Dunoon Park Technical High School in Eastern Kingston was abuzz with activities last Friday morning with the staging of the institution’s Business Department Awards and Recognition Ceremony that involved hundreds of students in that area of study at the institution.
Held at the Madge Facey Auditorium on the campus, the event was staged under the theme ‘Being Fearlessly Enterprising with the Right Attitude in a Global Village’.
For the occasion on which a number of outstanding students were recognised and presented with gifts for their performances in the subject area, the school pulled in marketer and entrepreneur, Kevin Frith, who spent some time at the institution during his teenage years. That was before he went on to make serious inroads in the business arena, seemingly in sync with the theme of the awards function.
Frith, as guest presenter, emotionally outlined some of the harsh economic and social realities of his upbringing, including limited parental support, before he got a few academic subjects and some critical technical training under his belt, and later went to the United States. There he gradually went into consultancy while learning his way into high-level entrepreneurship, and has seemingly not looked back in both arenas since then.
Some members of the student audience at the Business Department Awards Ceremony at Dunoon Park Technical High School last Friday.
Today, the businessman who has had, and continues to hold an array of holdings in multiple enterprises both locally and abroad, is becoming widely known as the central figure behind a high-end, tourism-styled, gated community development that is coming on stream in Twelve Miles, Bull Bay, St Thomas.
Having been at the forefront of the community bar and shop branding phenomenon that has taken root nationally, first for spirits giant, Wray and Nephew, and has since mushroomed into wider-scale adoption of the popular advertising and promotional concept by other major commercial entities nationally, Frith took his thinking cap into the real estate market and came up with another first.
Sun Coast Beach Club, which is being developed on 91 acres of beachfront property by TCF Holdings Limited, of which Frith is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), involves the first home community locally that is to be essentially a resort setting, with the attendant amenities and facilities right at home for 396 homeowners, their families and guests.
A teacher makes a presentation to a student at Dunoon Park Technical High School’s Business Department Awards Ceremony at the East Kingston school last Friday.
Frith, in his presentation, relayed the sharp turns on his journey from extremely harsh economic and personal realities, to being now an established entrepreneur in various areas of business.
He urged the Dunoon business business students to focus intently and pinpoint one specific area in which they are either individually talented or most keenly interested, to effectively narrow down to their best personal prospects for success as an entrepreneur.
He told them not to be daunted by the many hurdles that might be in the way of the successful execution of their ideas.
“If I could do it with all my issues, challenges, burdens and more negatives, why can’t any of you?” he asked in stressing his point.
“I decided what I wanted to do – I knew exactly what I wanted to do – and worked my way towards getting things done through extreme drive, purposefulness and determination and, of course, solid strategic application.”
Past student and entrepreneur, Kevin Frith (centre), poses with some of the awardees at Dunoon Park Technical High School’s Business Department Awards Ceremony at the East Kingston institution last Friday.
In sharing with the business students that he is less of the traditional flamboyant businessman, and more of a background executive who specialises in “getting things done”, he said that approach has proven to be very important to his rise so far on the corporate landscape.
He also recommended personal and professional humility, along with intense passion for one’s chosen field of endeavour, as critical factors to cultivate on the road to intended success in entrepreneurship.
