It’s already Wednesday, and we are well into the swing of Minnesota Business Venture. Campers enjoyed their last full day of working on their business plans before presenting them to a panel of judges tomorrow to ask for a loan. The day began with our entrepreneurial shareholder’s address from Tyler Olson, a MBV alum. He gave an inspiring speech about his own experiences with founding ten businesses by the age of thirty. Tyler is currently the CEO of SMCpros and helped to motivate our campers to “stop waiting and start your dream business today.” Tyler’s story encouraged students to be bold and take the first steps in becoming an entrepreneur.
Hearing about Tyler’s accomplishments and his experiences as an entrepreneur, campers participated in an activity where they met other students, student staff, dorm monitors, and BestPrep staff through “speed networking.” After meeting many new people, campers then headed to a financial literary break-out session. Each student had the choice to learn about paying for college, credit, car insurance, or renting an apartment. Representatives from Thrivent Financial, Affinity Plus, Allstate Insurance, and the University of Minnesota helped broaden their perspectives of how to pay for these expenses wisely.
The campers then had a break for lunch and met with their companies to work on their business plans. In the afternoon, everyone attended a philanthropy and ethics presentation. The philanthropy portion focused on giving back to the community and donating money, something that students can do in their own business plans. Students were also enamored by the ethics segment, in which John Rubischko shared his encounter with fraud and consequences. Due to embezzlement, John spent time in jail and explained how negative choices can affect us for the rest of our lives, along with how we can learn from these.
Students then headed to dinner and finished up their company meetings for the day. Each company is busy preparing and rehearsing their presentation for tomorrow. The campers enjoyed their recreation time after a long day of working hard and getting ready for the final days of MBV. We can’t wait to watch everyone rock their presentations tomorrow — keep up the great work!
