Why We Started Hazel's Treasures™

Most family businesses start in a garage, a kitchen, or a spreadsheet. Ours started in a checkout line, with a six-year-old asking a question we didn't have a good answer to.

Hazel had just spent her last quarter on a tiny bouncy ball from a vending machine near the front of a grocery store in Colorado. She held it up like it was treasure — because to her, it was. And then she looked up and said, very seriously, "Mama, I want to make one of these. But mine will help kids who are sick."

That sentence became the seed of everything.

A small idea with a very big heart

Hazel is a Colorado kindergartener. She loves rainbows, glitter, animals, her little family, and being kind to people she's never met. She's also persistent in a way that's hard to describe unless you live with her. Once she gets an idea, she returns to it every single day until something happens.

So we sat at the kitchen table and we listened. We asked her what she wanted to call it. She said, "Hazel's Treasures, because the bouncy balls are tiny treasures." We asked her who she wanted to help. She said, "The kids at the children's hospital." We asked her how much each one should cost. She said, "Fifty cents, so anyone can afford one."

She had answered the three hardest questions in business — name, mission, and price — before she finished her snack.

Why a real business, and not just a lemonade stand

We could have done a one-day lemonade stand. We could have donated to a charity in her name. Instead, we decided to take her seriously. We treated this like a real Colorado family business — with a real machine, a real mission, and real lessons that would still matter to her ten years from now.

Because here's the thing about kids: when adults treat their ideas like they matter, kids learn that their ideas matter. And that lesson outlives any single bouncy ball.

The first machine, the first "yes," and the first tears

Hazel picked the pink-and-purple machine herself. She wrote her pitch on a piece of paper with a heart on it. She practiced shaking hands in the living room. And then she walked into a local Colorado family business — Dante's Serious Ice Cream — and asked, in her tiny brave voice, if she could place her machine there.

They said yes. She cried happy tears in the car. So did we.

A family business, in every sense of the word

Hazel's Treasures™ is not a project we do for Hazel. It's a project we do with her. She helps refill the machines. She counts the quarters. She picks the businesses she wants to approach. We handle the parts that a six-year-old shouldn't have to — the logistics, the website, the paperwork — but the heart of it is hers.

Ten percent of every purchase is independently donated to Children's Hospital Colorado, because that was the mission from day one and we don't get to change it. She wouldn't let us if we tried.

"The bouncy balls are tiny treasures. The smiles are big. But the reason we're doing this — that's the biggest part." — Hazel

Why we're sharing the story

We share Hazel's story because we know there are other kids out there with their own quarter-in-the-checkout-line moment. Other parents wondering if they should take a small idea seriously. Other Colorado families looking for ways to teach their kids that work, kindness, and community can all live in the same place.

If that's you, we hope Hazel's story gives you a little nudge. Take the idea seriously. Listen at the kitchen table. Walk into the local shop. Say yes when your kid asks if they can try.

Because sometimes the smallest treasures turn into the biggest stories.