News

YLT Class 5 - Business and Communications Day

By Youth Leadership Tallahassee, 11/20/2008

YLT Class 5's Business and Communications Day did not disappoint! Leslie Smith of Envision Credit Union pulled out all the stops in organizing a fast paced day. The day was sponsored by Gold Sponsor Coloney Bell Engineering and Silver Sponsor Staybridge Suites of Tallahassee. The day began at the Hospitality Square Building -- thanks to Ron Sachs Communications who donated the meeting space -- with a presentation by Mark Miller of the Upgrade Center. He gave the group some insight on skills that every effective leader needed to have.

At each program day, Jeb Blackburn presents to the students a different leadership skill. This program day’s skill was team building. Blackburn is an instructor at Tallahassee Community College and his accumulated presentations at the YLT program days accredit each of its members with 3 dual enrollment credit hours. Using Legos as instructional tools, Blackburn illustrated what makes group thinking great.

Following his lecture was Mark Ravenscraft of The Ravenscraft Group, who talked about the importance of a resume and cover letter in the business world.“If you have a quality, well put together resume,” Ravenscraft stressed, “ you will never have to worry about landing a good job.”

Julia Kronholz of the Florida State University Career Center was next to present, sharing with the group the importance of one’s image, specifically the information that the students post on social networking sites, such as the most popular MySpace and Facebook.

The information on social networking sites was eye opening for the group. Prior to the program day, Kronholz had "Googled" members of the class. The group of high school juniors was surprised at the information that she knew about them, including a successful spelling bee honor that one class member had received way back in 4th grade. It often slips the minds of the millions of users on networking websites, but the information that is given, comments that are left, backgrounds on personal pages and pictures that are posted all become “fair game” for employers to review. And more frequently in today’s society, these different things being shared on the world wide web are brought up in interviews and often become the fine line between where you are and where you want to be.

The second half of the day began with lunch at the Governor’s Club. Between bites, Susan Stafford of Protocol Solutions shared with the students the essentials needed to gaining that extra edge during business meals.

Following the meal was what most of the students agree was the best part of the day; the lemonade stand.The class was divided into 4 teams. Each team was given a "loan" of $20 (which had to be returned), a bag of lemons, somewater, cups, a pitcher and a table. They had supplies to make signs and were given 2 hours to make, market and sell lemonade on the streets of downtown Tallahassee. Thinkingoutside the box was highly encouraged.

About every 45 minutes each team had to draw a card that had some kind of road block on it. For example, “Lightning struck your stand, pay $10 in damages” or “Health inspectors found severe violations, stop selling for 10 minutes.”Each group was approached by a police officer, who required them to present their permit to sell. None of the groups had such a permit, and as a result they had to stop selling until they bought one from city hall. Though this part was set up and the permits were waiting when each team arrived, this gave each of them a ‘real life’ opportunity to understand the intricacies of the business world.

Between the four teams, the class made $732 selling lemonade, in less than 2 hours. The class will distribute that money during their Social Services Day.