Executive Director Bruce Leech's Message |
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Greetings and welcome to another school year. I had my first in-person class in 2 years last week; I am happy to report that 90% of the students were in the classroom and the rest were able to join via Zoom. While this will be an interesting fall, I am glad to be back on campus with the DePaul community. I recently stumbled across a statistic that each year around 100 million businesses are launched globally. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these businesses will close within five years, with some estimating the failure rate to be as high as 90%. While this is a very disappointing statistic, the number not reported is how many founders failed but went on with a lesson learned to then start a successful business. It is what you learn from failure that is important to your future success, along with a few other tips:
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Stay Strategic and Take Action: When you start a business, it is easy to get caught up in the details, and while they are important, you also need to focus on the strategic issues like getting customers, adjusting your business model and watching the market. You will always learn from taking action and just “trying stuff” to find out what works and what does not work.
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Hire the Right People: One of your first priorities should be hiring the best people you can find so that you can hand over the reins in confidence. Your team can make or break your business, so it’s imperative to have people who believe in your vision and will work towards helping you achieve it.
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Trust your Gut: When I first started my business, there were many people advising me on all aspects of the business. This advice didn’t always align with my vision, and I soon realized that you can’t always please everybody. Each step of the way, it’s important to make decisions that align with your values and pass on the ones that don’t.
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Keep it Simple: I learned this lesson early in my business, but since then I discovered it was a key to success for people like Richard Branson. Keeping things simple, keeps you focused and not trying to do too much. I always lived by the rule of 3-5 and keeping my to-do list as the top 3 to 5 priorities for that day/week/year.
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Adapt: Needless to say, we have all been adapting every day for the past 18 months due to the pandemic. Change is always with us and we need to adapt to stay relevant and stay in business. We can no longer take things for granted and need to be ready to embrace change.
I hope these tips will help and there are many more that I could send your way, but I want to follow tip 4 and keep things simple. Have a great month and continue to be safe!
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Please join us for a fun night at the CEC!
All students, faculty, staff, and community members are invited to the Coleman Center to kick off the new academic year, connect with one another and learn about the upcoming activities and events for the year.
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Angelo Mermigis
Student Intern in the CEC Internship Program 2021
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My name is Angelo Mermigis (he/him), a senior approaching my last quarter at DePaul with a finance concentration. This summer, I was the Sunshine Enterprises Data Analysis for BizDev intern and worked on a few different projects like template revisions, process documentation, calls with customers, content creation, and process automation. I was grateful to be working for a group as ethically inclined as Sunshine Enterprises is, as their mission statement is to "empower high-potential entrepreneurs living in under-resourced neighborhoods, to grow their business and transform their communities" (Sunshine).
The CEC was awesome in creating the opportunity to work in a great culture at Sunshine, where I had the chance to directly impact strategic initiatives on a few ongoing projects. The remote aspect of the internship heightened my experience and created an opportunity to travel with family in Greece. With easy communication through text and video, the eight hour time difference didn’t create friction working with data and researching Python modules.
The internship program with the CEC was great, and provides students with the right training to succeed through various experiences with school projects and extracurriculars. Most internships include multiple step processes which gets students used to step by step follow through and verification on projects. Internships also typically require teamwork to achieve set goals with the guidance of teachers and peers, creating an environment where we can ask questions and efficiently tackle the problem of the hour.
My last words of advice for any incoming intern or someone even simply just considering applying for the internship program, is don't be afraid to ask questions, and try to make friends and have fun!
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Create and Grow Your Business |
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Become a part of our nationally ranked entrepreneurship program.
Find out more by reading and clicking on the flyer below!
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Website Designer and Social Media Marketing Opportunity
Interested in designing websites and managing social media? Macali Advance is looking for an individual to help a prospect design a website, create social platforms, and potentially engage in social media marketing.
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The Coleman Entrepreneurship Center has curated a list of external and university-wide resources with the latest events, competitions, programs, incubators and more for small businesses and entrepreneurs. |
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Join MHub on September 30th for their Cold Calling Workshop. The sales process is crucial to a start-ups growth, whether your company is big or small. Cold Calling can have an immediate impact on your bottom line, but most people don't know where to begin. Led by Maureen Wozniak of the BBB, this class will cover the basics of cold calling.
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ISTC is a member-driven nonprofit organization that cultivates technology-based economic development throughout Illinois, offering mentorship programs and startup challenges for students and entrepreneurs. All DePaul students & faculty have access to their programming and events.
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