Episode 7: Y.E.S.! to Youth Entrepreneurs: Empowering the Next Generation

00:06

Welcome back to another episode of Beyond Giving, the best nonprofit podcast on the Boost Network, sponsored by Nonprofits HQ. This week, we’ve got a really exciting conversation with a local organization that helps promote youth entrepreneurship and help teach those important skills to  youth in the community. So we’ve got Jacqueline  and Joseph joining us from Yes Entrepreneurship.  Thank you so much for joining us and coming on the show. Yes, thank you for having us today. We’re really excited about this,  Zach.

00:35

Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to share our program with the community, with the local business entrepreneurs and every youth in the city in San Antonio and even in the state that want to have and run and control their own business. We’re here to help. Absolutely. So I saw you pitch  at a recent one million cups  about your organization and what you guys are up to. And I was like, we absolutely have to have these folks on the podcast. This is such a cool mission. So can you tell us kind of a little bit about what Yes is and what it is you guys are working on?

01:02

Yes. So, YES stands for Youth Entrepreneurship Services,  and we’re really excited. So, what we do is we have different components that build up our nonprofit. We do mentorship academies, and those last for about five months.  We’ve been doing it at our office location at Success Space, who is also one of our  sponsors for YES. And we’re really excited about that opportunity to be able to bring our students  and people that are going through our mentorship.

01:31

into that space and seeing that they can fit into a professional  location environment. And it keeps them in the boardroom and it keeps them high level thinking. just that whole entire environment and feeling. But we also offer tutoring services as well because as we all know, us entrepreneurs, our brain is everywhere. And as we are everywhere, sometimes our brain is not in the books and worrying about straight A’s or grades. So we offer tutoring services as well.

02:00

Those are on Saturdays. The one thing as me as a mom, I noticed that I was paying for tutoring for even my children that was in the up range of $65 an hour. So two sessions a week, I mean, that could get pretty pricey for, especially for somebody that doesn’t have those type of funds for tutoring. So we’re able to offer that tutoring to the public as well. And then we also are going to be starting our yes tank, which our yes tank is about them doing their pitches.

02:29

and really receiving the funds for startup funds. So we’re really excited about that. That’s awesome. Joseph here though. I want to, I want to totally give it back to him because you mentioned the million cups where you met him.  I’m totally amazing. He is our community engagement  individual and he is on fire. So I can’t even think of the best person to go out into the community, be the face of what we’re doing and passionately talk about.

02:57

you know, really closing the gap of even generational poverty of what we’re addressing or even closing that gap from potential to access because that’s what a lot of our students don’t have. So,  The entrepreneurship services that we offer are amazing, the mentoring, the tutoring, but the one thing that we, yes, have come together with is to bring in the mental health aspect of it. Okay. Because the youth mental health is kind of pushed aside in the community, in the state, and we all see it every time.

03:26

everywhere. Our goal is to not only  help the youth with their mental, but the family. Because the family is the unit.  It’s like you when you’re building a home foundation, you have your different pieces in the rebar. Well, the child is one piece of the foundation, the mom and dad, the brothers and sisters are the other part. So we’re looking to integrate those together. as  like I told you that day, you know, we all have backstories. We all know and seen the struggles firsthand in the community.

03:56

So our goal is to help address those.  may not fix and help everybody, but at least we can provide them with a tool and a resource.  You know, our mission is to make sure that those future youth entrepreneurs of tomorrow have the resources  and the accessibility to product management, marketing strategies, to those businesses out there that want to help. That’s why we’re looking for those business mentors to come in, bring those mentees to their business. Let’s get them.

04:24

into a program tour. can go for a few weeks, learn how the business is learned firsthand from those business owners. That’s such an interesting component because you see a lot of these kind of  entrepreneurship programs and things, right?  And I can’t think of any except Yes Now that incorporates kind of that mental health  portion of that, which is such an important  component.

04:47

And so how does that kind of integrate? Because mental health just in general in this country is in an awful state, right? It’s really hard to get the help that you’re looking for. It’s really hard to,  it seems like the younger, like you said, it’s just kind of like pushed aside. So how does that integrate into your programs?  We all know that when you started business, business is very stressful. You’re not only dealing, you know, as adults are dealing with the home life, the business life, then the financial, the personal, well, it’s the same thing with the kids.

