eLearning Entrepreneurs
Forget Bill Gates and his “even dropouts can succeed” mantra. Lots of self-starters are founding their own businesses, and are intent on finishing school at the same time. Enter a new wave of eEntrepreneurs–business-minded executives who are embracing the flexibility and convenience of online learning to further their education and grow their businesses. Though they already have day jobs, they’re working toward a degree to enhance their credibility, improve job-related skills, and foster networking opportunities.
Raising a virtual hand
When Garret Heaton began college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, NY, he missed the planner his high school had always distributed, which allowed him to mark school-specific events like midterms and finals along with holidays and days off. At the time, there weren’t many Web calendars–and those that existed weren’t very good. So Heaton decided to create his own.
With the help of four friends, Heaton stayed in Troy over summer break and launched HipCal, an online calendar, to-do list, and address book, in fall 2005. The calendar’s mascot was a hippo, hence the company name. The 22-year-old created a group calendar with account-sharing capabilities and started using it to organize fraternity events. Instead of a 30-box monthly grid, Heaton’s calendar was distinguished by its plain text list of the day’s events, as well as a future outlook showing the agenda for the upcoming weeks.
“I’m a very organized person,” Heaton says. “It really started out as a small project, just for fun.”
But then, in late February, Plaxo called. Plaxo, the Web-based business address book service with more than 15 million Web users, flew Heaton and his fraternity buddies out to California and began negotiations. In May 2006, Plaxo acquired HipCal. They also hired Heaton and his team as programmers and product managers for Plaxo, armed with the task of developing a similar calendar to be merged into the Plaxo interface.
There was just one caveat: Plaxo would only hire Heaton on the condition that he finish his schooling. Though his co-developers included a recent graduate and college seniors, Heaton was only a college junior at the time. “I was fully on board,” Heaton says. “I didn’t want to mess up my chances of graduating.”
Still, he needed a way to pursue two dreams: working full-time for Plaxo and earning his college degree at the same time. This became especially difficult once he moved to the West Coast for work. That’s when he discovered that RPI had a distance-learning program. Live classes were broadcasted so that Heaton and fellow distance learners could watch the streaming video feed on a computer. He would try to watch the class live, so that he could participate in chat room discussions about coursework and raise a virtual hand if he had any questions. Two days a week, he’d leave early from work and attend afternoon classes via the live video feed.
It wasn’t the same as being in the classroom, he says. “It was harder to feel engaged during class and I’d often refrain from asking minor questions because I didn’t want to disrupt the class flow.” But without the online option, he says he never would have been able to graduate this past May and join Plaxo.
Creating credibility
For Bonnie Harris, an advanced degree was a ticket to generating credibility in a new field.
Harris spent 16 years in the technology industry before branching out on her own in 2002 and starting Wax Marketing, an integrated marketing and public relations firm based in St. Paul, MN. Suddenly, her bachelor’s in economics didn’t hold much weight.
So Harris enrolled in a online master’s program in marketing communications from Western Governors University in 2005. “I needed to have a much broader base of understanding,” she says. “I was definitely looking for training that would help me directly with my business.”
Harris was pitching a big potential client while taking an advanced public relations course. She used some of the templates and frameworks from that class in her proposal–and won the client’s business. “It was more of a professional approach and methodology,” she says. “The proposal was more educated because I had learned to layout the components in a much more detailed fashion.”
With more than 100 discussion postings on an average week, Harris got to know her classmates well, many of whom were fellow marketers. “I gained as much as an education from my classmates as I did from my professors,” she says. “Since they live all around the country, each offered a totally different perspective.”
The online format of the program meshed well with Harris’ business schedule. “I wasn’t stuck with a class on a certain night,” she says, noting that she’d often work on Saturday morning and in the middle of the night. Distance learning also allowed her to divide her time, spending winters in Breckenridge, CO. “I learned more this way given my schedule than I would have in a regular university,” she says.
Becoming a better entrepreneur
Danny Kessler already has a bachelor’s degree. The self-defense guru is currently pursuing a second bachelor’s, one specifically geared to help him grow his business.
Kessler, one of the youngest members of the National Speakers Association and a personal safety expert, is enrolled in Grand Canyon University’s College of Entrepreneurship. Since his talks take him around the world and consume so much of his time, he’s found it easier to take online courses at GCU.
Kessler began his career in martial arts. While still in college, he taught self-defense to women at the local gym. He started teaching a similar course at Arizona State University, which led to gigs at high-end summer camps and safety seminars at high schools and colleges across the country.
One of his entrepreneurship courses explored the use of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to grow a business. As a result of that class, Kessler began his own blog, one that helped further establish him as an authority on self-defense. True to the course's e-marketing lessons, it also helped him book more seminars.
Next up on Kessler’s course schedule is a class on sales and negotiating. “It’s very practical, hands-on and relevant to my business.”
An online degree is not just another piece of paper, Kessler and other eEntrepreneurs agree. Rather, it’s a way to boost credibility, learn more about your field and grow your business.
By Tamar Snyder
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