John Dimmer

John Dimmer was a longtime friend of to instructor so it was interesting to see what kind of people he hangs out with. He was involved with the Free Range Media, Freezone and Lariat Software with Andrew Fry, or our instructor. He later then retired and started a business with his dad. So he has a massive experience in entrepreneurial ventures and successful ones at that.

Some interesting things that I learned from him are carving out areas where your business dominates, a bit about angel investors and crowd sourcing.

Starting from the last topic as I was the most excited to check that out, crowd sourcing is the bomb.com right at this moment. Websites like gofundme.com and indiegogo.com are being used as platforms to crowd fund things like business ventures to charities. So that got me a nice place that if I do decide to start a business use if I need the funding.

Next he gave us a personal look at angel investors as he is one himself. That was very interesting to me because receiving the information from the person who is actually in the business himself is more beneficial than reading 100 books that cover the theory about the business. His highlights were the amount that angels were generally able to fund, the amount that they wanted to know they can get back and lastly the importance of an exit strategy to the angel investors.

And more on a personal level he told us about his strategy that he used to carve out the NW corner that he dominates with his sales of AirStream trailers and a few potential exit strategies.

He is definitely someone you would want on an advisory board for your business, his knowledge and experience are hard to overlook.

Bruce Kendall

Bruce Kendall is President  and CEO at Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County. And a buddy of our instructor otherwise he would not be visiting us. Actually I learned that our instructor has some of the coolest friends around, lucky for his kids since that means some cool job opportunities.

Anyway his company is a nonprofit that looks to develop Tacoma and the Pierce County to make them more successful. Which is awesome and I hope that they continue to thrive.

But aside from that I learned a few interesting things. One I had no idea that companies like his exist, and that they are nonprofit. And by like that I mean companies that work on improving local economies for NO PROFIT. That is very amazing. The people who start those companies, the people who work there have forever earned my respect. Another thing I learned is once again the importance of clusters and how their company is focusing on expanding a cluster or two here in Tacoma. As a student in not such great economic times the idea of possible jobs is inspiring. And lastly he finally said that business education is important, yay for me (finance major me). I feel like it’s not stressed enough that if you want to have a business venture you need some research or education in business because that is what you are staring, a business.

Overall his visit was a feel good and uplifting one. Anytime you hear that bad situations can be fixed and there are people dedicated to fix them you feel better about tomorrow.