05:13

They have that mental health, but you know, a lot of them come from homes that have been disrupted either by physical abuse, drug abuse, whatever, but they have such amazing ideas and talent to develop these businesses. And with the mental health aspect, we want to address that because not only are they gonna, we want to have a business, we have a business, but I got school and then I got the home life. And so we’re trying to figure out tools, working with certain professionals. I’ve been talking with a few of the universities here in San Antonio to bring that together.

05:42

because that has to be addressed. Because once you fix that mental health in a young man, young woman who wants to own their own business, look at the potential. And the economic drive and the economic stability that’s gonna be created for them and not only them, but for their family and for their long-term, you know, because at the end of the day,  we do this as a nonprofit.  What  we get out of it is sitting back and going, wow.

06:11

that mentee mentor, that mentee, young man, young woman, look how successful they are.  And that’s because with us, as we all know in business, the easy part is to fall down. The hard part is to get back up. Well, we, yes, we’re going to reach our hands out. We’re going to pick them back up. We’re going to dust them off. We’re going to find out where did you stumble? Where, what caused you to fall? And with our team, we have such amazing individuals on our board. I mean,  we have an amazing president.

06:42

We have our vice president, Vanessa. We have our secretary, Fenton, who’s one of the founders. We have Crystal, we have Matthew, we have Amber, myself, but it takes a team. Absolutely. It takes a village to make a difference. Absolutely. And the impact that you’re creating, You’re reaching your hand out to help these entrepreneurs, these young entrepreneurs kind of stand back up, but you’re also providing them the tools so when they do fall down in the future, they can get back up. They know that they can do it and they have what And that’s when it comes to documentation is the biggest.

07:10

key to these young men and young women is what caused you to fall. Let’s write it down. So we’re going to start asking them, write a diary, a business diary for yourself, a personal diary for yourself. Then you come in and when you’re with your mentor or mentee, you can sit there and talk to your mentor. They can talk to me and Jack. We have our own personal experiences. We both grew up fighting the generational poverty and fighting the struggles in single moms and homes.

07:37

We were there, so we’d use our own personal experiences to say, Hey, we know what it feels like. And for some of these kids, they look at us, Oh, you have this, yes, I do not, but we didn’t grow up like that.  We worked, we busted our butts to have what we have. But we want you to do the same. Absolutely. Yeah. And those, that’s such an important component of anything in life, not just entrepreneurship, anything in life. And so I want to kind of pivot a little bit here and Jacqueline, you started, yes, right?

08:05

And so what kind of led you, what was your background?  How did that kind of lead you into starting this nonprofit specifically that helps young entrepreneurs? Yes. So  I own a business and our business is about business strategists. So what we do is we really go into businesses that are already successful and we just help them recalibrate,  give them a facelift or, you know, really help them align, create alignment for their company. So we’ve been doing this with

08:33

a lot of companies from the Silicon Valley, so a lot of startups there, but also a lot of Fortune 100 companies as well. And so in doing this type of work,  Fatt and my business partner, who’s also,  we are the founders of the Yes Nonprofit, we came together and we’re like, you how can we give back into the community? And we really wanted to  drive philanthropy  as a component of what we were doing with our business. And

09:01

what we saw was that there is a gap between potential and access, you know, especially in the underprivileged,  you know, areas of the town, you know. And so  as we looked into like what access wasn’t there, especially with the type of clientele that we were working with and getting to see  what they had access to, and then also looking at people that were in the startup realm and what they did not have access to. And a lot of the times the entrepreneurs were saying,

09:30

God, if only I knew this stuff when I was younger or gosh, if only they taught this in school.  And as we came to the drawing board of we want to give back, we want to  get more involved in philanthropy, those were the things that came up the most for us. It only made sense because we were already doing it and we still are currently doing it in our day-to-day business.

