Co-founder of the National Secondary School Entrepreneurship Competition, Dr. Christian Stone, is urging students to turn ideas into action and embrace failure as a part of success.
His words of advice came as he addressed hundreds of students and educators at an awards ceremony on Tuesday at NAPA.
He urged students to embrace failure, leverage technology, and turn ideas into reality without delay, noting that technology has made people somewhat “lazy.”
“Or you could go home, and you could say, you know what? I’m going to look into Shopify. And I’m going to learn how to set up my own store and sell my own products or my own services, selling to Trinis or the whole world. You could do that today. And in fact, you could go home, research global markets, design a logo. You could register your business. You could set up that bank account. You could literally do it today from a device.”
The National Secondary School Entrepreneurship Competition seeks to fill a void in business training and development with a business simulation competition designed to equip students with the required skills and critical thinking skills in the domain of entrepreneurship.
Dr. Stone pointed out that this year’s competition logged more than 5,600 hours of training, and nearly a third of the teams ranked in the top 10% globally.
He said the real win isn’t the trophy, but momentum.
“The difference between those who dream and those who achieve it’s just one word, it’s execution. Entrepreneurs, they don’t just talk about the ideas. They build them. They don’t wait for the right time. They don’t wait for that right time. Just make it the right time. Because right now is the right time. So when the ceremony ends, and the clapping done, those trophies that you have, you put them on your shelf, they start to gather dust.”
But he encouraged students to lean into technology, not fight it.
“That same technology that gives you the instant access – don’t just use it to consume. Use it to create. If you’re serious about becoming an entrepreneur, there’s no reason to wait. You can do it right now. So today, just today, you could go home, and you could set up a LinkedIn profile, and you literally could message any business person across the entire world.”
The competition saw schools winning prizes in various categories, but the overall winner was St. James Secondary, with Marabella North Secondary copping the second and third place spots.