This is The Business Experience Show where we talk to entrepreneurs about the
challenges and successes of starting owning or operating a business welcome
to the business experience show I'm your host Lisa Caprelli we have co-host Brian Gaps.
Today we're talking with Stephen Christensen he's founder of
Teen Entrepreneur Academy. Hhe's also the dean of the School of Business at Concordia
University in Irvine welcome thank you thank you Lisa and Brian glad to be here
hi Stephen thank you tell us a little bit about teen entrepreneur Academy how
did that get started well it got started I read a research report about high
school students and the issue of unemployment and high school students
Gallup did a survey that said 85% of high school students in America wish
they had more business education in high school and 80% said they wanted to start
their own business now it's not that the high schools are ignoring business
education but they have so much other things that they're teaching so I
thought to myself well I'm teaching entrepreneurship already in the MBA
program I already have some curriculum material and so I was thinking how could
I help address this issue so the idea came to me to run a summer program for
teens who want to start a business and I started doing a little research on
summer programs and the fact that Concordia University we don't have
summer school we have the dorms available to us so it was sort of like
here was this problem somehow I've got this background prepared to offer a
solution and the idea was born and actually the first time came up with the
idea it was called the youth entrepreneurship Academy but then as I
refined the idea and talked to others including teenagers they felt that the
word youth connotated sort of a younger age group and so we talked about how do
you name a business and how their business name relates to what you do so
we suggested working with the teens the teen entrepreneur Academy because it's a
very descriptive name and based upon that you can figure out what it is that
we do so a lot of the things that you teach you have an actual practice with
the teen entrepreneur Academy yeah what we do is we try to practice what we
teach and try to engage the teens in it and so that's how we saw
came up with I went to a high school actually in Santa Ana where they have a
business academy already going at century high school and I'm one of their
advisors and so in that classroom teams already form businesses they form groups
of three and during the course of the year they created hypothetical companies
they don't actually do selling but one person is the CEO one person is a VP of
Marketing one person is a VP of HR and then the CFO and they create these
hypothetical companies so I partnered with them so I used them sort of as my
beta testing an idea group they actually even helped design the logo I want to
point out this is your this will be your third summer yeah third so 18
entrepreneur Academy and I so every year I get four or six kids from century high
school this year we have about 65 registered we had 40 the first year
which is not bad first year out of the gate unknown program and then 65 year -
and we're at 65 right now and let's describe for the person watching this
maybe their mother father they they know their child has an interest or teenager
has an interest in starting up a business one day or maybe they watch
that maybe you're a teenager watching this and and you're very entrepreneurial
driven so describe for us first of all they gotta go to your website they can
go to the website see you I dot edu slash te a okay and describe what they
can expect it's five day it's a five day program they come to Concordia
University yes so it the program starts on Sunday afternoon the parents drop
them off at one o'clock and it concludes on Saturday morning eleven o'clock after
graduation so they come in they actually it's sort of a college immersion
experience so it's entrepreneurship and college at the same time they live in
the campus they live in the dorms they attend our classes and training in the
same classrooms that the college students learn so they're actually in
high school going to college how exciting and and they live on the dorms
rural groups of four four per room of course you know males in one section and
females in the other and then I use recent college graduates as the
chaperones that handle the overseeing of the dorms and the administration of the
program where I oversee the curriculum and
speakers in the presentation and it's a beautiful it's a beautiful campus and
people can go take a tour for free right yeah any time they could come visit our
campus we're in Irvine in the Turtle Rock
community up on top of the hill it's a gated community the city of Irvine nine
years in a row safest city in America and it's a bit isolated which you want
with teenagers as well well it is its isolated and on the top of the hill so
you don't have any distractions they can't run to the store on the corner or
what have you and actually we collect their car keys because if you're a
senior in high school you might have a car right but there's no cars allowed
and if you end up driving yourself we collect your car keys just nobody leaves
the campus Steven what age can you be to attend teen entrepreneur Academy so
therefore high school students so it's anything from incoming freshman to
senior in high school so it's usually thirteen to seventeen years old and as
