by Seamus Sweeney ’21 (Seton House)

Last month, Mrs. Scholz’s Sports and Entertainment Marketing class started a new unit on entrepreneurship. We had the unique opportunity of being taught this unit by local entrepreneur, Mr. Anson Flake. Mr. Flake is the former CEO of local company Hydroworx. Hydroworx is a company that was started in 1997 by Mr. Flake and his business partners. Hydroworx makes underwater treadmills. These treadmills are used to help rehabilitate people, especially athletes, from their injuries.

Mr. Flake taught us the many skills that it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. “Finding the gap” is one of the many things he emphasized to our class. This means that as an entrepreneur, you need to find what is missing in a market, or what the people want that they don’t have already. Another thing that he taught us was to “make meaning”. What this means is that to have a successful product or service, you need to make sure that there is meaning behind your product. Your product can’t just be made for a stupid reason, it has to have a real meaning for what it is supposed to do. You must be passionate about it, and truly care about the success of it and the effect it has on other people.

Mr. Flake also took us to local digital marketing company, WebFX, in Harrisburg. This company was started in the 1990s in a dorm room at Shippensburg University. About ten years ago, they were a very small company with not many clients, now they are a much bigger company with many clients. For the past four years, WebFX has been the “Number One Place to Work” in the state of Pennsylvania. It was very cool to see a local company, started by entrepreneurs, that is successful, not just in our area, but throughout the country and world. This showed us that if you have a passion and truly care about something, you can be successful in whatever you are doing.

Mr. Flake taught us a lot, but he also truly cared about us. He wants to help us as much as he can in learning how to be a successful entrepreneur. We took the Clifton Strengths Test, which helped us find out where our strengths are, and how we can best use them to benefit not just us, but everything we do. He also told us that if we ever needed help or mentoring, we can reach out to him for some advice.

As a class, we learned so much. Mr. Flake gave amazing advice and was easy to talk to. He really helped us make connections and listen to him and trust what he said. I truly appreciate him for taking time out of his busy schedule for coming here to Trinity, and teaching juniors and seniors how to be successful entrepreneurs, and just successful in life in general. I will take the many skills that I learned and try to put them to work if I ever get the opportunity.