A word from a YE Teacher

Being a transition teacher was one of the most frightening things I have ever had to do. Transition teaching means I was in the business world with no teaching degree and I decided to try out teaching while I took classes to get my teacher certification. When I interviewed for my job they said that I would be taking over the YEK class because they thought I would be a good fit, so I said no problem. As I got closer to the start date I realized that I had almost no idea of what I was doing and no idea what teaching YEK required at the time. 

Teaching YEK over the last 4 years has forced me to be more organized and ready for each day. I have to have the energy every day to keep up with the students because they don’t take a day off. It is a fantastic class because I can teach the kids things that happen around them every day and affect them. Things that they think are insignificant because they are happening around the world affect the places they shop and the things they do. It is fun because the class evolves every year as the business world grows and changes the class grows with it. Having the experiences of leaving the classroom and seeing how entrepreneurs in the real world operate is fantastic and also having business professionals in the area come in and speak really makes an impact on the kids in the class room. This class teaches everything that it takes to make it outside the walls of high school, the lessons that I get to teach is the knowledge that these students will remember 10 years from now. I feel privileged to teach such fun and interesting class.

-Jim Vanek

The Evolution of Modernity

As an American born in the early eighties I am lucky enough to have been born into a culture that clings onto freedom.  This freedom manifests itself in speech, media, sports, and also the business world.  Most of the largest and most successful businesses in this day and age are businesses that were just getting started during my formative years, so in a way it is almost as if I grew up with them.  While I was watching “Saved by the Bell” and wishing I could order pizza in class from my brick cell phone like Zach Morris, or one day see laser guns like they used in “G.I. Joe”, businesses that would shape the culture of my adulthood were being born. 

I am reading “The Culture Code” written by Clotaire Rapaille.  In this book he speaks a lot about what people want, versus what they say they want.  He refers to a particular instance to prove his point.  Around the time that Chrysler was deciding if the world was ready for the new Jeep, Clotaire was brought in to assess the public’s interest, and how to move forward with production and reformation of the Jeep that everyone associates with the military.  He mentions people talking about gas mileage and safety as important, which are two things NO ONE thinks of when envisioning a Jeep.  When he changed the way he started to ask the focus groups to think of their first memories of Jeep, and what they think of when they do envision a Jeep the responses were very different.  He started to see just how this vehicle defined an era of freedom, hope and change.  The Jeep is now one the best selling American cars ever made.   

This is what fascinates me about people.  People very rarely say what they really, really want, and often they are perhaps unaware of what that is.  Instead, when asked what do you like, or what do you want, they respond with what the culture tells them to want or like.  People haven’t changed, but the business world has had to adapt for that very reason.  Don’t get me wrong, I am just as guilty of letting businesses dictate the culture as anyone else.  I like many other people my age have fallen into the “Apple Hole”.  I have 3 Ipods, a Macbook, and Ipad and I am a self proclaimed Mac fanatic.  When asked why, my answers are essentially the ones that those clever “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” commercials told me.  I have become the customer that these businesses drool over, and chances are no matter how much you resist you will become one too.  Apple does a fantastic job of making slight improvements (just enough to make it new) and continuing to dictate and change what we think we need or want.         

The business world has become so dependent on this type of environment that now they often spend much more on advertising and marketing than they do on product research.  All too often the rapid evolution of the “now” is causing small businesses to succeed based on the modernity of a certain product or service, but then once that product evolves into something different, either the business doesn’t realize it at all, or they realize it too late.   

How can the small business world keep up with the culture dictating giants like Google or Apple?  What makes a business able to survive in a business world where the “now” becomes the “yesterday” so fast?  

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

-Henry Ford

-Grant Mankin

A Word from a teacher

Wow! Y.E.K. experiences bring so many things to mind.    First, Y.E.K. has provided some of the most relevant, valuable training I have experienced in my 23 years of teaching.  Training both in a variety of forms such as Koch Industries training sessions, summer teacher training, access to community events, a variety of teacher sharing platforms (which we are in the process of expanding and improving), and collaboration between educators, Y.E.K. staff, universities, community and business leaders.  All of these things make the Y.E.K. teacher experience more valuable!  Another huge part of the Y.E.K. experience that impacts my experience as a teacher, is the financial support our classrooms receive.  If there are curriculum, activities, or anything out there that can help us impact kids, Y.E.K. makes sure we are adequately funded in order to bring these things into the classroom.  In addition, this enables us to “practice what we preach”, that incentives work.  Through this financial support teachers are able to find ways to incentivize students, thus impacting the classroom.  Although the areas I mentioned above are HUGE, they are not the most memorable part of the Y.E.K. teacher experience for me.  

