Are you ready for a new calendar year? Is your Spirit Box team? A new year means new possibilities for both you and your school-based enterprise. Taking action now can help set you up for success when the new year begins. Let’s talk about a few ways you can get started!

In Part 1 of this article, we covered what SBE certification means, as well as the first five standards judges use as criteria to award Bronze, Silver and Gold-level certifications. In this article, we will describe the final four standards, as well as provide a glimpse at what comes after you submit your documentation.

In this article, you’ll learn about the first five standards used to gauge certification and a summary of the activities required for each. You can find the details for each standard and submission requirements in the DECA Chapter Certification document.

Holiday and seasonal promotions can spark new interest in your school store and business, as you creatively integrate celebrations with your products or services. Below are a few examples of companies that incorporated their products into holiday advertising in fresh and innovative ways. You might not be able to create an actual video commercial or campaign, but take these ideas as inspiration for the resources you do have.

Developing a seasonal and holiday promotion strategy starts with identifying your target customers and the most relevant holidays to them. You can walk through these steps in Part 1 here. In this article, you’ll continue learning about how to then move from calendars to actually identifying the products, offers and more.

Seasonal advertising and promotions can help you sell more products by keeping your store top-of-mind and relevant to your customers’ day-to-day life. In this article, you’ll learn about the basics of what it means to implement season and holiday promotions, how to create your plan, and how to keep learning for future years’ sales.

The last step of launching a business is to secure funding. As you have likely learned from calculating your startup costs, starting a business is expensive. There are costs to launching your business and annual expenses you will need to pay.

The big question to ask yourself is: Where will I get the money? There are many ways to get funding, but we’ll cover three here: investors, self-funding, or loans.

Generation Z (or Y) is composed of everyone born between the years of 1996 and 2010. Current high schoolers fit within this generation and Pew Research identified key ways this generation differs from those in the past. You might be part of Generation Z, or perhaps you are an educator who works with Gen Z’s on a regular basis. In this article, we’ll discuss three of these trends.

Below you’ll find just a few videos with concrete steps and reflection questions to help you discover what kind of work you want to do. One video helps you discover the mindsets you’ll need to stick with your dream once you find it!

Effective interviews require preparation and attention to detail—don’t “wing it”. Below are concrete steps you can take to ensure you're feeling confident when the day comes.