Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour

Wow! We had an amazing week traveling all over the state of California. From 500 high school students in Porterville to an amazing group of educators in San Bernardino to an auditorium full of middle school students in Sonora, the Extreme Entrepreneurship Team had an awesome time inspiring students and their teachers to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

Our first event on May 6, 2009, was sponsored by Porterville College. Around 500 high school and college students came together to learn about how they could start businesses at a young age and learn about entrepreneurship at Porterville College. AJ Yager, (www.ajyager.com/blog) a local young entrepreneur that started dreaming big at the age of 10 shared about his experiences as one of the founders of Long Beach magazine and read an excerpt from his upcoming book. Also 30 exhibitors, including representatives of Porterville College and a group of young entrepreneurs from a hip hop clothing store, helped students see how they could start pursuing their dreams today!

Then our team headed south to San Bernardino: Michael Simmons, co-founder of the tour, Arel Moodie, speaker with Arel Moodie International (www.arelmoodie.com), and Elizabeth Saunders, women in business speaker with Real Life E (www.RealLifeE.com) fit themselves, their luggage, and all of the tour material in a Ford Focus. A bit of a squeeze but everyone and everything made it!

In San Bernardino, the awesome threesome put on a Teacher Workshop for local educators in collaboration with the Inland Empire SBDC. During this event, we focused on how our educational experiences, including classes, mentors, and competitions, had lead to our success as young entrepreneurs. Michael also shared about different resources that teachers could use to empower students to succeed, including online tools like Facebook ads and Google analytics.

Arel jetted across to NYC for another event, but Michael and Elizabeth carried on in California with an event for around 350 middle schoolers in Sonora. Columbia College sponsored this awesome program that encouraged 7th and 8th graders to start thinking about how they could create opportunities for themselves and others in the area. During the event, we emphasized the importance of going to college and considering community college as an affordable option. We also shared about the dual enrollment program where students can start earning high school and college credit at the age of 14. These kids had amazing energy and awesome ideas!! We can’t wait to see all they will teach us in the coming years.

All in all, it was a fantastic week—three cities, three age groups, and three opportunities to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs!

Las Vegas, NV

Visiting Las Vegas for an EET event is not a tour stop that will be forgotten easily. If you have been to Las Vegas you will know that working and sleeping are two things that while in Vegas are hard to do. One thing that was not difficult to do was to enjoy the beautiful University of Nevada Las Vegas campus! Spectacular.

Over 175 students stopped in to hear Rahim Fazal and Luke Burgis tell their entrepreneurial story. Luke is new to the tour after working on Wall Street for major banking corporations to now owning his own business Fit Fuel while, Rahim is a veteran tour speaker from the founding of the tour. Both speakers highlighted the importance of learning to meet other people and not being afraid to reach out to try something new. For more information about the event check out the article written by UNLV’s Rebel Yell.

The EET did not hit the jackpot or win a new car while visiting Las Vegas, but hopefully luck will turn around next year! The next stop is El Paso, TX where the temperature continues to rise for the team! The next couple of weeks are going to take the team over 8 states and several hundreds of miles with stops at half a dozen colleges from Texas to Ohio. Many sleepless nights are on the way!

The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour bus rolled into the beautiful picturesque background of the Rocky Mountains at 5:00PM Wednesday evening.  Over the last week we have covered 1,200 miles over 20 hours of bus drive time aided by collectively drinking 38 cups of coffee, soda, of course Michael Simmons’ favorite - green tea!   Our next stop is at Metropolitan State College of Denver, home of the mighty Roadrunners.  This is our third event in one week but our energy is high and of course we were ready to “High Five” our way to spreading the word of how students can take actions to achieve their goals.

Michael Simmons delivers keynote.

Today, the event received “mile high” status beginning with an early interview with Greg Moss at Denver NBC Affiliate KUSA-TV Channel 9.[link to video if possible]  Extreme Tour Co-Founder Michael Simmons did an AWESOME job of promoting the event by giving three great reasons why people should attend:

1. Learn great ideas from other success young people. 2. Learn how you can take your ideas and act on them.3. Win great prizes and cash donated by our favorite tour sponsors like OppenheimerFunds.

