Running a Real Business Project is not an easy task. It has lots of moving parts and things to take care of on your end. The students will react in different ways. Some really light up and go deep in their businesses, whilst others are uncomfortable with the experience and try to avoid it. The structure and activities provided on this page are all designed to help get those uncomfortable students to make a move, and to help steer the excited ones in the right direction for getting a successful student business up and running.
A student business project is a little different from just starting any business. We have a specific time frame in mind for finding an idea, developing it into a viable business, and making sales before the culminating event. All this whilst still being full-time students, athletes, club members, part-time workers, and home helpers. Therefore, we are going to help students find ideas that are easy to start, quick to start, free (or cheap) to start, and still exciting to work on. It may not be their dream business just yet, but it will teach them all the basic steps for getting started.
For you, the business guide, this can be an uncomfortable experience. We are going to see students struggle with finding “the right” business idea, come up with ideas that we know won’t work, or fall in love with a vision that isn’t practical for the project. We can ask lots of questions and encourage reflective thought, but we have to avoid taking over the project. The students need to be allowed to find their way through the maze, even if it means hitting some dead ends, realizing it won’t work, and starting again. There’s so much more power to that kind of learning than the type where you solve all the problems before they even occur. We want to create a business community that supports and helps one another, even if they are working on different business ideas. Collaboration and networking are important parts of life, not just business, and we don’t often get the opportunity to truly flex those muscles in school.
On this page, you’re going to get suggestions for how you can run the project. It’s not a fixed formula, and you may decide to do things in a different order, leave out aspects, or replace them with other topics more relevant to the course you teach. I encourage you, like the students, to try things out, see what works, and keep iterating to get the best project for your students. The suggested schedule is based on a 60-90 minute class period. You may need to lengthen or shorten based on what you have with your students.
If you would like to watch a full PD presentation about the project and how to implement it, you can find it here.
The REAL Business Project is a FI Educator resource for which FCPS has a district-wide license. No part of this resource may be shared in public domains or resold.
This is the suggested pathway you follow if this is your first time running the project. Each of the steps in the pathway above goes with a resource linked on this page. Below, you’ll get a brief description of each one and a suggested timeline for implementing.
If you are planning to hold a business fair at the culmination of this project, go through the following checklist before starting the project with your students.
4+ weeks before event (ideally just before you start the project)
Choose a date and time
Secure a location (big spaces like gyms, cafeterias, media centers, or even long open hallways can work). In school and within school hours is better than out of school and outside of school hours for getting the rest of the student body to attend, and improves the odds of all student business owners being able to attend.
Inform admin, custodians, and any other important school-based staff of your plans to ensure no conflicts with things like testing or other events. Book the event via the Facilities Use portal.
Invite high-profile guests and judges to attend. Local press, chamber of commerce members, superintendent, politicians, large corporations CEO’s, celebrities (can’t hurt to ask!), etc. Aim for 1 judge per 5 businesses at the fair.
Secure a sponsor for the event (optional). Approach a local bank, credit union, wealth management company, or locally owned business to sponsor your business fair. Prizes may include 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Best Table Display, Most Creative Idea, Best Presenter, Impact Award (business that has the greatest impact on the world). For example, Middletown HS business fair has the following prizes: 1st - $300, 2nd - $200, 3rd - $100, $25 each for the 4 special categories mentioned above.
Inform students and parents of the date. Remind them to block the date/time in their calendar and inform any relevant teachers or work-study bosses of the need to be in school during that time.
Make a plan for getting students from the start of the project to the business fair by adding the activities on this page to a calendar, accounting for days off, unexpected closures, and losing 1-2 days to unexpected school events or drills.
2 weeks before the event
Create your Business Fair Posters and display them around the school.
If you have a public notice display screen for student announcements or to showcase work, share the Business Fair Graphic (Presentation) along with any advertisements the students have created for their businesses (See Day 12).
Make sure the business fair date is clearly posted in your classroom.
Send invitation reminders to parents via an email (or letter home if you have the bandwidth and resources for it. It could be fun to have the students send an invitation letter or card home with details of the fair!). The best response rate and attendance will come if you personally call the parents and invite them to attend the fair. It's time-intensive, but it works better than email.
If you haven’t invited your judges and special guests to attend yet, make sure you contact them now or follow up if you haven’t heard back.
Let your students know that they will be starting their own businesses with the aim of actually selling to the public and making a profit. The project will end with a business fair where they will be able to show off their businesses to the rest of the school and present to judges in a one-on-one setting. Inform them of the fair date, have them add it to their phone calendars, and set any reminders needed for booking off work. Notify parents early to avoid appointment conflicts, have parents show up, and get an extra reminder for students to book off work-study, etc.
You are likely going to be met with mixed reactions. Some will be excited, some puzzled and unsure, and others will be anxious. Let them know that this project is something different, that they probably haven’t done before, and that you will all be facing the discomfort together. For those worried about the presentation, you can look to allay fears by clarifying that it will not be on stage to a huge audience. Just a one-on-one conversation. If they need the judge to be you, that’s an easy compromise to make.
EXAMPLES TO SHARE: MHS Fall 2024, MHS Fall 2025, MHS Spring 2026
Common Questions/Complaints:
I don’t have time to do anything else outside of school. How am I supposed to start a business?
We are going to be devoting plenty of classroom time to this, and you will be choosing a business idea that fits your desired lifestyle and time commitments. If working outside of school is not an option, choose something that can be done totally in school or is something like a single event.
I don’t have any business ideas. I’m not that type of person.
We will do several exercises to help us come up with business ideas. There is no “entrepreneur gene”. Creativity and seeing solutions to people’s problems is a brain muscle that we can develop. By the end of the project, you will be seeing ideas everywhere! You don’t have to invent anything new and you can even just choose an idea from a list that you find online if you’d like.
I don’t want to be a business owner in the future.
Not a problem! There are tons of skills and experiences we are going to develop in this project that will be useful in an employment situation too. This is a great resume builder for getting you to stick out from all the others and demonstrate your ability to think creatively and solve problems. You can always choose to work in a partnership with someone else who has an idea you like.
The students are going to do 3 activities to help them build a solid business idea.
Activity 1: BUSINESS IDEA BRAINSTORM - Total Time: 15 minutesIn this activity, students will do a mind map activity where they are prompted to dump as many thoughts as they can onto an activity sheet in the given amount of time. There is a YouTube video you can use to prompt the students through the exercise if you don't want to do it yourself. Once done, try to map things written down in each category together to identify business ideas.
In this activity, you will first do a class demostration of how to collect problems or challeges for a target group (example: what are the problems in our school?), and then propose solutions to those problems. Then, students will identify a new target group or situation to list problems for and then propose solutions.
Using the two previous activities, prior ideas, internet searches, and/or inputting the information from the two activities into an AI tool, generate a list of 20 business ideas along with a brief description of each idea. Bring the list of 20 ideas to the next class.
Next up, they are going to take their 20 business ideas from the previous day and rank the ideas based on how excited they are about working on the idea and how easy it is to start. They don’t need to find “the one”. They just need an idea that they can see themselves staying excited about for the duration of the project. It needs to be something that fits their schedule, has a path to profitability, and can be started quickly. The activity will offer several probing questions to help guide the students towards ideas that will work best for the project.
They should come out of the activity with a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. If it looks like Plan A is not working, for whatever reason, the student should quickly pivot to Plan B, and then C if needed.
The students are all still working individually at this point. We want each student to go through the process of coming up with ideas and developing an idea before they join forces with another student.
In this activity, students will take each of their 20 ideas and add them to the given 2-axis chart based on how excited they are about working on the idea and how easy it is to start. Once done, the ideas closest to the top right corner are likely to be their best ideas for the project. The ideas fo through the stress test on the following page before deciding the final ranking.
Once they have their Plan A idea, they are ready to develop it further. Completing a Business Snapshot will help them to develop their idea further and see if it really feels viable for the project.
Every student will complete a Business Snapshot for their top business idea, following the guide included in the resource. The snapshot is an adaptation of the Business Model Canvas and is used for "Lean Startups" in place of a business plan. If you or your course prefers a full business plan you can do it in addition to the Snapshot once the projects are more developed.
Your role in this activity is to help answer questions, ask thought-provoking questions to the students, and encourage them to tell you more about their ideas. Don’t direct them or point out flaws in their thinking or assumptions. Let them figure it out for themselves!
