By the time Michelle Youngblood’s students leave her entrepreneurship and small business management class at Chatsworth High School, they’ve gone from having only the basic notions of small business realities to being able to conceive, build and run a company. Youngblood’s class is one of 13 Project ECHO programs in eight high school campuses in Southern California. The non-profit organization, ECHO stands for (Entrepreneurial Concepts Hands-On), was started by Chip and Vicky Goodman with Dr. Lorraine Monroe in Harlem, N.Y., and eventually moved to Santa Monica. Over the last year, more than 500 students participated in the program. Project ECHO works with local teachers to develop business opportunities that can be developed and run by students on campus. Last year, Youngblood’s class launched a business selling bracelets. Students this year are partnering with a Simi Valley company and selling dog tags with the Chatsworth High School logo to their fellow students. Youngblood’s two separate Project ECHO classes competed against each other, developing full business plans, which included operations and marketing strategies and financial strategies. The winning plan was presented to administration officials for final approval. After the business’ grand opening in the coming weeks, students can order custom dog tags and receive them in about a week. Profits generated by the business will go toward a scholarship fund and to the school to replace revenue lost when sugar food products were banned on campus. Youngblood says the class is valuable to students whether they’re planning to attend college or not. “This is an entrepreneur program, not every person is college bound, but sometimes through this program they’ll at least go to community college or junior college to pursue their dreams,” said Youngblood. She said that about 75 percent of the students that take the Project ECHO class plans to work in business, either as entrepreneurs or in some other part of the corporate world, after high school. Misconceptions Lanzrea Boullard, a senior at Chatsworth High School, said before she enrolled in Youngblood’s class, she assumed the life of a small business owner was one of relative ease. “I just thought you had to start the business and then you didn’t have to do any work,” Boullard said. “You just hire people to work for you and just check on your store.” The students say they now have a firm grasp of what is required in a business plan, as well. “(Before the class), I thought a business plan was like a dream, what your ideal business would look like,” said senior Johnathon Lange. Lang, Boullard and the rest of their classmates said they’ve learned the basics of putting together a profitable financial plan, marketing a product and dealing with distributors and customers. Senior Scott Eberstein worked on financial analysis for the business. “We had to find out how much it would cost to buy in bulk, the difference between 500 and up to 5,000, to see the price difference and how much profit we’d be making,” said Eberstein. “We had to find out how much each rhinestone would cost . . . if someone wants something different we know roughly how much it would cost.” Keeping it going Youngblood is working with the school’s administration to find a student group to take over the business when the current semester ends, but if all else fails her current students say they’ll be happy to work as extra-curricular employees. Youngblood said she sees no reason the school couldn’t be populated by half a dozen or more student businesses at some point. Senior Quincy Thomas, who was voted CEO of the business by his class, said he hopes hat he hopes to look back in a few months and see a thriving business. “I would want (to see) that the business is really successful and it looks like it’s going to stay at Chatsworth for at least 10 years,” Thomas said. Alan Lewis, who founded his own Internet company during the dot com boom and helped to launch Project ECHO at Canyon High School in Santa Clarita, spoke with Youngblood’s class about the pitfalls of small business ownership. His lessons helped Youngblood’s students avoid some typical mistakes. “In life you have to learn what to do and what not to do by failing,” said Thomas. “But we’re getting a variety of mentors, like Alan Lewis, coming in and telling us their success stories and their failures.”
