MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Motivational speaker and author Kyle Scheele proudly recalled the time over two decades ago when he was a “flat broke” 17-year-old high school senior who had no job, had no time for a job, was student body president, studying for the ACT — but needed to relieve the cash crunch that plagued him.

Known as the “Patron Saint of Crazy Ideas,” Scheele began to tell his story of budding entrepreneurship to hundreds of attendees as keynote speaker of the 2026 Leadership Summit hosted by the Jennings A. Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University.

“This morning, I want to tell you a story about the time that I chased an idea that seemed crazy at the time, and how chasing that crazy idea ended up changing the entire course of my life,” he said. “And I want to tell you that story because I think that chasing your own crazy ideas and building a culture within yourself and the people you work with, where chasing crazy ideas is just kind of a natural byproduct of the culture.”

Sponsored by Jennings A. Jones Chair of Free Enterprise, this year’s event was held Oct. 23 at Embassy Suites in West Murfreesboro, with Scheele crafting his remarks around the theme of “Thinking Inside the Box: How Tough Times Fuel True Creativity & Innovation.”

For Scheele, the young high schooler, that tough time with no personal cash flow prompted him to pursue the idea of starting a small business creating and selling custom T-shirts. So he borrowed a friend’s laptop and designed an ivory-colored shirt that read “Osteoporosis is bad to the bone,” a popular creation that led to a profitable venture from the school cafeteria that eventually drew the principal’s ire — and shutdown — as a violation of school rules.

But throughout the process, Scheele said he was getting on-the-job training around design, sales, merchandising, distribution, and the myriad other aspects of successfully running a small business — all stemming from pursuing what many would consider a crazy idea. Scheele went on to share anecdotes about the successful evolution of some of his other ideas — whether it was a symbolic Viking funeral for the regrets of 21,000 people, hosting the world’s first fake marathon, or gaining a million TikTok followers in just 25 hours. 

Ideas need five things

Relaying personal stories about various stages in his life, Scheele told the Leadership Summit audience that every idea needed five elements to have a chance at coming to fruition: 1) a chance; 2) a home; 3) a time and place; 4) a bodyguard; 4) and a crew.

Scheele shared that the Harvard Business Review published a study last year of chief innovation officers at a number of major corporations, and those leaders “overwhelmingly” agreed that when their teams are allowed to explore a challenge internally, “they find the answer already exists about 70% of the time. And yet only about 10% of ideas employees share are reviewed. That gap is a big problem in the modern business world. … You’ve got to give ideas a chance.”

Giving those ideas a home can be as simple as using the Notes app, Google Docs or voice memos on your phone to capture them immediately, while they’re fresh in your mind. Or go old-school and use a napkin, or keep a notebook handy to write them down as they come.

“A lot of incredible businesses worth millions or billions of dollars have started when a bunch of people like you get together in a room like this, somebody pulls out a napkin and starts sketching,”  he said. “… Notebooks are a great place for ideas. I always have notebooks with me. A notebook takes something out of the air and puts it into a place where it’s not going to change.”

This becomes even more important when those ideas live within shared documents and spaces where team members can explore and expound upon them. Good leaders, he said, aren’t people who solve problems, but people who “make sure problems get solved” by tapping into the ideas of the people on the front lines of the challenges being faced.

Then there’s timing: “There’s no such thing as the perfect time and the perfect place,” said Scheele, recalling how the pandemic cratered his livelihood as a public speaker for months on end, forcing him to open the door to TikTok videos — going from posting two videos leading to 17 followers to eventually posting a viral one that led to a million followers overnight.

“Ideas are really powerful, but bringing them into the world is kind of scary, because right now, when it’s just an idea, it’s in your head. Your head is such a great place. It’s warm and safe in there, and there’s no consequences, and you get to imagine how great it could go and all of the best possible versions,” he said. “But as soon as you bring it out, all of a sudden it comes in with a cold, harsh air of reality, and then other people have opinions about it.”

Which means those ideas need a bodyguard to protect them, which is what happened when Scheele embraced his desire to publish a children’s picture book, before obstacles and frustration led him to bury the idea and his writing, before a quirky occurrence with his wife at a pizza place one day sparked him to open up his notebook again.

Two years later, his book “The Pizza with Everything on It” was published during the pandemic and ended up in the Amazon Christmas catalog. Amazon put the follow-up book, “A Sundae with Everything on It,” on a billboard in New York City, he said.

“Every idea needs a bodyguard because every organization has a devil’s advocate. There’s always someone who will tell you … why it won’t work.”

‘Creativity is a team sport’

Scheele concluded his talk by challenging the myth of “the self-made man or the self-made woman” and encouraging the audience to form “a crew” of like-minded supporters and collaborators to bring ideas to reality.

He shared the story about his idea that led to the creation of a highly successful online fake marathon fundraiser that relied on the participation and engagement of a social media community of thousands of people from around the world having fun creating and sharing their photos of competing in the “Run Free” marathon — because it was free of running.

“Every single successful person is a balance, a mixture of two things. One, absolutely, yes, their hard work, their determination, their skills, their effort,” Scheele said. “But equally, or even more so, is the community of people that surrounded them, the resources that they were given, the opportunities that they had nothing to do with that fell into their lap. 

“Yes, they took advantage of those opportunities, but the opportunities were still there, nonetheless. And so creativity is a team sport, because life is a team sport.”

For MTSU junior Tyler Robinson, a business innovation and entrepreneurship major from Selmer, Tennessee, this marked her second year attending after learning about it through an entrepreneurship class during sophomore year.

Scheele’s five essential elements for ideas resonated with her as she assessed her own creativity and contemplated how to move her ideas forward.

“I know in some ways I can be very creative. Like, for example, I can make very good encouragement cards and things like that for friends. It’s just something that happened because I like to spread positivity and offer encouragement to my friends,” said Robinson, who wants to continue that positivity professionally.

“I want to become a project manager, and I want to start a nonprofit. Kind of like a school. At first it was an organization, but now I want it to be some type of academy, a school that will offer opportunities for all students, from pre-K level up to high school and even some in college,” she said. “Our education system’s a bit rocky at the moment. So I want to provide an opportunity for everyone to access a good education … and have better opportunities.”

According to Scheele, ideas such as Robinson’s academy can provide a framework for Robinson to use her project-management aspirations to bring her nonprofit goals to life.

“There’s this thing in creativity that people always talk about: ‘Let’s think outside the box.’ It’s an interesting idea, but that’s not actually how creativity works. The box is a vital part of creativity, because if you don’t have a box, you don’t need to get creative,” he said. 

“If you have all the money and all the team and all the time and all the opportunity and all the resources in the world, you don’t need creativity. You just write a check and you get whatever you want. But when all of a sudden the box shrinks, and now you don’t have the time that you’ve got, oh boy, you have to get creative then.”

— Jimmy Hart ([email protected])