This is America, which supposedly means that if you’ve got enough time, dedication, and cutthroat business practices, you can be anything you want to be. This is also Brooklyn, which means that if you’ve got enough ingenuity, promise, and luck, you can probably win a competition where someone will give you enough money to be anything you want to be. This time around, it’s the Brooklyn Public Library’s PowerUP! competition that wants to pull you up by your bootstraps and launch you into commercial success.
I think that some time during our collective childhood, we were taught that books and libraries can make our dreams come true, and, in a way, the Brooklyn Library is proving that. Their PowerUp! competition is for fledgling Brooklyn entrepreneurs who need that little extra push that we like to call “money.”
To aid in the process, the Library will be offering classes to participants on creating business plans, marketing, financial projections, and doing research with library resources (books — oooh, ahhh!). In addition to this, competitors will also be connected to business counselors in the community, which means a lot more in Brooklyn than it probably did in the small suburban library you grew up near.
According to their page, everyone is a winner since all competitors will have access to free resources and services, but we all know that the real winner is the one who gets to walk away with $15,000 in startup capital.
All interested participants must attend at least one orientation session, and lucky for you, there are a whole lot of them. Sessions are scheduled for March 6, 13, 23, 28, as well as April 4.
So get moving, because, again, this is America, which means that you have to get your idea out there…before someone else does.