ZeroMillion.com Newsletter - August 2003

Interview with Michael Simmons, author of The Student Success Manifesto

8/1/03 - ZM: Please tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience, and your background in business.

I am the author of The Student Success Manifesto: How to Create a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Prosperity, which has been endorsed by educators, entrepreneurs, professionals, students, and best-selling authors Mark Victor Hansen and Stephen Covey. I have been a keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and panel participant on the topic of youth entrepreneurship at conferences from California to Washington D.C. As a student at the Stern School of Business at New York University, an author, teacher, speaker, and award-winning entrepreneur, I am able to deliver a unique perspective that connects with audiences.

I have written popular articles on student entrepreneurship that have been published by Entrepreneur.com, College Bound Magazine, and Whizteens in Business (a book on youth entrepreneurship). I co-founded my first business, Princeton WebSolutions (PWS), a web development company, when I was sixteen years old. For the year 2000, Youngbiz Magazine rated PWS the #1 youth-run web development company in the nation. In addition, I am the winner of three entrepreneur of the year awards from NFTE, Fleet, and the National Coalition for Empowering Youth Entrepreneurship.

ZM: What does your company do and where is it located?

The Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation is an empowerment epublishing company targeting the over 70 million strong of Generation Y. Today’s youth aren’t just tomorrow’s future, they are one of today’s most untapped assets. We maximize the power of youth by leveraging our generation’s competitive advantage - technology - to create and market multimedia, interactive ebooks.

ZM: What is the legal structure of your business? Why did you choose this?

We are an LLC primarily because our lawyer strongly recommended it.

ZM: How many employees does your business employ?

Two

ZM: How was the business model of the company developed?

After starting a web development company and attending college, I realized that a lot of students could benefit from basic principles of success distributed in the right way. This right way, I believe, is ebooks. Our generation is extremely technology savvy and the software/hardware for ebooks is improving at an exponential rate, while the actual usage of ebooks by the population is rising steadily.

ZM: Was your company financed by venture capital, private investment, loans, or personal funds?

Personal Funds

ZM: Were you the founder of the company?

Yes

ZM: Do you feel your company has a distinct corporate culture? If so, would you describe it?

I feel that the company definitely has a distinct culture. We are in a unique set up because my girl friend is my business partner. We both work full-time on the business and we also live together. As we grow, we are going to have to pay special attention to the corporate culture.

ZM: Describe some of the obstacles you have encountered along the course of building your company? How were these overcome?

The largest obstacles I've had to face are invisible ones. They have been the people closest to me who want the best for me trying to persuade me away from my path of passion and purpose.These obstacles are difficult because they change us without us even knowing it. I've overcome this by writing in my journal at least 1 hour a day to organize my thoughts and make sure I'm doing the right things for the right reasons.

While I have faced many other obstacles, all of them have been defeatable with optimism, persistence, and creativity.

ZM: How important do you feel the proper advisors are in ensuring an young entrepreneurs success?

Proper advisors are crucial, in my opinion. I have around 40 people that I can go to for advice on various topics. As youth, we are especially advantaged, because older people are extremely willing and interested in helping us succeed if we are pro-active.

ZM: Have there been any organizations that have helped your business grow? If so, what are they?

ZM: What have been the keys in bringing your company to the level it is at today?

We are still a very small, but growing company having just launched our first product. We have gotten to this point by extreme persistence, vision, and willingness to make unconventional choices.

ZM: Has technology played a role in your business? If so, how?

Technology has definitely played a large role. As a virtual epublishing company, technology has helped us:

  1. Create interactive web site
  2. Create innovative ebooks
  3. Use software (ACT, Quickbooks) to automate our business.

ZM: Have you made any mistakes along the way that you have learned from? If so, would you describe them?

My largest mistake has been not preparing and planning enough for what could go wrong. This repeated mistake cost my partner and I over $10,000 in a matter of a few months in high school.

Now, before I do anything I do a pre-mortem by making a list of what could go wrong and how I could avoid it happening.

ZM: Did you envisage being an entrepreneur, business owner, or CEO as a younger person or did your position occur by happenstance?

The position occurred happenstance. When I was 16, my friend and I created a web site and submitted it to the search engine. We hadn't really planned out a full business. We wouldn't have known how to. A few weeks after submitting the site to the search engines, we got our first client for $1,000. With that momentum, we devoted our resources to making the company growing.

ZM: What books and resources would you recommend to fellow entrepreneurs?

ZM: What advice would you give to a young person that wants to one day succeed in business?

I would say to follow your passion and purpose ABOVE the conventional path. Too often, I see people follow their 'plan B', which is not something they're passionate about.

ZM: What trends and changes do you see occurring in business today?

ZM: How important do you consider networking and building contacts to be for an entrepreneur's success?

Networking as a rule of thumb is extremely important. Key to networking is being very willing to give. I spend a large part of time strategically volunteering for individuals and organizations that I would like to build relationships with.

ZM: If you could pin it down to just one thing, what is the one most important thing you have learned about business?

Success comes from wanting something bad enough and being willing to work hard enough to get it.

ZM: What value do you put on formal and informal education for a future businessperson? What do you see the importance of a college degree as being? An MBA? What part of your current knowledge did you gain in an academic setting and what part in the real world?

I think that the academic setting can be a very powerful platform to success. However, to leverage this platform as an entrepreneur, I think we need to be creative and pro-active. Student entrepreneurs can use the fact that the school has a stake in their success to their advantage by leveraging the school's resources to become one of its major success stories.

ZM: Any final advice for young entrepreneurs, businessmen, or businesswomen just getting started?

I believe anybody can be extremely successful if they follow their passion and purpose full-heartedly, above all else.

ZeroMillion.com Newsletter - August 2003