Go Belmont!

National finalists 2011.jpg

For the past eight years I have had the pleasure of taking our students from Belmont University to the International Collegiate DECA competition. 

This was the largest Collegiate DECA Event ever, with about
1,500 international competitors. 

Of our 28 Belmont participants, we had 20 end up in the
finals today.

Congratulations to all of our International Winners:

Business Plan Event:

1st Place:  Tim Smith

3rd Place: Jake Jorgovan

Entrepreneurial Challenge:

2nd Place:  Jerell Harris, Areej Rabie, Josh
Gilreth

3rd Place:  Kathleen Bond, Matt Madden,
Lindsay Ricker

Top Ten:  Mandy Thompson, Hillary Unis, Jenna Owen

Sales Management:

2nd Place: Jerell Harris

Restaurant Management:

2nd Place:  Clark Buckner (second year in a
row)

Top 10:  Max Magura

Finalist:  Julia Cecere

Business Ethics:

Top 10: Lindsay Ricker and Kathleen Bond

Finalist:  Aubree Phillips and Charles Williams

Retail Management:

Finalist:  Hillary Unis

Bringing Values into Vision

Many entrepreneurs talk about integrating their values into the vision for a new business. But some take it one step further and actually build a business model based on their values.

Green Truck Moving Co. is a Nashville-based startup that is integrating the founders’ commitment to the environment and the community into the mission of their company.

The founders have implemented environmental practices that include using more eco-friendly fuel in their trucks, recycling and reusing moving materials, operating a virtually paperless business and using recycled materials. “While not all consumers are typically inclined to buy solely off a company’s values — say eco-friendliness — it is important to make consumers understand the potential impact it could have in their own community,” said co-founder and Belmont University MBA student Emmanuel Reed.

“We feel our values will help us grow our business, because it is not just a selling point. We have to walk the talk and have our values drive and inspire the people within our organization.”

They also commit to plant two trees after each move they perform for their customers.

As the business expands, they have plans to go even further in pursuit of environmental values. Green Truck Moving is developing rentable, reusable containers made of recycled material to replace traditional moving boxes.

Another example of integrating values and vision is a new business called Mattress Works.

This startup, founded by a group of Belmont students, exists to provide employment opportunities for the homeless and to divert waste from landfills through deconstructing and recycling used mattresses.

“We developed Mattress Works out of our passion to encourage environmental sustainability and create social change in the community,” said co-founder Emily Hollingsworth.

Mattress Works has secured used mattress suppliers and scrap buyers for two trial runs. It has processed about 160 mattresses between the two pilot operations. This served as proof of concept, which allowed it to test the viability of the business model and identify any weak spots.

After working out some kinks, the founders are moving forward with Mattresses Unlimited as their first supplier, and they are negotiating a contract with a second supplier.

“Our end goal is to transfer the ownership of the venture to a homeless man who has been trained as part of the Mattress Works team, embodying our belief in the power of entrepreneurship to facilitate change in the lives of others,” Hollingsworth said.

Hollingsworth is leading a team of students presenting Mattress Works at the Texas Christian University Values and Vision competition this week.

For a growing number of entrepreneurs, starting a business is more than just a vehicle to making money. Entrepreneurship is a path to pursue their values through the vision they create for a business.

Learning Business Hands-on

Two of my friends are helping to organize a summer camp for high school students to learn more about business through a week of experiential learning.  I will be participating as one of their guest instructors.  It will be held here in Nashville from July 17-23.

The Managing Ourselves Camp is an immersion in a working organization of the students’ own making under the leadership of experiential learning expert Dr.
John Miller,

The Managing Ourselves Camp is an excellent chance for high school students to challenge
their teamwork and leadership skills, strengthen their understanding of how
successful organizations work and learn about academic and career paths that
match their talents.

And They Said it Would Never Work

A few years ago we received a seed gift from a donor who has now become our major benefactor for the Center for Entrepreneurship here at Belmont.

He and I had a conversation about what the gift would allow us to do.  He deferred all decisions to me, but did make a challenge.  He said that he hoped that we could find ways to leverage his gift.

What a lot of entrepreneurship programs do to leverage gifts is to set up venture funds.  They make investments in student and alumni businesses with the hope that these investments will pay off big returns.

But that model does not work in our Center.  We have our unofficial “Life Time Warranty” which states that we never take ownership or consulting dollars from any students or alumni no matter how successful their businesses become.  We will always be there as their teachers and mentors.

So we came up with a different model.  We called it our Runway Loan Program, in which we would make $25,000 loans to student or alumni businesses that needed help and showed good potential.

Here are the terms:

  1. Zero percent interest
  2. Repayment of principle tied to cash flow (very small percentage so as not to bleed cash)
  3. Non-recourse loan
  4. Once principle is paid back a gift agreement kicks in which says they will give our Center a gift of 1% of the revenue of the business we supported that continues until the business is sold.  At that point we get 1% of the proceeds of the sale.

