Sowing the seeds of business: CEO students get creative during pandemic

STERLING – With every successful business comes a story about how it came to fruition.

For more than 30 students in the Whiteside Area Career Center’s Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities program, those stories are just beginning, and they’ll be showcasing their projects Wednesday and Thursday at Northland Mall for the group’s annual Trade Show.

The dreams Rock Falls High School juniors Katie Witherow and Meg Frank are developing in their minds this spring: Witherow is thinking about creating her own line of self-care products, and Frank is trying to find her fit in the clothing business.

Those stories, and those of the rest of the students in their class, started with casseroles and soups.

As much of an odd combination as that may sound like, there’s one important aspect tying it all together: Learning the best way to catch people with their sales pitches for the delicious dishes and baskets is an important step in helping them sell their products and services to the public.

That’s where the CEO program comes in. It gives students a crash course in how businesses operate and how they might own one, or even start one, themselves – and that’s what the program’s two recent classes did: They raised seed money that will help each students’ business develop and grow in time for their public revealing later this year.

Witherow and Frank, part of the instructor Le Hartman’s CEO West class, whipped up soups and casseroles. The CEO East class, taught by Emily Zimmerman, sold gift baskets consisting of coffees, chocolates, gift cards and massage candles to come up with their seed money.

The nearly $8,000 raised by both classes will be available for each student to tap into – sort of like money for a bank loan – to help get their individual business going. Throughout March, students worked on a business plan and gave a pitch to designated “CEO bankers” among their class to request seed money for their business.

Delicious dishes

When Witherow was trying to figure out back in October what food would be a good seller, she tapped classmate Sydney Minssen of Prophetstown High School to be the operations director and Frank the marketing director of the Savory CEO brand.

The team decided on soups and casseroles, which freeze well and are a quick fix for people on the go. The casseroles were million-dollar chicken, lasagna, baked mac and cheese, cheesy broccoli and rice, and tater-tot. Soups were chili and chicken tortilla.

“When brainstorming ideas for our class business, we all leaned towards food from the start,” Witherow said. “We wanted to create something that would be both successful for us and help out our community, and Savory CEO did just that. It was an affordable, quick, and easy meal for families in our community.”

Minssen’s team spent hours and hours in the kitchen whipping up enough casseroles for about 800 people. The class made a visit to The Kitchen Incubator of Northwest Illinois in Sterling to learn about food preparation, safety and marketing.

“Being in charge of the operations side of things, it was very difficult trying to figure out a timeline for our business plan,” Minssen said. “There were so many aspects to think about and consider. We had to create timelines for when we wanted to decide on a menu, when we would be able to start taking orders, how and when we would make the orders, how we would store all the orders, and when the orders would be available for pick-up or delivery.”

Frank was in charge of a team tasked to get the word out about the project. That involved creating the Savory CEO name, organizing fundraisers, making flyers, drafting press releases, updating social media accounts, and connecting with local businesses to promote the project. Frank’s team also contacted area Chambers of Commerce and local media to help promote sales.

“I’ve learned so many lessons from being in a leadership position,” Frank said. “I had to learn to delegate tasks. I wasn’t used to being in a class where everyone wanted to participate and give it their all, so learning to take a step back was really difficult for me.”

Beautiful baskets

When the CEO East team was coming up with their plan to get seed money, they put all their eggs in one basket. The class bundled several locally based items together into two different types of baskets: one for self-care, valued at $50, and another more appropriate for a “date night” at $60.

The self-care baskets consisted of a $10 gift certificate to Cloud 9 Massage in downtown Dixon, a soy candle and pillow spray from Asterisk Boutique in Dixon, shower steamers from Bock Bath Co. of Dixon, honey from Lincolnway Inn in Franklin Grove, and “CEO Blend” coffee from Curate Kitchen in Dixon. The “date night” baskets had gourmet chocolates from The Crystal Cork in Dixon, a $20 gift card to The Crystal Cork, a $20 gift card to the Palmyra Pub in Dixon or Candlelight Inn locations in Sterling and Rock Falls, and random “love notes” made by the students and kept in a keepsake mason jar.

Gathering the baskets up proved to be a bit tough, Dixon High School senior Grace Smith said, as the initial theme was to revolve it around Valentine’s Day. However, the class rebounded to create the two-themed approach, and Smith also got her mother, who owns Cloud 9 Massage, to chip in to the project with the donation of gift cards from her business.

Then came getting the word out about the baskets.

“There were many different ways we used to market our product,” Smith said. “We had flyers, a radio ad, we had been putting stuff on our Instagram and Facebook pages, and have been sharing by word-of-mouth.”

Smith’s senior classmate, Connor Colby, was in charge of marketing the baskets. He and project manager Ashley Crawford, also a Dixon High senior, wrote a script for a radio ad on WIXN, which Colby got to perform. He also worked with the participating businesses to have them promote the baskets by inserting small advertisements in their shopping bags.

The project also needed a name. Colby came up with it: Baskets Adore.

“This was extremely thrilling, as I got to meet many of the local entrepreneurs personally and introduce myself to them,” Colby said. “I enjoy presenting creative ideas and I love to think outside of the box, so I was constantly coming up with different solutions to try out when we were struggling. I learned a lot about leadership throughout this whole experience and I look forward to building on that as I move forward.”

Sales of the baskets ended after the first week of March.

Successful students

The CEO program, modeled after a pilot program in downstate Effingham County, started in 2013 at the Career Center, and split 2 years ago into geographical divisions as its popularity, and the number of students, began to grow. Classes meet at businesses throughout the Sauk Valley, where students can speak to owners, company presidents and employees. Before the end of the school year, students also will have written a business plan and met with prospective investors for their business.

Prospective juniors or seniors must apply to become a part of the class by the March before the next school year; junior students also can apply to remain in the class for their senior year. This year’s group of CEOs consists of 31 students from the 16 school districts and two private schools that the Whiteside Area Career Center serves, with an instructor for each of the two classes. More than 75 businesses and individuals throughout the area invest at least $1,000 into the program annually to keep it going, and so do CEO classes from previous years.

The Trade Show is the annual “Super Bowl” of the class, where student businesses, that can typically range from handmade products to decor to air fresheners to food, are presented to the public during a two-day event; it was held at Northland Mall in Sterling in years past, and last year was at the outdoor Sterling Marketplace. The class also has held “Taste of CEO,” where students helped bring local food vendors to a sampling event.

The pandemic has presented several challenges to the program, but like their counterparts in the business world, the students are making the best of a bad situation.

For upcoming projects, Minssen still is working on setting her idea in stone, but said she plans to donate half of the profits of whatever she comes up with to a foundation of some sort. Smith and Crawford are teaming up for their project of making charcuterie boxes. Colby’s business idea is making do-it-yourself cookie and brownie kits.

Some developing dreams pan out after students’ time in the program is through, and some don’t. More than a dozen projects that originated in the CEO program have established businesses, be it brick-and-mortar or home-based, in the Sauk Valley. They have their knowledge from CEO class to thank for that.

“There are several goals, from teamwork, creative thinking, problem solving, to failing,” said Hartman, who has been with the program since its beginning. “We let students figure out how to execute their plan and even let them fall a little short and struggle a bit, as that is a great way to learn. They also learn a lot about leadership, personalities, accountability, and more. Not to mention they have to figure out the operations, marketing, and finance of the business; but a main goal is that they turn a profit of some kind.”