Student is a busy entrepreneur
Bryan Kress has started three different enterprises and is still a year away from finishing college. The 22-year-old Southern Illinois University Edwardsville senior, who is majoring in economics and finance, and also is pursuing a degree in accounting, didn’t waiting for graduation before launching his own online social media consultation business. His newest venture, Business on the Mound, combines his love for this and baseball. He recently talked more about it with business reporter Will Buss:
Q: What is Business on the Mound?
A: “What it does essentially is that it helps people pitch their business. The idea came from pitchers, who pitch off of a baseball mound. I like baseball, and I like business. So we were trying to tie the two together, and also with the limitations on domain names, it was really hard to find a good one, so I had to become creative. Right now what the site does is it allows you to basically, if you’re a business owner, and you want to get your idea out, especially small businesses and entrepreneurs, it’s really hard for you to get publicity and media attention. So what we do at Business on the Mound is that I give you a chance to talk about your business over a recording. And what we do is submit it on a podcast. And with that podcast, you can download it off of I-tunes, you can share it with all of your friends, and also through various RSS feeds to allow it to be sent all over the Internet. So on a daily basis, not only for that business of the week that gets to pitch their business, Monday through Friday I give you various business tips. So Monday is “Money Talk Mondays,” Tuesday is “Management,” Wednesday is “Web Site Wednesdays,” Thursday is “Thirsty For Marketing Thursdays” and then Friday is the “Business of the Week,” which is who we spotlight on there.”
Q: How did you get started?
A: “I established it about four months ago is when I established the Web site. And I started this Web site simply based off of going to different business groups, People In Business happens to be one of them, and I saw that I had a lot of knowledge that I wasn’t putting on paper, basically. So people were asking where could I learn more about this or what could I learn more about this? So I decided what would be easier than having blog where I write daily articles about these topics that I know or if I don’t know about them, why not have a guest author come onto the site and talk about that particular topic to help my listeners and readers all on that one page. That’s really how it came about. People wanted to know more, and I figured I’d be able to help them out with what I know.”
Q: What can you tell us about your other businesses?
A: “They’re all underneath the name Kress Developments, but then it kind of branches out from there. I do real estate. I have two properties in Edwardsville, and there’s a four-unit down in Granite City that I split with another person, we’re partners. I have the Web site business Note2Home, which is actually a network that I’m in the middle of talking with venture capitalists about. What that does is it helps create a one-stop shop for teachers, parents, children all on one site. If you wanted to check your child’s grades, and not just one child, but all of your children. If you wanted to check all for their grades, and they may be going to different schools, so you’re able to go to this one site and access all of their grade information, all of their homework, pass outs, all of the clutter from one site. So you can access this one site and then if they have an event like a baseball game or maybe your daughter has a ballet recital, you’re able to see these events and get maps to them instantly. So I’m on the go, and I need to figure out where the ballet recital is in St. Louis, I just click on ‘view map’ or ‘get directions’ and the directions are actually based on your profile. And at the same time, the school benefits because it’s a free site and they’re also able to buy school supplies through something along the lines of amazon.com. So you buy the school supplies from the site, then there’s a 10 percent margin that Amazon gets based off of their store, so a portion of it would go to the school and then the other portion would go to the site so I can fund the hosting on it.”
Q: How have you been able to run all of your enterprises while going to school?
A: “I’ve noticed that being in college has helped more than anything because it allows me to open up my mind, but at the same time as a professor is talking about something, I can relate it back to what I’m doing.”