Chattanooga: Young woman creates a scholarship and network for potential entrepreneurs

By Jennifer Adkins

Staff Writer

Young entrepreneurs need a support network, according to 22-year-old business owner Melissa Hicks.

Ms. Hicks bought her first business, Silver Locket at Hamilton Place mall, soon after graduating from high school. She had worked there two months.

“I’ve always been extremely motivated,” she said.

“Why can’t I buy a business at 18?” she thought.

Ms. Hicks said she did not realize at the time the difficulties facing an 18-year-old entrepreneur. Teenage business owners often must face headwinds, she said.

“I went home and told my parents I was buying a business, and my mom was like ‘You are 18. This is not what you need to be doing right now,’ ” Ms. Hicks said.

“They watched me fall several times. It was hard for them to watch me grow up like that,” she said.

Bankers are even more skeptical of young people, according to Ms. Hicks. She said she had to present her business plan and Silver Locket’s financial records, and she still didn’t get all the money she needed.

“It’s really hard when you’re young, and they don’t think you can do it,” Ms. Hicks said. “I made a down payment to (the owners of Silver Locket) through the bank’s help, and then the rest was through personal financing.”

Even then, Ms. Hicks said the challenges of buying a business did not cease. Everyone wants to make money from you, especially if you are young, she said. Ms. Hicks said she was upgrading software when she didn’t have to and buying things she didn’t need.

“What someone tells you, you believe,” she said. “You think you have no other option. I didn’t have any one to turn to who could show me the right answers.”

These days, Ms. Hicks is working with Ooltewah High School to set up a scholarship fund called Project New Vision to help young people who want to become entrepreneurs.

Ms. Hicks is currently offering a $1,000 scholarship to deserving students with entrepreneurial goals. She also plans to develop Project New Vision into a support network for young entrepreneurs. She said the network would allow women to get together and “toss around ideas” and maybe one day help finance some of those ideas.

“The biggest thing is to tell yourself it is something you can do,” she said. “Find people to help you. If I had just gone to find someone to help me in the beginning, I would have avoided a lot of mistakes.”

Now, Ms. Hicks said she has several mentors including her University of Tennessee at Chattanooga business professor, John Riddell, vice president of the Center for Entrepreneurial Growth at the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce, and Joe Winick, Erlanger hospital’s senior vice president of strategic planning.

Ms. Hicks is working on a master’s degree in business at UTC. She said buying a business should not be a replacement for education.

She also said her parents are a lot more supportive now because it has been such a life-changing experience for her.

Ms. Hicks plans to launch Web sites for the Silver Locket, www.thesilverlocket.net, and Project New Vision, www.projectnewvision.org, in the next week. She said students can also apply for the scholarship by talking to their guidance counselors.

E-mail Jennifer Adkins at jadkins@timesfreepress.com