From left, Tyson Shay, Kaycee Dixey and Jessica Rodriguez. (Submitted photos)
By LORI ANN EDMO
Sho-Ban News
FORT HALL — Two Idaho State University students who are Shoshone-Bannock tribal members, Tyson Shay and Kaycee Dixey, placed second in the U.S. Bank Pitch Off earning $1,000.
In addition, another tribal member Jessica Rodriguez placed third with her partner Melissa Sema from Aberdeen winning $500. Rodriguez is majoring in business graduating in spring of 2021 with two degrees in marketing and management and a minor in advertising/public relations. Their pitch was hat spray.
The students were in Dr. Jeff Street’s Small Business Entrepreneurship class. At the beginning of the semester, the professor advised the class, each were to pitch a business idea to a group of judges telling them they would be grouped together or they could work by themselves to pitch their ideas. Dr. Street had two classes – Kaycee and Tyson just happened to be in the same class.
Kaycee said in the beginning each had their own ideas they pitched to the class and the top ten ideas the class liked were pitched to the judges. “My idea didn’t make it,” she continued but Tyson’s idea “Errand Express” did. The professor partnered Kaycee and Tyson to work on the presentation slides and their pitch that would later be before three sets of judges.
She said they worked on their pitch whenever they could meeting several times via Zoom to work on what they were going to say, how they would present and presentation slide content. Their pitch was to be no more than four minutes and the judges had six minutes after it to ask questions. The pair pitched three times on November 20 via Zoom and each one was less than 15 minutes.
Tyson explained the idea of Errand Express. It’s a delivery service for the local community. It would involve services such as food delivery from Pocatello or Chubbuck to Fort Hall. In addition to food, the service would also deliver such items as couches or larger items. “The reason for this business is because we want to help the community with saving time so they aren’t using their leave from work to take care of errands, or so they have more leisure time for themselves,” he said. “We want to help people save money, no more spontaneous purchasing when you go to the store for one item.” He noted during the pandemic there is a greater need for people to stay home, “so we would bring items to your doorstep. Errand Express would look to help with the proper type of transportation to help people get the items. “We also want to help the procrastinators who just don’t want to do it.”
Tyson said they’re still in the preliminary stages but hope to expand into a larger area, larger cities and evolve in other ways as well. But for now, they would like to start out small and hel our Fort Hall people and local community.
Errand Express logo. (Submitted graphic)
Kaycee said they haven’t really discussed what their next steps would be as they’re kind of waiting to see what Dr. Street has to say. “It would be awesome to see Tyson and I to actually start Errand Express. I was shocked and excited to hear that we even placed,” she continued. “Because there were two separate classes, we did not know what other business ideas were pitched to the judges. We just did our best and it got us second place and $1,000.” They only knew that there were nine other ideas in their class because Dr. Street has each group practice pitching their ideas to the class.
Tyson said the experience for him was very educational. “The idea of Errand Express was birthed years ago, pre-pandemic. At the time, there really wasn't much of a need for this type of service, however, there was a need for this type of service for our Fort Hall Community.” He said it was only thought about until given the opportunity to put the idea on pencil and paper and be able to share the idea with others. “It was awesome to be able to present the idea to a judged panel,” he continued. “Being that I am a Powwow Emcee it really wasn't a big deal to speak in front of people. As Kaycee mentioned we are unsure where all this will take us in the future. We are hopeful we can make it a reality and help our people and beyond!”
Kaycee’s major is Business Management with an emphasis in Accounting. She’s graduating winter semester.
Tyson has an Associate of Science in Business and will be receiving a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management in May of 2021.