Presented April 19, 2005 At Danville Community College Danville, Virginia

Presented April 19, 2005 At Danville Community College Danville, Virginia Michael Simmons, author The Student Success Manifesto& CEO of Extreme Entrepreneurship Education Corp. Ryan P. M. Allis, authorZero to One Million & CEO of Broadwick Corp. and Virante, Inc.

Anyone Can Make It What Will Your Epitaph Say?

You Only Have One Shot

Anyone Can Make It What Will Your Epitaph Say? • Over 50% of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C- averages in colleges. • Sixty-five percent of all U.S. Senators come from the bottom half of their school classes. • Seventy-five percent of U.S. presidents were in the lower-half club in high school. • There is no correlation between high SAT scores, good grades, and money according to the research done for Thomas Stanley’s book, The Millionaire mind.

Fail Your Way to Success Two Examples of “Failures” Edison failed over 10,000 times before finally inventing the light bulb. Edison did not see these as failures, however. He saw them as successes. On the 4,531 try to find a proper filament for the light bulb, Edison did not see himself has having failed 4,530 times. He reframed the situation so that to him. He had successfully eliminated 4,530 possibilities, refining and narrowing his search as him proceeded, drawing him closer and closer to his goal. Christopher Columbus’ big mistake was that he was looking for a trade route to India and accidentally bumped into America—later to become the richest and most powerful country in the world.

Fail Your Way to Success What Will Your Epitaph Say? Even if you do fail or make mistakes, you will always be building your intangible assets that in the long run will help you build your financial and material assets.

You Only Have One Shot "If you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted. One moment. Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?” – Eminem Well Guess What…. Source: Metrotimes.com You really do only have one shot and one opportunity.

Ryan’s Story • An 11 year old on the west coast of Florida • A 14 year old with a growing web site design firm • A 16 year old disillusioned punk with red hair • A 17 year old VP of Marketing of a company that went from ‘zero to one million’ • A 19 year old published author and CEO of a investor-backed software company • A 20 year old CEO of a software firm with $1.2 million in annual sales.

Building a Company to $1MM in Sales • Idea/Product Generation • Idea/Product Evaluation • Incorporation? • Raising Funding: Debt vs. Equity • Market Positioning • Becoming a Manager, Building Your Team • Building Systems

Three Steps to Succeeding in Life There are three steps to succeeding in life, however you define success… 1. Know what you want in life. Know your end goals. 2. Write down your intermediate goals and a plan to reach these goals. 3. Review & revise your plan monthly, keeping track of all setbacks and progress. “All success begins with something definite that you fully intend to do. Success is a function of definiteness of purpose.” – Napoleon Hill

How to Succeed Financially Two Factors Determine Whether You Become Wealthy or Remain in the Middle Class… • How Much You Earn • What You Do With Your Money After You Earn It • Do you really want to become wealthy? Then you have to commit to using the • excess money you earn to buy assets, rather than buying nice cars and • vacations. Then use the cashflow from your investments to buy nice things. “The Rich build assets that through business entities purchase other cash flow producing assets. The poor spend their money on liabilities and short-term pleasures, without any business entity.” – Robert Kiyosaki

Why This Matters According to the United States Social Security Administration, if you take any 1000 students and follow them for 40 years until they reach retirement age, you'll find the following…

Getting Out of the Rat Race Take a long-term viewpoint to financial success… • Determine where you want to be in 20 years. Do you want to be living • paycheck to paycheck or have the freedom to travel, take time off, and be with • your family? • If you want the latter, then follow these steps. • Save as much money you can each month. • Invest this money wisely, based on your current risk level. Look at stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, or your own business. • Start a 401(k) retirement savings plan as early as you can. • Don’t buy anything you cannot afford and always pay off your credit cards each month. Pay your bills promptly and monitor your credit rating. • Once you’ve established a good credit rating (650 or higher), as soon as you can afford it get a mortgage and buy your own home. Continuing to rent is like flushing money down the drain each month. • Work intelligently and hard and pay off your home mortgage as quickly as you can.

