CEO Business Visits

• Mr. Phillip Hickman & Ms. Amy Kempfer

CEO Guest Speakers

• Mr. Joe Wiley, President & Founder
• Mr. Patrick McKeehan, O'Fallon, MO Economic Director

 Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire teammates and customers. This week we met with Joe Wiley and Patrick McKeehan.

First we met with Joe Wiley, who was recognized in February 2009 by the St. Louis Business Journal as One of the Most Influential St. Louisans. In September 2009 he received the Inclusive Leadership Award, which recognizes St. Louis’ most influential minority business leaders. In September 2011 he received St. Louis University’s College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Merit Award. He serves as a basketball TV sports analyst for the St. Louis. Mr. Wiley is the owner of Quest Management. Founded in 2003, Quest Management Consultants is a Human Resources Consulting Company with expertise in Career Transition, Leadership Development, Organizational Effectiveness and Talent Acquisition. With Joe Wiley’s background that includes a 30 year Human Resources career with Pfizer, General Dynamics and Monsanto.  Quest is a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) certified by the State of Missouri and the Minority Business Council. He taught us about his background and the importance of networking, It's all about people. It's about networking and being nice to people and not burning any bridges. Your book is going to impress, but in the end it is people that are going to hire you

The next day Patrick McKeehan who is the Economic Development Director of the city of O’fallon came in to talk to us about our pitches  and knowing our customer, quoting “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, they are not dependent on us. We are dependent on them. They are not an interruption in our work. They are the purpose of it. They are not outsiders in our business. They are part of it. We are not doing them a favor by serving them. They are doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so”. Alayna went up to give her 2 minute pitch about her company on the spot and everything flowed smoothly but she missed some points as Mr. McKeehan said.

CEO is still slowing down even though we still have much to do.

Jaylen Davis
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Jaylen

This week was the 28th week of class. This week in CEO we had a lot of presentations. Also during the week we had time to work on our individual business. This week we only visited only one business.

On Tuesday we had a presentation by Joe Wiley. Joe Wiley specializes in human resources management. He graduated from Belleville West ,and went to Saint Louis University. He played basketball and was All American. He has a degree in sociology. He also led Missouri Valley Conference in scoring. He was convinced by a friend to go into human resources at Monsanto. He left corporate to start his own business. He helps recruit for SLU basketball. He started his business Quest in 2003 and has had business from multiple places. Quest hires vendors to do processes. Originally he sourced 180 people and later narrowed it down to 18 people. Mr. Wiley also helps with various fundraising and gives back. He was named one of Saint Louis most influential people. Lastly he made the statement that you build a career and a reputation and always network.

Wednesday we met with Philip Hickman at Associated Bank in Fairview Heights. Phillip Hickman is president of the branch. Also we met Amy Kempfer the branch manager who has been in banking for 19 years. Associated Bank primarily operates in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He talked about the two F's friends and family . He stressed having skin in the game, and getting your foot in the door. He also explained that banks do risk management and that they don't compete or help shadow banking system and predatory lenders.

Lastly we had a presentation from Patrick McKeehan. He talked about the elevator pitch. He went around the room and asked everyone logical and financial questions about our personal businesses. He stressed it's all about the customer. And that there is a difference between your customer and your consumer. He told us figure out who your customer is and find your unique selling proposition.

Epiphany Smith
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Epiphany

Can networking build or bury a business? Perhaps the answer is both. So whether you're running a bank, own a consulting firm or even are starting your own business. The power of networking could mean life or death in the business world. Through this week I've established this as our “Theme”. With speaking with a consultant Joe Wiley, he specializes in training experienced workers who are subject to liquidation. Once his team gets ahold of their client that's when the magic happens. To learn how to network and get retrained will help anyone in the business world. Essentially Mr. Wiley's business is teaching adults all of the things that CEO teaches us students. Proper etiquette, how to interview and etc.  

This week much has gotten us one week closer to our final business plan drafts. With our business mentor Ms. DiMaggio coming to review our plans I have personally found much more is needed to be done than one thinks about when putting together a business plan.  As time crunches down I’m starting to stress out and networking with my business mentors to get things going!

