Rootie-Toot Tutors

The entrepreneurial spirit is actively engaging many, many students on Planet College. The urge to make something of your own in your own way is  is irresistible. One student, Devon, who did so tells his story here.

During my last year, I was a business major, there was a contest for Entrepreneurial proposals. It had a cash prize and was only open to business majors. I decided to enter but I knew I needed a partner to make it work. I knew Marlene from Student Government. We were on the events council together and put on some programs that went well. A couple of slams and some djs. I liked working with Mar, she could get things done but she's totally chill. When the entrepreneur competition came up I asked her if she wanted to partner. She's an ed major but only one person had to be in the business department to enter. We put together our proposal, it was for a tutoring company, and we entered. The winners were announced and we did not even place. A lot of people liked our idea, though, so we decided to do it anyway.

Our plan was a tutoring company that focused on local families. We would higher tutors from school and assign them to individual students we had found as clients for our business. We made up a catchy name for our business and distributed flyers at locals schools and churches for parent's who wanted their child tutored by a college student. 

Because Mar is an Ed major she knew a lot about lesson planning and student assessment. She is also organized to the max so she took the scheduling and payroll and general administration stuff. I've always been a good talker and sales comes naturally to me so I met the prospective clients and if it looked like a fit signed them up.  Our focus was younger students who were not functioning at grade level. Mar would figure out what the student needed and I recruited the tutor from the students who applied.

Our plan worked OK for a while but after about a year business fell off seriously so we decided to fold it up. I don't think I'd do it again but I sure learned a lot. First of all, it is a lot harder to get someone else to work than it is to do it your self.  We had a lot of problems with tutors who did not show up. I'd have to call around and find some body real fast or else I had to do it myself.  There was a lot more to it than we thought.

Mar and I are still friends but we won't be working together on anything.  That's another thing we learned; real world business is a lot different than planning school functions.

That is the adventure of one entrepreneur on Planet College.