A Long (but Fruitful) Day

Yesterday was a long day. The conference started at 9 AM and went through the afternoon. It was a beautiful culminating experience from the previous two days. Again, we had only 17 students, but the class had really gelled as a unit. By yesterday, they were all willing to share their (sometimes very personal) ideas and question one another. I knew the students well and could cater what we were talking about directly to their needs and ideas.

We moved rooms to another auditorium that was in a newer building. It was much nicer and I liked the switch. It gave us real presentation space. The campus as a whole - Universidad El Bosque) is really pretty:

 

We started the day off simulating launching a business. It combined all that we had talked about so far - identifying opportunities, taking calculated risks, and solving problems. The class broke into groups of 4, came up with a business idea, and then created a commercial, print ad, mission statement, and a pitch for the investors (me).

Only one of the groups split up the tasks based on strengths. They sent the publicist to do the print advertisement and the other three split up the rest of the tasks. The rest of the groups worked together on all the pieces and so were rather rushed for time at the end.

They came up with a number of neat ideas:

1. Samm Bar - providing a healthy, high quality, fast food alternative. This was actually one of the student's ideas coming in, so it was very helpful for him to have some feedback on the idea.  They had a very specific and reachable target market and had a great presentation style.
2. Emerpet - making the lives of people easier by helping their pets with medical and grooming needs. Their commercial told a great story and they definitely had the most finished presentation. After getting feedback from me and the rest of the class, one of the students decided that she wanted to try really pursuing this idea on a smaller scale (to minimize the risk).
3. The Store - supporting entrepreneurs to start their own business. Basically, it's an incubator for direct sales. The group of friends that came up with this idea for the first time and had been talking about going into business together. They decided to go for it! They started looking for a place after class got out and are continuing the search tomorrow.
4. Fruserve - providing a fast, easy, innovative and healthy food option on college campuses. They had thought through many details, had a clearly identified need, and appeared to work well together as a group. Each member of the group owns their own business already and was looking for further development and training.

The rest of the day was great. We had some wonderful discussion and a number of other fruitful activities.  At the end of the day, I invited everyone to share their life purpose statements. First I shared mine, to break the ice: I was created to live in the intersection of my passions - creating, innovation, teaching, and leading. Here are the other life purpose statements:

• Be like Christ
• Serve and Grow with Others in Opportunities
• Live and Enjoy what God has Given
• To Live Without Worries and Not Be Frustrated as Time Goes By
• Tool of God, Light to Personal, Family, Business, and National Finances
• Bridge People and Opportunities
• Give My Time to the Lord, Serving the Things I Can, Because I was Born to Obey
• See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a ruler and commander of the peoples. Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations you do not know will come running to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor. (Isaiah 55:4-5)

I was truly inspired by the hard work of the people in the class and how well we all worked together. This experience was truly a blessing. I made good friends and we learned a lot together. Now the class will be continuing to 3 more modules, learning how to write a business plan and start a business in Colombia. I hope this weekend the class learned what it really means to have entrepreneurial patterns based on biblical principles.