I recently found this article on entrepreneurship. It was so fascinating that I gave the editor of the Charlotte Observer a call for permission to put it into the next issue of my magazine.
Makes a lot of good points - and from what I can see, true points!
Collegians ask: Why Wait?
Even before graduation, these bold pupils started their own businesses
DIANE SUCHETKA
Staff Writer
Kids. Used to be they went to college to learn skills that fit the jobs waiting for them when they got out there.
Now they want more.
They're tired of watching their down-sized, laid-off parents get pushed around by corporate America.
So they're creating their own jobs, like never before.
They're opening businesses while they're still in college -- pulling together dating services and software companies, building lofts in dorm rooms and furniture out of driftwood.
"A lot of the evidence is anecdotal, but it just seems crystal clear that the number of businesses being started by students is higher than ever," says Gerald Hills, director of the Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"A significant factor may be the poor job market. It's not like employers are knocking the doors down to hire undergraduate students."
But it's not just about money.
The biggest reason students want to become entrepreneurs, says Tony Mendes, director of college initiatives for the Kauffman Foundation, is to have more control over their lives.
"And to make a difference.
"I think that's why we're seeing the big increase in social entrepreneurship," he says.
That's using business strategies to solve social problems. It's a hot topic these days. At the University of Notre Dame, there's a social entrepreneur internship program and an annual competition for the best social entrepreneurship plan.
It's part of what Mendes calls a big trend in the teaching of entrepreneurship -- moving it out of America's business schools and into the humanities, the arts, all areas of academia.
Why, Mendes asks, should a dance major have to get an MBA to start a dance company? Why shouldn't she be able to take entrepreneurship in the arts while she's an undergraduate?
That's why the Kauffman Foundation has asked 15 colleges across the country -- Wake Forest University and UNC Chapel Hill among them -- for proposals on how to teach entrepreneurship all across campus.
In December, Mendes says, the foundation will give five to seven of the schools up to $5 million each to create that change in their culture.
"Our economy is driven primarily by entrepreneurial activity," he says. "It's not driven by corporate growth.
"Today's entrepreneurs are creating the economy of tomorrow."
REGGIE GRAY
Reggie Gray had his own business the whole time he was a student at Johnson C. Smith University. But the truth is, he started it when he was 12.
Gray, 24 now, owns all or part of three companies and is launching a fourth.
It began with a $100 magic kit his mom bought him when he was in the fifth grade. He showed so much interest, his mother eventually loaned him $300 to buy a magic table and a tux. And Reginii, The Great Kid Magician Extraordinaire, was born.
In 1998, Gray moved from Baltimore to Charlotte to go to college. He worked weekends and nights as a magician for his new company, Razzle Dazzle Entertainment, while studying communications.
In 2001, his senior year, he found a partner who had worked in group homes for years and together they opened Kitty's House, a Christian-based home for children with mental and behavioral disorders. Within months, two teenagers living there sneaked out a window, stole a car and had an accident. One boy died from the injuries, and the state fined the home for insufficient supervision.
Gray says he's responded, installing alarms on every window and documenting bed checks every 30 minutes. The young man who survived, he says, successfully completed the program, is earning A's and B's and has started a lawn-care business with help from the home's owners.
In 2002, Gray and another partner founded his third business -- a real estate/property management firm, MSC Investments.
In the meantime, Razzle Dazzle has evolved. The company now rents cotton candy and snowball machines and offers clowns and caricature artists for hire.
And business No. 4? Gray's developing that now. Eventually, he hopes to use GP Productions/Food Group to open a sports bar and grill and then franchise it.
"Financially speaking, the sky's the limit," Gray says. "I don't think of millions, I think of billions. I'm a dreamer, that's what I am."
His biggest dream, he says, is to set up a foundation to help young people. He'll start by turning Razzle Dazzle into a nonprofit, using the magic show to teach kids to stay out of trouble, discover their talents and make the most of their lives.
"That's my main focus," Gray says of the kids. "They're our future."
Zach Rich
Zach Rich could've rolled his eyes at his parents, could have ignored them, could have just walked out of the room.
Instead he turned a disagreement between his mom and dad into a business.
Now, two years after founding ExZact Inc., the company is making a profit.
"I'm expecting him to be surpassing me in income level in a couple of years," says his father, Toby Rich, vice president of a concrete company in Pennsylvania. "That's no joke."
Zach Rich was in high school when his dad came home late, and his mom wanted to know why.
His father had spent his day soothing customers, angry because their concrete arrived late. It was late because drivers spent so much time hosing concrete off their trucks between deliveries.
