Sue Brownfield was still smiling as the sun filled the Shelton-Badgett Center for Viticulture and Enology on the campus of Surry Community college. As the contestants were networking before the winners announced she said, “It’s been an exciting afternoon. The judges had a hard time, but they did make decisions.”
“YES Surry challenges our high school students to become entrepreneurs. We really want them to develop businesses here in Surry County. That’s what YES Surry stands for: Young Entrepreneurs of Surry, and that’s what we got a chance to see this afternoon.”
Her passion for the competition, and to see this type of knowledge imparted from one generation to the next, stems from the fact that these students are the future small businesspeople of Surry County. “We really believe that small business is the future of Surry County. So YES Surry trains our young people in how to start and how to grow your business.”
Brownfield said, “What we saw was really awesome from these businesses. They are talking about what their passion is and what drives them, they analyzed the competition, they looked at the market, and they did some very complicated financials, and I am proud of them.”
She said seven winners each presented to a panel of esteemed judges and that winners from the school level each already received $500 to use to further their business.
During the afternoon, the finalists made full business presentations to the judges, but at the evening session they truncated their pitch down to a more palatable three minutes. The “elevator pitches” are made to Mr. Moneybags, Peter Pequeno of First Community Bank, who is sharing the elevator in the scenario with the entrepreneurs.
Brownfield explained, “We had two gentlemen (Dakota McCoin and Troy Snow of Elkin High School) who had a problem. There is a problem in Elkin. They can’t buy a snow cone anyplace. They saw a problem and they developed a business idea.”
“Then we had someone (Jadee Gilley of Mount Airy High) who saw a totally different kind problem and that problem has to do with homelessness, poverty, and people who don’t have the bare necessities of clothes, food, or can’t fill out paperwork to get government assistance. So, a passion for helping other people.”
She pointed to the team from North Surry High of Sky Estrada and Cassie Noonkester who engineered Toasteze as a possible solution to grabbing stuck or burnt toast from the toaster without using your fingers.
Teaghan Gillispie of Surry Early College High School showed her keen eye for capturing nature photography while Lydia Childers of Millennium Charter Academy presented cakes that looked like photos.
Brownfield said she could smell the hot dogs on the grill when showing off one of Childers’ designs only to inform them it was a cake made to look like a grill full of burgers and dogs.
Grace Leftwich of East Surry High was crowned the winner of YES Surry 2023 and awarded $2,000 to grow Window Washing by Grace. Emma Ford of Surry Central High School took second place for her marketing firm Matter Marketing, and Childers’ cookie and cake designs took home third place.
Vice President of YES Surry Will Pfitzner was the keynote speaker, with Brownfield calling him “a role model for these young entrepreneurs.”
He said YES Surry is in the process of modernizing the competition and the ways that students can connect to one another while also learning more about business. “We are trying to merge the gap between education and business. The way that we believe this is done is through experience.”
“We believe it is through experience that these young individuals in our community go out and discover their passion, discover what they are not interested in, what they good at, or fail at, and ultimately either create businesses or find careers to pursue.”
“We got funding through grants from the state and county and with that grant money we have been building exciting tools that our youth will use in order to scale this impact they are generating,”
They have automated the YES Surry process and an online portal for students to create their profile and participate. This eliminates what he said was a word-of-mouth style of advertising the contest. Once on the platform students can build resumes with their interest and the platform will allow them to connect with one another and the community, like the YES Surry advisors.
Pfitzner said, “Our community members are on this platform communicating, in a sense its similar to LinkedIn, Facebook, or Indeed but we are creating it ourselves here in Surry County and YES Surry is leading the way.”
“YesMarketPlace.com is going to hold everything YES, everything for you entrepreneurs need to be successful and grow the businesses we heard today,” he said. Brownfield said that the first YES Surry winner, Devin Haynes, was helping Pfitzner with some of the debugging of the website, thereby keeping the learning going even for a past winner.
Also, Pfitzner said they are creating YES Learn that will create curriculum on writing a business plan, a financial statement, and other skills the contestants needed. He said the students may have asked for help or watched YouTube videos on how to write a business plan and such. The new website wants to be the source for such information, making it a homegrown warehouse of knowledge for the future business leaders of the county.
The variation of business ideas presented Thursday when compared to itself, and against the previous competition year, makes it evident that there is not a lack of creativity in the young people of Surry County nor a desire to turn ideas into dollars.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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