Hello, and welcome to Connect, Collaborate, Champion, the podcast of the new American colleges and universities, a network of private canvases working to educate students for the public good. Our podcast speaks with insightful experts about current and future issues in higher education and examines the impact of higher ed on society. Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_03Welcome back to the NACU podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Opusio, Senior Director of Programs and Communications here at NACU. Today, we've got a standout story that checks a lot of boxes, real-world learning, community impact, and student-driven innovation. We're diving into the Integrated Business Program at the University of La Verne, and trust me, this program is pretty impressive on its own. But what really makes it shine is how perfectly it reflects two key components that make an institution a NACU institution. Blending professional preparation with a strong commitment to civic engagement. Joining me is Rick Hasse, the program director who's been instrumental in shaping this unique experience. And we also have two incredible students, Anthony Garrido and Malia Capistrano, who used what they learned in the classroom to launch actual businesses from the ground up in just 16 weeks. It's an inspiring model of how learning should look active, applied, and anchored in purpose. The students come away not just with course credit, but with real experience that has a community impact. Welcome to the NACU podcast, Rick, Malia, and Anthony. Could you please go ahead and introduce yourselves so we know who's who?
SPEAKER_01My name is Rick Hasse. I'm an instructor in the College of Business. I teach finance and accounting, and I've been associated with the University of La Verne for 36 years.
SPEAKER_02Hi, everyone. I'm Malia Kabushalo. I'm a sophomore business major. Hi,
SPEAKER_04everybody. I'm Anthony Garrido, and I'm a senior at the University of La Verne.
SPEAKER_03All right. Now that we know who everybody is, Rick, why don't we start with you? Can you tell us a bit about the Integrated Business Program?
SPEAKER_01The Integrated Business Program is a very unique program offered by the University of La Verne College of Business. We began in 2011 as a way of providing hands-on experience to by integrating finance, management, marketing, and running a company into a 16-unit or a four-course block of courses, either in the student's sophomore year or in their junior year, depending on where they are with... If there is an honor student, they'll probably take the program in a sophomore year. If a regular program student, they take it in junior year. So it's a block of four courses that they take at the same time. And this... Integration of all these different types of disciplines leads to them creating a company, preparing a business plan, going to a bank and securing a loan, selling their product, with the proceeds of the product going to charity. And we have found that this is a great way for students to learn about marketing, management, but also in an integrated format of how it affects them running a company and getting hands-on experience in managing a company. They develop product development, inventory control, accounting analysis, budget variances, operations analysis. We also manage it. Each team manages an internet site. So it's a great program to offer students a complete knowledge of actually running a business.
SPEAKER_03That is really interesting. So because it's a four course block, does that mean that's the only thing they're doing in that
SPEAKER_01particular semester? Yes, in that semester, that's the only courses they take. And it gives them integration where they're all working together with four different professors, four different programs, but all leading to what is called the practicum course, which is the business 390 course, where they work with a professor and actually running the company.
SPEAKER_03Is this mandatory for all of your business students or they elect to take this course?
SPEAKER_01It's mandatory if you're in the Bachelor of Science program in the business administration. If you're a Bachelor of Arts major in the business administration, it is not required. So roughly we get during a semester, roughly 50 students a semester in the program in a two semester format.
SPEAKER_03That's a lot of pieces put together. Really interesting. What's the most challenging part of this?
SPEAKER_01Well, there's two areas of challenge. 16 weeks to start up a business, learn about marketing and management and finance, integrate accounting controls and sell your product, develop a website. The challenge is really getting it up to speed quickly. We go in blocks in the 16 weeks. The first five weeks are setting up the company. Students determine what their responsibilities are, CEO, CFO, operations, marketing, internet. And then once that's the that you put together a business plan. And then at the end of five weeks, we meet with the bankers and prepare a presentation on the business plan. After that presentation, the bankers usually give them a line of credit of $2,500. And then we get into the 10-week sales and operations mode of the course, where they take that $2,500, buy their product, and begin selling it and going out into the community and raising money for their charity.
SPEAKER_03That's really interesting. It also sounds very stressful and high energy. Let's go back a loan from the bank. If you have 50 students in the program, how do you... manage that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, that's a good question. We break up the students into teams, anywhere from seven to nine team members, depending on the enrollments, depending on that. And we break them up into teams or companies. So for example, this spring semester, we have four companies, four teams, and each one of those teams put together a business plan and present to the bankers to secure a $2,500 line of credit with the bank. And then that money is credited to a bank account that they open up in their company's name. And then they go out and buy the product, deposit the money and operate their business.
SPEAKER_03All right, that makes a little more sense to me that they're working together, which is wonderful. How are the students paired together?
