April 3, 2019

Young entrepreneurs

Young entrepreneurs

By Neal A. Shipman
Farmer Editor

Creating a new business isn’t as easy as a person would think. The road to developing a new business is full of pitfalls, challenges and failures before a successful product line is every launched.
That hard lesson, as well as the rewards of bringing a product to the market is what seven Watford City High School students have learned this year as part of the Youth Entrepreneurs program.
According to Aaron Cummings, W.C.H.S. instructor, Watford City is first and only North Dakota school that is offering this unique classroom experience to students.
“The goal of the Youth Entrepreneurs program is to help prepare students for success in the workplace and in life,” states Cummings. “As an elective course, they learn how to develop a business model, put together financial statements and understand how money flows.”
During the yearlong program, as students created their business product, Cummings says that the participants learned what they have to do to have a successful business, who their customers are, and how they were going to sell their product.
“Our first idea started off pretty rough,” laughed Dominic Parks, a W.C.H.S. sophomore. “Sometimes a good idea doesn’t work.”
Parks, who along with Rachel Rascon and Jorge Boneta formed one of the teams in the Youth Entrepreneurs class.
“We first tried to develop a hair gel,” says Parks. “But it turned into a mush. It was a disaster.”

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