Activity 2: BUSINESS SNAPSHOT - Total Time: 40+ minutesFirst, complete a snapshot together as a class for a fictional business, such as a lawncare company, bakery, or craft vendor. Follow the guide in the resource to help fill each section.
Then, have each student complete their own Business Snapshot.
Now it’s time to let the students form teams if they would like to work with others. Encourage the students to think about the following:
Do you like your idea a lot and want to bring someone in to help you or are you interested in working with someone else on their idea?
What skills and resources do you need? What can you offer someone else?
Will you work well with the person you are considering? Will they be reliable and produce work that meets your expectations for quality?
Do your schedules match up for working together? When are you available to work on the business and how much time can you give each week?
Are you happy to share the profits of the business with someone else? Do you need a partner or an employee?
The recommended team size is 1-3 people. Any more than 3, and you usually end up with someone being carried by the rest of the team unless there is a very dedicated group with strong leadership. Most student entrepreneurship competitions, including the future verion of StartUp Frederick for small businesses, have a 3 person limit per business.
Once teams are settled, revise the Business Snapshots with partners and then move forward with coming up with a Business Name and Logo.
Time to get creative again! Deciding on a business name and logo can be one of the first moments where a student or group feels like "oh, this is a real thing", but it can also be the first major stumbling block where they stall due to being unable to settle on the "perfect" name and logo. Your role is to encourage them to make a first draft which can always be updated or changed in the future if they think of something better, but challenge them to leave the class with a name and logo in place.
The resource below includes 2 videos to show your students before they begin deciding on a business name and building a logo. We want simple, descriptive, easy-to-say names that help inform potential customers about what the business sells. Same with the logo. Simple designs, 1-3 colors, something that gives a hint about what the business does, ideally includes the business name. Avoid using pictures and stick to icons and simple illustrations on Canva.
If they don't finish in class, make it homework to come into your next class with a business name and logo ready to go.
Teacher Tip: Make sure students submit a collaboration link to their logo so you can make changes if needed and you can get a high resolution copy for business fair signage.
Activity 1: BUSINESS NAME AND LOGO - Total Time: 60+ minutesFirst, complete a snapshot together as a class for a fictional business, such as a lawncare company, bakery, or craft vendor. Follow the guide in the resource to help fill each section.
Then, have each student complete their own Business Snapshot.
A mastermind meeting is another word for a brain trust, and the purpose of these is to get people working together to lift each other’s businesses up and be successful. You can/should run several of these meetings over the course of the project, and the more you can do, the better. There are 3 built into to this project timeline along the way, but if you have the space to make it a weekly routine, say on a Friday or Monday, you’ll see even more benefits.
The mastermind meeting is one of the most effective activities you will do for getting students to take action and move forward. One of the biggest challenges students will face is moving from theory and paper to action and starting their business. They can spend the whole project plotting the greatest idea ever, but if they never try to actually sell it, they've missed the biggest learning moment. The meetings will force students to consider next steps, create goals, and share their progress with the rest of the group. It's not a formal presentation, but rather a quick update on what they are working on and what they need to do next.
You need to create a culture for these meetings from the very first moment. Use the Google Slide provided with the expectations for the meeting or create your own with the group. The most important thing is that all devices are away once the meeting starts. Second most important, is that we are respectful of the speaker and quiet while they talk, and curious with our questions.
Teacher Tip: For grading this activity, have 2 parts. One is a participation grade with meeting etiquette (mark down students who don't follow the meeting guidelines). The second is a completion grade for taking notes on each business using the provided activity sheet. Make them do it on paper to avoid distractions that come with devices.
If the meeting runs over your allotted time, continue it the next day. Give students the prompts you want them to talk about on the board and allow 5 minutes before the meeting starts for them to jot down bullet points to talk about when it's their turn.
Activity 1: BUSINESS MASTERMIND MEETING - Total Time: 70+ minutesGive every student a copy of the mastermind notes sheet and write the talking points they should address on your board or add to the presentation slide with meeting expectations.
Each group gets 2-5 minutes to talk about their business: share the business name and synopsis, what they are currently working on, what is next on their to do list, and what they need help with or have questions about.
