RBE Blog- Lessons Learned by Matt Sullivan

RBE was a unique experience that is exclusively offered at Butler University. The College of Business mantra, “Real Life. Real Business.” is transparent in this course as sophmores have the opportunity to create and operate a business. Being a business student, I have read books that give advice and helpful tips on creating a business, but the lessons learned from the experience offered in RBE are much more superior that any book could offer. We went through the first couple of weeks as a team composing a marketing plan and analysis, a financial analysis, and a plan of how we would prove that our business could, in fact, be profitable. Going into the proof of concept, we thought we had everything prepared as well as we could only to find out that we had much more to learn. One of our most impacting lessons that we learned is the importance of accounting for the unaccountable. We were questioned by the funding committee, and one of the questions they asked is if we accounted for a spoilage factor for our inventory in our financial analysis. As none of us had thought to mention this, we realized that our financial statements were off because this was not accounted for. We originally planned to store our inventory in one of the team member’s room, but after our final presentation and some advice by the funding committee, we realized this could lead to an internal conflict. They asked us how we knew that our team member wouldn’t get hungry and sneak some of our inventory through his digestive system. We realized that we would then need a neutral location or a lock to place on the storage. We also learned to practice, and practice again. Despite how many times we practiced our presentation, we still had a few flaws that with more practice could have been resolved. These lessons could be mentioned in a book, but until one experiences these lessons first hand, then the lessons will not be retained.