We met up with the MSCD Center of Innovation Marketing Coordinator Cindy Busch upon our arrival. Cindy’s energy and passion were infectious. Seems like even she can’t escape the entrepreneurial spirit with plans for her own business – delicious gourmet dog treats that even human can eat!

We also met up with one of our rock star entrepreneurs (Jason Duff) fresh off the plane from Columbus, Ohio.  

Jason Duff shares his entrepreneurial story.

Jason wowed today’s audience sharing how one of his companies COMSTOR Outdoor is helping small businesses be successful by advertising on his billboards in Ohio & Indiana.   Also, local entrepreneur, actor and TV host Ryan Parker shared how his company Backyard Genius is helping to tell the “untold stories” of countless successful people who have developed uncanny ideas that are making the world a better place to live and work.  Ryan commented on the panel the importance of volunteering as a way to share your talents and meet, connect, and learn others.

All in all, we had a great event at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Tomorrow we’ll be off to Las Vegas (cha-ching!) but you can sure bet we can’t wait to return to Denver again soon.

The team prepares to head to Denver!

The fourth stop on the Spring 09 tour brought the EET team to Hibbing Community College (HCC) in Hibbing, MN. Burrr…. the temperature the night before the tour stop reached negative 22 degrees. And the cold in Minnesota wasn’t even our true weather problem! The day we were scheduled to arrive to the event, a Nor’easter hit the east coast dumping over a foot of snow in many places. Michael and Arel’s flights were both cancelled. After the initial scare and jumping airline to airline and city to city, the team eventually arrived in Hibbing with plenty of time to spare before the next day’s events.

Our host in Hibbing, Chuck Lyons, informed the team of Hibbing’s rich entrepreneurial history.  Considering it’s size, it was IMPRESSIVE! Hibbing is home to entrepreneur Carl Wickman, founder of Greyhound bus lines as well as home to singer/songwriter Bob Dylan.

Arel gives the audience a high five!

At the event, local Minnesota entrepreneur, Ryan Shore, founder of 7 different corporations companies since 2004 joined the team to share his story of past success. He did a solid job illustrating the importance to students not to be afraid of failure.

We’re closing out the event here FAST and boarding the bus for the Rocky Mountains. We have a 16 hour overnight drive tonight so Michael can make a keynote in Cheyenne before our next EET stop in Denver, Colorado. Who knows what travel excitement awaits the team on the way! 

Wow! What a tremendous extreme tour stop! This was the first time in the Spring 09 semester that the entire EET team got to travel by bus to the event.

The first tour stop with the bus!

Hosted by Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, South Dakota as part of the school’s annual LAUNCH Leadership Conference. The event included a keynote address from Michael Simmons, breakout sessions from Arel Moodie and A.J. Yager.

If you have ever traveled to South Dakota you can relate to the way the weather patterns change from day to day this time of year. Two days before the event it was 65 degrees nice and sunny. The morning of the event — freezing rain, sleet and snow, not to mention wind chills in as low as -20 degrees. It was down right COLD! However, this did not stop the EET team from rocking the house with over 160 students in attendance.

Audience rocks the house!

A key part of the LAUNCH Conference included partnerships from all across the state of South Dakota, bridging the East-West divide. Partners included the Enterprise Institute, Kelly Center for Entrepreneurship at DWU, SDEPSCoR, SD Governor’s Office on Economic Development, SD Small Business Development Center and SD State University Entrepreneurship Program. All of these different organizations teamed together to host the EET team and really provided for a unique tour stop. The team cannot wait to visit SD again soon!

Next, the bus is on it’s way to Hibbing, MN!

