Entrepreneur represents what UK aspires to
February 11, 2010
Balancing 15 credit hours and 20 hours of work would be difficult enough for most students. Dallas Rose, co-owner of Bunks Gourmet Burgers, does all that while spending 80 hours a week running his business.
Professors always tell their students that the time they spend in the classroom is only half of the battle of creating a foundation for a successful career. The rest comes from developing a knowledge of the field outside the classroom and out in the real world.
As a finance senior, Rose is doing more than getting a feel for what it’s like to be a part of the business world. Instead he jumped in head first, starting his own restaurant inside a local bar.
While sitting in class learning the fundamentals of running a business certainly proves to be useful, nothing competes with doing the real thing, where mistakes are as real as the successes.
UK stresses that its ultimate goal is teach students so they can one day enter the work force and give back to the state, a concept that is seen in the top-20 plan.
Rose epitomizes the brand of student UK hopes to create through this plan, as he has harnessed the lessons learned from the classroom and applied them to his own business.
What’s more is his ambition doesn’t stop there. Sure, he has started a successful business while doubling as a college student. But he has aspirations that reach even higher.
“I went into it thinking that I want to have 200 plus locations,” Rose said in a Feb. 9 Kernel article.
In less than a year, Bunk’s is almost out of the red from its original $20,000 dollar investment, and Rose said income is only increasing.
Rose knew it was a real possibility the owners could have “fallen on their faces,” but had enough confidence to open up the restaurant anyway.
Taking in no salary until the restaurant has paid back its investment, finishing up classes and still working at P.F. Chang’s, Rose is the type of student that feeds in to UK’s top-20 plan, regardless of whether or not the university ever actually achieves the ranking. Ultimately the ranking is just a number.
But people like Rose aren’t just numbers and their successes should be a model for anyone that walks this campus.
