Jul. 17, 2007
Camp serves future MBAs
Workshops give young entrepreneurs a taste of the business world

BY JENNIFER ANDERSON
The Portland Tribune

Ever since he was 4, Daniel Felder wanted to be a superhero.
"I spent most of my time in elementary school trying to get bitten by radioactive spiders,” he jokes. “But unless I can attain laser vision between now and the time I’m 20, it seems the best way to help people these days is to become rich. I love giving money away."

To that end, the incoming junior at Cleveland High School is in fast pursuit of becoming an entrepreneur. Besides being enrolled in Cleveland’s business magnet program, the only one of its kind in the district, he spent a week last summer engrossed in lessons at a new business boot camp called Young Entrepreneurs Business Week.

This week the camp is under way for its second year, and Felder is back for more.

Seventy-five students from public and private high schools across Oregon converged at the University of Portland campus Sunday for the seven-day camp.

The program costs just under $300 per student and can be subsidized with financial aid from sponsors. Fourteen students will represent Portland public high schools, hailing from Grant, Lincoln, Cleveland, Wilson, Madison, Benson and Leadership & Entrepreneurship Public High School (a charter school).

That’s many more than the three PPS students who attended last year, when the program made its debut with a total of 25 students.

There’s business etiquette, too

This year the aspiring business leaders will hear a lineup of guest speakers, attend virtual marketing seminars, create their own mock companies and get graded on their presentations from local business leaders.

They’ll also learn corporate etiquette tips, such as how to dine on a dish as tricky as French onion soup with the boss.

Among the speakers last year was Bob Farrell, who founded the national chain of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlours in Portland in 1963 and produced a video on leadership and customer service called "Give ’Em the Pickle."

Felder, the Cleveland student, appreciated the lessons on how to read and benefit from price charts, volume charts, options trading, real estate basics and other investment basics.

"I can now say, in all confidence and without a shadow of superiority, that I know more about finance and equitable investments than the majority of adults in the world," he says dramatically."All that for $300. Isn’t that just amazing?"

Jim Berchtold got involved in supporting the event from his own son’s experience with a different business camp in the 1980s, which ended its run in 1993. Now, no other high school business camp like this exists in Oregon, while there are 28 throughout the country.

"The ability to think on your feet and think outside of the box, and the attitude, I think, is just a tremendous thing," says Berchtold, a board member of Share the Wealth University, the Sherwood-based nonprofit organization that sponsors the program. "These are high school students, and it’s a business/personal finance topic that they don’t get a lot of in the high schools.":

Seventeen-year-old Alex Riley, who is returning to the camp this year, can attest to that. While he’s in all of the advanced classes at Lincoln High School, he says he took a half-year economics class in his sophomore year but knows of no other business or finance classes offered. Other high schools also have had to drop such electives due to budget cuts over the years.

Idea started with game

Maurissa Fisher, the executive director of Share the Wealth, said the business boot camp fills a gap not only in curriculum, but in the way most teachers teach, as well.

After graduating from Gonzaga University, Fisher, now 28, taught at public schools in the Yakima Valley but became bothered by a trend she and her colleagues experienced.

"I talk to 30-year teaching veterans who are always struggling to make things relevant," she says. "Their kids ask, ‘Why should I learn this.’ (My husband) got tired of hearing that question. He challenged me to make it relevant."

So Fisher got hold of the popular board game, Cash Flow 101, and played it with her husband, Nick Fisher, a University of Portland alumnus who founded the school’s annual business-plan competition while he was there.

In the Cash Flow game, players balance their expenses with their income and investments and try to get out of the "rat race" into the "fast track," where they’re able to splurge on their dreams, such as jet-setting around the world.

"I said that’s what I want to do," Fisher says, "bring those concepts into a program for kids."

So Fisher and her husband founded Share the Wealth University — which is not a university at all, but an umbrella organization that aims to "immerse students, parents and teachers in a forum to progressively learn entrepreneurship and financial literacy, but more important a balanced, value-centered mind-set essential to success."

Lincoln student Riley was eager to head back to business camp again this week, hoping for better luck with his mock company than last year. "We came in last," he says, " due to a calculation error. The (chief operating officer) turned in the wrong forecasting sheet. We ended up with the first-quarter report going for the third-quarter report. It just went down the drain. But we came up with a new strategy and did OK."