So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

For many who dream of starting their own business, the first step is to earn an MBA or related  master’s degree. These programs prepare learners with the tools to apply in almost any kind of business endeavor, whether it’s opening a restaurant, sharing leadership skills, or using horses to teach life lessons. This approach certainly worked for the following seven entrepreneurs who all launched successful businesses after attending graduate school.

Julie Steenerson, Sapor Café and Bar
One of Julie Steenerson’s favorite parts of her former job in the financial sector wasn’t crunching numbers; it was taking clients out to lunch and also recommending great eateries to her coworkers. But when she decided she wanted to turn her culinary passions into a commercial pursuit, Steenerson realized she knew nothing about the restaurant business, so she decided to go back to school to put together a business plan for a restaurant.

Steenerson is now co-owner of Sapor Café and Bar in Minneapolis for which she laid the groundwork while attending the University of St. Thomas MBA program. “I chose St. Thomas because I had gone to a small, private undergraduate school,” she says. “I knew that learning environment worked best for me.”

She decided on a concentration in entrepreneurship/venture management, an elective track that St. Thomas offers. The school’s entrepreneurial courses are delivered in its full-time, evening, and executive MBA programs;  Steenerson chose evening classes she took on a part-time basis. In the end, her business plan doubled as her capstone project and she took her PowerPoint presentation to the bank to secure a loan after she finished her degree in 1999.

“When I look back at the business plan, it’s amazing how many things were pretty close,” she says. But what surprised her even more is how much her professors helped her through the process. “The professors’ care and concern and help went far beyond the classroom,” she says. “My law professor became an attorney for the business. My HR professor helped me build an application and interview process. My capstone professor helped me decide on a space for the restaurant.” Plus, she says, “They continue to be customers of mine.”

Michael Miller, Hound Dog Products
“I’ve wanted my own business since I was five years old,” says Michael Miller. “My grandfathers both [had their own business]. I got to see the joys and pitfalls of owning your own company.”

Like grandfather, like grandson. Miller founded and runs Eden Prairie–based Hound Dog Products, a developer and marketer of a novel line of gardening tools that pull weeds, cut and refill holes for bulb planting, and even pick up dog poop. The company, which was formed in 1994, will post sales of nearly $10 million this year.

Prior to starting the company, Miller worked as a salesman for Procter & Gamble and also as a national sales manager for Pillsbury before deciding to pursue an MBA at the Carlson School of Management, which offers full-time, part-time, and executive MBAs. Miller signed up for the school’s advanced placement program, an accelerated version of the full-time program that is no longer offered. It took him one very intense year to complete, earning him a degree in 1990.

After graduate school, Miller re-entered the corporate world and was sniffing around for potential business leads when he met with a man who showed him an innovative lawn tool he had developed. Miller, a lawn-care buff, realized he’d found his calling. He took a chance, quit his full-time job, and launched Hound Dog.

The greatest benefit of getting an MBA, he says, was learning from the years of experience of others in business. “It taught me some of the basics of how to think about business,” he says, “how to critique a business plan, how to view a business from the top down and the bottom up.”

Michael Ayers, The Commonwealth Practice
Not many people are inspired to go back to school after hearing a poetry reading. For Michael Ayers, co-founder and CEO of The Commonwealth Practice, it was a poetry reading that helped him chose a school.

The turning point for Ayers, who had been working on leadership development initiatives at 3M, was a presentation by David Whyte—a poet, lecturer, and corporate consultant. “It was sponsored partly by the College of St. Catherine,” Ayers says. “I thought, any place that’s going to bring in a business consultant/poet sounds like an interesting place to look at.”

So he enrolled in St. Kate’s master of arts in organizational leadership, which allows students to choose one of six concentrations, including strategic management and healthcare leadership. “The MAOL is what an MBA ought to be,” Ayers says. “An MBA is about administering businesses. That’s different than an MAOL, which is about leading organizations.”

Ayers worked full-time at 3M while attending classes on weekends. He finished his degree in 2000 and, in 2002, left 3M to start Commonwealth, a Minneapolis consulting company.

Just as important as the master’s degree itself, Ayers says, was the content of his courses at St. Kate’s. “I had a communications class, with writing and speechmaking. I was getting a chance to sharpen those skills and pick up some things I hadn’t picked up before,” he says. “In other cases, it was broad kinds of things, like the importance of having a personal mission statement, that guide how I go forward.”

Lynn Baskfield, Wisdom Horse Coaching
Lynn Baskfield has been riding horses since she was seven. She’s also been an entrepreneur for most of her life. It’s little wonder then that she ended up combining her two passions in Twin Cities–based SpiritDance and Wisdom Horse Coaching, her life-coaching business endeavors that use horses to teach life skills.

