A Nifty Program

Fifteen years ago Steve Mariotti was about to call it quits. He paced the hallway just beyond his roaring high school class, having been driven from the room by a flurry of spitballs. His situation was a teacher’s nightmare:

He was threatened and cursed at, radios blared, and kids danced in the aisles. One student had actually set fire to another’s coat! Mariotti had tried all the traditional methods to get control of his class to get them interested but nothing seemed to work.

He had been on the job for only two weeks as a math teacher at Boys and Girls High, regarded as one of New York City’s roughest schools. Though the school has since turned itself around, a headline at the time read “Teacher Beat-beaten and Dragged Down Stairs." "Teacher’s Hair Set on Fire at Troubled Boys and Girls High School," read another. Negative publicity caused seventy-two teachers to refuse to report to work, and by the late 1970s the dropout rate had reached 50 percent.

It was a do or die moment for Mariotti. After several minutes in the hall he braced himself, walked into the classroom, and without introductory comments went into a mock sales pitch, hypothetically selling his watch to the students. He described the watch’s features, enumerated its benefits, and explained why the students should buy the watch from him for the incredibly low price of six dollars. He gave the speech an entrepreneurial slant, explaining the percentage of markup necessary to in make a profit if the watch were resold.

To his surprise the students paid attention. He realized that when the discussion turned to money, and how to make money selling something, he was able to get students interested. More important, once he had their attention he was able to move into a conventional arithmetic lesson based on real-world business examples. Excited by his success, Mariotti started weaving business lessons into his curriculum.

The behavior and interest level of his classes improved remarkably. He created games where students would learn math by making change in a retailer/customer scenario. The game treated math as a practical reality and the message was blunt: If you don’t understand basic mathematics, you lose money. More subtly, it put students in the position of the shopkeeper, the entrepreneur.

This situation, born out of desperation, pointed Mariotti toward his true calling teaching entrepreneurship to low-income youth.

Unlikely Beginnings

Steve Mariotti grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attended high school in Flint, home of General Motors, where his father worked as an engineer. Even as a young man Steve developed a love for business. "I held several door-to-door sales jobs in my late teens and was an Avon salesman during college," says Mariotti. "Selling really helped me appreciate the process of business the art of making money of making the sale."

Mariotti went on to get an MBA from the University of Michigan in 1977. Shortly after graduation he won a summer scholarship to study economics at the Institute for Humane Studies at Stanford. He was one of twenty economists selected to study under F.A. Hayek, the Noble Prize winner for economics in 1974. After a summer of immersing himself in pure economic theory Mariotti was offered a job as financial analyst at Ford Motor Company.

Mariotti worked at Ford for thirty months and earned the nickname "Stevie Wonder" as a result of saving the company millions of dollars in overlooked profits. Although he loved his experience at Ford, he came to realize that the corporate world_, with its unofficial structure of politics and infighting, was not for him.

He moved to New York in 1980 and started his own small import-export firm. "I immediately went searching for a niche," says Mariotti. "I started focusing on products and countries that my large competitors didn’t want to bother with." He started importing everything from shoes to freshwater shrimp to snake skins. He was, in his words, "working very hard, making very good money, and having a great time."

But then the unexpected happened. One evening in 1981 while jogging on the Lower East Side, he was approached by a group of teenagers who demanded ten dollars. He had very little money in his jogging suit and could give them nothing. They proceeded to beat, harass, and humiliate him.

This unexpected mugging caught him emotionally off guard. In the months that followed, he suffered painful flashbacks. As an entrepreneur, he wondered to himself, "Why would these kids rob me for a few dollars when they could make much more money running a business together?"

Knowing that he had to face his fears, he chose the most direct route: He decided to give up his business and start teaching inner-city youth as a way to deal with the trauma of his mugging. He applied to become a public school teacher in the kind of neighborhoods that his attackers called home. "I wanted to be assigned to the worst areas, to test myself, and the New York school administration was happy to oblige."

Mariotti found that while other teachers and administrators were stressing reading, writing, mathematics, and "good citizenship skills," their approach was nonproductive and even counterproductive in this type of urban setting. Abstract "book knowledge" had little value to inner-city kids, who regarded it as irrelevant to their lives and futures. When Mariotti taught the principles of business and making a profit, students became engaged. And once they got interested in starting their own businesses, they came to see the need for knowing how to write and add to conduct business effectively

"It became apparent to me that many of my students, no matter how troubling their lives and situations were, had a natural aptitude for entrepreneurship," says Mariotti. "Their lives encouraged independence, toughness, unselfconsciousness, and a natural ability in salesmanship. They were also comfortable with risk and ambiguity, which is essential for successful entrepreneurs."

