Wade Markley
This semester was truly a blast. I never would’ve imagined that running a business could be so fun. Running Victory Apparel was a lot of hard work, but in the end, when you have a group dedicated to working hard and having fun at the same time, it’s amazing what you can do. As Kyle mentioned, getting our business approved by Real Life businessmen at the end of the semester was a great feeling. All the hard work paid off and we truly experienced Real Life Real Business in this course. “Victory is a way of life.”
Kyle Taylor
I had a great time this semester working with my group Victory Apparel. We all were determined to make our business a success, as well as get a good grade in the class, and I think we all worked hard to turn that into a reality. Getting our loan approved at the end of the semester by the funding board was awesome. Overall I think we all worked well as a team. Once we all found the areas we excelled in, we really started clicking as a group and the business took off. Ending up with a profit in the end was a good confirmation of the work we put in. Overall I highly enjoyed this semester and this group.
Kevin Cook
My team, Victory Apparel, had our ups and downs running our business this semester. As the year progressed, it was evident that we were starting to mesh better as a team. We all were committed to successfully running our business, make a profit, and finish the class with an A. We all distributed relatively equally in our group based off our capabilities. I would say that Kevin Odenwald was our leader in the group in a sense that he was the best with the finances, which took a large part of the work. I was able to effectively promote and sell our product the best out of the group due to the surveys I created and the sales I made. Jordan was creative and the best with the powerpoint. Kyle proved to be a good salesman and a great public speaker. Wade, our CEO, was always optimistic about everything and did a great job leading our group to “Victory.”
Jordan Brady
Real Business Experience was the most interactive and valuable class that I was able to take this semester. There were so many life lessons to be learned not only from my group but from the activities that we did inside of the classroom. Although I was the only the girl in my group I still thoroughly enjoyed the time I got to spend with my team. Each member brought something new and innovative to the table that I would have not expected. Surprisingly, the guys turned out to be just as good of t-shirt sellers as any female out there. My most valuable lessons however, were learned inside of the classroom. The speaker that came to talk to us about his business was so relevant to everything that we were trying to accomplish with RBE. He was real and so easy to talk to and he even offered a lot of teams advice. The second way I learned many valuable lessons was through the mentors. There is not another class in at Butler where you can sit at a table, twice a week, and receive first hand advice from experienced, professionals. I hope that at some point during my career I am privileged to work with a mentor again because there is no one in the world who can give you better advice.
Kevin Odenwald
The Real Business Experience benefitted me more than most classes I will ever take throughout my college career. Even though I had strong communication and writing skills along with a strong work ethic going into the course, RBE improved my skills and tested my work ethic throughout the entire semester. I was given an extreme amount of situations to hone my talents or learn something new in all the various assignments given, which I would not have had the opportunity to do in most other courses.
One of the main areas that I improved in was creating and executing presentations. With all the presentations assigned for the class – which seemed to average once a week – I learned to be efficient and decisive when making a presentation, to choose what information is the most important to present, and to present with other people. Another aspect that I know I need to work on because the RBE class showed me is my delegation skills. I took much of the work load upon myself for various reasons, and delegating some of that work to other team mates would have made the experience less stressful and more fun. I like the Butler Business slogan of “Real Life. Real Business” and for the RBE class I would add “Real Improvement.”