Before Baskfield even hit upon the idea of equine-assisted learning, she had immersed herself in workshops and conferences aimed at deepening her knowledge of the mind-body connection. She brought those lessons to her business at the time, a beauty salon in Minneapolis where she incorporated mind-body-spirit wellness talks.

Recognizing that a graduate degree would complement her previous studies and give her an important credential, Baskfield looked into the programs available at the Twin Cities campus of St. Mary’s University, which offers master of arts degrees in areas such as management, international business, and human resources, in addition to a PowerTrak MBA.

She graduated in 1997 with a master of arts in human development, an interdisciplinary graduate program that allows students to customize a program that combines their scholarly interests, life experiences, and career goals. “St. Mary’s program is very individualized in that we design our own degree program with the help of an adviser,” says Baskfield, who concluded her degree with a position paper on life coaching.

So did the hard work pay off? Without a doubt, Baskfield says: “The content that I studied, and the different courses I took through St. Mary’s continues to inform the work I do.”

Heidi L. Fisher,Wisconsin Council of Nonprofits
Heidi L. Fisher may not want to start a business, but she’s embraced the idea of social entrepreneurship. She’s co-leader of a feasibility study that analyzed the needs of Wisconsin’s nonprofit organizations and recommended that there be a state association to help all nonprofits reach their fullest capacity.

Fisher saw the need for the study while enrolled in Hamline University’s master of arts in nonprofit management, which the Minneapolis school offers via a regular or accelerated track through its Graduate School of Management. The Wisconsin native signed up as a full-time student and, after accepting a job as director of annual giving and major gifts officer at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Foundation, completed her degree by 2004 as a part-time student.

“I had never had accounting, and I had to write spreadsheets and do statistics and analyses,” she says. “In those particular classes, Hamline pushed me…it prepared me very well for working in the foundation.”

While in school, Fisher learned about an organization called the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. “I realized that Wisconsin didn’t have such an entity,” she says. “I spent my whole last year in essence creating a business plan to begin a state association of nonprofits.”

That business plan was her final project for her degree, but Fisher pursued it even after graduation. “I never would have been able to do it without working on my master’s,” she admits. “Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have been motivated to work on it. I never would have thought I could do it.”

Sean Manley, Electronic Data Recovery
“I come from a long line of entrepreneurs,” says Sean Manley, account manager with On-Demand Services Group, an IT staffing firm based in Burnsville. “My father basically has done staffing of one sense or another since I could say my own name.”

It’s no surprise, then, that when his father and older brother started a new division of the company, they asked Manley to get involved with the intrapreneurial endeavor: Electronic Data Recovery, a business that focuses on tape-based data backup systems.

It’s a far cry from Manley’s previous career in rehabilitation psychology and work in the health care field. In fact, when he went back to school for an MBA at Argosy University in Minneapolis, Manley focused on a degree with a concentration in healthcare administration. (The school offers six other MBA concentrations.)

Manley enrolled as a full-time student while also working full-time at  Art Institutes International Minnesota, running their facilities department and housing program. “I don’t recommend that,” he cautions. “There were a lot of early mornings and late nights and weekends.”

In 2005, near the end of his coursework, his father approached him about working with the newly formed company. Though IT wasn’t his field of expertise, he says the lessons he learned in his MBA studies have translated well to his current role. “We’re looking at becoming a global business, outsourcing partnerships with firms in India, becoming web-based,” he says. “There are lots of things I don’t think I would have ever thought of without that MBA background. I wouldn’t have known where to look. Having that has really given me a leg up.”

Lawrence Esso, JL Esso
Lawrence Esso is a prime example of the entrepreneurial personality: a self-starter eager to move ahead with his business plans. So eager, in fact, that he couldn’t wait to complete his MBA before opening JL Esso, his men’s and women’s shoe store in Edina’s Southdale Center last October.

In 2003 Esso signed up for part-time classes at Metropolitan State University, which offers both a general MBA and six other concentrations in addition to its Center for Women Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship Education. “I knew [an MBA] was going to help me understand more about my business and managing and running the business,” he says.

While researching the school’s MBA program, Esso heard about how supportive the professors were. “That was something I experienced firsthand,” he says. “The professors went out of their way to help you.”

Their help extended outside of class as Esso developed the business plan for his store. In fact, he can still rely on them to answer questions and address issues he encounters in his fledgling business.

Esso intends to one day finish the five classes he needs to receive his degree, but for the time being he’s putting everything he’s learned about promotions and ad campaigns and how to price items into his store.

“I’m using a lot of stuff like that right now,” he says. “I actually have some of my textbooks at the store to brush up on things.”