If you can come up with a product that keeps concrete from sticking to metal, you're gonna make yourself a billionaire, Rich remembers his father telling him that day.
He took the idea to Clemson University in 1999 when he went off to major in marketing.
Two years later, on fall break, he was sitting in a board room asking executives of a chemical company to develop a formula that would get his dad home early and make Zach rich.
He signed an exclusive agreement with the company, packaged the product under the name DinoGuard and started selling it the summer after his sophomore year. His customers are construction companies that spray the clear liquid on trucks and other equipment so that concrete more easily slides off.
One year later, the Spiro Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Clemson gave him the S.C. Student Entrepreneur Award.
Rich graduated in May, moved back to Lambertville, N.J., with his parents and is marketing other products now, formulas that give concrete a smoother surface and keep asphalt from sticking to construction equipment.
The 22-year-old doesn't reveal numbers, but ExZact Inc., he says, is making money and he's never borrowed a dime.
"I'm proud as punch of the kid," Rich's dad says. "He took an idea, ran with it and it's turned into a viable career."
Some days, Toby Rich says, he'll be out working and people in the business will stop him and tell him stories about his son.
"Pretty soon, I'm going to be known as Zach's dad," he says. "I'm not looking forward to that day."
Adam Witty
It was Adam Witty's parents who taught him that one man's trash is another man's treasure. He founded his company, at 19, on what his folks threw away.
Witty grew up in Florida with parents who had season tickets to the Orlando Magic and schedules too hectic to make it to every game.
"I saw my father throwing these tickets in the garbage can," says Witty, who graduated from Clemson University in May. "One hundred and twenty five dollars worth of tickets going to waste."
Why not create an online store for unused tickets, Witty asked. Season ticket holders have the best seats in the house.
In 2001, his sophomore year, he opened ticketadvantage.com, charging buyers and sellers 10 percent of ticket prices. It would be nice to say that business took off from there.
"The old adage `if you build it, they will come' is a bunch of hogwash," the 22-year-old says. "I'm here to tell you, it doesn't work."
So Witty did what marketing majors are trained to do. He went after customers.
He advertised: in alumni magazines, on radio broadcasts of games and in one unique way.
He and a dozen buddies drove from Major League Baseball park to Major League Baseball park last summer, holding "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" singing contests and peanut-eating competitions. They provided other entertainment, too, for arriving fans. And, while they were at it, handed out literature about Ticket Advantage and marketed products for nine other companies who picked up the tab for the trip and paid Witty to advertise for them, too.
That was the beginning of his marketing business, Advantage Networks. Together, the two had total revenues of $250,000 this year and about $40,000 in profits.
Now, Witty's creating a new marketing tour, similar to the baseball one, that will travel to NCAA Southern Conference basketball games with slam-dunk and three-on-three competitions. He'll make money selling corporate sponsorships and advertising for companies that provide game prizes and other freebies.
"A big part of entrepreneurship is identifying opportunities," Witty says. "It amazes me, every day, the ways you can make money."
Rosita Najmi
When Rosita Najmi traveled to the West African country of Benin 2 1/2 years ago, her plan was to study economic development in the Third World with a dozen other Wake Forest University students, conduct a little research then head home.
She ended up co-founding a nonprofit organization that has sent thousands of dollars in medical supplies to the country and built a clinic in one of its villages.
In the field of entrepreneurship, Najmi is known as a social entrepreneur, someone who uses business strategy for social good.
"I just linked a need with resources," says Najmi, 21, one of Glamour magazine's "2003 Top Ten College Women." "If that's entrepreneurship, then great."
Project Bokonon (medicine man in the West African language of Fon) began when Wake students toured a Benin hospital and saw IV bags taped to walls and patients lying on tables without mattresses. The students promised to send supplies the following year.
Then 9-11 happened and their attention was diverted. Three months before the next group left for Benin, Najmi, Project Bokonon co-founder Brett Bechtel and other students decided to keep their promise.
They applied for grants and asked fellow students for donations.
That year, they sent $5,000 in beds, mattresses, mosquito netting and vitamins to Benin.
The year after that, they raised $12,000 and sent enough money to build a clinic in the village of Issale.
Najmi did much of the negotiating in French, her third language.
This year, she's helped establish the group as an officially recognized nonprofit with a board of directors so Project Bokonon (
www.projectbokonon.org) will live on after she graduates in May.
After that, she hopes to work for the World Bank or spend a year in service with the Bahai Faith religious community.
"In my religion, we believe in the idea that work is worship and the purest form of work is service," Najmi of Knoxville, Tenn., says.
"I don't do this because it's cool or because it's the nice thing to do. I do it because it's my job. It's my commitment to the human family."