Rohail Rizvi- Entrepreneur in the Making

On Monday I met with the one and only Randal Pinkett, winner of The Apprentice and author of Campus CEO. I have to say that just from meeting him for a few minutes that he is a really cool guy. I shook his hand and then told him about I had learned of his book from the Campus CEO competition a couple months ago and decided to pick it up after David Askaripour of MindPetals told me we got mentioned in there. I told him I wrote for MindPetals and he was really impressed and asked me to write a review for his book on my blog and try to get some coverage on MindPetals about the book. I told him sure thing, without a doubt. He was cool enough to sign my copy of Campus CEO and I gave him a card for Walamu and told him about how I started it at Rutgers last semester and he seemed pretty impressed. This is considering Mr. Pinkett also went to Rutgers and started his business here all while graduating with a 3.9 GPA and being on the track team. Mr. Pinkett is truly an inspiration to me and I’m sure to the many others that will pick up a copy of his new book, Campus CEO.

To get started on building your own business empire while still in college, get your copy of Mr. Pinkett’s book here: Campus CEO.

P.S. I have an extra copy of Campus CEO since my order from Amazon came in a day after Randal was at the signing. If you have any suggestions on what I should do with this extra copy by means of some sort of crazy give away competition, leave a comment.

Just a small update on how things are going. I haven’t talked about Walamu’s status in a bit, but the site’s actually doing pretty well. As I’m meeting more people here at Rutgers, more people are hearing about Walamu and the word-of-mouth effect keeps multiplying. It’s not at a level where it’s self sustainable yet, but most of the visitors that come to Walamu are via word-of-mouth only second to Facebook. It’s turning out to be pretty hard to shift the focus from the marketplace to the classifieds aspect of the website. Since textbook season is over, I’ve been working on pushing the classifieds side of the website. I placed an ad in our college newspaper’s classifieds section about Walamu’s classifieds, but that didn’t do much. I also tried messaging people who were looking for roommates on Facebook, but then I get stopped for spamming. I know that people who are already in need of classifieds should be where I should target my marketing. Even with this strategy, however, getting the classifieds moving is proving pretty hard. Nonetheless, I think as more people hear about Walamu this should correct itself to some extent as people get more used to the website.

In other news, Randall Pinkett, the winner of The Apprentice and author of Campus CEO, will be at Rutgers tomorrow signing books. I will definitely be there and hoping that my copy of Campus CEO will arrive in the mail from Amazon tomorrow. If not, I might just have to buy a copy from the bookstore. If I’m lucky enough to get two copies signed, I might do some sort of giveaway with one of them.

Today’s society no longer considers Pluto a planet, and if you’re Wendy’s you no longer consider “small” as a menu size option. With the recent “war against obesity” featuring documentaries such as Super Size Me and slogans such as “Say No to Biggie size,” Wendy’s has taken a clever turn. While ordering a number one classic single with cheese last night at the student center, I was asked if I wanted a medium or a large. I went with medium, although usually I go for the small if it’s there. However, since the cashier never mentioned “small,” I didn’t bother to ask. The person next in line ordered the same thing as me and was asked the same question, medium or small? At first, he said medium, but then had to ask if there was a small option. The cashier said yes and put in an order for a small. This is pretty clever by Wendy’s and I don’t even think it’s that ethical. If you’re going to ramble on about giving your customers choice, at least reveal all your menu options. Now I don’t mind that I got a medium because I finished all my fries and my soda, but that’s just another way of ripping customers off and not letting them have what they really want. This is just another way of corporations like Wendy’s not caring about the health of their customers, but rather trying to improve their margins in sneakier and sneakier ways. So remember, next time you go to Wendy’s and want a small, make sure you tell them.

Fear is probably one of the greatest obstacles in entrepreneurship. However, there is another great obstacle that can hold you back almost just as much. That obstacle is outcome dependency. If everytime you get rejected or a client doesn’t like your ideas and you take it out on yourself, it means that you are still outcome dependent. The only way to succeed is to completely kill your outcome dependency. The way to do this is to go all out. Pitch that VC you’re sure is going to shut you down. Ask that girl out with the most ridiculous line and keep going until you’re almost certain you’re going to get slapped. Screw it…screw what they think. This is YOUR problem and not their’s. You’re just using them as a crutch to get over your HABIT of taking it out on yourself when something doesn’t go your way. The only way to fix this is to become immune to rejection and realize that there are other factors at play and it’s not just YOU. So quit blaming yourself, control the factors that you can, and pitch hard.

