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While a trusty monthly check may prove enough to satisfy the average Pepperdine student, the entrepreneurial spirit leads some students such as seniors Chad Edwards, Jessica Brandes and Scott Motte down the job-route less traveled.
Every summer, Edwards flies to his hometown of Denver and instead of filling out local job applications, he digs into his desk to resurrect his own business, a landscaping operation he and a high school friend started the summer after their freshman year at college.
The perks are obvious.
Arp-Edwards Inc. highlights he and his business partner’s names. Edwards sets his own hours, hires his own friends and boasts the title, CEO.
“We’ve decided to go with the fancy titles just because we could,” Edwards joked.
Behind this notoriety, however, lies the often overlooked long hours spent balancing the budget, discovering creative marketing mechanisms or finishing a job while most students around him remain single-mindedly focused on attaining that Pepperdine diploma.
“It’s gotta be something that you’re dedicated to,” Edwards said. “You have to be able to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.”
Like rain on a Denver summer day, landscaping can be discouraging, he said.
“You come off the job site at midnight and know you have to be there at 6 the next morning. Then a client will say that they don’t like it and want things changed,” Edwards said. “(A business owner has to be) the kind of person who can deal with that and focus on getting the job done.”
Edwards said having his own business does not leave him without a boss, as he originally imagined. Rather, every one of his clients becomes his boss.
Brandes, who runs her own tutoring business targeting students from kindergarten to 12th grade in the Malibu area called “My Tutor,” agrees that one of the most difficult challenges of running her own business lies in dealing with clients.
“It’s frustrating when you send a tutor to a family’s home to meet and begin their first session, and the family forgets and is not home,” she said.
Balancing school ad work is also a challenge for Brandes, a music and business major who started her tutoring business at the end of August.
“Between classes and orchestra, work (actually tutoring students) and running My Tutor, it is often difficult to find time to relax,” she said.
“The weekend has been great for catching up on all the missed sleep and class work.”
Motte said his business usually cuts into schoolwork also.
“My business is more often than not much more interesting (than schoolwork),” he said, “and sometimes that leads me to cutting time out of my studies to work instead.”
Motte said his company builds Web sites for businesses to create efficiency, enhance marketing power and save money.
“In the process, I sometimes redefine the way a business does business,” he said.
Like Edwards, Motte began his business the summer after his freshman year.
After he experimented with the free Web space that the school offered him, he figured he might as well get paid while learning Web design.
While the entrepreneur lifestyle is sometimes 24/7, the work pays off.
Brandes said she makes just enough to cover operational costs.
She hopes her client base will increase as the school year progresses, but either way she said, “I’ve learned a great deal about effective ways to, and not to, run a company.”
Aside from decent pay, Motte perceives more options ahead of him after graduation. Plus, he can testify to the experience and confidence he has gained from his business.
He said his father taught him that in the long run, the hard work is worth it.
“I’ll have more time for my family when those years roll around,” Motte said.
“My dad was able to coach us as kids and be around a lot because he wasn’t slaving away for some boss. He worked as he wanted to.”
Edwards also acquired business experience from working with his dad, he said. He, like Motte, said he might turn his business into an autonomous venture someday.
All three entrepreneurs said they have received help and inspiration from friends and faculty at Pepperdine.
Brandes said her marketing professor, Dr. Roy Adler, helped her with ideas for marketing My Tutor.
For example, she found that standing on the corner where parents drop their children off at school and passing out flyers was more effective than ads.
Edwards said his friends from Pepperdine in different majors have helped him.
One friend created a Web site for his class and another created a press packet for his marketing major. Both of Edward’s friends either received a grade or a bonus on their resume, while Edwards’ business benefited.
“That’s the benefit of doing it while you’re in school,” Edwards said.
Motte added that apart from help, he gets inspiration from his friends.
“I get inspiration from my friends all the time,” Motte said. “Most of the time, they don’t know it, but I do. And it’s inspiration that makes this fun. It’s those moments when you realize that all the hard work is totally worth it.”
Motte and Brandes concluded with some words of advice for any aspiring entrepreneurs.
“You need to have a strong financial backing or else you might find yourself phoning home to mom and dad,” Brandes said.
Motte added some long-term advice.
“Prepare to sacrifice a decent amount of your time, but try to find something once a week that helps you reflect on the more important things in life. If you get those straight for the week, the business falls in much better.
“Oh,” he added, “and you better be smart, and a really hard worker.”
Submitted 10-06-2005
MALIBU, CA
