Exploring Career Achievement Award - Business

Do the following:

Learn how the stock market works and what makes stocks go up and down.

Invest $100,000 of fictitious money in five to 10 real stocks. Check prices on the stock page of a local newspaper once a week for 12 weeks. Determine economic events, such as interest rates dropping or increase in earnings, etc., that caused increases or decreases in your chosen stocks.

After you have tracked your stock for at least 12 weeks, make a presentation to your post, another post, a class, or another community group on your experiment, highlighting what your gross dollar and percentage investment gain or loss was.

Pick a product that can be sold to people your age. Find out how much money it costs to purchase this product wholesale. Calculate the cost of creating an organization to sell the product. Include the cost of buying, transporting, storing, and advertising the product, and paying the sales force. Set a price for the product that will allow the organization to pay operating costs and make a profit. Is the product's price competitive with other organizations selling a similar product? How much of the product must be sold to make a profit?

Find out whether your post can legally be made into a corporation. Contact an attorney or your state's secretary of state for the necessary legal documents.

Contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and get a copy of the rules related to hiring. Collect applications from local businesses and see whether any of the questions on the applications violate EEOC guidelines.

Do the following:

Choose a product that you could sell to other people your age. Design an advertising campaign for the product. Use television, radio, print, and point-of-purchase advertising as part of your plan.

Make a tabletop display of or presentation on your advertising campaign for your post.

Do the following:

Put together a sales presentation for an automobile. Decide who the target buying group will be. Decide how you will highlight the car's features and how you might overcome the objections of the potential customer. Do not forget to allow for servicing the car after the customer buys it.

Make your sales presentation to another individual. Ask him or her to critique how you did.

Tour the computer facility of a local business. See whether they have a mainframe or local area network (LAN) system. Determine whether the business uses commercial software or custom software designed for the business. Does it have document processing, spreadsheet, and database capability? Ask what information the business keeps in its database and have the manager demonstrate as much of the system as possible.

Set up a computer information system for your post. Put your financial records on a spreadsheet. Create a database for your youth participant records, and store all correspondence, meeting minutes, etc., in a word-processing system.

Do the following:

Learn the requirements for importing automobiles and/or motorcycles for sales in the United States.

Learn the requirements for selling in Mexico a product made in the United States.

Share your findings with your post, another post, or a community group.

With the help of an accountant, learn to review the annual reports of several companies. Identify and explain the two major financial statements - the income statement and balance sheet.

Lead a game of Monopoly for your post, another post, home, class, or a community group. Then lead a discussion of the game and have each player discuss whether their technique produced a net income or loss and the amount of assets (land, houses, and cash) they accumulated.

Do the following:

Learn how to balance a checkbook or savings book.

Open a savings or checking account.

Over 90 days, keep your account balanced.

Manage the funds for a post activity or other group activity. Collect and disburse funds, give and receive receipts, keep an accurate accounting balance sheet, and then report to the group on how you and they did.

Do the following:

Read and explain the annual report of a company.

Write a business plan for a new company.

Explain the use of the internet as a business component.