Jill Schramm/MDN Kaidence Hase, a junior at Drake-Anamoose High School, and Zack Volson, a sophomore, talk about the entrepreneurial project their FBLA chapter conducted last fall. They presented the project Thursday on behalf of their chapter at the Minot State University Academic Showcase.

Small, rural communities can be challenging places to start businesses. Seeing start-ups in their community fail, including two in one year, the future business leaders at Drake-Anamoose Public School began to wonder if there really was a future in their hometown.

“They had this idea in their head that no matter what they’re going to do, they’re going to fail unless they had the right last name,” said Kaidence Hase, state president and Drake-Anamoose chapter president for Future Business Leaders of America. “We realized that was because that’s all they had ever seen was failure. All the businesses that we currently have were open long before any of us were born. They’ve never seen someone start a business firsthand and grow it from the bottom up. So we really wanted to show them that it is possible.”

The Drake-Anamoose FBLA created a market day experience for its members that Hase and chapter vice president and treasurer Zack Volson presented at the Minot State University College of Business’s first Academic Showcase on Thursday.

The showcase included 34 presentations by 62 MSU and high school students across categories of high school, undergraduate group, undergraduate individual, graduate group and graduate individual.

The Drake-Anamoose FBLA showcased its project from last fall, in which members exercised their entrepreneurial skills. They selected products to sell, determined costs, pricing and any loans needed from the FBLA, developed sales strategies and conducted marketing. On American Enterprise Day on Nov. 15, they set up booths at the school, drawing customers from around the Drake area to shop for bracelets, freeze-dried candy, Hawaiian drinks and many other items available for sale during store hours from 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.

“After all their expenses and everything, they got to keep their own money, too, that they made,” Volson said.

“We had 100 percent member participation. Ninety-three percent said they would participate again,” Hase said.

Adviser Joan Birdsell said about 40 of the school’s 73 students in grades seven to 12 participate in FBLA. The marketing project was a good real-life experience for them, and an activity that could light the spark for some youth to consider entrepreneurship as a career path, she said.

Hase said all but one booth made a profit, and that group later came into the black with after-market sales. Profits ranged from 50 cents to the $300 taken in by the popular pizza booth.

Hase said students discovered how difficult, and how fun, it can be to operate a business. As far as altering the attitude about business failure, the project is believed to have made inroads.

“We opened up members’ hearts and their eyes to something a lot bigger,” Hase said.

“Just because our towns are small doesn’t mean our dreams have to be,” Volson added.

Presenting at the MSU Academic Showcase offered an opportunity in addition to the state FBLA conference for the Drake-Anamoose chapter to hear from judges before competing at the national FBLA conference this summer.

“It was really cool to be able to come here and receive more feedback,” Hase said. “It’s going to be very, very beneficial. We’re very grateful we were invited to it.”

MSU plans to hold the showcase each spring and involve the Minot community further, event coordinator Maleeha Latif said.

“It’s a great chance for students to showcase their work and network with industry professionals,” she said.