When I presented this model to a couple of national meetings I did not get a very warm and fuzzy response.

I was told, “They will never pay it back without teeth in the agreement.” 

And I heard, “No entrepreneur is going to give up 1% of revenues in perpetuity for a measly $25,000!!”

Well, they were wrong on both counts. 

We had strong interest for our initial round of two loans. 

Yesterday the first of the two loans, this one made to Just Kidding Productions (video company, whose founders also started the apps company Aloompa), was paid back to us in full.

Loan Payback edit 1 small.jpg

And thanks to the on-going generosity of  our donor, we will be making many more Runway Loans for years to come!

Business Model Demands Patience

Author and entrepreneur Steve Blank describes the business start-up process as having two phases.

In the first, entrepreneurs learn about their customers and what they want. This can be thought of as a series of experiments with real customers. It eventually leads to a business model that can be used to build a sustainable venture.

Once we learn what our business model needs to be, we can begin the second phase, which includes attracting more and more customers and building a company.

It is essential that we take our time before moving to the second phase to make certain we’re building our company around a business model that can lead to successful growth.

Nashville-based Aloompa is a great example of a business that’s taking its time to get things right.

In a visit to my business school class at Belmont University, two of the founders, Kurt Nelson and Tyler Seymour, told how they developed the business model for this relatively young company.

The original vision was to develop apps that would allow streaming of live videos directly to the iPhones of concertgoers. But this proved to be more difficult than they thought. However, their experimentation with the business model led to recognizing a more promising opportunity that still involves apps for music events.

They approached the Bonnaroo music festival about developing an app for attendees. To prove to Bonnaroo that the app would be something of value, they gave away the first year’s version.

They used that first year to prove that the app had value and to test what features fans at the festival truly wanted.

Their success with Bonnaroo led to the sale of more music festival apps. With each new app they continued to engage the market, all of which helped them learn more about their business model and their customers.

A big, early breakthrough for Aloompa occurred when they were asked to develop a new app for country artist Kenny Chesney. This showed them that their business model could be much broader than just developing apps for music festivals.

They still weren’t finished experimenting with what their emerging app business could become. Recently, they moved into developing apps for the Rally to Restore Sanity staged by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as well as for the popular conversation game Table Topics.

Nelson said Aloompa isn’t ready to hire a full-time staff and build an organization. The partners are keeping operations lean and flexible because they expect the business model to continue to evolve.

The Aloompa story illustrates that even when the market seems to be accepting a new venture, and sales start to grow, owners still shouldn’t move too quickly to formalize the business. Be patient. Continue to experiment with customers. Tinker with the business model until you’re ready to scale up the venture.

Rethinking Goal Setting

If business plans are marvelous works of fiction — and they most often are — then the specific financial goals that they are tied to are fairy tales.

Don’t take this wrong.  I am a strong advocate of building a business that meets your aspirations.  You need to consciously engineer your financial and non-financial priorities into your business model.  But when I start reading plans with specific multiples of EBITDA tied to an exit event a few years out I cringe. 

Even VCs know that only 10% of plans they fund (which can be as few at 1% of plans they receive) will probably meet the goals stated in the business plans for their portfolio companies.  And yet, almost every entrepreneur seems to think their plan will hit its numbers and reach their specific goal.

I think more of us should take the approach of goal setting that Ami Kassar has set for his business MultiFunding.  From his blog:

I often get asked the question “Ami, what is your goal for MultiFunding ?”  People want to know “how big” I want the company to be, who do I think will “buy it” one day, is this a “lifestyle business”, or do I “want to take it public one day.”  My answer is that our goal for the first year was to survive, which we did.  My goal for the second year is to be able to keep the company growing at a pace where we can maintain excellent customer service, and to be able to make a good living while I do it.

Business models evolve as we learn from the market where our business really needs to be and what it can really achieve.  You’ll be a lot happier as an entrepreneur if you set realistic goals, especially for the early stages of the business.

Once you get traction, then you can start to set more specific goals that reflect a growing knowledge about the market and your customers.  And you can more realistically temper these potential goals with your non-financial goals including those shaped by the time you want for your family, friends and community.

A Mixed Outlook

The Kauffman Foundation has connected what they consider the nation’s top economics
bloggers.  Although not all of us are economists, we all write our blogs with commentary on economic policy and/or trends.

Each quarter they survey us to see where we think things are in the economy.  We are an eclectic bunch, with a variety of journalists, academics, consultants, and just good old fashioned pundits.

This quarter the group was slightly more positive than the past quarter. 

Although 77 percent continue
to describe the economy’s overall condition as “mixed,” “facing
recession,” or “in recession,” 23 percent now believe the
economy is “strong and growing” or “strong with uncertain
growth”.

Here is the word cloud from our open ended response to the state of the economy:

word-cloud.gif

This survey was from a few weeks ago.  Wonder what renewed inflationary pressures, record federal deficits, and unrest around the globe will do to change our collective perspective next quarter…

Behind the Blog

Blogger Dan Oliver, who is a former student of mine at Belmont, has started a series at his blog in which he interviews fellow bloggers to learn more about things like why they blog and how they go about their blogging.

