Announcing judges and businesses for our 2020 Children's Business Fair!
Youth are capable of far more than we can imagine.
From all of us here at The Forest School, we hope to see you at our Acton 2020 Children’s Business Fair, this Saturday 12th December, 10am - 2pm! Details Below!
When inspired by stories of successful entrepreneurs, amazed by the power of using mistakes for growth, and engaged through real-world, hands on experiences, our young heroes can discover their passions and opportunities to make the world a better place. We want to give them the opportunity!
The Forest School is excited to let you know that we are hosting our Children’s Business Fair Saturday, December 12, 2020. It will be from 10am-2pm at Trilith neighborhood (formally known as Pinewood Forest) in Fayetteville, GA. Kidpreneurs will develop a brand, create a product or service, build a marketing strategy, and then open for customers at our one-day marketplace. It’s an incredible opportunity for growth, creativity, experience and fun!
This year we will also have food trucks and musicians during the fair. We want to create an environment of fun and a place for people to stay and shop. This event is sponsored by Acton Academy, the Acton School of Business, and the generous support of our donors and volunteers. We all believe that principled entrepreneurs are heroes and role models for the next generation.
Whether an entrepreneur is famous like Elon Musk or Oprah Winfrey or they are one of the thousands of unsung business owners across this country, these are the people who make sacrifices to innovate, create jobs and serve their communities.
These are the kidpreneur businesses that will be represented at this year’s fair:
Stretchy Hair Care
Crafty Cousins
Sweet Stand
hotter chocolate
Bleu’s Lemonade
pop of color
Cakey’s Lebanese meat pies
Sister's Snacks & Craveables
L & L Gloss
The Loaded Waffle
Chy's Art of Meaning
Chaotic Cooking with Sean
JBR Christmas Goodies
Wyatt's Works
The Weight of Ink
No Stress
The Cool Kiddo
Beybladers United
Cadence’s Creativity Corner
MJ Jewels
Hobart
K-Brooke
Griffin's Lovely Lanyards
Grace Hart Designs
cake pops by holly
Made With Love
Animal Care Boxes
Our judges for the 2020 Children’s Business Fair are:
SHANE QUICK
The entertainment industry is all about labels, but you can’t put one on Shane Quick. He wears many hats– He’s an artist manager, a promoter, a creative, a disrupter, and a visionary and most recently an executive producer of a new TV show. He’s from the small town of Cullman, Alabama, but his talent has reached the other side of the world. He created international touring models that changed the reach of christian music and family entertainment. He put together one of the nations largest country music festivals, Rock the South in his own back yard. He built the largest Christian team in the industry at Premier Productions, and with his leadership it became a top 10 touring company in the world. He started small, but after almost 20 years in the industry he’s now pulling off 600+ shows around the world each year. With all of this, his greatest accomplishment is being a husband to his wife Laura, and father to his sons Ethan and Clay. He puts his heart and soul into his community and his work– but he’s not finished yet.
LAURA QUICK
Laura Quick was born and raised just outside of Savannah, Georgia. She attended college at Florida State University and pursued a career in marketing and sales for 10 years before she decided to scratch the entrepreneurship itch.
Laura started her first business in 2013 in Mountain Brook, Alabama as a business consultant specializing in strategic sales and marketing. Laura has always been a woman in business who doesn’t mind standing in the gaps and teaching others how to do the same. So, when she read a New York Times article written about the South in June of 2014, she immediately saw a big gap in the southern magazine industry. She quickly went to work building a business plan for Good Grit Magazine.
Laura has grown accustomed to being called “crazy.” She has heard more times than she can count that “the magazine industry is dying,” or “paper is going away,” and “digital is taking over.” And while that may be true, since the inaugural issue in July of 2015, Good Grit has grown to 300,000 readers, is circulated in 48 states, and is sold in more than 2,500 retailers.
Laura continues to challenge herself, her team, and the industry by continually striving to create a better product in a way that is certainly non-traditional. She surrounds herself with talented people she believes in, and they all continue growing and learning together as they create each issue, insisting that each one be better than the last.
Good Grit is a progressive Southern culture magazine with beautiful imagery and gritty content curated to bust through stereotypical glass ceilings about “southerners” and inspire social responsibility. In 2019, after the success of the magazine, Laura saw another need. Many of the advertisers also needed help with their branding. Since Good Grit already excelled at storytelling, Laura got to work creating an agency to help advertisers tell their own stories. In under a year, the passion behind Good Grit has helped countless businesses take their branding to the next level.
Laura Quick has built her business by being unconventional and well… gritty
JAMIE HEMMINGS
Jamie Hemmings is a proven sales leader with over 18 years of comprehensive experience in business development, account management, marketing analysis, territory cultivation, sales, and corporate training. Innate ability to create strategic partnerships with clients and committed to delivering value-added service to achieve excellent customer satisfaction. Expert in team building, training sales department, development of curriculum, and training materials for salesforce. Possess strong organizational and interpersonal communication skills. Result-driven, visionary leader that thinks “outside the box” that demonstrates professionalism with immense integrity.
Jamie Michael Hemmings had a successful career in business development while driving growth for Fortune 500 companies. He also managed an innovative meatless entrée line for kids, called Greenie Tots that was sold nationally in stores including Whole Foods, Safeway & Publix. And developed two tech companies Best Tyme a scheduling application for doctors and pharmaceutical reps and Leaf Tyme an application that searched for cannabis dispensaries in your local area. His passion for entrepreneurship continues to flourish with the development of Stretchy Hair Care, focusing on relieving the pain associated with detangling and styling natural black hair. For far too long, people with tender heads have suffered
in pain until now because of Stretchy Hair Care and their flagship product patent pending Stretchy Detangling Clipz.
He's also a contributing writer for Medium and Thrive Global. His current column is interviewing Black Men in technology called Inspirational Black Men In Tech
JILEA HEMMINGS
Jilea Hemmings is a staunch believer in the power of entrepreneurship. A successful career revamping Fortune 500 companies was not enough for her entrepreneurial spirit, so Jilea began focusing her passion into her own projects—beginning with the formation of her own consulting agency, Eshe Consulting, and the development of the innovative meatless entrée line for kids, Greenie Tots. Her passion for entrepreneurship and technology continues to flourish with the development of Leaf Tyme, a tech solution that connects dispensaries, brands, and medical clinics to customers within the Cannabis industry. With the Leaf Tyme App customers connect to licensed dispensaries and brands, learn about the cannabis laws in every state, and explore how Cannabis can help with common health conditions. Leaf Tyme supports business to business growth within the cannabis industry through streamlining the appointment setting process between brands and dispensaries. Jilea is also an advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace and is an influential speaker promoting the important role of women in technology. She believes that there should be no boundaries—neither class, race, nor gender—that should stand in the way of being able to use one’s purpose, passion, strengths, and talents to fuel entrepreneurial endeavors.