09:52

So it really aligned well and you were able to create kind of the impact that you guys are creating today. That’s what our business is all about, creating alignment. So  of course it was going to be an alignment. Perfect. And then so as you decided to start, yes, and started kind of bringing in  people like Joseph and the rest of your board into this, how did their paths kind of lead them to that? And I kind of want to talk a little bit about like your background because you have a really interesting story about how you landed here as well. how did you start picking your team and figure out

10:21

Who made sense to kind of execute this with you? No, absolutely. I mean, obviously people that hear about what we’re doing with Yes, they want to be a part of it and they want to be involved because it is very unique, right?  And so the components that we deliver. But as we were beginning to build,  we  were looking  strategically for people that not only had the passion for it, because passion’s easy. A lot of people have passion to start a business and it doesn’t go anywhere, right?

10:48

But it wasn’t just about the passion, but it was also the influence of that component as well, which is how much influence do you have in your community?  How much influence do you have with  getting to lead people in a better direction? You know, because you could have influence also, but lead them not in a good direction or more self-profiting,  you know, kind of direction. So  it was about that. And then the other component was

11:15

You know, how are you able to bring this all together and what’s your stick ability and commitment like, you know?  So those components were very valuable to us  because we are dealing with youth and  you know, every single one, I mean, there’s such a unique story behind every one of our board members. We also have a layer of junior board members as well. So these were handpicked, hand selected for  junior board members that came from our program, but they were hand selected because of

11:45

not just the ambition, because of their ability to give back and wanting to be stewards of leadership. So that’s amazing in the community. And that was the other thing too, like a lot of our board members. mean, look at Joseph, for example, amazing, amazing background. You know his background. He can talk about it here in a moment,  amazing background. But his ability to move things forward is what made the difference for us. And that’s, he listed all of our board members already.

12:12

Every single one of them has the ability to make and move impact. So that’s what we looked for. that’s exactly how you stuck to your  mission. That is amazing. then so Joseph, can you tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how that led you to  all the amazing work you’re doing?  My background, what I do today for my community and the people here in the state of Texas is coming from how I grew up. I grew up with nothing.  You know, my mom raised seven kids by herself.

12:42

Wow. You know, we’re all successful. We’re all very grateful to have a mother that stood up and didn’t walk away, didn’t give up on us. You know, I’m like I tell people I’m number six or seven. I’m towards the bottom of the pole. know, but my background is, you know, I left the west side of San Antonio. I grew up in a poor neighborhood. I tell people all the time, I know what it is. I have no electricity, no water, no food. Hand me down clothes. How are you going to get there? How are you going to make it?

13:12

That’s why a lot of the business owners that I come across have said, hey, I’ve been there. I know that. know that. Well, these kids need to know that that’s how we all started. We didn’t  come out with gold spoons and silver spoons. didn’t have any. I went to Penn State. I got a physics degree. I joined the military. I served my country.  And I started my own business. I did consulting on my own. I lived in New England for 16 years, almost 16 years in Boston. I have three beautiful children.

13:41

And I’m proud to say in the last two years, all three of my daughters just finished medical school. That’s amazing. Congratulations on that. And doing it as a parent by yourself, it’s not easy, especially with girls. It’s definitely not easy. But  my background is I became a PTA dad when my daughters were in elementary. He’s the girl dad. I’m the pink. I love pink. Jack had met me. wore Oh, you have to see his I pink socks on. When you have pink socks on. Right. Pink socks on.

14:08

I’ll show you. There’s my pink socks. Oh, wow. They are. I started as a PTA dad at Colonial Hills Elementary. know, the PTA mom was there. She was leaving. Had nobody else to do it. A good friend of mine, who I still communicate with, his is Brian Cortese, were two dads, both had daughters.  And we says, you know what, we’ll run the PTA.  And Texas PTA said, well, we’ve never had dads do it. Because it’s a very, everybody thinks PTA is a mom thing.

14:38

You know, and that was my drive. I said, okay, well, I’ll be a PTA president. Became a PTA president. And 2017, I was appointed to the Northeast ISD School Board and became a board member of district research, my NEISD, proudly. You know, and in that time I met with Maureen Mollack, with David’s Law, Dr. Richard Middleton, and was part of the writing with David’s Law. You know, it was…

15:04

did a lot of advisory for that stuff, you know. And you see a lot of things in schools, but to make a difference as a mom and a dad, or as a grandparent or an uncle, if you don’t have children, it doesn’t matter. You can be an inspiration to a young man, young woman who needs it. You know, and I’ve always believed in giving back. You know, that’s why the day that I met Jacqueline, you know, I was the first one there, she was there, there was nobody else there, and we just started talking, and my belief is…

15:32

You know, everybody has their different beliefs and faith.  And politics. And politics. And education, doctorate. And everything, really. I look more on the faith side of it, is because God brings people into your life for a reason. Yes. God made it so that me and Jacqueline crossed paths that day. And what she told me, the amazing things that she wanted to do with Yes, and what her and Vanessa and Fante were trying to achieve, and what they were trying to get going.

16:01

I know, and like I told her when I saw, when I got involved with this, we’re still babies at this, but I’m very, she can tell you, I’ve rewritten the bylaws. I’ve rewritten a lot of the policies for the board because they have to be in coercion with the laws of the state of Texas and the federal government. And that’s what his expertise is. And I went, and she can tell you, I rewrote everything. And everything that I write, I write to the board. We change it, we modify it.

16:26

But that’s the key to running a business. There’s rules and regulations to everything. You have to know how to do it and not just, oh, I’m going to go make some money.  Well, how do you make your money if you don’t manage it? You’re not making anything. So my goal with Yes is for us to take this not only where we are in San Antonio today, but we’re going to take it statewide, citywide, countywide. All the powers that be, we want them involved. If you have a business, you started a business and you…

16:53

hear what we are saying today that those stories resonate with you, that when you started, nobody was there to help you. Nobody was there to guide you through it. We want you to step in now and share those stories with our kids. Come and do the presentation at some of our events. Come and speak to our mentees that are involved in our program. And  that’s the key to this. It takes a village to make a change, but together, it’s like we say, yes, we can.

17:19

Absolutely. Yeah. And so you, you both bring like a wealth of business knowledge and experience and desire to create impact, know, consulting PTA, pink socks, nonprofit work, right?  Jacqueline, you’re bringing your VC background, your, your business side.  So it really seems like you guys did create like the perfect team to build this organization,  which is amazing.

17:46

So I want to talk a little bit about how your programs kind of work and how  young entrepreneurs that maybe have this idea that they want to go through one of your programs, how they get involved in that and how they actually move through and progress through. Yes. Yeah. So our programs with our mentorship program, they progress through it. So it’s entry level, they go through an application process and then they also do an interview with us. So we interview them specifically to see if they’re going to be able to have the stamina to go the five months, cause that’s a long time.

18:15

for a 12 year old through 18 years old right now. Right now in this cohort that we have, we have 12 through 18 right now and they are very excited, very on fire. So the first steps are basically uncovering and discovering who they are and identifying those drinks that they have and what are something that they’re really not interested in, right? So we uncovered that part and it’s more about that identity work, right? And then the second part is more of like,

18:42

Okay, great. Now that you understand who you are, what you’re passionate about and why you love doing those things, let’s look at something in the community, in your society, in your neighborhood, in your family that  needs a solution, that there’s a problem and it needs a solution. So a lot of kids that we work with,  they talk about parks.

19:05

how they can’t go outside to the park because they’re getting eaten up by mosquitoes or they have to spray themselves with a bottle of repellent.  And even when they do get there, the equipment’s hot.  so they talk about all this stuff, right? And in their business plan, right now, currently, they’ve already developed like, okay, well, they can add this greenery. And they talked about certain greenery that cools down like certain landscapes. But then they also talked about awnings and then…

19:32

little waterfalls and then misters that come from the actual like bars of the playground, you know? So they talk about all this stuff. It’s very creative, but it’s like that’s solving a problem in the community and it will get people to go and participate in parks and go out for the day, you know, go outside, just go to their local park.  Um, so that’s going to be the next thing. What is there, what problem, what, what problem in the society do you think you can solve? You know?

