Young entrepreneurs get a chance to shine
By Mike Weland
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| While we don't know the names of all the Bonners Ferry High School students in this picture, there are a few older graduates who are very proud to be standing with them; Panhandle State Bank president Dave Walter, Anita Stockdale-Woods and Craig Anderson, holding a contribution to the future; Jim Marx and Sandy Ashworth ... knowing that their contribution is going to be a boon ... and that these kids will be the wave of a good, bright, and proud future. |
When I was a young lad in middle school many
years ago, one of my teachers challenged my
fellow students and I to imagine a product or
service our small town might benefit from,
imagine how we might promote it, and, with a few
hand-written notes and drawings, demonstrate how
we might launch a business.
I flunked the class ... I came up with "INSTANT H2O! ... Just add water!" My proposed product was a great idea, but it didn't have "legs." After buying a case or two of my empty cans at $.10 each, my customers came to realize that they already owned, with every empty container in their house, pretty much the same product I offered, and it was free. Just add water.
Most of my potential customers went out and bought pet rocks instead, and though I had a great label ... I found no customers.
In Oklahoma, going through a drought at the time, I thought my idea would be a sure winner, but it didn't gain much traction and I became a reporter instead of an entrepreneur. Had I known computers were coming, I would have attempted instead to sell $6 cans of air.
At Bonners Ferry High School, kids challenged as I once was have to come up with imaginative ideas, but a new word has been thrown in to the challenge ... "viable," and Panhandle State Bank and the Boundary County Library have helped one such virtual idea, a Main Street store called "Under the Sun," become reality.
"Not only is it an immense draw for locals," librarian Sandy Ashworth said, "but it is a noted destination business that has won the state Department of Commerce's award for Best Entrepernurial Business of the Year."
Panhandle State Bank's support has brought new equipment upgrades at Bonners Ferry High School and new tools that every interested student might learn and apply ... tools that even a year ago might have been unimaginable, but with which, in the hands of imaginative students, the future will be paved.
When I "invented" Instant H20 back in the mid 1970s, I had to design the packaging with colored pencils and "type up" my proposal on a manual Underwood typewriter and I knew ... thought ... that what I was concocting was all tongue in cheek.
In retrospect, I may have become a rich entrepreneur had I gone with the idea.
My mother bought me a pet rock for Christmas that year, paying $3. I appreciated it, as it skipped across the water fairly well. I found several rocks along the shore that skipped better ... but it was the thought that counted most.
In hind sight, I'd have preferred a pair of warm socks, and perhaps to have had the opportunity for my misguided idea to have been considered by someone other than my mother, who had no imagination at all.
"We're working to put funding where it can have the greatest impact on our community," said Panhandle Bonners Ferry branch manager Carol Julian. "And that starts with our children."
It's not often you hear the people of a bank say that, and it's more rare yet to know that the bank officials saying it happen to be the kids we grew up with.
I flunked the class ... I came up with "INSTANT H2O! ... Just add water!" My proposed product was a great idea, but it didn't have "legs." After buying a case or two of my empty cans at $.10 each, my customers came to realize that they already owned, with every empty container in their house, pretty much the same product I offered, and it was free. Just add water.
Most of my potential customers went out and bought pet rocks instead, and though I had a great label ... I found no customers.
In Oklahoma, going through a drought at the time, I thought my idea would be a sure winner, but it didn't gain much traction and I became a reporter instead of an entrepreneur. Had I known computers were coming, I would have attempted instead to sell $6 cans of air.
At Bonners Ferry High School, kids challenged as I once was have to come up with imaginative ideas, but a new word has been thrown in to the challenge ... "viable," and Panhandle State Bank and the Boundary County Library have helped one such virtual idea, a Main Street store called "Under the Sun," become reality.
"Not only is it an immense draw for locals," librarian Sandy Ashworth said, "but it is a noted destination business that has won the state Department of Commerce's award for Best Entrepernurial Business of the Year."
Panhandle State Bank's support has brought new equipment upgrades at Bonners Ferry High School and new tools that every interested student might learn and apply ... tools that even a year ago might have been unimaginable, but with which, in the hands of imaginative students, the future will be paved.
When I "invented" Instant H20 back in the mid 1970s, I had to design the packaging with colored pencils and "type up" my proposal on a manual Underwood typewriter and I knew ... thought ... that what I was concocting was all tongue in cheek.
In retrospect, I may have become a rich entrepreneur had I gone with the idea.
My mother bought me a pet rock for Christmas that year, paying $3. I appreciated it, as it skipped across the water fairly well. I found several rocks along the shore that skipped better ... but it was the thought that counted most.
In hind sight, I'd have preferred a pair of warm socks, and perhaps to have had the opportunity for my misguided idea to have been considered by someone other than my mother, who had no imagination at all.
"We're working to put funding where it can have the greatest impact on our community," said Panhandle Bonners Ferry branch manager Carol Julian. "And that starts with our children."
It's not often you hear the people of a bank say that, and it's more rare yet to know that the bank officials saying it happen to be the kids we grew up with.