Elizabeth Greenberg had no idea the origami flowers she sent to her friend in the hospital would turn her into a student business owner, but they did.
Similarly, Yasmine Arrington didn’t realize her idea for a social service presentation would become a reality in the form of a nonprofit, but it did.
We all know Elon is a place full of motivated people. Everyday students on this campus are doing amazing things with the resources available to them. Some have even already started their own business ventures and are looking to build a future upon them, or to help improve the lives of others. Elon offers several helpful tools for students interested in entrepreneurship, including the Entrepreneurship major and the Doherty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The Center works with students and alumni to help them succeed in economic and social progress on a global scale.
You don’t need to be a business major to be an entrepreneur, as several Elon students have already proven. All you need is a good idea and the motivation to make it grow. According to Professor Laura Zavelson, who teaches entrepreneurship classes within the School of Business, many students outside of the school have been taking introductory level entrepreneurship classes.
“We really enjoy when people outside the School of Business take [entrepreneurship classes],” Zavelson said, “because it shows that entrepreneurship reaches across academic disciplines.”
Zavelson says that in her time at Elon, she’s seen a wide range of student business ventures. One of those ventures is that of Kevin Ridge, a senior Media Arts and Entertainment major.
“What I’m trying to do is start a music aggregate that would be like the IMBD for music,” Ridge said.
The other part to Ridge’s online creation would include allowing up and coming artists to subscribe to his company’s web promotion services rather than hiring someone else to create a website for them. He says he already has a few phone numbers of artists he would like to work with, including Mike Posner.
There are naturally many difficulties that come with trying to start a business at any time, and especially as a student. Ridge says his greatest challenge so far has been finding the right people to help him, but like other entrepreneurs on this campus, he realized that fellow Elon students are a great resource to turn to.
“I’ve currently got two really promising Elon students helping me to develop the site,” he said.
Ridge has also found a helpful faculty mentor in Professor Zavelson, who originally encouraged him to pursue the idea and would encourage any student to do the same regardless of their hesitations.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are,” Zavelson said. “Surround yourself with good advisors and try to make your idea a reality while managing risks.”
Elizabeth Greenberg turned her idea for an origami flower arrangement business into a reality with the help of her mother. Greenberg came up with the idea after learning she could not send her friend and fellow Elon student Andrew Genova live flowers while he was in the hospital. Instead, she went to the craft store and created paper flowers with a unique twist.
“We made very basic origami flowers with quotes from The Hangover and Seinfeld and some inspirational things, but more so funny things,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg’s origami arrangement attracted attention from nurses at the hospital, as well as other visitors wondering where they could order something similar. From there, Greenberg’s mother encouraged her to pursue her entrepreneurship skills and turn her craft into a business.
Over the past year since she started the venture, aptly named Non-Scents Flowers, Greenberg has made 71 sales and invested about $20,000 in start-up costs. Like with any start-up, she has experienced some roadblocks as plans fell through, but didn’t let that stop her. Originally, Greenberg hoped to work with a group home for at-risk kids, having them help create the arrangements. Unfortunately the home closed, but Greenberg considers working with the kids one of the highlights of her business so far.
“Being able to help them and have that relationship was just awesome,” she said.
Greenberg considers her positive business relationships to be one of her greatest successes so far. “We have great relationships with the people who purchase flowers and the hospitals,” she said.
As for one of her greatest challenges thus far, Greenberg can relate to Kevin Ridge in that finding the right people to help has been difficult to say the least.
“The hardest part has been finding the right people who are really committed to the company and passionate about what we're doing,” she said. Greenberg compares how she would have done things differently had she started the venture later in her college career, going back to the notion that Elon can be one of the greatest resources a student entrepreneur has. “I definitely would have used Elon and the students here and pulled them in to get ideas.”
Greenberg knows that she can utilize her fellow students in helping with various aspects of her business, such as communications. “Right now I'm doing all of the social media, blogging, and website management,” she said. “I can do it to an extent, but I know there's someone else who can do it better than I can.”
When it comes down to her present most vital tools for running a business as a college student, Greenberg’s answer is simple. “The internet, and my mom.”
Senior Chris Welch took a different approach to entrepreneurship. Rather than starting up a business locally or online, Welch partnered with a small Mayan village in Mexico called Tinum in the hopes of helping improve their way of life through exporting the honey they produced. Welch first came across the village during a Business Fellows trip his freshman year, and after learning about their problems with getting the honey exported, returned the following year with friend Kyle Cassaday. The pair hoped that by creating a market for the honey in the United States, they could help with the village’s poor employment situation.
“We wanted to help provide a new avenue that they could pursue inside the village for employment, while creating a market here for this really high quality organic honey that we thought would do well,” Welch said.
Welch described the steps he and Cassaday took on the return trip to Tinum in order to make their vision a reality.
"We looked for shipping companies, export brokers and import brokers, and established a relationship with the co-op in the village."
Welch cites his greatest challenges in the beginning as finding the necessary funding and stores willing to carry the product. He began by talking with a contact at Weaver Street Market.
“He wasn't really willing to meet with us at first, but I finally got through to him and went in, and he was really impressed because we had already done a lot of the footwork,” Welch said.
According to Welch, once they had managed to secure one major vendor in North Carolina, talks with other stores became easier. Their break with the first vendor is a perfect example of how persistence in any venture can get you where you want to go.
