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Economic Vitality Unplugged takes a deep dive into people, policies, and projects, shaping Tallahassee-Leon County’s economy.
[Inspirational music]
[Keith] Hello and welcome to Economic Vitality Unplugged.
The podcast, where we explore people, ideas, and innovations driving growth across our region and beyond.
I'm your host, Keith Bowers, the Director of the Office of Economic Vitality. And today we're diving into a powerful
conversation about entrepreneurship, innovation, and the future of Florida's economy. I'm
truly honored to be joined by Dr. Susan Fiorito, the founding Dean of the Jim Moran College
of Entrepreneurship at Florida State. Susan is a trailblazer in entrepreneurship education,
and has helped shape one of the most unique academic experiences in our country. Susan, welcome
to the show, it's great to have you here. [Susan] Thank you very much. I'm very honored to be here.
[Keith] Well, we're honored to have you. We got a lot of ground to cover. So let's just jump in. I would like to start with your
journey. For those of you who may not know your full story, what inspired your path into entrepreneurship
and eventually into higher education and leadership? [Susan] Well, it started by being
a high school home economics teacher. My love for teaching. I graduated from Florida State University
in '73 with a degree in home economics and taught that for five years at
Hialeah in Miami Lakes. I grew up in Miami. So my love for education
and the creative arts really, started then. And then I moved to Atlanta and
got married and was part of a family business that opened retail stores,
jean stores in Atlanta, Marietta, and the family also had a
leather manufacturing company. So we manufactured leather goods, belts,
hard leather belts and purses and wallets. I would sew the wallets. Again, my background
in clothing and textiles, home economics, and I would design leather vests and we'd sell them in the
store. We started with one store and we eventually ended up with four stores in the Atlanta
area. That was between '76 and early '80s. [Keith] So you've
got roots in the retail trade, which is a very tough trade. [Susan] And it was a great
experience for me. I would, after teaching and I did teach high school up in Atlanta
and also at the Fashion Institute of Atlanta, which was like an associate degree, I did that during
the day because anyone who knows or who starts a business, you put all the money that you make in the business
back in the business. So I was earning money to support our family. And so
I got a real taste of entrepreneurship, continued to love education. And that didn't work
out so good. The marriage, as you know it's 24/7 and there were some things that weren't
right. So I left the business, got a divorce, and moved down to Miami and started
teaching at FIU. And then got my degree, moved to Oklahoma, got my PhD in merchandising,
and then taught at the University of Iowa. So, higher education from then on.
[Keith] So how did you get from Iowa to Florida State? [Susan] So they closed my department at the University
of Iowa. They closed the merchandising department in the '80s. When there was a recession, the state
of Iowa decided not to fund duplicative programs. And I was teaching in merchandising,
and there was a big merchandising college at Iowa State. So they closed my department
and then my husband, that I had married when we met at Oklahoma State, we looked for
two academic jobs and ended up here at Florida State in 1990.
[Keith] Wow, that's a pretty neat path. And but we're glad it worked out for not only
you, but for our community. And so you serve as also a professor, not only are
you a Dean, but you're a professor at the College of Entrepreneurship as well as an entrepreneur
in residency. So let's talk a little bit about the Jim Moran College. It's become a national
standout. So if you want to just tell us a little bit about its mission and what makes the college so
unique. [Susan] Okay well we're the only one. We're the only college of entrepreneurship
in the country and it started with a gift from Mrs. Moran, who wanted to honor
her husband, Jim Moran, who owned Toyota dealership and to
enhance his legacy, she gave $100 million to Florida State
University to continue the Jim Moran Institute, that is now 30 years old, and then to establish
the first school of entrepreneurship and we began actually accepting the students
in 2017. So, we are just finishing up our eighth year. We
moved from a school to a college in 2019 when we started with graduate programs.
But, we are the only one who gives degrees in entrepreneurship. Three undergraduate
degrees, five masters degrees and then we're working on a PhD program.
[Keith] That's excellent. I mean, the first in the nation to offer a full degree in entrepreneurship,
you must be so proud. Talk to us a little bit about your approach with the students
and teaching entrepreneurship because it is taught in some business schools and in just
some other campuses. But what is your approach that leads to a degree in entrepreneurship?
[Susan] Thank you. And I do need to clarify. There are programs. There are institutes of entrepreneurship
all over the country, many of them much older than ours, but they're in colleges of business, or they're inside
colleges of engineering. We are the first standalone college of entrepreneurship.
So what is the advantage of that? The advantage is that we can control the curriculum.
