Thirty Martinsville-Henry County High Schoolers participated in the inaugural MHC Uptown Youth Entrepreneurial Boot camp.

The idea to hold the boot camp came from Jennifer Reis — a professor at UNC-Greensboro in arts entrepreneurship and management and known local artist. Reis said she has wanted to hold a youth entrepreneurial boot camp in Martinsville for several years now after teaching it at the college level.

“I was also extremely entrepreneurial as a child and a teenager, but there wasn’t really any resources for that,” Reis said. This led to her reaching out to Rudy’s Girl Media Owner Natali Hodge to bring her vision for the camp to life.

The two worked together and with community partners for over six months to bring this project to life. Reis constructed and designed the curriculum and Hodge played a larger part in event hosting and administrative details.

For two days, high school students from the Patrick & Henry Community College Summer Discovery Institute gathered at New College Institute and formed six teams to develop innovative business ideas for a vacant commercial space in uptown Martinsville.

The space they saw was located in the Jefferson Plaza, owned by Derrick Ziglar, and the students then worked together to create business plans based on the layout for that vacant space and refine their concepts before presenting their plans to a panel of judges.

Reis started off the boot camp asking the students to imagine they were in 2030, putting them in the mindset of having just graduated from college and wanting to start a business that would better their community, specifically uptown Martinsville.

The curriculum included: learning about what was lacking in the community, what a target market is, what people in a community actually want, who specifically they would serve as customers as a small business owner, researching competitors and finding a competitive advantage, basic business analysis tools, profit generation and financial operation basics.

“I wanted them number one to use their imagination and creativity,” Reis said. “And how can we continue to build on this renaissance of uptown Martinsville because we’ve got good things going ... I wanted them to be really excited about opportunities in their community ... and to learn some basic entrepreneurial skills.”

“It was important to me to push the community development aspect of it,” Reis said. “The kids were great ... A lot of enthusiasm, a lot of really creative ideas.”

The students business pitches included: a multi-cuisine restaurant that would utilize food trucks; a three-in-one amusement experience with laser tag, an escape room and arcade games; a thrift store with upcycled clothing; a Japanese inspired restaurant and comic book store; and a business to give advice to owners of small pets and animals.

Reis said she hopes the program will continue as an annual event, but also believes it could benefit other nearby localities in the region as well.

“Being able to think entrepreneurially, yes helps you if you want to start a business, but also helps you in your career,” Reis said. “This is learning through doing, not just sitting there taking notes and being passive.”

“I am really thrilled with the enthusiasm of the students,” she added. “Just to see ... how proud they were and how much fun they were having together, that was really, really heartwarming and also encouraging that this went well.”

“I think they did amazing for the amount of time they had to put together a whole business idea,” Hodge said. “It was a very compressed amount of time.”

Hodge, having been to a number of similar pitch competitions for adults, said the students’ presentations were on par with ones she has seen in the past.

“They did a really great job,” Hodge added. “We have to expose young people to entrepreneurship early ... The earlier that they have that real information the better.”