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High school students in their junior year in the Twin Cities gathered on the Centralia College campus this week for a crash course in business.
Lewis County-based nonprofit organization Kiddin’ Around hosted the Lewis County Business Academy this week for a second time.
The business academy gathers students in their junior year from both Centralia High School and W.F. West High School in Chehalis. Each year, the local nonprofit asks students to set aside their local rivalries for the four-day workshop.
The academy splits more than 400 students into 24 groups of 15 to 20 students — equal parts Centralia and W.F. West students. Starting Monday morning, the academy tasks each group with developing a product idea into a winning business by the end of the week. Local volunteers from the community led each of the teams, working as business advisers.
This year, a team going by the business name Atlas took the overall title with a business idea for a miracle medication that could cure all medical conditions. But it's not the idea itself that won the team the title. Instead, it's a team's performance in a range of categories that are meant to test how the team understands and delivers on different aspects of running a business.
According to Kiddin’ Around Vice President Naomi Robb, teams come up with a unique product idea on day one and start to develop a prototype before diving into the other aspects of their business model.
“That's kind of the Shark Tank side of things, which is where they've made these little product prototypes, which are kind of a unique product that's not on the market,” Robb said. “They're incredibly creative, and come up with all kinds of wonderful things.”
From there, they are asked to appoint members of the team to leadership positions, including chief executive officer, head of marketing, head of finance and others. The students are also asked from the start to set up their business, which involves developing a business model, including determining how many employees it will take to run the business, how much product should be sold for and how much money the company will need to begin operating. They must also develop marketing and advertising.
For the sake of fairness, the business academy stays on campus, and students are not allowed to do the work at home with their own equipment or bring special supplies into the program. On the last day of the program, on Thursday morning, each business makes a shareholder presentation.
Throughout the week, each team goes through six business simulations. They also face individual deadlines for developing different aspects of the businesses. Partway through the third day, on Wednesday morning, each team has to have a poster presentation ready. Later that day, each team submits a commercial filmed and produced on the Centralia College campus. Each step is meant to give students a taste of what it is like to run a business.
Two students with the team Meal Pals — Becca Jones from Centralia High School and Anabel Moeckel from W.F. West High School — said they were pleasantly surprised with their experience at this year's business academy. Their business marketed a small capsule that when microwaved becomes a full-fledged meal.
Like any common sense entrepreneur, their team developed the idea around a simple need and followed inspiration from a movie hoping to make a small bit of science fiction from the film “Spy Kids” into reality.
“We were all really hungry on the first day, and we're talking about food. And then one of our teammates was like, ‘oh, you know, in Spy Kids when they put the pill in the microwave and then it comes out as a whole meal,’” Moeckel said. “We ran with that idea … We just thought it was a really good idea.”
One business adviser at the workshop, Dave Fernstrom, said he was impressed with the way the students tackled the challenge. He added that the transformation in the students from day one to the last day was remarkable. Many students on day one show up unsure of the program and apprehensive of mixing with students they don't know from another school. By day four, mingling with students from the neighboring city and working together is a highlight.
“What is really incredible to me is, initially, the kids were very shy, didn't want to speak, very kind of closed,” Fernstrom said. “Each day you saw them blossom and open up, and today has been just awesome, because they are more direct, and ‘no, you need to do this.’ They're just more confident in what they're doing.”
This week marked the fourth year that Kiddin’ Around has operated a week-long business workshop, but it has gone through changes even in that time. When the group first began the program, it participated in Washington Business Week, which follows a specific curriculum that is used by many. However, after two years of the curriculum, the group and others decided to go their own way.
The new model is meant instead to be tailored to the needs of the local community and goes by its own title of Lewis County Business Academy. This year's business academy has come to a close, but sophomores in the two major local high schools have something to look forward to next year.