Hope With A Concrete Path

In 1987 Steve Mariotti founded the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE, pronounced "nifty"), which leads students toward economic self-sufficiency by training them how to start their own legitimate businesses. Students write a business plan, apply for a business license, and open a business checking account. NTFE’s "product" is a business-literate young entrepreneur who has experienced buying and selling in the marketplace and knows how to keep accurate records.

"Poverty is transcended by those who possess knowledge and who know how to create value," says NFTE’s executive director, Mike Caslin. ÎNFTE demystifies the world of business, fosters a sense of self through entrepreneurial achievement, and creates ethical entrepreneurs who compete in the marketplace and create products and services of value.

"The problem with education," he says, "is that we teach children the tools of economic participation, the how, but fail to clarify or make relevant the why." NFTE’s key benefit is the "turn-on" it provides to learning. When principles of entrepreneurship are brought into the classroom, students are more likely to see that things they considered irrelevant be it reading, math, or economics÷ can profoundly affect their lives.

Caslin believes the implications of failing to inspire at-risk youth could have far-reaching consequences, "We are witnessing an entire generation of young, people coming or age without vision, without connection to their communities, and with a sense of hope so devastated that they have no respect for human life, These kids believe the future holds nothing for them. If we fail to act now, what will these kids and the world we live in, be like when they are thirty?

The Program

NFTE hit the streets of New York City's South Bronx in 1987, producing revenues of $189,000 that year. In 1997 the income figures were expected to exceed $4 million. NYPE has grown from 200 students in its first year to 3,OOO in 1997, and t now has 80 part-time and 22 full-time teachers in its ranks. There are 65 NFTE sites in 17 American cities and another 17 sites internationally by the end of 1997 NFTE will have had 17,000 graduates pass through its program.

Part of NFTE’s success can be attributed to the respect and support it has received from the business, political, and academic communities. It is endorsed and supported by Jack Kemp, former New York City, Mayor David Dinkins, Microsoft Corporation, Babson College, and the Harvard Business School.

Students have gone on to run retail operations, such as designing and selling T-shirts, jewelry, bird feeders, and dolls. They have launched service businesses in cosmetology, graphic design, lawn care, tutoring, and computer repair. NFTE alumni are offered follow-up support and access to capital, and they have been accepted in business programs in prestigious universities

NFTE provides cutting-edge curriculum research and development, as well as public education forums. Carefully selecting its teachers, who are drawn from public and private schools and community organizations, NFTE provides them with both initial training and continuing education. It encourages teachers to see opportunity in students who don’t appear to have talent÷ those who have been rooted out of the educational system as "lost causes."

Designed as a "Mini MBA Program," NFTE’s core curriculum is based on the same principles taught in America’s most prestigious business schools. "My belief is that if it is good enough for the best and brightest, it’s good enough for the children of the poor," says Caslin. "We produce students who think critically, who possess wealth creation skills, and who are prepared to own."

NFTE’s Core Program requires a hundred hours of entrepreneurial training and covers a spectrum of business skills and concepts. It includes lectures by teachers, talks by business owners, and field trips that provide hands-on business experience. Programs take place at participating schools as accredited course work. After-school programs are offered, and summer Biz Camp programs are active around the country

Student Success Stories

What happens to teens that complete the NFTE programs? Aside from learning how to achieve financial independence through small start-up companies, graduates also use their new business skills to become better students, good employees, and productive members of their communities. NFTE reports that there is an important secondary benefit to earning money: 90 percent of its students communicate better with their families, teachers, and peers as a result of the course.

Going beyond business training, NFTE seeks to make a comprehensive difference in the lives of its students. But true to its mission, NFTE has helped inspire and lead scores of students to create and sustain viable small businesses some growing and prospering well beyond their modest high school beginnings.

