Students living the American dream
Being a full-time student is the same as having a full time job, but for some, school is complicated by owning and operating their own businesses.
Trevor Knudsen is a senior in international agribusiness and Spanish and owns three of his own businesses: a disk jockey business, a farrier or horseshoeing business and his own veggie farm.
Knudsen said he started just out of high school as a DJ and said he hadn’t planned on starting his own business as a DJ – he fell into it.
“My friends and I had a band in high school and we played a few gigs,” he said. “After, I had friends and relatives who asked if they could borrow the speakers, and eventually had some other people who offered to pay me for that.”
Knudsen now DJs at least three times a week, and occasionally works six nights a week.
“It’s gotten to the point where I have hired my brother to take on some of the work,” he said.
Knudsen is no stranger to music and said he plays the guitar, flute, harmonica, drums, is currently learning banjo and can play a little on the mandolin. Most of these instruments he has learned by reading books and getting advice from other people.
Knudsen said his background in music has affected his business as a DJ because the type of event he works will affect the music he plays.
“Most people like popular stuff, but understanding music and what music can be danced to and different moods has helped out,” he said. “You have to understand not just the beat, but the mood and the beat. I like that challenge of looking at a crowd and saying, ‘What can I play that will make them feel the way they’re supposed to?'”
Knudsen said he began his ferrier business because he has a horse he needed to have shoes on and said he realized how expensive it could be to pay a ferrier, so he took a class at USU when he was in high school and then apprenticed to a professional.
“I took a week off of classes in high school and kind of learned, and then that summer I went around with the ferrier and he’d get overbooked, so he gave some to me,” Knudsen said.
Knudsen said after a year of ferrier work, he had to cut back on the work because it is so physically demanding.
“At the rate I was going at the time, I’d be crippled by the time I was 30,” he said. “So right now I’ve only got about five clients, but they keep me busy.”
Knudsen’s vegetable farm began as a plan in an agribusiness class, where he was required to create the plan for a business and do the market research and the leg work for the business.
Knudsen has land where he keeps his horses and said he doesn’t have the capital to break into raising animals, but since there’s a growing demand for local vegetables, he decided to take his senior project and make it a reality.
He raised watermelon, cantaloupe, broccoli, cabbage, radishes, sunflowers, corn, beans, carrots, onions and many other plants. He didn’t stick to his original plan of a few often-sold vegetables and said he should have.
“If you have a business plan and it works out, you should probably stick with it,” Knudsen said. “I had this plan and I sort of scrapped it, which was not the smartest thing.”
Preston Rainey is a senior in business entrepreneurship and has owned two businesses while in college. He said his classes really helped his businesses to grow. Rainey owns his own physical training gym with his brother Nick in Provo and said the whole process has been a learning experience.
“We bought the gym in December 2011, which was nice because we didn’t have to do the start-up, but we’ve been building it since then,” he said. “We started the year with no clients, and right now we have about 15.”
Rainey said he doesn’t receive any money from the business. He and his brother are putting all profit back into the business to make sure it continues growing. He said being a student and owning a business is exhausting, but his schooling is helping with it.
“I’m in my marketing class, and I’m thinking about how to apply the techniques to my business, in my finance class and relating it to the finances,” he said.
Rainey said being a student and owning a business is difficult, especially having a class-load of group projects and papers on top of his business dealings.
“I go to bed at night thinking about my business and you wake up stressed about it,” he said. “I handle angry clients and the office work and do schoolwork.”
Knudsen said he has learned much from the process of owning his own business, including knowledge of what it’s like to own a business and the pros of working for other people.
“It’s nice because I am in charge of how much I work and I can decide to take on more or less work,” he said. “But at the same time, I can’t call someone and ask if they can cover my shift.”
Owning and operating his businesses has allowed Knudsen to work when he wants, and he said that while he owns three businesses, not all of them are full time.
“In the summer I did a lot with my veggie farm and as a farrier, but now that school is in, I don’t work quite as much,” he said.
Knudsen and Rainey said the future is open for the future of their businesses.
“I have an idea and there’s a place with an open market and no competition, so I’m looking forward to what’s next,” Rainey said.
– april.ashland@aggiemail.usu.edu