Northside, Southside students present business plans

About 45 Northside and Southside High School students gathered Thursday (Dec. 4) to present business plans to a panel of judges in hopes of obtaining as much as $500 in startup costs.

Now in its second year, the entrepreneurship program is a joint effort between the Fort Smith Public Schools, University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center-Fort Smith.

The funds for loans to the student businesses come from area businesses and the IEC. Craig Pair, president of Control Technologies and an IEC board member, moderated the Thursday morning event.

After the panel heard the presentations, they prepared evaluation forms that were then given to the students. The eval scores also determined the funding amount for each business idea.

In closing the event, Pair advised the students to keep good financial records.

“In the real world, if you don’t have a receipt or some kind of paper trail, you pay for things out of your own pocket,” Pair warned.

He also told the students to aggressively pursue their business plans.

“Don’t be afraid to talk to people, to look them in the eye and ask for their business. That’s how you make a sale,” he said.

Melinda Briscoe, (left) the business teacher at Northside High School, has some experience facing a panel of judges. On Nov. 7, she stood before a panel of seven judges to make her case for a $3,000 grant from the National Consortium on Entrepreneurship Education to support her programs at Northside. Only nine grants were issued nationwide, and Briscoe returned to Fort Smith with a $3,000 check.

The program has seen the number of participating students double between its first and second year, Briscoe said. Judy Smith is the program advisor at Southside High School.

“My plan, our plan with this (entrepreneurship program) is to get as much interaction between these students and local business owners. It’s important that they hear from them what it’s like to be in business,” Briscoe said Thursday. “We have to get them past the theory and give them some hands on.”

Students Sean Robison and Ryan Washington are interested in hands on. Their business idea, SqueakerZ Auto Detailing, is all about convenience and lower costs for customers.

“We will always be cheaper than the competition and we come to your house to clean your car. You’re not spending your time or your gas money to come to us. We come to you,” Washington said when asked for a short version of his sales pitch. He and Robison were asking for $200 to get SqueakerZ up and running.

The students meet again in April to update Pair and other program partners on their business progress.

The students talked about the virtues of entrepreneurship (self-employment) and presented their business plans in the Paul Latture Conference Room of the Business and Professional Institute — a room originally designed to celebrate the manufacturing (mass employment) history of the Fort Smith area.

That juxtaposition was not lost on Kermit Kuehn, director of the Family Enterprise Center at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and a professor of management and entrepreneurship at the university’s College of Business.

“This (program) is the beginning of getting these young people to think about their work lives in a more non-traditional sense; in the sense that you don’t just have to go out and work for someone and think they will always take care of you,” Kuehn said. “They need to know about that other option, that you can have your own ideas and business and be successful and take care of yourself.”

Ryan Washington and Sean Robison presented their business plan for SqueakerZ Auto Detailing.

 

 

 

 

 

Kermit Kuehn (right) and Craig Pair (center) present a business plan evaluation to one of the entrepreneurship students.
 

 

 

 

A group of the entrepreneurship students gather to pose for a class photo.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Pair encouraged students to aggressively pursue their business plans.

 

 

 

 

 

Judy Smith (center, light blue jacket), entrepreneurship program advisor at Southside High School, visits with students following their business plan presentations.