For Regina Gathaiya, owning a business has been a lifelong dream.
The UNLV graduate, who earned her master's degree in business administration this summer, learned as a child in Kenya to appreciate the independence of the entrepreneur. Her father, a civil engineer, left a career at East African Railways to launch his own engineering firm; her mother was a nurse who quit health care to become a farmer.
"What I liked about them was that they both had a certain amount of freedom," Gathaiya says. "They enjoyed what they did and were able to make money doing it. There's really no limit on how far you can go when you're a business owner, but there are limits when you work for someone. I've always known that my ambition in life is to own a business or get into a business venture with others."
In April, Gathaiya moved a step closer to achieving that goal. She won third place and $5,000 in the statewide Donald W. Reynolds Foundation's Governor's Cup Business Plan Competition along with MBA students Juliet Mushi, Timothy Mushi, and Aziz Makoko. Their concept: a business that would massproduce school uniforms in the African country of Tanzania.
Gathaiya drew upon her MBA training for her contribution to the group's business plan. Her marketing courses informed the plan's details on how to bring the group's product to consumers, and her strategy studies trained her to understand how to "sustain a competitive advantage," she says. Finance classes helped her determine the concept's long-term viability. Yet, her education was thin on training in venture management and other areas that are especially important to small-business owners.
New Center Will Cultivate Entrepreneurs
Such training is poised to become a bigger part of business education at UNLV.
This fall, the College of Business plans to launch its center for entrepreneurship, an institute dedicated to educating students — and professionals in the community — on the finer points of small-business enterprise.
Rich Flaherty, dean of the College of Business, says the proposed center will support course offerings, research programs, and speakers' series to teach a wide range of entrepreneurial skills. Those looking to open a small business must know, for example, how to budget limited startup financing and identify pricing structures for a new product. And foregoing the corporate world with all its varied functions means learning to multitask — serving as the secretary who returns phone calls, the marketing agent who writes press releases, and the bookkeeper who balances the books.
Management professor Janet Runge says the center will be an essential addition to the College of Business.
"Frankly, we're late to the party," Runge says. Entrepreneurial education at colleges across America has grown dramatically in the last decade, with major regional centers at UCLA, Brigham Young University and the University of Oregon, among others. UNLV now offers a concentration in venture management as part of its master's program but the undergraduate major was only recently developed.
"There's a growing recognition that job creation by and large is coming from small- and medium-sized firms and not necessarily from huge corporations," says Runge, who served as the faculty adviser to Gathaiya's Governor's Cup team. "These firms are really contributing in big ways to the communities in which they operate. Entrepreneurial education is important."
The educational oversight is peculiar in a city nationally renowned for its dynamic small-business climate.
Small Businesses Dominate
Companies with fewer than 100 employees comprise 97.3 percent of businesses in Clark County, according to fourth-quarter data from the state department of employment, training, and rehabilitation. More than 22,000 of the county's 38,793 small companies have four or fewer employees. In January, American City Business Journals ranked Las Vegas the nation's No. 5 bigcity market in small-business vitality. In 2003, the Small Business Survival Committee rated Las Vegas second in the nation based on policies and incentives that encourage and assist entrepreneurs. This spring, the city also landed at No. 14 on Inc. magazine's list of Best Places to Do Business in America.
Hugh Anderson, chairman of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, says small businesses are essential to the Las Vegas economy.
"Smaller businesses, by and large, are the ones that allow larger businesses to function," says Anderson, who estimated that 85 percent of the chamber's member firms have 100 or fewer employees. "Office-furniture suppliers, janitorial services, insurance providers, vehicle fleets — all the odds and ends required to run a major company — are usually supplied by small businesses."
The focus on educating future smallbusiness leaders will build upon the college's already extensive research and service programs.
Through its 19-year-old Nevada Small Business Development Center, the university assisted 4,000 small firms last year, providing 900 of them with indepth training and advice. Its advisers provide expertise in areas such as developing a business plan, creating a marketing campaign, and finding financing.
The proposed center will have some natural tie-ins to the Nevada Small Business Development Center, Runge says. But the entrepreneurship institute will have longer tentacles. For starters, it won't confine its activities to the College of Business. An architecture major who wants to own a design studio or a fine-arts major who wants to launch a graphics firm could both benefit from adding small-business acumen to their roster of skills.
Business Owners Get Help with Multiple-Hat Syndrome
In addition, the center will facilitate entrepreneurial internships so that students can gain hands-on experience in the basics of running a small firm.
"The center is a way to connect people who have financial skills with people who have ideas," Runge says. "It's also a way to connect the university with the community around it, through entrepreneurial internships. It will create stronger opportunities within the community."
The chamber's Anderson has no doubt the center will be extremely useful to the small-business community. "The beauty of the scenario is its quid pro quo," he says. "The biggest challenge for any business owner is ‘multiple-hat syndrome' — turning on the lights, meeting payroll, keeping customers happy. This project could be just what business owners need. Maybe an owner doesn't have time to create a marketing plan, and that creates an opportunity for a student to get practical (internship) experience by helping with a plan. The student gets an enormous level of experience in a real-time, practical project, and the company can leverage bright, energetic minds so the owner can focus on doing business. It's a marriage made in heaven."
Michael Graham, deputy state director of the Nevada Small Business Development Center, says the entrepreneurship center will complement his organization's offerings.
"The (entrepreneurship) center will support a curriculum that teaches students the processes involved in entrepreneurship," Graham says. "The NSBDC will help them carry that academic process into a more practical application. With entrepreneurship, you're talking about developing minds that think differently from people who are just trying to get a job. It's more expansive. It encompasses the steps required to get an idea to market."
Runge says it's an educational concept with a potentially cross-cutting impact.
"Entrepreneurship brings things together in a way that helps everybody. When entrepreneurship works, everybody benefits: the people starting the business, the people employed by the business, and the community, because the business is there. We can help students take a good, long look at entrepreneurship as a viable opportunity and give them the skills they need to really make it happen. It's an element of the American dream."
