Ever had one of those days when you just can

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	Ever had one of those days when you just can’t concentrate? One minute you’re sitting in class, listening to a discussion about American history, and the next minute you’ve spaced out so far you almost enter the twilight zone. We’ve all been there before — just ask Michael Stahl. During a doodling session on a trip to la-la land, he came up with a business plan that rocks teen worlds.

It all started when Michael was asked to coordinate a job fair for his school district. His mission? To hook up students who needed jobs with businesses that needed workers. While he was putting it all together, he was also taking in the local gossip.

What a Match!

Students were complaining that they didn’t know where to look for jobs. Employers said they were hurting for help. Surely, there was a way to bring these two groups together.

Well, there was. Michael’s classroom doodling became a biz plan that launched a successful company called 4Teens Network, LLC. He still keeps that piece of paper in the office he shares today with business partner Ephren Taylor, Jr.

Their one-year-old company was recently voted by the Kansas City Star as one of the Top 50 Tech Companies to Watch. For this honor, the two 18-year-olds competed with top leaders in the Kansas City business world. Pretty fly for two young guys!

The 4Teens Network is better known as Careers4Teens.com, the Website where teens log on to find work. Ephren hopes users discover something even more important than an ordinary job. “A job is something that you go to because you have to,” he says. “A career combines a lifelong passion with what you really love to do.”

Funkadelic Features

As the company’s chief technology officer, Ephren is working on a system to keep track of job match-ups. But judging from the 700,000-plus people who visited or signed on to the site in one month alone — and the 100 employers who advertise on it — he feels it’s safe to say that Careers4Teens.com has been a success so far.

Here’s how the site works:

First, job seekers register with Careers4Teens.com for free.
Then, they immediately get access to a cool job search engine that lets them to see all the latest info on possible jobs.
The Careers4Teens online career development center offers job seekers info and advice on how to land the jobs they want.
Registered users also receive free e-mail newsletters with updates on new job listings.

Résumés Online

But wait, there’s more! Careers4Teens also lets its users breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to writing résumés. Teens answer a set of questions, and the system builds professional résumés for them. “You can print your résumé out, tear it off, and take it with you,” Ephren says.

Best of all, users can choose job listings on the site that interest them and send résumés to those employers with one click of a mouse. Plus, they get a free e-mail account at Mail4Teens.com to receive replies from prospective employers. How cool is that? These guys give teens the ultimate edge in job hunting!

Aggressive Vision

Careers4Teens.com has also formed partnerships with schools and organizations such as the National Youth Information Network, creating a much larger group of job-hungry consumers. “The students are happy because they get jobs, the employers are happy because they get workers, and the school counselors are very happy,” Ephren reports.

Booming success doesn’t mean Michael and Ephren are content to sit back and see what happens. They have definite plans for the future. “We want to be a monster,” says Ephren. “We want to aggressively spread over the entire country, but we’re going to concentrate on the 50 top metropolitan areas first. We can duplicate that in other areas just as easily.”

Eyeing the Big Boys

The two hope the endeavor will eventually become global. Their plan is to make information available in seven different languages, beginning with Spanish. But whoa, there! Michael and Ephren haven’t lost sight of the grassroots aspect of their organization. They started out to provide a service needed by their community, and they want to continue that relationship. “We want to grow slowly enough that we can make our growth community-based,” Michael says. In short, they want to continue working with schools and local organizations wherever they may be.

And they want to expand their services to provide more educational and entertainment opportunities. If all goes as planned, teens will one day be able to get certified in various career fields through Careers4Teens. But why entertainment? They figure entertaining Websites keep young people off the streets, off drugs, and out of trouble.

Their business successes and far-out vision have already gotten these two ‘treps a lot of attention. Business opportunities seem to be almost beating down their doors. Not only that, but these guys are even starting to rub elbows with the big boys. “When you’re 18 and walking into a multi-million dollar office with the CEO of a big company, it’s a thrill,” Ephren says. “I know we’re young to be doing something like this, but the world is changing,” he adds. “I love it, I love it, I love it!”

Careers4Teens has been renamed - to visit the site, please go to GoFerretGo.com.