November 1, 2013 at 2:57 p.m.
High school students get crash course in business
High school students get crash course in business
The Wisconsin Business World program designed the workshop as an abbreviated offering of their annual summer program which takes place over several days.
This program, known as Mini Business World, challenges students to think outside the box when it comes to business.
Rhinelander High School teacher Pat Kubeny said the workshop is an extremely useful tool to continue his business students' education.
"The objective is to give them an outside-of- the-classroom experience to apply what they're learning inside the classroom," he said. "I saw today that for many kids, they saw that application in a real world sense of our textbook curriculum that we're doing in school. We try to do that in the classroom, but it really takes a lot of time to simulate that. It's only a one- day workshop, but they offer the four-day workship in the summer. Last year, none of our students ended up going, but this year I think a good amount might go for the summer course."
Senior Lukas Kreger said he was looking forward to learning more about business, something he's very interested in.
"We had to make a company, create a new product, find a way to market it, read financial reports and manipulate them to show that we had a good company," Kreger said.
The students were split into groups and each had to come up with their own plans. At the end of the day, each group presented its own unique businesses. When the presentations ended, the students voted on which one was the best.
Kreger said his group was up to the task.
"I wanted to win," he said. "I was hoping to put something competitive together and we came up with Sunbelt Active Supports. We took our good financial records that showed really good growth and used good marketing language to promote ourselves. A lot of people thought we were actually doing a commercial when we presented. We just held a shareholders meeting and gave them all the information."
Senior Phoenix Bise was in a different group competing against Kreger. He said he was excited for the challenge.
"We knew that we'd have to market a product, but we didn't know it would be specified to life betterment products, so that made it a little more challenging," he said. "Our business was called Vita and we wanted to narrow down our product to what we thought people need and what people like. We decided we wanted to do something medical and something that helps people's health. We thought one of the easiest ways to do that would be to create a consumable product. After we got on that track, it just came down to the details."
Bise and his group put their heads together and decided to offer a healthier alternative to an already wildly popular product.
"We noticed that a lot of people are really on that energy drink and caffeine craze," he said. "Our product does the exact same thing caffeine does, but without the negative aspects by using a chemical found in your brain."
While the competition factor made the challenge more fun for the students, they realized the most important part of the day was the knowledge and experience they gained. Junior Dan Mohr was a part of Bise's team and said he was keeping the big picture in mind throughout the exercise.
"Stuff like this will help us in the future," he said. "It will help with our education and maybe help us get good jobs down the road. It's teaching us to be innovators."
Kreger agreed and said he was using the workshop to help sharpen some of his skills already in place.
"It gave me an opportunity to practice my marketing strategies and learn how to kind of wing it when you have to," he said. "I like numbers and sales. I'm good at it, so this was very useful to me."
Students have the opportunity to follow up on the Business World program and attend a longer workshop in June at either Edgewood College in Madison or St. Norbert College in De Pere.
Andy Hildebrand may be reached at [email protected].
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