When I was Department Chair in the College of Business, when we had a small program, I was over there
2014 'til we started the school. We had College of Business core
courses. The College of Business would decide on what our students
took for core courses. And if you don't mind at this point, I'd like to say the difference.
What's the difference between a college of entrepreneurship and a college of business? A college of business
has a corporate focus. Okay? And so their focus is on
corporate marketing, accounting, finance. Our focus of entrepreneurship
is on startups. Is on creativity. Is starting something from nothing. Do
we teach accounting? Yes. And we teach marketing. And we teach finance. And we teach human
relations. But it is from a startup point of view. So it's a very different
perspective that we have, that our students have. They want to be their
own boss. And so it's very different. I appreciate what the college of businesses
do around the country, but their perspective is different than ours. [Keith] Right.
Typically, the school of businesses are programs where students graduate and they're looking to go into corporate
America and work for someone else. Entrepreneurship is strictly preparing them
to work for themselves. [Susan] That's what we say. However, many of our students graduate and
they don't have enough money, they don't have enough experience in what they want to start their business.
So we encourage them to work in industry to work for big corporations
in the area that they're interested in. Make mistakes on someone else's money. [Keith] Yeah,
I love that. [Susan] Learn from them. Who are their vendors? Who are their suppliers?
Who is the customer or the market that this big company isn't serving? And
where there's still problems? So some of our students that are graduating at 22 years old,
23 years old, they don't have the finances to start their own business. But they
can learn from others during our internship program or working for someone
else and eventually start a business that will be successful.
So it's a mindset. [Keith] I was just getting ready to say that. You took the words right out of my mouth. Entrepreneurship
is more than just starting a business. And you said something that stood out as well. It's about solving problems
and equipping students with the skill sets to solve problems whether it's for themselves or for
their employers. So why do you think entrepreneurship is more important now than ever, especially in
a community like Tallahassee-Leon County? [Susan] It is important because over 90% of all the
businesses in the United States are entrepreneurial, or small businesses, and
they create so much economic power. They hire people. They're often
more stable than giant corporations that are going to, you know, I heard this morning on
NPR about Intel letting, you know, I don't know, how many thousands of people go in their corporation
that work for them. In small businesses, they create a wealth
for their employees, for themselves, and it's oftentimes a lifestyle. It doesn't
have to be. It could turn into Microsoft, it could turn into Amazon, Dillard's,
Macy's. I mean, they've all started from family businesses, so they can grow into big companies,
but really is the small mom and pop. It's the innovator that really
creates new opportunities. [Keith] You said another word that just jumps out at
me, the innovation piece. Well, a lot of things have changed since your start over eight years ago.
How are your students thinking about innovation differently than they were, let's say five years ago—what do you
see? [Susan] Well, I mean, there's AI (artificial intelligence). [Keith] Yes. [Susan] And so what we're providing
for our students in our programs, and it's so nice that we have about 700 undergraduate
students. The College of Business has 8,000 undergraduate students. So we're very
small. We love being small. We love the opportunity of working with smaller groups
of students. We love teaching face-to-face. So we mentor students, that
has been consistent throughout all of our existence. And another thing that I think that
has changed, although it was the bedrock of how we started, is that our faculty have all been entrepreneurs. So
they're teaching— [Keith] That makes a huge difference. [Susan] Exactly! They're teaching from experience. Some of our faculty still
do have businesses, they're consulting, they're working on businesses. One of our faculty
owned Southern Compass in town. So he had a retail business. And he was teaching for
us. So, you know, and he sold his business. What great experience that is for our students to learn
first-hand how to do that. [Keith] And that's the full cycle of the evolution of a business.
You start with the ideation piece. And eventually you go to your exit strategy.
And learning all the steps in between or working through all the steps in between
that level of information and resources is invaluable. [Susan] Right. I mean, we do have
textbooks, but our faculty all are able. One of our faculty owned franchises. And so
he's able to talk about negotiation and franchising. And another faculty
member was the Strategic Planning Director for Deloitte Touche. So, now he's
teaching for us. So he can teach strategic planning. So they have
this experience that is critical. And we try to, through the years, keep
up with trends and another good thing about us being small is we can change classes.
You know, if this particular class that we have this syllabus and objectives for, if they're
not meeting our needs now, we change it. I hear from those faculty. Those faculty come to me
and they say, "I've taught this for three years, I really want to change it up." [Keith] And I would
think it also mirrors how dynamic the business world itself is changing. It
is not static it is being updated and something else is obsolete, you know, within two to three
years. So, and that makes perfect sense. Talk to us a little bit about the partnerships
that the college has forged with local businesses, nonprofits, and public institutions.
