Several weeks ago, a student from Baldwin-Wallace College, Drew Thomas, asked, after a training I did at their school, if he could interview me for a class project. Today we conducted the interview while I was driving between Houston and Lake Charles. Here’s the list of questions he asked with some of my answers…

How did you get into this field or job?
I’m working on a longer post about this, but the short answer is a speaker, Patrick Combs, came to my school, College of Dupage, and inspired me. Around the same time, I won an academic award, All-USA Academic First Team, and was asked to tour around other community colleges in IL and tell my story. One school paid me a $50 honorarium. Then I saved up $2000 and attended a conference, APCA, where speakers go to get booked on the college market. It was a train wreck. So I went and worked for SuperCamp for three years to beef up my facilitation and speaking skills. While there I met Kevin Prentiss, who because my partner in Swift Kick. We built our Dance Floor Theory program, and came back to the market and it took off like wildfire. The rest, as they say, is history .

What do you enjoy most about your position?
Seeing students discover themselves and their passion through co-curricular activities.

What parts of your work are your least favorite, and why?
Rushing from one place to another while on the road. Taking one flight, to one rental car, to one hotel is fine, but doing that 100+ times per year can be exhausting.

What is your educational background?
B.A. in Business Management from Aurora University. The intangible skills I learned in college (time management, confidence, creativity, etc) I use far more than the tangible skills I learned (accounting, economics, etc).

What is a typical work day/week like?
Every day/week is different. I really don’t have a typical week. There are also travel days vs non-travel days. There really isn’t a normal day. I do however like to keep the same morning/night routine. In the morning, I wake up and drink a big glass of water, then do a combination of stretching, yoga, meditation, and pushups for 15 minutes. At night, I like to do a quick reflective journal on the day as well as set up my top 3 most important projects to get done for the next day.

What are the responsibilities in your position?
Everything. I’m serious, at this stage of a company I really keep a hand in just about everything. I have a team of two programmers who work on Student Launcher every third month, one full time assistant, and a part time community manager. It’s been said that the three most important things a CEO should do are to set the right strategy, hire the right team and support them to make the strategy happen, and make sure there’s enough money in the bank to make it all happen. I suppose I do that, while also taking the garbage out.

What can a person do to prepare to enter this field?
Whew. Honestly I don’t think someone can prepare to be an entrepreneur and start something from nothing. The learning happens as you go. As for professional speaking, the best thing to do is get training. Great speakers got great training to be great.

What is the work environment like?
My team is all virtual right now, so the work is done with a constant set of check-ins over daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals.

What are some of the problems you deal with on a day-to-day basis?
Cash flow is always on the top of my mind. How can I get everything done with limited resources. Specifically with spreading and growing Student Launcher.

What are the challenges you face with regards to communication in your job?
Since we are a virtual team and I’m often on the road, communication is key. Skype, IM, Email, and Texting are critical to our work flow and communication.

What kind of future is there for this type of job or industry?
As school budgets go down and academia is tightening the spending belt, fundraising will continue to go up, so Student Launcher is in a great spot. As for speaking, the requirements for assessment are increasing and thus speakers have to prove the value they give to a school, which I think is great as it weeds out the bad speakers.

What social, political and economic trends influence this field of work?
As I said above, smaller education budgets and requirements for assessment.

If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently?
Hmmm, I would have grown our speaking business a bit longer before starting Red Rover. We were just starting to hit it big when Kevin and I opted to use our resources (time and money) to build Red Rover. Had we kept going with speaking a bit longer, I bet we could’ve built an amazing foundation from which to built out from.

What is the best advice you can give a person interested in this occupation?
As Nike says, “Just Do It!”

I started daily reflective journaling back in 2002 after a speaker, Patrick Combs, came to my school and told us how powerful journaling can be to sort through all the noise in our heads. At the time, like most college students, I was totally confused about who I wanted to be and what I was going to do, so I gave it a shot and haven’t stopped since. Most of the journaling from that time is offline, since the concept of blogging wasn’t a thing back then.

Today, I was looking back through my offline journal to find out when I had my first paid speaking gig (Oct 26th 2003 with Black Hawk College for $1,250) and ended up spending two hours reading through several of my past entries. The journal is filled with 304 pages of raw emotion and thoughts about who I was and what I was dealing with from day to day. Some of it is really sad to hear me say and other parts are super inspirational because I can see the real me starting to shine through bit by bit.

I’m not ready yet, but I hope someday I have the time and willpower to post my offline journal on here because it’s amazing to have a written, first-hand, testimonial of my growth starting with the early part of my college career.

Today, one of my EO Forum mates toured a group of us around his newly purchased storage facility here in Atlanta. It was fun to see how excited he was to show us each floor of the place…even though every floor pretty much looked alike. It’s a storage space after all .

I don’t think it was the actual storage units that he was excited about though, I think he was excited about the fact that a dream that he had and worked really hard on, came to life and he got to show it off to us.

Owning and operating a physical location really does make a business feel so much more real than a virtual one. We got to touch the walls and smell the fresh paint. That’s real.

Student Launcher is very much real and we have “customers” coming through our “doors” every day, but it’s not something I can touch or smell. Instead I have to appreciate moments like this…

@tomkrieglstein I have to thank you for the @StudentLauncher tool… It’s been extremely helpful in raising money & support for our trip!

February 28, 2013 10:51 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@beekayroot

Brian K. Root

We both worked hard to make our dreams a reality, but after touring, and touching, his building today, I see a difference between being able to watch people walk in and out of your physical store verse looking at site traffic on google analytics.

Several weeks ago I attended a lecture where the presenter talked about how everyone has their own super power. She went on to say that group leaders have a responsibility to not only determine their own super power, but also the super powers of the rest of the team.

Today I had breakfast with a two guys who also attended the super power training and we talked about what we thought each of our powers were. I said that I think a few of my super powers are charisma, work ethic, and adaptability. My two friends nodded and then said they also think I’m great at building systems and organizations. I let that one sit with me for a bit.

Later, in the car, I said that if they were to ask Annie, five years ago, if I was good at organization, that she’d laugh at them. Organization is a skill I’ve needed to learn over the past five years with the growth of the company. I also think when someone tells me I’m not good at something, I want to prove them wrong and get good at it because I think I can be good at anything. So now I’m wondering if somewhere in there lies my real super power…

Semi-related is how every time I take some sort of personality test, I never score extreme on anything. I tend to fall somewhere right in the middle.

I’m on the last few days of a month long sprint to build the V1 of our new product we’re launching called AlumniChoose. Today I woke up at 7am and worked almost solidly till just a few minutes ago. With breaks for lunch and such, that’s almost a 14 hour day. The past month has consistently been 10-14 hours days. All of it in preparation of making sure we hit our V1 launch date of Jan 16th. By launch, I don’t mean send out the press release. I mean I have a team of beta schools that I’m working with who will test and give their feedback. From there, we’ll assess next steps in terms of development and marketing. My eyes are red and tired and my body will collapse on the bed tonight just like it has for the past month, but the crazy thing is, I can’t wait to wake up the next morning and do it again.

My job entails a lot of traveling right now. Specifically in this season as schools are ramping up their leaders for the year and orientations are in full swing. If you look at our calendar, you’ll see I’m on the road a lot. Every time I’m on my way back to NYC and I start to think about ACbert, I get a warm fun feeling in my heart. I get excited to see her. I smile, like I’m smiling now as I sit on a plane back to LGA because I start to visualize the look on her face when I walk in the door.

Anytime I come home, whether it’s on a long trip like this one, or just a simple trip to pick up cat litter, she welcomes me back with genuine excitement. How can I not help but be excited to come home every time if I know she’s excited to see me. It makes me want to come home sooner.

It reminds me of a story a speaker friend of mine, Patrick Combs, told me a long time ago about two brother who went to the same college. Every time they’d meet each other in the main quad, they’d open up their arms, draw a big smile, and embrace each other like they were long lost friends. He equated it to a dog welcoming his master home even if she just went to go get the mail. You can’t help but feel loved and welcomed.

My oldest brother, Robin, connects with people in a similar way. It’s inspiring for me to see and practice in my own life.

The TechStars Bloomberg documentary aired tonight. Some people on Twitter were calling it the American Idol of start-ups. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. We, in Red Rover, were in the NY TechStars program for 4 months and they did a TON of filming. They must have walked away with 1000s of hours of footage so they really could’ve taken the story in any direction they wanted. And they did…

Within the first 10 minutes of the show, it was pretty clear what six companies they are going to focus on for the next six episodes, and Red Rover wasn’t one of them. What that means is that they are probably not going to use any of the footage of us expect maybe a few b-rolls of us interacting with one of the main six. If what happens on TV is reality, then it will almost seem like we weren’t even on the show or in TechStars :-/.

Having done the NBC Today Show wedding contest and now the TechStars Bloomberg show, I know that producers are out to create the best possible show and whether you like it or not, they are in charge. What happens in the end is up to them not you. Apparently a $1mm+ revenue generating enterprise software solution with a group of tall guys who dress sharp and work hard isn’t good for TV . Understandably, we didn’t have any big pops during or after the filming so in terms of a story…there really wasn’t one with Red Rover.

I’m still excited to watch the rest of the season though, as I love watching the start-up hustle. You can watch with me Monday nights at 9pm EST on Bloomberg TV, or streaming on their website.

This morning our friend Lauren texted us to see if we were up for helping set up a new Irene evacuation shelter they were opening near Union Sq. It makes sense that there would be need for a massive number of volunteers across the city, but neither Annie or I had heard anything about it on the news. Had Lauren not texted us, we probably would’ve stayed home, worked, took a walk, and slowly prepared the rest of the apartment for Irene. Instead we spent 5 hours doing some serious sweat labor to make sure those in need, and their pets, had a safe place to stay during the hurricane. I appreciate having people in my life who think about others as it helps me to remember to think about others. Not only does helping others help them, it also has been scientifically proven to make the giver feel good.

Yes, taking a bus from NYC to Pittsburgh takes eight hours and flying only takes two hours. Yes, it would actually be cheaper to fly if I added in how much my per hour cost is and added that to the cheaper bus tickets.

But it’s 2:58 in the morning, I’m drinking a beer (I snuck on the bus) while listening to This American Life, and ACbert is fast asleep on my lap. That is priceless.

We’ll be able to fly for the rest of our lives, but for now I’m going to enjoying a bus trip with the one I love curled up sleeping on my lap while we road trip to Pittsburgh because that is something I don’t see a lot of older couples doing.

As part of ACbert’s 4-day birthday celebration, we went tonight to an open mic night at the Bowery Poetry Club. Anyone could submit to perform which means the talent was all over the place making the night a bit of a hot mess. But I appreciated that everyone was wiling to take a risk and try something new whether a joke, song, skit, or story. While I watched person after person get on stage and create something from nothing, it reminded me of a blog post my former business partner, Kevin Prentiss, wrote a while ago comparing entrepreneurs to artists…

For an entrepreneur, there is nothing that feels as good as creating something amazing from nothing. This is the hope.

Like artists, we create. But we are artists that must sell. There’s no chance to be discovered after death. Our creation lives or dies in the present.

Imagine if a crowd of museum goers could make a sculpture disappear forever with their disapproval, or far worse, their simple misunderstanding. How many artists would stop showing work? How many artists would stop creating altogether? How many would create cheap crap, that was simply a quick get?