Let us All Cheer On Great Teachers & Their Creative Students

May 16, 2007

Greetings from Green Bay, Wisconsin!

Wow - what a fantastic series of short business stories you produce! 

As a marketing teacher in Green Bay Preble High School, I use EVERY ONE of your stories to help me highlight lessons and activities that we are discussing.

My advanced marketing co-op class viewed EACH lesson as we discussed the various components of a business and marketing plan that each student had to developed for our large "Business Plan" unit.

We actually ordered the chocolate covered crickets from Fluker Farms and everyone is in the "I ate a bug club!" now.

Our marketing students also run a small business in the school - it is a school store called the  "Hornets Nest".  The students do every aspect of the business from promotion to ordering inventory to designing new school spirit inventory.  Last year we grossed $130,000 in sales and made a net profit of nearly $40,000.

We also used the video series to aid us in our most ambitious project yet.  We are inventing a game and we are trying to bring it to the market.  It is a game called "Wingo" and it is a Wisconsin traveling BINGO game.  We have a prototype done and next year we will try to bring it to the market in a very real way.  

We are going to work on the very things you do your stories about: sales,  distribution, promotion, marketing, product development, etc.

The video series highlights so many of the things the textbook covers yet does it in a fun and "real world" way.  

I am going to sign up today on your website so I can access more of them for next year's lessons!

Thanks and keep it up!

Mark Bonetti
Preble High School
Marketing/School Store/DECA/Co-op

Thank You, Mark Bonetti

Please relay this message to the students, Preble High principal and the school superintendent:

"You have an extraordinary teacher with Mark Bonetti! 

He's on fire with the zest for life. 

Look at his spark and see if you can catch that fire.  It will propel you to new heights."

Mark gets it.  Most people think business is all about greed.  Bad business is; however, we call that exploitation.  

Business is about creating something of value.  The best businesses actually bring new values into the world; they extend the old value equations so the product or service is richer, deeper, more embracing... 

In creating the Hornet's Nest, you all are doing more than selling goods and services.  You are beginning to embrace life and the very meaning of life. When you stop creating something of value, you begin wilting inside.  

Keep stirring things up... all of you.  And at the end of the school year, give three cheers for Mark, a fabulous teacher who is truly preparing you for the world.Warmly,

-Bruce (and Hattie)

PS.  Here's a question that you might answer for us --  Prior to the web, say 1994,  what business reached a billion dollars in sales, from its incorporation date, faster than any company to date in history? 

I think it may have been Apple or Microsoft. 

Now, since 1994, what web-based companies have reached a billion in sales and who did it fastest?  I suspect YouTube would head that list. 

The point is that in this global, relational economy, billion dollar businesses are just waiting to come out of their cocoons.  The big areas will be in physics, mathematics, and geometry as applied to nanotechnologies, gravitation, and suborbital to orbital flights. 

You have a fabulously exciting future ahead.  Be creative.  Be smart.  And, just go for it!

PPS.  Where are your producers?  Get the students with the new HiDef cameras and who have the nonlinear, video-editing software, and have them produce a piece about your store.  If they do a great job, we'll drop it into an episode of the show.  Just do it!