we do the rooming we room them by age groups so we don't have a thirteen year
old with the 17 year old and all this so we group them by schools and age
categories and I imagine people sometimes come in as friends they come
with their friend and you make arrangements for that so the friends can
stay together right now we have students coming from six states and three
countries okay that's awesome so who typically sends their kids to
this would it be entrepreneurs they're not necessarily people who've lived the
corporate life and want their kids to maybe experience something different I
imagine you get all that it's a variety of people I talked to a lady yesterday
and they have a family business and they have children who are in high school and
they want them to get engaged in a family business and they wanted to know
if this experience would help them and of course it will because we deal with
financial literacy we deal with startup budget they'll hear terms that they'll
hear in the family business and so they'll actually go through identifying
customers selling products everything that the family business does so they're
gonna be trained to take over the family business they want to go that way so
that's one as a family business owner or the entrepreneur or it's the parent who
might work for a regular company but they see in their son or daughter this
entrepreneurial spirit they're always selling something
whether that's mowing lawns or iced tea and they see that they have a propensity
for it so somebody asks at the schools because
I work with high schools and the teachers select the students for me so
one new school that we have partnership with the teacher called me
up and he so what type of student are you looking at
is there a grade requirement do they have to be a student's B student C and I
said there's only one requirement and you will know who they are and that is
that they have a desire and an interest in a mindset for business and
entrepreneurship you'll know who those students are how they when you talk
about business their eyes light up so I want the person who has that spirit in
them and if they're a C student like I was that's fine so there is no grade
requirement the only requirement is passion in their heart or an ID nmi and
what it would agree thing for any teacher to nominate students yeah and
they know him best so that's why I defer to the to the teachers for selecting the
students so and let's walk through a little bit about what the teen
entrepreneur Academy includes what happens when these students get there
well the first thing that we do on day one is we sort of you know we have
classes every day they have breakfast lunch and dinner on the campus so we
breakfast is 7:30 to 8:30 8:30 we get into the first class so we have
45-minute classes all the way through the day and the first thing we focus on
in the morning is really a mindset shift we want to begin to inculcate a
free-enterprise mentality we want to begin to train them that every single
student who's there can be successful so regardless of their
circumstances in their neighborhood at home when they come to this campus and
they participate in this camp every single student has the ability to be
successful with their own business if they work hard they get the education
training and discipline but if you look at America people who are successful
they were focused on it and that it's it's not like they have to have been
given resources and money to be successful that if they're persistent
they can be successful the first thing is mindset shift and on that note it
doesn't matter where you live what your socio-economic background is no I
actually asked them a question I said I asked them to raise their hands if they
had a they participated in the decision as to where they were born and when they
were born none of us did that's where we came from the most
important thing is where are we today and what are the decisions and choices
we're going to make going forward because from this point
as teenagers young adults they're not responsible for their life and it's the
decisions and choices they make and if they decide they want to start a
business then we're there to give them the tools and all of the things that
they need to be successful in starting a business so first thing is mindset shift
and then somebody asked me will do they have to have a business idea to come to
the camp and the answer is no so maybe half the students already have in mind a
business idea for something they want to start but the other half want to learn
the principles of entrepreneurship and how to start a business in one of the
things you do is you help them understand what decisions go into
deciding which business to create so one of the exercises we do is how to
identify opportunities ok so we do an opportunity exercise and they work
together because the shortage is not in ideas there's a ton of ideas it's
sorting out which idea is actually valid that's meeting a need or solving a
problem somebody has so we also begin to train them to identify problems as
opportunities now we welcome problems we're looking for problems to solve and
every problem is an opportunity so that's the entrepreneurial mindset a
problem is an opportunity 13 entrepreneur Academy each year you have
amazing speakers reaching out to these teams and really touching them and
really hitting home their business successes give us some examples of your
past speakers okay I'm glad you talked about speakers because that is a