20:00

Some other people said they live in a community with a lot of senior citizens. So they’re like, we want to create like a Roomba for  lawn mowing. And I’m like, oh, that’s awesome. And then it has a sensor for like concrete edges and like the borders of like all that stuff. So they’re really coming up with these ideas, but our program isn’t designed to like, how can you make a ton of money? It’s more designed of

20:25

What problems do you see and how can you solve them based on your  strengths and your identity and who you are, right? And then once we get them through that phase, then we really do the  breakdown of the business, right? The business is like, okay, how would you market that specific business? How  would you get funding for that business? So we have them build pitch decks. We have them do lean models, like all of that stuff. So they’re able to do that. We brought in a VC firm, so they were able to pitch.

20:53

to the VC firm live and get real-time feedback from the VC firm. And these are people that have access to money. And if they see an opportunity within one of our students,  is that  networking avenue. The biggest thing that we also saw with a lot of people that we work with,  a lot of the startups,  they weren’t readily available to access to funds.

21:20

And that’s the biggest thing. Everybody needs money for their startups, you know, but where do they get the money if they weren’t born into wealth and they don’t have access to  that type of wealth, right?  So being able to put these individuals, the students into communities where they’re able to get  right on access, straight on access with individuals  that are running VC firms, that are multimillionaires. We do panel events for them at certain  phases in the five month program. We’ve done panels.

21:50

So we bring out people that are already making multimillion dollars, but the key avenue here is they rubbed two red pennies together and made that money. They didn’t  have it. They weren’t born into it. So it really gives them that no excuse kind of  atmosphere. Like they had no money and they made this happen and they saw a problem in the community and they solved it by doing X, Y, and Z. And so really giving them that path.

22:16

And then once we go there, we talk about budget, we talk about how do you make a return. And then now we talk about being stewards of wealth. How do you make that money grow? And then also how do you give back to your community? So those are all key components within the program. So now you’ve made a million dollars with your, let’s say your Roomba, you know, so these are, as we’re walking through it, they build it in teams, they get together in little teams and they have to go through all the marketing and do all that.

22:45

Now that they’ve made money, fake money, you know, and now they’re like, okay, we need to do this. So then once they go through that phase of it, they built this component of,  um, of their business, of that business that we gave them and assigned to them. Then we exercise the ability for them to create their own idea. And then now with everything they just learned through here, how would they make their own idea, make money? That’s really cool because it gives us safe.

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place right through the assigned company to learn how to develop an idea, how to research it, how  to figure out your business model, and then allows for the freedom and creativity after that to bring your own idea to life. That’s pretty cool. So in how many  entrepreneurs have gone through the your programs? Yes. So right now we’ve actually just completed our next Tuesday will be our completion of our first school.

23:37

So Sunnybrook Christian Academy, they’re really excited  seniors and juniors that we’ve been working with for the last five months. So they’re completing their program. So it’s about 30 of them. It’s exciting. Yes. And then we have through our two cohorts that we’ve already done, I want to say it’s about 15 people. So about a good 45 people. We’ve been doing this for less than a year.

24:01

Our launch date of the program, our inaugural was July 25th of 2024. Oh, wow. So it’s coming, we’re coming up on a one year solid, but in that one year, we were already able to complete two cohorts, finish with one school, the mentorship program, and then successfully have a tutoring every Saturday for the students to come and learn.

24:23

That’s amazing. And that’s a lot to accomplish in less than a year or And we had a conference. And you had a conference. Okay. we held a conference, a youth conference, 2025. We did it the weekend of Easter. And we had, who do we have come Jenna Frank, who’s the new white Power Ranger. Her dad was David Frank, the original That’s amazing. She came all the way out from Hollywood. And to feed off of that, that’s one of the questions that you asked me that day. Well, how do you specifically design from what I want? And I told you, we…

24:52

We’re giving you the tools. You’re gonna give you all the tools and with those tools then you’re gonna develop your business for what you want. And that was one of the key questions you asked me. How do you do it for just one person? We don’t. We’re giving you the necessary tools and now we’re gonna look at your specific idea and then we’re gonna develop from your idea because everybody’s ideas are different.