The most memorable experience is being able to work with students in the area of entrepreneurship or dream building.  The empowerment many students feel as they begin to look at themselves as creating value not just taking a paycheck is rewarding.  Although we as teachers are sometimes frustrated that this empowerment doesn’t happen easily or overnight for all students, that is at the same time what is so rewarding.  We only get to have these students in our program for 9 months, if it was that easy to change lives and get students to be entrepreneurial thinkers overnight, the experience would not present such a rewarding challenge.  

In my 20+ years of involvement in the Y.E.K. program, seeing students at North High School (and other schools) continue to grow after experiencing the program, as they “battle” as “owners” to create value for themselves, for their families, educationally, and professionally.  As Y.E.K. teachers, staff, funders, and supporters, the experience is not only rewarding, but vital to our community's future.  Although students may enter the entrepreneurial thinking path at the beginning, middle, end, somewhere in-between, or for many not even on the path, the Y.E.K. experience gets them on the path, and moves them forward at an accelerated rate.  AND THAT IS A CHALLENGING, FRUSTRATING, and (Oh, YES!) REWARDING EXPERIENCE!  Why I love Y.E.K. so much!  

-Matt Silverthorne

John Alefs

Andover High School Market Day

Check out Andover High School doing work at their Market Day! Great job guys.

Mike Farag

Dave Mace

Kyle Gerstner

Todd Ramsey

Brand Strategist Todd Ramsey drops by the YE offices and was kind enough to answer some questions for us.  Thanks Todd.

Winfield YEK Market Day 2010

YEK Market Day 2010


The Winfield Vikings market day it up!  Thanks to Jayna Bertholf for making this video of your kids doing their things, and great job Vikings!

Thanks Kecia!

Kecia Kessler, President & CEO of Account Recovery Specialists, Inc.

HAPPY GLOBAL E-WEEK!

I know I am a day late, and for that I am deeply sorry.  With my somewhat sincere apology out of the way, please enjoy the video postings this week from some of our great Alum and Entrepreneurial volunteers.  Beth Tully from Cocoa Dolce started us off yesterday.  Prepare yourself for a whirlwind of Principled Entrepreneurship and great advice on how to turn your business idea into a business reality.

-Grant Mankin

Beth Tully owner of Cocoa Dulce Artisan Chocolates here in Wichita tells us a little about starting, owning a operating a small business.  Thanks Beth!

Educating the Educated

After completing 6 of the 8 courses for the 2010 Leadership Wichita class, I have to admit, The Greater Wichita Chamber of Commerce and the Leadership Wichita trustees do an exceptional job at accomplishing their goals to inform, inspire and involve participants. I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity this fall to spend time hearing different perspectives in leadership, government, the media, economic development, education and various aspects of our community. Each session I leave inspired to do my part to ensure a thriving future for my community.  That also translates immediately into my role with Youth Entrepreneurs, helping thousands of young people achieve great success in their lives and communities.  

But what does “my part” mean?  I like the quote by Peter F. Drucker, writer and management consultant, who describes leadership like this, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”  It’s easy to agree with the statement that we are better equipped to do the right things if we’re first knowledgeable of the root issues and some potential solutions.  What is more difficult is to determine the right solution, and sometimes even what the root issue really is.

I have found it interesting that the speakers from which I’ve learned the most can also be quite controversial in their respective fields.  Should government spend any money toward economic development efforts, and if so, should we focus on spending millions of dollars toward incentives to lure big companies to the area or pour more efforts into the local small businesses who are trying to become medium-sized businesses?  

Is education on the right path? Steve Wyckoff certainly had some great evidence about why we need radical education reform. I was excited that so many of his suggestions to take education to the next level fit what we’re doing in Youth Entrepreneurs classrooms including the opportunity to apply what they’re learning immediately. 
 

