Biz organizations help shape future entrepreneurs

By Janet Rorholm
Edge Business Magazine

Parker Valdez always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and he started early.

Valdez, a senior at Linn-Mar High School, started his first business with his brother, Preston, when he was 9 years old. The brothers handed out fliers in their neighborhood offering to mow lawns. They have been encouraged by their father, Perry, who owns his own business, Ultimate Touch Detail Center in Cedar Rapids.

Valdez says the experience of running his own business has been invaluable.

“I was able to learn a lot of things, like time management. I had to call on people and give them estimates. I also had to learn how to deal with people.”
Valdez plans to shut down that business when he goes off to college at the University of Iowa in the fall, but after graduating in business, he hopes to open up his next venture, an auto collision repair business, also with his brother. Both are taking auto tech classes at Kirkwood Community College.

Valdez also is working on his business skills through Linn-Mar’s Future Business Leaders of America, an organization that hones business skills for students as young as middle school.

“To provide the opportunity for students to get practical experience is valuable on many fronts. They get experience and responsibility. It also gives them a better sense of finance and how to deal with money and anything we can do to improve financial literacy is important,” said David Hensley, director of the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at The University of Iowa.

Business organizations for young people like FBLA and DECA, Business Professionals of America and business mentoring and internship programs aren’t just important for students. They also are important to the state in terms of economic development and to communities as well, Hensley said. There is always a need for more opportunities for young people to interact with entrepreneurs and business people in the state, he said.

“All of those interactions help mold and develop our students in unique ways – whether they get a job in business or create their own company,” Hensley said.
Everyone wins by participating in these opportunities, he said.

“Business owners get to see what the next generation is like and what kind of talent they bring. They can help develop that talent,” he said.

Often these students also learn just what it takes to make it in business.

“It also comes down to hard work. Students learn how hard you have to work. They get a sense of what it takes to be successful,” Hensley said.

Hensley said the University of Iowa has pushed experiential learning for youth for several decades.
“The idea isn’t that you turn 4- or 5-year-olds into entrepreneurs. You get them to think about it and how you take their interest and use it. Young people are very, very creative and we want to get them to harvest those skills… we want to motivate and empower them,” he said.

That includes experiential learning programs for high school and college students like the Okoboji Entrepreneurial Institute that Hensley helped found. The institute gathers together students from the state’s three public universities at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory on West Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa for a one-week crash course in entrepreneurship.

Students are mentored by area entrepreneurs, an experience Cody Seeley found the most valuable.

“To get the opportunity to speak with them and share contact info was probably the greatest benefit,” he said.

Seeley, 22, a senior at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, graduates in May. He and a friend and business partner, Jason Willcox, are planning their own online investment firm catering to college students.

Seeley said he’s turned to the entrepreneurs he met at the institute for advice as he works on starting his own business.

For younger students, some of that mentoring comes from the National Future Business Leaders of America program, the largest business career student organization in the world. Nationally, it has about 215,000 members at the high school level, about 15,000 at the middle school level and about 11,000 college students. The organization’s professional division has more than 3,000 members.

Iowa has about 1,031 FBLA members at 27 schools. Cedar Rapids will host the state FBLA competition April 1-4 at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel in Cedar Rapids.

Students will come together to compete in everything from Web site design, interviewing skills, public speaking and economics.

Dana Lampe, FBLA adviser at Linn-Mar High School and for the state, said students who get involved in FBLA don’t just learn business skills, they learn important leadership and communication skills.

“These kids really develop a self confidence,” she said.
Zafir Dharssi, a junior at Linn-Mar who is involved in FBLA, said he was looking forward to the state competition.

“It’s given me a lot of new experiences and I’ve met so many new people. I really like that social aspect of it,” he said.

He said his motivation for getting involved was simple. “I wanted to see if I could get into business and learn the fundamentals,” he said.

Dharssi has dreams of owning his own business some day.

©2009, Gazette Communications