differentiating feature of our teen entrepreneur Academy with other ones the
first year I had the Academy and as an entrepreneur every year I review what we
did and I learn from it so the first year we have speakers coming in and just
because you're the CEO of a company and very successful in 55 or 65 years old
you have all these employees and one hundred million dollars and you might be
a great speaker for the employees at your company or potential customers but
now we're teaching teenagers and the teenage brain is different so every
seven to eight or nine minutes the modality needs to change so I have sort
of revised these speakers that I begin to bring in I'm bringing them down in
age I think this year I have very few who are
with 30 because I want the teenagers to be better be able to relate to them see
as adults will hear this great speaker who's got this great company will hang
on every word and take notes because we're committed to lifelong learning in
our self-improvement teens are still distracted and trying to figure out why
do I need to listen to this guy and some tune in and to now the other thing that
I've done is talk to the speakers I've sort of given them a speaker's guide
that whatever so we begin to talk about what's the learning outcome you want in
your 30-minute presentation and then how do we know we're going to accomplish
that outcome and then also the first year I was in auditorium seating well an
auditorium seating it doesn't lend itself to moving around and working in
groups now we're in roundtables groups of six or seven so I say to the speakers
start with your key points but then as you go through your presentation
somewhere about minutes seven eight or nine you need to ask them a question
that they are then going to work in the group and answer together and then give
you the feedback as to the conclusion they reached so that they're in an
experiential learning environment as they get going so I've changed the
speakers but I've had CEOs I mean one of the most popular ones of course is wing
lam founder of Wahoo's Fish Tacos we had two other young guys who sold their
company at 23 years old for 20 million dollars and so they'll come in and and
and then I have actually brought in a high school student who had a first
patent while she was in high school and it's very interesting because she had a
patent on in the bottom of jacuzzi sometimes when girls go swimming their
hair could get stuck in the drain and they could drown and her sister used to
tease her let that was happening to her so the sister came up with an idea to
put a propeller a metal propeller inside there so that when the jacuzzi drain is
going if your hair got stuck it would cut it a great idea so she has a patent
she's in local right here Irvine High School great fantastic that she has the
patent but then we talked about what's to go to market strategy well she was
inventor that's why she invented that the difference between the inventor and
the entrepreneur is to go to market strategy so to have a patent is a great
first step but unless you know how to take that patent and go to the market
whether you're licensing it manufacturing it outsourcing it
so we talked about the difference between the inventor stage and the
entrepreneurs it's the idea stage and we often hear people say I have a
million-dollar idea Lisa or you know this idea is worth four million and we
say okay it's an idea the execution is worth a million or four million dollars
it's not the idea and that that's where we spend most of the time on our
curriculum is on the execution we teach the Lean Startup methodology and our
focus is on the customer development model we need to know who is your
customer and some students will say well everyone everyone is no one
we need they actually do a customer profile of age income geography
demographics psychographics religious preferences all of these to identify
that ideal customer so then we can do the survey to find out where their
target market is how large it is they do industry trends is that is is the
industry they're in growing shrinking government regulations training so the
whole thing is driving them to putting together a PowerPoint presentation of
their business it's sort of an investor presentation that they present in the
business plan competition oh they love the business plan competition describe
that that's the last day yes yes the last day and what they love
about it is they win money the best business plan wins a thousand dollars
the team wins a thousand dollars and so every team gets to present and they're
usually teams of three or four and so they put together this presentation so
they're doing their their research all week getting ready for that they're
working so they're working as a team it's by themselves they go out if you
say it for example PowerPoint or put this on Prezi they're in charge of their
own little well they're in charge of it I give them a template to fill in but
then they gotta have to get the images videos anything that they want to
incorporate into that PowerPoint presentation to help sell their products
okay give me the picture where do they go work on that do they have computer
labs at the campus that they could use some already have their laptops that
they can use and so they're working on it in the afternoon in the evening so we
have group time set aside specifically for that so with the 12 slides then we
put together a schedule that by the end of day two you should have these two
