Around the world, entrepreneurial spirit is brewing in today’s youth, and a tight-knit community like St. Louis is a perfect place to get a project on its feet.

Alex Abramson, Melanie Paticoff, and Jeff and Randy Vines have all been very successful in starting their own businesses by fine-tuning their skills and putting a lot of love and elbow grease into their work. These Jewish entrepreneurs shared with Ohr Chadash their insight into the how-tos of entrepreneurship for teens who are interested in developing their own product, business or organization at some point in their lives.

Alex Abramson’s product, Easy Suds, is a perfect example of how an innovative idea can come to fruition through hard work.

Developed by Abramson, who grew up in St. Louis, along with two other engineering majors at Johns Hopkins, Easy Suds is a soap dispenser designed to standardize the way we wash our hands by mixing soap with water immediately as it comes out of the faucet. The release of the soap and water is timed for 20 seconds, the duration that the Centers for Disease Control recommends for optimal germ elimination. Abramson was inspired to create this product  by watching the actions of people around him. “I saw (people walking out of the bathroom without washing their hands with soap) one too many times, and I set out to fix it,” he said.

If you see a problem that you can fix, Abramson recommends addressing it head on with, in his case, an innovative product with a catchy name. This plan of attack works for any field. If you target an issue in society, be it an absurd lack of burger joints or a sharp increase in homeless youth, you can take the initiative to change that problem, make it your job to see that plan through and eventually, end up making a change that benefits everyone in your community.

Melanie Paticoff, who grew up in Long Island but attended Fontbonne University and then Washington University, took a similar approach to Abramson’s, but her vision and results were very different. Inspired by her cousin, Julie, who was born deaf and uses bilateral cochlear implants to hear, Paticoff set out to educate deaf students in and out of the classroom by creating children’s books that have characters with a hearing loss.

She wrote two books, “Sophie’s Tales: Learning to Listen” and “Sophie’s Tales: Overcoming Obstacles,” about a dog with cochlear implants. Once she completed this project, Paticoff began looking for another way to reach out to more children and teens with hearing loss. Her latest venture, “Hearing Our Way,” is a magazine that helps kids with hearing loss, focusing on language, literacy and self-advocacy learning.

Paticoff says that in order to start your own project, you have to begin with the most basic steps before you can make it big. “When I wanted to write a book, I literally Googled ‘how to write a book.’ Maybe it wasn’t the best way to do things, but I did it, and I learned from it,” she said.

Paticoff also stresses the importance of utilizing all of your skills when developing an idea for an organization or business.

“I’m able to use all of my deaf education background, my personal connection to hearing loss, my creativity and my business experience to support children with hearing loss,” she said.

By tapping into personal strengths and focusing on a cause you’re passionate about, you will not only be motivated to push through the initial difficulty of starting up a project, but also have the expertise to succeed in what you’re doing in the long run.

Jeff and Randy Vines, creators of STL-Style, are arguably the kings of utilizing their skills and passions. Growing up in St. Louis, they developed a love for the culture that only our city could inspire. After college, they started printing T-shirts that celebrated St. Louis in a creative, unique way that they had never seen before. Their business grew from there, and in 2010, they opened their STL-Style store on Cherokee Street. The Vines brothers stress the importance of staying true to yourself in everything you do.

“Never abandon your core principles and don’t compromise what you stand for,” said Randy Vines. “That passion and devotion will permeate every aspect of your endeavors. It makes the difference between those who are just looking to make a quick buck and the ones who have the vision and commitment to being part of something greater than just their singular enterprise.”