14-Year-Old Founder and CEO of Me & the Bees Lemonade on Being a Social Entrepreneur, Educator, and Teenager
In this episode of Women in Retail Talks, Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) Senior Content Strategist Ashley Chiaradio chats with Mikaila Ulmer, the 14-year-old founder and CEO of Me & the Bees Lemonade, a philanthropy-focused beverage business based in Austin, Texas. Listen in as Ulmer tells the story of how she founded Me & the Bees Lemonade at just four years old, starting with a children’s business competition, a fascination with bees, and her great-grandmother’s recipe for flaxseed lemonade. Ulmer shares how she and her family expanded the business from selling lemonade twice a year at fairs to selling year-round in local food stores to now having product on shelves in over 1,000 stores nationwide. The growth of Me & the Bees Lemonade took off after Ulmer appeared on season six of “Shark Tank”, securing an investment from Daymond John in 2015.
After 10 years of running her company, Ulmer has learned a lot about being a CEO, including how businesses can do social good, give back, and still turn a profit. Me & the Bees Lemonade donates a percentage of its profits to local and international organizations fighting to save honeybees, and Ulmer works to educate others on the importance of honeybees and how to help save them. The social entrepreneur also discusses her nonprofit organization, The Healthy Hive Foundation, which is dedicated to increasing honeybee awareness and the number of safe environments for bees to survive and thrive through research, education and preservation. In this podcast episode, Ulmer shares who she looks up to as mentors, her future plans to grow Me & the Bees Lemonade, and how she’s currently writing her first book, “Bee Fearless,” coming out next year.
Mikaila Ulmer, Founder and CEO, Me & the Bees Lemonade
Date: September 3, 2019
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