The 9-Year-Olds Running a Real Business at Maryland Hero Camp Just Landed a Distribution Deal

Five girls. Five years at Perfectly Me Hero Camps in Maryland. One bracelet store that just got a whole lot bigger. An update on Ella, Rebecca, Charlotte, Millie & Florie.

A little while ago, I told you these five had built a company. Cash register. Tiered pricing. Open and close signs. A standing request for a Venmo because "no one carries cash anymore." Weekly committee lunch meetings where they walk in with targets and walk out with assignments.

I thought that was the peak. I was wrong.

Since then, Ella, Rebecca, Charlotte, Millie, and Florie have done what every growing company eventually does. They scaled. They hired. They built a sales deck. And they closed a distribution deal.

I want to be clear, again, that I did not assign any of this. I provided beads, a Chromebook, a table, and a room for interviews. Everything else — the plan, the pricing, the hiring, the pitch — is theirs.

Let me walk you through the quarter.

How Hero Campers Built a Real Hiring Pipeline at a Maryland Summer Camp

Last time, production was too slow, so they started teaching other kids how to make bracelets. That was the seed. This summer they turned it into a real system.

They don't just show a new kid a knot and wish them luck. They train them. There's a process. New makers come in, learn the craft, and level up over time — and the store's pricing now reflects exactly where each maker is on that journey.

Which brings me to the pricing.

A Kids Summer Camp Bracelet Store With a Three-Tier Pricing Structure

Here's the tier structure they built — on their own:

• $1 bracelets — made by their newest hires, the kids still learning the craft. Real product, real value, made by beginners who get to contribute on day one.

• $5 bracelets — made by their trained, experienced makers. Higher skill, higher price.

• Custom orders — special colors, specific designs, personalization? That's a premium, with an added fee on top.

Sit with that for a second. They tied price to skill level and built a training ladder that a kid can climb from the $1 shelf to the $5 shelf. That's not a craft table. That's a compensation-and-development structure.

And at the very top of that ladder, exactly where she was last time: Florie. Master craftsperson. Highest prices in the store. As they should be.

There's a Fulfillment Department Now

When a customer wants something custom, it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. They built an actual fulfillment process for special orders — take the request, price it, make it, deliver it. The unsolicited upsell I told you about last time (the Perfectly Me summer camp brand-color bracelet they made me and then charged me for) wasn't a fluke. It was the prototype for a whole custom-order operation.

They Started a Marketing Department

They designed flyers on the Chromebook. They made advertising posters by hand. They are, in other words, running demand generation — telling people the store exists, what's for sale, and why they should care.

Nine and ten years old, running their own marketing.

And Then They Walked Into a Room and Pitched

This is the part I still can't quite believe.

A local theater group has a performance coming up next week. The girls saw it for what it was: a built-in audience, a crowd with wallets, a distribution opportunity.

So they made a Google Slides presentation. They built the deck. They walked in. And they delivered the pitch themselves — asking the theater group if they could set up and sell bracelets at the show.

Let me say that plainly. My nine- and ten-year-olds built a pitch deck, presented it to adults, and asked for a sales channel at a live event.

I have sat through worse pitches from grown professionals.

Meanwhile, Operations Never Slipped

While all of this was happening, the daily business kept running. The cash register is still open on schedule. Millie is still checking in with me — daily — about whether I've pulled the cash out yet. The committee still meets, still sets targets, still executes for the rest of the week without me hovering.

They didn't trade the fundamentals for the flashy new stuff. They added the flashy new stuff on top of a business that already runs tight.

What I Actually Did

Almost nothing, and that's the whole point.

The plan to hire? Theirs. The pricing structure? Theirs. The training system, the fulfillment process, the flyers, the posters, the pitch deck? Every bit of it, theirs.

I provided the resources and then got out of the way. That's the entire job. Give kids the tools, the trust, and the room — and then try to keep up.

This Is Still What Five Years at a Values-Based Camp Looks Like

Every one of these girls started as a tiny SuperHero camper five summers ago, learning HeroValues for the first time. Today they're scattered across the Perfectly Me Universe — SportsHero, STEMHero, SuperHero, and two of them stepping up as Hero Helpers in KindergartenHero, pouring into the next generation the way we poured into them.

And underneath the cash register and the pricing tiers and the slide deck, the mission has never once changed. Every dollar still goes to the same place it always has: snacks for kids who don't have them. Kids they've never met and love anyway.

They didn't set out to run a company. They set out to make sure nobody goes hungry. The company is just what happened when nine- and ten-year-olds decided a problem was theirs to solve and refused to do it halfway.

Ella, Rebecca, Charlotte, Millie, Florie — you've officially outgrown "cute." This is a real enterprise. A sales enterprise, sure. But a sales enterprise for good.

So watch out, business world. The Bracelet Store is hiring, training, marketing, and now pitching.

And they've still got weekly targets to hit.