Austin Thurman
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Austin

This was a great week of Belleville CEO. We met with Mrs. DiMaggio May again as well as a member of SCORE. We also met with Joe Wiley from Quest Management Consultants. We also met with Patrick Mckeehan, the economic development director for the city of O’Fallon MO.

On Monday and Friday we met with Mrs DiMaggio May. On Friday we were also visited by a SCORE member. Everyone met with them individually to look over business plans. I met with Mrs. DiMaggio May and she helped me figure out what information I needed to add to my business plan. We talked a lot about industry. Because my business’ industry is not very defined and hard to research, I'm really going to have to research some numbers.

On Tuesday we met with Joe Wiley. It was amazing to learn from him and hear his story. It was absolutely amazing to hear about his basketball career and how he used it to shape and form his career. One thing I really learned from Mr. Wiley was how important networking is. One thing this class has allowed me to do is network. I've met so many different business leaders in almost every field of business. I never realized how beneficial this could really be until I heard from Joe Wiley. One thing his business does is help other businesses find job candidates. He is able to do this so well because he has a very big network of contacts. It's also because of his networking that he was able to work so closely with the SLU basketball program and help them recruit.

We also met with Patrick McKeehan who helped us with our elevator pitches. He explained the best way to give an elevator pitch and what the key things are to focus on. He really helped us define our customer as well as realize exactly how many customers we have. He also told us how important a story is in an elevator pitch and to not just spew out facts. Overall the lesson was very helpful and gave me a good starting place to write my elevator pitch.

Tim Donaho
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Tim

This week in the CEO class we started off the week by meeting with Jo-Ann Dimaggio and her reviewing our business plans while everyone else was making self edits and in just catching up on some of the other things we had to do. It is kind of weird that people say your business model might change or pivot at some point and mine did pretty early on with the business changing from in school selling to out of school concessions business.

On Wednesday we met with Philip Hickman of the Associated Bank in Fairview Heights. Our class has met with multiple different banks and bankers but somehow each time our class learns something new. The type of information and common financial sense when it comes to banking is extremely smart and seems like everyone should learn this type of stuff. There should be a required class in the public school curriculum that teaches this type of stuff, not CEO exactly but one where it teaches about keeping track of finances and financial do’s and dont’s. I also never even knew of these like super banks that give loans to banks and what to show a banker when you need a loan for a business. I also enjoyed hearing a bankers perspective on the financial crisis back in 2008 and what caused it and that the banks aren’t the only ones to blame.

On Thursday our class met with Patrick McKeehan and we talked to him about our personal businesses in like an elevator pitch type of way. I found it really interesting and useful on how he described the way in which I could get clients for my business. The way I would do it would be by making sure to give the coaches no headaches, making them completely focus on the game instead of working the concessions strand or have to get parents to volunteer and work it. They also get a cut of the profit for letting me sell there, so instead of working a stand, getting all the products, and staffing it, the coaches can now just get a cut of my revenue and not have to do anything.

Joe Beussink
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Joe

Associated Bank of Fairview Heights graced us by allowing us to come to their place of business this previous Wednesday and what a wonderful time it was. We were greeted with friendly faces and they taught us a bunch of the ins and outs of banking that we would not have known prior to speaking with them. They showed us how to be banking literate and we appreciate them for it. They are originally out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Ms. Amy Kempfer runs the Fairview Heights location. She utilizes a team of 12 bankers and tellers to run the bank. She also goes out and tells people about finance and of its importance. They also told us about the differences in banks. Classifications usually come from size. Smallest is community bank which includes Bank of Belleville and The Bank of Edwardsville. Regional banks include Associated Bank, etc. Large banks include those such as Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America. Central Bank is a community regional hybrid, in between them both. Regions is a super regional bank, a mix between Regional and Large. At Associated they try to act as a community bank because of the fact community banks have much more pull with the area they are in. For banks to give loans they must see that the entrepreneur has skin in the game or something to lose such as collateral because they truly dislike taking the first risk. They also made us aware of the Shadow banking system - most predatory lenders such as Payday loans, car loans etc from sharks. They charge exuberant interests, charge for having checking accounts, and charge for cashing checks.