Can you share a few ways your students are engaging with the local community in real time? [Susan] So, there's
several ways. One is our college does require an internship.
So, all of our students no matter what their major is, they need to do an internship. Many of them do
it with local companies. In fact, you and I have talked about some of our students interning with
you. And this is a hugely valuable for them.
We have also worked in one of our classes as consultants for some business
who approached us and said, "Can your students work on this project for me?"
And that was two summers ago. And this individual said, "If I would have paid a consulting
company, I would have paid over a hundred thousand dollars. Your students did such a good
job for us in laying out our path for growth." It gave the students
a good experience. And that company felt like they really had an advantage that there
are young people involved in looking forward for that company to help them be
more resilient in what they were doing. So we were, you know, our students go to Domi. We
support Domi through JMI. The Jim Moran Institue. We offer programming for
underserved entrepreneurs through JMI. And one portion of working
with this group of entrepreneurs in the community is our students mentor them.
So here again, these people who want a business, who are community people, get students
who know everything about social media because they eat it, breathe it. [Keith] They live it, right? [Susan] They live
it. And they know what people want. They can read the marketplace.
So I think we're working with communities through JMI, through Domi, and through
all of our students that are doing internships and shadowing. [Keith] That is such a great model.
It creates a win-win, especially when you pair your students with the small businesses in our community. And like you
said, I mean, a hundred thousand dollars for consulting that that company took advantage
of the resources that were right here. That is amazing, amazing. So let's shift our focus ahead
a little bit. We talked a little bit about workforce and how does the Jim Moran College prepare students
with the 21st century skills they'll need to succeed, whether they either start a business or step into
a leadership role and you talked a little bit about some of the courses you listed off of the several different
business-centric courses. But what do you think is your secret sauce for preparing the
students to either be successful in starting a company or successful working
for someone else until they have the experience and resources as you described to start their
own? [Susan] A couple things that we really feel are important that our students learn.
One, failure is not a bad thing. Okay. [Keith] Absolutely. [Susan] The student
who comes in first in a competition may not learn anything new from what the judges are telling them.
The second runner-up, the third runner-up of that competition has the judges who are
giving them suggestions on how to be better. So not winning basically
how they feel they're losing, but they learn more.
That's exactly what we try to tell our students. Failure is a good thing. If you learn from
it and can pivot and can figure out with help of our faculty or judges
who are community people, how to move their ideas further,
how to pivot. So another thing that I think that we're doing not only encouraging
students to take a risk to try things, don't worry if you fail, just learn things
from them, and hopefully when they're young, they're not investing millions of dollars into something until,
you know, they're starting small. Another thing is that we encourage teamwork.
It used to be, years ago, that a single entrepreneur can start a business. That is not the
case anymore. So we require our students to work in teams. And
as the silos across the university are breaking down, we encourage students
to look out at the whole university. Have someone on your team from computer science.
Have someone on your team from engineering. Have someone on your team from social work.
So we encourage students to work in teams to be successful.
[Keith] And that's so important too because like you said, I mean, you could be very good at one aspect
of business. But you need a support team. You need more diversification of thought. And if you
really truly want to be successful, if you want to build something that's sustainable. So I mean, it sounds like you guys are
checking off a lot of boxes when it comes to entrepreneurial education. Looking ahead,
what do you see on the horizon for the Jim Moran College? [Susan] Well, as I mentioned, we submitted a
proposal to get a PhD. And again, that will be the first in the country. So
some people would say, why do you want to do a PhD in entrepreneurship? Because
we have a philosophy about education that colleges of business don't have.
And so, we need people to teach entrepreneurship who have been through an entrepreneurship
program. It's exploding all over the country. People ask us, how did you get to be outside
the college of business? And I said it was just a hundred million dollars. [Keith] That's
all, that's all you need—right? [Susan] And I think the
more that people understand that we are successful in building
this, corporations, businesses will say, "Okay, I think in our
university, we need a separate entity that can provide this education for students
in our university." But that's why I think a PhD is important. We're
also breaking down the silos so our PhD students– typically a PhD student
would go into, let's say, a history program. They want
to get their PhD in history. All of the people on their dissertation
committee come from history and there's one outside person who makes sure
everything is done right. We're not going to do that. We're going to ask our students, our PhD students,
that they have to have a second idea, not just entrepreneurship, but maybe
it is EOAS (Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science), environmental, meteorology, maybe it's social work, maybe it's
computer science. And we want someone from that college to be on their
dissertation committee. We want our PhD students to take content areas in different
colleges. That is not happening here at FSU, but what is an entrepreneur?