25:13

Absolutely. And that was one of the key questions I remember that day. you know, I’m a, we’re a bootstrap company and we’re doing really significant revenue now. But one of the things or the challenges that we had when we were building was we didn’t have access to the things that we needed to learn about our business, to learn how to scale it, to learn how to grow. And we kind of made a lot of that up as we went and we some mistakes and we did some things right. But that’s what I think is super.

25:40

why I’m super interested in Yes and the work that you guys are doing, because as founders that built in a space where we didn’t have the resources, where we didn’t have the ecosystem, where we didn’t have the things that we needed or wanted, I firmly believe it’s our responsibility to create that thing, create that ecosystem that we wanted when we were building, And to support it. so it’s last year at Startup Week, I’ve had a lot of conversations on that topic about how…

26:08

You know, the ecosystem is super fragmented and it’s, it’s, it’s tough for people to build. And we need to start thinking about what future generations of startups look like, what future generations of entrepreneurs look like. And then this year I met you guys. I was like, oh my gosh, that’s perfect. So, but yeah, that was one of things that I was really curious about because every step of our journey has been very unique to our experiences, our knowledge, our lack of knowledge, our weakness, um, and the direction that we want to take our company. And so when you’re able to.

26:36

create the foundational tools like you were just describing. to address each one. How to address those very unique needs for each entrepreneur and companies. it sounds like you guys do that by teaching the foundations and then supporting each of those entrepreneurs as they develop their own ideas. And I feel like that’s a really important component as well because as we do the mock businesses, right, they’re able to express a lot of freedom and creativity because when they

27:04

start to work on their own personal business, they kind of hold back a little bit, you know, when that was being led first. So it’s like, okay, now we worked that out with our beta. We did a beta before we started our cohorts. So we did the beta and the beta was like, let’s just focus on your business. And it was, there was a lot of resistance, but when we put, we front loaded it and said, okay, we’re going to do a mock business first.  That  really helped the ideas and creativity for here because they already made themselves look

27:33

or came up with a flawed idea, or they’re like, oh yeah, that’s not gonna work, you know? And so, and it was as a group, you know? But then when they started working on it as their own, then it was like, yeah, I know what I need to be doing here. Okay, yeah, okay, that might not work, so let’s just try this out. And they were more fluid with wanting to make mistakes, and it was okay. So they implement those tools that we’re giving them. So they’re actually digging back into the toolbox and looking at what we have taught them and what they’ve learned.

28:02

in that process. And that’s where that development comes in. That helps with their development.  It gives them more freedom to do it because it’s their dream. It’s your dream. It’s not our dream. Our dream is just to give you the, like I said, we’re giving you the foundation.  But the biggest thing too  with what we’ve noticed with the students is that some of the students didn’t have, like there was a differentiation, right? There’s the students that had a lot of support at home. Their parents are like, yes, I want you to be a part of this.

28:31

And then we had students that were like,  why do you want to do that? Just go get a job when you  go to work at McDonald’s, like you don’t even need to go to college, you know, so very different  type of backgrounds, right?  But the people that were attending against like their family’s best wishes or even getting negative feedback, you know, as they were going home and talking about it, they developed a layer and I, you know, and it’s like what we tell them, there’s going to be people.

28:59

as you’re building your business that are not gonna believe in your business.  And right now you’re only seeing it  inside your home, but later on it becomes  bigger than that. And so you have to be okay and build that shield of armor that’s gonna protect your ideas and not let those ideas pop because someone came around with a popper. That’s so important too because so many people come around with that popper, right? And as an entrepreneur,

29:27

I mean, nine out of 10 people, whether you’re asking for investment or sales, are going to tell you, no, this is a silly go away, right? But it’s that 10th person. It’s that 10th person that helps you move your idea forward, but you’ve got to get through those no’s and being able to take that energy and channel it into a productive, a productive direction after you’ve been told no, or your idea doesn’t make sense, or you’re never going to make it or whatever those things are, right? It’s incredibly important to building that company. Yeah. So with.