As the students share their business names and logos with you, along with the description of the business, this is a great opportunity to display them in your room for all to see! This increases the ownership and pride the students feel about their creation and builds pressure on lagging businesses to get their name and logo complete. Grid out a whiteboard in your room or use the poster printer in your school / CTC to get copies of the poster for your classroom.
Teacher Tip: Laminate the posters and write on them using whiteboard marker for years of reuse!
Resource: BUSINESS DISPLAY POSTERSA common myth and excuse you might get from students is "I don't have any money to start a business". Parents may also have concerns initially about needing to "fund" their venture when their kid starts asking for a bunch of equipment and materials to bring their dream business to life. It's important that you make clear to the students, parents, and your admin, that this project is designed to be a zero-dollar startup and at the bare minimum, shouldn't cost the students any of their own money to get started.
A lean startup is one which keeps costs extremely low in the beginning to allow for the business owner to test out their ideas and see if there is demand for the business BEFORE sinking a lot of money into it. They use the initial profits to fund the next stage of growth in their business and thus start without any credit or initial seed money. This allows for students to try, fail, learn, and try again without the risk of losing money.
This activity will help your students to explore the different ways to strip their business idea down to it's core concept and then help spark ideas for bringing it to life without spending any of their own money.
Teacher Tip: Make sure you communicate this and share the highlights of the activity once done with them so they also have ideas about how to support their teen starting a free or super-low-cost business.
Activity 1: THE ZERO DOLLAR STARTUP: HOW TO GET STUFF FOR FREE AND CHEAP - Total Time: ~40 minutesGive each business or student a copy of the student activity sheet and then take them through the provided slideshow presentation, pausing to brainstorm ideas together for each one. Also allow 1-2 minutes for the businesses to generate ideas specific to their own business.
An operating agreement is a document that is usually produced when you are formalizing the business entity into an LLC, with multiple owners or a board. It makes clear how different aspects of the business will run and forms the basis for future decision-making in the business. Getting our budding entrepreneurs to complete one helps them to bring order to their thoughts and consider parts of the business that maybe hadn’t crossed their minds yet.
For partnerships, the Founder's Agreement is the contract that everyone contributes to for setting expectations and roles for the members. It is a huge proactive step to take to avoid conflict in the future between members of the business, and this is often the point where students decide to actually not work together or to change groupings. It’s better to happen at the beginning than later on.
Give Sole Proprietors their version of the agreement, and Partnerships (2-3 members) their version. Once done, have each owner sign and date the agreement. Keep physical copies of the agreement in your classroom, available for students to view if they need to. This will help to settle arguments before they develop, since students have already agreed to how decisions will be made and disputes resolved.
Teacher Tip: At this point, the businesses will really start to branch apart in terms of what they are accomplishing and the pace at which they move. Some may even already be creating and selling products if they have an existing business or are really excited to get started! Others will still be hanging around the Business Snapshot stage and ruminating on their idea, waiting for the perfect one to pop up. Sit with these students, encourage them to pick something and to work on it until something else pops up or to do it until the end of the project and then jump into a different idea. Pick something that is really simple and easy to do since these are students who might lose steam quickly if they run into roadblocks or uncertainty about how to proceed.
Give each business the appropriate version of the activity (sole proprietor or partnership) and time to complete. Before they sign and date it, ask that they review it with you. Look for areas where they have not fully answered the prompt or forgotten an important decision point.
If you have tracked cash flow in your class as part of a different activity, such as in Monopoly, then this will be a very simple thing to introduce. This activity has two parts to it, and we're going to use the first part now. Give students the cash flow tracker spreadsheet and have them log any income or expenses to date, along with making a plan for updating the document on a regular basis. I like a daily reminder on my phone to do this.
From the Founders' Operating Agreement activity and this one, the question should arise about how to accept payment for the business and how to handle the income of the business.
💳Payment: The businesses will need to decide what type of payment they will accept for their business. If they are under 18, then they can't set up their own digital payment app such as Venmo, PayPal, or CashApp, BUT a parent can help them set up an account. Explain the situation to your class parents in an email and encourage them to help students set up at least one digital payment app and link it to a dedicated checking account for the business. Once the project is over, the students can close the account, but it's important to keep the money separate from their day-to-day spending. This is an important personal finance, business finance, and partnership practice which helps avoid conflict in the future.