Some people, including myself, become extremely disheartened when something doesn’t go their way or if someone doesn’t like their ideas. The reality is that if you keep blaming yourself on things outside of your control and view every failure as inherently caused, then you’ve already lost the game. You will only continue to set yourself back and damage your confidence and faith to keep going forward. Thus, it is extremely important that no matter how many times you fail or what criticisms you get from some big shot exec, continue to move forward until you see your vision through. This is not to say that you should not take contructive criticism and apply it, but rather that you should not take failure and criticism as a reason to stop trying and start blaming yourself. Just keep choppin’ as we here at Rutgers like to say.

Yesterday, while sitting at the student center re-reading Micheal Simmon’s, The Student Success Manifesto, a 30-something year old Korean man randomly decided to sit down in the chair across from me at my table. I look up from my book without tilting my head up with a confused look on my face. I’ve approached people before, but never with the directness this guy just has. He starts rambling about something about how his English isn’t very good and how he is looking for a student to edit his paper. He sees me still with my confused look and says “I’m sorry, can I get your name?” and we shake. He says that he needs someone to edit his “paper.” I figure it couldn’t take more than a few minutes and college essays are hard enough as it is, especially for international students. After I start reading it I notice the mass amount of religious material and Biblical quotes in the “paper.” I start to question whether this is for real or not. He further explains that it is a prayer that he has written for his Bible study class. The “prayer” kept mentioning how he is “thankful for the opportunity to bring 12 RU students to the light of the Bible.” I tell him that I’m not a religious person and that if he expects to sell me anything he is wasting his time. He insists that he is not and just needs someone to edit his paper. I continue on editing the very few mistakes that there were with a couple stops in between reiterating my position as the paper continues to delve in religious material and seems to be aimed at changing one’s mind. After I finish editing the piece, he begins to ask me questions about my faith and starts talking about Jesus and how if one believes in him that they are granted eternity, whereas if they do not they will perish. I feel extremely angry at this point after realizing that my hunch was in fact true. This man used the pawn of having me edit his “paper” as a bridge to try and convert me. However, I then took a look at it from a different point of view. I really wanted to give this person what he had coming for using such a deceitful tactic. I then realized though that this was just another form of marketing. He was trying to sell me a religion just like Clorox is trying to sell me detergent. Albeit, it was ironically not the most ethical ways of doing so, it comes down to making the sale or not and this was his tactic. Religion, when it comes down to it, is probably the best marketed product on the planet, right?

The recent debacle with Turner Network and their hugely botched guerrilla marketing ploy of placing magnetic boards with a figure of one of the characters from the Cartoon Network show, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” Although there probably have been many marketing mishaps before this, some probably even bigger, this is the first time something like this has happened in the post 9/11 world. The question is…does this mean marketing has it’s limits?

My philosophy has always been to push the envelope really far. On the other hand, you always have to keep in mind what begins to become controversial (although sometimes that’s good) and when you approach a city-wide bomb scare like in Boston.

What do you think? Have you ever come close to going too far?

early spring. At least, let’s hope that’s the case.
With February already here, it’s crazy to think that spring and summer are right around the corner with only three months of school left. A lot of students on campus have already planned out their summers or are in the process of doing so. As for myself, being a pre-business student, it’s hard not to take notice of all the investment banking firms recruiting on campus. A few weeks ago, Goldman Sachs was on campus and just this past week Barclays Capital made a stop at Rutgers. I did not attend the information session for Goldman Sachs as I knew I would be impressed by them and would start getting that cut throat sensation of being the best in class and doing everything I can to get “that job.” I ended up going to the Barclays Capital presentation as I looked up their website and they seemed to be different from the other firms in terms of how they relate with their interns and their size. I thought it might be interesting to see how a smaller (albeit pretty big) investment bank competes for recruits against bigger companies. I was, in fact, impressed with Barclays and they seem to be a great place to start off a career. I might also look at Lehman Brothers as a place to start off as my cousin worked there for a few years. A career, however, is not exactly what I’m looking for as you well know. Nevertheless, I think that if an opportunity came with a great enough learning experience that would allow for individual growth, I might consider it.

Other considerations for this summer include spending a month or two abroad doing something productive (i.e., teaching students about business/entrepreneurship), finding a mentor and perhaps shadowing a successful entrepreneur, or just plain seeing the world.