Becoming Wealthy • Once you own your own home and your mortgage is paid off, you’re • out of the rat race and can begin acquiring wealth more rapidly if this • is your goal. • If becoming wealthy is your goal, here are a few ways to do it… • Invest in real estate. Buy properties you can either rent out or fix-up and sell at a higher price that what you paid. • Start your own business. Raise debt or equity capital and build your own company or grow it organically through sales. Make your money either through the company profits or by selling your company after a few years. • Invest in private equity and options. Although more risky, investors with a high enough net worth may wish to add investing in early-stage private companies through Venture Capital firms or investing in options to their portfolio. What Do You Want Your Net Worth to Be in 2025? What Steps Are You Going to Take to Get There?

What Will Your Epitaph Say? We have one life to live. Each day, you make a choice to work hard toward your goals seeking long-term fulfillment or take the easy route seeking short-term pleasure. What do you want you gravestone epitaph to say about you? What do you want to look back on when you’re on your death bed? ACTION 1: Take a minute to write down what you want your epitaph to say ACTION 2: Take a minute to write down any goals that you have set for your life.

What Will Your Epitaph Say? We have one life to live. Each day, you make a choice to work hard toward your goals seeking long-term fulfillment or take the easy route seeking short-term pleasure. What do you want you gravestone epitaph to say about you? What do you want to look back on when you’re on your death bed? ACTION 1: Take a minute to write down what you want your epitaph to say.

What Are Your Goals? ACTION 2: Make a list of your goals. • Big, Hairy, Audacious • Specific /Measurable • Time • 1 Year • 5 Years • 20 Years • Categories • Money • Health • Brand / Reputation “Set your goals high. Make your vision big. Aim for that big hairy audacious goal. Shoot for the starts and at worst you’ll land on the tree tops.” • Personal Development • Personal Growth • Network / Team

Now Make It Real ACTION 3: Sign your sheet listing your goals. ACTION 4: By the end of this week, type up your list, print it out, and frame it. You’ve come a long way by writing down your goals, but if you don’t take the final step, you’ll return to the everyday life you’re used to. But if you do take this last step you’ll enter a new world, a world where dreams become realities. Type it. Sign it. Frame it. Make it Real.

Recommended Books • Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki • Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell • Blink by Malcolm Gladwell • The Idea Virus by Seth Godin • New Venture Creation by Jeffrey Timmons • Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill • The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin • The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Freidman • Zero to One Million by Ryan Allis • The Student Success Manifesto by Michael Simmons

What We Want You to Get From This • Take a proactive role in planning, goal setting, and personal evaluation. • Get out there and do it. Take the initiative and have a bias toward action. Get experience however you can, build your network, have confidence, and be in it to win. • Write down your goals. Aim high. Shoot for the sky and you’ll land on the tree tops. • Review & revise your goals monthly, keeping track of all setbacks and progress.

The Key Message You’ve got one life to live. Each day when you wake up make the decision to work toward your goals. Take the red pill

Visit these sites… Ryan’s Web Sites: http://www.ryanallis.com – Ryan’s personal web site http://www.zeromillion.com – Ryan’s entrepreneurship resource http://www.intellicontact.com – Ryan’s email newsletter software http://www.virante.com – Ryan’s web marketing consulting firm Michael’s Web Sites: http://www.successmanifesto.com – Michael’s personal web site

Any questions Any Questions? You’ve got one chance, one opportunity to ask any question you’d like of Ryan and Michael on anything related to business, entrepreneurship, personal development, web marketing, or life in general.

Get The Books Today Buy the books online at www.amazon.com Zero to One Millionby Ryan P. M. Allis The Student Success Manifestoby Michael Simmons

About the Speakers RYAN P. ALLIS Ryan P. Allis, 20, is the author of Zero to One Million, a guide to building a company to $1 million in sales. Ryan is also the CEO of Broadwick Corp., a provider of the permission-based email marketing software IntelliContact Pro and CEO of Virante, Inc., a web marketing consulting and search engine optimization firm. Ryan is a junior economics major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is a Blanchard Scholar. Over the past four years Ryan has built three businesses to $1 million or more in annual sales. He started his first business at age 11. MICHAEL SIMMONS Michael Simmons has been a keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and panel participant on the topic of youth entrepreneurship at conferences from California to Washington D.C. Michael a recent graduate of the the Stern School of Business at New York University. Michael co-founded his first business, Princeton WebSolutions when he was sixteen years old. Michael was the winner of three entrepreneur of the year awards from NFTE, Fleet, and the National Coalition for Empowering Youth Entrepreneurship. He is the author of the Student Success Manifesto.

Presented April 19, 2005 At Danville Community College Danville, Virginia