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Last Saturday, I did my first ever workshop for NFTE.  NFTE is a global organization for teaching entrepreneurship to high school students.  I first got involved with them judging business plans a month ago.  Afterward, I received an invitation to do a workshop on “creating a website for your business”.  I immediately took the opportunity and got started working on the materials.  I knew this would be a huge opportunity to talk about TeenBusinessForum.  Knowing that probably none of the students had heard of it, I decided to go all out.  I got promo cards as well as t-shirts made to pass out during my workshop.  Here are some things I learned:

Students Were Paid To Attend

This was somewhat surprising.  On one hand, I didn’t think that brews real entrepreneurs.  I mentioned that to several members of the forum and the overwhelming response was one of shock.  One response I got was “What?  They were paid for learning something that will benefit them?”  On the other hand however, it did spark interest.  Had I been paid to learn about business, I might have gotten started earlier.

TeenBusiness Who?

Yup, no one I talked to had heard of it.  I look at this as more of an opportunity.  I have a product, TBF that I want to sell.  I should be discouraged if everyone has heard of it and still didn’t want to join.  That’s not the case so I have plenty of work to do.  Of course I made a good impression, not just with my presentation but also with showing them that there are indeed teens that started their own businesses on the forum.  I got a company to give out two 1-year web hosting packages as prizes for my two workshops.  I also got a few companies listed in the back of the handouts that I think would help with the students’ businesses.

I definitely got the word out.  There were about 30-40 students.  They all went home with at least one promo card.  About 12 got t-shirts.

Keep At It

There still hasn’t been a signup but that doesn’t discourage me.  I keep referring to the saying, “Customers are sold to, not brought.”  That just means that customers need to be convinced that a product I’m selling will benefit them.  Do I truly believe TBF will benefit these students?  HELL Yes!  Tell me how a community of teen entrepreneurs from all over the world is not a great resource for students wanting to learn about business.  It just takes one big PR hit to get TeenBusinessForum on the map.  It might be the next time I do a workshop and get the word out to 40 more students or the 10th time, or 100th time.  At some point, a student will join, get connected, start a business and then tell everyone how great TeenBusinessForum is.  From there, it’ll go viral.