SPEAKER_01Well, the professors who run the program, we know the students pretty well by the time they're sophomores and juniors. So the students enroll in the class, and then we match them up basically by what we think, how they all will mesh together. You know, we want to have teams with some men, some women. We want to have diversity backgrounds. We have a very diverse student body here at Laverne, and we want to make Sure. It's random, to be honest with you. But we do move students around and pair the students up by what we know of their abilities and what their expertise is. Some of them are accounting majors, maybe. Some of them are marketing concentrations. So we kind of match up the teams to incorporate all the skills of that group.
SPEAKER_03You mentioned that there's faculty teaching each of the four courses. Do you engage other areas of the institution, like, say, the Career Center or anything like that in terms of running this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what we do is we spend a lot of time with our business office and treasury operations because naturally for accountability and liability purposes, we have to make sure we're depositing the money and keeping track of all the funds. So we work closely with the CFO's office. We also work closely, not so much during the semester, but at the end of the semester with our career planning office to let them know that these students now have the ability to go into basically run a department or run a business based on their knowledge of the course. And we coordinate that with internships or any job development. And during the course at the beginning of the semester, we have what is called a small business development center on our campus. Small business, meaning they find and help small businesses get started and run. That office coordinates with our students in their business plan development and the coordinating of duties within the teams to give them experience about how small businesses do it. So those are the three main areas. Also, since we are giving to charity and community development, we work with our advancement office, our fundraising office, just so they're linked into the development side of things and we're raising money for charity.
SPEAKER_03All right, let's talk about some of these projects for the students. Malia, can we start with you? Yeah. Why don't you tell us about Cool Ash Koozies, which is really cool. I went to your website recently. Very nice.
SPEAKER_02So we started with the idea that we had to include a charity with everything. So recently, before the semester started in around February, there was a bunch of California fires, especially in the Palisades and Altadena. So going into that, we knew that we wanted to focus on something fire related. We ended up choosing the California Fire Foundation as our charity. We knew that a lot of groups would choose fire victims, which obviously is very important, but we also wanted to focus on the firefighters. So the koozie ended up being a little play on words, kind of like koozies keep things cold while cold things put fires out so that was a little bit of a fun play on that and then we want to do something a little bit different than like your typical slide-on koozie that goes onto a drink so we found a slap-on koozie that basically slaps onto a can like a slap-on bracelet that we played with when we were kids making sure that the koozie fits any size can and it'll keep your drinks nice and cold so that's basically how we came up with the product and everything it's been pretty successful so far
SPEAKER_03You have a really cool design on the koozies and I could link to your website in the show notes for this so people can go to your website and check them out. And you also have an Instagram account too. Is that correct? Yes, we do. And I think TikTok, right? Yeah. So who did the design and where did you find the actual materials to make these?
SPEAKER_02Well, I actually made the design. I have a little bit of a background in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Nice. So I kind of merged that with something on Canva and just put it together myself. And then the actual product itself, we found a supplier. So that's how we got the product. And they actually put the design on it for us. And then we just have that shipped here and we keep inventory on campus. In terms of sales,
SPEAKER_03do you have to ship anything or is it mostly local sales?
SPEAKER_02It's mostly local sales. We can use our website if we would like to, but we find a bunch of events around. So we've done like farmer's markets. We've done a couple of car shows. We went to our school's baseball games and softball games or local soccer parks and stuff like that. And just going around selling our products. So going up to people and learning how to sell.
SPEAKER_03So what was your specialty? You mentioned that you have some design background. What's your area within the business program that you're focused on? If you have one already?
SPEAKER_02I don't have anything focused on like a concentration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right now or anything. But within my group, I'm actually the CEO of our group of seven. How much money did you raise? You didn't mention that yet, did you? No. So we've actually raised just under $4,000. We're in week eight of 10 weeks. So that $4,000 is going to be the charity check. But we've also paid off our loan already. So we've probably made about $6,500 so far. Wow. That's really
SPEAKER_03impressive.
SPEAKER_02Thank
SPEAKER_03you. Is this something you think you would keep going beyond the semester?
SPEAKER_02I've thought about it. Just do it personally. I have to think about making a bigger order of inventory myself and then maybe finding a different logo. Right. Right.
SPEAKER_01volleyball team, which won our conference championship last year, and also went to the final round of the NCAA tournament. So besides being a student on campus and business, she's very busy with as a student athlete and participating in a lot of student groups. So she's got her hands full.
SPEAKER_03Yes, you do. You do. What was most enjoyable about working on this project?
