Eastern Illinois University’s entrepreneurship club held their fifth meeting for this academic year on Thursday night to flesh out details regarding future meetings and the upcoming Small Business Fest.
The club’s two-year standing president Nick Macaluso, a former EIU student who graduated last spring with a master’s in business administration, started the meeting giving advice to each of the club’s members.
One key piece was to utilize the student union’s ability to print off business cards to help promote your business. Another piece of advice was for each member to build up one another’s ideas and utilize fluent communication.
“We want to create a community here,” said Macaluso.
This community was prominent during the meeting, as the moment a student mentioned using Canva for business cards, the conversation quickly led to the suggestion of doing a workshop on how to use Canva.
Macaluso also noted that as a small business, you must advertise yourself to get noticed amongst the large crowd of other small businesses.
“You really have to put yourself out there,” he said.
One student who is directly putting himself out there is Elian Encarnacion, a junior transfer student from DePaul University in Chicago. Originally hailing from Elgin, Encarnacion creates music in a variety of genres including rap, hip-hop, jazz rap, trap and soul rap.
Encarnacion said he is interested in creating music for commercial events and organizations who may be interested in utilizing his unique sound. Macaluso also pitched the idea of Encarnacion playing some of his music at the Small Business Fest.
According to Macaluso, the Small Business Fest is set to take place on Oct. 12 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The Small Business Fest will be in the Library Quad for what will now be the fourth time. Each year the event has taken place, there has been an average of 40 vendors with the goal for this year being to hit 50 vendors, he said.
Each vendor is given a table and two chairs; what happens with the stand past that is up to the vendor. On average, he said, vendors make $39 per hour, with some making depending on how good their marketing is and if any free items are present to draw in consumers.
Those interested in joining the club can attend any meeting, look out for the club at events like Panther Palooza or the Small Business Fest or contact Macaluso directly at nkmacaluso@eiu.edu.
The club typically meets in the Student Center for Innovation in Booth Library from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. each Thursday, but due to scheduling conflicts their meeting location has changed. From now on, the club will meet at the same time and day, but the meeting’s location can now be found at Lumpkin Hall in room 2121.
Luke Brewer can be reached at 581-2812 or lsbrewer@eiu.edu.
