Finding something I was passionate about was easy in some aspects of life, but harder in others. For most people, they find what their passionate about very quickly, and these passions soon turn into college majors and then after that, they turn into careers. I had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up, and time was running out to decide. After all my life of switching careers that ranged from saving the world, to wanting to be a sports director, I never knew what I wanted to be, but after taking an entrepreneur class my junior year of high school, I finally found the profession I was meant to do for the rest of my life.
From a young age, my parents, teachers, and all the adults in my life always asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up? My response was easy: I wanted to be a super hero. From time to time I would think that I was the chosen one, and imagined was the real-life Spider Man. I would try to shoot webs out of my wrists and climb up walls, always seconds away from bursting a blood vessel (along with shedding a few tears from not sticking to the wall). I soon found out that being a super hero was not possible, and my dreams were like a vase that was dropped – it was shattered.
As a result of after I was human again, I soon started to naturally get into sports. Football was something that immediately caught my eye. I loved the way the game was played so physically. Not only did I love the feeling of hitting someone as hard as I could, but in a way I was the super hero I always imagined myself to be. Constantly thinking about football, I started to find something I was passionate about. When high school finally came up, it was time to start deciding what our careers were going to be. With the love I had for the game and sports in general, I decided that sports was all i anted to do, so I thought I wanted to be a sports director. This thought was short lived, after looking more into the job. I did not like the numbers that I saw, because the need for the job wasn’t very high and I wanted more for myself. My only thought of any career, quickly went out the window. I did not think too much about finding a career, till the beginning of my junior year, whenever things got real.
Our administration had a meeting with the whole junior class, telling us that now was the time to start getting ready for college, and figuring out what we were all going to be. hen I get nervous I start to sweat, and I could feel it coming upon me. I was nervous because I felt like I was not prepared for the most crucial decision of my life. I felt like I had not planned at all, while others have planned for years. It is hard to think that making only one decision can determine what I do for my whole life. Although I didn’t feel prepared, I would soon be influenced by a business that I was enrolled in. Going into my junior year, I was selected to be in a business class, also known as Youth Entrepreneurs. Only the best of the best were chosen, so I felt honored to be in it.
The class seemed really fun, but I did not know if it was for me. All my life I had loved making money, and being really cheap with it too, so that part of business felt very natural to me. There is a lot more to business than just that though, and I didn’t know if I was business sawy. The first couple of weeks past and we did nothing but practice how to talk and strategize. We would learn how to pitch everything we did, and persuade the listener that it was the best thing they had ever seen. We were taught how to make a plan, and do anything to give to get the upper edge and benefit us.
Doing this everyday made me more creative, and a better speaker. Not only did I start to develop an important life skill, but I was getting ready for one of the most important days of the class: Market day. Market day is where a group of individuals sell a product during lunch to all the kids in the school. This product can be anything from food, to clothes, or even having something like a photo booth; it just has to be profitable and make money. Market day is the closest thing to selling in the real world as we could get, so it was a very good opportunity for us to see what it was going to be like.
My group decided that we were going to sell pizza from Pizza Hut. I spent a lot of time talking with them on the phone, negotiating with their prices and trying to get them to lower it to as cheap as possible. I would tell them what other deals we were getting from different places like Little Caesars, using this as a tactic to have them meet prices. I would also pitch to them how much money they would be making on the deal too. Using everything | had learned, I got the price dropped down to a very profitable amount. Now that we had our prices set, all we had left to do was plan before market day.
When market day finally arrived it was a big success for my group. We made hundreds of dollars in profit, and we were all very happy with how it went. With how market day played out and the process it took to make it happen, I started to find business a lot more interesting. I started to think that maybe I had found my calling because | played a very large part in just how successful our group was. With this thought in my head, I started to wonder if business was something I should do for the rest of my life, not only because it was starting to really intrigue me, but because I was decent at it.
As I started to become confident in the big world of business, the true test of this career would come later on in the year when we had to make a business plan. A business plan is a business that a person creates in order for it to be started and become successful. This plan goes over every little detail that costs money for the business to open up. Not only did we have to create this work of art, but we also had to present it in front of successful entrepreneurs, that went through the same process as us. This was the most important part of the whole class, because this one presentation would either make or break our grade. reak our grade.
I wanted to come up with a business that was very realistic, and innovative. After countless days of wondering what I should do, I finally set my sights on a very profitable area: coffee. It is a well-known product, that is part of most people’s daily routine. My business was called The Busy Bean, and its main target was everyday people and businesses. It was a coffee shop that sold everything from coffees to teas, and what separated it from Starbucks and most coffee shops was that it gave its customers a more convenient way to get coffee.
Customers not only could come into our store and buy it, but they could also get it from one of our coffee trucks, or call and have it delivered to them. The reason why I did the simple but innovative change, was because time is very tight with people, and any way to save time helps them out tremendously. With the very promising idea in mind, I now had to take into perspective every insurance, license, machine, and everything else that would cost me money to start my business up. This was very challenging in some areas, but for the most part it just clicked with me and I got it done very fast.
I understood all the numbers and everything else so well, that if anybody needed any help they would always ask me. When it came time to present, I nailed my presentation, pitching just like I had practiced all year. The judges really liked my idea, and how realistic all my numbers and ideas were. I ended up getting a really good grade on it, and it felt like all my hard work had finally paid off. The year was coming to an end and I felt like the class taught me a lot of real world skills. After taking my favorite class of all time, I was confident I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
After researching and seeing the vast amount of options, there was no doubt in my mind that wanted to go to college for business. Going into that class, I would have never thought that I would finally figure out my future career. There is so much more to learn, and it excites me for the future. I had found a growing passion with business and it felt destined. Through this life long process of making the most crucial decision in my life, I learned that we are all passionate about something, but not to rush when searching for what it is, because the answer will always come.
