Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Delaware County, PA (Delco"") and the surrounding Philadelphia Metro Region.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Delco
Ellen Fisher Ignites Futures with the Young Entrepreneurs Academy
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Ellen Fisher Ignites Futures with the Young Entrepreneurs Academy
Discover the trailblazing world of youth entrepreneurship as Ellen Fisher, CEO of Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA) Philadelphia visits the Good Neighbor Podcast to share with host Bob Blaisse, the empowering narrative of the Young Entrepreneurs Academy. Witness how these driven middle and high school students transform from eager applicants to proud business owners. Ellen, with her deep insights into this innovative program, paints a vivid picture of the intense mentorship and the exhilarating moments when these youthful visionaries pitch their business plans, secure startup funding and step into the public eye at trade shows. It's more than an education; it's the birth of tomorrow's industry titans, and it's happening right in cities all across America.
In a heartfelt segment, we celebrate Ellen Fisher's indelible mark on the Philadelphia area through her dedication to YEA. With a compact but mighty board and a robust volunteer force of 77, the YEA Philadelphia team is a testament to the transformative power of community engagement. As we extend our invitation to Southeastern Pennsylvania's professionals to join this enriching journey, we also honor Ellen with the Good Neighbor Award for her remarkable community service. Join host Bob Blaisse in this inspiring episode, and you'll be reminded that making a difference extends beyond our front doors—it's about stitching together the fabric of a community we all can cherish by mentoring future entrepreneurs to be leaders in their community and leaders in business.
Website: yeaphiladelphia.org
Call: 610-446-4747
--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond... The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.
Young Entrepreneurs Academy Spotlight
Speaker 1Hello, delco. This is Michael Barkan, welcoming you to the Good Neighbor podcast, where fans of local businesses and their neighbors come together. It's my pleasure once again to introduce my friend and neighbor, our host Bob Blasey.
Speaker 2Hello there, and thank you, michael, for that introduction. Bob Blasey here from the Good Neighbor podcast, coming to you again from Delaware County, pennsylvania. In the southeastern part of Pennsylvania we lovingly refer it to it as Delco, and it's starting to get some real national popularity. We love bringing on businesses from Delaware County and beyond to be able to talk to you about their business, because we've already deemed them as Good neighbors, and by good neighbors we don't mean persons that live next door to us as much as businesses that are among us that we can be proud of and we can trust. So the Good Neighbor podcast. Today, in this episode, I'm happy to introduce to you a CEO, but not of a business, a CEO of a nonprofit organization that has a tremendous Mission and we'd like to share it with you. So let me introduce Ellen Fisher to the stage. Hello, ellen.
Speaker 3Hi, thanks for having me, bob.
Speaker 2Thank you for coming and we'd like to be able to spend this time, ellen, to talk about your Foundation. I guess it is called the Young Entrepreneurs Academy and it's gonna be very interesting to hear what this is. I suspected what it was because I had some history in my own youth of being a young entrepreneur. Let me take a guess, if you don't mind, for the listeners that are listening here we go, we'll see how close they can come. Think what young entrepreneur Academy could be. Is it something like I used to participate in when I was in high school, called junior achievement? Does it give youth the opportunity to create a, a pseudo business, from the ground up and maybe even make it real, really try to sell things, but all along the way, to be guided by mentors and to be able to learn the principles of creating a business?
Speaker 3So it is a little similar to junior achievement, but the difference is that the goal of our program is to actually create a real business in the course of a year, so that they are not dissolving a business at the end of the class. They actually have a business or a nonprofit.
Speaker 2Wow, and they, if they're successful, they're able to earn money from it. And then gosh, I listen out to the father of four sons. Two are still in college. My light bulb went off a couple of different ways right away. Alan, I could imagine, first of all, social activity for youth that doesn't have them staring at their phone the whole time, like actually just social gathering girls and guys in high school, and so that's got to be fun. I could also imagine that they wouldn't come into the program without some natural instinct towards wanting to create a business, being being an entrepreneur, so that's wonderful. I want to ask a couple of questions just at this level. First, they are meeting in person or they meeting online girls and guys, and what ages? And tell me when they do get in person, where do they meet?
