photo: Pexels

A teenager having an after-school job? Umm, that’s not exactly breaking news. But a teenager having an after-school job that lands them a six-figure (yes, six-figure) salary kind of is. High school students RJ Duarte and Owen Johnson are making the type of money that many adults never see — and they’re having fun while doing it.

Duarte, who is now 17-years-old, started his career years ago. At age six or seven, the now-high school senior started mowing lawns with his big brother. Little did he know that a decade later he’d be running his own super-successful landscaping company. Green Worx, Duarte and Johnson’s brainchild, does what just about every other landscape company does. They cut grass, plant flowers, clean-up yards and remove snow (in the winter, of course).

The two boys started working together in middle school, when Duarte’s burgeoning lawn care company really started taking off. After realizing that he had more clients than he could handle by himself, the then-middle schooler started working with his friend and classmate Owen Johnson.

Green Worx has gone well beyond two kids, a mower and a few kindly neighbors who pay them in quarters to clean up their yards. The company is set to rake in over $100,000 this year. Not only are they bringing in the big bucks, but these high schoolers are now giving other kids a chance to make money. They’ve hired fellow students, paying them $10 an hour. This is more than the $9.30 minimum wage in Duarte and Johnson’s home state of Colorado.

With clients such as a golf course and a water park, the boys sometimes need to wake up at 2:30 a.m., just to work and go to school. It looks like the hard work is paying off. Along with the profits-a-plenty that they’re seeing, Duarte also won $1,000, for being a young entrepreneur, from Young Americans Bank.

Does your child have his or her own business plan? Tell us in the comments below.

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