slides done at the end of day three so some will
follow the schedule some might be like me and cram everything into the last day
as as long as they can well I'd like that it's very kinesthetic and hands-on
most people learn best by actually doing it you said you break them up into
groups with speakers and they're actually getting involved so that's not
just going and they're just listening they're actually getting involved it
sounds exciting for them yeah and so what happens is there are some business
academy summer programs that are highly theoretical or they'll create a
hypothetical company and they might do mathematical models and all this ours
are not hypothetical these students actually have this idea for a business
and they're creating their plan and it's for something that they really want to
do so we we give enough theory but most is you got to do the business and so
what happens was in the first year I didn't have some CEO coaches so when
they presented their business plan to the judges for the first time it was the
first time out of the gate so it was not as polished as it could be are they
giving guidance every day they're getting guidance every day but then on
the day before the business plan competition I bring in if we have twenty
teams I will bring in forty coaches and mentors successful entrepreneurs
business leaders bankers sponsor companies that are supporting us and
they will spend two hours meeting with the group reviewing their PowerPoint
presentation challenging assumptions looking for gaps helping them practice
their presentation so that when they present the next day to the judges
they're better prepared so that happens on Thursday so Thursday night they're
all cramming taking all the information and repolish enough their business plan
getting ready for the presentation the next day on Friday so on that note if
you're a business owner or you want to be a sponsor to help teen entrepreneur
Academy what can you do same thing you just go to the website my email address
is on there and just send me an email and express your interest I'm sure
there's many local business owners entrepreneurs that would love to be part
of your program well the Orange County Business Journal did a little expose on
the teen entrepreneur Academy and the fact that we're looking for
entrepreneurs who would be speakers mentors and coaches and I probably had
six or eight emails business owners who wanted to come in
and who wanted to actually coach the kids so but then what happens Friday the
business plan competition Friday morning we have breakfast the business plan
competition each team only gets ten minutes we've got the timer going and at
the end of ten minutes we'll give them a one-minute warning but at ten minutes
we're done okay just like in real life right you're going to pitch an investor
you've got to ten minutes so probably twenty teams ten minutes
will present in the morning we have a panel of CEO judges who are picking the
top three plans okay then we break for lunch
we'll have some speakers in the afternoon and the top three business
plan teams are then sequestered to begin to refine their business plan it could
still have feedback from the CEOs and judges and then Friday night at five
o'clock is the final presentation where we invite the public to come parents
donors sponsors anyone who's interested to actually hear the kids present their
final presentation and then the winner is selected and then we have a reception
and so forth that sounds fun it's like a sports competition I really like it it
is and actually for the the teams that are picked for the final three you know
they can email their friends Facebook you know get the word out this you know
9:00 to 5:00 o'clock I'm presenting and it's I'm glad you mentioned that because
we work with a lot of business owners and they understand business but they
don't understand marketing and technology in the way it is done
currently but I bet these teens come in with their smart phones and their use of
technology they've got that part down they just don't have the business
experience and so do they integrate that do you find them integrating that
quickly and easily both actually when you talk about like last year two or
three or four of the plans were for different apps that they wanted to
develop or one team wanted to develop an app that would disable your phone when
it's in motion when you're driving so you couldn't text and drive you know so
rather than the team turning off the phone which they won't do you know
actually the motion if you're going more than 10 miles an hour the motion on your
phone would actually disable it so you couldn't text so they're already coming
up with apps the winning business plan from last year was
a social media promotion site working with youtubers and developing strategies
for them to get more followers and to have interaction between these youth
these famous youtubers which is big business and their fans interacting with
them in a unique and dynamic way that I can't disclose the NDA group which by
the way that's the first thing we do on Monday as well when they come is
everybody signs NDA agreements we explain about the confidentiality and
non-disclosure and so forth but of course we know those are just for honest
people and so forth so Steven people come to teen entrepreneur Academy and
you are encouraging education of course a lot of them will go on to college and
