Launching Rocket Club to Teach Kids How to Be Entrepreneurs

Episode 175: An entrepreneur since age 15, Alex Hodara tells us why he created Rocket Club to teach 7 to 14-year old students robotics, coding, and entrepreneurship. 

Guest Biography

Entrepreneur Alex Hodara is the owner of Hodara Real Estate Group, an investment and development company he founded as a brokerage in 2008. Hodara launched the venture during his junior year at Boston University, hiring 15 of his classmates and launching what CNBC coined as "America's first student run real estate brokerage." Upon graduation with his B.B.A. from the distinguished Questrom School of Business, the success of Hodara's firm landed him on Forbes' "30 Under 30" and Bloomberg Businessweek's "Best Young Entrepreneurs" lists. Hodara bought, renovated, and rented his first building in 2011, and today owns 200 multifamily units between Boston and Jersey City, just outside of Manhattan.

In 2018 Hodara sponsored a STEM competition at Westfield High School in New Jersey. Inspired by the student's brilliant engineering ideas and desire for elevated entrepreneurial support, he developed Rocket Club, an award winning, selffinanced robotics, coding and entrepreneurship club for kids. Hodara officially launched this passion project in February 2019 in Hoboken, New Jersey and word spread fast; with new locations popping up in Montclair, NJ, Upper West Side New York, Lower Manhattan, The British International School of NYC, and a free program in Newark, NJ during the first year of operation. Rocket Club went on to win the 2019 NJ Tech Council's Innovation and Education Award, and STEM Leader to Watch Award. Each location was near capacity when COVID-19 hit the world, in March 2020. Hodara and the Rocket Club team quickly pivoted to a fully virtual model, providing free education to members through the fall of 2020. In the process, enrollment soared as parents sought out additional resources for their children who were distance learning. Rocket Club's virtual curriculum is four semesters, and teaches members to develop their own businesses, learn Python coding, and build robotics. Each day, Rocket Club hosts Rocket Club Live, an interactive, educational game show and Q&A featuring a successful guest. Guests have included the founders of Netflix, Beyond Meat, Casper Mattresses, Harry's Razors, Vonage, and Bobbi Brown Cosmetics to name a few.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• We get a glimpse into the entrepreneur's mind.
• Building a curriculum designed to expose kids to as much as possible to inspire and help them decide what they want to be when they're older.
• How Alex is investing his own money to cultivate entrepreneurs of the future.

Show notes: http://www.inspiredmoney.fm/175

Find more from our guest:

Mentioned in the episode:

• Jeffrey M. Zucker
• Vin Vomero
• Keith Harrington
• Morgan McDowell - Host of Rocket Club Live
• Marc Randolph, co-founder and founding CEO of Netflix
• Josh Dobbs - NFL Quarterback and NASA Rocket Scientist
• mightyquinnsbbq.com

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Special thanks to Jim Kimo West for the music.