My failed entrepreneur experiment

This is rather sad and look it up on Google - "joe gere monmouth university". I was asked to help teach a class at Monmouth University, the Entrepreneur class which was mostly Seniors.

I write this because I received a note about the blog from someone that thinks my writings are brilliant and he made me laugh with that remark!

Anyway, I do what I'm doing here to make money, yes, but more so to give you young people some good lessons and hopefully make some money as well - like I said see above I taught this in a University!

First day of summer class I start with the regular professor and he asks me to teach the kids about business, the web, fashion, yada, yada, yada. Second day of class he announces he's going to Italy for the rest of the summer and I'm taking over and if I can help him grade finals as well.

Think about this, as parents your paying real big money to send your kids to this school and the professor walks out and goes to Italy and leaves me there with no agenda nothing and I have wing the whole thing - WOW, these kids got a lesson and a few cruses and yelled at's that they never got in school before!

I survived and we plan to do this again in the fall and we're going to launch a clothing line that can continue to generate money for the school - sound like a good lesson, right?

The kids were lost, we wasted too much time on a name and logo, that was important to them not the clothing. It was really reveling how unprepared these students were that when they did not get their way for a name they pouted - like babies and didn't perform - GOD help them in the job market!

This pattern continued and continued until I was at the breaking point but kept pushing on. When the 2 students that had to work with the graphic arts people on small project for the fashion show kept failing (like designs for shirt graphics!!), I stormed into the graphic arts dept and told the professor my problem and we got two young women or girls as they turned out be to help with designs.

They had a few nice concepts and then they hit me with a contract for their services that would have come from Gucci not two young students with no experience, no designs sold, not a thing on the street!!!! I respond with a "Are you friggin out of your mind?" and after a couple emails I find out the art professor gave them a fashion contracts handbook and told them or helped them draft this "industry standard" contact that grants them residuals for life!!!!

Needless to say I blasted her and then got a letter from the Dean that I went into her class drunk because my speech was slurred! Everyone knew I stuttered and everyone else knows I can't drink with all my medications. I was thinking about suing under Amercian's with Disabilities Act and so on and just decided - SCREW it and the kids who just don't want to work and called the project over because two weeks before the show we still had no designs, no name and the kids still fought and 25% don't show up for class because they took it for credits only and nothing else and the early morning classes were full of hang-over leftovers!

I brought in guy who owns a young mans clothing company that sells well in the US and Europe with bag full of designs that sold only in Europe and we could have them FREE as a present to the school and he would ship us the small quantities we needed to start this line after the show. Even when we voted on designs to use for our show, people refused to vote - I told them "You have to choose, you have to rank them". Amazing, in an open environment they couldn't say a word, after class I get emails about what was good and what was not - nuts right?

I still talk to a few of them, those that wanted to learn learned, the others, well it will take them along time to figure why they don't have good jobs yet or never will!

So, to that person from FL, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing now. The work world sucks, schools prepare only the chosen few for the real world and most of you get pushed by and out the door and left to wonder aimlessly.

Maybe a small drink company can help change that, I have to try?