Best summer job: You learn business and technical skills

March 27, 2001 —

It's no secret that business and technical skills are a magical combination. But only a few years back, techies were never encouraged to polish business skills: Staying at technology's bleeding edge was what it was all about. Like the separation of church and state, a clear distinction existed between technical ability and business skills. That's no longer true. Gone too is the myth that entrepreneurs are born rather than made.

Thinking has changed. Techies no longer subscribe to those beliefs and neither does anyone else. In another new wrinkle, the melding of technical and business skills that typically occurred only after several years in the work force is now happening to high-school students, many of whom are inclined to use spare time surfing the Net rather than pursuing sports. Ephren Taylor, Jr. personifies the recent realization that combining technical and business skills makes a powerful career-building tool.

In 1999, Taylor, then 16, and best friend Mike Stahl, also 16, already had a solid business concept ready to fly. It was a Website for connecting job seekers in high school and college to employers. The employers would pay to list their jobs on the site, whereas the service would be free to job seekers. While not exactly an original idea, it was a moneymaker. So GoFerretGo.com was born in Overland Park, Mo. Taylor was the techie and Stahl was the businessperson on the project.

Today, Taylor gets peeved if he is identified solely for his technical skills. He boasts having been part of the strategic planning process with a say in every major technical and business decision. Yet, Taylor admits that his technical skills were what got the ball rolling. The partners' first Website was his creation.

By age 16, Taylor had amassed a half-dozen technical certifications, so it's not surprising that he and Stahl launched an e-commerce company. While most teens master entrepreneurial skills by trial and error, these two received their business education through programs developed by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, a nonprofit organization that provides business training and education in Kansas City, Mo.

Yet, elementary and high schools are slow to pick up on the value of teaching entrepreneurial skills, according to Marilyn Kourilsky, a professor of education and social entrepreneurship at UCLA and education advisor at the Kauffman Center. Kourilsky is also coauthor, with William Walstad and Mable M. Hay, of E Generation (Kendall/Hunt Publishing; $12.95), which contends that nations will increasingly rely on entrepreneurs to stimulate economic growth. Virtually all schools, from elementary through college levels, are quick to teach technical skills, but they remain slow in imparting the ABCs of entrepreneurship. Along with the necessity of mastering the three Rs, the importance of knowing how to search the Internet and utilize the hot software of the day is disputed by no one. Yet it's equally important to know how global business meshes advanced technology with basic economics.

The message is that you can't start building business skills early enough. Ideally, the process ought to begin in high school. Hasn't the dot-com shakeout and a cooling economy pointed up the importance of fine-tuning business and managerial skills? Hundreds of dot-coms bombed because their young founders knew next to nothing about running a business. They learned lessons the hard way when their companies failed to turn profits and the once-bottomless well of venture capital dried up. Odds are that sad fate won't happen to GoFerretGo.com.

Ultimately, the most marketable IT graduates have internship experience that taught them both entrepreneurial and technical skills.

Taylor and Stahl launched their company with $1,000 of savings. Two years later, they conquered $250,000 in angel financing. Taylor says another round of financing is not too far in the future. This year, he projects sales of more than $500,000.

It's not luck that made GoFerretGo.com successful, but the combination of technical and entrepreneurial skills. The company is hardly three years old and Taylor has his sights set on being acquired and retiring at 21. An acquisition is certainly a possibility, but it is doubtful that Taylor will quit at 21 since he'll be at the height of his entrepreneurial game. As long as he remains on the cutting edge of both technology and business, success is almost assured.

ITworld.com