“Campus CEO” by Randal Pinkett

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Table of Contents

Put It on Paper – Creating a Powerful Business Plan
Show Me the Money – Raising Capital
Financial Statements 101 – Understanding the Basics of Business Finance
Ten Mistakes Every Campus CEO Makes – And How to Avoid Them
Final Advice – Seven Universal Lessons for Every Entrepreneur.
Works Cited

The student’s life does not restrict to studies only. The financial pressure that often threatens the students makes them seek some ways out from the situation they find unsuitable. Campus CEO: The Student Entrepreneur’s Guide to Launching a Multi-Million Dollar Business by Randal Pinkett is the right tool to apply when starting one’s own entrepreneurship. Campus CEO is a manual for the beginner entrepreneur which throws light on every step he or she needs to take when launching a profitable, campus-based business, succeeding at the same time in academic studies. The book under consideration is the key to the student’s success in business along with his or her development of academic proficiency.

In the present work, we are going to analyze the main aspects of the book chapters we find the most important for the student’s understanding of the basics of business. Namely, these would be Chapter 3, titled Put It On Paper-Creating a Business Plan, Chapter 6 – Show Me the Money- Raising Capital, Chapter 7, that is, Financial Statements 101-Understanding the Basics of Business Finance, Chapter 16, titled Ten Mistakes Every Campus CEO Makes – And How to Avoid Them and Chapter 17, that is, Final Advice – Seven Universal Lessons for Every Entrepreneur.

“Who says you can’t be the one to start a club for would-be business owners? Why can’t you get busy putting your college on the map when it comes to student entrepreneurship? After all, isn’t that part of being CEO-bringing new ideas, products, and services to the public? Aren’t you ready to create something new that didn’t exist before?”(Pinkett R, 2007, p. 4.) This quotation from the book study is considered to be a good springboard to the reader’s financial and academic success.

Put It on Paper – Creating a Powerful Business Plan

The fact that a successful enterprise starts from a diligently written business plan are confirmed by Randal Pinkett. In this chapter, the author places an emphasis on the need to forecast the future needs of a starting enterprise and being ready to start acting.

While author does not cover each and every part of the business plan in a great detail – the emphasis is placed on the marketing strategy and basic financial planning.

Ideas outlaid in the chapter echo the ones covered in class, to be more specific, the components of the business plan such as Executive Summary, Financial Statements, Marketing Strategy are covered. While class readings cover each part thoroughly, author presents ideas in terms of starting a business on campus – as such, the context of business planning is the daily learning environment.

It should be pointed out, that the key concept of this chapter is its practical implementation, since the process and the need for a business plan is presented in terms of the regular student environment.

Show Me the Money – Raising Capital

While the needs for starting the business on Campus are normally lower as compared with starting the business in a regular economic environment, the needs for initial investment are significantly smaller. Still, author covers all major ways to receive the funds required for the start up placing an emphasis on raising money from friends and family and getting basic financing from banks.

While in class readings we have covered all business types depending on financial needs of a starting enterprise including publicly traded company, organizational forms that require major financing are not emphasized by Randal Pinkett as an option for the business on Campus. As such, the ideas are more enthusiastic than professional, which is definitely not bad considering the target audience the author had in mind.

Financial Statements 101 – Understanding the Basics of Business Finance

Needless to say that the basic knowledge of Business Finance are required for an entrepreneur to analyze the situation, predict and plan the further course of actions. In his book, Randal Pinkett laid out and explained the importance of financial planning. To be more precise, the importance of the break even point (at which a company actually starts earning money), organizational needs for investment at different stages of growth, the start up fixed investment in equipment needed for the service delivery or the productions process, variable costs (expenses that vary with output, which may differ depending on the production scale).

The basics of the financial statements – Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Stakeholder’s Equity – are covered with the major role of those in financial planning being explained.

The chapter on Financial Statements is rather an add-on to the text covered in class than the basis for real financial planning. The chapter provides insightful information to get a general idea and understand the role of finance in entrepreneurship rather than presents step by step guidelines on how to actually plan and analyze organizational performance.

Finally, the context in which this information was presented should be considered, since a business start up on a campus with a relatively not competitive business environment and a lower scale of operations is different from the real life business activity in a large market.

Ten Mistakes Every Campus CEO Makes – And How to Avoid Them

This chapter investigates the most common mistakes campus CEO makes and gives useful pieces of advice on how to avoid them. The first and the most crucial mistake of any beginner entrepreneur is to think that entrepreneurship is an easy task to deal with. Going by the author of the book under analysis, business is a rather risky adventure, as your benefits may be slashed or you may be forced to work overtime without being compensated appropriately.

Students are often afraid to start their own business because of their young age. Randal Pinkett persuades the reader that he or she is able to launch into business at any reasonable age. The students being inexperienced is also refused by the author. He sees them as those capable of critical and analytical thinking, fresh ideas from which many can benefit.

He author claims that it is the best time to become entrepreneur when a student. The student’s flexible schedule and the access to the campus resources permit the student to start his or her business and carry it successfully.

Discipline and organization that the student will develop when engaged in some business will have a positive influence on the academic career. Thus, both business ad studies win.

The author warns the readers not to be misled by the false idea that the lack of money will not enable them to succeed in business. Moreover, one should not believe that students’ are only small-time enterprises; instead the reader is asked to consider Microsoft, Google, Dell and other global bands as examples of development of campus ventures.

Final Advice – Seven Universal Lessons for Every Entrepreneur.

This chapter is considered to be an overview of the advice that was made throughout the whole book. They consist in the following:

Work with the team;
Take risks;
Be persistent;
Learn from mistakes;
Adapt to the changes;
Learn how to learn;
Build your network right on the campus;
Develop creativity, resourcefulness, courageousness and vision.

These instructions resemble to those we have got during the classes. One should realize their importance, should not neglect them, as they are considered as keys to business and academic success.

The chapters we have picked out for analysis helped us to understand the basics of the student’s business and to correlate them with those studied in the course. Creating a business plan is the starting point for every entrepreneur, the next step he or she undertakes is raising money, which, going by the author may be done through various ways, from friends and family, included. Successful entrepreneurship is impossible without the student’s realizing the basics of business finance which consist in planning and organizing financial performance. The information on the problem presented in the Campus CEO sounds professional and helpful for the students starting their own business. What is very important, the way the information is presented in the chapters and the whole book discussed is a student-friendly one which contributes to the student’s enthusiasm about his or her would-be occupation.

Works Cited

Pinkett, R. Campus CEO : The Student Entrepreneur’s Guide to Launching a Multi-Million Dollar Business. Kaplan Business, 2007.

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