University of Texas students balance full-time school while running own business

UT students balance school with running business

Being a full-time college student and running your own business can be a struggle especially starting your first year in college. FOX 7 Austin's Jessica Rivera talks to two sophomores who are studying and fulfilling orders.

AUSTIN, Texas - Being a full-time college student and running your own business can be a struggle, especially starting your first year in college. 

The backstory:

"So first semester, it was definitely extremely overwhelming, especially because we got to school, and we didn't have much time on our hands whatsoever," says UT student Vance Mark.

UT sophomores Mark and Leor Goldstein had a vision to create an all-natural product in 2022. The two decided to start their own business called Zizical Botanicals.

"My business partner and I, Vance, we started in high school. We had this idea to well, we were always using other hair products, and they always just left our hair feeling unfulfilled, unhealthy. So Vance initially came up with his own formula to put together a hair product," says Goldstein.

Vance and Leor's freshman year was a busy year. Working on balancing classes and fulfilling orders.

"We have to balance our time a lot, but we make time for it. And we both don't have Friday classes, so we've kind of dedicated Fridays to just physical days. And whenever we have free time, we're always thinking, like what can we do to improve, what can do next, what's the next steps," says Goldstein.

Not only did the two start the idea of creating a natural line product, they handmake it themselves in their college apartment.

"It's a little tight space, but we make it work. Basically, we have a whole bunch of bulk ingredients, and then we just melt everything down. It's a lot of time just cooling. And then we have this huge industrial mixer that we bought. And we just whip it up," says Goldstein.

Seeing how overwhelming it was to balance it all, the team decided to reach out to the school for help.

Dig deeper:

"I'm currently in the Forty Acres Founders' program, which is an accelerator program at UT, and it offers us mentorships, employees, and funds to kick us off and get us started," says Mark.

The Forty Acres Founders Pre-Accelerator Program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to study potential customers, improve their product, establish product-market fit, and position their product for success within the marketplace.

"Every single week we just to get into the headspace to understand how to really do what it is that you're dreaming about doing and then on top of that, they offer me a mentorship," says Mark.

On top of working with like-minded people, they receive funds from a grant to help keep their business growing.

"We have an assistant and our business assistant gets paid $20 an hour by the mentorship program or by the founders program pays her $20 an hour to be our assistant so she can help us with whatever little things we need," says Mark.

Students who take part in this program can either get credit hours of coursework upon completion of the Forty Acres Founders program.

To learn more about the program, you can click here.