Down to Business: 51 Industry Leaders Share Practical Advice on How to Become a Young Entrepreneur

Founder and CEO, Zolli Candy

#KeepSmiling

On life: It’s about finding your people and finding the people that at the end of the day support you for you.

On business: As long as you can communicate your wants, your vision, and your needs to your team members, confidently delegate tasks, and set up processes in which your team members can succeed, then you’ve done your job as CEO.

On social: Social media can be a great tool. At the end of the day, it’s about how we use it.

On college: Look for a good fit.

Alina Morse became a chief executive officer (CEO) when she was just nine years old, and she has been defying expectations ever since. She could not have imagined that being offered a lollipop at the bank when she was seven would spark an entrepreneurial journey, and yet that one event inspired her multimillion-dollar idea to create a healthy candy that’s good for your teeth. After two years of perfecting her formula and taste testing, Alina came out with Zollipops, the first product in the Zolli Candy line. Today, Zolli confections are sold on Amazon and in more than twenty thousand other retailers in the United States and around the world, and have expanded to caramels, taffy, and peanut butter cups. Now in her late teens, Alina is leading a healthy-candy revolution, challenging a traditional industry filled with legacy brands--and men--to think about candy differently. She even uses her high school experiences in business, applying her theater training to public speaking and media interviews, and lessons from competitive tennis and dance to management and team building. Alina has retained her original vision by creating the Million Smiles Initiative, through which she distributes her candies to schools around the country and simultaneously educates children about the scientific applications in candy making, entrepreneurship, and oral hygiene. She talks to us about how she convinced the industry to take her seriously, challenging the status quo, and being true to yourself.

What is the origin story of Zolli Candy?

I came up with the idea when I was seven years old on a trip to the bank with my dad. The bank teller offered me a lollipop. My dad always told me you shouldn’t have candy because sugar is terrible for your teeth. So I asked him, “Why can’t we make a healthy lollipop that’s good for my teeth?” so that I could eat candy without it being bad for me. And Zollipops were born.

Did you know from the very beginning that you had a hit?

Even from the start, I was surprised by my own idea because it seems like such a simple theory. But I really did think it could be transformational, and something that could fill a niche in the market. Granted, I had no idea to what extent Zolli would grow, and I’ve been shocked along the way to see an invention that I believed in become a staple at my favorite retailers and in so many households.

It took two years for you to perfect your first product. Could you tell us more about that process?

Those first two years really entailed a lot of trial and error. Initially, it started by purchasing some ingredients from our local supermarket--some sugar substitutes like stevia and other ingredients that I had done some research on--that could act as replacements to the sugary ingredients in a regular lollipop. I learned to make candy by watching YouTube videos, and after attempting to make candy at home in my kitchen, making a huge mess, and having to replace some kitchen appliances, I realized that I needed some help. So we proceeded with researching various manufacturing facilities, taking some tours, and eventually landing on a manufacturing facility that was a perfect fit. They could create sugar-free candy. Then we just got to work with this plant, where we said to the food scientist, we want to start off with six flavors, and let’s just try and fail and try and fail until we come up with something that’s really delicious. It felt like over a hundred, but we did upward of twenty trials per flavor--tweaking the flavor, the color, the texture, and then testing it in various climates to ensure various stability ratings. That process was about a year and a half, and then those other six months entailed formulating the packaging and all the logistics that come with trademarking your taglines and logos and other behind-the-scenes stuff before pitching at the end of that two-year period to our first retailer, Whole Foods in Southern California.

Can you describe that first sale?

Whole Foods is merchandised regionally, so you have to pitch each region. California is a very progressive market littered with early adopters. It’s definitely a great place to launch a new and up-and-coming innovation. We traveled to Southern California from Michigan, where I’m from, and I practiced the pitch all the way there. I was super nervous because it was my first time in a real business meeting, and I was also very excited to get this in front of some very powerful people. The meeting went fantastic. At the end of it, they said they would let us know in the next few months if we were in or not, and we waited patiently for an answer. And we got in! It was just a very exciting and almost surreal moment, from picturing our items on store shelves to being in a mainstream retailer. From there, we got on Amazon.com and then the business took off after my first media appearance on Good Morning America. We were able to reach out to more and more retailers, attend business conferences, and get to where we are now, which is more than twenty thousand retailers across the country.

What are the advantages of being a teen entrepreneur?

There’s definitely that shock factor that’s played into people’s interest in the company. It’s also been interesting to see which retailers, brokers, and executives have actually heard of Zolli Candy and heard of my story prior to us meeting with them. That’s pretty exciting as well, whether they’ve seen me on TV, or heard about our story via social media, or word of mouth. There have been several instances where people have already heard of Zolli Candy and have been excited about bringing it into their stores, because it does have that authenticity and that organic family business story that ultimately resonates with their customers. That aspect has been definitely helpful.

Has your age ever hindered you from finding investors or people to partner with?

On the disadvantage end, there’s some very traditionalist views in the consumer-packaged goods industry, as well as traditional retail. It is the oldest form of sales. Depending on the retailer, it’s definitely an industry that can be pretty stagnant and traditional. Often with those values come the views of “you need a business degree, and you need to go to college before pursuing a business venture.” For me, that’s been tough to crack because I was starting a company when I was in elementary school. Obviously, I didn’t have a degree or real-world experience yet. But being in those situations, and having the mindset of being like a sponge, wanting to soak up all that information, I was luckily able to prove a lot of those traditionalists wrong. Ultimately, it has created a more open-minded market, and has broken down some of those stereotypes.

Does the current education system fail to properly prepare students with skills they need to be an entrepreneur, like public speaking, negotiation, and investing?

Most public schools don’t even have personal finance courses that could benefit students going into the real world, whether...