WALLOWA COUNTY — Twelve Wallowa County teenagers tried their hands at becoming entrepreneurs, and all succeeded, according to a press release.

The dozen youths in the Mentor Match Teen Entrepreneur Program were successful in creating, starting and running their own for-profit businesses.

The program kicked off in September and concluded April 30 with a pot luck dinner and presentations from each of the teens on what they learned.  The teens also received awards for their efforts.

The Top Producer Award went to Wallowa County Stack n’ Split, owned by Joseph Charter School juniors Grayson Hawkins and Isaac Beachy. The team helped split and stack wood for a variety of customers, earning nearly $2,000 from September to April. One job was so big, they had to hire extra people.

“I learned that I need to think through how I pay employees,“ Hawkins said.

The Most Valuable Entrepreneur Award went to Enterprise High School senior Krystal Beckman, for serving as president of the club and as a leader and mentor to others in the program, as founder of KB Pet Portraits.

Most Likely to be an Entrepreneur Award also went to Beckman, in what  program adviser Stacy Green described as a tight competition.

“Several were in the running for this award,” Green said, mentioning Brady Brown, whose automotive business Straight Thrashed had grown to include branded merchandise; Hawkins for landing a big job that required employees; and Logan Aase and Aden Mildrexler of Elegant Edge XVI, a T-shirt company that featured Aase’s senior picture, for their creativity and sales skills. But Green said Beckman was the one student who “pulled together all the elements of an entrepreneur — sales, strong and clean financial records, consistently selling and being bold and going way out of her comfort zone.”

An award that Green said she has only given out once before in the program’s 14-year history went to Enterprise High School junior Aase for 100% attendance.

“Logan did not miss a single meeting or field trip,” Green said. She gave honorable mention to Wyatt Nash, who had 100% attendance for meetings, but missed one field trip.

Green, an Enterprise sales and marketing consultant, founded the Mentor Match Teen Entrepreneur Program in the fall of 2010 in partnership with Building Healthy Families, a local nonprofit that administers the program with funding for teen mentoring. Since its inception, teens have created approximately 120 businesses.