Myles Ruiz, a 2019 Cherokee Trail High School graduate who started an immersive entertainment company, returned to a marketing and entrepreneurship class to teach students about starting a business and give them hands-on team challenges.
Ruiz, 25, is a senior business engineering major at the Colorado School of Mines. He talked with students about entrepreneurship and marketing and shared the story of his company, Funtastic.
“My company is Funtastic,” Ruiz said. “We deal in immersive entertainment, so we started off with portable escape rooms, but now we’re kind of branching out to doing prop builds, event production, kind of anything that’s fun. It’s in the name, Funtastic.”
Ruiz said the company’s first build started at the end of 2024.
“Now we’re kind of chugging along,” he said.
He said he knew the topic could seem dry, so he planned the visit around activity.
“I am going to be just talking about entrepreneurship and stuff, but that’s not always super fun. A little bit boring,” Ruiz said. “So, I wanted to bring some interactive elements, some of our puzzles, kind of have them group up and do some teamwork and towards entrepreneurship.”
Ruiz said the activities were meant to show students what running a business involves.
“We have them trying to solve a puzzle over there, team building, problem solving,” he said.
At another station, students created their own companies and were encouraged to be creative.
Ruiz has visited Cherokee Trail before when he came to a teacher event over the summer and brought some of his puzzles for staff to try to solve.
He said returning to the school is personal.
“I love giving back to the community,” Ruiz said. “My family still lives in this community. Like my sister still goes here. My other two sisters graduated from here, so really exciting.”
Ruiz said being invited back means a great deal.
“To have an opportunity where people want you to come back and feel like it’s a valuable opportunity for them to hear you talk and kind of share your experiences, it’s everything,” he said.
He told students he did not have his path figured out as a teenager.
“I didn’t really even know what I wanted to do in high school, so that’s kind of partially why I’m here to, you know, explain some opportunities,” Ruiz said.
He said mentors and alumni guided him by showing him what he “maybe should and shouldn’t do.”
He said the hardest part of running a company is handling every role. When a business starts with something like portable escape rooms, the work is fun, and people love it. Then the other tasks arrive.
“You have to do all the other stuff, all the business stuff, all the reaching out to people, all the different things that maybe other companies have dedicated roles for,” Ruiz said. “You’re kind of jack of all trades in that sense.”
Asked whether he started his company with purpose and passion, Ruiz said, “I think I put passion into everything that I do.”
He also offered advice about self-worth.
“Tell yourself what you’re worth. Don’t let other people tell you what you’re worth,” Ruiz said. He said a business idea “doesn’t have to be the craziest idea of all time. Just kind of getting in and starting.”
Students said hearing from a former classmate made an impression.
Blake Sexton, a junior who wants to major in business, said his team was working on a project in which they had to build a business with $10,000. He serves as one of the team’s project managers.
“Just hearing from someone that was in our shoes not too long ago, it actually makes it feel way more attainable,” Sexton said. He said Ruiz was “already in” the position students are in now, “and now he’s successful, owns his own business, and that’s what we’re about all trying striving to do in our entrepreneurship class.”
Caris Chan, a junior, said the visit reflects the school’s business program.
“I think it just really shows how our school is so developed in this kind of business, like these business classes and this business program because it’s really prominent in our school,” Chan said.
Chan said the lessons feel more practical now.
“Right now, I feel like we’re just in these business classes, but now I feel like we can take those risks from what we’ve learned and just actually (apply) that to the real world,” she said.
Paige Hollinger, a junior, said Ruiz’s visit showed her where classroom work can lead.
“I really think it’s pretty awesome just to see how far we can actually go and see (an) actual example that all this hard work we do for all of our business clubs and classes can actually get us somewhere,” Hollinger said.
For Ruiz, finding his passion didn’t happen overnight. But he said by sharing his journey, he’s hoping students here realize that time is on their side.
“I hope they walk away with a sense of purpose and passion, and maybe determination that if they do want to start a business,” Ruiz said. “That it’s possible for everyone, and they just have to start.”
