Raising Entrepreneurs

Welcome back!

The entries are starting to come in through the Cash-Smart Kids website – great work, everyone, keep them coming!

Three weeks until the competition closes …

Describe your business or business idea, and submit your entry to us.

You can post a 2-minute video to YouTube, tagged “cash-smart kids”, or make a Hub on HubPages, tagged “cash-smart kids”, or you can submit text and a photo at the Cash-Smart Kids website.

The two best entries will be featured in the book “Raising Cash-Smart Kids”, which will be published next year.

Entries close October 15th.

Jack Spooner, 12, of Parkville weeds his neighbor’s flowerbeds July 16. Spooner, who started a small lawn care business, attended an entrepreneurs camp at Metropolitan Community College-Maple Woods.

Kate Duffy’s students are bright, driven and ready to start their own Donald Trump stories. Of course, they still have to go to high school.

Duffy led a first-time camp for young entrepreneurs from July 14 to 18 at Metropolitan Community College-Maple Woods.

Seven participants in sixth through eighth grades got hands-on experience with every facet of a successful business, including finance, marketing and management, Duffy said.

The goal of the camp, Duffy said, is to get kids interested in running their own ventures and plant the skills they’ll need to succeed. The younger the better, when it comes to business education, she claimed.

“Actually, I wish we could start teaching these kids when they are six,” Duffy said. “Entrepreneurship is such a good way to teach important life skills to kids, like how to think clearly, stay organized and look for opportunities.”

The camp’s genesis goes back to the First Step Fund, a nonprofit agency that’s helped thousands of people in the Kansas City area learn entrepreneurship skills, according to the group’s Web site.

Duffy and First Step Fund graduate Pat Ross decided to convert the group’s curriculum for elementary and middle school students.

Duffy and Ross put together a proposal that was approved for funding by an internal grant program at MCC. Five-day camps were held throughout July at MCC’s Penn Valley, Maple Woods, Blue River and Longview campuses.

Entrepreneurship is “being able to see opportunities in the world and take calculated risks,” Duffy said.

David Andrews is 13 years old, a home-schooled Liberty resident and willing to take a calculated risk. After his parents returned from a trip to Hawaii with tales of tasty Hawaiian ice, Andrews decided to open his own stand. The camp was a chance to refine the business plan, he said.

“I think the most difficult thing is going to be all the travelling around, to soccer games and stuff,” he said.

Kansas City North resident Elyse Hines, 12, will attend New Mark Middle School this fall. She was starting a tutoring business.

“I’ve done it before. I tutor kids in elementary school, help them become better at their school work,” Hines explained, making her pitch. “It’s affordable, it’s convenient.”

Freedom of choice is the best thing about being an entrepreneur, Hines added.

Read the full story in the KC Community News.

Photo: Sun Tribune

Dimension, a company set up by a group of A-level students, is proof that Britain’s youth, despite its poor image, has entrepreneurial drive in spades.

Students at the Fortrose Academy were given an opportunity, through Young Enterprise UK’s company programme, to set up and run a small business for eight months and they jumped at the chance. Little did they know that the decision would eventually lead them to London and Stockholm.

“We focused on the sort of issues that we found important – environment, health and education – and then looked for a suitable business opportunity,” says Patrick Boyer, the managing director.

Having decided that their business would promote healthy eating to young children, the team came up with the idea of using recipes, a magnetic rewards chart and a storybook about a cartoon character, Harry, to encourage primary school children to eat their five-a-day.

“Scotland’s poor record in fighting obesity is one of the reasons we opted for this project,” says Alana MacPherson, the creative director.

With the obvious interest in their product and a decent balance sheet, Dimension decided to enter the local Young Enterprise Innovation Awards competition – and won. They then won county and regional competitions to earn the right to represent Scotland in the national finals at the Park Lane Hotel in London.

Last week Dimension was named as the HSBC Young Enterprise Innovation Award winner for 2008, having seen off stiff competition from 11 other regional finalists and 3,000 teams of other young people who had also particpated. Their prize is a trophy, £1,000 and the chance to represent Britain in the European Junior Achievement Awards final in the Swedish capital this weekend, where the company’s financial results, teamwork, marketing strategy, communications, product development and administration policies will be under scrutiny.

Read the full story in The Times online.

We’re into the final stretch now for the Cash-Smart Kids competition.

Now is the time to turn those good intentions into entries!

Describe your business or business idea, and submit your entry to us.

You can post a 2-minute video to YouTube, tagged “cash-smart kids”, or make a Hub on HubPages, tagged “cash-smart kids”, or you can submit text and a photo at the Cash-Smart Kids website.

The two best entries will be featured in the book “Raising Cash-Smart Kids”, which will be published next year.

Entries close October 15th.

So, get to it – banish the excuses, and submit your entry now!

If Josh Holmes has his way, shoppers will eventually find his “Got Books?” line of T-shirts and apparel at bookstores and libraries across the U.S., or even the world.

Not a bad goal for a 16-year-old.

Holmes is one of several young adults who spent the past week at a business boot camp for young entrepreneurs. The Napa Valley College Small Business Development Center ran the five-day course, held at Napa Valley College.

Developed for the 14- to 27-year-old crowd, organizers targeted the week-long Napa Youth Enterprise Academy seminar towards young adults who want hands-on training of how to start, organize and run a small business.

Read the full story in the Napa Valley Register.