29:55

these types of programs and helping these young entrepreneurs build their business, you probably need a lot of help and support from people in business, right? People to help mentor, people to help you run these programs. what is it that Yes needs and like what type of- We’re looking for entrepreneur mentors. I wanted to ask this question though. I want you to finish that, but I want you to answer the question.

30:18

What  would have taken for you to have the access to the resources that we’re giving right now? would you be  right now with your business if you grew up in this and you were able to have access, not only to  the mentorship, but to the network and to the resources? And I want you to think about where your developmental process as a business owner would be when you turned.

30:44

When did you launch your business? old were you? How early were you?  So two years ago, right? So I was, you know, I had some smaller projects like this fitness, the health tracking app, like some things like that that generated some revenue, but they weren’t serious runs at business, right? The first legit company was this one after working for startups, which by the way, working for a startup, it’s way different than running a startup. Yes! Oh my gosh.  Where’s the fire? Oh,  exactly.

31:13

But that’s the difference, right? We spent  more time than I would have wanted to, trying to understand how to actually do this thing, right? Okay, so you built a product, that’s great. You got to talk about it. You’ve got to understand the problems that you’re actually solving. You’ve got to figure out all of these things, accounting, right? All of these things. And then how do you pitch this? How do you money for it? Exactly. And even identifying if you need to raise and how much you need to raise and what you’re going to do with those. All of these things. How do you allocate those funds?

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And we time, I wouldn’t say wasted, but we spent time learning those things, right? We originally were selling to the wrong group.  we weren’t getting anywhere. And when we really finally learned that selling through partnerships, that’s what makes sense for us doing rev share deals.  But how long did that take you to find that out? Yeah. like  we were,  it was probably like the last like nine months,  12 months, something like that is when we really started actually gaining the traction that we were looking for. Cause we spent the first, you know, several months trying to understand this.

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You know, both of us working full time. And then as we bring on other people on the team, right. If we were able to just understand how to evaluate and how to move that forward from the beginning.  Right. would game changer.  Absolutely. You know,  traction as early as possible is important, whether you’re planning to raise or not. so knowing how to actually get that and how to understand what traction or what revenue matters as well. Right. Those are, that’s amazing information. And I think, you know,  we.

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all of us founders that have built and kind of figured that out as we went and fumbled and then move forward and all these things.  We’ve already learned that. Now we just pass that along, right? Help people learn that and understand that earlier.  I’m rambling. But how much did it cost you in money, time to have to uncover all of that? So that’s what this program is about. So when I say, when I ask you that question,  I ask,  what would you give back for somebody to have that?

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somebody at a younger age to have that, you know? And that’s what this is about when communities of entrepreneurs come together and they really see what  we’re doing and how we’re leading this. It’s about, it’s an easy, oh my gosh, that makes sense because I am that person. I was that person, but I didn’t get access to this. And that’s how,  that’s how business owners, entrepreneurs are getting involved. And that’s why they’re getting involved because there’s a deep rooted passion for them.

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It took me years to figure all that stuff out and you get to get this now. I want to be a part of that. I want to give of our resources, be a mentor, financially give because  my time capacity just doesn’t allow me to be a part of it. So that’s what we’re looking for. We’re for entrepreneurs that are out there. They have faced these struggles when they started  and we’re looking for sponsors for our program. We’re looking for program sponsors. We’re looking for business sponsors. We’re looking for business mentee mentors to come in and say, Hey,

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this young man, this young woman wants to do what I’m doing, I’m going to bring them in, I’m going to show them. And I’m going to help them develop their book. And that’s what it really comes down to because we’re giving you the tools so when you do fall, you can go, oh man, this is what they showed me. This is how I learned. This is what I learned in the program. Oh, I fell. It’s okay to ask questions because  if you don’t ask a question, you’re not going to get the answers that you need. And it’s okay because we try to tell them, you’re going to fail.

