Rohail Rizvi- Entrepreneur in the Making

In this day and age, it’s not surprising to hear about young people making an income off of the Internet. However, this is on a different level. College students are ditching their part-time jobs and work-study jobs, considering they are earning more than their professors. These lay out the secrets on how to make money while in college.

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What challenges does your company face in general as well as in the HR (hiring) sense?

Staffing is a double edged sword when your business is in a college town like New Brunswick.  We have no shortage of help.  College students flood my restaurant almost daily in search of work.  That’s the good news.  Now the bad news, college kids are not that reliable.  Must view a job in any restaurant as a pit stop on the road to real life.  As such, they do not take the work seriously and as a result we experience high turn-over.  It is expensive to constantly hire and train new people.  We have another restaurant located at the Jersey Shore.  We have the opposite problem at that location.  It is impossible to find anyone to work.  The pool of qualified workers that actually want to work in a restaurant is almost non-existent.  As a result we have entice people with a greater salary and benefits.  This also costs us money.

Can you describe the hiring and firing processes?

We hire more people than we need because sooner or later someone just stops showing up for work.  We have two interviews when we hire.  A modest amount of experience is required to get the job.  A little bit of luck is also required due to the 100’s of applications we receive each month.  To get fired you have to earn three strikes.  Each time an employee makes a big mistake we fill out a form that both employee and employer sign.  After three strikes the employee is fired.

How do you keep talented employees?

This is a restaurant in a college town. Most talented employees eventually get jobs that offer more growth potential.  The ones we have that stay, we try to treat with respect and dignity.  We try to compensate them well.  These seems to work.

What are some of your daily activities and the amount of time you spend on each activity?

I own the joint.  I have hired people to handle most responsibilities.  I handle the books, and all accounting functions.

Are there any programs / events run by the company to try to promote employee interactions and camaraderie? If so, please describe.

We plan two trips a year.  We might rent busses and take the entire restaurant to Atlantic City.  We have rented party boats and gone fishing.  Any type of event where we can get everyone out of the restaurant is a good thing.

How have local demographics effected the people you hire and has diversity played a role?

No.  We hire the best candidate at the time we need help.  Most of our candidates seem to have the same background.  As a result we are not as diverse as I would like to be.  That being said, we always try to hire the best person for the job.

What are the risks / benefits of over- versus under-staffing?

It is always better to have too many people than too few people.  If you have too many people the people that are hungry and want to work will work harder to keep their job.  They will fight to survive.  If you have too few people they have the upper-hand.  If they are late or don’t show up, there is no penalty because you can’t fire them… as you already are short personnel.

Wow. It’s kind of scary getting back on here. I’m actually pretty nervous about this post. It’s been ridiculously long since my last one. I apologize to my readers for leaving you for so long, but even more to anyone who’s ever looked up to me as an entrepreneur. I don’t know how many of you there are out there, but I know I’ve gotten some touching emails in the past.

I won’t try to make this incredibly long. What have I been up to all this time? Well- I’ve taken a lot of leadership positions in my fraternity and that has kept me very busy. The social connections I’ve made in the past semester probably out number the number of connections I’ve ever made in the past.  I’ve made friends and brothers. I’ve definitely learned a lot  during this time and I’m being challenged everyday. I’m pretty used to “being my own boss” and doing everything on my own as an entrepreneur. However, the fraternity is forcing me to learn how to work with others, deal with difficult situations, outside input, and most of all (so far my most difficult challenge) dealing with criticism.

I sometimes wonder where I’d be if I didn’t join the fraternity. I think about whether I would have been better off. Would I have stayed more focused on entrepreneurship? Yeah probably. However, being a brother is teaching me a lot about working with others as well as allowing me to implement my creative side. Thus far, I have held positions of External Social Chair, New Member Education, and now Rush / Publicity Chair. I look forward to using my marketing skills to pursue a successful Rush this semester. However, being that this isn’t a one man show- I’ve already encountered a ton of doubt, criticism, and aversion to new / riskier ideas from my fellow brothers. All I know though, is that I will continue to be a part of this as long as I see purpose in it. If it any point I feel like my involvement is not a part of a bigger purpose, I’ll reorganize my efforts. I can’t see this happening soon as I do believe in what the fraternity tries to uphold.

