Entrepreneur Leadership Series hosts successful business owners
According to a study conducted by Oxford University, one-fifth of the U.S. workforce are “in occupations that will likely shrink.” Utah State University’s Entrepreneur Leadership Series aims to provide students with the skills to start their own business in a rapidly changing job market.
Michael Glauser, a professor in the Jon. M. Huntsman School of Business, helped create the series.
“Students might need to know how to create their own jobs someday,” Glauser said. “We think everyone needs to look at entrepreneurship as a possible career option either now or later in their lives.”
The series is a one-credit class featuring business owners and entrepreneurs from across Utah on Wednesdays from 6-7 p.m. in the Eccles Conference Center. The presentations are open for anyone to watch. Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn how successful businesses rose to prominence by sitting face-to-face with the minds behind the companies.
“The best teachers of entrepreneurship are the people who have actually done it,” Glauser said. “So 13 years ago, we created this series where we bring a successful, prominent entrepreneur to campus once a week.”
The different kinds of successful businesses operating today are vast, from media companies and lifestyle brands to vintage clothing and musical groups.
“We try to bring a wide variety of speakers,” Glauser said. “Older entrepreneurs, younger entrepreneurs, men, women, tech and healthcare companies, entertainers — we want the students to see there are lots of different ways to get into business.”
According to Glauser, the series is the introductory course for the Center for Entrepreneurship, which teaches students basic skills to get a business up and running.
“We think every student should consider self-employment an option,” Glauser said. “We’re seeing so many changes in the job market with occupations going away and new ones arising.”
USU alumnus Travis Chambers is the founder of Chamber Stays and Chamber Media. Chambers told the story of how he became a business owner and spoke about all the discoveries he’s made for his presentation on Feb. 7.
According to Chambers, it all started with a viral video, “The real meaning of mph.”
“I looked like a jerk, and she didn’t look super bright,” Chambers said in his presentation. “We were on Tosh.0, Good Morning America and World’s Dumbest.”
The video made Chambers and his wife $60,000 and gave Chambers an in to work with major brands such as Kraft, Coca-Cola and Old Navy.
After working as a social media director for 20th Century Studios, Chambers would start advertising agency Chamber Media.
After initially dropping out of business school and switching to journalism, Chambers discovered the importance of working with whatever life handed to him.
“This is really the heart of entrepreneurship,” Chambers said in his presentation. “It’s what Bob Ross calls ‘Happy accidents.’ He’ll make a mistake, he’ll run with it and it becomes something that really belonged there.”
According to Chambers, entrepreneurs cannot let disadvantages end the business.
“As things went wrong, I took my disadvantages and turned them into advantages,” Chambers said in his presentation. “If you can understand that these accidents and disadvantages are where all your innovation comes from, then you will be able to succeed.”
According to Glauser, another challenge young business owners typically face is lack of funding. However, Glauser argues that entrepreneurs should not let this barrier stop the business from growing.
“People think they’re limited by funding, but that’s just a myth,” Glauser said. “You don’t necessarily need money, but you need resources.”
The Center for Entrepreneurship and the series seek to help students get their ideas off the ground in realistic ways.
“When students come to us with a great business idea, we ask if there’s a small way to test it without spending a lot of time or money, to make sure you’re working on a problem people will pay money to solve,” Glauser said.
Chambers urged students to pay close attention to how change is occurring, whether it’s radical or incremental.
“100% of my success has come from choosing the right industry,” Chambers said in his presentation. “Choose something that is in its early stages. You don’t want to be in an old growth industry.”
Chambers’s next endeavor is two experience-driven hotel properties in Utah and Puerto Rico.
“The premise is, ‘Can we make a hotel that makes you feel like you’re in a movie,”’ Chambers said. “A hotel that makes you feel like you’re in a simulation or in a theme park, but you have the whole place to yourself.”
Logan James, a finance major, and Ellie Cram, a marketing major, spoke for the series on Feb. 14. James and Cram are the faces behind ThriftJam, the white bus carrying thrifted classics that frequently appears near the Quad.
James and Cram founded ThriftJam in their first year at USU.
“We started as a normal vintage seller,” James said. “We went to a lot of flea markets, farmer’s markets and things like that. It was fun, but we wanted to find a way to actually make a business out of it.”
According to James, starting a business can be an uphill battle. Lacking the necessary funds is one of the biggest challenges for a growing business.
“The first couple years were really hard,” James said. “Just like any business the first few years, you definitely don’t make enough money to pay yourself a good wage. We were working multiple jobs to pay for our needs and for ThriftJam.”
