By Piper Rutherford | Staff Writer
Baylor’s new partnership with the Kauffman FastTrac program offers students interested in pursuing a business venture the chance to participate in a 10-week curriculum to get their business design up and running.
FastTrac facilitator for Baylor, Lesley Reed, said the program includes learning modules, pitching activities and speakers from the professional world for those who have not started a business or whose business is less than three years old.
“The course begins on Oct. 7 with the Ideate Module, which provides strategies for aligning personal and business priorities, then continues over the next few weeks with positioning your business idea in the market and understanding the elements of a customer, whether that be pricing strategy or demographics,” Reed said.
According to the Kauffman website, the program not only provides students with tools to brainstorm and start businesses, but coaches them through growing and sustaining it.
“After [the Ideate Module], the Commit Module shows students how to financially protect their business via IP and copyright law, followed by the last two weeks of refining one’s business strategy before the big launch,” Reed said.
Amy Murphy, former manager of two Shipley Do-Nuts in Waco, said she went through the FastTrac Program 20 years ago and continues to apply what she learned about business during those 10 weeks in her current profession of social work.
Murphy didn’t have any background or entrepreneurship prior to completing the Kauffman FastTrac program, she said. All she had was an idea for a dog retail, training and daycare business, and she needed a way to organize her thoughts if she wanted the business to come to fruition.
“FastTrac helped me get on paper in a formulaic way what would make sense to an investor and customer, and although I never started the dog business, I still use what I learned in FastTrac when dealing with funding streams and talking to different donors for fundraising,” Murphy said.
While this program is new to Baylor, Reed said they offered it to a few students over the summer who had business ideas of their own, such as a hat brand and candle-making business.
“In the past, outside of Baylor, I have seen people taking the course come in wanting to start their own restaurant, get their app up and running or find out how they can promote their own fashion line,” Reed said. “There is definitely a flexibility of starting and owning your own business, which offers a lot of opportunities.”
As for what it takes to be successful in the business field, Reed said it is beneficial to learn and collaborate with other entrepreneurs, which the course offers. It also helps students cultivate traits helpful to entrepreneurship and success in business.
“All of this helps you develop the skills of being a risk-taker, self-reliant, innovative, creative and resilient, which is what someone in the business world needs to pick themselves up each and every day,” Reed said.
Though Kauffman is partnered with Baylor primarily for Baylor students, the program is open to students, faculty, staff and the Waco community, according to the Baylor website. Applications for the program are due Sept. 16.
