Raising Entrepreneurs

From last week’s MyCentralJersey.com comes news of another great initiative.

Middle school and high school students will create their own businesses – working alongside successful New Jersey business owners — at the Young Entrepreneur’s Academy, an eight-week, Summer Saturday series, July 11-August 23 at the Academic Resource Center, which serves middle and high school students in Essex and Union Counties.

Open to boys and girls ages 11-17, YEA! uses the fundamentals of entrepreneurship to promote creativity, basic understanding and skills in money management, business concepts and financial literacy. It encourages students to frame their dreams, and current interests into future money making and career satisfying professional options. Using tactical problem-solving approaches, the program enhances confidence, creativity, self esteem and self reliance.

It’s so great to see these small programs popping up - of course, you can’t hope to get all the concepts across in just a handful of Saturdays, but exposure to the concepts is a great first step, and the kids will retain some of the material, each in their own way.

At least there are summer activity options beyond making candles and going to camp these days!

Image: riot jane

Still waiting on word from the publishers …. nothing ever happens when promised! Sigh.

Meanwhile, I want to remind everyone of the great opportunities which are available to entrants in the competition - for example, having your business mentioned in a magazine which goes out to 6 million readers!

Whether you win or not, being in the competition has all sorts of ongoing benefits. For example, young Rhiannon’s video has been seen by news outlets all around the world, and is currently featured on Peter Economy’s blog.

I know there are lots of people out there intending to put entries in, but procrastinating.

Do it NOW!

The longer your video is online during the competition, the more exposure your business will get.

We had a rush of people coming to look at the competition rules last week, so I am guessing that someone has been publicising the competition, or the press release - or maybe we have had some press coverage that I haven’t heard about yet.

If you happen to have seen a new story about the Cash-Smart Kids YouTube video competition somewhere, please drop me a line in a comment on this blog, or via the contact page and let me know!

We’re still waiting to hear from the publisher we like the best, after an initial warm response - who knows how long it might take them to come back with an offer?

In the meanwhile, though, keep the entries coming in - so far I have seen about one percent of the entries that people have spoken to me about actually materialise, so I know there are an awful lot of good intentions out there.

Let’s see those good intentions turning into some ACTION!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait…

Keepin’ it brief today - we have the flu in the house.

We have had a nice, positive response from at least one publisher about the book, the project, and this competition. Peter and I are going to be interviewed by Costco magazine in a few weeks’ time - this goes out to over SIX MILLION readers.

If you want a chance to have your business mentioned in that interview - get off your tootie and put your entry in!

Check out the competition rules if you haven’t already. The rewards just for entering are very, very worth it.

It has been a quiet week on the entries front this week - so many people tell me they are working on entries, but only a few have actually submitted them!

We have another proposal going off to a publisher this week, so the deserving winners will have a publisher worthy of their efforts by the time the competition closes.

I have emails from people all over the world, including places like Puerto Rico and Malaysia, with kids who have English as a second language working hard on pulling together their entries.

If it all comes through as planned, we should have a real United Nations among the finalists!

The Americans are still running behind, though, given how many Americans there are, and how many have internet access. Where’s your national pride? Come on, Americans! Get your entries in!