Current UCF student and CEO Ace Glenn spoke to students and aspiring entrepreneurs in the Business Administration Building on Thursday and shared the story of his personal journey and what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur.
Glenn is a finance major at UCF, and he won first place in the Joust Business Plan Competition last spring for his Better Ways to Study plan, which he is currently CEO of and constructed in just 36 hours.
Glenn’s website, www.betterwaystostudy.com, sells $5 visual study guides for select classes to those among the 60 percent of people who are visual learners. That concept soon led to the invention of CourseMob, a student-friendly mobile study device.
Glenn organized his speech into four chapters about his voyage into the entrepreneurship world, each chapter representing each year in college and all four equipped with a lesson he learned at the end.
He began by explaining his freshman year as a drastic mistake, because he kept his business ideas locked up in his Libra dorm room, petrified that people would think they were stupid. Nevertheless, the lesson he told the audience was to “talk often about your ideas” if progress of any kind is desired.
The next year proved to be a breakthrough for Glenn. He competed in both the Joust Business Plan Competition and the King of the Court Business Pitch Competition for the first time. He placed second in the Joust and fourth in the King of the Court.
That same year, after seeing an influential video in his foundations of business class, Glenn got into door-to-door sales. He traveled to Spokane, Wash. and spent 138 days selling Comcast services for King Marketing. After facing multiple forms of rejection, from doors being slammed in his face to getting shot at through a window, Glenn ultimately prevailed, winning the sales incentive.
“If you don’t live outside of your comfort zone, you won’t grow,” Glenn said.
During his junior year, Glenn got into Internet marketing sales and eventually turned his garage into his own telemarketing business. That spring, he competed in the King of the Court Competition for the second time, but did not advance on. After a panic attack struck the speaker of the company ranked ahead of his, the spot was given to Glenn and he won second place. As the third lesson, Glenn told the audience to never give up.
In the final chapter of the presentation, he elaborated on CourseMob, which Apple officially approved and released to the market in August.
"Ace's story has inspired me to apply some of his ideas and advice in my own Amway Independent Business,” senior Jackie Filippi said.
CourseMob is available as an app for smart phones and as SMS for non smart phones. Glenn and his team work directly with UCF professors to ensure the study material used is accurate for each class. CourseMob knows what material to send based on the date and delivers it in question format to help students stay prepared and avoid procrastination.
“Make learning a ubiquitous experience,” Glenn said.
Glenn concluded his presentation by saying that his experiences have been the best time of his life, and that with passion, it doesn’t feel like work.
is a member of the 
Be the first to comment on this article!