they actually have a vision now a plan in mind and we were talking about
earlier that they get to use the resources of that open mind using their
their peers their college once they go to college college yeah absolutely so
what happens actually there's been some research done that shows that high
school students who participate in extracurricular entrepreneurship
training programs such as mine graduate at a higher rate than those that don't
and today in America I don't know if you know this but there's a terrible high
school dropout rate I mean one in seven high school students drop out of high
school everyday and the main reason they say is that they don't feel like the
curriculum is relevant to their life they're trying to figure out what to do
with it so when you begin to introduce business and all of this they could say
oh I could see how I could use this now they should be paying an attention to
all of the subjects so number one we're trying to help keep kids in high school
graduate from high school then go to college actually so last year one of our
students graduated from the Tina Turner Academy went to college in the state of
Washington and he majored in entrepreneurship at the college the the
college had a business plan competition he entered the business plan competition
took first place from there he entered the regional competition for the western
USA took first place and then went back to Nationals in Washington DC didn't win
it all but there was some correlation between the concepts that he had learned
in the high school teen entrepreneur Academy and his readiness for college
and right now your program teen entrepreneurial Academy is
it's local it's at Concordia University in Irvine California
but you have expansion plans as well well there are 10 Concordia across the
USA and so one of the ideas that we're evaluating and putting together a
business model on just like we teach the teams is the opportunity to consider a
licensing package to offer it to other universities in other regions so that
the students in that area can have the benefit of it because it's really not as
much about promoting University as it is about creating a mindset shift in these
young people and small businesses let's not forget the small businesses or the
backbone of this country small businesses provide more jobs create more
stimulus in the economy and every big business actually sometimes started
small right Apple started in the garage hoola package started in the garage
links is here in Irvine started in the garage instrument so they all start
small and so we're trying to teach them these principles so that they're better
prepared now my daughter I have two daughters graduated Concordia
one of them when she was in high school participated in a teen entrepreneur like
program at another university and she told me that once she went to college
and studied business she was better prepared than her classmates to relate
to the business curriculum because she had been exposed to the terms she know
what a profit and loss statement was she knew where to start a budget was she
knew what target marketing she know what unique selling proposition was because
she was exposed to those things and today she's under 30 making six figures
at her case so she has that experience and that's what this camp can do for you
teen entrepreneur Academy this is a skill set you could get and it's not
just for people who want to go in to start their own company but as you said
having these tools having that mindset helps you when you work with another
company even when you're working a corporation having the entrepreneurial
mindset and understanding can help you in so many different areas so you're
right that's a key point because not all of them will start businesses but when
they go and work now for another company for an employer they're coming in the
door understanding and thinking like an owner they'll know about overhead
they'll know why the owner of this company is conscious about costs about
customer satisfaction we want them to think like an owner and to
add value to that company every day Steve you wrote education is the most
effective means to change a person's life and improve a community it is the
most precious and life-changing gift we can give anyone so that's really what
we're doing this I mean this isn't a business model of how Concordia is going
to recruit high school students it's a passion of mine it's a hobby I'm not
paid to do it it's something that I want to do it's a it's a way for me to give
back to the young people because they're our future leaders so you know we hear
people say you're never too old conversely we believe you're never too
young to learn principles of business and in free enterprise and self
responsibility so that's what we're doing and part of that is you've made
this program affordable for everybody well and and we don't want finances to
prevent somebody from participating so if they have an interest we'll find a
way to get a scholarship program or some way to fund them so probably a little
bit more than fifty percent of our students are from low-income at-risk
communities who never would have this type of program available to them just
because of the cost and so we have a commitment that we'll always have half
of the class coming from low-income communities and we'll go raise the money
from our corporate sponsors companies individual donors banks or other
organizations so that this would be available to them that you for doing
