BusinessReport.com

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned from starting your business?

“Effective networking is the most important lesson I have learned from starting my business. Communicating with others about your business keeps your clientele continuously flowing.”

When Shayla Price, then a senior at Thibodaux High School, started looking at the price of college tuition, she realized she was going to have to get some financial help. But where to start?

Thanks to determination, good organizational skills and an enterprising spirit, Price scoured the Internet, read books made available by her college counselor and did research at her public library. It paid off: She ended up receiving more than $100,000 in college scholarships, which paid for her tuition to Southern University and then some.

Five years later, Price, now a second-year law student, is turning her experience into a successful business venture, helping teach others how to prepare their resumes and take advantage of the many need- and merit-based scholarships available. She has already self-published a book—The Scholarship Search: A Guide to Winning Free Money for College and More—does consulting over the Internet and conducts workshops at local schools and libraries.

She also has a natural talent for public relations and has promoted herself in more than 10 national magazines, including Teen People, Seventeen, Black Enterprise, and Better Homes and Gardens. She has appeared on BET’s The Center and at the Essence Music Festival.

So what is the secret to her success? “It takes preparation and a lot of tenacity,” Price says. “You basically have to look at it like a part-time job.”

When Price was applying for her own scholarships, she approached the task like a job, she says. She’d wake up each day and go to school, do her extracurricular activities, then hit the books studying. Once her homework was done, the rest of the night was devoted to tracking down scholarships, which are plentiful, she says, as long as you know where to look for them.

And how to apply. Price advises her student clients to become very active in community organizations. Many scholarships today are heavily weighted toward community service and volunteer work.

She has continued her emphasis on community service and keeps busy with her involvement on several different boards. She is a governor-appointed commissioner for the Louisiana Serve Commission, a state entity dedicated to building and sustaining high-quality programs that promote and support citizen service. She is also a community liaison for the Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network and a member of the Capitol Area Leadership Council for the Louisiana Center for Women and Government. Additionally, she is the national spokesperson of ProgressiveU.org, representing more than 50,000 high school and college student bloggers.

In keeping with her vocation toward community service, Price is pursuing a law degree so that she can help nonprofit organizations in a meaningful way. Her ultimate career goal is to be CEO of a leading nonprofit agency. “I’m not really sure what kind,” she says. “But something that helps children and the low-income.”

Whether that work will take place in her native Louisiana or not remains to be seen. Price has never lived out of state, and she is feeling the urge to spread her wings. It won’t be anytime soon, though. She doesn’t receive her law degree until May 2011.

“Until then,” she says, “I’ve got plenty of work to do here.”

Click here to return to the Young Entrepreneurs cover story.