Young Entrepreneurs, Joel Popoff And Adam Armit, Inspiring Others To Follow In Their Footsteps
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Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson were just some of the famous names in entrepreneurship being tossed around at Fort Frances High School last week as part of a Northwestern Ontario-wide initiative to inspire area youths to start their own businesses.
“We’re here to teach students, young people across Northwestern Ontario, about entrepreneurship,” explained Adam Armit, who has been visiting different schools across the area alongside fellow Lakehead University student Joel Popoff on behalf of ACE Lakehead, an organization within the university’s Faculty of Business.
Their presentation, called “Reach 4 the Stars,” starts off with a movie that Popoff has made highlighting the benefits of being an entrepreneur.
“And then we profile some young entrepreneurs, and show how many millions or billions of dollars that some people have made off of it,” he noted.
While they start off listing rich and famous entrepreneurs, the two first-year Honours Bachelor of Commerce students are themselves examples of youth who have started up their own businesses.
Armit, a native of Fort Frances, is the founder of Wildfire Music, which has brought bands like Faber Drive to the area. Popoff, from Schreiber, is the founder of Desiderio Clothing Corp.
“It’s pretty fun,” Armit said of being given the opportunity to travel across the region and making presentations to students. So far they’ve done presentations not just at Fort High, but also Hammarskjold in Thunder Bay as well as Nipigon and Terrace Bay, with more scheduled down the road.
“Nipigon actually enjoyed it so much that they want us to come back next semester and possibly do it for their entire school,” Armit enthused.
“We’ve learned a lot ourselves, as entrepreneurs, so it’s a really great learning experience,” echoed Popoff. “And just being able to travel and share our story of how we started our business, and that we were able to do it at a young age, in a small town like this.”
“We’re both straight out of high school, so we know what presentations are like, so we want to kind of relate it to [youth],” explained Armit, noting young entrepreneurs like themselves aren’t as common.
“So we’re going to talk to them about our businesses, how we started, what we did right, what we did wrong, what we love about it, and basically just relate it all back to us.”
Read the full story in the Fort Francis Times.