After hearing about the phenomenal growth opportunities in taking composite materials used to build airplanes and reconstructing them for the medical field, I wondered why I hadn’t studied biomedical engineering in college. Are we giving students enough opportunity to see what career opportunities exist a few years down the road?

In some cases, a little knowledge provides a very clear solution, but even in the situations where there is no clear solution, each of the conversations and following reflective thought is beneficial to a better ability to lead and to have informed conversations with fellow leaders.  

We want our YE students to have similar experiences, where they become observant of the market, scratch their heads and question the possible solutions, and then apply their new-found knowledge in innovative ways. Like Leadership Wichita, YE also strives to inform, inspire and involve. Inspire our future leaders with a vision of a bright future, inform them of the rules, values, and skills it will take to achieve it, and involve them in the practice and application of what we teach. We hope it will be noticeable the next time you talk with a Youth Entrepreneurs graduate.

- Phoebe Bachura

Innovative Simplicity

Last week I was invited to speak about entrepreneurship as a career choice to a career exploration class at Andover Middle school. Looking back I would say it was successful. Their teacher, Mr. Foxx, said I had them eating out of the palm of my hand. The thing that made me know I had their attention was the way they kept asking questions about entrepreneurship and what it means to be an entrepreneur. If only we had a way to bottle the curiosity of 7^th graders and sell it to the teenagers of America….but I digress. 

One question in particular stuck in my mind all through the weekend and has prompted this post. “Jonny B,” said the young girl sitting in the fourth row, “can an entrepreneur innovate but not use technology?” I was kind of stunned by such an insightful question, coming from a 12 year old.

“Ummm, yes.” I said, kind of stalling, “You know, like if you were to somehow innovate the way that people interact or make decisions. I would think it would be possible and valuable” 

Did she feel like humanity was too dependent on technology? Was she afraid that she didn’t have the capabilities to innovate and be entrepreneurial using technology? Or was she just hinting at the modern myopic view of how innovation works? Whatever it was, it certainly got the gears turning.

Youth Entrepreneurs is absolutely interested in using technology to innovate the way we accomplish our mission. As you read this post, scarce resources are heavily invested in new websites, an online business plan builder, a crowd sourced online network for teachers to share their curriculum with each other, and a video contest on Facebook built around our Market Day experience that is going very well (hat tip to Lindsay!). The point of most of this innovation is to increase productivity and get more from less. Realize, though, that all of this technology is worthless without real human beings to use it. Econ Check: I think that’s called a network externality. 

For the last two and a half years I have been working with entrepreneurship students and teachers in my role of Program Manager for YE. Thinking back on the thousands of interactions that have taken place, I realized that very seldom does it directly involve technology. Normally my approach is to engage them in conversation with the goal of helping them understand their comparative advantage. It truly is an ongoing process of experimental discovery. This “in the moment” trial and error process has evolved in so many ways with varying degrees of success.

In my humble opinion, the most successful innovation in working with entrepreneurship students has to do with helping them define their vision of success before doing anything else. That’s right, “begin with the end in mind”, as Steven Covey so eloquently put it. The twist I put on this, however, is that I don’t tell them that is what I am doing. I just ask, “So, what does success look like?” Or, my favorite, “How much money do you want to make?” The last one works really well when planning for Market Day.

In economic terms, scarcity inherently means that we can’t have everything we want. Blending this with a bit of spirituality, I posit that we are all “suffering at the margin”. Ludwig Von Mises said that it is our dissatisfaction that drives every decision as we seek to reduce our own disequilibrium. Perhaps the point that this 7^th grader was making was that technology may not be the cure, the answer, or the path to satisfaction. She was hinting at her own view of the future and looking for clues that help her believe in it.

As we embrace the productivity of innovative technology, let’s not discard humanity. In embracing change, let’s reduce scarcity without increasing complications. Entrepreneurs create value for society by using innovation to solve problems and make life better. Einstein was right, “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.” 

-Jon Bachura

Clarity

Entrepreneurship is at the forefront of the Youth Entrepreneurs' [YE] mission, but having a successful business is only a small part of the type of thinking that the YE family teaches.   

Founder Liz Koch puts it best in an interview for the Wichita Eagle in 2008, she says, "My goals and what I look at as success (by way of YE) is to change the way they (students) currently think about what is possible for them, their life, their family in the society, in the town, which they choose."

