Young Entrepreneur Loves Making the Sale

Danny Sheridan is only 16 years old, and he has already discovered his passion: business.

Danny is the president of WholeSaleMrBeams.com that sells high-efficiency, wireless LED lights for home, garden and office uses.

Now don’t get Danny wrong. Even though he’s an ambitious, young entrepreneur, he’s still a typical sophomore who enjoys having fun, hanging out with his friends, playing video games, navigating the Web and watching his favorite TV shows and Netflix movies.

The only thing that makes him a little different from his friends, however, is that he loves to score a sale.

“I just had an order of 12 lights and when I saw that I say, Yeah!” said Danny. “That’s the satisfaction I get. For me, as a young entrepreneur, when I get an email that I made a sale, it just brightens my day.”

Since he began selling stuff on the Web about a year ago, he’s already made five figures in sales and he’s been rated as a top seller on eBay.

“My parents are big entrepreneurs. They both recently started their own companies, and that is really where most of my motivation comes from,” said Danny. His Dad, Ben, invests in small businesses and helps manage them. He also just started a new real estate company. Mom, Laura, is a marketing consultant and owns Viva La Brand.

“There’s a lot of business talk in our house,” said Ben. “Danny has three older brothers and sometimes we have to apologize that we don’t talk about other things like the arts or something else.”

Danny launched his first business initiative last year after reading an article on Yahoo that the price of Xbox live cards — used to pay for playing online video games — was going to increase from $50 to $60 a piece a month.

“After doing a lot of searching online, I found someone who was willing to sell me a bunch of cards for $40 apiece,” explained Danny. “So I held on to them for about 30 days and they were worth $60 a piece. I sold them all on eBay in about nine months and made a pretty good profit. It was my first business venture.”

That intro to making money got Danny hooked and he began searching for other products to sell. His dad told him about David Levine, owner of Chagrin Falls-based Mr. Beams, which markets his high-efficiency indoor and outdoor LED lights.

“I told him I liked his products and that I think I can sell them on eBay,” said Danny. “I guess I was convincing enough for him to say, let’s give it a shot.”

Danny noticed other eBay sellers were promoting similar LED lights, so he decided to differentiate himself by selling lights in bulk at discounted prices.

“I tried it and it was really successful,” Danny said. “My sales blew me away as well as David Levine.”

Levine suggested Danny sell the lights on a website, which he designed himself through GoDaddy.com. The site went live in October.

“When I get home from school, the first thing I do is open my Google analytics page to see how many people come to my business site, how did they get there and what are they typing in the search field to find my products,” said Danny, who works about 10 hours a week on his business. “I’m learning a lot about search engine optimization and I’m trying to develop a more efficient way of processing orders. I’m also learning better ways to keep track of my business transactions.”

At the end of the interview for this article, Danny was asked if he wanted to say anything else.

“If I could just stress three things about Mr. Beams lights: They make your home and office safe, they’re easy to install and they are low maintenance. I just wanted to make that clear,” said Danny.

Are you sold yet?