Speaker 3So the program is for middle school and high school students. They actually apply to the program. So they write essays, they get letters of recommendations, they send in the transcript and the student selection committee. They have interviews and a student selection committee select students that we think are the best match for the program. They come in person right now it is at Cabrini University we're in our 10th year of operation and they come every week from five until eight on Cabrini, from November to the end of May. Some of the children come with business ideas. Some of them actually have businesses already, believe it or not, and some of them come and then they change their idea and some don't have any idea. So we help them create an idea that is not just an idea, a good idea, it's a business opportunity. So we help them evaluate the difference between an idea and an opportunity to make money.
Speaker 3And then we bring in mentors to work with the students, their business owners, that work with them to create a real business plan and at the end of that they have a pitch to a panel of investors, panel judges that actually give them startup funds.
Speaker 2Ellen, that is just so wonderful in light of the fact that when I mean when I was a youth and we would do something like this, or through to J8, but in this case, this group of teams they've literally grown up watching Shark Tank, so just that concept of it you got to give a pitch.
Speaker 2You don't have to explain what that means. In fact, they're so advanced from having watched the show like that and they don't even understand what a good pitch and a bad pitch is meaning too long or not enough information or how you're going to really generate revenue. So it's that's extraordinarily exciting to think that children and really young adults are given this opportunity. Ellen, can I ask another couple of questions on this? When they are, after they're chosen for the program and they and they go through the year, I guess, of developing their business and then and then they they are are they giving the pitch at the end For the success of the business going forward? And is that how they're chosen to, kind of who is the best or who gets funded, or anything like that?
Speaker 3So so what happens is that the pitch actually happens two thirds of the program through way through the program and after they receive money, some startup funds, they actually launch their business at a trade show. So they actually are selling their product or service at a trade show. One of our students actually goes on to this is part of a national program, so one of our students goes on to the regional and national competition as well.
Speaker 2Wonderful and is then is Young Entrepreneurs Academy the same name nationally or is it locally here in Pennsylvania? So you are.
Speaker 3It was founded at the. University of Rochester how wonderful. So there's programs all over the country.
Speaker 2So in a sense, are they, are you, are a non, it's a nonprofit organization. Yes, are you. Are you the say the end Pennsylvania or Philadelphia area organization, almost almost like an extension of that academy, but also separate as a separate nonprofit?
Speaker 3Yes, we, we were actually the first program young Entrepreneurs Academy in the state of Pennsylvania and and now there's two other ones, one in state college and one near Pittsburgh how many nationally?
Speaker 2and.
Speaker 3There are About 45 of us nationally.
Speaker 2Wow. I mean we have listeners from all over the country. We might say and start our program as saying that we're originating from southeastern Pennsylvania, delco, the center of the universe. We like to think sometimes, but but the fact that we do have listeners all over the country and the fact that they may be hearing about the young entrepreneurs academy, certainly I guess people from other parts of the country could contact you for some advice on how to be referred To the national context and to learn a little bit more about this. It's so exciting because it has mission. And it not only has mission but it has legs, meaning that the, the, the products themselves could develop into worthy products and worthy companies. The companies can end up hiring other people. These, these young entrepreneurs, not only learn, but then they learn how to guide. I'm sure after 10 years you have some graduates coming back and maybe even being mentors themselves.
Speaker 3It's interesting. Actually, a student from our first class Just wrote me and said that she's graduate. She was a sixth grader when she did the program and she wrote me and she said she was just finishing college and she is going to be an investment banker On wall street. She does intend to start another business, um, after she saves a little money from investment banking, but she wanted to give back to our current students and talk to them about how to have a business, have a world in finance.
Speaker 2Oh, that's wonderful Again, very inspiring. I'm sure sometimes you might even have a student that it goes through families like my older brother did it, so I'm going to do it. It reminds me of certain other things. I had boys who went to boy state. You know what's the american legion hosts and you know the the competition say for uh, uh scouts. You know that they can be in different, larger things than just the local troop. But in this case it's really got my heart because it's business and um, I just think that uh, entrepreneurial thinking um Is really important for the good of our country, but it's also good for one's own integrity of their self-worth. But also it's got mission and giving back to the community. If you can, they say what's that saying, ellen, if you can make your hobby Be your job, you'll never have a bad day at work ever. And um, just to be able to know that these young Students, teenagers, are being inspired. I don't think we see it enough in in our teenagers today, enough that they really are willing to get excited About something that could mean the future for them. They're not afraid to hook on into it.
