The 17 year-old undertaker and the new teen workforce

Courtesy of the Daily MailKids today. No, really. Give a boy a lemonade stand, and he'll come up with a marketing strategy for distributing the beverage online. Ask a teenager to mow your lawn, and she'll invent a robot that does it better. Give a girl scout a box of cookies and she'll come back with a deed for a bakery shop. For every grown-up who brags about how hard they worked back in the day, there's a kid who's working harder and bringing in higher revenue. Back it up. They use the word 'revenue.'

This week, a winner was chosen in the National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, a non-profit contest that gives kids in low-income communities a chance to develop their own companies. Thirty one finalists submitted original business plans, and one 17 year-old, Nia Froome, won the $10,000 award. But that's petty cash for the Facebook generation expecting to follow in Marc Zuckerberg's billion dollar footsteps. With low overhead opportunities on the internet, free advertising through viral marketing and social networking sites and, Zuckerberg's career-slash-sexual exploits in college banking at the box office, working never looked so good. Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs beat out Oprah, Tony Hawk and Jay-Z; as most popular business leader among teens. That's more than we can say for adults, who are still ranking "movie star" as our dream job.

It must be hard to accept $10 an hour babysitting jobs, knowing you could be launching an online brand that pays your college tuition. With higher education expenses and unemployment rates than their parents, and the world at their fingertips kids are taking initiative like never before. For them age is just a number...that could use a few more zeros.

The Undertaker At 17, George Simnett already runs his own business. But that's not the shocking part. The British teenager opened his own funeral home two months ago in the U.K.. His hourly chores include consulting with grieving families and preparing bodies for burial. You know, kid's stuff. His parents were farmers, but he decided early on to attend school for the business of death. Now he hopes to recruit his mom to be his in-house florist.

The Vegan Baker17 year-old Nia Froome, ofValley Stream, N.Y., won the NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge. But that's just the icing on her dairy-free cake. She launched Mamma Nia's Vegan Bakery, while cooking vegan meals for her mother who had given up meat after battling breast cancer. Now she sells health-conscious cookies, cupcakes and cinnamon rolls to New York area residents through her website.

The Record Producer Dallas-based 16 year-old Ryan Anderson is the president of Bootstrap Muzik, a label that distributes artist's music through online promotion. After relocating with his family from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Anderson tapped into the geographically unified resources of the web to develop his brand. Now he's planning on launching a clothing label. The Dance Instructor Most 10 year olds take dance classes. Amiya Alexander teaches them. After reaching the ripe old double digits, the Detroit native, thought: enough is enough. It's high time she use her skills to help people, raise money and make a little profit. So she conspired with her mom to buy and old school bus, paint it pink, and host parties and dance classes for local kids on the moving vehicle. Amiya's Mobile Dance Academy has reached cult status in her area, as national news outlets have spotlighted her efforts to combat childhood obesity through unconventional fitness classes. And her interest in promoting health doesn't stop there. The money she makes doesn't go towards candy, it goes in her education fund. Amiya plans to be a doctor.

The Online Beauty Retailer Leanna Archer was 10 when she first bottled her mom's recipe for homemade hair products and began selling them online. Leanna's Inc reported a $150,000 revenue in 2008, up from $45,000 the year before. At 13, she was pocketing $5000 a month, while attending school. She also managed to squeeze in a trip to New York's financial district to ring the NASDAQ opening bell. Now 16, she maintains the site and ships products daily in between math homework.

The Computer Repair Technicians Nina Velic and Belma Ahmetovic, just graduated high school, but they've already been working for months. Their New England-based business Beta Bytes, offers computer repair services to the Bosnia-American community in their town of Hartford. Both of their families fled from Bosnia during the war and relocated in the East Coast over a decade ago. Growing up in a wired world, the teenagers noticed their family members facing language barriers when it came to fixing computers. Beta Bytes offers "culturally-sensitive", multi-lingual tech repair with intentions to expand to the Albanian and Latino markets in the near future.

The Inventor What if you combined the compact shape of a donut hole and the flavor of a cake? You'd have the best food ever. Duh. Leave it to a 17 year-old to invent it. "It's cake with icing, and it's molded into a ball and then dipped in chocolate," California teen Crystal Vo tells ABC news. People really like them because they're tasty and fewer calories than a slice of cake. Which people, you ask? The employees at Intel, for starters. The company ordered 2000 from Vo this year.