The Extreme Entrepreneur Tour made its second round to Bakersfield College for their informational seminar geared at informing mainly young people, but anyone interested, in how to start a business.
This year’s convention took place in the grassy area in between the Grace Van Dyke Library and the Student Services building inside a white tent and the Fireside Room, unlike last year’s seminar held in the campus’ forum.
The event took place from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. with hot dogs and chips being offered. The Students in Free Enterprise organization sponsored the event in collaboration with Kern Community College District.
The seminar comes with a new lineup of speakers, each which personal entrepreneur stories. The organization also provides the audience with a panel of business owners who answers questions.
This year’s keynote speakers were EJ Carrion, the co-author of the book “Ignite your Dreams: How to Build and Accelerate Your Life as a Top Notch Student” and co-publisher of “Collegiate Performance Magazine”, and David Gardner, Co-founder of ColorJar, the Venture Accelerator.
The list of the panel was Tim Terrio, founder and CEO of Terrio Therapy-Fitness; Michelle Leveroni, owner and founder of the first Subway in Bakersfield; Scott Doolittle, founder of Scott’s Landscape and Design and Justin Avery Anderson, inventor of Anderson Trail, the Original Premium Soft Granola.
This time the EET invited other colleges in the southern area of California, as well as being a part of the Wasco Thomas Jefferson Middle School entrepreneurship elective class program with 116 students present. The BC turnout was approximately 100 students, according to Gayle Richardson, BC professor and organizer of the event at the campus.
“I organized the event for here and I put together the location of it and how BC students would be involved,” Richardson said.
The seminar kicked off with Carrion beginning his speech and hyping the crowd up with his enthusiastic personality. There were interactive activities that Carrion utilized to get the students more excited in the information the Tour offered.
Haley Huntington, business management finances major, was one of the personnel who registered the people in attendance for the program and this was her first time working the event. Huntington said that the speakers made the event fun with the activities they had.
“I found out about the tour from my teacher Ms. R because she said that it was a great organization and a great learning experience,” Huntington said.
After the speakers talked to the crowd and gave their personal business stories, they opened the panel up to answer the questions students wanted to ask. They asked questions like how hard was it and what advice he had because the majority of the crowd were middle school students.
Anderson talked about how he came up with the idea to invent his soft granola because when he was 16 years old he wore braces and couldn’t chew the hard granola.
Anderson stated, “Don’t give up and keep persevering. Find something you want to do and keep trying.”
The speakers and personnel of SIFE finished their tour with a group picture in front of their tour bus in the parking lot behind the bookstore.