WMHS Student is Senior by Day – CEO at Night

Christian Flamman is a lot like a typical senior, doing things like hanging out with friends, working a part time job and playing varsity athletics.

Except that he's also the CEO of a company.

Flamman launched a franchise of Tristate Ticket Group, a ticket re-selling company, in January of 2011. His business, called Premiere Ticket Group, is a web-based business that lives at the URL Pticketgroup.com and sells tickets to every kind of event in the area – sporting events, concerts, and more. It's a gig he runs in his spare time after school and on weekends.

"Any type of ticket you want, we can get it for you," he said.

For instance, Flamman's site still has tickets to the Electric Daisy Carnival, a Las Vegas-based show that tours to major cities in the form of two- or three-day festivals, even though the event sold out on Ticketmaster in less than an hour.

Though a rough economy has impacted his business, he said he has been able to stay successful by promoting his company via social media.

Flamman balances working with his company while taking a full load of courses at Ward Melville, playing on the varsity tennis team, and working part-time at too. He is considering attending High Point University or Johnson and Wales next year – but either way, he will enter with 15 credits already completed, thanks to the classes he has taken at Ward Melville.

For instance, he is currently taking "College Accounting," one of the classes which will yield college credit, and "Virtual Enterprise," a class that simulates running a business from the ground up. In his sophomore year, he took a class titled "Business and the Music Industry," which he said motivated him to pursue a venture in the ticket business.

"I’ve learned so much from this department as a whole," he said. "This department actually inspired me."

But some of those business classes are in danger of becoming a victim of budget cuts the district is contemplating.

Flamman learned several weeks ago that business electives at Ward Melville High School were on the chopping block. He stood up at a recent school board meeting to defend the district's business program, saying it facilitates practical business experience.

"By taking those classes, it’s given me real world business experience and also college credit at the high school level," Flamman said. "These are things that I’m going to be using for the rest of my life."