Written By: Brianna Dennis, Business Outreach Specialist
Working within communities with small businesses can be very enlightening. Often, the owners of the small businesses you serve are the community leaders officially as well as unofficially. You can learn a lot about programs that came before you, why they were successful and why they may have failed. You can learn what support would be useful as opposed to what the “power that be” deem as necessary. One of the many lessons I learned was, “these kids don’t know how to do anything,” as stated to me by a local real estate investor. Of course, I still see myself as a “kid,” so I was slightly offended by the statement. After further explanation, I understood what Mr. Lassiter meant. Mr. Lassiter went on to explain that he had started his business as a way to acquire generational wealth and support his family. He regaled me with his stories of how he made the money to buy his first property and many of his wins as well as losses over the years. The point of his story was that soon enough he would be looking to retire, and he did not feel that any of his children were going to be able to take over his business. I inquired as to why he thought they weren’t ready, and he stated that, “These schools don’t teach these kids how to think for themselves. They know how to do a few equations and have read some books but they do not know how to problem solve or figure out anything for themselves. They don’t teach them to hustle.”
After speaking with him, I started to ask other business owners that I encountered who would take over their business should they not be able to operate it any longer. First, I found that many small business owners had not thought about this scenario and secondly, I found that many of them did not think their children could “handle” the business. I then went to a few teachers that I know personally and asked them if their curriculum included any entrepreneurial based classes and the answer was the same across the board, no. Whilst formal schooling is not the only method of education, nor are the educational systems charged with teaching a student every single thing that they will ever need in order to survive, the topic of successful entrepreneurship should be included in the curriculum in some manner.
We all know that in today’s economy working one full-time job will more than likely not support a comfortable lifestyle. To supplement income people have been creating “side hustles” to make extra money and many have been very successful. These “side hustles” are entrepreneurial endeavors. People young and old are creating businesses every day but no one has taught them how to properly manage a business after it starts to grow. For this reason, many of them fail even after seeing some success. If high school is the last required educational pursuit for our youth, why are we not teaching them how to create, manage, and grow businesses as this is the proven way of the future?
Not only will new businesses be created but family businesses will need to be taken over, some, even need to be saved. It will be the youth who are responsible for tackling these challenging tasks. Yet, we as a society aren’t equipping them with at least the basic knowledge. Yes, people can Google anything and everything but there is only so far that it can take you. Some sort of formal educational foundation is needed to ensure that the youth have a chance at being successful in all of their entrepreneurial endeavors.
I went to Richmond Height High School and met with their career readiness teachers. I wanted to find out how entrepreneurial skills could be introduced to the students they work with. This particular team of teachers are tasked with teaching students how to create resumes, fill out job applications, how to correctly answer interview questions, and how to conduct themselves once they have a job. They also guide students who want to go to college. One teacher on the team expressed to me that many of her students say they “don’t want to work for other people,” but the student isn’t prepared to work for themselves. We all shared a chuckle. We know that working for others is not anyone’s “dream job” but we also understand the work it takes to build your own business. The students did not seem to understand the second part. From our meeting I concluded that the teachers see the need for a curriculum which teaches entrepreneurial skills but that the teachers themselves do not have the time to develop or deliver such a course.
With all these thoughts in mind, Great Lakes Community Action Partnership is in the process of developing an online classroom that will teach youth the skills needed to start, grow, and maintain a business. The program will be delivered as a 15 lesson seminar core with an additional five optional lessons. The lessons are developed with the audience in mind thus, they are engaging, use age appropriate language/examples, are accompanied by an activity at the end of each lesson to ensure that the topic was understood, and make sure to incorporate all four major learning styles. The optional five lessons in the curriculum focus on how to manage and grow an established business which brings the total number of classes available to twenty. The goals are that participants will define what success looks like for them, discover and develop an actionable business plan for their desired entrepreneurial concept, build a cohesive brand strategy to market their business for their target audience, and create processes so that they can scale their business and keep things organized in the future.
The five lessons that focus on how to manage an existing business are really geared towards our youth that will be taking over family businesses. It is important that the youth receive the necessary education on how to make sure that their family business stays open and continues to flourish in the future. Too often, when the original family member can no longer run the business, the youth are unable to do so effectively and the business closes. Our hope is that no more family businesses will close for lack of knowledge.
Currently, our program is set to be delivered in Fall 2022 in 8 different schools. We will be working with traditional high schools in urban areas, traditional high schools in rural areas, and trade schools as well. The schools we will be working with are in Hamilton County, Cuyahoga County, Lake County, Franklin County, and Butler County. The program will be delivered online and in person based on the needs and scheduling of each school. We will be utilizing Google Classroom so that all the information will be available to the students to access at their own leisure once the seminar is completed. By offering this program to schools free of charge, we are filling an educational void and building stronger community ties with each school we work with. They say it takes a village…our entrepreneurship program, Mind the Business that Pays You, is our village contribution to the youth in our community and their futures.
