Pool Service America's CEO Hawkins gave the first of a series of talks to South Florida High School Students as a National Foundation for Teaching Enterpreneurship (NFTE) guest speaker. As such, he visits participating NFTE classes, presenting real world lessons related to entrepreneurship. Concentrating his message on general business considerations, he shares things he "thinks he has learned" along his entrepreneurial path, set within the context of an overall theme of "don't let anyone tell you that you can't."

NFTE, through entrepreneurship education, helps young people from low-income communities build skills and unlock their entrepreneurial creativity. Since 1987, NFTE has reached more than 280,000 young people, and currently has programs in 21 states and 12 countries. NFTE has more than 1,500 active Certified Entrepreneurship Teachers, and is continually improving its innovative entrepreneurship curriculum. The organization has been in the news lately with the successful release of the documentary film "TEN9EIGHT - Shoot for the Moon," which follows a select group of students as they progress through NFTE's national business plan competition.

The idea of volunteering as an NFTE guest speaker was originally suggested to Hawkins by his wife, who shares his strong advocacy of education and belief that equality of opportunity and the creativity it unleashes is the optimal path for society and the key to the continued success of the United States. He immediately took to the idea as a way to do his small part to expose young people to business concepts and experience they might not otherwise get exposed to. States Hawkins, "I'm doing this for one simple reason. I would have liked for someone like me to have given the talk that I'm giving when I was their age."

Pool Service America is a leading swimming pool service and repair company. More information can be found on the company's website, www.poolserviceamerica.com.