It All Starts Now

Contributing Staff: Natashalee Reid, Section Editor

"GEW" Posters

It is never too early to begin honing and developing skills for success in life. No one agrees with this assertion more than Erin McGuire and Camille Govoni, students of King Phillip Regional High School in Wrentham, USA.

The two ambitious young ladies manage their high school DECA club. DECA clubs are organizations that seek to prepare future leaders for the world of business, which includes hospitality, marketing, management, and entrepreneurship.

Through their organization, they have enlightened teens and adults alike of entrepreneurship. Their recent efforts came in the form of a campaign called “It all starts now”, an initiative based on “Global Entrepreneurship Week”. The seven-day seminar is dedicated to informing and enlightening individuals about the realms of business.

During the week of November 14 to the 20^th, the girls were able to speak to teenagers and adults about the importance of entrepreneurs, what it takes to become an entrepreneur, traits and skills of entrepreneurs, famous entrepreneurs, local entrepreneurs, Global Entrepreneurship Week, and their club’s mission. The initiative was indeed successful as many students approached them privately afterward stating they were inspired to start their own business.

An in-depth look at the initiative follows:

What is the main focus of your project?

The main focus of our project is promoting the importance of entrepreneurship. We believe that the time for entrepreneurship is now! The title of our project is “It All Starts Now” because we believe that it is never too early or too late to consider the possibility of starting your own business

Who is your target audience?

Our campaign is targeted towards students ages 11-17 because we believe they are the future entrepreneurs of the world! We also targeted our project towards adults because many adults have dreams they want to fulfill.

How did you promote entrepreneurship?  And to whom?

For our project we held five workshops and presentations.  We based our project around Global Entrepreneurship Week, a week that is devoted to entrepreneurs and the importance of entrepreneurship.  Global Entrepreneurship week took place on November 14th to November 20th in over 123 countries.  Our five presentations took place throughout the week with a different workshop each day.  Our first presentation was for our DECA class. We spoke about Global Entrepreneurship Week and how any of them can become entrepreneurs.  Our next three workshops were for two sixth grade classes and one-eighth-grade class.  At these presentations we spoke to the students about the importance of entrepreneurs, what it takes to become an entrepreneur, traits and skills of entrepreneurs, famous entrepreneurs, local entrepreneurs, Global Entrepreneurship Week, and DECA’s mission.  The students were able to share with us their thoughts on each part of our presentation. After we spoke, the students broke up into groups and created their own hypothetical business complete with a business plan.  The groups then presented their ideas to their classmates. The students loved being able to be creative and innovative, and many told us they enjoyed being able to get up in front of the class and show the others what they had thought of in terms of a business idea!  Afterwards, students approached us and said they had been inspired to become entrepreneurs! Our fifth presentation was held at our local library. This presentation was an opportunity for us to present to an audience consisting of mostly adults and teenagers.  We spoke about entrepreneurship and the need for entrepreneurs today.  We had an extended question and answer session where we answered questions on entrepreneurship and our campaign. An aspiring entrepreneur attended our presentation and we were able to help her with aspects of starting a business like the many uses of social media and how to implement a social media campaign in her business.

How did you learn about entrepreneurship?

To learn about entrepreneurship, we interviewed many local business owners.  We interviewed Tim Bowditch of The Music Box and Jim Lorusso of Tootsies.  Both of the business owners were able to give us valuable information on the art of starting a business.  We also did a lot of research online.  Our favorite websites to use were kauffman.org and gewusa.org.  The Kauffman Foundation and the people at Global Entrepreneurship Week were very kind and helpful to us.

What was the most rewarding part of your project?

An extremely rewarding part of our project was having the opportunity to be guests on the Jordan Rich Show on WBZ News Radio Boston 10:30 AM. Mr. Rich had us live in studio to talk about our project, workshops, and the importance of entrepreneurship in the U.S.  We spoke at 12:30 AM on November 27th.  We had over 300,000 listeners tune in to our half hour show.  This was one of the best experiences of our lives!

How did your project/overall experience impact you?

Our project has become a major part of our lives!  We do not go a day without thinking about entrepreneurship and how we can change the world.  Before we started our project we barely knew what entrepreneurship was. We now know more than we ever thought we would. Motivation, passion, and determination have driven us to discover who we are: future entrepreneurs.  Our project has impacted on such a high level.  Our campaign impacted the young individuals and adults of our community; we helped them be inspired to become entrepreneurs. Our presentations and workshops helped us grow and learn more about ourselves: we are now ready to make our entrepreneurial dreams come true because of our campaign, “It All Starts Now!”

ARB Team
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