SPEAKER_02I really just enjoyed like the real world experience that I've gained. Since it's over 16 weeks, I feel like I've just learned so much within the past 10 so far. I think definitely creating the pitch to the bank and working together with the team and putting together a presentation and seeing it all actually come together and start selling an actual product and actually making our first couple of sales. That was really exciting. Just seeing like, wow, people actually like this. Some people want to buy it. And then also just seeing our group have fun with it. We put this all together and seeing them enjoy going out and selling things too.
SPEAKER_03All right. Well, Anthony has been very quiet and patient. So let's talk to Anthony a bit about his project. Before we get into your project for this semester, your bio shows that you have actually some experience prior to this and you're a senior right now. So can you talk a little bit about your history as an entrepreneur and then what you're doing this semester?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So ever since I was a kid, I've always really been entrepreneurial focused. I've Started multiple businesses starting from the age of like 15. A lot of those failed and last year I started my first like official big business. It's called Greedo's Vending Machines and I actually went to the SBDC on campus that Professor Hassey talked about. Completely free services and they helped build a business plan with me, help me get a loan, help me analyze the things that I wouldn't think of as a starting entrepreneur. So right now, I do own six different vending machines at multiple different locations. And I want to continue to grow that business. Every three to four months, I'm looking for a new location. And basically, what I do is I buy vending machines. I have a place out here in Machu Picchu that I go to to get my vending machines. And I go door to door to warehouses to... Tire shops, any place that I see there's a lot of employees, a lot of people, a lot of foot traffic. And I simply ask them, hey, I'm Anthony Greedo with my company and this is what I do. And I have credit card readers on all my machines that help track my inventory, my financials. I work a full-time job and I'm a student as well. So I just need to have those things there to help make my time run more smoothly. Wow.
SPEAKER_03So that's not your project, though. That's what you came in with.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Michelle, if I might add, the reason Anthony was selected to be in this podcast is because he was a CEO of his team last semester. like malaya and his team sold hats and were very successful and because they were so successful in as part of running our program of the four course program every semester besides the faculty we ask retired business leaders to advise us and consult with us and help run the businesses and also we ask former students with their expertise to come in and speak to the students as advisors and help them. Anthony is one of those advisors this semester in the program advising one of our teams in the project. And that also is selling hats as well. He's like an experienced student in the program. He's done it. And now he's taking that entrepreneurial spirit and doing things on his own at the same time, helping new students in the program.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's wonderful. I was wondering, because you said people usually take it either sophomore or junior year, and I know Anthony's a senior. So let's go back a little bit, Anthony, and talk about when you were in the program, the hats. Tell me about these hats and what they were like and what the charity was that you selected.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so our semester fell in the fall semester. So We wanted to have a charity that was oriented towards breast cancer because October was right in the middle of our semester. A lot of our team members had people that had cancer in their family. My aunt had passed away from cancer like a week before that semester started. Gosh. So we chose a Susan G. Komen for a cure charity out here in the Inland Empire. And we wanted a hat that represented cancer. breast cancer as well. So I'll show you right here, but it was I Heart Boobies.
SPEAKER_03I love it.
SPEAKER_04With the heart in the form of a breast cancer ribbon. So we see that it has a good impact on the charity, but when you're out there selling to the people, That hat's going to catch your eye. You see buoys on a hat. It's like, hey, I got to stop and see.
SPEAKER_03Love it. That's great. And I will have to add here that I am a breast cancer survivor. So thank you very much for that. I may need to get one of those hats. Tell me about how your semester went when you were doing this as well. What were some of the challenging aspects of doing this? What actually went well, though, given that you already had some business experience?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so going into it, we knew that it was a product that was kind of risky. We didn't know if it was going to be really good or flop. So we had to hit it hard in October during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We went to a lot of parades, breast cancer walks. Our charity hosted – they always host a yearly breast cancer walk, and they allowed us to go to their sponsorship row, and we ended up selling like $2,000 a product just within like four hours there.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_04So during October, we really hit it hard and – And by the end of the semester, we ended up profiting $4,000 and about a gross of $12,000.
SPEAKER_03That's amazing. And so the gross of $12,000, then you had to take the loan off of that and then the supplies as well. Yeah, all that stuff. Wow, that's a lot of money. Were most of your sales in October, I assume? Yeah, probably like 80%
SPEAKER_04of them. After that in November, we try to go to these events, but it wasn't catching people's eyes anymore.
SPEAKER_03They've moved on to something else. That's wonderful, though. Question for both of you, maybe we'll go back to Malia, is what skills did you learn during the semester that you think you either didn't have before or that you had but weren't quite as developed as they are now?