💸 Managing Income: Our student businesses are going to start making money soon and it's important to have a plan for this income before the first sale actually happens. Once students know how they are accepting payment, they need to decide where they are storing the income of the business, and then how they are going to use it. Included in the Business Cashflow Google Document is a tab where students can see a Profit First model of utlizing the income of a small business. The students DO NOT need to use this, but it is a great conversation to have about the major financial areas of a business, including:
Business expenditures
Owner distribtuion
Taxes
Business Emergency Fund (Reserves)
Profit (optional account which the owners use to financially reward themselves periodically outside of the agreed upon owner distribution)
Assign students a digital copy of the Business Cashflow Google Sheet, with the instructions for tracking all income and expenses for their business.
Market research is a very important part of the process, and it shouldn’t happen just once for a business. For the sake of this project, it will happen once formally, but make sure your students know that this should be an ongoing process.
The market research for the student businesses is going to be broken into multiple sections:
Determining the ideal customer avatar and generating the questions they need to answer about their target market.
Building a market research survey for their target market
Conducting secondary research (existing information available, probably online), and giving the survey to a minimum of 10 people in their target market.
Reviewing the results of their survey and making decisions for their business based on the results.
These activities will take 1-2 days for the preparation side of things, and then you should allow 3-7 days for them to complete the research and summarize their results. You can still work on other areas of their businesses during this time, but some students will need more time than others to gather their survey results as well as other types of research. Allowing class time for students to do their desk (secondary) research, create their surveys, and then administer them (if possible in school) really improves the quality you get.
Activity 1: MARKET RESEARCH PREP - Total Time: ~40 minutesAssign or print copies of the Market Research Prep document to each of the student businesses. Business owners should spend time going through each section of the document. The big thing you need to do is make sure they understand that they are trying to identify what information they need to find out about their target market to make better decisions about their businesses. The biggest mistake they make is to just write down what they think or believe about the market without any research or data to back it up.
By the end, the students should know what information they can find online to help their business (pricing, flavor options, services to offer, similar business reviews, competitors, etc. They should also have identified the information they need to gather about their customers directly from the source.
Activity 2: MARKET RESEARCH SURVEY - Total Time: ~20 minutesUsing the provided Google Form Template and Google Form Header Template, students build a survey to give to their target market. Tips you should share before they build their surveys:
10 questions maximum
A mixture a easy and hard questions. Easy questions include: MCQ, check all that apply, range responses, and simple short answer questions. Hard questions include: long response questions, short answers where respondents really have to think about their response, responses that require a lot of reading or caluclating before responding.
Customize the header using the Canva Template, and update the introduction paragraph to inform survey participants about your business and why you are asking them to take this survey.
Consider how you will share the survey with others. Ideas include: shortening the URL to make it easier to type, using a QR code generator, posting the link to the survey where your target market can find it (social media, LMS groups, emails, etc.)
After students have completed their secondary research and given their survey to a minimum of 10 people in their target market they can complete the Market Research Results Activity sheet which will guide them through interpreting their findings for making informed decisions for their business.
This is an activity you can choose to skip if you are restricted on time BUT it can also be one of the most impactful and needle-moving activities for your young business owners to do.
Mentors serve as guides. They have walked the path before you, experienced similar problems to what you are facing (and will face in the future), and have figured out more optimized ways of doing things. Finding and speaking to a mentor can save business owners a huge amount of time and money, whilst accelerating growth and opening up new networking potential.
The task is for each student business to identify possible mentors for their business. The potential mentors should be business owners, in the same type of business or industry, ideally local (but not essential), and in small to medium sized businesses. Larger businesses tend to be much more difficult and delayed to contact. For each mentor, they need to list information about the business as well as contact information for the owner. This activity is also an exercise in finding contact information for people we wish to speak to (awesome skill to have!). Once done, reach out to the top two choices (allows for greater odds in getting a quick response) sharing about the business project they are working on and for a few minutes of their time to ask them some questions.
Afterwards, the students will fill out a reflection sheet to determine what information is going to help them make decisions about their business moving forwards.
