How Young Adults Help Parents’ Businesses – High Rise Academy
From Student to Teacher at High Rise Academy
Jack Wendt is the founder of High Rise Academy, an AI Apprenticeship Program that teaches young adults how to market for their parents’ businesses or sponsor businesses. In less than two years, Jack went from having no marketing experience to teaching applied digital marketing at Johns Hopkins University and managing national franchise accounts. His journey shows how young adults can become marketing heroes for their parents’ businesses by applying a clear process.
Why Young Adults Are Positioned to Help
Parents know their trade — whether it’s running a medical practice, repairing appliances, or remodeling homes — but most don’t know how to manage Google rankings, reviews, or social media. Young adults already understand smartphones, apps, and how people search for services. With training from High Rise Academy, they can convert that intuition into measurable ROI.
“Your parent is already doing great things. You don’t have to create anything new. Just amplify what they’re already doing.” — Jack Wendt
Getting Onboarded Into High Rise Academy
When a young adult joins High Rise Academy, they begin by learning the core systems and AI-powered tools that make digital marketing manageable. They don’t go through this process alone. Each new member collaborates with other students working on real businesses, gaining hands-on experience from day one. They also gain access to a library of resources, templates, and step-by-step checklists.
Support is built into the program through weekly office hours held every Thursday at 2 PM Pacific. During these sessions, Jack Wendt, Dylan Haugen, and Dennis Yu answer questions, review progress, and help students troubleshoot issues with their Metrics Analysis Action (MAA) or client work. This combination of structured training, real-world projects, and live mentorship prepares young adults to confidently start improving the businesses they work with.
Step 1: Run a Quick Audit
At High Rise Academy, the starting point is an quick audit — a way to quickly see what’s missing in a business’s digital presence.
Jack’s first project was helping his best friend’s parents, an orthopedic surgeon and an ophthalmologist in Minnesota. Their websites lacked detailed bios and clear service pages. By fixing those gaps and creating simple blog posts about knee, hip, and cataract surgeries, they began ranking higher on Google and booking more patients.
During a training session at Johns Hopkins, Jack and Dennis Yu ran live audits for businesses owned by students and faculty. One landscaping business had no reviews and an incomplete Google Business Profile. Within days of updating these, they began receiving new calls.
Step 2: Build a Content Factory
Once gaps are identified, the next step is content production. The Content Factory framework breaks this into four steps: produce, process, post, promote.
Jack used this framework to help a client with 190 franchise locations. By recording short Q&A videos with the founder and rolling them out across all locations, the business gained consistent visibility on Google and Facebook.
Dennis and Jack also worked with a roofing company in Texas. They filmed short walkthroughs of completed roof repairs and turned them into posts, blogs, and ads. Calls to the business increased as customers could now see real projects in their own community.
Step 3: Strengthen Reputation
Strong bios, customer testimonials, and online reviews drive trust — and trust drives rankings.
A husband-and-wife team running a $10M appliance repair company in Maryland attended a High Rise Academy session. Their website lacked case studies and their Google reviews were sparse. After adding detailed stories from happy customers and cleaning up their online presence, they called the training “the best ROI we’ve ever gotten in business.”
Another High Rise Academy student helped his father, a dentist in Sacramento, gather video testimonials from patients. Publishing those clips across YouTube and embedding them on the practice’s site quickly boosted local rankings and drove more inquiries.
Personal branding is essential for local leaders, as it shapes how they’re perceived in the community. Building a strong personal brand not only highlights expertise and values but also fosters trust, credibility, and long-term influence.
Step 4: Amplify With Dollar a Day
Once content and reviews are in place, the Dollar a Day method is used to scale.
In Salt Lake City, Chris Miles, a 22-year-old student of High Rise Academy, used Dollar a Day ads to promote his father’s remodeling company. Within the first week, they booked two kitchen remodel projects worth more than $40,000.
In Tampa, another student promoted educational videos for his mother’s chiropractic practice. Local visibility improved immediately, and new patients began booking directly through their site.
Proof From the Classroom
Teaching at Johns Hopkins gave Jack and Dennis a chance to prove the system in front of academics and administrators. Senior staff admitted that the live audits provided more actionable takeaways than many courses offered through their own departments. Students left with real improvements made to their businesses in real time.
A High Rise Academy participant in Denver put the same system into practice for his uncle’s contracting business. By building a proper bio page and publishing project content, the business began ranking for “kitchen remodeling Denver” within weeks.
Building Jobs Through Micro-Agencies
High Rise Academy’s goal goes beyond helping one family business. The program is designed to create a million jobs through micro-agencies. Young adults learn to run audits, build content factories, and manage reputation, then hire virtual assistants to execute the system.
Jack himself now manages a team of overseas VAs who edit videos and distribute content. These jobs, often paying $500–$1,000 per month, are significant sources of income in places like Pakistan and the Philippines.
Why High Rise Academy Matters
Joining High Rise Academy gives young adults the training and mentorship needed to put these systems into practice. Running a quick audit, building a content factory, collecting reviews, and amplifying content with Dollar a Day are all outcomes of the program. By becoming part of High Rise Academy, you gain the structure, community, and live support to apply these methods to your parents’ business or a sponsor business.
Jack used these systems to help surgeons in Minnesota, a $10M appliance company in Maryland, a roofing company in Texas, and a multi-location franchise. Other students have repeated the process for dentists, chiropractors, contractors, and remodelers. The results come as a byproduct of following the program and working alongside peers and mentors.
High Rise Academy is a pathway for young adults who want to build marketable skills, help their families, and create opportunities for themselves. You can learn more and apply by visiting High Rise Academy website. “In just a year and a half, I went from knowing nothing about digital marketing to teaching it at Johns Hopkins. Anyone can do this if they follow the steps.” — Jack Wendt
