Last evening I was invited to attend an event at Buchholz High School. The occasion was the Installation of Officers and Member Induction to the Academy of Entrepreneurship, a magnet program within the Alachua County District School system.

In addition, new officers were presented for those students involved with DECA. For those of you unfamiliar with DECA Inc., it is a not-for-profit student organization with members in all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, as well as Canada, Germany and other countries.

DECA exists to prepare emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management. It has chapters in high schools and colleges around the globe.

All students involved last evening pledged to carry out to the best of their ability all the duties and responsibilities of membership in the Academy of Entrepreneurship.

Every citizen of Alachua County should know that among our students across the district, are the emerging leaders of tomorrow. They are motivated, intelligent, hard working, and very impressive.

As an entrepreneur myself, in the world of financial services, I’m proud of my affiliation with these two programs. It’s often easy to become discouraged by what we see and hear in the media about issues facing out country in the early twenty first century. But I’ve always believed that the glass is half full, and nothing I saw or heard expressed last evening could possibly change that. We are going to be in good hands as the next generations take our place on the stage.

My role in the proceedings was to speak to the parents first and the students second. Personally, I’ve been involved with the Advisory Board to the two academies at Buchholz ( the Academy of Finance and the Academy of Entrepreneurship ) since their inception in the 1990’s.

The focus of my remarks was to help parents become more aware of a process that exists to help them finance the cost of a college education for their children. I concluded with the comment that the best way to pay for it is with someone else’s money. Watch this short presentation to find out what I mean. CLICK HERE TO WATCH