Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in the late 19th century. He believed that diet was the key to good health. “Eat what the monkey eats,” he told anyone who would listen. “Simple food and not too much of it.”

In an attempt to create a substitute for bread, Kellogg turned wheat into flakes — and, by accident, created the first breakfast cereal. To cut a long story extremely short, this led to Battle Creek becoming the “Cereal Capital of the World,” and eventually to Kellogg’s Cereal City USA, a $22 million breakfast food funhouse that opened downtown in 1998.

Using the entrepreneurial mindset and trying to find a solution to an existing problem, Kellogg found an opportunity and chose to take action to pursue it.  Now, Kellogg’s is one of the top 20 largest companies in the world.

The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour met in this famous town for the Generation E Institute Showcase.  This was a historic event because the entire team was there- yep, Michael Simmons, Sheena Lindahl, Arel Moodie , Sarah Green and Matt Heffner all in one place.  This hasn’t happened in about 3 years!

Generation E Institute offers entrepreneurship education to any community.  They incorporate entrepreneurship education into schools and offer a full menu of certification options:  middle school, high school (two curricula), after school, Career and Technology Centers, and Alternative Education settings.  All curricula can be offered as complete courses or “drop in” units into an existing curriculum.

The showcase featured middle school and high school students who had created a business complete with a full business plan.  During the showcase, judges have the opportunity to read business plans, and meet the students to judge their display and their presentation performance.  Businesses ranged from dog treats to chap stick made from beeswax to show roosters/chickens to a teen issues magazine.  Awards were given at the end totaling $5,000!  Needless to say, we were all extremely impressed by how prestigious these kids were and are proud of them for taking action and bringing their ideas to fruition.

In the afternoon, the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour presented their event to an intimate and engaged audience.  One participant even drove two and a half hours just to make it to the event!  Now that’s dedication!

The next tour event will be June 8.  In the meantime, Arel Moodie will be doing a keynote in Brooklyn and traveling with his girlfriend to Virginia.  Sheena and Michael will be going on a long deserved vacation to Europe with their daughter Halle, and Sarah Green (tour manager) will be spending 6 weeks backpacking in Central America!  What a life these young entrepreneurs lead.  Everyone is looking forward to the next event in Western Arizona!

In the midst of our travels through California, we have stopped in a small place called DeQueen, Arkansas to hold an extreme event.  We had two of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country give great messages to the participants at Cossatot Community College.

Here are some of the messages that these successful entrepreneurs shared with the audience:

Gabriel Anderson: “The one thing you must master to have all the success you want in life… Darma”.  “Darma is a term that comes out of India that means to follow ones life purpose or your life’s calling” and to figure out the one thing you can do better than anyone else in the world.  Bill Gates, the guys from google… They found it.  It is up to you to find your own.   So how do you find it?  The best business to start is the business that solves a problem.

Doug Fath:  Doug talked all about the entrepreneurial mindset and how this should always be growing continuously.  He first got inspired (like many young entrepreneurs) by reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad.  He went on to tell a little bit of his story about talked about how having his own business gave him the freedom to travel for three months with his fiancée throughout Asia.  Who doesn’t want that lifestyle?!  He even was able to compare starting his business to petting a 450 pound tiger!  Want to see the comparison?  You’ll have to ask him!  He left the audience with two main pieces of advice: 1) find a mentor and 2) build an allstar team.  He encouraged everyone to leave the room with a whole new mind set and to start to think differently and to take their dreams to the next level starting today.

Before heading back to Texas to fly to California for the next event, we stopped at a local restaurant for lunch called Sisters.  It opened July 2009 and their moto is “we cook what we love so you’ll love what we cook”.    Holy cow.  Delicious, devine, scrumptious, delectable… come on thesaurus, help me out… what are some more words for some of the best home style cooking you could ever have!  Delicious fried chicken, creamy cheesy potatoes and to top it off… buttermilk pie and fresh strawberry pie.  Sorry, Grandma, I’ve found my new favorite dessert!  Check them out on facebook here.  If you are ever in the DeQueen, Arkansas area you definitely need to make a detour to Sisters Restaurant where you will find delightful cooks/owners, a wonderful staff and some awesome food!

It seems like each event that we do tops the last, so we are on to the next in San Bernadino, California.  Can’t wait to see what it has in store!

Wow.  We have just finished a blitz of events!  University of Missouri on Friday, Porterville, CA Monday, Allan Hancock in Santa Maria, CA on Tuesday and both Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, California simultaneously with Baton Rouge Community College in Louisiana on Wednesday.

Over 1000 students heard about idea creation and received tangible steps towards taking a hold of their own future and either creating their own business or being entrepreneurial in their jobs.

Speakers this week featured Ryan Everson, a very successful 19 year old who created Computer Doctors right out of high school, , Derek Johnson CEO of group text messaging website, Tatango.com and Lauren Berger, the Intern Queen.

Pictures of the events have been posted to www.facebook.com/roadtour.  If you were at one of the events, be sure to tag yourself in the photos!

Events next week include Cossatot Community College in DeQueen, AR on Tuesday, April 20 and San Bernadino on April 22.  Follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/roadtour for live updates.

After an amazing event at Mizzou on Friday, the team has just landed in California for a week’s worth of events.  We were slightly terrified as we boarded our 10 seat propeller plane to Visalia but now we are settled in and looking forward to rocking the house this week!  Stay tuned!