James and Cram decided to take ThriftJam from a side hustle to a full scale business during the series’ annual Shark Tank Night. At the event, students have the opportunity to pitch business ideas to a panel of successful entrepreneurs, receive advice and win start-up funding.
“We gave the pitch, and they weren’t too thrilled with it,” James said. “So we did some brainstorming together with Michael Glauser, who gave us the idea for the bus.”
Glauser is the author of “Main Street Entrepreneur,” a book presenting nine key findings for building a successful business. Glauser collected these insights on a cross-country road trip interviewing over 100 entrepreneurs in 104 small towns.
“We wanted to find role models in people that have created jobs where there are no jobs,” Glauser said.
According to Glauser, the journey began in Florence, Oregon and ended 45 days later and 4,000 miles east in Yorktown, Virginia.
“It was an absolutely amazing experience,” Glauser said. “It was amazing to see the beauty of America and of these incredible entrepreneurs in these small towns.”
The trip inspired the speaker series and gave ThriftJam a new direction to take their business.
“Glauser said, ‘Well, I built a bus. What if you guys did a bus?’” James said. “From that moment, we just went with it.”
According to James, acquiring a bus is no easy feat. After pitching the idea again with the inclusion of the bus, ThriftJam was on the lookout for a bus to renovate.
“We got kind of lucky,” James said. “My mom sent me an article from our hometown school district that said they were retiring half of their fleet and were getting rid of the buses, so we got one of those.”
According to an article published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “10 Essential Things Successful Businesses Have in Common,” finding a niche to work under is a crucial quality of lucrative businesses.
“Vintage is a really saturated space,” James said. “Most people know a friend or family member that sells vintage clothing. It was a big challenge finding a way to differentiate ourselves, so the bus really helped with that.”
According to James, the chance they took on the bus idea has proven a great way to grow the business.
“We’ve done well for ourselves,” James said. “It’s grown to the point that it’s both me and my partner’s career plan after we graduate. We have the bus, but our big focus now is reworking old, damaged textiles into new pieces and selling them online.”
Another series speaker was Utah-based mother Jill Koziol, the co-founder and CEO of Motherly, an online well-being brand focused on making parenting easier. Motherly provides research backed advice, stories of motherhood and classes about all aspects of parenthood.
Koziol’s first venture into business started with HoneyBee Child SwingEase, a device created by Koziol to convert any playground swing into a baby swing. Koziol later left the business and founded Motherly alongside former Washington Post editor Elizabeth Tenety.
“In 2015, I received a call from Liz Tenety,” Koziol said. “In that first conversation, we realized we were going to partner together. We launched our alpha six weeks later on Mother’s Day.”
The duo first ran Motherly as a blog, republishing and writing content geared towards millennial moms.
“We realized that our skills were very complimentary,” Koziol said. “She was a writer and a journalist who understood the media business, and I understood our target market.”
Motherly became a fruitful business that made it on the 2022 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies. Parity.org also listed Motherly as one of the best places for women to work.
In her time as CEO of Motherly, Koziol has learned a few key lessons.
According to Koziol, an entrepreneur who starts a business in a demographic they represent has a competitive advantage.
“You have an innate understanding of the needs of that user segment,” Koziol said. “However, it’s still important to be really obsessed with the data of your audience because you likely don’t fully represent them.”
Another important lesson Koziol learned is to take a chance on an idea, even if it isn’t fully realized yet.
“If you wait to launch something until you’re proud of it, you’ve waited too long,” Koziol said. “You should always be a little embarrassed when you first launch. If you wait till something is perfect, you won’t be open to feedback.”
Koziol dubbed this process “failing fast,” to get an idea out into the world and test it when a business owner is most receptive to changes.
“It is important that when something’s not working in your business, that you’re willing to pull the plug on it quickly,” Koziol said. “If you’ve worked on it for a year, you get emotionally attached to the product when it might not be the right thing.”
According to Koziol, having the right team at the right stage of a business is another key to success.
“In the early days, you want people that are passionate,” Koziol said. “People that are jacks of all trades, who are willing to take risks and try new things. As the business grows, you start meeting people who have a specialized skill or expertise to do certain things.”
Koziol hopes that attendees of the speaker series realize passion and persistence can create a prosperous business.
“You are stronger than you think you are,” Koziol said. “Success rarely happens overnight, it’s a grind. But if you do take that on, and you have passion and persistence, you can be successful.”
Having the courage to take a risk on a business idea is a common thread throughout the series presentations and the starting point for the featured entrepreneurs.
“The No. 1 thing people struggle with is taking a chance on themselves,” James said. “It’s really worth the investment if you believe in your business. Taking that jump is the most useful thing you can do.”