Other than our visit we had work days for our personal businesses and it's astonishing to see how much progress is being made by everyone. Almost all of us are pretty set on our ideas and have started to get the wheels turning on how and in what direction we want our businesses to go.   We are utilizing our past connections from earlier CEO class days and really have started to put the pieces together in our business puzzles.

Royce Payne
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Royce

Week 28 of CEO was very productive for me and I still learned a lot. We had two guest speakers, Joe Wiley and Patrick McKeehan. We also worked more on our business plans and finished our bio’s for our personal businesses.  We’re getting to the time of year where we’re completing all the planning and finally getting to the real business. I’m excited to get my business underway and start making products. Unfortunately, my business model is specifically designed for college students and I won’t have any type of direct access to that market until I go to college. For now I’m just going to have to develop my business and make sure I am completely ready to handle anything that could possibly happen in college.

Joe Wiley from Quest Management Consultants came in to speak to us on Tuesday. Mr. Wiley was definitely one of my favorite guest speakers of the year, mainly because of his past. He played basketball for Saint Louis University. He is ranked 7th in total rebounds and 13th in total points in SLU basketball history. I thought it was very cool to hear from him because one of my better friends Jordan Goodwin is committed to play basketball there and I believe he can be the next great SLU basketball player. Mr. Wiley’s story about how he had no idea what he was going to do with his life besides play basketball sounds very similar to my friend’s. Fortunately for Mr. Wiley, he had many connections through playing basketball and everyone who was around him just wanted to help him. Straight out of college he got a good job at MonSanto, and later a very cool job of broadcasting the SLU games. I hope to make the same kind of connections in college just like he did because the friends you make in college last forever. Since I will be going to business school hopefully I can befriend many future business leaders. Mr. Wiley later took advantage of his financial success and opened his own business named Quest. His story is inspiring to me because unlike many entrepreneurs he opened his first business over 20 years after college. I think that is the type of career path I want to take, so if my business were to fail I would have multiple jobs in the past I could refer to and rely on for some sort of stability.

Michael Lassman
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Michael

Another exciting week of CEO has passed, and it has been a productive week. I met with my mentor Mike Marchal, and discussed my business plan as well as another business option. After a long time thinking about my options, I want to change my business. Soccer has been and always will be my passion. I started playing when I was only two years old. I sat on the sidelines of my older brothers game, and loved every second of it. Throughout the years, I have been through the club soccer system. I have stuck through it through the ups and downs. I have been cut many times, but I used that as motivation to keep going and improving. I have been fortunate enough to have a successful soccer career. I won the National Premier League national championship in 2013. I have played on a US Developmental Academy team. I have been a varsity starter every year I have played high school soccer. I was captain, and won All-Sectional Honors. I also won the South Seven Defender of the year. Finally, my favorite award is the Chicago Fire All-State All-Academic First Team. I want to help children grow into better players, and hopefully exceed my soccer resume. Most importantly, I want kids to have fun with the sport that I love so much. I hope that I can help kids fall in the sport that has been with me for my whole life.

This week we talked about narrowing down our market. We need to focus mostly on our potential market, and customers. You need to have passion in what you are talking about. When someone invests in a company, they are investing in the person not the idea. They have to believe in the person. I am excited to work on the elevator pitch because I have a good story to tell, and I am very passionate about my service. I need to write a business plan for my new idea, and financially I will be good. I will not have to spend a lot of money. I am excited to move forward.

This week, we met with Joe Wiley. He is SLU basketball legend. He has broken many records, and has a very successful career. He decided to finish his college career instead of going pro. He now owns Quest which helps fill managerial positions at large clubs.

Stephen Waltrip
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Stephen

Starting my week off on Monday at Artigem Replacement Services with a visit from Mrs. JoAnn DiMaggio-May during one of our scheduled work days. I sat down with Mrs. DiMaggio-May and went over my business plan where she made small corrections and gave a lot of advice on what I should add and delete from my personal business plan.