Jimmy Mack, 25, a NFTE graduate and volunteer for over nine years, is the owner of Bulldog Records in New York City. Bulldog Records has become a successful production and management company that recruits and develops musical talent. At the age of 15 Jimmy had started his first small business, Pro Elite Management, which helped sports figures secure endorsement deals with corporations. His company was already doing well and was considered one of the top sports boutique companies in the country when he heard about NFTE through family and teachers.

Jimmy found NFTE to be a valuable source of contacts and knowledge that helped him become an even better business owner. "NFTE was my yin, and I was the yang. The program helped me develop some of the business skills I was lacking." Bulldog Records is now poised for real growth in the coming years. "We work with Time-Warner and Electra, we have a marketing division, and we do joint venture deals with other companies In 1996, the New York Post ranked Jimmy as one of twenty "Top Tycoons Under 30" and Black Enterprise magazine nominated him "Rising Star of the Year." Jimmy is still actively involved with NFTE. He tours the country several times a year helping to develop new NFTE programs.

Tyeisha Wright, 21, got involved with NFTE four years ago as a junior at Belmont High School in California. Tyeisha started a small business, Something for All Occasions that sold clothing and notions to the local community. She led her class in sales and received NFTE’s 1996 Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Tyeisha has recently opened a full-time storefront in Menlo Park after expanding the business with her mother and running it from her garage for two years. Tyeisha sees growth as her goal for the future and plans to move on to a larger storefront. "I think NFTE is a great program that really inspired me. They have given me support in so many ways, even after I graduated

Maleka Lenzy, 17, got involved with NFTE two years ago while in high school. She started Classy Productions, a full-service catering company, while a NFTE student. Operating in the Washington, D.C., area, she has catered events for her local chamber of commerce and the Washington, D.C., Board of Trade; she has also catered several NFTE functions. Her small business won Maleka the 1997 "Young Entrepreneur of the Year" award from Black Enterprise.

Maleka believes that NFTE taught her to be resilient, especially through the business planning process. "When you start writing a business plan, it looks good on paper until you try it out. Things never go the way you planned, and you have to keep trying new things and never give up on reaching your goal." Maleka has just started college at Johnson and Wales University in Charleston, South Carolina, majoring in hotel and restaurant management. Upon completing the program, Maleka plans to own and operate a five-star resort.

A Vision For The Future

The NFTE training program has lasting value for most who take part, whether or not they go on to run a company "Not all entrepreneurship students end up owning their own businesses," says Mariotti. "But I have found that NFTE graduates make better employees. They are better able to join the mainstream because they know how to be participants in society instead of feeling they are merely some of its victims."

A recent study conducted by Harvard’s Kennedy School surveyed all nonprofit organizations across the United States and ranked NFTE in the top five as having a successful formula for sustainability and growth. Emboldened by its successes over the past decade, NFTE plans to spread its entrepreneurial vision at home and abroad by developing a major Internet presence. To this end it maintains an informative Web site and has developed standardized training modules for launching NETE programs worldwide. Already hundreds of requests for such programs have come in

"There is a correlation between business formation rates...positive things like capital accumulation, goal setting, investing in yourself· [and] less crime and less racism," says NFTE’s Caslin. "It makes more sense to get out in front of the social curve and invest positively before we have to invest negatively"

NETE plans to universalize its curriculum so that it is widely available to all who express an interest. "We are able to help a church in Kentucky work with twenty kids in a basement or a Rotary chapter in Argentina, Venezuela, or Paraguay set up an entrepreneurial training program for local youth. We can provide all the materials, software, and teacher training on an international level."

NFTE’s clarion call is for business people to spend time working with at-risk youth. The knowledge that successful people have and take for granted is desperately needed by the children of the poor," says Mariotti, who stresses that writing a check is not enough. "I believe that the entrepreneur is the new hero for inner-city kids. There is a tremendous emotional return on giving time to kids who desperately need positive role models and the knowledge they possess.

If Steve Mariotti has his way, NFTE will become a banner that can be carried by all who are concerned with the issues facing today’s youth. "If we can convince enough people to mentor kids through a NFTE-sponsored program, we could experience an economic renaissance of amazing proportions and possibly fix a few of society’s problems at the same time"

For More Information

The National Foundation for Teaching

Entrepreneurship, 120 Wall St., 29th

Floor, New York, NY 10005. Tel:

212 232-3333. Fax: 212 232-2244. Email: nftebiz@nftebiz.org. World Wide

Web site: www.nftebiz.org.