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So, you want to be a successful entrepreneur.
Berry College graduate Richard Pickering has some advice for you — be creative and learn to harness that creativity.
"You’ve got to set yourself apart from everybody else," Pickering told a crowd of about 50 Berry students on Friday, as part of a speaker series of Berry alumni who have made it as entrepreneurs.
Pickering, a 1984 Berry grad who is now 42, re-tired at the age of 39 after a career including research and development at American Express and working as a senior vice president at First Data Corp., where he brokered a deal with Microsoft to create a new electronic billing system called TransPoint in the early years of the Internet’s popularity.
"We grew it four years later and sold it for $1.2 billion,” he said, although he got little more out of the deal than a ‘congratulations’ and a bonus.
The early evidence of Pickering’s business savvy still exists in Rome, where he started The Balloon Factory in 1982 during his college days. Richard Marable — later a state senator — partnered with Pickering in the endeavor and bought out his share when Pickering graduated. The store still operates on West Third Street, run primarily by Kathie Marable, Richard’s wife.
"(Pickering) is a billionaire now. We should have stuck with him," Kathie Marable said.
Pickering has started several successful business ventures, but he’s also had his share of failure, something he says is an important step to reaching your goals.
After completing Harvard’s Graduate School of Business, Pickering started Smart Card Inc., a company that used similar technology to what credit card companies are beginning to use today by putting computer chips on their cards.
The business plan for the company had won him Harvard’s Entrepreneur of the Year award, but it busted when he tried to launch it.
"We put everything we had into this business, and it didn’t work," Pickering said. That left the Harvard MBA and his wife living off macaroni.
"It doesn’t matter how good the idea is if the market timing is wrong," he said.
Pickering also told the students how his days of creative adventures began at Berry — He invented the ongoing tradition of mudwrestling. He found his share of mischief, including putting Mickey Mouse gloves on the large clock on Hermann Hall on graduation day. And he made extra cash by buying used couches for $5 at the Salvation Army in Atlanta and reselling them for $30 to his fellow students.
He also encountered a mentor at the college, activities director Rufus Massey, who is now a senior advancement officer for Berry.
Pickering recalls Massey telling him, "You will either be very successful in life or you will end up in prison."
"He helped channel my creative energies,” Pickering said. "I hope each of you get someone to mentor you the way he mentored me." Pickering ended his speech Friday with an offer — for the first three students who bring him a business plan, he will consult with them about its feasibility and possibly even invest some money in it.