Dan interviewed me for his most recent post in this series.  You can find it here.

Dan writes a very thoughtful blog.  I appreciated the opportunity to chat with him about my own blogging.

New Economic Reality Leads to New Business Models

After developing their business model and forecasting expenses, many aspiring entrepreneurs are suffering from sticker shock. The thought of investing a large amount of money or going into debt is scaring many away from their startup dreams.

Aubree Phillips, who is graduating from the entrepreneurship program at Belmont University this spring, has dreamed of starting a clothing boutique since the day she arrived on campus. She gained experience by working in the campus-based clothing store called Feedback and worked on the plans for her store in every entrepreneurship course she took.

But with graduation looming this spring, the thought of spending more than $100,000 to open her store in a weak economy gave her cold feet. But she did not abandon her dream. Instead, she partnered with her friend Natalie Sawyer, a Lipscomb University alumna, to brainstorm about ways to meet shared goals by bootstrapping.

The biggest single financial commitment was the physical space to house their boutique. So Phillips and Sawyer decided to change their business model from a store to a “traveling boutique” called Fringe and Lace. Rather than setting up in a traditional storefront, they take the clothing directly to their customers’ homes.

“We specialize in clothing, jewelry and accessories,” Phillips said. “All items are trendy and under $100. Our customers find that shopping at home, surrounded by friends, is a fun and relaxing buy topamax online canada alternative way to shop.”

They are able to keep staffing costs down since they do not need employees for a brick-and-mortar store. Phillips and Sawyer staff all of the parties. When the business grows beyond what they can handle, they plan to hire interns and part-time employees to help.

Fringe and Lace has relied on bootstrapping for its marketing. Word-of-mouth has been a big source for securing early customers, which they have encouraged through the use of social media. They have also been using a blog approach to their website, www.fringeandlace.com, to keep their customers current on their new inventory and to help build a community of loyal repeat customers.

Inventory is the final major cost for their business. “After each party, we make an order to update our merchandise,” Phillips said. “This way we do not have too much inventory on hand. It also helps us to continue to offer new and different pieces. We try to be smart about our buying so we don’t end up having too much or excess inventory that we can’t sell.”

They store their inventory in an office at Sawyer’s home.

Rather than letting the economy discourage their dreams, Phillips and Sawyer showed how changing the business model and bootstrapping can make the cost of a startup more affordab

Joint Venture on the Boulevard

Belmont and Lipscomb universities are just a few miles apart along Belmont Boulevard and are both part of the Atlantic-Sun athletic conference.  Over the years and intense rivalry has developed between the schools, which reaches a crescendo each year during basketball season.

While the Battle of the Boulevard — as this rivalry is known — continues between their basketball teams, one group of student athletes has called a truce for the sake of launching a new business.

Two Belmont tennis players have joined forces with a member of the Lipscomb tennis team to start Mydormfood.com, an online grocery store geared toward college students with empty cupboards in their dorm rooms or apartments.

Jonathan Murrell, a sophomore finance major at Belmont University, came up with the idea.

“I kept finding my friends paying three times as much for food on campus compared to what it would cost at bulk stores.”

Jonathan developed his business model the right way. Rather than jump directly into writing a formal plan, first he talked with potential customers, some friends and other students to gauge the validity of the concept.

He also assessed what he needed to get the startup launched. What he needed most was help.

He also realized that he needed people with other skills. Jonathan approached his older brother James, a marketing major at Lipscomb University, and Bruno Silva, a teammate on the Belmont tennis team.

After a few planning meetings, the trio decided that this new idea was worth going for. James would take on the shipping and marketing. Bruno would manage the inventory and accounting. Jonathan would oversee the site and customers.

So, the company was born with three tennis players from rival schools coming together.

They soon realized that their original business model was not quite right. Instead of students being the primary target market, they soon learned, most orders were coming from parents.

So, they adjusted their product. They created two options: gift cards so students could shop for themselves, and pre-made care packages delivered directly to customers’ doors.

Bootstrapping is a big part of their startup. Jonathan’s and James’ oldest brother recently moved out of their house to pursue graduate work in history at Oxford. So, their mother agreed to let them use his office as a makeshift warehouse.

“We removed all the old manuscripts from his bookshelves and replaced them with Pop-Tarts and potato chips,” Jonathan said.

They also developed their own website, which saved them thousands of dollars in development costs. They used an online legal site to set up their LLC.

While they have high hopes for their new venture, they took care to protect their downside risk.

“We ended up making our inventory purchasing decisions based on what we would be willing to eat if the business failed. If it doesn’t work out, let’s just say I’ll be eating mac and cheese, cup noodles and Skittles for a very long time.”

But if they succeed, their effort will be known as the Joint Venture of the Boulevard.