They have to go around, they have to know a lot of different things. So we're preparing
our faculty to have entrepreneurship core, but we want them to look out,
"What are some other areas that you're interested in, that you have expertise
in?" and to build that PhD program with other colleges around
campus. [Keith] That's amazing and it comes full circle too, because, you know, once you have this
PhD program, FSU will become the launchpad for people who are leading in entrepreneurship
education. [Susan] Yes. [Keith] I mean, you'll be, you'll play a significant role, not just
in the state of Florida, but across the globe, teaching people, and that's one of the things that you
often see when you start talking about entrepreneurship. There are a ton of books that have been written about
entrepreneurship, but those books are typically, you know, not one-size-fits-all,
and what you're doing is you're curating a lot of different elements and
making it into one curriculum. And by teaching the teachers
how to approach that, I think that is just phenomenal. When do you think you'll know for sure
if your application is successful? [Susan] So I believe the Board of Governors is reviewing it
in October. So we should know, probably by the end of fall semester, if we're
able to accept the students for Fall of '26. [Keith] Right around the corner.
[Susan] Right around the corner. Yeah. That's right. [Keith] Excellent. We're going to move into the lightning round. You know, have
a few quick questions for you. And just say whatever comes in your mind first. So one word
to describe entrepreneurship. [Susan] Problem-solving. I know that's two but I'll hyphenate it.
[Keith] We'll, hyphenate that. We just solved a problem right there. Problem
solving. Okay. Your favorite book or podcast for inspiration. What are you reading or listening
to? [Susan] How I Built This. [Keith] That is a great one. That is a great one. [Susan] Love that podcast.
[Keith] Yes. What is your most memorable student project that you've seen? [Susan] It's probably
one of the first ones when I became Department Chair for Entrepreneurship. And that's DivvyUp
Socks. [Keith] Oh, yeah. I'm wearing DivvyUp socks today.
[Susan] And those guys continue to be judges for us in competitions. They're
such great role models. They've been so successful and we just adore them.
There's others, but I mean that was the first, the most creative. [Keith] Yeah, I talk to Mitch,
probably at least once a month. And they're doing, they're doing very well. And they are
such a huge success story for, not just FSU but for our community, as it relates
to manufacturing. [Susan] Yes, they could have moved home to Tampa. [Keith] Yes. [Susan] They could have moved there, but they stayed here in our
community. [Keith] They stayed here. The last one, what piece of advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
[Susan] I'm going to say two things. One, don't be afraid to fail, and two,
know yourself and your skills. When I was working in our business in Atlanta,
in the clothing store, a family came in with little boys. The jeans were long, I said,
"Look, I'll hem these for you,"—because I had a industrial sewing machine—"for no charge, on-the-spot,
but you can't bring them back." So it was the skill I had,
sewing, that I combined with our store. We put County Seat out of
business in that mall because no one could compete with free alterations,
on-the-spot, and then they'd have something that they could go home that fit them because
back in the '70s nobody cut off their jeans. [Keith] Right, they just rolled them up. [Susan] Yes, but the
home sewing machine would not go through all those thick layers of denim. So we
were offering a service because I knew how to sew. So I tell our students,
think about what your skills are. Are they in athletics? Are they in art? Are they in
mechanical whatever? Bring those in and even the slightest little skill might
be something that makes you unique in the marketplace. [Keith] That's great advice. And basically what
you're saying is know yourself and understand what you're good at and leverage that to the best
of your ability. [Susan] Exactly. [Keith] That is great entrepreneurial advice. Well Susan, our time
has come to an end and like I told you these conversations they go by quickly but they're so,
so much fun and it's such a resource for our listeners in our community. So I'd like to thank
you so much for joining me today. [Susan] Thank you. [Keith] It's been an absolute pleasure learning more about you, the
incredible work that you're doing at the Jim Moran College, and before we sign off do you have any final thoughts
that you'd like to share? [Susan] I just want to give a shout out to our faculty and staff who,
as you know with any entrepreneur, it's not one person, it's a team and we would be nowhere
without our team of faculty and staff and community supporters like yourself, Keith.
So, thank you all so very much. It's been such a joy. I love my job, I love
what we're doing and yeah, it's wonderful. [Keith] Well, that makes it all worthwhile, right?
[Susan] Yes. [Keith] Well, thank you again. And that's it for today's episode of Economic
Vitality Unplugged. To learn more about the Jim Moran College or connect with us, just check
out the episode notes and don't forget to subscribe and share the podcast with others who care about building
a strong, resilient, and innovative community. Until next time, stay inspired, and
let's keep building. Thank you!
[Inspirational music]