Activity 1: FIND A BUSINESS MENTOR - Total Time: ~80 minutesAssign or print copies of the Find a Business Mentor - Preparation document to each business. Students will need to determine the type of person they want to talk to and then begin researching potential mentors in their area or online.
Before reaching out to anyone, make sure the students have written their introduction script and shown it to you.
Teacher Tips - Make sure to inform your class parents about this activity before you begin for 2 reasons. 1) they will be reaching out to adult strangers and it's important that parents are aware and available to support them in this, and 2) parents may have connections in their network who would be willing to step into that mentor role.
Also, encourage the students to invite any mentor they find to the school business fair. It's ok if they say no, but this can be a great way to bulk up the guest list with helpful attendees who can offer valuable feedback to the students and raise the profile of the event.
Finally, record all the mentors that students find and their contact information for future years. Sometimes it can be great to have a list of names in different industries who have a history of mentoring your students in the past.
It's recommended to offer time in class for students to contact mentors and even schedule when that contact is going to happen. If a student is willing to model a phone call to a potential mentor in front of the class, definitely take advantage of this!
Activity 2: MENTOR CONVERSATION REFLECTION - Total Time: ~20 minutesGive students 3-5 days to complete their reach out and schedule the conversation with their mentor. Then assign them the Business Mentor - Reflection document. You will need to have flexibility wih regards to submission since we can't control how responsive mentors will be. Students shouldn't wait more than 2-3 days for a response before moving on to the next 2-3 names on their list. Calling will be more effective than emailing too.
It’s day 10, but given that we are in schools, with all the distractions that go on, it could easily be 2-3 weeks since your start day. This is a good time to have a mastermind meeting and see what everyone is up to.
This meeting should act as a status update. What are you working on? What do you need help with? What challenges are you facing? What’s the one thing you are avoiding doing that would have a big impact on your business? Focus on setting short-term, effective goals, that can be met in the next 1-2 weeks.
Activity 1: BUSINESS MASTERMIND MEETING - Total Time: 70+ minutesGive every student a copy of the mastermind notes sheet and write the talking points they should address on your board or add to the presentation slide with meeting expectations.
Each group gets 2-5 minutes to talk about their business: share the business name and synopsis, what they are currently working on, what is next on their to do list, and what they need help with or have questions about.
The next two activities, Production Process and Advertisements, are things you can jump into straight away, or you can wait for a few days and focus on other parts of your curriculum. Slowing down and letting students have a few days to complete the earlier activities can really help with preventing overwhelm before launching into new ones.
If the students haven’t made a sample product yet or completed a service, this is the activity to light that fire and get them to actually produce something. For those who have, this is a chance to refine the process. In this activity, the students will need to detail the full process for making their product or perform the service for their business. Think of this as the ingredients and method for a recipe. Someone else should be able to pick it up and recreate the product or perform the service based on following the instructions.
The last part of the activity prompts students to provide picture and/or video evidence of their completed sample. This is the part that gets students to actually do the thing, and that act alone can stimulate them to move forward with making a first sale.
Activity 1: The Production Process - Total Time: 80+ minutesGive/assign every student business a copy of the Production Process activity sheet. They will need class time to complete the document, plus addtional time to photograph or record their effort at creating a prototype. Allow 1-3 days for completion.
Businesses should really be taking shape at this point, and hopefully, you’ve had some sales within the class! Adding something like a desk bell to your classroom that the students can ring whenever they made a sale can create a fun experience to mark sales. Set the culture that if someone rings the bell, everyone gives them a clap, and they share what the sale was and how they got it. Normalizing sales and making students aware of each others sales can open students up to the possibility of getting a sale themselves or drive some healthy competition between businesses too.
Marketing, as you know, can be its own full high school course. We are looking to cover the basics of communicating with our target market to inform, entertain, and persuade. For this activity, they are creating 3 advertisements for their businesses including the required information listed in the activity.
The 3 advertisements are:
Social media graphic and caption
US Letter Poster
Free Choice
RECOMMENDED ADDTION: Have the students create a 4th advertisement in the form of a Google Slide which can be added to a promotional slideshow that you share in a common area, such as your cafeteria, to inform other students about the upcoming fair. See the examples from MHS high school: Spring 2026, Fall 2025
If you have a communal area TV screen or bulletin board for displaying student work or sharing notices for students, see if you can share student advertisements on it for the two weeks before the Business Fair. Direct students to the Presentation Slide Template and have them send you an advertisement for their business as their free choice, or in addition to their free choice. For the free-choice challenge, students have created t-shirts, business cards, stickers, bookmarks, hats, etc.
