By Darrell Smith - Bee Staff Writer Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, August 5, 2007

As the mercury climbs past 90 degrees in El Dorado Hills, 6-year-old Mary Kate Mulligan decides it is time to open up shop.

At her age, though, a business owner doesn't exactly go it alone. Mom, Dad and little sister Brenna are in tow as Mary Kate waits for the thirsty throng to line up for the "lip-smacking good" lemonade promised at her stand.

Fifty cents, please. "Thank you, honey," says Sharon Welling of El Dorado Hills, plunking down a couple of quarters before taking a sip of pink lemonade. "It's delicious. Little Mary Kate did a fine job. Aren't they the cutest little girls?"

Cute, sure, but what counts here will be just how savvy and resolute Mary Kate is. She and other Sacramento-area elementary schoolchildren received $10 in startup capital from Umpqua Bank as part of a program to teach the basics of running a small business from behind the time-honored summer stand.

As manufactured as this image is, it's not outlandish. In the Sacramento region and around the nation, young people are taking control of their future and launching significant businesses that are winning them recognition from their adult peers.

Young people are eager to learn these lessons, said Hank Kopcial, executive director of the Young Entrepreneur Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the National Federation of Independent Business.

He dismissed stereotypes of young people as disaffected and obsessed with video games and online sites. Young people are expressing interest in going into business in larger numbers than five years ago, Kopcial said, and the Internet is a large part of that.

In fact, the NFIB foundation awarded more than 400 scholarships worth $480,000 last year, he said. Nearly all of the recipients were already running businesses that were inspired, Kopcial said, by the successes that other young entrepreneurs enjoyed.

"With the Internet, a young person can start a multinational business from the desk in their bedroom," Kopcial said.

One scholarship recipient did just that, Kopcial said, founding a Web site design firm and hiring domestic and overseas subcontractors via the Internet to meet his design needs. Other student-run companies run the gamut from a South Dakota dog breeding business to a retro spin on ice cream delivery, featuring white-suited ice cream truck drivers.

KrystalParrish, a 16-year-old incoming junior at Laguna Creek High School in Elk Grove, got her first taste of running a business through Sacramento's Junior Achievement program.

She and other students opened a bakery business, devising a way to print photographs on iced cookies. The business, open over 12 weeks during the just-concluded school year, was a smash.

Her advice to others hoping to replicate their sweet success:

• Make connections with the people you work with. Get to know them so you can talk about something more than work.

• Find mentors who can guide you through the business process.

• Make it personal. It's your business, not just an assignment.

• Establish a personal connection with your customer. Parrish asked customers to call or e-mail her with feedback, and she would e-mail photos of the product they were about to receive.

• Make sure to laugh. Sometimes things don't go as planned. When that happens, a sense of humor goes a long way.

Running a business may be a big responsibility, but in an age of downsizing and outsourcing, savvy youngsters see the Ghost of Christmas Future and hope to head that spirit off at the pass.

"They want to have more say in what they do with their work life," Kopcial said. "They've maybe seen a friend or family member lose their job, and they see that having their own business potentially offers that freedom."

Today's small business owners often sowed the seeds of their current success as children when they launched summer or after-school businesses.

James Goodchap, for instance, built upon his love of entertaining. As a 10-year-old boy in his native Wales, he staged puppet shows for a penny in his backyard.

"It was never hot enough for lemonade, and we couldn't get lemons," quipped Goodchap, now owner of Sacramento-based marketing firm Goodchap Brand Identity. "I wanted to entertain my peers, get people together and have a good time. And, make enough money to buy chocolate."

The 48-year-old puppeteer-turned-marketer said any program that introduces youngsters to the business world is worth his attention. Since coming to Sacramento from the United Kingdom in 1991, Goodchap has been active in the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy, an educational program for local students supported by local business people.

It was a lemonade stand more than 30 years ago that propelled a young Curt Davis onto the road to entrepreneurship whether he knew it or not. Davis needed some scratch to pay for the stuff he wanted, so he set up a lemonade stand, hung out his shingle and went to work.

"I think every kid had a lemonade stand," Davis said. "Most of the money I had (as a child) was from serving the neighborhood."

His Colorado Springs, Colo., venture was inspired by an age-old complaint: "Kids want stuff, and parents don't want to pay for it."

The lemonade stand set the stage for other neighborhood-based businesses: mowing lawns in the summer and shoveling snow in the spring for extra cash. By the time he was 14, he had landed a job with Colorado Springs' parks and recreation department.

Now 40 and with a business of his own, the Sacramento transplant said he now passes the lessons he learned along to his four children.

"I learned more of a work ethic," said Davis, owner of Infinity Services, a Sacramento flooring and carpet cleaning business. "When you've got to work for stuff, when you've had to earn it, you appreciate it a little more."

He doesn't have to tell Mary Kate. A couple of quarters here, a dollar there, even 50-cent pieces don't come easy.

"It's really a lot of work," she said after pouring another cold cup of lemonade outside the Umpqua branch on El Dorado Hills Drive in El Dorado Hills. Too busy with customers to run errands, Mary Kate learned quickly to delegate.

"Can you quick run home and get the things for the stand?" she said to her father, Bob Mulligan.

Days earlier, before her dreams of a lemonade stand came true, Mary Kate's enterprising mind happened upon a way to make some summer cash. She stood outside the family's home with a cup and a flute.

"She said she wanted to have money for when she got older. She'd wanted a lemonade stand for a long time, and I had put it off," Bob Mulligan said. "But then I remembered the bank's offer and we went from there."

Business was slow those first couple of days, but Mary Kate started figuring out which hours were best to sell her brew.

Mom and dad taught her how to keep records, and Mary Kate expanded her selection ("We have sugar, sugar and sugar-free," she explained), and by her first week in front of the bank, her take had easily doubled the bank's $10 loan.

Mulligan said her daughter takes in about $6 a day in sales. The family has already opened a bank account where a portion of Mary Kate's profits go for safekeeping.

On a recent day, she shook the plastic cup carrying coins and bills, a faint smile curling over her face at the jingle. Then she repeated one of her dad's favorite sayings: "A dollar a day helps keep the blues away."