Businesses: The Future Of The World

[castille]

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."

[Section 8]

Wow, more young children being obsessed with the all mighty dollar. Scary as hell.

[GuidoNius]

Well maybe, Section 8, it's a matter of finally some young people trying to do something they're talented in instead of following a straight jacket of what people believe they "ought to do". Isn't it great some people can even make money out of what they like to do?

Agnes Ostic

[Rave7pt0]

It's not about the money. I'm in the exact same boat they are -- money is intrinsically a means to an end. Money provides options man. I want to help people, and I can't do that slaving away at a job I hate making nothing... or a job I love making nothing for that matter. Do you have any concept of what you can do with a billion dollars? If you know how to use it, you can change the world. Watch me.

[GuidoNius]

Take it away, man. I´ll be happy to watch you succeed. What gave you the idea I wouldn´t be happy if you made a billion? Agnes

[G. Adams]

To make more than the mean average of the world population means that someone is getting less than the mean average. And if you make a billion, your way, way above that mean average. So, in order to make your billion to help people, you gotta screw people to get it.

However, if were lumped with this system anyway, good luck to you if are gonna get philanthropic once your there.

[eXploiTeD]

Whats this? These kids started from scratch, applied skills, learned other ones, and made some money off it. Its small business, its entrepreneurship, and, in my opinion, thats fucking cool. You want to 'fight the system,' don't pick on the little guys who've earned what they've made, pick on the big guys who really haven't (et al. Nike, Exxon, etc.) Its the multinationals that are being unethical about business, not the small, privately-owned businesses...

[RebelWithanAK]

I agree; it's exploitation you want to stifle, not ambition. Ambition is generally a Good Thing. I wouldn't have problems with paying someone a billion dollars if they earned it; I just don't think anybody's yet earned a billion dollars...

[Section 8]

All that I'm saying is that money should not play a heavy role in one's life. Do it because you love it, not because you can make a quick buck.

[Impenitent]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Section 8,)
All that I'm saying is that money should not play a heavy role in one's life. Do it because you love it, not because you can make a quick buck.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

all done for love...

love of money...

love of race...

love of power...

be careful of what you wish for... the worlds worst "criminals" act out of love...

[GuidoNius]

Section 8,

Well, technically, money is a form of appreciation of talent. Talent in the end does want to get rewarded & recognized (unless you're going to get all Buddha on us). Money may not be the only from or recognition but it is a relatively honest one. More honest in any case as the applause from a happy few leading to state subsidies to keep some niche masturbation act going. Money is the easiest way for the public (the people) to express their recognition of talent.

Agnes Ostic

[RebelWithanAK]

More honest than a overly-hyped piece of masturbation material-on-two-legs with no musical talent? Money as a concept may be a merit-based itemry, but Capitalism ain't.

[GuidoNius]

Rebel, no, not necessarily. But I wasn´t talking about Britney´s honesty & as far as recognition of Britney´s talent (or of the talent of the people creating Britney, people rapidly forgotten just because they do not have the spotlights), who are we to impose our judgment & taste on others?

[RebelWithanAK]

People with taste, that's who. =p

[GuidoNius]

Ah, the "happy few" communism.

[castille]

What has the world gone to when somebody can find fault with young teenagers trying to achieve their dreams?

Its people who say "They're doing it for profit" or "They're just obssessed with money" who are the real losers. Those people, who have probably failed in their own lives, try to pull down the dreams of others.

I've seen hundreds of dreams pulled down because of such negative and critical people.


Section 8 - I am actually quite shocked at your rude remarks about these young entrepreneurs. I had always thought of you as a very reasonable individual, even if we disagree on politics.

Frankly I'm not surprised; it seems all the "socialist" protestors are doing is simply criticising everything they can criticise. I can bet my life on the fact that not a SINGLE young entrepreneur is "obssessed with money".

In fact, people who are obssessed with money would not bother starting a business. Most, if not all, of these young entrepreneurs do not even make much money. Business is not about showing profit instantly; it usually takes years, and even decades. I've never met an entrepreneur who didn't have a goal for his or her life.

I would prefer if you read the article. Read the part where it shows a group of young entrepreneurs working to send aid and supplies to rural African villages -without any profit.



Skills in business aren't simply about "profit". One of the most important skills is creativity - and thats the deciding factor for every business.