that because I grew up poor and I would have loved to be able to watch this on
youtube or television and I would have been the one like oh my god I want to go
to this teen entrepreneur Academy to have that um I always had that
entrepreneur spirit in me you know since I was a little girl so so if you are
that person that you you think business could change life you see the advantage
of being a business owner I really want you to go sign up for this you can speak
with Steven or any of his stuff you can go to see you i GD u /t EA and you know
we're gonna have a great year and every year we update and change the curriculum
and different speakers and so I do have people come back so last year's business
plan winners they both want to come back but they'll come back as counselors and
mentors then we have peers helping peers so
they'll go around helping and coaching their business plan teams with the other
students as well yeah so each you're just growing and growing and you're
spreading the entrepreneurial spirit to the country while we're creating what we
call teen printers Steven what are the dates of teen entrepreneur Academy in
2014 well we hold it we always hold the teen
entrepreneur Academy the second week in July so every year it will be that time
sometimes we conflict' what other summer schedules people have and I've heard a
mom who said we're gonna come home early from vacation so that our son can get to
the program there do you find parents wanting to be eavesdropping and peek in
on their kids so didn't sound out aloud well I invite them to come of course the
challenge is the teams don't want their bombs around or dads but it is open it's
an open program when we do have the business plan competition some of the
parents do come we have a graduation lunch and a graduation speaker and all
the parents are invited to come to that so we do get some parents coming some
parents actually are successful entrepreneurs and they want to talk
about their entrepreneurial experience and so I will recruit some speakers from
parents of students that want a participant to be a part of this
business is the background I have an eight-year-old and he's we watch Shark
Tank together and he's always talking about hashtags from you know the
businesses and things and and he's right on the money on you know he's only eight
so I can't wait to send him to two teen entrepreneur Academy one day yeah and
we've had speakers who had been presented on Shark Tank and got funded
so we we have some local people that we bring in who do that but the thing
that's really important about these teenagers in entrepreneurship is that
teenagers are natural entrepreneurs they have a natural curiosity and
inquisitiveness and innovation and creativity it's innate it's in them
already but unfortunately what happens as they go through life and the
educational system and other things people start telling them all to conform
and and actually that creativity sometimes gets diminished in them and so
we want to keep that entrepreneurial spirit alive in them and keep them going
because there's some of the greatest entrepreneurs around wait
the number one answer or response you hear to want to owning a business what
is the you know we all know starting a business it's it's a ton of hours you
put in it for sure you know more than if you're an RA we
paid employee what is the top response to here for someone loving owning it
their own business well the number one reason is freedom freedom to choose
their own destiny our freedom to do what it is that they love to do but we know
it's not easy it's very difficult and we talk about the failure rates and we talk
about the fact that actually with our program it's okay to fail because every
time you fail you find out what didn't work in your business I mean we do case
studies for example PayPal when PayPal first launched and got their investor
funding from venture capitalists they had one business model in one business
plan in 30 days the guys found out that didn't work and they met with the
venture capital team and said you know that plan that you put four million
dollars into that's not gonna work we're gonna go with this Plan B and the
investors said okay well you guys know what you're doing that's okay their
business model actually changed four times before they struck on the plan
that is PayPal today so failing is only telling you what didn't work and helping
you pivot or modify your plan so that you can match what the customer wants
and let's don't forget that today businesses no matter what age you start
your business it's how you get found on the internet and the web you know
getting ranked on page one of Google is important YouTube all these features to
any business yeah and the young people they understand all of that
and they're real active and posting things and maybe some older verses need
to go back to school actually I do have an offer out to any companies that have
a product or service that are targeting teenagers if they want to come and do a
an alpha test and bring their product in and ask the teens to evaluate it kick it
around test it what have you they can bring it in and we'll do that last year
we had Google glass so all the kids got to try on the glass and play around with
them this year there's a new company out there you might have read about called
oculus which was acquired by Facebook an Irvine based company and they have the
virtual reality goggles so we're making arrangements to have those
