NFTE blog

Malik McCaffity is 15 years old, and a 9th grader at New Hope Academy. He participated in the Choice Program's Entrepreneurship competition, where over the course of three months he learned how to launch his business idea. Day 'N' Night Clothing Design is an urban style clothing line where Malik applies his desire is to make males and females look fit and stylish from head to toe.

Written by Sylvia Watts McKinney, Executive Director of NFTE Philadelphia

This past Tuesday, we hosted the final round of presentations in the Philadelphia Chapter of NFTE’s annual business plan competition. Five students competed, and each did a tremendous job articulating their plans for business development and growth.

Of these students, I’m proud to announce that Bianca Nieves, a senior at Esperanza Academy, was crowned the first place winner. Bianca runs a business based on her grandmother’s Hispanic spice recipe, which she branded Grandma’s Secret.

Written by Brent Freeman, Founder and CEO of Roozt.com

What I need you to do is to close your eyes and think back to when you were 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. Go ahead, think of something you did that year that you were proud of, excited about, or thought was going to affect your life forever. (Seriously, go ahead,  I’ll wait…)

Great video blog post on social media and traditional media by New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and social media guru, Gary Vaynerchuk. For more interesting videos from Gary be sure to visit his website.
 

Finding your customers is obviously an important part of maintaining a consistent revenue stream for your business. But once you’ve lassoed them in, what are you going to do in order to keep them around? Maintaining a strong and loyal relationship with your current clients is one of the most important things to focus on with your business.  You don’t want them to just buy one product from you but instead have them keep coming back for more. Here are a few ideas to keep your customers aware of all the new products or services and how to keep them always coming back.

No matter what business you’re in or what company you work for there will be a point in your career (if not multiple points) where you’ll need to do a presentation for work. Now I’m sure many of you have sat through presentations which have sent you right to sleep because the presenter is either reading off a piece of paper, or is repeating the same two bullet points over and over again. Obviously this is not what you should aim to do when you’re making preparations to do your own presentation. You want to make sure that you’re holding the attention of your audience while providing them with interesting information at the same time. To help you prepare for your next presentation at work here are a few tips on how to give a great presentation.

As you walked into the business expo at the New York Marriott Marquis last night you could sense that there was something special in the air. As kids were running around, setting up their booths to display their businesses you couldn’t help but feel excited for them. It was the start to the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Dare to Dream Awards Dinner and the beginning to a fantastic evening honoring our dedicated students and teachers.

Anyone that owns their own company should always be thinking of ways on how they can improve their business. To help you figure out what areas need the most work though you’ll need to do routine business reviews, which show you how each area is progressing.  Here are a couple areas that you should focus on to determine how well your business is doing and what needs the most attention.

Anyone that’s managing a “one-man shop” knows that every now and again you’ll reach a point where you just have too much work on your plate. And as a business owner you don’t want the quality of your work to start slipping just because you have an increase in orders to fill. So what do you do? Some people might say that you should just focus on the most important thing you need to do, but what if they’re all important? Here are a few suggestions on how to manage it all without sacrificing quality.