Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour guides aspiring business students

Michael Simmons was 16 when he started his first company.

He started his Web development company, Princeton WebSolutions, in 1998. Since then, he’s won various awards, co-founded the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour and written three books. Now, he’s sharing the secret to his success with college students across the county.

Simmons and the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour made a stop Wednesday at the East Lansing Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbot Road, to try to inspire students and young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. The Lansing Economic Area Partnership, or Leap Inc., an organization aimed at fostering economic growth in the region, helped organize the event to bring the conference to MSU students.

“We have always had a particular focus on entrepreneurship just because it’s really going to be the future of this region from an employment and prosperity perspective,” said Denyse Ferguson, president and CEO of Leap Inc. “We co-sponsored with (the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour) and really engaged a lot of MSU students through Spotlight Campus to really get this going.”

Spotlight Campus is a part of Spotlight Michigan, which is an MSU student-run organization that promotes innovation and entrepreneurial businesses and communities in Michigan.

Communication senior Nikki Taylor came to the event to get ideas about how to start her own business. Taylor said she always knew working 9-to-5 wasn’t for her and wants to start her own business one day. She said she hopes to open up a clothing store with her own
designs.

“It was just always an innate thing,” she said. “It was just kind of that thing, dreaming big, knowing I could do it.”

The tour brought more than 17 speakers — all young entrepreneurs who have found success — to discuss some of the key components of creating a working business.

The speakers gave tips on how to foster ideas and basic business management, such as making a Web site, obtaining business cards and creating a logo.

“There were all of these successful, young entrepreneurs I was meeting just through my network … and I realized most people weren’t exposed to that story,” Simmons said. “People felt like if they wanted to be a entrepreneur, you need to raise a lot of money and have a lot of experience. I was seeing the exact opposite of that, people using their age and being in school to their
advantage.”

The Lansing area is pushing for economic growth incorporating entrepreneurialism and innovation, Ferguson said. Shawnee K. Vickery, co-director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship in the Eli Broad College of Business, said in order for both Michigan and the country to grow, entreprenuerialism and innovation is essential.

“Going forward, more and more students who are graduating from college will be intrigued and attracted to developing their own companies,” she said. “There are lots of opportunities in the Greater Lansing area and going forward it’s going to be essential for the state to put in policies that will encourage entrepreneurship and innovation.”