It's recommended to print the posters and display them in a public space.
Allow 2 full class periods for this activity since some businesses will get very creative and take more time. If there are businesses that finish within a single class, encourage them to make more, put their ads to work, or complete prior activities that haven’t been done yet. There is always something they can be doing for their business, even if it’s not an official project activity.
The activity includes Canva templates already sized for the required asset.
Activity 1: Advertising Your Business: 160 minutesGive/assign every student business a copy of the Advertising Your Business activity sheet. Make sure to go through the 3 functions of advertisements: inform, entertain, persuade. There are videos you can show your students included in the teacher instructions, and you can brainstorm types of advertisements as a class before beginning.
Teacher Tip - The more you share the student work with parents (and continue to invite them to your fair), the faster you will get their work back and the higher the quality will be. If doing a promotional slideshow, share the link to the slideshow (View Only) with parents so they can see their child's advertisement (or lack of) easily.
Time for another meeting! This time, you are looking for a status update, sharing advertisements that have been created, and looking for ways to support each other in getting the advertisements in front of our target markets.
Share information about the upcoming business fair and ask students to include their to-do list for preparing for the fair as part of their presentation.
Activity 1: BUSINESS MASTERMIND MEETING - Total Time: 70+ minutesGive every student a copy of the mastermind notes sheet and write the talking points they should address on your board or add to the presentation slide with meeting expectations.
Each group gets 2-5 minutes to talk about their business: share the business name and synopsis, what they are currently working on, what is next on their to do list, and what they need help with or have questions about.
For high school student businesses, it's helpful to focus on pricing strategies that are simple, practical, and commonly used by small businesses. Here are the main ones:
Cost-Plus Pricing
Calculate how much it costs to make or buy the product, then add a set amount or percentage for profit. This ensures every sale contributes to covering costs and earning money.
Competitive Pricing
Set your price based on what similar businesses are charging. This works well in markets where customers can easily compare options.
Value-Based Pricing
Price the product based on how much customers believe it is worth rather than just what it costs to produce. Businesses using this strategy often emphasize quality, uniqueness, or convenience.
Premium Pricing
Set a higher-than-average price to create the impression of higher quality or exclusivity. This strategy works best when the product or brand offers something customers can't easily find elsewhere.
Penetration Pricing
Start with a lower price to attract customers quickly and build a customer base. Prices may increase later once the business has established a reputation.
Skimming Pricing
Introduce a new or innovative product at a high price to maximize profits from early buyers, then gradually lower the price over time. This is most effective for unique products with little competition.
Bundle Pricing
Sell two or more products together for a lower total price than if they were purchased separately. Bundling encourages customers to buy more items at once.
Psychological Pricing
Use prices that seem more appealing to customers, such as $9.99 instead of $10.00. Small changes in how a price is presented can influence buying decisions.
Discount Pricing
Temporarily lower prices through sales, coupons, student discounts, or seasonal promotions to encourage more purchases. This strategy can help increase sales during slower periods or move excess inventory.
Freemium Pricing (best for digital products or services)
Offer a basic version for free while charging for additional features, upgrades, or premium content. This allows customers to experience the product before deciding to pay.
Subscription Pricing
Charge customers a recurring fee (weekly, monthly, or yearly) instead of a one-time purchase. This creates predictable income and encourages long-term customer relationships.
Dynamic Pricing (less common for student businesses)
Adjust prices based on demand, timing, or other market conditions. Airlines and hotels use this often, but even small businesses may change prices during busy events or peak seasons.
Loss Leader Pricing
Sell one popular product at little or no profit to attract customers, hoping they will also buy other, more profitable items. Grocery stores commonly use this strategy with sale items.
Keystone Pricing (common in retail)
A simple retail pricing method where the selling price is typically double the wholesale cost. It provides an easy rule of thumb for businesses that resell products.