Check out some behind the scenes at Missouri University here

Want to see what our participants get out of the events?  Here is what Mizzou students think

Click here for the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour at Michigan Works! Video

Let’s go Racers! The triumphant chant capped Rob Nicholson’s speech at the Murray State tour stop. In many ways this Extreme Tour experience resembled the Murray State Racers Basketball team, scrappy, resilient, and determined. Their improbable NCAA birth the day before inspired a whole county. Predictably, a combination of small town charm, pride, and big aspirations filled the room. Curious attendees picked the brain of speaker Rob who marveled them with his own resiliency- he got kicked out of his house at 18 years old, worked for $2.13 and hour and had to figure out someway to buy a home and start a business with little money. For one day at least, Rob was a “Racer”

Other “Racers” in attendance were the President of Murray State University as well as Dean Tim Todd. He gave an awesome introduction to the event. Business professor Steve Dublin chimed in from time to time as well. He pointed the students towards a host of great resources the campus offered to entrepreneurs.

Other keynote speaker, Dustin Hillis, seized the day in his own way. He not only shared his own story but also a powerful four-step formula for achieving success. Students were impressed by his ability to start from not knowing anything about business to becoming the number one ranked sales professional in the Southwestern Company.

Interesting fact of the day: Murray Kentucky is one hour away from Metropolis, the birthplace of Superman. After leaving this event, you got the sense that the real superheroes were the underestimated attendees who left encouraged and ready to change the world! Let’s go Racers!!

Great quotes from the tour:
Dustin Hillis:
“If you do what everyone else does, you will get average results”

Juan:
I need this event. My mom and I came over from Cuba when I was a child and we were doing a translation business that showed promise. We ended up quitting because we got discouraged by the debt that we piled up. This was the encouragement I needed to get back on my feet.

When we landed in Sioux Falls, we were graciously told by our pilot that it was -19 degrees. We left Florida when it was 78 degrees. You do the math! Arel and Sarah picked up our awesome Danish intern, Tue, grabbed the bus and headed off to Mitchell, South Dakota!

If you thought LAUNCH 2009 was fantastic, LAUNCH 2010 blew everyone away! Conference Partners included the Enterprise Institute, Kelley Center for Entrepreneurship at DWU, South Dakota EPSCoR, South Dakota Governor’s Office on Economic Development, South Dakota Small Business Development Centers, and South Dakota State University Entrepreneurship Program. Our sponsors and partners were incredible and brought in a great program.

The one and only, fabulous Sheena Lindahl was our key note speaker for the event. Boy can that girl rock a crowd! She motivated everyone in the audience and told them that “we are who we allow ourselves to be”. She talked about how “extreme” entrepreneurship is taking entrepreneurial skills and applying those to your entire life. She told about her own story of how she was able to co-found the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour and create the life that she wants for herself by being able to work with people who inspire her and raise her 15 month old daughter, Halle. What an inspiration.

Quotable quotes from what students learned:

“It takes more than an 805 job to get what you want out of life”- Bryan
“There are two kinds of luck, good and bad, and I can create my own opportunities in life”- Nick

After the event, the EET team loaded up the bus in the snow and ice and made the trek to Minnesota, don’t ya know (said with an accent). We made a pit stop at the Corn Palace, the main attraction of Mitchell, SD. An entire building made from corn! It was quite a spectacle and an incredible work of art. To get some caffeine for the ride we stopped at Black Sheep Coffee where Arel tried chai for the first time (and loved it) and solved a rubik’s cube in under 5 minutes! If you weren’t full of awe for this guy before, you can be completely impressed now!

3 events in one week and they were all huge successes. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the season has in store!

What’s better than home cooking? Beats us! The Extreme Tour kicked off the Central Texas  College event on Tuesday  night with a hot meal and some good company at the OrgSync headquarters. OrgSync C.E.O., Eric Fortenberry, was a gracious and humble host who set the tone for Wednesday’s event. The Central Texas SIFE team is a hard-working and welcoming group who really embodies what it means to “DREAM BIG.”

The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour team kicked off the Spring 2010 tour and rocked the house in warm and sunny Florida. We arrived at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, Florida on Monday, February 22.  In order to get a flavor for the community we would see the next day, we went to the Original Tiki Hut to experience some fresh seafood before bringing all of our energy to the event the next day.  I don’t know what they’re feeding the fish down here, but it definitely worked!

The event was sponsored locally by EDI (Entrepreneur Development Institute at IRSC), the CCTI (Corporate & Community Training Institute at IRSC), the SBDC (Small Business Development Center at IRSC), and the City of Ft. Pierce Redevelopment Agency (FPRA).

As usual, the event started off with a lot of high fives and even though it was 8 am, everyone was participating enthusiastically.  The participants came in tired and skeptical of what they just signed up for, but by the end of the day they were literally jumping in their chairs and busting with ideas and goals to apply what they learned that morning.

Keynote speakers Adam Witty and Jason Duff definitely brought on the heat.  Their success stories impressed us all and they addressed topics from social entrepreneurship and using your talents and passions to make money and save the world, to the importance of who your employees are and making sure that they are so focused they are able to “pee through a straw”.  Marinate on that one for a minute!

Here are some worthwhile quotes from some of the event participants:

“It wasn’t just another conference with the mumbo-jumbo of trying to just get everyone motivated and inspired.  The tour achieved that of course, but actually gave us tangible and practical steps for how to be able to apply that energy and take the next step”.

“Can you come back next week?”

“I learned something new today.  I’ve always known that to be a successful entrepreneur you have to connect a new and innovative idea with the solution to a problem, so I’ve been trying to create something completely new and separate from what is out there.  I learned today how to apply this enthusiasm and passion to creating a service to improve the current, rather than create something brand new.”

If this first event sets the precedent for what the rest of the session will bring, you are all in for a treat!  The team heads out to cold and snowy South Dakota bright and early tomorrow morning.  Let’s hope the energy from participants at the South Dakota LAUNCH 2010 will be able to keep us just as warm and fired up as we are down here in Florida!

Solano Community College