Local entrepreneurs helping provide a path forward for teens

By Kayla Penokie, Ilene Gould, Janice Allen

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    GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan (WXMI) — A group of men is banding together to help local teens start early when it comes to achieving their dreams and becoming financially literate.

Terry Sylvester and Joimonn Davis have been friends since childhood. Together with two other men, they’re planning to put on the Young Entrepreneurs Expo in Grand Rapids. They say they want kids 17 and under to feel independent, while also feeding back into the community.

“The importance is everything. Because I believe if we don’t learn that, then you get stuck in this society where you’re just a follower. And I’m not cool with being a follower,” said Sylvester.

However, what Terry Sylvester is “cool” with is entrepreneurship.

As the owner of Sylvester’s Luxurious Mobile Detailing in Grand Rapids, he knows a thing or two about running a business.

Together with Joimonn Davis, the two share their triumphs and struggles with being an entrepreneur in their podcast Surviving Startup, which they often shoot at the public access station WKTV.

“So we wanted to start a podcast that one showed our journey that made us transparent to people. So we can show you like, it’s not just you that is hard for, and because it looks good over here for somebody else. That doesn’t mean it’s not struggles going on,” Davis tells FOX 17.

“We’re no experts. We’re just guys who started and we’re continuing to go. So we hope that everything we teach or not teach because everything we share helps the next person,” says Sylvester.

Together, with Reverend Willie Anderson from My Brother’s Keeper and Eddie Jaroul with Success Definers, they are hosting the Young Entrepreneurs Expo off Birchcrest Drive in Grand Rapids on August 18th.

“With the young entrepreneur, it teaches you experience, it gets you out there to connect with people, which is one of the main things is connections, and just trickles down, just keeps going,” says Sylvester.

“I think as we begin to actually give them a space, to learn new skills in entrepreneurial field, connect with people their same age, then they will start to build a community within themselves,” says Davis.

During the event, kids 17 and under will learn career advice, connect with other young entrepreneurs and check out their vendor booths, and see where a business mindset can take them.

They’re things Sylvester and Davis both say are important elements to helping keep young people on a path forward and out of trouble.

“Everything it helps, like you just say, stay busy, it helps you stay busy for one. And when you have a goal, it gives you less time to interact with the nonsense,” says Sylvester.

“When people start to see these people be successful, will these children be successful, and you have other generations who they sew back into now it’s changing the whole look of what it really is, what it really means to be cool, when it stopped being cool to harm your own neighborhood, when it stopped being cool to destroy the people around you,” said Davis. “We have to normalize something that’s going to cultivate our children.”

In addition to networking opportunities, the expo will also feature lesson on gun safety with My Brother’s Keeper, which is the first black-owned gun shop in Grand Rapids. There will also be a school supply giveaway, which they are still collecting donations for.

To register for the expo call 616-329-0563 or email: youthentrepreneurshipstartup@gmail.com

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