Peggy Revell
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson were just some of the famous names in entrepreneurship being tossed around at Fort Frances High School last week as part of a Northwestern Ontario-wide initiative to inspire area youths to start their own businesses.
“We’re here to teach students, young people across Northwestern Ontario, about entrepreneurship,” explained Adam Armit, who has been visiting different schools across the area alongside fellow Lakehead University student Joel Popoff on behalf of ACE Lakehead, an organization within the university’s Faculty of Business.
Their presentation, called “Reach 4 the Stars,” starts off with a movie that Popoff has made highlighting the benefits of being an entrepreneur.
“And then we profile some young entrepreneurs, and show how many millions or billions of dollars that some people have made off of it,” he noted.
While they start off listing rich and famous entrepreneurs, the two first-year Honours Bachelor of Commerce students are themselves examples of youth who have started up their own businesses.
Armit, a native of Fort Frances, is the founder of Wildfire Music, which has brought bands like Faber Drive to the area. Popoff, from Schreiber, is the founder of Desiderio Clothing Corp.
“It’s pretty fun,” Armit said of being given the opportunity to travel across the region and making presentations to students. So far they’ve done presentations not just at Fort High, but also Hammarskjold in Thunder Bay as well as Nipigon and Terrace Bay, with more scheduled down the road.
“Nipigon actually enjoyed it so much that they want us to come back next semester and possibly do it for their entire school,” Armit enthused.
“We’ve learned a lot ourselves, as entrepreneurs, so it’s a really great learning experience,” echoed Popoff. “And just being able to travel and share our story of how we started our business, and that we were able to do it at a young age, in a small town like this.”
“We’re both straight out of high school, so we know what presentations are like, so we want to kind of relate it to [youth],” explained Armit, noting young entrepreneurs like themselves aren’t as common.
“So we’re going to talk to them about our businesses, how we started, what we did right, what we did wrong, what we love about it, and basically just relate it all back to us.”
Making presentations across the region really is just the first part of the project since Armit and Popoff then will be heading to southern Ontario to participate in the Sife Entrepreneurship Challenge on March 14.
“We’re basically competing against every other university in Ontario and Canada to teach young people about entrepreneurship better than they are,” Armit said.
“We haven’t done super good the other years, but we’re hoping to do a big comeback,” added Popoff.
“It’s kind of hard because there’s just two of us, Lakehead’s a pretty small organization,” Armit remarked when comparing other participating schools like Ryerson or the University of Guelph.
“But we’re actually first-year students, so it’s actually quite a big deal,” Popoff chimed in. “Usually first-year students aren’t very recognized, and it’s a big deal that two first-year students are actually travelling all across Northwestern Ontario and representing ACE.”
Another exciting part of the project is the chance to meet and network with the CEOs who will be judges for the competition, added Armit.
As well, they’re hoping students see the benefits of starting up their own business and consider it an option in their future.
“Some people think that [entrepreneurship] is for older people,” Popoff explained. “Whereas we’re trying to show people that it’s for anyone and that it’s really, really becoming well-known for younger people.
You can start entrepreneurship at any age, it doesn’t matter,” he stressed.
“Anyone who has an idea and dream is able to do it. As long as they go for it and don’t give up, anything is possible.”
