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Troop 89
Great Bend, PA

Entrepreneurship Merit Badge

Categories: Merit Badges
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About Course

An entrepreneur is someone who starts a business. This badge asks you to think like one.

You will not actually open a business. What you will do is plan one properly, from the first idea all the way to the flyer you would hand out — and by the end you will know whether your idea would have worked.

What you will do

You will interview someone who really has started a business and find out how they did it. You will come up with a long list of business ideas, narrow it down, and pick one. Then you will write a full business plan for it: what you are selling, who would buy it, what it costs, what you would charge, who would help you, and how people would hear about you.

How long it takes

There is no waiting period in this badge. No twelve-week log, no three-month record. Most Scouts finish in two or three weeks of steady work.

Two things are worth starting on day one. The interview depends on somebody else being free, so ask early. And you need your counselor to agree your business idea before you write the plan — otherwise you might write all sixteen parts of it twice.

What you get to help you

Every lesson follows one example business, a mobile bike repair service, so you can see what each part of a business plan actually looks like when it is finished. There is a plan template you can print or type into, and a spreadsheet that works out your costs and your price for you.

The quizzes grade themselves straight away. But a perfect score does not finish a requirement — your counselor will still sit down and talk each one through with you. That conversation is the badge.

This course explains how businesses work so you can meet the requirements. It is not business, legal, or financial advice.

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What Will You Learn?

  • Define entrepreneurship in your own words and explain how entrepreneurs affect the U.S. economy
  • Explain why eleven different skills matter to someone running a business
  • Interview a real business owner and find out how they started
  • Come up with business ideas, then work out which ones are real opportunities
  • Write a complete business plan covering the product, the market, the money, the people, and the promotion
  • Work out what your product costs to make and what price actually earns a profit
  • Design a promotional flyer for your business
  • Talk through the problems, the failures, and the ethical choices a business owner runs into

Course Content

Topic 1: Start Here, and What Entrepreneurship Is
Requirement 1. Read the first lesson before anything else - it tells you the two things to start today. Then work out what entrepreneurship actually is and why entrepreneurs matter to the country.

  • Start Here: How This Badge Works
  • Lesson 1: What Entrepreneurship Is
  • Lesson 2: How Entrepreneurs Change the Economy
  • Quiz: Entrepreneurship and the Economy

Topic 2: The Skills an Entrepreneur Needs
Requirement 2 names eleven skills and asks you to explain why each one matters to someone running a business. These three lessons cover all eleven. The trick is to say why each one matters to a BUSINESS, not just why it is nice to have.

Topic 3: Interview an Entrepreneur
Requirement 3. Find someone who has actually started a business and interview them. Do this FIRST - it is the only part of the badge that depends on somebody else being free. Ask a parent or guardian before you contact anyone you do not already know.

Topic 4: Finding Your Business Idea
Requirement 4. Think up as many business ideas as you can, pick the three best, then choose one. IMPORTANT: talk your chosen idea through with your counselor before you start Topic 5. Requirement 5 is a sixteen-part plan for that idea, and you do not want to write it twice.

Topic 5: Your Product or Service
Requirement 5(a), the first five of the sixteen parts. What you are selling, what your goals are, whether you can actually make enough, what could go wrong that you would be responsible for, and what licenses you might need. From here on, every lesson ends with the same example business worked out in full.

Topic 6: Market Analysis
Requirement 5(b), three more of the sixteen parts. Who would buy this, who else is already doing it, and why anyone would pick you. This is the section that decides whether your idea is a business or just a nice thought.

Topic 7: The Money
Requirement 5(c), three more of the sixteen parts. What it costs to start, what one sale costs you, what to charge, and what happens to the money afterwards. There is a spreadsheet with this course that does the arithmetic alongside you.

Topic 8: Personnel
Requirement 5(d), two of the sixteen parts. Which jobs you will do yourself and what makes you able to do them, and whether you need anyone else. Short topic - but "I will do it all myself" still needs explaining properly.

Topic 9: Promotion and Marketing
Requirement 5(e), the last three of the sixteen parts. How customers find out you exist, how you use the internet without giving away more than you should, and the one piece of the plan you design rather than write - your flyer.

Topic 10: Assemble Your Business Plan
Requirement 5, all of it, in one document. You have now been through all sixteen parts. This topic puts them together, checks nothing is missing, and sends the plan and the flyer to your counselor.

Topic 11: If It Were Real — Successes, Failures, and Ethics
Requirement 6. Imagine your business is actually up and running. What goes well, what goes wrong, how you recover from failure, and what you do when the profitable choice and the right choice are not the same. Nothing to hand in - this one is all conversation.

Topic 12: Meet Your Counselor
Everything in one place: what you must SHOW, what you must DISCUSS, and how to get ready. Read this before you arrange the final meeting.

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