a pair of those goggles coming in for the students to begin to play around
with that so we try to keep them on the front end of technology actually we're
also looking at bringing in a 3d printer so these students could see how these 3d
printers work and all of the capability because I mean the innovation is moving
in that direction already wow you could you Jam pack a lot of stuff in five days
sounds like so much we do it's a lot of fun but you have to because the teen
mind is moving moving moving their mind operates different since 1975 the sort
of the whole educational paradigm has changed because she had that traditional
rote education but their mind works differently today and so the educational
experience has to be different with the activity in an interaction and all of
this so they're there the internet generation so it wasn't like when we
were in school and so we actually we try to adjust to so that our curriculum
matches the teen mind and the business landscape has changed dramatically as
well right so you talk about traditional business well what is it tradition there
is no traditional business anymore we talk about business as unusual there is
no business as usual I mean they're still blocking and tackling and cash is
king and cash flow and things of that nature but the whole landscape of
business has changed it's changing everyday it's a global it's 24/7 and
that's what these kids are being prepared I mean I we work with
businesses who've been around 20 30 plus years and they're experienced in what
they do but they don't know how to reach the younger generation so I always say
there's a generational divide and businesses who are experienced need to
learn from the young generation so they you know essentially you need to learn
from each other yeah let's talk a little bit about Concordia University because I
think parents will love this aspect as well well we're a private Christian
University in Irvine we've been there for 40 years we have an enrollment of
closing in on 5,000 at the undergraduate level 1,500 undergraduates and they live
on the campus and so it's a liberal arts core with the professional programs in
business so our business students have a two-year immersion in the liberal arts
so they learn about thinking reading writing and all this as well as the
competency in their business discipline let's talk about some of your back
with Concordia University in Irvine while I joined the University in 2001 as
executive vice president for University Relations coordinating external
relations fundraising in all of those sorts of activities but then in 2007 I
actually left that's the problem being an entrepreneur I came up with an idea
to create a nonprofit organization called faith and work life that puts on
workshop seminars on how to integrate faith and work so I went out and raised
about three hundred thousand dollars for the startup there's a non-profit and did
that for about three years but if you remember two thousand seven eight and
nine where the recession was that was time to raise money and so I saw that we
were beginning to run out of money and the time to look for money is not
when you're out of money you want to look ahead six months and see when
you're gonna cross that line of running out of money so I had the opportunity at
that point in time to bring in sort of an Operations person and basically
replace myself and then Concordia said well why don't you just come back here
and come back and help us with our External Relations programs again and so
I went back to the University so I was there for seven left for three and then
now back for three more so you not just been in academia you've been in the
trenches of entrepreneurial life yeah it's it's fun and challenging amazing
money right helping other businesses and once you do become a successful business
owner I mean what do you define success that's really right right and so you
give back and you help others you pass those experiences along to the young
people so we could prepare the next generation they're gonna be the leaders
of this country and essentially giving them shortcuts on what to avoid how to
avoid some any money incorrectly well yeah so one of the things I tell the
speakers because I give them sort of a little list of address these things but
one thing we want every speaker to address is what is it that you wish
someone told you back then that you learned now so we can learn from their
mistakes and while most of the speakers are successful and they get all of these
stories they do have the stories of things that went wrong strategies they
thought would work that didn't work and why they didn't work we even had one
speaker who talked about how her company went under and what she learned from
that experience so that they're also learning from entrepreneurs now she you
know they bounce back do another another startup or another
business but what they learned that way Thank You Steven for being with us and
sharing with the audience a teen entrepreneur Academy any last words for
to get people going to your website the website is see you I dot e-d-u /te a
well if if someone has a passion in their heart or an idea in their mind the
biggest challenge is coming up with a workable plan and that's what we do we
actually help them create the plan to sort of realize the dreams and visions
that they have or at least come up with a workable plan and the thing is people
don't take the time to write the plan we have a theology professor at Concordia
