On June 3, at the Driftwood Shores beach, I dipped the tires of my road bike into the Pacific Ocean. A team of friends and colleagues joined me in this tradition, a kind of bond that demonstrated we are in this together. No turning back now. Ahead of us lay the entire country, nearly 4,000 miles we would ride in 47 days.
I’d made this ride before, traversing the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, on a journey to celebrate small town entrepreneurship. As the executive director of The Center for Entrepreneurship at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, I saw the difference that small businesses make on that ride. I interviewed 100 entrepreneurs to glean the secrets of their success and to tell their stories.
That was 10 years ago, and now I am at it again. Still celebrating entrepreneurship, this time bringing attention to small businesses around the world. A program we offer at our Center for Entrepreneurship called SEED has changed the lives of hundreds of students and thousands of people they teach. I am even more excited to be riding this time. We are a team on a mission. We exchanged a round of high fives on the beach that morning and set off through the streets of Florence, Oregon, onto Highway 126, lined with evergreens that seemed to be cheering us on as we headed to Eugene, 90 miles away. This time we are not looking for business owners to tell their stories. This time we are the ones with a story to tell. We couldn’t wait to spread the news.
It didn’t take long. On our way to Eugene we stopped at a park for a breather. With two support vans in tow, we are pretty hard to miss. A man approached us and asked, “Where are you guys headed?”
“Yorktown, Virginia,” I said with a laugh. “But today, just Eugene.”
“Wow!” he said. “Are you raising money for something?”
“We are,” I said. I explained how our SEED program (Small Enterprise and Development) works at Utah State University. How each year we select and train 100 students to spend a three-month internship in locations all over the world teaching people how to successfully build small businesses. “Our students have taught more than 10,000 people in Peru, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, the Philippines, and other countries,” I explained. “Most of the families our students teach are earning $100 to $150 a per month. By helping them start a small business they can earn two or three times that amount, which lifts them out of extreme poverty. Their children can go to high school and even to college. So, we’re asking people to sponsor this ride, even a few cents per mile. Our goal is to fund 100 student scholarships for three years in a row.”
The guy didn’t hesitate. “I want to help,” he said.
I’m writing this from Newton, Kansas, just outside of Wichita. We’ve ridden 2,000 miles, breathing in the breathtaking grandeur of McKenzie Pass, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and Breckenridge. And we’ve crossed the Continental Divide several times. To see America by bicycle is to be lost in wonder at the magnificence of our great country.
We’ve spent the night in 30 different towns and hamlets, some just a few hundred people strong. At every stop, people are curious and excited about what we are doing at Utah State University. And they want to become a part of this story.
I tell them about a woman in the Philippines who we have helped build a successful lumber business and several other companies. She in turn has helped dozens of other women build successful small businesses. I tell them about a woman in Mexico who was destitute after her husband died, who our students helped start a bakery that is now earning hundreds of dollars a month. And I tell them about a man in the Dominican Republic who has built a successful air conditioning company, with the help of our SEED interns. Most importantly, I tell them how it changes the lives of our students. They come back realizing they hit the jackpot at birth and they decide to be givers in life rather than takers.
So often we read that our country is hopelessly divided, that there is nothing we can unite around. Take a bike ride across America and you will quickly see that people everywhere are eager to make a difference. This past month we have seen this first-hand. You can help too. Go to www.pedalingtoendpoverty.org to find out how.
In the next few weeks we are looking forward to biking through Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Virginia. Our ride ends on July 20th, but the stories spawned by this epic adventure are just beginning.
Mike Glauser serves as executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.
Mike Glauser serves as executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. He’s also the Director of the SEED poverty alleviation program, helping thousands of people around the world to improve their standard of living and benefit their communities through entrepreneurship.
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