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SIFE Ryerson Wins Regional Entrepreneurship Challenge!
The entrepreneurship team presented 3 entrepreneurship programs including StartMeUp (which includes the $25,000 Standard Broadcasting Business Plan Competition), ROI2 (where our teams of entrepreneurship students have generated over $5M per year in new revenues to existing companies) and the Dobson Micro-Financing Challenge (where 35 entrepreneurship students started up 9 new businesses this semester). The SIFE Financial Education team presented 4 projects including Project SeaView (to promote financial independence in Tanzania, Africa) and Project Eastdale (to teach financial literacy and independence among at-risk youth right here in Toronto). Here’s the important point! Yes, the program was excellent and a lot of work from many students went into generating the meat in the presentation. However, the thing that really clinched the win was the sizzle – the QUALITY OF THE PRESENTATION. These 8 students didn’t just throw the presentation together the night before and give an average performance. They WORKED to PERFECT the presentation. Over 30 students tried out to gain one of the 8 positions. The entire script of the 10 minute presentation was written out and they went through over a dozen iterations along with the same number of modifications to the ppt slides. They presented half a dozen dry runs in front of either me, the advisory board, or the rest of the team. After each dry run they made significant changes to improve the presentation. The night before they stayed up late practicing and practicing. The teams’ performances truly deserves an A+, and also demonstrates that the grade must be earned. Athletes don’t win because of a 10 second sprint – they win because of the 1000’s of hours of hard work and preparation that went into those 10 seconds. Many of the presenting teams simply made mistakes, forgot their lines, were too glib, went over the 10 minute time limit and were cut off, or were unprepared for the Q&A period. Some had technical difficulties. These teams failed to prepare properly. In the real world, there are winners and losers. Not everyone can slide by with a mere B+ performance. Customers normally buy from only one of the companies that pitch to them. Sales professionals must do their home work, refine their pitch and then practice and practice to get it perfect the first time. I understand that students must often balance their time and do “just enough” on many assignments. This may be “OK” in school, where a B- (a mere 7 out of 10) allows you to move on to the next grade, but this is poor training for the real world where “OK” performance is not good enough to gain that job, win that account, get that investment, or woo the partner of your dreams. The real world has winners and losers and usually only 1 contender will get that job, account or man/woman of their dreams. In school, everyone usually passes as long as they do “just enough". Think about that the next time you assign someone a perfect score for merely adequate performance...
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SIFE Ryerson won the TD SIFE Entrepreneurship Challenge Regional Round of Competition and took 3rd place in the HSBC SIFE Financial Education Challenge Regional Round of Competition! 16 Universities from Ontario and Quebec competed in the ACE 2008 Central Regional Exposition on March 13-14.