How do you spend your afternoons? Playing sports, reading, hanging out with friends, or watching T.V. are the typical answers, but not for Molly Smart. The Liberty senior spends her time managing and running a company.

‘B. Smart Trucking’ is a transportation business based in O’Fallon. Smart and her father are the entirety of the company. They transport goods across the states to stores such as Walmart.

Her father began the company when she was 11, and Smart wold help on occasion up until the time she was around 14. At that time, Smart began to really invest herself in the company.

“He knows he can trust me. And he can’t do paperwork while he’s driving the truck,” Smart said.

Smart helps her father with the business aspect of the company; she does paperwork, takes calls, and communicates with the other companies. And she does it all from inside her own house.

“[One of my favorite parts is] that I get to work in my pajamas,” Smart said.

Some might see running a business while also trying to pass high school as impossible, but for Smart, it’s just another day in the life. The business helps to teach her things she couldn’t necessarily learn at school, such as what it takes to run a business and how to talk to people of authority.

Smart says she probably will carry on with the company after high school, but she does still plan to go to college and major in business.

But running a business isn’t always as nice as Smart makes it seem. She sometimes has difficulties dealing with the companies, deciding on payment information and reaching the companies. At times, it can be really stressful. Smart balances the stress with being light hearted at school.

“She is a really great person to talk to. She is always really funny and looking for a laugh,” Ms. Braswell, one of Smart’s teachers, said.

Running a business does have its challenges, but it also has its rewards. Sure, maybe you don’t get to go hang out with friends all the time, or lounge around doing nothing all day. But you do get to branch out and gain experience.

Sometimes it ends up that you’re just not the average student; you are more.