Growing up, Collin Siddell’s life wasn’t easy.

Money was tight, and there were days his family went without meals. His parents separated but eventually remarried, and as Siddell got older, he saw how his parents' continued hard work helped the family move up. They moved from Binghampton to Cordova when he was in middle school, and Siddell, 17, is now a senior at Houston High School, one of the highest-performing public high schools in Tennessee.

However, throughout his childhood and even now, Siddell has felt overlooked at school. He wasn’t disruptive in class, but Siddell said he is not as "book smart" as some of his classmates. He’s always been a solid “C” student, which he said led some teachers and administrators to believe he didn’t care about school. He said his strengths lie in other areas, including interpersonal skills, communication and a knack for turning ideas into reality.

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A few years ago, he realized there were probably other students like him, kids full of passion, ideas and willingness to work hard, even if that didn’t necessarily translate to their report cards.

“I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I wanted to help the kids that were like me,” he said. “I wanted to start an organization for kids like me that got overlooked.”

He consulted a friend of the family who was an attorney and for his 15th birthday, instead of asking for gifts, he asked for money to put toward starting a 501(c)(3) organization. He worked on the application paperwork after school and spent his free time drawing up lesson plans and reaching out to local business owners.

Now years later, A Diamond in the Rough is in its pilot phase at Dexter Elementary School, teaching financial literacy and business planning to students at the school. The program started at Dexter in October. Siddell hopes to expand it to other schools in the Memphis area in the coming school years.

The monthly meetings feature guest speakers who talk about entrepreneurship, how to save money and how to run a small business. At a meeting on March 5, Kat Gordon, the founder of Muddy’s Bake Shop, shared with a group of 34 students ages 8 to 10 about how she got into owning her own bakery after struggling in real estate.

“As I was being bad at my job — but trying, bless my heart — I was baking on the side,” she said.

As she shared her cakes and cookies with friends and family, eventually people started asking her to bake things for parties or as gifts. Almost without her noticing, her side project started to grow into a business she could barely keep up with. Eventually, she decided to dive in, despite not having a business degree or having gone to culinary school.

"All the things that, if you look up how to start a business you should have, I didn’t,” she told the kids. “But I decided and I made a commitment.”

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Now, 12 years later, Muddy’s is a Memphis staple with two locations and a separate kitchen that people can tour on the weekends. She credited much of her success to hard work, help from friends, family and strangers and a willingness to ask questions and learn.

Gordon encouraged the students — now and in the future — to look for who might be trying to help them and accept that help, as well as being the person to offer a helping hand to those around them.

Afterward, she answered questions from the students on everything from what her favorite cake flavor is to where she got her startup capital, how she deals with disgruntled customers and how she found employees as her business grew.

Gordon’s talk hit on all the points Siddell has said he wants kids to learn from the program. He said A Diamond in the Rough is not about changing kids into something they’re not, but encouraging them to evaluate their strengths, clarify career ideas and then figure out how to translate those into a financial reality, whether they dream of being a professional athlete or owning a yard work business.

Siddell said a lot of people talk about throwing money at Memphis’ problems, but he believes making change in his community needs to take a more personal approach.

"It’s not money that they need, they just need to know, the youth especially, they need to know that they’re loved and people care about them,” he said. “We just want to get the kids thinking, ‘I just want to do better.’”

When he graduates from Houston High in May, Siddell plans to study for two years at Southwest Tennessee Community College before transferring to the University of Memphis to get his degree in business.

In the meantime, he wants to keep growing his nonprofit, encouraging kids in Memphis to dream, giving them the financial literacy tools to help them act on those dreams and reminding them that there is a community to support them.

“I may not be able to change the world but maybe somebody will remember, ‘Oh I went to that program, Diamond in the Rough, and they told me I can be anything,’” he said.

Corinne Kennedy is a reporter at The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached via email at Corinne.Kennedy@CommercialAppeal.com or on Twitter @CorinneSKennedy