The Bakersfield College Habits of Mind Team hosted the event “Capital, Character, & Competence: (It Takes) More than Money,” in which a panel of speakers gave students advice on how to start their own business and also discussed potential solutions to poverty in the United States.

The event took place in the Levan Center for the Humanities on Oct. 27 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The keynote speakers at the event were Bob Meadows, Tim Terrio, and Peter Wonderly.

Opening the presentation was Meadows, manager and vice president of Mission Bank. He spoke about the money aspect of owning a business, but focused more on giving his audience advice and helping it realize that “it takes more than money.”

“Commit to a lifetime of learning, learn from others, and learn from life. From that, wisdom should flourish,” Meadows explained.

He went on to say that success is defined differently for everyone.

“We seem to learn more from our mistakes than our successes,” he said.

Meadows debunked some of the “myths of owning a business” throughout his presentation, urging students to have a business plan.

He added, “I encourage those of you who want to start a business plan to pursue it, but understand potential obstacles and how you will overcome them with alternate plans.”

Meadows did talk briefly about what bank lenders consider when granting a loan to those who want to start a business, one of those things being conditions.

“You need to understand what can affect your business when asking for a loan, because we’ve already looked into it. I have friends and know people in the oil businesses that are suffering right now because of outside elements over which they have no control. Those are critical things to consider,” he stated.

Founder and president of TERRIO Physical Therapy-Fitness Inc. Tim Terrio spoke after Meadows and discussed the difficulty of starting a business and the satisfaction of making it work.

Terrio used Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Americas as an example for perseverance.

“His original plan was rejected 3 times before it was finally approved in Spain…Conventional wisdom at the time was that the world was flat. People didn’t want to risk falling off the edge, but Columbus took that risk,” he stated.

He tied this in with the theme of his presentation which was that “We need to stop thinking we can’t do it before we actually try.”

“We need to think outside the proverbial box we built, our flat world. We do it to ourselves all the time, we create our limits,” Terrio added.

He went on to discuss his own business, and that after its 18 years of success; things have not gotten any easier.

Alluding to his comparison to Columbus, Terrio said, “You can’t sail through life without storms, but you can be the one standing on the deck while the storm is happening…When you get blown off course, you reassess, reorient, then recommit.”

After Terrio’s presentation, Bridges Community High School teacher Peter Wonderly took an unconventional approach to the presentation. He hoped to motivate students by discussing his own setbacks and the setbacks his students are experiencing these days.

Wonderly said that while his family was poor, they were never miserable. He said that his parents grew up during the Great Depression, so they taught him and his siblings the value of money.

“Work ethic was probably the greatest gift we ever got. Work for what you want,” Wonderly added.

After his father lost the family business, Wonderly decided to quit school to work because, as he stated, “They weren’t paying me to go to school. Upon learning about my decision, my dad kicked me out. It was probably the greatest thing he’s ever done for me.”

Wonderly discussed his struggle to overcome situational poverty. He decided to go back to high school and spent seven years trying to get through four years of college.

“There was a lot of talk about student loans, but I decided to buy a sound system and expand into work as a DJ. It took me longer than it should have, but I graduated debt free,” Wonderly said.

While going back to school worked best for him, Wonderly said that his work at Bridges Continuation High School has helped him realize that college is not for everyone.

“A lot of my students want to work straight out of high school. We try to teach them skills not only to get the job, but to keep it,” he said.

Wonderly’s discussion then shifted into one about poverty.

He discussed the difference between situational and generational poverty, and expressed disgust at how students often find themselves stuck in the poverty cycle.

Wonderly said, “It puzzles me and annoys me that they [government] are unable to do this [help].

My students are often treated as criminals, but we need to understand that students who suffer from generational poverty come with a different set of rules. They focus on survival.”

He added, “What we need to do is help them reach their full potential. We need to stop criminalizing them and above all else, we must make them believe in themselves.”

Tying his experience back to business, Wonderly said that the best way to make a business work is believing it will and doing something about it.

“Seeing is believing, and what people see on a daily basis is that it won’t work…If all it took was money, you’d be dealing up a whole lot of businesses. It takes a lot more than that. Money itself is not gonna make a change,” he said.

Wonderly concluded presentation by telling students, “If I work hard in life, I am going to get ahead in life…There is no lack of American citizens who want to see change.”