TECUMSEH — Hannah Stepp was at a wrestling tournament to support her brother, a Tecumseh wrestler, about three years ago when a shaved-ice business at the tourney caught her eye.

“They were making money like crazy,” she said.

And it gave her an idea.

The then-16-year-old Tecumseh native and her family bought a trailer and cart and by the time she was 17 she had opened her own shaved-ice business, Hannah’s Hawaiian Shaved Ice.

But she wasn’t done there. Before she turned 19, she had already started a second food-truck business, Bussin’ Bowls, which sells açai-based sweet treats.

Bussin’ Bowls originally was intended to be an expansion of Stepp’s shaved-ice business. She was looking for a second trailer when a vintage VW bus caught her eye on Facebook Marketplace, “and I said, ‘there’s no way I can’t get this. This is so, so cool,’ ” she said.

Stepp ultimately decided to sell açai bowls from her bus instead of shaved ice, and planned for the bus to be a fixed-site operation. But when that plan fell through, she didn’t let that discourage her and turned to Plan B: to take the bus to different events just like she was already doing with Hannah’s Hawaiian Shaved Ice.

Running two successful food truck businesses wasn’t exactly in Stepp’s original plans for her life. As a child, she wanted to be a teacher. Then, in high school, she decided on a career as a real estate agent, “but people don’t trust real estate agents who are 18 or 19 years old,” she said.

And while she was an excellent student at Tecumseh High School, graduating in 2023 with a 3.8 grade point average, she wasn’t really a “school person” and knew college wasn’t for her.

“I just wanted to start my life,” she said.

Then came that fateful high school wrestling tournament that changed everything.

Although her colorfully decorated bus and trailer, which she pulls with her pickup truck, have traveled as far away as Caseville, Michigan, for a festival there, most of the events she goes to are in Lenawee, Washtenaw, Monroe, and Jackson counties.

They include county fairs; farmer’s markets; area festivals such as the Clinton Fall Festival, Artalicious, and Appleumpkin; and school events like wrestling tournaments, where she does a brisk business because “the gyms are hot and people are there for 10-plus hours.” When she’s at a school event, 15 percent of her income goes back to the school.

The Lenawee County Fair has given her some of her most interesting experiences, with people stopping by to buy shaved ice not only for themselves but for their animals too, such as horses and cows. Stepp said she even had a customer who was carrying a chicken and gave it some shaved ice.

So how did she learn how to make Hawaiian shaved ice and açai bowls?

During a family trip to Maui when she was a high school junior, she went into a shop that sells the popular treat and watched how the process worked.

From there, “it was a lot of trial and error” involving her family and friends. “The amount of shaved ice they ate was just insane,” she said, laughing.

She makes her own syrups using concentrates she buys from a company in Maui.

As for her açai creations, that was a matter of watching lots of videos online and deciding what would work best for her business.

Hannah’s Hawaiian Shaved Ice sells 24 flavors including four that are sugar-free. Her No. 1 seller is blue raspberry, but tiger’s blood — made with fruit punch concentrate — is another customer favorite, as are the cotton candy and pink lemonade flavors. Hawaiian sweet cream, which is what actually makes shaved ice “Hawaiian,” or sour spray can be added on for an extra charge.

Bussin’ Bowls offers four different types of açai-based desserts, all of which also have granola, banana, strawberries, and blueberries. The Sweet Berry adds sweetened condensed milk, while The OG contains Nutella, The Bee Bowl features honey, and The Berry Butter includes peanut butter.

The Berry Butter is Stepp’s biggest seller. Personally, she prefers The OG because she likes Nutella.

Planning the menus for Hannah’s Hawaiian Shaved Ice and Bussin’ Bowls was something of a challenge in that she had to decide what flavors to sell and how to price her items. But that was one of the fun parts of getting the operations up and running.

The far bigger challenge — as is true for many entrepreneurs, few, if any, of whom started two businesses before age 19 — was learning the ins and outs of actually running a business.

Fortunately, Stepp had two great role models and advisers in her parents, Robert and Danielle. Both are real estate agents, and the family also own Robert’s Roll Offs in Adrian and Lakeside Self Storage in Onsted.

“I didn’t have any idea how to run a business. Zero clue,” Stepp said. “My parents have been my rock. They taught me how to do everything. Without my parents I could never have done it.”

Right now, for example, she’s learning to navigate the world of having employees. Four people currently work for her, “but they’re all my best friends,” she said.

And then there’s the discipline involved in being a business owner. There are plenty of times, Stepp admits, when she’s wished she could be just a regular teenager, and she often has to miss out on doing things with her friends, but “they’re okay with it,” she said.

“My friends are all super-duper supportive. They see that it works for me and it makes me happy.”

Stepp’s plan is to continue to run her businesses herself for two to four more years and then follow her goal of becoming a real estate agent with other people managing her two business operations.

But for now, she’s having a great time with her businesses. “I love what I’m doing,” she said. “The conversations I’ve had through that window are some of my best conversations ever. And I love being my own boss. I can’t imagine doing anything different. It’s so fulfilling.”