Tech Teen Makes "cents" With Tractors

By Author: Molly Berton
Total Articles: 76
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Tech Teen Makes "Cents" With Tractors
The very first time one of Jenna Greckel's customers spoke to her to put her father on the phone, she persuaded him to change his mind and traded him a $6,000 tractor.
Jenna was 18 years old and is educated a lot about bridging age and information gaps since she was the first 4-Her in her Nebraska County to complete the 4-H Business Sense program. When she was 12, she took what she'd learned about communication skills, advertising, bookkeeping and creating business plans and started a pet-sitting business.
Within only a year she had ventured into a larger enterprise that combined her rural heritage with modern-day technology. Vending antique tractors and equipment over the Internet is more profitable than caring for pets, but it also produces more challenges.
"I had to put together and present my business plan to the bank manager in order to get a master note to fund my business," the 4-H member said. "As a freshman in high school, it was scary having a payment due on a loan worth thousands of dollars!"

To make sure her venture succeeded, Jenna focused ...
... on the business essentials of buying and selling a product, planning for overhead cost, and determining profit margins. As her sales and reputation grew, she also began performing appraisals and selling items on consignment.

Jenna often works with lifelong farmers who are not familiar with modern business technologies that are obviously today’s trend. "The farmers educated me about these tractors, and I helped them in return to get a higher selling price by means of the Internet," she said.

Negotiating with people of different ages and personalities from all over the country was a daunting experience at first, but 4-H helped Jenna overcome her shyness. "Now I'm able to conduct business transactions with confidence," she said.
Jenna also developed decision-making and financial management skills that she teaches to other youth as president of the 4-H Jr. Group leaders and counselor at an entrepreneurship camp.
She enjoys helping younger and older generations learn how to use technology for business, and she knows that she's often helping people capture a part of their childhood. "People frequently buy antique tractors as a way of maintaining a connection with their past," she said, "and I love helping them relive fond memories of their youth."

With any company, it’s important to you to definitely know how to always be fair with employees and founders on the subject of dividing up the equity as part of your company. Slicing Pie, by Mike Moyer, provides a straightforward solution to understanding start-up fairness.