Student-run businesses
Taking care of business
Students learn what it takes to run a business by starting their own
By Lauren Sieben
Kat Djokic is running late, but she has a good excuse. She’s coming straight from a meeting with the advisory board for a coffee company called Vida, and she’s the company’s president and CEO.
She arrives at a large, brick building in West Allis, Wisconsin, and unlocks the door to a ground-floor retail space where the first Vida café is slated to open in a few weeks. Right now, the space is under construction, but Djokic is calm — the permits are coming along, she says, and all the equipment is ordered.
She starts describing how the café will come together, pointing out the window to where a cart will be stationed on the sidewalk facing 70th Street so that commuters can pull up for a cup of coffee or a latte in the morning. She motions to where a new door will be installed so that patrons won’t have to walk through the building’s main entrance to enter the café. She explains how a coffee-serving robot will free up the baristas to focus on providing great customer service.
Djokic is entrenched in every aspect of the business, from cleaning the café to hiring baristas and working with developers on the details for all of Vida’s retail locations, which include new cafés opening soon. It’s easy to forget that this isn’t even Djokic’s full-time job — the 21-year-old just started her senior year studying marketing and data analytics at Marquette.
Djokic is one of about 50 students operating real-life businesses through Marquette’s new Student-run Business Program. The program gives students a chance to gain hands-on experience at the helm of companies held by Blue & Gold Ventures, an independent nonprofit organization affiliated with the program.
Aside from Vida, Blue & Gold Ventures owns four other student-run businesses, including a blockchain lab, a property management company, an event production company, and Eagle Incubator, which vets new student-run businesses and provides support to the other companies under the Blue & Gold umbrella.
“THE NEW FACE OF EDUCATION”
Marquette’s program is part of a new generation of student-run business programs, explains Owen Raisch, associate director of the new program and CEO of Blue & Gold Ventures. The earliest student-run business dates back to 1894 at Cornell University, where a laundry business offered a way for students to earn cash while in school. These days, student-run business programs are evolving to reflect a pedagogical shift that increasingly values learning experiences outside the classroom.
“We’re building what may become the new face of education,” Raisch says. “Education is changing worldwide, along with our economy … and universities’ strategies are driving toward community engagement and experiential learning.”
That’s where the Student-run Business Program comes in. The program launched in 2018, with support from the college and interested donors. Students from any college can participate. They either apply for jobs at Blue & Gold’s existing companies, or they can bring their own business ideas to the table by pitching new concepts to Blue & Gold’s board of directors.
Once a student’s new business is approved, the fledgling company starts an eight-month incubating period with support from Eagle Incubator. Students receive seed funding from Blue & Gold Ventures and work to generate their own revenue as they eventually take their businesses from concept to reality. The goal is to launch between three to seven new ventures each year, Raisch says, and then to eventually sell off successful businesses that no longer offer ideal experiences for students.
“There’s an opportunity here with what’s being built to impact the Milwaukee community positively. It’ll create jobs here in Milwaukee, not only for Marquette students, but for the community as a whole, and the more we can do that, the better.” –Matt Cordio, Bus Ad ’11
To ensure the success of each venture, students work closely with an advisory board made up of local business leaders and Marquette faculty. Alumni, in particular, have come out in force to serve on each business’s advisory board and to mentor students, Raisch says.
Scott Yauck, Eng ’87, Law ’95, a President’s Society member, is the developer of the West Allis business park project where Vida is located and serves as chairman of Vida’s executive board. Blue & Gold also has its own board of directors, which counts Matt Cordio, Bus Ad ’11, among its members. Cordio, who founded The Commons — an entrepreneurial skills accelerator program for Milwaukee-area college students to work together and solve business problems in the community — says he expects Marquette’s Student-run Business Program will have a similar ripple effect.
“There’s an opportunity here with what’s being built to impact the Milwaukee community positively,” he says. “It’ll create jobs here in Milwaukee, not only for Marquette students, but for the community as a whole, and the more we can do that, the better.”
MORE THAN A PAYCHECK
All of the students working at Blue & Gold’s companies are paid. And in many ways, students earn much more than a paycheck, Raisch says.
“I see so many students getting into their senior year with nothing on their résumés. We want students to have something strong on there,” he says.
As students get to work launching and running the day-to-day operations of their businesses, they also rub shoulders with Milwaukee’s business leaders. One of the program’s first graduates landed a consulting job at IBM right out of school, Raisch says, and she credited her experience in the Student-run Business Program for helping her ace the interview.
“To say that you’re responsible for a real company, real teams, real results — it’s a substantial differentiator for discussions with interviewers,” Raisch says. “Employers see it as an indication that students have business acumen; they understand the whole picture.”
For Djokic, leading the charge for Vida has also brought her Marquette course work to life.
“I wouldn’t be able to do this without the education I got in school, but the education is a lot more valuable with this as supplement to it,” she says. And it’s not just technical skills that she’s learning on the job.
“Smoothing out a supply chain, marketing … all of these things, you can learn,” she says. “But it’s the soft skills that become really difficult, like talking to advisory board members, managing a team, being not just a boss but a true leader.”
Djokic says running Vida has challenged her to become a better public speaker and has made her unafraid to ask questions. Her confidence shows: She explains supply chain sourcing and the challenges of running a brick-and-mortar retail business with the poise of a seasoned serial entrepreneur.
EARLY SUCCESS STORIES
Vida has the largest retail footprint of Blue & Gold Ventures’ current businesses, but it isn’t the program’s only success story: The student-run Blockchain Lab sold out all 300 seats at its inaugural conference; in 2018 the Eagle Incubator’s Nest Holiday Pop-up Shop opened in Walker’s Point selling gifts and goods from local makers and artists; and 1881 Event Productions made strides after the group partnered with Rugged Races to manage the operations for the 2019 Milwaukee Marathon thanks to support from race owner and alumnus Mike Zimmerman.
Blue & Gold Ventures
“People were really concerned whether (the marathon) was too much responsibility for students,” Raisch says. “(Under previous ownership), the marathon had a history with prominent failures. … We took that on at a time when people didn’t think it would succeed. But our students helped more than double the prior registration records, so we hit just over 7,500 runners.”
Now, other universities are hoping to replicate Marquette’s early success. Raisch says he has heard from schools around the country and the world, from California to Cairo, to inquire about Marquette’s student-run business model.
The team at Vida is also starting to make plans to scale up, even as the first retail location opens its doors. After Vida’s student leaders presented at the Student-run Business Association Conference in March, representatives from universities including Harvard and Stanford took notice. Other student groups are now planning to open their own Vida franchises, which will expand Vida’s footprint from Milwaukee to campuses at both those universities.
Although the program at Marquette is still young — Raisch continues to focus on fundraising so that Blue & Gold can continue launching new ventures — he’s already seeing students thrive, with benefits that extend beyond work experience, networking and leadership opportunities. Some of the most important takeaways for students are the intangible benefits that can’t be measured in LinkedIn connections or bullet points on a résumé.
“People are surprised to see what the students can do, and the students themselves are surprised,” Raisch says. “It’s a transformational experience to go from not really feeling like you have a place in the world, or like the world hasn’t started for you yet, to managing people and engaging people in the community to create substantial change. It’s a big deal.”
Read more about the Student-run Business Program in the 2019 issue of Marquette’s Discover magazine.
