Raising Entrepreneurs

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Young Entrepreneur, Joseph Pascaretta

Lots of people start careers at a tender age, but few were as young as Joseph Pascaretta.

Pascaretta, a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Rochester Hills, started his first company when he was still in middle school, nearly 10 years ago.

“My business partner and I were 11. We both wanted to be pilots, and we used to take pictures of airplanes and post statistics on the Internet. We got a lot of responses,” says Pascaretta.

The next step came when he was at the house of a school friend, whose family happened to own a construction business, he says. “I told them I could build a Web site for the business. At first it was something of a joke because I was just a kid. But it turned out great,” he says.

So he and his partner, Aaron Dowen, also 20, of Shelby Township, launched a Web site design business, which became the foundation for the holding company that now includes three distinct businesses, including the original Web site design business, an architectural landscape business and a third business, which now handles IT services for a growing roster of clients.

The businesses are able to take care of both the inside and the outside of clients’ businesses, he says.

Alps Technology International has 107 employees, including seven in Europe and Australia, as well as sales of more than $5 million.

Read the full story in the Oakland Press.

Thanks to one of our readers, Cassandra Jowett, for passing on a link to this blog post. Apparently there is hope yet for the Millennials!

Many people have wrongly classified Millennials and other young professionals as lazy and self-centered, but I believe this stereotype results from this generation defining success differently than previous generations.

Unlike their predecessors, this group has been taught to push the envelope and not simply define success as receiving the golden watch after 25 plus years of service at a company. Millennials have watched their parents work 9-5 each day, only to be later downsized and out of work 20 years into their careers, and as a result, young professionals have expanded their definition of success to places outside of work.

A young professional’s accomplishments in their career are only a small piece of the total picture, which now encompasses personal growth, constant learning, a strong family life, and a sense of accomplishment when everything is said and done. Millennials want to blaze their own path and most especially control their own destiny. As Mr. Michael Malone writes in his article “The Next American Frontier” (Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2008), the Millennials have become a generation of entrepreneurs.

For the first time in American history, according to Mr. Malone, 18 to 24 year olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35-44 year olds. I think this fact demonstrates how wrong the general perception of Millennials is. Young professionals are not lazy, they are trail blazers, and they are innovators in its purist form: entrepreneurs. Mr. Malone has finally given voice to what this generation wants: that it is ok to want more, to look to new horizons, to constantly expand your knowledge base to stay competitive, and to say no to the regular corporate job.

Read the rest of this blog post at BrettHummel.com.

The younger generations are different, sure – but then, were the workaholic, emotionally repressed men who were raised in the 50s and 60s really happy? And do the Gen X women trying to do a full-time corporate job and provide decent parenting to their kids really believe we have cracked the happiness code?

I know, for me, that being in control of how I spend my time is thre single greatest factor in my happiness. An extra $50,000 per year (which I could earn if I wanted to work that hard) wouldn’t compensate for the relationships that would have to go on the back burner while I worked.

The only work I am prepared to do these days is work that sets up more passive income, or work that I find intrinsically fulfilling, like teaching, counselling and coaching – and even that I limit very strictly.

I can absolutely sympathise with any young person who decides that they won’t play the corporate game – and I don’t think that makes them lazy or unmotivated!

I remember my first employer telling me that if I was only willing to work 10 hours a day then I obviously wasn’t ambitious. Fortunately, I had the nerve to walk away from someone who was not only a workaholic, but a pusher.

Time will tell.

For now, we look at the Millennials, and we hear them described:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Quote originally from Socrates (469 BC -399 BC)

The more things change, the more they stat the same …

A GROUP of teenagers are proving to be top entrepreneurs that even Alan Sugar would be proud of after setting up their own mobile disco company.

The year 12 students from Katherine Lady Berkeley School, in Wotton-under-Edge, have taken part in a Young Enterprise scheme that encourages young people to set up and run their own business.

Friends Neil Pande, 16, Jack Allsopp, 16 and Nathan Giles, 17, got together to launch JNN Mobile Disco and they have already have some great success.

“We’re all really excited about running our own enterprise. I love music and have been the DJ at a number of friends’ parties in the past,” said Neil, from Wotton-under-Edge.

“But now we have invested in some serious sound and lighting equipment. The effect is awesome.”

The trio have bought all the latest DJ equipment including strobe lights, smoke machine and multi-coloured disco lights. They had a successful first event providing a children’s disco for birthday girl Jo Mackie, from Wickwar who said the disco was the best she had ever had.

Their next planned event is an adult disco and the company will then be organising Christmas parties for their fellow students at school.

The Young Enterprise scheme, which is the UK’s leading business and enterprise education charity, is a competition and the most successful businesses will get to compete in the national finals.

Nathan, from Berkeley, said “Our aim is to win the regional finals if possible and go on to the nationals. To do that we need loads of bookings for discos, birthday parties, Christmas and New Year parties.”

Source: The Gazette

hen John F. Kennedy told baby boomers to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” they ran with it. That generation, born between 1946 and 1964, had a collective fascination with butt-kicking, entrepreneurial achievement.

So-called millennials, born between mid 1970s and 1990s, have received a radically different message–one captured in part by President-elect Barack Obama’s stance on the benefits of “spreading the wealth around.”

The oft-raised question–and it’s a big one for the U.S.–is whether millennials (also known as “The Everybody Gets A Trophy” generation) have been so coddled, so inoculated against insults and injury, that they are now too, well, soft to achieve entrepreneurial success.

I admit I harbor some concerns about the country’s evolving entrepreneurial ego. Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economist who coined the term “creative destruction” and likened entrepreneurs to nothing less than “heroic” innovators, believed that self-made men and women possessed a “rugged individualism” and a “will to conquer”–not exactly millennial DNA.

Not that millennials are damaged goods. Corporate recruiters drool over them for their ability to adapt and fit into bureaucratic enterprises. Overachieving, nobody-tells-me-what-to-do entrepreneurial types don’t go so gently into that good night.

Thriving entrepreneurs are rarely seen starting a business at the young age of 16, but the owners of Sorelle’s on Nicholson did just that, eliminating age stereotypes in the business sector.

These ambitious, 21-year-old twin sisters, Nicole and Ashley Russo, opened up their corporation – Sorelle Gamelle – meaning twin sisters in Italian, at the age of 16, and have now expanded to two locations – Houma and Baton Rouge.

“We were inspired to open the store when we were 16,” said Nicole Russo. “We used to have to go to New Orleans to shop for shoes, but we eventually got tired of there being no place in Houma to go shopping for reasonable shoes that young girls could afford.”

This propelled the two young ladies to fill this lacking niche. The determined Russo sisters created a business plan, which they then presented to their parents, who were so excited about the idea that they helped in funding the store.

“I’m not going to lie,” said Ashley Russo, who works daily while also going to college. “It’s tough running two stores.”

Nicole Russo, who also is a full-time student as well as a cheerleader, also stays very busy, but she “wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“If you have an idea, go for it,” Ashley Russo advises other young entrepreneurs. “Be positive and follow your heart. If you really want it bad enough, it will happen.”

These sorelle gamelles have a solid desire for running their business, and are assured that this is what they want to do long-term. Their strong, selling sense will propel them into the next phase of their production goals.

“We do have plans for expanding the business,” said Nicole Russo, “and hope to expand soon.”

Source: Tiger Weekly