certain circumstances someone could make more money with a flop than a hit. The problem is that its completely illegal. (Raise a million dollars to produce a play, that in reality only costs around 60 thousand dollars to produce. Make sure that the play is a flop. It closes on opening night, making the investors think that since it was a one night flop, there are no profits to go around, and they lost their investment. The Producer keeps the remainder of the money in his pocket, 940 thousand dollars) Naturally, needing someone to juggle the books for him, Max tries to enlist Leo in this scheme. But at first Leo, being an honest man, is hesitant. So it takes a while for Max to convince Leo to be his partner. Max is talking to Leo:
Leo: But if we’re caught, we’ll go to prison.
Max: You dont think you’re in prison now? Living in a gray little room, going to a gray little job, leading a gray little life?
Leo: You know what? You’re right! I’m a nothing. I spend my life counting other people’s money. People I’m smarter than. Better than! Where’s my share? Where’s Leo Bloom’s share? I want…I want everything I’ve ever seen in the movies!
Now, I don’t claim to be smarter than or better than Ashley, but considering all the years of hard work I’ve put into graphics and website design, among other internet enterprises, and having nothing, not a cent, to show for it, I feel just like Leo when he cries out: “WHERE’S MY SHARE???? WHERE’S LEO BLOOM’S SHARE????”
I sure would like to know the answer to that question.
April 20th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
**Leo** — wow, great post. Your questions really have me thinking. Nothing has ever fallen together for me either to that degree. And I’ve been closer to your situation than you may think. Thanks for your post. I hope you are around more and look forward to your perspectives. Maybe you could guest post. I will watch the movie and comment on that.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:24 pm
This story brings to mind another, which I recently saw on the news… OK , this guy did graduate from high school, and was able to make it into Princeton, but quit in his freshman year (unbeknownst to his parents at the time!), lived in a copy machine room for a year and a half and took his entrepreneurship to make a success.
http://www.terracycle.net
April 21st, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Whoops! it is .net not .com!
April 21st, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Julie …. that is an amazing story. Thanks for sharing the link. (I corrected the .com to .net)
May 1st, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I believe her achievement great.
I am happy for her, but i do believe dropping out of school wasn’t such a smart move.
Maybe it’s just because i’ve always been told that education is important.
Honestly, where is she going to be when myspace goes belly up?
Her company will plummet.
Yeah, she is talented enough to have other jobs, but how many people want to hire someone that hasn’t even finished high school?