Tapping Entrepreneurial Talent in Teenagers with E CITY

Where will you find the next generation of local entrepreneurs? You might say Weatherhead, B-W’s Center for Innovation and Growth or Lorain County Community College’s Entrepreneurship Innovation Center. But don’t forget to add E CITY to the list. Sure, the participants in this program usually aren’t old enough to vote or drive, but they’re already on their way to becoming business-savvy professionals who know how to start—and maintain—a profitable company.

E CITY (Entrepreneurship: Connecting, Inspiring and Teaching Youth) teaches entrepreneurial and life skills to motivated high school students, the majority of whom are from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Successful local businessman John Zitzner founded E CITY in 2002 and based its curriculum and goals on the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE, pronounced “nifty”), an international organization that provides entrepreneurship programs to children in low-income communities.

To date, nearly 1,000 students have completed an E CITY program, which requires much more than a pie-in-the-sky dream of owning a cool business. Once students are selected for a program, they have to commit to 70 hours of after-school lectures, field trips and class projects. All the while, the students are learning to visualize and put into place their own business plan. And all right here in Northeast Ohio.

“We’re teaching them the financials of a business—sales projections, return on investment,” says Michael Wolff, director of development for E CITY. “We even have them create a philanthropy plan to discover the benefits of giving back to their neighborhoods.”

The structured curriculum isn’t for everyone. “A few students may drop out along the way,” Wolff says. Most of those who start the program do finish, however. “Our graduation rate is consistently in the 85 to 90 range,” he adds.

Who the kids are when they first start the program and who they are when they’re finished is often quite different. E CITY primarily serves students from lower-income families. Entrepreneurship may have seemed like an opportunity available only to more privileged kids. But E CITY retrains their thinking so they see that business ownership can happen for anyone who is given the appropriate tools.

“Most kids are hooked when they hear they can be their own boss and make money,” Wolff says. “By the end, they’re in business attire, standing in front of the class and delivering their business plan from a PowerPoint presentation.”

Oh, and there’s money involved. Students who devise business plans have the chance to be awarded cash that they can put into their businesses. The best of the best go on to the E CITY-Wide Business Plan Competition, which this year will be held on July 31 at Trinity Commons. Fifteen of the top winners from last fall and spring’s programs compete for up to $1,000.

Students participating in the E CITY-Wide Business Plan Competition will share their business plans with volunteer judges, who will be paying special attention to some key factors. “They look to see if students know what they’re talking about in regard to their financials,” Wolff says. “The judges are members of the business community, and they challenge the students on how realistic their ideas are. Creativity plus realism is what they’re looking for.”

Judges aren’t as interested in a business where something would have to be invented or that would require a large group of people to operate. In fact, students often choose typical businesses, such as landscaping and grocery delivery services, and find novel ways to make them succeed. Others make the most of their creative talents, devising plans to sell handmade tissue holders, coin purses, pillow cases and cards.

In addition to the E CITY summer competition, students have the opportunity for further recognition of their business plans. E CITY encourages its students to take part in an international competition put on by NFTE. This requires even more dedication. A volunteer works with a student to expand the existing business plan.

“It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of time,” Wolff says. But obviously some E City students decide to put in that extra effort. “There has been a Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner [in the NFTE competition] from Cleveland for the last five years,” Wolff says.

What’s the reason E CITY kids are making an international name for themselves in the world of entrepreneurship? Wolff credits in part the E CITY staff and volunteers. “We follow these kids and we identify those who are dedicated and work with them,” he says. Maintaining close contact with participating schools is also crucial to the program’s success. “We have to build strong relationship with principals and the teachers who will teach the program within the school,” Wolff says.

Students benefit from one-on-one partnerships with volunteers from the beginning of the E CITY program. “We have over 100 student businesses per semester, and each one needs a business coach,” Wolff explains. Volunteers also serve as guest speakers and field trip hosts. They range from CEOs of corporations to self-employed professionals.

If students want to see a concrete example of someone who took an idea and built it into a successful business, they need look no further than Zitzner. As the founder and former president and CEO of Bradley Company, a Cleveland-based software firm, Zitzner started in 1983 with a staff of two people. By the time Bradley was sold to Xerox in 1998, the company had grown to more than 40 employees. Along the way, it was named a Weatherhead 100 company and earned a spot in the Inc. 500. Zitzner and his wife actively work with E CITY participants.

You can think of the E CITY program as helping students to create a life plan as well as a business plan. Determination and responsibility are themes that are continually reinforced. “We teach them about business and why the boss is concerned that his employees are working hard…and why it doesn’t make sense to buy $150 Nikes with the money you earn,” Wolff says. These are lessons all of us could stand to learn—or relearn.

And kids seem to be getting the message. Blaine Mickens, a graduate of the E CITY program through Cleveland’s Whitney Young School, co-owns a lawn care service, Lawn Groomers. (The company’s motto is, “We make your lawn look as good as you do.”) Mickens puts his earnings back into the company to save up for advanced lawn equipment, including a weed whacker.

Mark Harris started his athlete-training business while he was an E CITY student in 2004. Today, Raw Talent is incorporated and offers physical training and nutritional counseling to athletes ranging from about 11 to 23 years old. “I learned that an idea can come to life only if you commit to doing it right,” he says.

Harris’ goal is to one day provide training services to the Cavs and Browns. To reach that goal, he knows he has to keep learning and challenging himself. “It’s okay to be ignorant but not to be dumb,” he says.

If you think these kids’ accomplishments aren’t being noticed outside the program, consider the thick list of corporate friends involved in E CITY: Baker Hostetler, Chase Bank, The Cleveland Foundation, Developers Diversified Realty Corporation, Ernst & Young, Forest City Enterprises, Key Foundation, MBNA, NorTech, Rockwell Automation, Swagelok, thunder::tech, University Circle, Inc. and Wal-Mart, to name just a few. Such entities not only provide financial support, they also become intimately involved with students and their business plans.

Wolff says that about three-to-four percent of students who start a business with the help of E CITY keep them going for six months or more. That percentage seems low until you realize that’s 30-40 kids between the ages of 15 and 18 who, over the last six years, have created businesses and stuck with them. Plenty of others will take what they’ve learned and apply it to a career following more schooling.

When you look at the big picture, that’s a group of entrepreneurial-minded teenagers who will help to grow business in Northeast Ohio—and hopefully encourage their peers to do the same.

So who knows? The next bright idea to spur the region’s economy could be revealed on July 31, straight from the PowerPoint presentation of a high school student. Pay attention, Cleveland.

Visit http://www.ecitycleveland.com to learn more about this organization and their Business Plan Competition on July 31 at Trinity Commons.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Diane DiPiero ohiodianeATnetzero.net
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