The beating coronary heart of JMU’s School of Enterprise curriculum is a 12-credit-hour course that integrates finance, administration, advertising and marketing and operations often called COB 300, which college students take instantly following formal acceptance into the school their junior 12 months. The course locations college students in cross-disciplinary groups and duties them with integrating materials from the 4 lessons and growing a viable marketing strategy.

The course looms giant. Practically with out exception, college students worry the trials of COB 300. Additionally almost with out exception, the school’s alumni reward what they realized within the course. 

Twenty years in the past, profitable enterprise capitalist Don Rainey (’82) proposed a proper marketing strategy competitors, which might invite college students with the very best enterprise plans created in COB 300 to compete for scholarships. Since its inception, almost 600 college students have participated within the Rainey-Shepard Enterprise Plan Competitors because of the generosity of Rainey and Russell “Rusty” Shepard (’86), who funded the endowment that generates greater than $25,000 yearly in competitors scholarships. 

Upon the twentieth anniversary of the competitors this 12 months, Rainey chatted by way of Zoom with a number of of the alumni who look again fondly on this formative expertise.

“I talked to a bunch of competitors alumni, and it’s very shifting and significant to me after they speak concerning the impression and that it actually did put together them,” Rainey stated. “Many have stated to me that was a spotlight of their expertise within the School of Enterprise. And I stated, ‘Properly, , clearly that’s excess of we’d have ever hoped for.’”  

Brett Danielson (’18), founder and CEO of BarTrack Inc., a worldwide hospitality expertise firm, was among the many alumni on the decision with Rainey.

“The competitors made me notice how a lot I really like creating and fixing issues, and the way I’m going to place my all into it,” Danielson stated. “Going by means of that course of actually makes you suppose in another way and put us in a scenario that we in any other case wouldn’t have been. And who is aware of, with out the marketing strategy competitors, I may definitively say my life can be utterly completely different.

“I undoubtedly view JMU as one of many greatest influences on my life, and the marketing strategy competitors is true there with it,” he stated. 

For Rainey and Shepard, the marketing strategy competitors endowment was deliberately designed to focus the minds of the opponents.

“The second I hope for is that in 10, 15 or 20 years, they’re standing outdoors a boardroom, and so they should go in and persuade individuals of their concepts, the standard of their work, the precision of their considering,” Rainey stated. “There’s large cash on the road, and so they’ve already skilled that due to the marketing strategy competitors. And so, the financial element of the marketing strategy competitors isn’t life-changing for anybody, however it’s necessary.”

Danielson stated of the prize cash, “The chance to win a scholarship, for us, was actually necessary. I believe it mattered to each single individual on the crew. You understand, all of us have scholar debt. So, it was a giant deal for us to compete on a degree the place there was some actual reward for us if we did one thing good. It was an incredible expertise.”

Rainey stated many marketing strategy competitors alumni at the moment are a long time into their careers and have gone on to attain nice issues. “And it’s great to speak to them too,” he stated, “to see that they bear in mind it, and that they, in lots of instances, treasure it and really feel it helped propel them.”