Jacqueline Mayor danced to the head of her class to win first place in a recently held BizCamp for budding entrepreneurs.

Jacqueline, who has been dancing for seven years, turned her passion toward profit and designed a business plan to launch her own dance school - "Five, Six, Seven, Eight".

The 16-year-old student, who is currently attending Saltus Graduate Year (SGY), spent a week at Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative of Bermuda's BizCamp.

The camp is based on the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) programme.

She and other camp attendees learned the ins and outs of starting up a business in today's competitive environment.

"I'd potentially thought of opening a dance school so I went into the camp wanting to know what it entails to open a business," she told The Royal Gazette.

"It involved more than I had expected."

"It was intense because we learned all these concepts in one week."

During the first two and a half days of camp, students were introduced to key business people from companies such as the Bank of Bermuda, Troncossi Public Relations and Promisant.

"The rest of the week is spent working on our business plans and PowerPoint presentations and using the information we've learnt as a case study," Jacqueline explained.

The students also had to produce business cards and dress professionally when they outlined their business plans as PowerPoint presentations in front of a panel of judges.

Jacqueline said the camp was also beneficial and she was able to practice public speaking, which she said she isn't good at, and learn all the other small but important things concerned with opening a business.

Currently, Jacqueline is considering whether she wants to continue exclusively with ballet next year and study at the Royal Academy of Dance in London, or, whether to apply to university in Canada where she could study education or business as well as dance.

"It will be a tough decision but I'm not sure yet exactly what school I want to go to. But I do know that I love to teach and I really like to dance. My goal right now is to come back and teach in Bermuda," Jacqueline said.

Jacqueline said, if she was to open her own dance school now, it would have to be different from those currently available.

"It wouldn't be a good market decision if I started a dance school in Bermuda right now with five schools already opened," she said. "But it was a great experience and it will be useful in the future."