YEA!

YEA! Stands for Young Entrepreneurs Academy and it's an incredible program that I teach at the University of Rochester every Tuesday from 4pm - 7pm. It's quite the commitment considering that I run a business and have a young family.

But it's all worth it!

The students are not college students. It is a special program for middle and high school students partly funded by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation. Some of these kids are 12!

The program is intense. From the get-go, we hit the ground running with massive amounts of business planning education infused into their young brains.

Then we brainstorm business ideas and the students choose a business and actually start it. Yes, they get their DBA's, create in-depth business plans, a designer makes them real logos and....... and this is big ... they actually get funding from investors.

That's what we did last night. We got 12 investors to buck up some money. We had a very official event hosted by David Koretz, CEO and Founder of BlueTie (www.BlueTie.com)

Then, in front of the investors and about 200+ family, friends and people from the community, the students pitched their business ideas. Imagine being 12 years old on stage pitching a business idea. Scary!

Well, my students did great! I am a proud papa today. They all got funded. Some got more than they asked for, some less. But the exercise of creating a business from scratch and pitching it live to real investors is an experience that will certainly shape these future business tycoons for the rest of their lives.

So here’s a big YEA! to my students... congrats!

And a big thank you to Gayle Jagel, the YEA! program founder for bringing the academy to Rochester and helping me tremendously every step of the way with this course. Remember, I am an entrepreneur, not a trained teacher. She has expanded the program to SUNY Geneseo and I am going to help her spread this program around the world! If you want to help in someway, contact me or go to http://www.rochester.edu/college/osp/yea.html

I also have to thank Heather Ziarnowski, the program director. She does a ton of the behind the scenes work and the program could not happen without her. She is in the class every Tuesday keeping me on track! Thanks Heather! That's a tough job....

Now ask yourself... "Have you helped a young entrepreneur today?"