BYU MBA

A friend of mine works on the MBA Student Voice newsletter (https://marriottschool.byu.edu/mba/newnewsletter/newsletter.cfm) and asked me a few questions about entrepreneurship at BYU for an upcoming article. I thought I’d post my comments here for prospective students. Check out http://marriottschool.byu.edu/cfe/ for more info on entrepreneurship at BYU.

Do you think that there is competition in the minds of MBAs between
the entrepreneur and the company man in each of them?

Absolutely – except that the company man almost always wins. Nearly every MBA I talk to about my business comments that they too would like to start their own business someday after a few years of corporate experience. You could probably ask anyone in the Creating and Managing New Ventures class and they’d tell you they’d really love to go out on their own. But for many, the perceived risk is way too high. I can’t remember the exact contexts, but I recall on more than one occasion Rich Zollinger asking a professor or guest speaker how one could start a business being married with children. His questions revealed the underlying assumption held by many that the risk is just too great to give it a go – especially once you start your family.

Personally, I strongly agree with Rich and am terrified of failing on a new venture (married with kids myself). That’s why I decided to start my business just before coming back to graduate school. Being here at BYU has been an amazing opportunity to test-drive my idea without taking on any real career risk. Plus, everyday I learn new things to help me; my only real complaint is that I can’t absorb it all fast enough. Sometimes I wish I could spread the MBA out over several years and just take one or two classes so I could devote the rest of the time to my business. As others have said, its like a suitcase that I’ll be unpacking for the rest of my life. But as school is beginning to come to and end for me, I’m feeling increasing internal pressure. We’re not yet making enough revenue to support ourselves once school ends and so I’ve tried to keep my employment options open in case things do not work out. Likewise, I’m working even harder on my business – hoping that things will progress enough that I can be fully self-employed next April.

Do you think that entrepreneurship is focused on enough in MBA school?
Or shouldn't it be, because undergrads make better entrepreneurs,
usually?

If undergrads do make better entrepreneurs (not sure I agree with that), its only because they’ve gone down that road and tried it – whereas MBA students typically have just had great corporate jobs. I think if more MBA students would just go out and try to start a business, they’d get that rush of excitement and (using their broader skill set) be much more successful than a typical undergrad. BYU itself has tremendous resources for entrepreneurship – but you sort of have to leave the MBA program to find them. I don’t necessarily think there should be an entrepreneurship track, but I think the school should make it really clear that is OK if you don’t do the cookie-cutter Finance, Marketing, Supply Chain, or OB/HR programs. I almost didn’t want to come to BYU because of the track system, and would have appreciated more visibility for the general management or self-designed route.

You and I talked once about the weights on each side of the scales:
What are the pluses of entrepreneurship? The pluses on the other side?

For me, the only real benefit of corporate life is the relative financial stability – that is unless you’re lucky enough to find that perfect job that you just absolutely love. But if you succeed at entrepreneurship the rewards are much greater, more personal, and more transcending than money. When I decided to start my own business I felt like I had just arrived as a new immigrant to America – ready to find my fortune. It was an incredible feeling of freedom, excitement, and possibility.

Before coming to BYU I researched and visited a wide variety business schools, including the Wharton school at Penn. During a class on entrepreneurship a professor at Wharton suggested that if you want to go be a “potted plant” in some large corporation that you should demand a salary of at least $250,000 to justify passing up the financial opportunities of entrepreneurship. His point was that – on average – the money is so much better for those who are successful at starting their own businesses. Its also more risky – but I think its ironic that those of us in MBA school (who are far more educated on what it takes to be successful) are often more risk averse than your average entrepreneur who often will start and succeed in business just because he or she was too naïve to know how hard it would be.