All photos via: Courtesy: GaBBY Bows
Gabrielle “Gabby” Goodwin is a 12-year-old CEO who created the first patented double-face, double-snap barrette known as GaBBY Bows with her mom. Through her business, she’s gained a lot of attention and success, including being named the 2018 Black Enterprise Teenpreneur of the Year.
As a successful business owner, Gabby is now on a mission to help other young girls like herself become thriving entrepreneurs. That’s why, she and her mom, Rozalynn Goodwin, launched the Mommy and Me Entrepreneurship Academy. With this program, young kids and their moms will be able to work towards entrepreneurship by micro-franchising the GaBBY Bows business.
Gabby and her mom tell Black Enterprise that the idea for the academy came about when the 12-year-old CEO volunteered at a local children’s shelter and met other young women who were impressed that she was a business owner. A year later, Rozalynn said she stumbled upon a micro-franchising workshop at a work event, where attendees were introduced to the idea of applying a traditional franchising model to a small business.
To Rozalynn’s surprise, she says, her daughter had already knew about the concept through a research project she had done on Madam C.J. Walker.
“Gabby shared with me about how Madam C.J. Walker had set up these directors and all of these Black women were selling the products,” she said.
From there, Goodwin and her mom continued to do research on micro-franchising in order to educate themselves on how they could apply it to GaBBY Bows so that other young women could get a taste of entrepreneurship. It was during this time when they also formed the Mommy and Me Entrepreneurship Academy. In addition to allowing young kids and their parents to become a micro-franchiser, the academy also provides training and mentorship on how to successfully run a business.
Goodwin, who admits to once being a very shy kid, says that being a CEO has helped her to step outside of her comfort zone and build her confidence. Now, she says, she hopes that she can instill that same confidence in other young people her age.
“I think that this academy is going to boost a lot of girl’s confidence because when I started GaBBY Bows I wasn’t that confident,” she says. “I was pretty shy, and now that entrepreneurship has boosted my confidence I think that it will boost their confidence as well.”