I sell candles and donate my proceeds to Saint Jude’s and more recently University Hospitals. I started making them as a hobby in the sixth grade. It was summer of 2022 when I got some craft supplies from my aunt. Then my mom saw a flyer for a fall festival in Beachwood, and I decided to just try selling there I thought it would be a good experience. I shared the news of that first market with my friends and my community at school, and I got a lot of support from them. After that, my family and friends were the ones who convinced me to keep selling them. In 2024, I entered the Young Entrepreneur Ohio Pitch Challenge and won the social entrepreneurship category. And after that, I really got involved in doing markets around this area and spending more time growing my business. I had my first stall at the Beachwood Fall Festival, I saw a flyer online and decided to try it out. I relied on my community to help me, I started talking to my teachers, my friends and I told them about this. They all showed up to support me and buy my candles at that first market. A lot of credit goes to my 6th grade Social Studies teacher Mr. Smith because we had an entrepreneurship project and he’s the one who convinced me to continue my business. He helped me work on my website and use that project to take it to the next level.

I decided to donate to Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital because my family has been deeply affected by cancer. My grandma is a cancer survivor, and my grandpa unfortunately passed away from cancer in the spring of 2022. Seeing firsthand how expensive cancer treatments were and how much my family struggled, I felt like if there was anything I could do to lessen that pain, I would like to try and do it. That’s why when I started getting more into this, I decided to donate to Saint Jude’s, it’s a way to take some of the financial toll off the families who are already struggling.

One of the biggest challenges for me was time management. Learning to balance school with extracurriculars and running this business was very tricky at first. I overcame that by learning how to prioritize and stay organized.

The biggest thing I’d say to them is don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. Talk to your friends, family, and community and use them as a resource because they’re your first supporters and word of mouth can be super powerful. My school offered me a lot of feedback, advice, and support to help me when I was starting out and to help me gain confidence. Stay patient and make the best of everything because every mistake is an opportunity to grow. And for me, sometimes I go to markets that aren’t the best, but at the very least, I get to make good connections from it. Never be disheartened by anything, just keep going no matter what.

The biggest thing I’ve learned is social skills. When I was younger, I was extremely introverted and I’ve always tried to get out of that shell, do things like leadership councils in school. Working and starting Light of Love has really helped me be more comfortable talking to people and I think through meeting people at markets and stuff, my social skills and thinking about things on the spot have really grown. Then also through some competitions, I’ve been invited to pitch live at a couple of places and that has just really helped my overall confidence grow.

One thing I do is I always ask customers to give me feedback on products so I can continue to make my products better. I also like trying out new candle shapes and molds to try out new designs for my existing customers. It’s a reason why they can keep coming back because there’s always new designs coming up. I also have some seasonal and holiday candles. One thing that makes my candles different is that there’s a lot of different designs. They’re very colorful, which is different than other candle trends which have similar color schemes and jar shapes. My candles have brighter colors and fun designs for people of all ages. And the profits go to a good cause. Each customer can get a candle they like and know they’re supporting something that’s very important.

I plan on really expanding it through high school. Especially my online presence and getting a lot more sales through e-commerce. I recently launched my website, and I have all my products on an online store now. I hope to create a stronger social media presence and find other ways to reach a larger audience. And in addition to that, so far, I’ve donated to Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and last year I expanded and partnered with University Hospitals. I would love to expand my reach to even more hospitals and be able to just keep growing and give even more each year. And then after that, going into college, I would love to keep doing Light of Love, like forever really if I could. It’s such a good way for me to kind of do something that I love and help people, which is another thing that I love doing.

West Side Market was a very different experience compared to a lot of the farmers markets that I’ve done in the past. The setup was a lot better; it was indoors and there was a beautiful booth. I think it was a really good experience because it allowed me to meet a lot of new people and a lot of the sellers at West Side Market were very supportive of my cause. There were some challenges in the beginning, like a lot of the crowd at West Side Market is primarily there to get food but it was a good experience, and I did make a lot of sales and really good connections.

Business is very interesting to me, but I’ve also been looking at going into corporate law because I think that combines a lot of the things I’m interested in. Corporate law is a great tool to know for really all business in general. I’ve always been interested in finding some way to help people. When I was younger, it was doing food or clothing drives through student council for my school. I don’t think my younger self really imagined me starting a business, but I feel like after taking that route, it really fits me because I love combining helping people with the problem-solving aspect of entrepreneurship and getting to talk to my customers and expanding my reach. I’d say when I was younger, I didn’t really think I would take this route, but now I feel like it’s very fitting for me.