and in I remember we working on one of our papers and he said sometimes I don't
know what I think until I see what I write and so the discipline of writing
this down asking questions refining it is really an exercise that we take them
through as well and on that note I have to say as no matter what business I work
with writing is so essential canta canta creates the content for your business
you know the content that's driven for your mission statement what is your
purpose what that's gonna be on your website content which comes from the
umbrella of writing we were just talking about this yesterday Charlotte's Web
it's an example right yeah I love that novel it's a classic marketing novel
Charlotte was one of the greatest marketers of all time absolutely and
actually we tell the eye our students to keep an idea journal because the ideas
are gonna be coming to them all the time and and to see opportunities problems
and just walk around and begin to see things then eventually you want to
evaluate those ideas but keep an idea journal this is such good information
you want more information it's easy go to see you I do you /t EA Steven what
are some of the other unique aspects of this program I know there are many well
you know being on campus for the whole week I have to break it up so on
Wednesday we take them surfing at San Onofre State Beach we take them to the
endless summer surf camp which is founded by Jason Sen an entrepreneur he
took his passion for surfing and created a business of surf camps he has three
camps one in Hawaii Costa Rica and Southern California so what I do is I've
prepaid for anyone who wants to have surf lessons and maybe only half of them
do some actually had even been to the beach I've never even
been surfing and so it's longboarding and so we have a surf lesson for an hour
and a half and San Onofre is just a wonderful wave for a beginner then after
the surf lessons we go up and we spend 45 minutes with the founder of the surf
camp where he talks about how did he take this idea for a surf camp and his
passion and actually create a business out of it so he gives them real life
lessons and of course they love the surfing but then since we're off campus
and we have the bus as we're driving back to the campus our goal is to be
back by noon for lunch we stop off and we visit companies so this year we're
gonna stop and visit Oakley the glass sunglass manufacturing company so we can
have a tour of Oakley and they're gonna see glass is being made and just an
innovative corporate headquarters I don't know if you've been to the Corp
Oakley facility it's just so dynamic and the kids can really relate to it
basketball court basketball and tanks in the front and just all of this fantastic
stuff and then from there we're gonna stop by a medical device manufacturing
company Massimo so they can see how they're making medical devices and
things of that nature and get a presentation so we go out and visit a
few companies then come back to campus and get back to work on our business
plans that's great and a week in California is not a bad way to spend
your time in July now it's a great and we get people I got some coming from
Canada China we have Vietnam last year last year States Oregon New York Florida
Texas Michigan Maine but the majority sort of Southern California at Los
Angeles San Diego and really what a great jumpstart idea you were you the
teen entrepreneur Academy plants the seed that you can go off and do what you
love do what you love in life you know instead of working for you know I'm not
discounting working for someone else but there's a value to having a purpose and
and having a gift in life that you're given well that was the other thing I
forgot to mention in their business plan every business plan must contain a
section on the nonprofit that they're going to support from the proceeds of
their business once they are in a position to do so but with the young
people today in high school they already know which causes they're going to
behind whether that's the rescue mission or the
community centers in their neighborhood we had one remember last year one of the
girls wanted to put together a program for juvenile delinquents when they get
released from juvenile hall to give them education and training and special
tutoring and counseling to get them back into education or the workplace so they
see their problems around in their communities and and they want to be
active and come up with solutions and so actually creating a business and having
a business is not only a way to support themselves but it's a way to give back
and support the community so they are already very in tune with helping others
and making the world a better place and so all these teams come together they
from all over the world essentially and they build new camaraderie new
friendships it will last him a lifetime build communities yes building
communities well I honor you for bringing the teen
entrepreneur Academy to the audience thank you it's just an idea and a
passion and you know it's a privilege to help people and you know sort of pay it
forward with what we already know I mean Concordia has the facilities we've got
the curriculum and I mean why not and some fine that's got in fun in there
Thank You Steven Christianson founder of T.E.A. - Teen Entrepreneur Academy. I'm Lisa Caprelli,
Brian Gaps. Thank you for being with us at The Business Experience Show.
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