While I agree some businesses lose track of their vision when they expand, such as Microsoft and Enron, keep in mind that there are countless businesss that are ethical, non-exploitative, and benefit society greatly. For every bad apple, there are at least a hundred good apples.

Two of those excellent businesses are Richard Branson's Virgin (setting new standards for employee happiness!) and Anita Ruddock's Body Shop (an extremely ethical business that donates huge profits to charity organisations).


Its extremely sad that so many misperceptions are applied to the concept of "business" and "entrepreneurship". I suppose in a way that it is natural of human nature to scorn success.

I am at least glad there are more teenagers who are realising that, instead of criticising capitalism and government and police and god knows what else, they could be working with society to make it a better place.

[GuidoNius]

castille,

Well, I'm all for youngsters going after things they're talented in and in passing creating stuff that makes others enjoy - even if it's Britney.

But the problem probably is whether these youngsters go after talent or whether they go after examples to which they feel compelled to conform.

In the latter case it's a piss poor way of spending anybody's life. It's just making for a society in which everybody tries to go faster in the straight line to loosing one's self than everybody else. I fear our Western society to be a bit too much of a flying wheel where everybody goes round fast as hell until they can't hold on & get whiffed into the rubbish bin.

By the way, some people's talent may be to cricize in order to make the society a better place to live in.

AO

[castille]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Agnes Ostic,)
castille,

Well, I'm all for youngsters going after things they're talented in and in passing creating stuff that makes others enjoy - even if it's Britney.

But the problem probably is whether these youngsters go after talent or whether they go after examples to which they feel compelled to conform.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>


While I don't pretend to speak on behalf of all these youngsters, from my view as a young entrepreneur (and from several other hundred youth I've met), the majority of young entrepreneurs are very non-conformist.

The view of society currently is that you have to go to university, get a secure job, marry, have 2 kids, and retire with a little package to the Bahamas. There is a fear of risk (most people are more afraid of losing $100 than earning $1000!) in a lot of society.

The view of entrepreneurs is to take risks in order to achieve great deeds. You ever wondered why people who win the Tattslotto are never happy? Its because they didn't earn that money by themselves! To some of us, becoming a millionaire is indeed a goal, but its the process that we often enjoy! Most people think that is crazy ("Why do you enjoy the stress of a business, when you could be enjoying free money?"), but thats the way life works!


The basic beliefs is simply individuality and risk-taking. We don't believe people should be entitled to society's rewards if they don't work for it, but at the same time everyone must be presented with some form of opportunity (ie. living in a democracy, not having to answer to any dictator or group).

Many of us actually came from quite poor backgrounds - I can say that most guys I know who start businesses are still collecting government welfare!


I can see why you're worried - but I can assure you that we young entrepreneurs are not conformist corporate clones. Where the "corporate clones" prefer security and stability, young entrepreneurs are all about jumping into the chasm and taking risks.

[GuidoNius]

Fair enough castille, fair enough, also because you see what worries me.

A couple of observations though:

- in principle I think it would be saner for people to like doing something & then doing great deeds with it or in it. Doing great deeds, chasing the big money, as such, risk to leave us with leading success people feeling as if they basically won the Lotto but had to waste their lifes for doing it whilst leaving us with many more with no skill & talent other than seeing begrudgedly how others with a tad of better fortune did succeed

- many people can see their talent in raising kids in security, there´s an element to be grateful for because no enterprise would succeed without these people - just as raising kids in security does not necessarily have to be a show of conformism, in fact, in current days, it starts to take on an aspect of herosim (also because people going for it leave little or no space for people going for it whilst caring for children)

- society would do well to get rid of many hurdles to entrepreneurs, but it would do equally well in having them pay a part of their success to all those creating a market for their products

Personally, I´d prefer children after college to get 2 years to go about - earning somehow a living - to be better informed as to their talents if it happens to be the case their talent is to study more. Likewise - instead of doing all of the studying in one lump up-front, it´d be nice to spread it over oneùs lifetime - taste for talent shifts with the years, you know.

AO

[castille]

The problem is, you can't always make a theory and demand for people to follow it.

Entrepreneurs in past were a different, but nonetheless shared the same traits. Colombus, Caesar, early colonists (at a 50% death rate!) were willing to risk everything they have in order to pursue their dreams.


Its true that those who don't succeed will always hold a grudge against those who do achieve, but there is nothing we can do about that. The world holds many opportunities for us, and its up to us whether we choose to take it or not.