Many teens moving beyond burger flipping for employment

"Would you like fries with your burger?"

That question is typical for many teenagers who have sought fast food employment after school to earn bucks for weekend fun.

But many teenagers across the Shoals are bucking the fast food trend by creating, however small, their own businesses.

From the whir of lawn mowers to the clicks of a camera to the brush of ballet slippers - these teens are their own bosses.

"With the teens versus the adults, the ideas are going to come up from the same arena," said Giles McDaniel, director of the Shoals Entrepreneurial Center. "If you were counseling a teen going into a business versus an adult, it wouldn't be very different."

One in every four U.S. teenagers age 15 or older is employed, according to the 2007 American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau. Data on how many owned their own businesses was not available from the set.

Bradley Addison, a senior at Florence High School, on a recent Tuesday afternoon, unloaded the push and riding mowers, weed eater, leaf blower and gas containers from the trailer attached to his Pathfinder SUV.

"I've definitely got it down to a science," he said as he prepared to cut the lawn of a friend's father.

Like any savvy businessman, Addison negotiates for what he wants. In 2007, to expand his business, his grandparents bought him the trailer that he paid for by mowing their lawn.

The trailer allows him to have the use of a riding mower along with the push mower.

"Last year, I was grinding it out with the push mower," he said.

His start was humble - sending fliers throughout a Twin Oaks neighborhood at age 14 that got a single response. He cycled over to the property and mowed the lawn with the property owner's equipment.

Now, he mows around eight yards - about 15 to 20 hours a week - ranging from gas stations to residences. He said a lot of his customers he knows personally.

"I've always been cutting grass as a chore," said Addison.

"It's nice to have that feeling of responsibility and maturing where you have a job with deadlines to meet," Addison said.

"I always thought I'd be one of those kids who would get a job at McDonald's," he said. Now, his friends who do work in the fast food industry make less money than Addison, by his estimation. "I make more money doing my own thing."

"It's real gratifying to know at the end of the day you started all of it," he said. "You're not under somebody - you're the one making it happen."

After cutting half the lawn, Addison was off to football practice where he is the kicker, then back to cut the other half of the lawn.

The lawn-cutting season runs from late March to late October and Addison said the season's end was bittersweet. "The job's done, but the money is not flowing in."

Sarah Beth Worsham, a senior at Cherokee High School, realized back in seventh grade that many girls in who live in her town - which is in rural Colbert County - didn't have a chance to learn dancing unless their parents drove them to Florence.

A dancer since she was 3 years old, Worsham's first dance class had eight students, and more than four years later, has grown to 45 students.

"I hated that they didn't have an opportunity to have dance classes," Worsham said.

She had so many students this year she hired her friend, Anna Hester, 15, to assist.

The 45-minute classes are held at Cherokee Elementary School and are divided by age: Ballet and jazz for the youngsters; hip hop and lyrical for the older set. The studio's work culminates in a recital in March.

Participants pay a monthly fee, which pays for music, supplies and Hester's and Worsham's salaries. What Worsham earns goes toward car payments, spending money and a college fund.

Working with kids and growing a business both take patience and time, but Worsham said, "I know what dance has done for me and I hope that dance lets them get self-confidence and get out of their box."

Like most days after school, Michael Arnold sits in front of his laptop with BET music videos in the background and a Ray Charles album on a small dresser.

On his screen is a grid, a virtual notation on which Arnold can paint beats and musical notes and create entire tracks of music that he started to sell a month ago to rappers.

Like building blocks, Arnold adds hi hats, Inferno guitar and a bass thump with mathematical precision and takes simple phrases and creates variations.

Arnold started two years ago, creating beats as a hobby, but rap artists Terrence Roy and Lee Murky asked him for tracks and the business was born.

So far, the bedroom musician has sold nearly a dozen tracks and plans to use the money he has earned to invest in a microphone and more complete music production software. Arnold said he someday wants to own his own record company.

His mother, Virginia Arnold, said, "He lives by it."

Mindy Bradford, 16, at Sheffield High School, started her business last summer when a friend asked to take her senior high school portrait somewhere along the Natchez Trace.

The photo made it into the yearbook and from there, people approached Bradford for not only senior portraits, but also wedding pictures.

With 10 different shoots in the past six months under her belt, Bradford said half her cost goes toward film and her time and the rest goes toward new equipment.

"I'm trying to keep the cost low so people will come," she said.

She said she doesn't trust digital cameras and instead uses film because it gives the best lighting, best quality and gives pictures a naturalness absent from digital.

Bradford said she hopes in the future to work as a freelancer for nature or modeling publications or start her own home portrait studio.

Darwin Anderson, 17, started to learn Web page design seven months ago and now is in negotiations to set up a site for Cori Alsbrooks, an artist who creates murals and paintings.

"You tell me what you want and I'll get it set up for you easily," Anderson said.

So far, Anderson said he has invested $21, and in terms of promotion, he's gotten back what he has put into his business.

"I haven't made any payback yet; hopefully soon that will change," Anderson said.

Anderson got together with a friend when he was 12 years old to produce a video game. Anderson said he had a fondness for playing video games in his youth and there was a boom in the game industry of game development resources.

Anderson also started to develop a forum where Web designers could give each other advice and ask questions.

He said so many people showed opposition to the idea, he had to clean the forum posts - twice.

Now, he's sticking to Web page design, and the video game is indefinitely on hold.

His advice to budding business tykes and tycoons?

"There's going to be resistance, but don't be surprised because there's probably going to be 10 times more than you expect. Even though you are the little guy, don't ever give up."

Trevor Stokes can be reached at 740-5728 or trevor.stokes@TimesDaily.com.