CEO Business Visits

• Roger Lowery, Owner (Investor)
• Kevin Pesko, President (Investor)

Kristen Hadeed was Midland’s speaker in the video for this week. She spoke on the challenges of taking risks, never giving up, and finding something in your job that inspires you to get up every morning to pursue success. Kristen Hadeed was able to turn her student maid cleaning business into a multi-million dollar company. I look at Midland’s video with Kristen Hadeed, and it makes me ask myself where will I stand in the real world after this class is over. I see questions being asked by former CEO students, and I wonder where I will be. Will I be asking the questions, going out and achieving my goals, or will I be in the same seat as Kristen Hadeed.  The future is very bright for young entrepreneurs, such as ourselves, and we need to take the first step as Kristen Hadeed had done.

Kristen Hadeed stressed heavily on the points of connecting with people, and giving everyone the chance to work hard and make a living. I look forward to getting the chance to meet a mentor with the business wisdom that I hope to learn and adapt towards. I sadly, had to miss this last week’s mentor meeting. However, I am excited to get the chance to communicate with successful businessmen and women, with whom I can connect with and hopefully for a close bond. Having a mentor will boost my confidence in the business world, will teach me valuable skills, and help build my business. Mr. Lowery, a CEO board member, gave us the insight into how and why having a mentor can mean so much to us as aspiring entrepreneurs.

James Monken
Friday, September 29, 2017Learn More About James

This week in CEO, we became closer as a team, and stronger as individuals. From this week, I mainly observed two things. The first being from Roger Lowry, who helped me see that there are business out there willing to work with college students and want to give them chances to prove themselves. I felt more reassurance hearing this, as a big struggle for me personally has been what I will do after college. Hearing Mr. Lowry speak and explain his own personal struggles to success enabled me to understand that failure is inevitable, and you can learn from your mistakes to build yourself. Meetings like these give me more confidence concerning what the future holds.

The second aspect that I picked up from this week was the ability to use your resources to strengthen your business and expand your company's potential. The mentor meetings were very successful, as I was able to not only conversate with knowledgeable information, but I also connected with them. The small talk that I had with the mentors ensured me that they were jus as, or if not more, excited for the productivity potential from our CEO class. We have not yet received our personal mentors, but I am excited for who I receive and the business wisdom they have to share. I look forward immensely for the future before me.

Ian Hass
Friday, September 29, 2017Learn More About Ian

This week during our first meet and greet, I was talking with Geri Boyer and she was asking about any ideas I had for my own business. I had been stressed about figuring that out ever since I signed up for CEO, and I still was very unsure what I would end up doing. She made a point about who your market is, and I realized college students would probably be the best for me. I tried to think of what college kids want/need so in my mind, I walked through my sisters college house. That’s when my idea for my business came to me. In university housing, the walls are always bare because students are not allowed to paint or change them so a lot of people try to cover them. One of the popular trends is to hang tapestries with designs or artwork on them. I have always enjoyed doodling and drawing, but usually, it is on my hand where it eventually gets washed off. If I could get my designs printed on tapestries or maybe even other items, they would obviously last longer. I will begin working with my art teacher at school to help develop styles and designs with different medias for my products which will be so much fun. I am really excited to begin working on my business now, and I hope that it can carry on past CEO.

Besides coming up with my potential business idea, I really enjoyed the meet and greet with prospective mentors. I was definitely nervous going into it because sometimes I have a hard time coming up with conversations with people I am not too familiar with, but I think I did well mixing in with groups and meeting new people. I am not sure who exactly I would like to be my mentor yet, partly because I have yet to meet half of the other options, but it was interesting hearing from all the different people there and connecting with them. Some of their questions were repetitive but it just gave me more practice for the next time I got asked the same question. The meet and greet was an opportunity that I would have never had if I were not in CEO, and I am very thankful to have had the chance to put myself out there and develop my networking skills already.

Elizabeth Harla
Friday, September 29, 2017Learn More About Elizabeth

Week 6 of my CEO experience has really opened my eyes to a new side of the business world. So far I have felt that the class has provided a lot of knowledge about how to be successful in business or how each business runs itself, but there hasn't been too much about the inspiration behind the company.