On Tuesday our class met back at Artigem Replacement Services to meet and greet with Mr. Joe Wiley who is CEO and founder of Quest Management Consultants. I learned the importance of knowing your surroundings when listening to Mr. Wiley.

On Wednesday our class met Mr. Phillip Hickman and Mrs. Amy Kempfer at Associated Bank. I really liked this visit for many reasons one being how I could ask them all about my personal business. For example I asked about financial issues about my personal business like when would be the best time to open up a separate account for my personal business.

Starting our Thursday off with a visit from Mr. Patrick McKeehan who is the Economic Development Director with the city of O’Fallon. Mr. McKeehan helped our class with understanding the real essentials in business. For example he went around our class and asked everyone what made our business better than our competitors and for me it would be the mobilization part of Dave’s Detailing because I am the only detailing business that offers that in this area. This gave me more insight on what to talk about during my elevator pitch.

Ending our week on Friday at Artigem Replacement services with company from Mrs. JoAnn DiMaggio-May and SCORE to help us go over our business plans again and to turn in our final biographies that will be featured in our next annual CEO report. I really like the idea of Mrs. DiMaggio-May and SCORE because it gives feedback and advice on our personal business plans.

Devin Alexander
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Devin

This week in CEO we had many workdays with our advisor Joann DiMaggio-May and one with Mr.Patrick McKeehan. I find these days to be essential when planning what we will all do in our businesses in the near future as well as knowing what we expect out of our business in the long term operation. I am constructing a very respectable business plan at this point and am excited about all the things I could do once I have my information and my elevator pitch in order. I plan to participate in many pitch contests- one being the NAACP event coming up in one month.

The speaker we had visit our home base this week was Mr. Wiley, the CEO of a local consulting service. What made Mr. Wiley’s visit stand out is that he followed his passion all through his life- being a young star athlete he got into consulting and running his own business all while still being tied to the sports he cherishes. I was extremely excited to hear him speak as he comes across as a very charismatic and kind man, and I learned many extremely helpful pointers that will definitely be put to good use in my business.

As for my production in my art business, I plan to pair with Mr. Crotty- the artist who assisted in making many of our class business plans come to fruition- to print photocopies of my artwork to frame and sell. Pairing with him will be much cheaper than printing at a public press like Walgreens. I anticipate working with Mr. Crotty again because he is so knowledgeable about an amazing array of art related subjects; I feel as though I always learn so much from conversation with him  and seeing him work.

Alayna Wells
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Alayna

On Monday, Mrs. DiMaggio-May came to our class to help proofread our business plans.  The written portion of my business plan is officially done, but I still need to work on my financials.  Mrs. DiMaggio-May made me realize that I have more cost than I originally thought.  I did not think about my advertising cost, but I will be factoring that in soon.  I have learned that writing a business plan takes a lot of time and should be carefully reviewed before it is fully finished.

On Tuesday, our class was visited by Joe Wiley from Quest Management Consultants.  Mr. Wiley is truly an inspiration.  He has been named one of the most influential men in the St. Louis area and was invited to play in the NBA while he was in college.  Mr. Wiley chose to pursue his education instead of starting a professional basketball career.  This is really inspiring because some people underestimate education.  Mr. Wiley stressed the importance of getting involved in and outside of school and making connections.  As I am starting my own persona business, it will be important for me to make connections, so this lesson was very valuable for me.  I also learned that to make the connections and networking last, it is important to keep in touch with the people you meet.

On Wednesday, our class visited Associated Bank and met Phillip Hickman and Amy Kempfer.  I learned a lot about how banks work and how they are placed into categories.  It was interesting to learn what a bank does more in depth.  I also learned that Associated Bank tries to mainly rely on contacting people face to face.  This method is more personal and is more likely to make a lasting impression, so I think it was very smart of the bank to choose to operate in that way.