You should spend time going through each of the options with your students with examples for each to help students refine their pricing. We do this towards the end of the project because it's important for student to trial and error their own prices in the beginning as part of the learning experience. They may realize now, or in the next activity, that they are making a loss or barely making a profit from their current pricing!
Go through each of the pricing strategies as a class.
Spend the most time on these because they're the ones they're most likely to use:
Cost-Plus Pricing – Easy to calculate and ensures a profit.
Competitive Pricing – Helps students understand market research.
Value-Based Pricing – Encourages thinking about what customers actually value.
Psychological Pricing – Demonstrates how pricing affects customer perception.
Bundle Pricing – Shows how businesses can increase average sales without simply raising prices.
These five provide a solid foundation while introducing students to the idea that pricing isn't just about covering costs... it's also about understanding customers and the marketplace.
This is the second part of the Track Cashflow & Breakeven Calculation (from Day 6). This activity is about determining the total cost of production, costs of the business, the revenue and profit per sale, and the point at which the business is profitable. If the students are following a lean startup model (or Zero-Dollar Startup) from Day 5, their costs should be very minimal and profit should come very quickly once they start selling.
The students will be looking at the fixed and variable costs of their business, before figuring out how many units they need to sell before they start making a profit. Ideally, most businesses are profitable on their first sale, but often there are some costs that need to be recouped from expenses along the way.
Activity 2: Breakeven Analysis: 40 minutesGive/assign every student business a copy of the Breakeven Analysis Google Sheet activity. This is a Google Sheet with formulas built in for reducing the amount of math that a student needs to be able to do to complete the activity. Discuss the concept of fixed costs and variable costs for their businesses before having them input their values.
Fixed Costs - Expenses that stay the same no matter how many products or services the business sells. Examples: website fees, booth rental, business license, equipment.
Variable Costs - Expenses that change based on how many products or services the business sells. The more you sell, the higher these costs become. Examples: ingredients, packaging, materials, shipping, or printing.
Follow the activity to help determine the cost per unit and profit based on current pricing. Let students experiment with their prices in the sheet to see the impact on profits and breakeven point.
Teacher Tip: Use the breakeven graphic created by the sheet as part of the table presentation on Business Fair Day. It gives a really nice anchor point for students to look at as they present the finances of their business to the judges.
The Business Fair is your culminating event for this project. Make sure you have referenced the "BEFORE YOU START" section of this page for action items you need to complete to organize the fair. At this point in the project, the students have gotten all of the essential instruction and activities for their student businesses, and you can choose whether to hold the business fair now or a little later in your semester to give students time to develop their businesses. The recommendation is to do the fair sooner, rather than later, as this is often the final catalyst needed for some students to take action on starting their businesses. Up to this point, they could have stalled or put off starting, but for the business fair they need to have products ready or be prepared to sell their services.
To prepare for the fair, the students have different aspects they need to consider:
What their table is going to look like
What they plan to have in terms of products available
How they will take payment on the day
What they plan to say to the judges when they come to their table
How they are going to attract customers to their table
Teacher - Make sure you are checking the Teacher Instructions for the Plan and Run a Business Fair activity to check out your activities for running a business fair.
Students will need time to prepare for the business fair, but don't fall into the trap of feeling like they need a LOT of time. 1-2 days should be enough time to prepare if you have been informing them about the fair throughout the project and if they have completed all their activities to date. Make sure to share the Business Fair Rubric and Judge Questions for them to prepare with.
If you have craft supplies available or can partner with an art teacher to open their space during your class, that is really helpful for getting students to create fun table displays. Collecting large pieces of cardboard that they can turn into tri-folds is a great tip for spurring students into action too.
It's Fair Day! You are going to be busy organizing the students, setting up the judges, meeting parents, and announcing the winners at the end. Prepare to have one of the best days of your school year AND be totally exhausted after it.
If you have any questions about running your own event, please reach out to Rob Phelan - robert.phelan@fcps.org.
After your fair has concluded, have the students complete a reflection about their experience during the fair AND for the overall project. Use this information to inform future changes you make and to help build your final grade for the project.
Activity 1: Business Fair Reflection: ~20 minutesThis can be completed on the day of the fair when you are finished or on the following day, but try to not go more than 1-2 days post event to get the best feedback.