SPEAKER_02I think throughout the semester, I've learned a lot about my leadership skills, especially being CEO of this company. I've had some going into it just being a captain of our volleyball team. But it's a little bit different when it's not working with my teammates and it's more working with my peers who are also at my classes and stuff. So I've just learned how to communicate and I've learned a lot of public speaking and different marketing techniques. But on the leadership side, just learning how to work through disagreements, learning how to get over two people not... understanding things in the same way. And also just trying to lead in a way that everyone is feeling motivated at all times, especially halfway through our selling point. Sales have slowed down a little bit. So encouraging everyone to keep making sales, reminding them that it's for the charity and for a bigger cause is something that I've really focused on.
SPEAKER_03How did you end up being the CEO? How were the roles divvied up?
SPEAKER_02So at the beginning of the semester... Hassi sends out an email asking for some background information on us and some roles that we would be interested in. And I actually originally said that I just wanted to be VP of sales. And we were sitting in one of our first meeting classrooms and Hassi had mentioned that we still needed CEOs. So I was sitting there thinking, could I do this? Do I really want to do this? And I had known Anthony before in a previous class. So I talked to him and I asked what it was like, how much work you put into it. And I knew I had a pretty good background for it. So I went up to Hassi and I just said like, hey, I think I might be interested. And he was like, can I interview for it? I was like, we'll just talk about it right now if you want. And so yeah,
SPEAKER_03that's how it happened. Anthony, now that you've had the experience of both being in the class as well as coaching people and somewhat a bit mentoring Malia in terms of, hey, you should go ahead and do this. What have you gained from all these experiences?
SPEAKER_04For me, I think the biggest part, again, is that real world, but going out and the sales side of things, just talking to people, growing, selling yourself and selling a product. A lot of other schools, you're just taking the classes and you're just learning the thing, but you forget about it three months down the road. Here, you're actually going out and having to talk to 100 people at an event and you're going to get 90 no's and it takes a toll on you, but You learn and you just build that sales side and that fact, that confidence side of just talking to people.
SPEAKER_03Very important skills. So important. Rick, what's next for the program? Keep on plugging or are there
SPEAKER_01any? Yeah, well, we have some things in the works. Again, we've been in the operation since 2011, Michelle. We've raised over $440,000 for charities over that time period with revenues of about $1,050,000. So we're successful. What we're trying to do now into the future, especially with a lot of integration with corporations and helping our students develop internships and job growth, we're starting to develop some partnerships with some corporations. We're talking with Costco We're talking with Google. We're talking with Amazon, who have big operations out here in Southern California. We're talking with the LA Clippers basketball team about having a relationship with them. So that's what we're working on this summer is trying to develop some corporate partnerships where a student can take the program, run the team, get experience with the four courses, and then perhaps get an internship with Amazon to go practice what they learned in that setting. So that's what we're developing now. And hopefully we'll get that going in the near future and develop another way of getting the students more experience and more applications to the real world.
SPEAKER_03Well, Leah, how
SPEAKER_02about you? You've got a couple more years left, right? Yeah. So over the summer, I actually have an accounting internship with a construction company. I also work a job in a restaurant. So I'll be balancing both of those at the same time and then also starting summer lift for volleyball. So I'll stay pretty busy. I've thought about possibly becoming an IBC mentor, but I wouldn't be able to do that until next spring because my volleyball season is during the fall.
UNKNOWNOkay.
SPEAKER_03Well, yes, very busy. I love it, though. Good things for you. And Anthony, you're done. Yes?
SPEAKER_04December 2025. So one more semester.
SPEAKER_03So you've got one more semester. And so you're building up your vending machine business. Do you have anything else on the hopper?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So I really want to pursue that entrepreneurial financial world. So currently, I trade futures for two different prop firms. And basically, I'm evaluated by them. And From there, I'm given a certain amount of equity. So with one company, I have $250,000 of equity that I trade with for them. Another company, I have $1.5 million I trade with for them. And I get to keep 90% of the profits while they keep 10. So I want to continue to grow into that and hopefully be sponsored by one of these firms to take my Series 6 and my Series 7 financial licenses. And from there, I want to with two other business partners, open up a prop firm and give the same opportunity to other traders like me and give them capital to trade for as well.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much. I'll just keep Googling you because I have a feeling you'll come up with something at some point. I'll see you on Forbes one day, I think.
SPEAKER_04Hopefully.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, everybody.
SPEAKER_04Thanks, Michelle.
SPEAKER_03Thank you.
SPEAKER_04Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for listening to Connect Collaborate Champion. We want to give a special thank you to our producer, George Drake Jr. To learn more about the NACU campuses, visit nacu.edu.