Senior Kaitlin Briley has had to practice persistence as well with her vintage furniture rental business, called Simply Put Vintage Rentals. Briley states that although it has been a challenge, she knows her business is what she’s passionate about.
“Starting a business is high risk, and the first couple years are a ton of work, but it pays off,” Briley said. She also indicated that another significant challenge has of course been trying to balance managing a business and finishing school.
“I want to finish my time at Elon well,” she said, “but at the same time I want to give my business the time it needs in order for it to grow and become a source of income when I graduate.”
Despite the challenges she faced while getting her business off its feet, the art major now has the opportunity to do what she enjoys most – design weddings and other spaces using vintage furniture, and work with people. She says her family and friends have been instrumental as her support system.
“Sometimes it is easy to get discouraged or overwhelmed, but they won't let me quit!”
Family and helpful friends can certainly make or break a business. When Yasmine Arrington decided to start a non-profit in high school, she leaned on her grandmother and the supportive adults around her. Now a sophomore at Elon, Arrington began ScholarCHIPS (CHIPS stands for Children of Incarcerated Parents) while she was only a junior in high school. The organization provides college scholarships for high school students who, like Arrington at the time, have incarcerated parents.
“My grandmother and I were looking at scholarships to apply for, and she said ‘You know Yasmine, I don’t really see any for teens with parents in prison’,” Arrington said. Although she didn’t think much of it at first, after doing some research on how many children have incarcerated parents, Arrington realized it was a significant issue.
The project started out as just that – a project. Arrington presented her idea as her social service project for the program LearnServe International. She presented her idea along with a logo, mission statement, and potential budget to a panel of professionals who liked it so much that they granted her $1,000 to start it. After that Arrington was featured in the Washington Post, and things took off from there.
“I never thought it would actually work and that it would last,” she said.
But it certainly has worked. Between last year and this year, ScholarCHIPS has raised $26,000. This year alone has brought in $14,000. Arrington’s foundation continues to grow. Her executive board has increased from its original three members to now seven, with her serving as founder and executive director.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to manage adults who are volunteering their time,” Arrington said of the challenges she faces by working with adults. She also said sometimes she isn’t taken seriously, although that is more rare. Arrington appreciates the legal and business advice she receives from her adult advisors, but also believes there are other benefits to working with students instead.
“I find that working with students can sometimes be a lot faster,” she said. Arrington is currently working with fellow Elon students to put on a benefit concert in April.
Also in the realm of nonprofits is Sarah Harrs, a junior who started the national organization Heart for People after traveling around Uganda in summer 2011. She was conducting research on the effectiveness of government versus grassroots organizations, and saw firsthand how many Africans have started organizations in order to help their own communities.
“I started Heart for People to support them,” she said. “[It] is a nonprofit organization that connects schools in the United States directly with nonprofit organizations in Uganda to help Africans help themselves.”
According to Harrs, American organizations provide direct aid and talk with the Ugandan program director about what kinds of projects they wish to support in order to help eradicate poverty. Heart for People is working on continuing to install chapters in elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as universities, along the east coast.
Unfortunately Harrs has faced troubles that any long-standing business would take a serious hit from, much less a student-run nonprofit still in its early stages. Heart for People fell victim to a criminal organization in the spring of 2012 that stole over $10,000.
“Recovering from that theft challenged our beliefs and our vision,” Harrs said, “but we raised enough money to pay it back in full.”
Harrs is currently studying abroad in Tanzania, and will travel again to Uganda to work with schools there before returning home. Here in America, Harrs hopes Heart for People will help increase awareness and activism in young people. Like Welch, she is hoping to bring positive change to another part of the world.
“One of the greatest aspects of Heart for People is in the ability for participants to see the tangible difference they are making in a country hallway around the world,” she said.
These Elon students have proven that youth or inexperience do not have to be limiting factors when starting a business. Each one of them has said that with the right mindset and the right people to help you, it’s perfectly possible. Kaitlyn Wintson, who graduated Elon last year, serves as one of many student success stories. Her photography business that was already quite successful during her time as a student has continued to flourish out in the “real world.” Like virtually any student entrepreneur, Kaitlyn has had to turn for help at time.
“I have absolutely no background in business or finances so I had to really outsource for some assistance in the battlefield,” she said. But that didn’t stop her from pursuing her passion for photography. Since graduating, Kaitlyn has become exclusively a wedding and portrait photographer with steady bookings.
As for students considering trying to start businesses of their own, Kaitlyn offers advice from her personal experience. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help!” she said. “ Other entrepreneurs at Elon would agree when Wintson insists that the faculty here can be a vital tool. “I went to professors constantly asking for advice on how to improve my work and get started in the industry, “she said, “they are a huge resource available while you are still in school.”
These students are following in the footsteps of some of the greatest business personalities our country has seen, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. They haven’t let age or schoolwork or roadblocks keep them from achieving their goals. For any students contemplating their own attempt at what these student have done, listen to Elizabeth Greenberg.
“…Elon has a lot more entrepreneurial students than the students [themselves] realize. There are a lot of resources and a lot of people have great ideas that they don’t go for,” she said. “It’s definitely not the wrong time to start something, but don’t do it alone.”