Speaker 2Let me ask a question about your funding, because you did mention that, um, they're given a grant to maybe fund their business. So help me understand how your foundation works. Locally, I would imagine as a nonprofit, you're collecting, uh, donations, but, um, how can that be done? Give us the url, promote it Giving. If this is something that a listener is hearing about, how can they help and, um, tell us how the funding goes On a larger scale, to how to, how they win awards and what kind of monetary award they are gaining for starting their business?
Speaker 3So, um, generally for the investor panel, they are getting about three months of operating costs, so that what the idea is that we're teaching them, we're giving them some startup costs for printing business cards, a couple months of websites and some actual product production, and then the idea is, of course, that they're selling those things and they reinvest that into the business. So that's sort of the funding mechanism and we are raising money through donations. So anybody that has some extra coins in their pocket, we would definitely love, and would love to support the idea of financial literacy for young people as well as entrepreneurship. It is a wonderful learning tool. They learn a lot about critical thinking.
Speaker 3I can also tell you that one of the things that's interesting another student came back to me and said you know, he got into Stanford. We had two of our students that got into Stanford and he said you know, he took a gap year and he helped write a software program for his parents' hotel business and they now have 28 employees and he's a sophomore at Stanford. Oh, my word, so he's still at college. And he said he looked at me and he goes. The reason why I wanted to get together with you is I wanted you to know that you changed life and you know for a 20-year-old telling you that there's a lot more life, hopefully, but that's going to go on after that, I go to school with really smart people.
Speaker 3They come to us with unbelievable challenges. People come from all over the world to ask us to solve their problems, and the difference between me and the people that sit next to me is you taught me that I actually have to do something. I don't. I don't just have to think of solutions, I actually have to test them out.
Speaker 2That is so inspiring. So your market in Philadelphia. You're really calling yourselves. You know Y-E-A for short, young and Entrepreneurs Academy, but Y-E-A Philadelphia, and I'm sure all the other cities have their tag name from their city they're in In your case. Is it Philadelphia proper? Is it the counties that surround Philadelphia? That who? How could you come from anywhere in Pennsylvania?
Speaker 2Actually, last year we had four students travel from New Jersey, so you want to accept people in New Jersey that's what I wanted to hear and in the tri-state area in southeastern Pennsylvania. We also can consider the state of Delaware as our neighbors. So these students are not bound by geography lines, but they are. They do need to apply and there's an application on your website.
Speaker 3And our website for application, as well as donations, is wwwy-e-a-philadelphia-spelled-outorg.
Speaker 2Wonderful. I would really ask every listener that is hearing this today if you have children, wish you had children, wish children were more involved, more active and certainly more understanding what it is to start business. If you've ever dreamed of being on Shark Tank yourself and you want to pay it forward to another youth to kind of be on the mini Shark Tank here, that's possible through the Young Entrepreneurs Academy. Definitely. Please go to that website, read some more and maybe make a donation or recommend to a youth to apply to become part of the Young Entrepreneurs Academy in Philadelphia. It's wwwy-e-a-philadelphiaorg and the founder of our local organization here is Ellen Fisher, and Ellen would be available to speak to you to be able to explain more about her leadership in the Young Entrepreneurs Academy. And Ellen, like they always say, working for a nonprofit, working with mission. You probably get more out of this than you are able to give because it's such rewarding work.
Community Involvement and Recognition
Speaker 3It's a wonderful give back career for me. I had my own business for 27 years and I was on a board and asked if I might consider running this thing. They were approached and I said oh, absolutely Always been passionate about teaching financial literacy to young people and certainly entrepreneurship. Wish I had this when I was in high school.
Speaker 2And how many board members do you have currently on the Y-E-A Philadelphia team?
Speaker 3We just have a few. We have just a few people that advise us. We have about 77 volunteers that work with this group of students each year.
Speaker 2So same thing. If you're in the Southeast from Pennsylvania area and you'd like to help lend your skills, contact y-e-a-philadelphiaorg and speak to Ellen Fisher, who is today our good neighbor, for the work that she does in her community. Ellen, we reward you with a good neighbor award and thank you very, very much for being a guest on our Good Neighbor podcast today. Thank, you.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast hosted by Bob Lacy. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gntdelcocom or by calling Bob at 610-557-3745.