Young CEOs doing business — as usual

By Monica Bryant
Diversity Institute Fellow

07.30.02

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Anthony Matthews. Photo by Shiloh Crawford III

Eleven-year-old Anthony Matthews isn’t spending his summer days on the basketball court, playing video games or dancing to the latest tunes by teen rapper Lil’ Bow Wow.

Instead, the sixth grader at John Early Middle School spends Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Children’s Entrepreneurial Opportunities Academy, Inc., learning how to manage the business he created three years ago.

Dressed in a neatly pressed navy blue suit, white shirt and tie and wearing shiny black leather loafers, Matthews, the CEO of Teron’s Greeting Cards, recently strolled through the C.E.O. Academy with his jacket casually flung over his left shoulder, notebook in hand, ready for work.

“I decided that I wanted to make my own money and buy my own things for myself,” said Matthews, who has been a student at the academy for three years and interns in the academy’s business office.

Matthews is among 40 youth entrepreneurs participating in the Second Annual Youth Entrepreneur Show and Sell Trade Show sponsored by the academy on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 100 Oaks Mall. The show provides a venue for students to gain experience operating their home-based businesses and provides an opportunity for them to sell their products or services, said Emanuel Roland, student services manager.

Matthews said he didn’t know anything about business when he first started, but once he got into the program he learned how to manage his money.

“I save 10 percent, give 10 percent to tithes and spend the rest,” he said.

The C.E.O. Academy is a faith-based, nonprofit academy that offers students in the third through eighth grade an opportunity to participate in an 11-month academic and entrepreneurial program.

The program was started in 1995 at Fisk University and moved to David Lipscomb University in 1998. “The main focus is gearing youth at a young age toward entrepreneurship and the principle of being self-employed,” said Roland.

Fifty students, primarily African-Americans, participate in the program, which is open to students of all cultures, races, socioeconomic backgrounds and faiths.

The Academy is not a standard tutorial program or average summer camp. The programs integrate math, reading, writing, language arts and business management to help students advance and excel academically as they create their own businesses.

Parents pay nominal fees, based on their income, said Roland. The fees cover consulting, tutoring and educational programs.

Terri Chapman, executive director and co-founder of the academy, said she initially started the program using 11th and 12th graders but found it difficult to hold their attentions because they were interested in other activities.

“I competed with them wanting to work at fast food restaurants as opposed to them wanting to create their own businesses,” she said. “It was really hard to change that mindset.”

Chapman said she also realized that the high school students were missing a lot of the basic academic skills needed to be successful in entrepreneurship. These included such skills as writing, mathematics and doing research – all needed to develop a business plan and startup budget.

Roland said younger minds tend to be a lot more open to learning about these concepts.

“We teach more than just how to start a business,” he said. “We’re also teaching basic individual principles like self-sufficiency, not having to depend on anyway else. We teach them about stewardship, the more you give, the more you receive.

“And at this age, we see they’re like sponges. They just absorb knowledge and anything new and create it.”

For more information, call 615-320-3232 or visit the Web site at www.ceo-academy.org.

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Articles, photos by 2002 Diversity Institute Fellows
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