Baton Rouge, Louisiana –

The 2009 Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour has officially kicked off! This is just the beginning to an exciting year of events, inspiration and lots of fun. This semester, Dustin Wickersham and Ana Molina have joined the road team. Dust hails from Huntsville, OH and Ana from El Paso, TX.

Our first event started at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. LSU is the flagship institution in Louisiana and the largest, with over 30,000 students.

The University is the home to the Fighting Tigers and a real live mascot Bengal Tiger, Mike, living on campus, who we had the opportunity to visit. Mike the Tiger

The tour was invited by the LSU Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute (SEI), and SEI Project Manager, Jarrett Rodriguez. The goal of the tour stop was to raise awareness about entrepreneurship opportunities across campus and fight brain drain in the region. Over 160 students registered and participated throughout the entire day.

Chancellor Martin welcomed students and opened up the event, followed by John Mathews, Director off the Small Business Services for the Louisiana Department of Economic Development, who stressed the many different resources available to students in the state of Louisiana. Both were followed by the tour’s Arel Moodie (www.arelmoodie.com) who kicked off the event with excitement and inspiration. Arel got the crowd up on their feet laughing and ready for our keynote speakers.

Michael Simmons, Co-Founder of the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, delivered the first keynote about his experience starting his own business, Princeton WebSolutions, when he was 16 years old. Michael explained the challenges and excitement of getting his first client to navigating his way of managing a growing business. Through the use of personal experiences, movies and an interactive PowerPoint presentation, Michael revealed how students can start a business at any age.

Our workshop sessions was lead by Arel, who once again got the crowd moving and excited with a workshop that help students brainstorm business ideas. In attendance for the networking breaks were exhibits from all round LSU’s campus and the State of Louisiana. These included the Louisiana Department of Economic Development, Louisiana Department Business & Technology Center, along with two business incubators. Another great asset to Louisiana and LSU is the food! For lunch, the audience received Jambalaya, a dish of Spanish and French influence made of meats and vegetables completed by stock and rice. FANTASTIC!

Our second keynote speaker, Josh Kowitt, used his personal story about starting his own business after two short months his freshmen year of college. His business started as a student refrigerator rental business and later he moved into shipping and storage through a new company, Collegeboxes. Josh’s business grew to 60 campuses nationwide. Josh’s entrepreneurship experience inspired students to understand the importance of starting a business now and chasing your passion as soon as you can.

Our LSU event closed with a panel discussion composed of 5 experts including our two keynote speakers and local entrepreneurs: Jack Warner (a local restaurant owner), Wendy Williamson (founder of gotbreastpump.com) and Abigail Lefebvre Business Development Officer from the LA Department of Economic Development). The discussion was moderated by Arel and much of the discussion was stimulated by the audience’s questions.

We are proud to announce that ARC has created a $25,000 scholarship for colleges & universities in the Appalachian region who want to bring the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour to their campus during the 2009 Spring semester. Individual schools are eligible for a scholarship up to $5,000. The deadline for applications is January 23, 2009

To apply, complete the application and send it to sheena@extremee.org.

The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour (EET) was invited to deliver a panel and keynote address at the first Governor’s Conference on Small Business and Enterprise, which was part of the kick-off for the first-ever Global Entrepreneurship Week. Representing EET was Arel Moodie.

The conference included over 400 small business owners, workforce development and economic development professionals, college administrators, government officials, and Small Business Development Center managers.

A very interesting portion of the event occurred when the audience was split into caucuses who brainstormed and voted on bills to present to Honorable Governor Shwarzenegger on how to promote entrepreneurship within the state.  37 ideas were brainstormed and 10 were officially presented to Shwarzenegger who later addressed the conference.

To view a video of Arel moderating a panel with some of the world’s top young entrepreneurs, visit the Kauffman Foundation web site.

The conference can best be summarized by its main organizer, Mary Wollesen, Statewide Initiative Director for Economic and Workforce Development through the California Community Colleges, who said, “The Conference was wonderful and the Extreme portion of both events was considered the best. Content was right on, the panel was inspiring, and Arel…well, what can I say.