As for entrepreneurship, I’m still promoting Walamu on campus and making new advertising partnerships for the upcoming semester. I will also be expanding to another school where I have backing from the fraternity. In addition, I am getting my feet wet in affiliate marketing and hope to create a consistent income by the end of this year. I’ll try to keep everyone updated on my journey, but if anyone ever needs to talk to me just shoot me an IM on AIM at romastaflex. I do tend to get lazy and procrastinate with email so just send me an IM anytime. Once again, I am so sorry for leaving for so long. I am grateful for every one of the friends, readers, and sponsors that I have made through this site.

Yep, that’s right. I’m officially halfway through my college career. Or 100% through. Depends on if I decide to continue to stay in school. Right now there’s a possibility that I’ll take at least a semester off of school. We’ll see how I feel by the end of the summer. I have a whole list of things I want to do from backpacking in Europe to interning to getting a whole new perspective on business. That last one is really what this is all about. In the day to day struggle to make something of your company, one tends to lose sight as to what they are really after and forget that it’s the journey that counts and not the destination as cliche as that sounds.

For the next couple weeks, I’ll be looking for a place to intern for this summer. I’ll also be moving into the house on June 1st. Another thing I really want to do this summer is check out the West Coast. I’ve been everywhere from London and Paris to Saudi Arabia, and amazingly have yet to see the West Coast. I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like and I think the vibe there is much more fitting for me. I may also make a stop at Austin as I hear it’s a great city for entrepreneurs.

If anyone cares, here’s my list of things I want to do this summer/next semester: List

If anyone has any other suggestions in terms of what they think I might be able to fill my time with, let me know. What would you do if you had an entire semester off?

P.S. I have Doostang (Professional, invite-only, networking site) invites. If you’d like one let me know and I just might send you one.

I’m almost done with my sophomore year here at Rutgers with only two more final exams to go on Wednesday. I promise I will get back to blogging then and I know many of you have been sending me emails which I have unfortunately been neglecting. I will get to those asap, sorry. I intend to respond to all of them so don’t worry. Meanwhile, if you have facebook and you’re doing big things, request an invitation to my new facebook group: http://rutgers.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2347338415&ref=mf   (The Real Go Gettas)

My apologies for not having posted in a few weeks. I had been extremely busy and under extenuating circumstances which kept me from posting.

To be honest, the last few weeks have been about keeping myself pushing hard towards my goals even when I feel like I’m at my breaking point. When you feel like you can’t take it anymore, when you start questioning why you’re doing what you’re doing, when you feel like your body is decaying from your consistent efforts and is about to collapse, THAT’S the moment where you have to push just a little harder to realize your goals. Block out all that pain and visualize yourself having achieved your goal. It’s at your breaking point that you will need the most motivation and it is that point at which you need to keep pushing the most.

All-nighters, crack-of-dawn mornings, and physical exhaustion have been the norm for me for the past few weeks, but I am happy to say that I stuck to it at my breaking point and am very proud to have reached my goal.

So just remember- keep pushing.

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.

Cool, I’ve finally been tagged for the first time thanks to Adnan over at Blogtrepreneur.

I’m not a big movie guy but here are five of my favorites in no particular order:

• Boiler Room
• The Good Sheperd
• Collateral
• Minority Report
• Wall Street

The Web 2.0 Effect

(aff.)
With so many e-books out there today, the good ones are really few and far between. The priceless ones are even more rare. The Web 2.0 Effect is clearly one of the latter. This book was not written merely for the purpose of making a quick buck on the Internet, but rather really makes a sense of all the hype out there and let’s the reader know what exactly makes sites like Facebook and YouTube a success. If you are an entrepreneur or own a Web 2.0, this is an absolute must read. There have been too many failures by companies trying to mock the success of the now few behemoths in the Web 2.0 world to think that you already know what it takes. Don’t look over the most important aspect of your business: the way it’s execution. The information found in this ebook is absolutely invaluable to the success of your business and if you miss out on even the small stuff in this book, you’ll be very behind.