Today we’d like to introduce you to Shanika Robinson.
Shanika, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started my first business at age 7. I used to clean the golf balls that landed in my yard from the course behind my home and then sell them back to the golfers playing on the field. After making my first dollar, I fell in love with the idea of entrepreneurship. My mother, Founder of Golden Krust, the largest Caribbean restaurant chain in America, truly inspired me at a young age to do what I love to do. Because of her, I started that first golf ball cleaning business and now, at age 25, have started a total of 5 businesses. I started my second and third businesses at the University of Georgia, one being a glass monogramming business and the other a healthy desert business. After graduating, I started my all-girls, entrepreneurship summer camp called “Girls Building Businesses” and my real estate investment company called “Feel At Home LLC.” I also manage one out of three of my mother’s Golden Krust restaurant locations.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been a very difficult road. In college, a lot of my friends would be going out to have fun and if I wasn’t studying or out at an organizational meeting I was often working on my businesses. I got used to be calling lame and a workaholic haha! But, especially at a party school like UGA, it definitely takes discipline to be out selling healthy desserts on a Friday night rather than having fun at a party. After graduating I was inspired to start both my summer camp and my real estate investment company while STILL working at my mom’s restaurant. It’s difficult to handle one start-up, but to handle two at the same time while still having a full-time managerial job was a tough balance to say the least. There was no “Thank God it’s Friday” for me. Friday and Saturdays were work days like Monday’s. I dealt with push back from friends and also family, worried that I was working too hard and that I needed to slow down. But I kept pushing through it all and have seen great success in all my businesses because of it.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Girls Building Businesses – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The business I am most passionate about is Girls Building Businesses (GBB), my all-girls, entrepreneurship summer camp. My passion is to spread the knowledge of entrepreneurship to girls and women across the globe and my camp has been a wonderful platform to begin doing that successfully. Camp GBB is a day camp for girl’s ages 7-14 years old. The camp focuses on educating, empowering, and encouraging young girls to build their own, successful businesses. At Camp GBB, girls write a business plan, hand-create their products and on the last day, sell those products and keep the profit they earn. I am most proud of seeing the girl’s transformation throughout the week, especially at the end when I see them collecting their profit from the products they’ve made. It brings me true joy because, by the end of camp, I know they believe that they can start a successful business no matter how young they are. We’re unique from other educational programs and camps because campers are immediately able to implement what they learn, see a monetary return on it and be able to utilize the knowledge they gain for a lifetime.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I would like to see my summer camps and after-school programs expand on a global level. I have opened up a second location in Atlanta this year and by next year would like to have at least 5. I also plan on offering workshops, seminars, and fun events for youth throughout the year to teach them about entrepreneurship, how to handle finances, how to invest money, how to positively utilize social media to build up a personal brand/business and other courses that allow them to learn real life skills that they don’t usually get taught in school. Ultimately, I would like to build my own school and also provide my school’s curriculum to other schools so their students can also gain that real life knowledge.
Pricing:
- $150.00 per weekly camp session (Monday through Friday 9am-5pm)
- $50 for extended camp time (8am-6pm)
Contact Info:
- Website: www.GBBusinesses.com
- Phone: (404) 932-3176
- Email: GBBusinesses@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/girlsbuildingbusinesses/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GBBusinesses/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/gbbusinesses_
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