Our hope is that not only will the students be impacted by the program, but they will in turn be inspired to impact the community they live in.  In other words, the standard of success we hold ourselves to as YE employees is measured by the student’s ability to learn to hold themselves responsible, to shake off the entitlement that has been instilled in them and by their unique ability to learn the principles of entrepreneurship. 

YE is growing, but only because the market demands it.  If YE truly wants these things, and continues to carry out the necessary actions in order to accomplish them, we must continue to find the right people, places and education tools through which to teach them.  YE’s vision is becoming clearer and clearer with every new student that decides to take the class. 

When the article mentioned above was published YE had just hired our current Executive Director (Kylie Stupka), awarded close to $30,000 in scholarships, awarded nearly $18,000 in venture capital and were approaching 700 students in its program at 18 high schools in Kansas.  In the 2010-11 school year YE will reach 1,000 students as part of the curriculum of 29 high schools in the greater Wichita area, Kansas City Metro area, Dodge City, Garden City, Lawrence and Topeka.  YE will also award upwards of $75,000 in scholarships.

The growth in the last 2 years is no doubt exciting, but YE’s growth is a growth born of the demand for and belief in what we teach.  YE’s success is based on the future.  It is the students.

-Grant Mankin

A word from a YE Teacher

 This guest post brought to you by former YE teacher Loren Kelly of Haysville Kansas' Campus High School.

Teaching for the Youth Entrepreneurs program has uncontested been the highlight of my teaching career. When approached with the opportunity, I jumped in head first and took the challenge. My favorite part of the program is the ease at which it fit into the classroom. Hands-on activities, field trips, and real-life lessons in business get students excited and yearning for more! When students walk in the classroom saying, “This is my favorite class!” or “Why can’t we have YE every day?” you know it is a program that is really making a difference.

One of my favorite aspects of the class was seeing the change in students. It kept me coming back day after day with more excitement and enthusiasm for my job. One student, for example, was very capable but just had not found something in high school that really helped them excel. Over the course of the year, I watched this individual become more passionate, out spoken, and motivated. Other faculty at the school asked questions and took interest in the change they also had noticed. That student will now leave high school with a self-confidence and new-found passion to be successful in the paths he or she chooses to pursue. I believe in the mission of Youth Entrepreneurs because I have seen the results and the impact the program has on students’ lives.

-Loren Stark Kelly

Famous Failures

Failure IS an option

Every success story, every from rags to riches story seems to start in the same place, failure.  They all seem to begin with the “hero”, whoever that might be, starting from nothing and gaining everything.  One might even argue that the true impact of the story comes from the dirt floor, living in their car, dire straits beginning.  After all, how impactful or meaningful would these stories be if the success came from a slightly less successful career? 

When I was younger my mother always told me that life wasn’t about the hard falls I would frequently encounter, but it was how quickly I got up.  Granted, this analogy was used mostly because I was a fairly uncoordinated child who grew into a slightly more coordinated adult, and falling was usually the reality she had to work with.  Even so, this provided me with the perfect framework for how to view failure.

To be truly successful in life and business, failure is a major contributor to ultimate success.  What successful man or women comes to mind whose success was not framed by failure?  In our culture failure has been painted as anti-success. Without failure how can we expect to learn, or evolve in any way?  We shouldn’t view failure as the end but instead see it as a pathway to something new and exciting. 

The idea of failure is a simple one.  It is defined loosely as “un-success”.  There are times where our failures will warp our views of what success might have been.  In other words, if what I think should have happened (what we see as success) does not in fact happen, that is failure.  Instead why not see “what we think should happen” as the ideal outcome, and not the only outcome?  Preparing our vision of success for the possibility of failure is the very thing that could push us to great things.  Thomas Edison once said, “I didn’t fail the test, I just found 10,000 ways to do it wrong.”  In other words we should not expect failure, but be prepared for the idea of things not quite turning out as we think they should. 

In business and in life failure is not the opposite of success as defined above, but instead it is merely having limited vision for the future.  If we let failure be defined as society defines it, then we will be scared of it, therefore never failing “successfully”.  Life equals Risk.  Failure is not only an option, but sometimes in order to truly succeed, it is the only option.  After all, according to Henry Ford, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”

-Grant Mankin