{"id":39,"date":"2025-07-08T10:05:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T14:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/?page_id=39"},"modified":"2026-01-26T16:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T21:58:10","slug":"side-hustle-club-learning-lab","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/side-hustle-club-learning-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"Miami Entrepreneurship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bea66b1941ec6cc97f3e4ba2a96a0a42\" style=\"color:#cb2929\"><strong>Side Hustle Case study:&nbsp;How Miami University shaped Mad Rabbit\u2019s trajectory<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Meeting &amp; teaming up.<\/strong> Selom Agbitor and Oliver Zak met as first-year students living in adjacent residence halls and pledging the Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity. That friendship\u2014and the shared ambition it revealed\u2014became the nucleus of every venture that followed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A low-risk \u201csandbox.\u201d<\/strong> They discovered that college is \u201cthe least risky time to start a business\u201d; coursework, scholarships and no family obligations let them experiment, fail fast and iterate while still on track to graduate Transcripts Video Mad R\u2026.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Peer-to-peer skill exchange.<\/strong> Miami\u2019s maker culture meant classmates were running their own side hustles; Selom bartered marketing help for a friend\u2019s bookkeeping, and both founders tapped campus mentors for e-commerce tips they never learned in class.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Early venture capital links.<\/strong> Intros from the entrepreneurship faculty\u2014Tim Holcomb in particular\u2014put Mad Rabbit on the radar of Cincinnati and Silicon Valley investors, giving the young brand credibility it could not have earned alone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-23210265cf83c3af73a925d90421cad7\" style=\"color:#cb2929\"><strong>Their entrepreneurial playbook<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Start small, learn fast.<\/strong> First came a dropship swimsuit store that required almost no cash but taught branding and customer service.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Validate before you build.<\/strong> For Mad Rabbit they ran Facebook\/Instagram ads to gauge demand, cancelled the first 20\u201340 orders, then cooked balm in Oliver\u2019s apartment only after seeing real interest.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Self-taught digital marketing.<\/strong> YouTube tutorials, Google searches and advice from entrepreneurial classmates replaced formal marketing courses.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Play to strengths.<\/strong> Oliver took the outward-facing CEO role and long-term vision while Selom became the analytics-driven CMO; clear role boundaries avoided conflict and accelerated execution.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Keep capital light.<\/strong> They used royalty-free images instead of costly photo shoots and stressed that hustle, not big money, got the company off the ground.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4532b82591d3a623cd89a9a68998c12b\" style=\"color:#cb2929\"><strong>What Selom &amp; Oliver mean by the \u201clearning-lab\u201d phase<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Right after the idea for <strong>Mad Rabbit<\/strong> clicked (spring 2019, while they were still seniors at Miami), they treated the brand as an<strong> <em>open-ended course project whose only grade was market feedback<\/em>. <\/strong>They deliberately kept everything tiny, cheap and reversible so they could collect data, swap variables, and build confidence before committing real money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-061cd395b1cc6db948254a342d9d3e19\" style=\"color:#cb2929\"><strong>Advice they give today\u2019s students<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Use the college cushion.<\/strong> Launch something now\u2014if it flops you still graduate with experience and a resume story&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Master time management.<\/strong> Juggling classes and a startup forced them to schedule study early in the week so they could \u201ccook and ship\u201d balm Thursday-Friday<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Ask questions &amp; network relentlessly.<\/strong> Every mentor, peer or alum is a potential shortcut to knowledge or capital; don\u2019t hesitate to reach out&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Leverage free resources first.<\/strong> Between open-source tutorials, royalty-free content and classmates\u2019 talents, most early problems can be solved without spending cash<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Start by solving real pain.<\/strong> Whether it\u2019s poor tattoo aftercare or another overlooked niche, test assumptions with quick, inexpensive experiments before investing heavily<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Taken together, their Miami experience provided the network, safety net and testing ground that let two finance majors evolve into data-savvy consumer-brand founders\u2014and their blueprint is eminently repeatable for any student willing to start, learn and iterate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-da254a4f295e89c7f958f4edd7dd0d7a\" style=\"color:#cb2929\"><strong>Examples they gave of \u201cpractice\u201d businesses<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table alignleft is-style-regular\"><table class=\"has-fixed-layout\"><tbody><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-left\" data-align=\"left\"><strong>Business they tried.<\/strong><\/td><td>A drop-shipping swimsuit store (women\u2019s bathing suits)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-left\" data-align=\"left\"><strong>Why they launched it.<\/strong><\/td><td>Summer side-hustle while still at Miami U.<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-left\" data-align=\"left\"><strong>Skills they set out to master<\/strong>.<\/td><td>Setting up a Shopify site<br>Running Facebook \/ Instagram ads<br>Handling customer support &amp; returns<br>Growing an IG account from scratch<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-left\" data-align=\"left\"><strong>What happened<\/strong><\/td><td>They flipped the store at the end of the summer for about $7k and walked away with real-world e-commerce know-how and a little seed capital<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-left\" data-align=\"left\"><strong>Business they tried<\/strong><\/td><td>Mad Rabbit\u2019s first tattoo-balm tests<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-left\" data-align=\"left\"><strong>Skills they set out to master<\/strong><\/td><td>Formulating &amp; manufacturing a physical product (Crock-Pot batches in their Oxford apartment)<br>Pre-selling with paid ads to prove demand before investing in inventory<br>Direct-to-consumer fulfilment and brand storytelling<\/td><\/tr><tr><td class=\"has-text-align-left\" data-align=\"left\"><strong>What happened<\/strong><\/td><td>Their ad-first test brought in orders within a week; the process validated product\/market fit and taught them supply-chain basics that later scaled to national retail.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shopify.com\/blog\/mad-rabbit-college-entrepreneur\"> shopify.com<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-69791ee6ad8adad4cda76fa6423847ea\" style=\"color:#cb2929\"><strong>Bottom line:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> Selom and Oliver used the swimsuit dropshipping venture to pick up low-cost, transferable digital-commerce skills, then applied\u2014and greatly expanded\u2014those skills in the \u201clearning-lab\u201d phase of Mad Rabbit itself, where they moved from pure marketing mechanics to product formulation, supply-chain, and brand building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section alignfull alignfull getwid-section-content-custom-width\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section__wrapper getwid-padding-left-medium getwid-padding-right-medium\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section__inner-wrapper\" style=\"max-width:1140px\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section__background-holder\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section__background\"><\/div><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section__foreground\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section__content\"><div class=\"wp-block-getwid-section__inner-content\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns has-2-columns are-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-7387b849 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Side Hustle Case study:&nbsp;How Miami University shaped Mad Rabbit\u2019s trajectory Their entrepreneurial playbook What Selom &amp; Oliver mean by the \u201clearning-lab\u201d phase Right after the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3201,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-39","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/side-hustle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}