Video producer Bob Burns and Eilish McCormick interview Millennium House adult day services owner Cindi Ryerson, who was selected to participate in an educational video to teach community college students about being an entrepreneur.
Cindi Ryerson, owner of Millennium House of Southwest Florida Inc., has been selected to participate in an educational video to teach community college students about being an entrepreneur.
A film crew flew in from New York and Boston to follow the day-to-day operations of Ryerson’s business who caters to caring for the elderly who aren’t ready to go into an assisted living facility or nursing home.
“It’s very overwhelming and humbling because I don’t think of myself as material to be taught in a classroom,” said Ryerson, who opened the adult day care services company in 2002.
The crew filmed days worth of tape that will be edited to fit a 20-minute segment, part of a case study series about what it means to be a real-world entrepreneur.
“This allowed me to work with the elderly on a more intimate level and it was a calling for me,” she said about having left a career in Fort Myers in which she ran a home infusion and home health company.
Millennium House currently cares for more than 30 of Southwest Florida’s elderly who must show at least one physical or mental disability.
“It helps them age in place and in a healthy setting where they don’t get depressed,” she said. “Our main purpose is that they have fun here and that they have purpose in their life.”
The setting is what was being caught on film by Burns-Solman Economics LLC, which is producing the video called “Living in the Entrepreneurial World.”
The series will eventually be tested and incorporated into classrooms across the nation.
“We want to move those ideas of business out of the business department and stimulate the thought of business in other professions,” said Eilish McCormick, one of the video producers of the project.
Stimulating that thought, McCormick hopes, will be conveyed through discussions and assignments that will go along with the video.
During taping, the film crew shot aspects of Ryerson’s business including her finances, new clients, social awareness of adult care services in the community, marketing efforts and how the elderly socialize.
“This is the liveliest place in town,” said Jamzie Firestone, a medicare clinical specialist, who was interviewed and filmed for the video.
Firestone is interested in helping Ryerson expand her business into the Naples area — one other aspect of the video that will show students how an established business expands its services into the surrounding areas.
“What Cindi has been able to do here is grass roots innovation,” said Bob Burns, the other video producer on the project that will be tested at Edison Community College in September. “There is a tremendous energy here and the idea itself is so right.”
Ryerson was nominated to appear in the video by Beth Hagan, a Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce member and an advisor for the project that will eventually include 20 entrepreneurs from around the nation.
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