Burnett accepting 2024 Railbirds Jacket
“Having done it all by myself, it was so nice to have someone keeping me accountable,” she said. Savvy Sweet Pecans is now in two storefronts, has an online store, and participates in farmers markets throughout middle Tennessee. “MTSU has given me so many opportunities to share about my business and do things that were hands-on as opposed to just sitting in a class, listening to a professor talk,” Tucker said.
The Power of Coaching
“We have several funded competitions throughout the program, which sets us apart,” Aaron said. “We’re always looking for ways to give prize money to our students.” Tucker used her 2023 BPC finalist winnings to buy materials to set up at farmers markets. Then she used feedback from the judges to improve her business plan and win first place (and another $5,000) at the National Small Business Institute Conference Business Plan Competition in 2024. Meeting and learning from those judges—local business standouts like McDowell—is the real prize, Aaron said.
For MTSU Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship majors, their first big opportunity to pitch a business comes at the end of a junior-level class taught by entrepreneur Dennis Gupton. In his Shark Tank-style competition, students present to a panel of local professionals, including a banker.
“I’ve seen these judges make offers on the spot: ‘I’ll give you $50,000,’ or whatever. That stuff happens. But it’s more accurate to say that after two months of participation in the competition, [participants] have received extremely valuable feedback from a myriad of judges.”
Gupton, who recently secured $8,500 in annual prize money from the Nashville-based Patton Foundation, helps his students refine their ideas so they’re marketable and viable.
Competitive Spirit
“Students are scared to do it,” he said, “but afterward they’re like, ‘OK, I understand now.’ They’re put in that hot seat to answer those questions because that’s going to prepare them to stand in front of a loan officer and ask for $80,000.” Gupton’s finalists often move on to the Business Plan Competition (BPC), which Aaron organizes once a year. Open to all MTSU students and recent graduates, the BPC awards cash prizes to winners and finalists.
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McDowell showed his entrepreneurial spirit early, when he got a Creepy Crawler maker and sold plastic bugs to his fellow fourth-graders. But he became an entrepreneur as a student at Mount Juliet High School, when he went from selling Cutco knives to recruiting MTSU students to sell them too. “That was my first experience making money off someone else selling, and training someone else how to sell,” he said. Like McDowell, Raymond Clifton (’24, BIE) took two journeys—one personal, one professional—to become an entrepreneur. First, he had to overcome a series of life events