On Tuesday we met with CEO Board member and owner of a Northwestern Mutual office, Roger Lowery. I thought Roger not only did an amazing job of telling us about his business and why/how he does what he does, but he also did a great job of advising us on how to be better people. Roger told us that basically the key to being successful is being a great person. He said that if a man starts a business and is only in it for the money, then the business and the man are going to fail. He wanted us to know that when you do something make sure you're doing it for the right reasons, and that will help you succeed. Another way Roger tried to help us be better is he gave us a paper with tips on how to break a bad habit and form a good habit, and he made us promise to try to change at least one bad habit that will help better ourselves.

Wednesday we watched an interview CEO had done with owner of Student Maid, Kristen Hadeed. I thought that the video seemed to drag on and wasn't too interesting, but if you really watched the video then you realized that Kristen really gave some good insight on starting a business. Coming from a person who isn’t too much older than myself really helped me understand how a business starts. She gave good insight on the inspiration behind her company, the ups and downs that come with being a student and an entrepreneur, and what it takes to make your business take off.

James Wiegers
Friday, September 29, 2017Learn More About James

Since he had spoken at Althoff’s Career Day, I had already heard Mr. Lowry do his lecture before. However, I enjoyed his speech just as much the second time around. Of all the entrepreneurs we’ve heard from, he has put the most emphasis on how we are in control of our lives, and that the best way to lead them is to follow our passions. He also taught us about the basics of habit forming, and how we can reap the benefits and avoid the negatives from it. I also particularly enjoyed how he advocated against the norm of businesses’ strong and often premature desires to expand, and to do it with money held conservatively.

I also liked Kevin Pesko’s informative talk at Bank of Belleville. Despite my dad being a bank examiner, I hadn’t known much about the industry, and what went into starting and running a bank. One message he hit on that hasn’t been emphasized on by other speakers is the magnitude of first impressions. I like to think I left a good one, especially since we have to meet with him later in the year to do mock bank pitch for our individual businesses!

I was very nervous about our first meet and greet. I was always worried about what to say, and how to strike up a conversation with these people. Once it started, however, I realized it was a lot easier than I had built it up to be. All of the owners I spoke with were very friendly, and seemed to take an authentic interest in me. What really stood out to me was how most of them asked about what we were thinking for our individual businesses, and for those who had ideas, they each gave a useful piece of advice for what we were considering. I went in not having any idea what to expect, and went out with some new relationships as well as two recommended contacts for my first plan for the individual business!

Jacob Gall
Friday, September 29, 2017Learn More About Jacob

This week helped me learn more about mistakes that could come up when I am starting a business. When I make the mistakes however, I need to learn from them or I will never achieve anything. A good example of learning from your mistakes is a person like Kristen Kadeed, the founder of Student Maid. She had 45 of her 75 employees quit on her, but after that happened she found a way to make them come back and work for her and keep everything running well.

Following your dreams instead of money is something I learned to insure that I will be happy with my business. I can be as rich as I can be but if I am not doing what I want to do in life, I do not see any point of doing what makes me that money. Rodger Lowery the owner of Lowery Benefits Services is a great example of this motive. He quit a job he was very good at because didn't like what he was doing. He wanted to be his own boss. Now he owns his own business and he is his own boss. This story helped me know to think more about planning to do something that I am happy with in life.

Lastly, I learned about building better relationships with people will help me in the long run. In college and high school I will meet many people that could be possible business owners or have a high status in a business. Being friends with them only helps myself and them. My business could have a partnership with theirs or we could help each other out when we need help. Also this plays into liking what I do when I'm older because owning my own business is already something I want to do but doing it with my friends and having it all play out right is even something better.

This week was very informative and was probably one of the most enlightening weeks in my opinion. I hope that I can find a way to do what I want to do in life, and remember these talks and videos from this class to help me.

Cam Wicks
Friday, September 29, 2017Learn More About Cam

“I am attending Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I have been checking out everything it has to offer, that’s mostly been the great classes and extracurriculars they have here for an art and communication major like me.  I’ve been learning and advancing so much in my skills in such a small amount of a time.  What I’ve really been spending time on is my life outside of and after college.  I’m in between two major music/art cities (Chicago and Milwaukee) and I’m working on landing an internship with a music company so I can continue studying audiology to make my own music.  I have a few really great things lined up already and I hope that something big comes out of them. Until then, I’ll keep working and making the crucial connections that made us successful CEO students so I can take my future in my own hands and not wait on an opportunity to be offered to me.

My business, Art of the Roots, is on hold to the public, but I’m selling individual commissions to the students.” 

Alayna Wells
- Class of 2017