ESPN Founder Headlines Global Entrepreneurship Week in Kansas

Be a part of Youth Entrepreneurs Business Breakfast Series with it's final stops in Wichita and Kansas City next week. The founder of ESPN, Bill Rasmussen, will be speaking on Thursday, November 17 and Friday, November 18. For more information and tickets visit yeks.org. Read below to hear a snipit of what Mr. Rasmussen will share with audiences during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

11.11.11

Ever wonder about how big companies got started? Corporate lore talks of Microsoft, Apple, Ford, HP, ESPN and countless others being hatched in a garage or basement or in some obscure lab. While the physical locations vary, the fact is that all companies - big and small - were hatched in the mind of their founder - the entrepreneurs who, against all odds, pursued their dream and passion until their vision became reality.

ESPN is one of those companies. Starting with just three people in June 1978, The Worldwide Leader in Sports has grown into the largest media conglomerate in the world.

Today it's a no-brainer! Let's go back to August 1978 when my son, Scott, and I laid out plans for sports around the clock - 24 hours a day / 7 days a week . . . the skeptics were legion. "Who's going to watch? . . . It will never work . . . There will never be enough interesting sports events . . . There is no advertising on cable . . ." And so it went. Skeptics were everywhere. There were very few believers.

I must admit that we had a few things to learn and many questions to ask, but that's what entrepreneurs do - every day! You don't have to know everything about everything to move forward with your idea. You do have to believe in your idea with all your heart and every fiber of your being . . . in other words sell your idea with passion and perseverance.

We reduced our quest to these simple facts:

                                F - financing

                                A - advertising

                                C - content

                                T - technology

                                S - subscribers

We devoted all of our energy and passion to learning and then implementing action in each of these five critical areas.

From November 1978 through January 1979, we added five more people to our team and by March 1, 1979, the entire framework for ESPN was in place:

- Getty Oil had agreed to finance the project;

- Anheuser-Busch agreed to the largest advertising contract in cable TV history at the time;

- the NCAA had agreed to provide programming content;

- RCA Americom had agreed to provide satellite distribution throughout the United States;

- several major cable systems had agreed to deliver our programming to their subscribers across the country.

ESPN was born and shaped with the efforts and determination of just 8 people - AND it all happened in 9 months. Six months later, on September 7, 1979, ESPN exploded upon the world with 80 people on board. Today, 6,000 full time employees and thousands of contractors and free-lancers deliver ESPN's 52 networks to all seven continents.

It is an amazing story, born from adversity.  I attribute our success to a dedicated team that believed in my vision with passion and pursued it with a determination that was unparalleled.

Bill Rasmussen

ESPN Founder

www.espnfounder.com 

Nov. 11, 2011

Come Rain or Snow, The YE Students Still Sold

The YE students in Garden City didn’t let a little snow get in the way of their Market Day businesses. Outside the school doors no one was out and about due to the weather, but that certainly wasn’t the case inside the doors of GCHS. Once the lunch bell rang, hundreds of students piled into the hallways to see what delicious food the students were selling this year.

I will be honest in saying that I was doubtful that the students would be able to sell the amount of volume they had anticipated in their bids. But I was definitely proven wrong! Many of the groups sold out of all of their products by the end of the second lunch and were forced to go to nearby stores to restock for the third and fourth lunches.

One group in particular, “Puppy Approved Chow,” really blew me away. They had planned to sell 500 bags of puppy chow. Having seen a few Market Days in the past, I thought they had overestimated their sales, so I mentioned they should maybe consider reducing the amount of units they planned to sell. In talking with them, I learned that they had made an agreement with the school cafeteria to allow students to purchase their puppy chow in the lunch line, using their school or “parents” lunch money. This was a great idea because many students don’t carry cash on them at school. In addition, no other groups were using the cafeteria, so they had found a captive market. To capitalize on the several hundred juniors and seniors that go off campus for lunch, Puppy Approved Chow also planned to stand outside the exits and sell puppy chow from their YE bags. Their planning and creativity definitely paid off. They ended up being one of the groups who sold out after second lunch, so they ran to Dillon’s to buy pop. When they got back to school, they reloaded their backpacks with pop and continued to make money. This group of young ladies definitely possesses the entrepreneurial spirit, and it was wonderful to see it shine through on Market Day!

One of my favorite parts of Market Day is seeing the community get involved. Crazy Cupcakes utilized local business owners and BPAs, David and Deann Crase, to refine their cupcakes. I won’t share the secret Mr. and Mr. Crase gave them, but let me tell you, those cupcakes were very moist! I ate three of them yesterday! GCHS’s nutrition coordinator and kitchen manager helped make the event a success by teaching the students about safe food preparation practices. A handful of other parents and BPAs also stopped by the event to see how successful the businesses were and of course to buy lunch.

At the end of the day the students were exhausted. They learned what it can be like to own a business as many of them spent until 9:00pm the night before cooking in the school kitchen, and then they were back at the school cooking at 6:00am. But I know they would all agree that seeing the satisfaction from their customers and making a profit made all that hard work worth it.

-Kylie Z.