Pepperdine Students Exhibit a Drive to Succeed With Corporate Visits
Nathan Gebhard’s father always told him that the best way to learn about business was to find people doing what he would like to do, take them out to lunch and ask how they got there. When Gebhard, 22, became a business major at Pepperdine University, his favorite professor told him the same thing. Last summer, he put the advice into practice, gleaning tips from a dozen corporations during a two-week road trip of the Western United States with two fellow students. Next month, the trio will expand the idea, visiting 50 companies over a 72-day cross-country trip for a book scheduled to be published in September 2000. Gebhard says that taking his learning curve out of a classroom and into the real world was “enthralling.” He was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.
When our professor, Dr. Blaine McCormick, was hired away to teach at Baylor University last summer, my roommate and my friend and I decided to pick up his idea--taking students on a tour of successful companies--and do it ourselves. Within two weeks, we sold my old truck, bought a new truck, built a camper shell, scheduled all the meetings with the companies and hit the road.
We selected companies that we had studied and admired. Some of them we had connections with. A friend’s mother worked at Sun Microsystems and my roommate, Mike Marriner, sat next to a Boeing engineer on an airplane and got his card.
But most of the companies we called or e-mailed cold, explaining what we were doing and asking if there was someone we could take to lunch. We were a little nervous, but we took “carpe diem” as our motto and decided to seize the day.
Most of them were very receptive, though when we told them we were college students from Malibu they had a hard time understanding why we wanted to do this over our summer vacation. When we finally made them understand that we just wanted to learn, they were very responsive and got really excited about meeting with us.
We wound up having meals or coffee with sales managers, chief engineers and marketing directors. At Toyota’s NUMMI plant [New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors in Fremont, Calif.], we got a guided tour with a group of Boy Scouts, then stayed until 10 p.m. talking about the company. I even learned how to put window sealing on a truck. By the end of the tour, the people raided the gift shop and gave us all kinds of company trinkets.
The meetings were very free-form. We would think of three or four questions to ask and then let it go from there. We took a few notes but not too many. Once the person from the company got started talking, it would get exciting.
At DPR Construction in Redwood City, Calif., we ate lunch for three hours and talked to this guy who was just awesome. We learned that there are no corporate titles and everyone works on a first-name basis. There are also no cubicles or corner offices with windows. Everyone works in the exact same conditions, even the CEO, who has one of the worst desks in the place. Everything is done to maximize the sharing of information.
At each company we visited, there was a huge amount of knowledge to be gained. At Nucor Steel, we learned how they employ 6,900 people and have a corporate staff of 26. Four layers of management separate the guy moving the steel from the CEO. The company’s steel mill we visited in Plymouth, Utah, has 350 employees total and turns out 1 million tons of steel annually--more than the mill down the road that employs 1,000.
At Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., we saw an incredible display of corporate culture and dedication to athletics. Each employee plays the sport that he or she is involved in at work. Research and development involves snowboarding in Canada and playing basketball in the Bo Jackson building.
Every company shared fascinating information with us and gave us new drive to learn and a greater appreciation for business and what can be accomplished through a tight group of dedicated people. We came out of this experience with a passion for creating that same kind of dedication in our own companies someday.
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If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016, or send e-mail to kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.
