OFI 1333: The Confidence To Do It Better | FFA SAE Edition | Trever Montgomery | Pierce High School FFA

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Today’s interview teaches us a lot of different lessons about entrepreneurship, and our guest is just 15 years old. Trever Montgomery has grown up loving to fish. Years ago, he had the thought that he might one day make his own “soft plastic” fishing baits. Like so many ideas, it came into his head, never left but got put on a back shelf somewhere waiting to be pulled off at some point in the future.

In 2020 Trever started high school, and with that he also started the FFA. His advisor let him know that he would need to have a supervised agricultural experience and explained what the options were. It was in that instance that he knew the time had come, and he was going to start making his own baits as an entrepreneurship SAE.

Trever started researching right away, and with in a couple of months he was creating his very own prototypes. He first began by purchasing a bait making kit from one company and learning the process. Soon, he knew how to make them, but he was noticing flaws. So, he purchased a kit from another company. He had the same experience again, seeing room for improvement in the baits that he produced with their recipe. It was at this point that Trever started taking the aspects of one companies baits that he liked and combining it with the aspects of another’s that he liked in order to make a bait that was superior to both of the originals. TM Baits was born.

Today Trever is in his sophomore year of high school. He has developed a significant social media following on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, and he has developed his own e-commerce website. He now sells baits to 24 different states in the U.S. based on the reputation he has built and the instructional and informative videos that he has made. At the same time that Trever has been learning about baits he has learned so much more. He understands e-commerce, marketing, applying for and receiving and SAE grant, research and development and much, much more.

Trever has one of the attributes that leads to entrepreneurship, which is having the courage to say “I can do it better” and then proving it. This is going to be a very exciting story to watch develop!

SUPERVISED AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE: TMBaits

HIGH SCHOOL: Pirece Public High School; Pierce, Nebraska

MASCOT: Bluejays

FFA ADVISOR: Matthew Neal

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR TREVER MONTGOMERY:

Click on the picture below to be taken to the Pierce Public High School website:

Trever’s FFA Advisors’ Email Addresses: matthewneal@piercebluejays.org

Pierce Public High School Telephone Number: 402-329-4678

FFA LINKS:

National FFA Organization

Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE’s)

Support FFA

Donate to FFA – One way that FFA students are able to start small businesses is through an FFA grant of $1,000. In 2014, 141 FFA students received these grants. With your donations, more students can get this head start – pay it forward.

REASONS TO DONATE TO FFA:

Only 2% of Americans grow and raise most of the food and livestock consumed by the other 98% as well as the rest of the world. FFA is providing the needed education, training and resources to Americans that will carry that torch forward and insure that America continues to have inexpensive, quality food.
Rural Communities will rely on entrepreneurship in the future for population growth and job creation. The FFA is a major catalyst to that entrepreneurial growth.
Farmers, ranchers and those working in agriculture give the rest of America incredible amounts of freedom because the search for food is as simple as going to the grocery store:

“The future of American agriculture depends on the involvement and investment in America’s youth, In order to prepare for the population of tomorrow, we need to encourage America’s youth today, and show that careers in agriculture are profitable, rewarding, and vital.”.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue