By Dr. Brian O’Rear, Director, Rising Entrepreneur Institute
I’ve lived two lives in the world of entrepreneurship. In one, I started, grew, and sold a business for well over $1 million, learning through sweat, failure, and triumph. In the other, I taught from the front of a classroom as an adjunct professor at a private Christian college, guiding eager would-be entrepreneurs through the academic side of business. Over time, I saw a stark contrast between the lessons of the real world and the confines of a lecture hall, between the motivations to create a successful business and to get a good grade. That’s why I’m so passionate about the Rising Entrepreneur Institute. Here, students don’t just study business—they live it.
My Entrepreneurial Journey
My business journey began immediately following my Air Force career. I had spent over two decades defending our nation, leading men, and flying high-performance jet aircraft in combat. I even set a world record once (ironically, it only lasted twenty-four hours). However, when that career ended, and I finally hung up my flight gear and uniform for the last time, I shied away from the suit and tie my colleagues were drawn to. Instead, I longed to do something different, to participate in the free-market system I had spent my life defending. I decided to start a business.
Over the next eight years, I built a successful business in the home service industry, employing professionals and developing a company culture that prized excellence in everything we did. We attracted veterans, and these young warriors – often fresh from overseas deployments – worked as a team as we gradually grew the company to be top in our state, and then #1 in our industry in the nation.
The first few years of the business were rough, to put it mildly. I had been a Colonel in the Air Force and held two Master’s degrees, and immediately I entered a playing field where nobody cared about professional or academic credentials. This was a world of fierce competition for service, and nothing mattered but to delight the customer. I quickly learned the most important character trait of any entrepreneur is grit- that ability to get punched in the face, pick yourself up, and keep on going. Day after day. Those were tough days, but they taught invaluable lessons.
Eventually, I sold the business so I could finish my doctorate and teach, hoping to share the thrill of entrepreneurship with aspiring small business owners. I assumed that my doctoral program would elevate my skills and give me better insight into the entrepreneurial world. I was wrong. It was almost all theory, writing, and study, and precious little practical application.
Nevertheless, once I completed my doctoral degree, I began teaching entrepreneurship to college students as an adjunct professor. From the start, my goal was to insert real-world application into the curriculum, but I had limited success, mostly due to the confines of academia.
As semesters passed, I became increasingly frustrated. College is not structured in a way to teach a student how to succeed as an entrepreneur. Instead, it is a setup to teach them ABOUT entrepreneurship- how to create a great PowerPoint presentation, how to do case studies on successful companies like Tesla and Starbucks, and how to manage a business (from the perspective of a book). Even at our best, when students focused on small endeavors and developed viable plans, they still lacked the real-world punch in the face that accompanies a failed marketing effort, a serious customer complaint, or a cashflow crunch that keeps them up at night. Those lessons are simply impossible to replicate in the classroom.
That disconnect drove me to leave the classroom two years ago and begin working with college-age students who were starting real-world businesses. To be sure, the pressures in such a program are far more acute: bad advice to these students means poor sales and perhaps a failed business. The pressure on them is greater than it is on college students, too- it’s not just a poor grade on a PowerPoint presentation. Failure in their small business may mean a hit to their sales and profits. None of this is theoretical- it’s all real.
My work as the Business Director working with the Author Conservatory, combined with my experience as an entrepreneur and as a past adjunct professor, led me to help create the Rising Entrepreneur Institute, where students don’t just dream—they do.
The College Experience: Expensive Theory
Picture a typical business major at any college. He enrolls in my entrepreneurship course, a small part of a four-year degree costing $30,000 annually—$120,000 total, not counting books, housing, or interest on loans. His schedule is packed: Intro to Marketing, Financial Accounting, Business Ethics, and my class, Entrepreneurship 301. Each course demands readings, exams, and group projects. In my class, his big assignment is a 20-page business plan for a hypothetical startup—a coffee shop, an app, a nonprofit, something like that. He spends weeks researching market trends, crafting financial projections, and designing a sleek presentation. His team pitches to me and a panel of local business owners, earning an A for clarity and creativity. His classmates all vote on one another’s presentations to help reinforce the value of their business ideas.
This all sounds great, doesn’t it? The problem is that none of the students start these businesses. Their financial projections, sometimes off by a mile, suffer nothing more than the embarrassment of some pointed questions during the debriefing – and a lower grade – nothing like the pain of a real-world fiscal disaster that would need to be identified, analyzed, and corrected in real-time.
Instead, after the presentation, the plan sits in a binder gathering dust, and the student moves on to the next course. By graduation, students have become better at the presentations, more confident in their abilities, and more polished in their analysis, but they’ve never sold a product, negotiated with a supplier, budgeted real money on a marketing campaign, or felt the sting of a pointed rejection. They learn how to talk about business, not build one.
The financial cost can be brutal, too. As an example, a $120,000 degree might leave a student with $80,000 in debt. He’s 22, with a diploma but no real-world experience. If he wants to start a business, he’s starting from scratch, competing against peers who skipped college and learned by doing. The time cost is just as steep: four years spent in classrooms, when two years of hands-on work could have launched a real venture. And the opportunity cost? Unbounded. The young would-be entrepreneur could have been testing ideas, failing fast, iterating, and starting over. Instead, he’s been perfecting his PowerPoint skills.
This is not to say college is not a good fit for many. It can be. However, for the student who wants to build his own business, the college experience may simply delay the beginnings and create a debt chasm that makes a start-up out of the question after graduation. Why not explore an alternative?
Rising Entrepreneur Institute: Learning by Launching
Contrast that college student with a person who decides to learn entrepreneurship by doing it. However, instead of simply reading books and watching YouTube videos, she invests in her education by enrolling in the Rising Entrepreneur Institute. The Institute’s two-year program, priced at just $6,990 per year, is designed as a college replacement. She pays a fraction of college tuition – about the same cost per year as four MBA courses – and finishes in half the time. But the real difference isn’t cost or duration; it’s the experience, especially the coaching and guidance. And a viable business.
At Rising Entrepreneur Institute, students don’t create hypothetical business plans they will never use. Instead, they launch real businesses. Guided by eight coaches—each a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple ventures under their belts—students start small, first researching markets, competition, price structures, and more, not from a textbook but by talking to customers. They build websites, set prices, and land real clients. Soon after launching their first venture, they’re tweaking marketing, pricing, and offerings based on what’s working (or not). If the idea flops, they pivot, learning resilience and grit in real time. By year two, they are heavy into self-analysis and coaching consultations to establish strategic plans for the long term.
The coaching is the real game-changer. My college students got 15 weeks of me, two hours a week, split among 30 classmates. At the Institute, our coach-to-student ratio averages 1 to 10, and students get personalized mentorship from coaches who’ve been where they are. Most of our coaches are still running their own businesses. They are like the master craftsmen of a trade school, passing down skills through apprenticeship, but with the depth of a college-level program.
The Institute’s system is like a franchise model for newbies. Just as a McDonald’s franchisee gets a proven playbook – recipes, branding, training – our students get a framework: market research tools, marketing templates, financial trackers. But unlike a franchise, they’re not locked into someone else’s brand. Students identify and pursue their own business, with coaches as guardrails. When they hit a bump, such as poor sales or a customer complaint, the coach helps them navigate the trouble, teaching by example and experience how to analyze the “why” behind the problem. This is learning by doing, not theorizing.
As in life, failure is a possibility, and we are not afraid of it. Our approach is to lean in, fail fast, learn, improve, and move on. In college, a failed business plan might mean a B- instead of an A. At the Institute, a failed marketing campaign is a masterclass. Students dig into why the ads didn’t convert—wrong audience? Bad messaging?—and try again. It’s not that failure isn’t an option; it is. It’s that we treat failure as the teacher it ought to be. That cycle of action, analysis, and adaptation is what I learned building my business. It’s what separates entrepreneurs from dreamers.
Cost was another sore point. At $30,000 a year, students deserved more than theory. I’d see parents sacrifice savings, believing the degree was a ticket to success. But most graduates ended up in entry-level jobs, not startups. I had some long, heart-wrenching conversations with students who were $100,000 or more in debt and extremely anxious about their financial futures as they saw their friends getting $60,000 a year jobs after graduation. The system sold a promise it rarely kept.
Why Try Rising Entrepreneur Institute
Rising Entrepreneur Institute is built for action, not abstraction. Students don’t need to wait four years to start their journey; they’re on it from day one. Our coaches don’t grade on hypotheticals; they guide students through real wins and losses. The price tag is a bargain compared to college costs, and the two-year timeline respects students’ time. Students aren’t just earning a certificate; they earn experience and income.
The Institute’s faith-driven approach seals the deal. It’s not about chasing wealth; it’s about building businesses that serve.
A Call to Action
As an entrepreneur who’s been there and a professor who’s seen the alternative, I believe in programs that prioritize doing over dreaming. Rising Entrepreneur Institute isn’t just an education—it’s a launchpad. For any college-age student wondering what’s next or any parent questioning college’s value, the Institute offers a viable opportunity. We hope you take it.