The Times - 8/23/2003
Finding passion, purpose, prosperity: Area author offers students guidelines for success
Somewhere between speaking during conferences, teaching information sessions and completing marketing course work at New York University's Stern School of Business, 21-year-old Michael Simmons wrote a guide book for students about the entrepreneurial spirit.
"Too often we (young people) disassociate ourselves from people who achieve greatness." Simmons said. "We forget that everything that lies within them lies within us."
Simmons writes that the entrepreneurial mindset accounts for the majority of innovation, job creation, and philanthropy. His book aims to teach students to become aware of and capitalize on trends to get ahead of others, understand the entrepreneurial mindset and how to capitalize on the principles that made men such as Bill Gates and Michael Dell successful at a young age.
He also offers ways young people can pave their way to success, such as applying for scholarships and awards, investing, attending and participating in conferences and workshops, and "shadowing".
Attending conferences and workshops is an excellent way to meet prospective mentors and network with others, Simmons said. Shadowing, in a broad sense is the professional version of "follow the leader", - working directly under the head of an organization and following him or her to learn daily routines and tasks.
"A lot of students get internships and see the organization from the bottom up," he said, "But shadowing is an excellent way to complement an internship. You can really decide if it's the career you want to follow."
Simmons also stresses the importance of reading.
"I used to hate reading in high school, at least until I started (a Web development) business. Before that, I didn't respect books. But other successful people wrote down their ideas and philosophies into something I could read."
Simmons' book, published by the Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corporation, attempts to show, in five steps, how to find success: definition, application, models, curriculum and challenges. Also included are encouraging quotes and philosophies from well-known businesspeople, charts and graphs that outline business studies and experiments, and Internet links to Web sites.
To Simmons, the definition of success is somewhat ambiguous, but he offers a general suggestion.
"I stress a lot that people define their own (terms for) success." Simmons said. "In general, it is doing something you are passionate about that can make a lot of money and make a difference. Especially in this (dismal) job market, a lot of graduate are not getting jobs they are passionate about so it is crucial for those as young as 14 and 15 to start (looking for) careers they want."
Applying Simmons' approach to entrepreneurship involves understanding how the philosophy can be applied to each situation, regardless of whether one decides to start a company.
As a high school senior in 1998, Simmons, with a friend, founded [Princeton] WebSolutions, a Web development copmany. Their main duty was constructing and/or updating Web sites of area companies. They worked with organizations such as Princeton YMCA, Princeton Holiday Inn and marketing and architectural firms. The company was rated the No. 1 youth-run Web development company in the country by YoungBiz magazine.
"Getting involved in the company is perhaps one of the best things I ever did." Simmons said. "It was a springboard for me into (everything else). We went on to college and now (the company) has become something in the past."
In 2000, Simmons won the Fleet Bank Entrepreneur of the Year Award and, in 2001, the Entrepreneur of the Year awards from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship and National Coalition. He also won the East Coast Collegiate Entrepreneur Award for New York.
He taught an entrepreneurship class to inner-city youth with the Liberty Partnership Program and has written articles for Young Money magazine, Entrepreneur.com, College Bound magazine, and Whizteens in Business.
Simmons is working with the Stern School of Business administration to establish an entrepreneur line of study at New York University.
By Gregg a. Bernhardt, Staff Writer