Crash Course for Campus CEOs
by Emily McMackin on July 31st, 2007
Randal Pinkett is best known for surviving Donald Trump’s scathing boardroom criticism on season four of NBC’s "The Apprentice" and impressing the billionaire real-estate mogul enough to hire him. But before that, Pinkett was known around his college campus at Rutgers as a student entrepreneur who juggled business classes with running a thriving CD business out of his dorm.
Now as CEO of BCT Partners, a Newark, N.J.-based consulting firm, the "Apprentice" winner hopes to use his experience to help other aspiring young entrepreneurs start and grow their own companies. We talked with Pinkett about his new book, Campus CEO: The Student Entrepreneur’s Guide to Launching a Multi-Million Dollar Business (Kaplan Publishing, 2007), as well as his views on the rising trend of student entrepreneurship and his secrets to business success.
Q: What did running a business teach you that you couldn’t learn in school, and how did your entrepreneurial experiences give you a competitive edge on "The Apprentice"?
A: Running a business taught me a lot of things that I couldn’t learn in the classroom, like how to generate profit, mark up products, do taxes, respond to customers and put the right systems in place to do my accounting, recordkeeping and inventory. I learned a lot of the fundamentals of business by doing them. It was great preparation for being on the show because we were required to wear different hats in different circumstances on different days. I went from being a student leader, an athlete and a business owner to a product manager, a producer of a commercial and a designer of a parade float. Having the ability to adapt and get up to speed quickly helped me.
Q: What’s the biggest challenge campus CEOs face?
A. Establishing credibility. While there are many benefits to being a student entrepreneur, at the end of the day you’re still young, and you’re still a student. You have to establish the kind of credibility that will ensure that adults on the other side of the table take you seriously. That means coming prepared with your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted. It means having a solid business plan and competitive analysis and market research, so the minute you sit down at the table your language is reflective of someone who understands the business and demonstrates seriousness. You may have to work harder to overcome the predisposition of those who might say, "You don’t know what you’re talking about."
Q: What’s behind the rising trend of teens and college students who are starting business while still in school, and what’s unique about today’s young entrepreneurs?
A: We’re the sons and daughters of a generation that experienced corporate downsizing and layoffs. We watched our society shift from one where you could expect to work for a company your entire life to one where you couldn’t. It changed the dynamic for my generation, causing us to think more independently and not put the fate of our careers in the hands of one employer. Today’s young people have a natural mastery of technology and, as a result, are innovating and pursuing business opportunities because of that. The rising cost of getting an education was a contributing factor for me starting a business. My business wasn’t a multimillion-dollar enterprise, but to be able to pay for books and still go out on a date occasionally, I had to be able to offset the costs. That’s a situation that’s very real for a lot of students. What’s unique about today’s student entrepreneurs is that they’re indeed running and growing successful enterprises. It’s common to see first generation, student-run businesses delivering food and laundry services to dormitories or selling used books. YouTube, Google and Yahoo are all serious businesses that were started by college students and have grown into public companies and multibillion-dollar enterprises. This generation is really pushing the envelope and challenging long-standing preexisting companies to say, "Hey, you’ve got to take us seriously."
Q: What are some misconceptions students have about what it takes to start a business?
A: Many succumb to the myth that they’re too young or inexperienced, or they need a lot of money to start their own company. When it comes to money, one out of every 10 high-growth business starts with $1,000 dollars or less. As for lack of experience, owning a business challenges you to assume a wide range of responsibility – more so than an internship or a part-time job might. It was young people who were able to see that there was no Facebook and create it; it was young people who saw the need for the first Kinko’s and the first national pizza chain. Being young is an asset because you’re able to see opportunities that interest other young people – opportunities that might be difficult for someone who is older and more experienced to see.
Q: How can teachers best encourage and guide students who dream of starting businesses?
A: Aspiring entrepreneurs naturally approach their business ideas with enthusiasm, energy and sense of limitless possibilities. While those are great characteristics, those ideas must be tempered at times with a reality check. Students need to know that they have to do their homework, and that it takes rigor and time to validate a good idea. Teachers have the opportunity to ask the right questions, prompt the right thinking and challenge students to show them that something they believe in can really work.
Q: In the book, you talk about balancing a business with getting an education. What’s the key to this?
A: You need to become a student of being a student. Part of being a successful student entrepreneur is learning about how you can best learn and going out and getting materials on things like how to study, take tests, manage stress and balance multiple demands on your schedule. It’s different for everyone in terms of what works best.
Q: What’s the secret to launching a successful business?
A: It begins with having a solid business plan that forces you to answer critical questions about your market, your customers and your business model. Secondly, it’s about building a great team. Many, if not most, of business success stories are not just about the entrepreneur; it always takes the team to grow a successful enterprise. At any company, the most valuable asset is the people – that’s certainly the foundation of my company. It boils down to getting the right plan and the right people in place, so you can leverage that energy with different talents and bring people to the table so that it’s not just you alone fighting the good fight.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring young entrepreneurs who are contemplating starting a business?
A: Either put the wheels in motion and get a plan developed or look for ways to use your idea in a class project or an independent study. If you write a business plan as part of a class, you have no choice but to do it (or flunk), and you walk away at the end of the semester with a tangible project. If you can’t wait to pursue your idea, find someone – a professor, a relative or a graduate who works in the industry – who you can bounce ideas off of and who will give you feedback. There comes a point in time when you just have to decide you’re going to do it. Part of being in business is that you can learn a lot through failure. You can’t be afraid of failure. All great entrepreneurs have experienced moments when things didn’t work out as they expected, but they were willing to give it another shot and try again.
Article used with permission from the National Federation of Independent Business. NFIB is the leading advocacy organization representing small and independent businesses. A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 1943, NFIB represents the consensus views of its members in Washington, D.C., and all 50 state capitals. Visit www.NFIB.com to learn more.
