Some people achieve amazing success early in life. Though prodigies are often found in music and art, it is rare to find a child that realized a long term business goal. Some kids pull it off, however. They create businesses based on viable ideas and realize them with organization and planning. Anyone looking to start their own business or improve an existing one should look to young entrepreneurs for inspiration.

This kid has more responsibility than I do at 30.

Kids That Succeeded in Business

Lemonade Day has already highlighted the amazing accomplishments of some of our own superstar business owners. But these special kids made their mark away from the lemonade stand.

Jam Slam: Turning Grandma’s Recipe into Big Business

Fraser Doherty was in a rush to start his career in business. At age 14, he started selling jam door to door to his Edinburgh, Scotland neighbors. The jam, quickly branded as SuperJam, was based on his grandma’s recipe with a few tweaks. By 2007, Doherty’s jam was available in 184 stores across the United Kingdom. After his products entered Wal-Mart, his sales shot to $1.2 million. Doherty has even written a jam specific cookbook. At 20 years old, he wryly noted to a reporter, “Success is pretty sweet.”

Greetings! Turning Cards into a Fortune

Sometimes a great business idea is just a starting point to another, even better idea. This was the case for Cameron Johnson, who started a line of custom greeting cards at the young age of 11. “Cheers and Tears” quickly earned Johnson several thousands of dollars but he wasn’t ready to stop. A few years later, he started SurfingPrizes.com, a search toolbar that displayed ads. He sold the company and finished high school with more than $1 million in assets. Not a bad way to start college.

That’s Apptastic! A Coding Hobby Turns into Millions

Prodigies are rare. But, once in a while, a young person has a great idea and the ability to follow through. Nick D’Aloisio played around with code in his spare time, leading to the creation of Summly, an app that used algorithms to generate summaries of news stories. At 17 years old, D’Aloisio sold Summly to Yahoo for $30 million in cash and stock. He is currently a student at Oxford University studying computer science and philosophy.