He admits he was not the ideal student (about 370th out of 450 students) at Auburn’s Edward Little High School five years ago. You wouldn’t know it today. College, two favorite books, two personal goals and a passion for what he does have given Michaud a direction he couldn’t have dreamed of just a few years ago. For his story and some lessons learned, read on. (Excerpted from a longer interview. For the entire interview, go to www.sunjournal.com.)  

You’re only 22, but already have your own production company, clients from around New England, and you travel around the country doing video. How’d you make that happen so quickly? Before we even went to college, we (friend Travis and Michaud) were making basic motocross riding videos of ourselves and our friends, and we all enjoyed watching ourselves. … Travis and I both applied to The New England School of Communications (NESCom) in Bangor where we were accepted. We started out together and as our motocross video making became more popular and people were starting to offer money, Travis decided that he was going to work and not pass up the opportunity of making money doing something he loved. I stayed in school. … Rodney (Verrill, head of NESCom’s video department) then organized an internship with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife) where he recommended me for a $10-an-hour internship over the 2008 summer (to teach them newer video technology). I started working through my internship immediately. … The director of information and education of the department, Regis Tremblay, liked my work ethic and my skills, so he decided to continue to have me work throughout the next school year. I continued to impress him and other staff in the department and when my internship contract ran out, they decided to hire me as a subcontractor, and now I charge them my own rates, making a lot more money. While all of the department stuff was happening, Travis had earned himself a name in the motocross industry and he has helped me gain my status throughout the industry by referring me to companies who need help with the services that I provide.

Go back five years to when you were at Edward Little and tell us what you would have predicted you’d be doing today. Five years ago I didn’t have a clue where I was going to end up. … I thought about the military, I thought about college, but I knew my grades weren’t really up to snuff to get in anywhere reputable. I think I was a bit lost in high school, but I always had the confidence in myself and knew that someday not long after high school I would be successful with whatever I ended up doing. … Five years ago I had no clue.

Your passions in high school were motocross and ski racing. Were you expecting to go pro? Motocross I loved the most and I wanted to become pro, but as I got older I realized that I just wasn’t being brought up in the sport the way the typical professional motocross racer is brought up. They’re usually home-schooled and live down South where they can ride every day and get a lot of practice with a lot faster riders. In New England, the motocross season starts in a cold April and ends in a cold October. … As for skiing, I enjoyed racing and was fortunate enough to ski with some fast skiers, but after hurting my knees from a couple of crashes and having to sit out, I couldn’t rely on making a career in skiing.

Word is that you were a horrible student, academically. True? I wasn’t the worst student at Edward Little academically, but I know that I graduated somewhere around 370 out of 450. My grades were primarily Cs and Ds, occasionally get an F or a B, and maybe once or twice I got an A in gym or art class. I just didn’t care. I didn’t believe in the school system and to a certain extent still don’t, but that’s just me. A lot of people are told that “that’s life, deal with it” but I never wanted to accept that and I still don’t today. Therefore I didn’t believe in homework, and thought that I spend seven hours a day in school, why would I want to do anything more? So I didn’t. I usually made sure I passed my classes, but nothing more.

So here you are at the New England School of Communications, with a 3.86 grade point average and your own business. What turned you into such a good student? I became a good student when I started doing something I loved. I wanted to make a good career in video and or Web so I also worked harder in my general education classes like math and English. I wanted to prove to myself that I could have gotten good grades all along, and it became important to me to make sure that I take these four years and concentrate. … I noticed a lot of other college students putting a lot of their college efforts into what parties they are going to attend for the weekend, while I put my focus into working on projects and reading about making money. About two years into college I decided that two things were going to make me happy in life. One was time. Time to spend by myself, with my family, friends, girlfriend maybe future wife, those types of things. The other was money. Money to spend on myself and travel and see the world, money to not have to worry about how am I going to survive and not live pay check to pay check, and also money to give back to people who are less fortunate. A couple of my goals are to gain enough money to make huge donations to countries that are less fortunate and organizations that I believe in, along with funding the construction of a building at NESCom. I truly believe in what NESCom is offering and want to help continue their success. I wish more college students would focus more on school and their careers, because I find a lot of them are just delaying their responsibility another four years. I drink and I socialize with friends, but I take rewarded time off for that instead of doing it all the time, like some. I won’t put something off until tomorrow that I can accomplish today, because tomorrow is a completely new day.

What would you say to a high school student who’s struggling with his or her grades today? I would say, find what you absolutely love and stick with it. Just because you can go to college to get a degree doesn’t mean you’ll become successful. People in our past, such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison, didn’t go to college and they were all extremely successful. Thomas Edison had over 6,000 attempts in two years before he got the light bulb right. Until a person can understand that the only way to success is to fail and to fail many times without giving up, then he or she will find themselves working to make someone else rich physically and mentally instead of themselves. So if high school isn’t your thing, then the chances are college probably isn’t either, and you should follow what you really love and read all the material you can on that subject because that’s what they make you do in college, except you pay a lot more money for it. Take steps every day toward what you love and NEVER EVER EVER… EVER GIVE UP. And when you feel like you can’t push anymore, push harder and longer and success will come. This is what I live by every day, thanks to two books: “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill and “How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not” by Robert Shemin. Remember your last day of work begins when you absolutely love what your do.

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