On Thursday, our class was visited by Patrick McKeehan.  Mr. McKeehan talked to us about our upcoming Elevator Pitch on April 6.  He gave a lot of great tips on how to be a better speaker and told us what to include in our speeches.  I learned that it is important to know your market.  This means really getting specific about who is going to buy your product or use your service.  I also learned that in a pitch like this, it is a good idea to tell a story about why you chose to make your business how it is now.

On Friday, our class had a work day and finished reviewing our business plans with Mrs. DiMaggio-May.  I had already reviewed my business plan with Mrs. DiMaggio-May, so I finished up my biography.  It was hard to encompass all that CEO has taught me in a single quote, so I focused on thanking these that helped me in starting my own business.  I also learned that it is important to remember how far you have come from the beginning, like how much I have learned from this year in CEO.

Kaitlynn Borik
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Kaitlynn

This was yet another truly exciting week for myself, as well as the rest of the Belleville CEO class!  On Monday we met at Artigem to receive more help from Mrs. JoAnn DiMaggio-May.  The next day we met back at Artigem where we had the opportunity to hear from Mr. Joe Wiley of Quest Management Consultants. On Wednesday, we met with Phil Hickman, at Associated Bank.  Then on Thursday, we worked on our elevator pitches as a class with Mr. Patrick McKeehan.  Finally on Friday, we met with Mrs. DiMaggio and one of her colleagues from SCORE to work further on our final business plans.

Like I said on Monday we met with Mrs. JoAnn DiMaggio again in order to present our business plans to her and figure out what should be changed.  I thought it was really helpful, and I was able to change something's that I was unsure about on the business plan.

On Tuesday we met Mr. Joe Wiley at Artigem.  In my opinion Mr. Wiley was one of the best speakers that we have heard from this year.  Everything from his prestigious  business to his history in sports, really captivated the class.  Overall I'm really glad we had the opportunity to hear from him.

On Thursday we met back at Artigem, where Mr. Patrick McKeehan helped us prepare our elevator pitches for our personal businesses, in hopes that we can convince donors to help fund our business.  I thought this was extremely helpful, because he really helped us think like the judges, and showed us what they're looking for when we present to them.

On Friday, we met with Mrs. JoAnn DiMaggio-May once again, as well as one of her colleagues from “SCORE.”  This was a really helpful experience because this time we had two separate opinions of how our business plans should be put together.  This gave us two sort of viewpoints of what should and shouldn't go into the plan, which I really liked.

Well in final, this was another great week for our Belleville CEO class, and I'm so excited to see what's coming in the weeks left.  I'm also very excited that the classes personal businesses are coming together so well, and all of the great ideas seem like they have a lot of potential, which is really cool to see.

Cole Maul
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Cole

This week we got a break from our business plans, we got to visit and talk to a lot more people than usual. Although on Monday, JoAnn DiMaggio-May visited us and really helped us with our business plans. I thought I was almost done with my business plan and I am nowhere near close to being done. Most of my paragraphs that are supposed to be a page long were only one or two sentences. Mrs. DiMaggio-May has helped us a ton this year and it has been so helpful.

On Wednesday, we visited Associated Bank with Phillip Hickman and Amy Kempfer and  learned so much about their bank. Seeing how many Associated Banks are around us I would have never known that they are located out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. He talked about the different sizes of banks and how Associated Bank is only a medium sized bank and in my mind I would have thought it was a large bank. He also talked a lot on how the depression in 08 really hit banks. The government put millions of dollars in banks when the depression hit. Even though, banks did pay them back they made around $100,000 off of that. The government also made some banks that didn't need the money, take it. Which forced the banks to owe money to the government for years. It also was crazy that they have never been robbed. Even though while we were there we tripped the security alarm and the police showed up. It would be scary to work in a bank because of how high the probability of getting robbed everyday is.

On Thursday, Patrick McKeehan visited us at Artigem and he was awesome! He focused a lot on our personal businesses and helped us figure out our customers and made sure people would actually buy our product or service. He also helped us how and what to say about our elevator speeches. He was so much help to us with our personal businesses. On Friday, we worked on personal businesses and bios. We are really getting close to our trade show and most of us are not ready at all.

Claire Randle
Friday, March 17, 2017Learn More About Claire