Ouachita Stories

Five finalists competed in Ouachita Baptist University’s third annual OBU Business Plan Competition. A total of $9,000 was awarded to the top three student teams.

First place winner Nate Peace, a senior mass communications, Christian studies and Biblical languages triple major from Bedford, Texas, was awarded $4,000. With the help of faculty advisor Chris Brune, Peace created a plan for “iNews.com,” a social news media website for young adults.

“Basically, iNews.com is composed of news stories that users post and that are extremely short and to the point,” Peace explained. “As a result, our news is quick and easy to read. To ensure credibility, the news is strictly monitored and rated. Lastly, iNews.com is customizable for users and allows them to only see the news that they want.

“I came up with this idea because I noticed a missing niche, news for young adults,” Peace said. “Most news sites are too long and have news that they do not care about, and social media is immediate but impossible to search.”

Britta Stamps, a senior political science major from Fort Smith, Ark., and Tanner Ward, a senior business finance and management and mass communications double major from Benton, Ark., were awarded $3,000 for second place. With Chris Brune as their faculty advisor, Stamps and Ward teamed up to plan TheSpot, a youth sports complex in Dallas offering 13 different sports in one location as well as a restaurant, a gym for adults and a childcare center.

“I got the idea for my plan when I began to take my daughter, who was two at the time, to gymnastics and realized how much time it took out of a parent's day for their kids to participate in extracurricular activities,” Stamps said. “I realized that between all of the sports my brother and I played growing up, my parents didn't have time to do anything for themselves because they were driving us back and forth constantly. I thought it would be a perfect fit if kids could still participate in as many sports as they wanted to, but parents could only make one trip to one place for all of their kids.”

The third place award of $2,000 was awarded to Chad Bullington, a junior accounting major from Windhoek, Namibia, and Jordan Snook, a junior business administration and finance major from Little Rock, Ark., for their web-based accounting and tax service Penguin Financial. Jim Files served as their faculty advisor.

These three teams will compete for a total of $10,000 in prizes against Henderson State University’s top three teams on Feb. 1. The teams also are encouraged to compete in the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup statewide business plan competition in March.

Bryan McKinney, dean of the Hickingbotham School of Business and associate professor of business law, explained the goal of the competition, saying, “The goal is twofold: we want to give students a great learning opportunity, and we want to build a spirit of entrepreneurialism across campus.”

“I gained so much from this experience,” Stamps said. “Besides being able to tell you exactly how much a football goalpost or a gymnastics spring floor costs, I learned that corporate taxes really affect the bottom line of a business. It’s not enough for your idea to sound good to you, but you have to convince investors and consumers it is a good plan as well. There is so much more that goes into planning a business than even I realized after four years of classes in business.”

“Writing a business plan forces you to think through every aspect of starting and running a business,” Ward explained. “You get to put into practice everything you've learned in class, from accounting to marketing, and you begin to realize how important a role each of these plays in whether or not your company will be a success or a failure. I've learned that starting a business isn't as easy as just renting a shop and sticking an ‘open’ sign in the window; it takes months of research and planning before you can even open your doors.”

For more information, contact Bryan McKinney at [email protected] or (870) 245-5513.

By Nicci Fillinger