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You’re going to be prepared. But if we’re giving you, as they say, it’s like sports. You have the right padding, you’re prepared to fall.  So when you do fall, you bust out the payback and you’ve, what’s the next step? Okay. And it’s like one of our, our junior board members, his name is Samuel Torres. He said it best at our conference.  We have so many clips of him talking about it, like on our social media pages, but he talks about the one biggest thing that

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adults do is they overlook teenagers and overlook their capabilities, their potential, because they can’t make thousands of dollars. Why? Because they’re so young.  And he said, that’s a flaw  and we need to change that.  And that’s what he’s dedicated to, changing that theory, that mindset, that  outlook on youth. And the youth that we’re working with, they’re ambitious. They have the potential to take their idea and

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take it to the limits, you know, but when they don’t have the resources, the backing, the mentorship, the guidance, it’s only going to get so far and they’re going to make mistakes and they’re going have to figure it out. And there’s too much time spent wasted on that figuring it out part. But that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for entrepreneurs that have a business that would want to sponsor our program. They would want to take part in some of the presentations. They would want to share their business knowledge.

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And we’re also looking for business owners, entrepreneurs that maybe you have your own kids  that are excited about business. They’ve been raised in it all, all day long.  they want to be a part of our program. Like, you know, maybe you know, an ambitious youth and you’re like, this ambitious youth needs that guidance. They need this mentorship program. Like send them our way. We’re looking for ambitious youth, youth that are trying to change the trajectory of their financial outcomes.

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be self-reliant. This is what this program is instilled, is to become self-reliant. Even if you want to go out in life and get a nine to five  after that,  that’s fine. But you still have the ability to be self-reliant because you can take something from seed.

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planted,  growing, watering, sprouted.  And that’s what our goal is, is to teach self-reliance so that you can change your trajectory. And it’s like I said that day, I will meet with anybody, anytime, anywhere. And he will.  I will come if they want to know more about it. I want us to present it to their business partners, to their boards. I will go. And when Jacqueline’s available, I will bring her, I will bring other team members with me because I’m…

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believe it takes the village to make a difference, but we want to make sure that these kids have that chance that a lot of us in business today that are successful never had, but we don’t want that for the next generation of entrepreneurs. This is a time and an era for all of us as business owners that have been blessed that we’ve been able to overcome the challenges of adversity in the beginning of our careers in entrepreneurship. It’s time for us to come together and give back in a way that

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we’re raising a new generation that doesn’t have to, you know, go through all those different hurdles, but they can just get their idea and now make it successful. That’s awesome. That’s such a cool mission.  Where do you have a website or somewhere where people can go? Our website is yesnonprofit.org.

38:02

Yes, nonprofit.org. They’re welcome to go. When they go onto our page, you can look at the bar on the top of the page. It says, you can see the board. You can see the back stories on every one of our board members and our JBMs, our junior board members. Our stories are there, our mission, our vision, what we’re trying to achieve, what our goal is. And like I said, anytime, anywhere they want to talk, I’m there. Did you call me? I was there. Yeah, absolutely.

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very responsive and I don’t even think I was like, can you do a Wednesday? And you’re like, yes.  I will meet with anybody. I,  I, said we’re,  we still need help as all organizations do. And even our Instagram is a yes.nonprofit. Yeah. Yes.nonprofit. We definitely share everything with you. I’ll make sure we have everything sent to you. Amazing. All my content. have all my contact information. If anybody wants it, please feel free to share it with them.

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Jacqueline is an amazing writer. She’s got her second book coming out. She’s going to California to write her. She’ll go do a book signing with Barnes and Noble. I’m Congratulations on that. I’m very, very proud to have a president that is so involved with making a difference in the world. Definitely. And it’s not just the community and locally, it’s the world. She’s seen our vision, her vision, Fante’s vision, Vanessa’s, Matthew’s, Christo’s, Amber’s, myself. Our vision is to make a difference.

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And to let those young men and women know we care because why? Yes, we can together. That’s amazing. That’s an amazing sound bite too.  Awesome. Thank you so much, Jacqueline and Joseph for coming on the show. That was another episode of Beyond Giving, the best nonprofit podcast on the Boost network. Special thanks to  the nonprofits HQ and the Boost network for providing  the show and making it available and for yes,  youth entrepreneurship services  for  sharing their mission and their vision with us today.

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Learn more about them at yesnonprofit.org.