pay for college
Like so many college students, Andy Hill and Rob Johnson spend hours on their laptops, interacting with social media sites like Facebook.
But Hill and Johnson aren’t updating their profiles or commenting on a friend’s post. They are creating online marketing campaigns for businesses. Last March, the University of Dayton undergraduates formed TalkToMe Media, partly for experience and partly to pay for college tuition.
Hill said founding and running his own business at age 20 is not all that different from a regular, hourly job.
“It’s no different than someone who is working at the mall and loving their job,” said Hill, an entrepreneurship and marketing student.
But truth is, it’s a little different. Hill and Johnson earn between $2,500-$5,500 per client for a three-month plan. They do this, working 35-50 hours per week while attending classes at UD. Since they founded the business four months ago, they’ve earned about $3,800.
For the fee, TalkToMeMedia will manage a client’s Facebook page. They will use Facebook searches to find other Facebook users who have similar interests to what the company offers.
For example, one of their clients is a horseback riding camp outside of Chicago. The company wanted to lure more college students to use its camp, so Hill and Johnson scoured Facebook to find profiles of students from nearby colleges. Then they sent online invitations for the students to join the company’s fan page. The company then continues to manage updates and conversation on the page about the company.
They’ve had their hiccups. They signed their first client before they had their company website up and running. They made up for it by offering two months free service.
But experience like this has been invaluable. You can learn the principles of accounting in class, but keeping your own books is another thing, Hill said.
Johnson said he has a professor who makes students practice the art of making cold calls, but truly calling potential clients who you have never talked to is entirely different.
“I gotta make these calls to make money for the business,” he said.
Four months into their venture, Hill and Johnson are ready to expand. Ohio State University freshman David Kelsheimer is going to be TalkToMe Media’s branch manager at OSU. Hill and Johnson will get 20 percent of his profits. They are in talks with a University of Texas and a University of Missouri student as well.
They are not missing out on any fun. On a recent day, they worked from 8 a.m. to noon; did a presentation for a client in the afternoon, worked a few hours and then went to a party at 5 p.m.
“It’s the full college life every day,” Johnson said.
Account manager ran home decor store as student
Springfield’s Jessica Swayze is now an account manager at Springfield marketing business, Oxiem. While a student at Cedarville University, Swayze ran her own store, Uptown Collection, from her freshman year until her graduation in 2008.
She earned a few thousand dollars every semester, probably the same amount she could have earned in an hourly job.
But it was the experience of marketing her business, working with clients and learning about budgeting that she says was most valuable. She also received management experience hiring other Cedarville students as employees.
“It pushed me to get to know the other local community business owners and think more strategically about marketing, which is what I’m doing now,” said Swayze, 23, who lives in Dayton.
The marketing, management and working with customers at Uptown Collection likely contributed to her securing her current job.
“I think it demonstrated that I had done something a little bit out of the ordinary,” she said. “I had experience working with customers, and that’s a big part of my job (now).”
Soap helps student pay for his master’s degree
Stephen Rumbaugh is not only paying for much of his Wright State University tuition through his soap-making business, he’s also incorporated the business into his master’s thesis.
Several years into his job as a graphics designer, Rumbaugh lost his job due to layoffs. That was the push to get his master’s degree, but he still had to pay tuition. He once bought a book on soapmaking and had tried it with disastrous results.
After the layoff in April 2009, he perfected the soap-making technique and founded Society Bodycare, where he sells two bars of homemade, vegan soap online for $10.
“It’s been a very nice supplement,” said Rumbaugh, 42, who lives in Yellow Springs. “I’ve sold a lot more than I thought I would.”
His manufacturing workspace is very small. He cooks the soap on his kitchen stove and cools the loafs of soap in cooling racks in a back office.
The soaps are definitely a luxury item, filled with essential oils and other items like mustard seed, paprika, basil, peppermint tea leaves, lavendar and lime. It appeals to Rumbaugh, who said he has hated regular store-bought soap since he was a child.
“You can get clean with Lifebuoy soap or Irish Spring, but everyone should enjoy luxuries,” he said.
Rumbaugh is a master of humanities candidate and Society Bodycare has turned into his thesis project. His thesis must have creative writing, urban planning and social work components.
He is putting together a business plan that would donate an ounce of soap for every ounce purchased to a charity. He will narrow down the list of charities and allow consumers to pick the charity of their choice.
He’s creating a new marketing plan for the company and changing the packaging of the soaps.
“(Society Bodycare) has been a very utilitarian project,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2216 or kmargolis@coxohio.com.
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