Warning; You are about to learn the real secrets of entrepreneurship From acclaimed author, serial entrepreneur, 17 time Iron-man Triathlete Mitch Thrower Good evening everybody. Welcome, this evening we are very very fortunate to have the opportunity to have a guest speaker who is absolutely a world class entrepreneur. His name is Mitch Thrower. Mitch and I met the first time when he was working on his Masters' degree, his MBA right here in USD, and he got his MBA at USD. Mitch has gone on to be an extremely successful entrepreneur, there's some little pieces of information that you should know. He has served as the entrepreneur in residence here at USD, he has co-taught the entrepreneurship course, the undergraduate entrepreneurship course, Mitch is what we have talked about as a "serial entrepreneur", a person who starts business, gets them up and running,, turns them over to somebody else, ands then goes on to start something else. His compnaies include Triathlete Magazine, if you want to see these he'll pass them out a little later, He also is one of the founders of Active.com, which is the Ticketmaster of participative sports. He founded a company called ActiveEurope.com, which is the European arm of Active.com, The Collage Connection and La Hoya Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that he has founded. He is a 17 time Triathlon runner or triathlete. Which I consider to be slightly less then self torture.. But he manages to do it and he trains continuously at various levels when he's getting ready, He just finished doing the Iron-man competition not too long ago. He is an author, he wrote a book called "The Attention Deficit Workplace" and he has also written monthly columns in The San Diego Magazine and Triathlete Magazine, He's even appeared on reality TV shows. He was on Fantasy Camp, and The Bachelor, were he was one of the friends of the bachelor helping him select his mate, he's even going to be in a flim this year, playing a dating expert based on his next book which is about ready to come out called "The Attention Deficit Dating". So anyway if you will, help me welcome Mitch Thrower. Thank you Scott. It's great to be here, You are very lucky to have Scott as a professor. I know he's ranked pretty high on the professor rankings. One of the things I wanted to start with, and you've probably, we know about the fires, but I wanted to start with just a moment of reflection for what's happened in San Diego. And I'm going to put a song on for just a second. The song is actually the theme of my lecture but, See if anyone knows the name of this song. {music playing} Does anyone know the name of that song? Maybe the right band but it actually "I dare you to move" by Switch-Foot. And so the theme for today The Real Secrets of Entrepreneurship. Mitch Thrower "I Dare You" I dare you to stand up right now. Please, stand up. Look down grab a piece of paper and a pen, put everything else under your desks, Grab your mobile phones as well, We're going to need to move really quickly cause I've got a lot of material tonight. It's great to be here. Piece of paper, pen,everything else under your desk, and your mobile phone. and now once you've done that please close your eyes. Please close your eyes, I see some eyes open, everyone close your eyes.. And without saying a word in under 30 seconds, without saying a word in under 30 seconds, this is going to be tough, probably the toughest class of the day for this to happen in, I would like you to change seats with someone else,you have 30 seconds, keep your eyes closed, begin. No talking. This is kind of what happens in corporate restructuring right? Evereybody stand up OK let's take some chairs away. OK the last folks you can open your eyes. Find a chair Good job, give yourselves a hand just for doing something crazy. How many folks have sat in the same seat or within one seat every single class? Please raise your hand.