Columbia College professor invests in students

Becky Bocklage got into entrepreneurship for the challenges. 

Her first challenge came at age 15 in the form of her family’s craft store in Jefferson City, which Bocklage’s parents let her run during the summer.

She took it as another challenge when the Great Recession caused her to close the business she owned for almost 20 years.

Bocklage now instills this ambition as director of Columbia College’s Fishman Center for Entrepreneurship, a position she took over in August 2017. She coaches entrepreneurs enrolled at the school — her latest challenge — during a time when small business numbers are rising again.

A lifetime of business experience

Before she began at Columbia College, Bocklage gained her first business experience in high school. While running her parents’ craft store, she worked with customers and made sure the store was fully stocked.

 Bocklage said she loved being pushed outside her comfort zone when she ran the store. It gave her a skill she still suggests to her students: hands-on experience.

“I wasn’t very good at it; I was 15,” Bocklage said. “But I learned things, and that’s what I think is really important about entrepreneurship and developing your skill set with it.”

After graduating from Missouri State University with a degree in entrepreneurship, Bocklage opened her first business in 1995. The business, named Accents, was a home decoration store that Bocklage said employed nearly two dozen people.

For the next 17 years, Bocklage taught part-time at Columbia College and ran the store with her husband. However, repercussions from the Great Recession created a static retail market. They closed the store in 2012.

“The recession made things kind of boring,” Bocklage said. “There wasn’t a lot of risk happening in the market. It’s hard to (take risks) when you’re in a trend industry, so we made the decision to close.”

The Bocklage family was not alone. During the Great Recession, from December 2007 to June 2009, business closings outpaced openings by a net of up to 63,000 businesses closed per quarter, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Rose Runyon, Bocklage’s 21-year-old daughter who said she took the store’s closing the hardest, credited Bocklage’s emotional strength as a stabilizing factor during the time.

“She’s always able to handle things really well,” Runyon said. “If there’s a very stressful, emotional moment, she’s always able to step back from it and be like, ‘OK, this is just part of life. We handle it; we keep going forward.’”

Then, in 2014, the family opened an antique store in Jefferson City called J Street Vintage, which Bocklage compared to the History Channel antiquing show “American Pickers.” She likes to emphasize that she digs through old, dusty barns to find items that could still have a purpose.

“The underlying goal is that we should put good, usable items into reuse,” Bocklage said. “We’re putting them back into purpose and not putting them into the landfill.”

J Street Vintage gives Bocklage the opportunity to work with her daughter, who co-owns the store with Bocklage and her husband. Runyon said there are challenges to working with family, but she appreciates how it improved the family’s bond.

“Working with your parents is different,” Runyon said. “It just worked for our family. Because, for a long time, that was all that we knew.”

Coaching during a boom

Bocklage now works as a full-time professor at Columbia College, but she thinks of herself more like a coach.

She takes time to mentor entrepreneurs at the school, research how businesses improve their workplace culture and work as director of the Fishman Center for Entrepreneurship. The center guides students through the process of starting up.

Bocklage’s new position coincides with small businesses bouncing back from the Great Recession. In the third quarter of 2016, startup businesses accounted for a net job growth of 123,000 employees, according to the Small Business Administration’s 2018 profile.

Bocklage often reminds her students of this economic strength, which allows her to encourage risk-taking.

“There was no risk being taken in industry,” Bocklage said. “Now, we’re really starting to hear how these companies have to employ really innovative, creative thinkers to affect change within their own work setting.”

One person who took this risk was Jesse Walters, founder and owner of Camacho Coffee, a coffee roaster in Columbia. Walters worked in a public relations role at Columbia College until he met Bocklage, who encouraged him to pursue his long-time dream.

Walters said the process of opening a business was stressful, but Bocklage helped walk him through starting up and maintaining growth.

“She’s been a huge cheerleader for us,” Walters said. “Our conversations together were a big motivator in me taking that leap to do this full time.”

For Bocklage, encouraging conversations are crucial when coaching any entrepreneur. She often has two or three separate conversations about a student’s idea before they create a business plan.

These conversations are never the same, and Bocklage often struggles to explain her coaching methods in exact terms.

“I have to figure out that person in front of me and what they need,” Bocklage said. “That’s a challenge to me that I get through, and we get an opportunity to see where they can take this new idea. It’s exciting.”

Walters said when Bocklage coached him, her approach allowed him to reach his own answers instead of being managed.

“Instead of her saying what she thinks may be right, she’s always asking us questions,” Walters said. “I come out learning things that are things I’ve said, just because of the question she asks me.”

Bocklage recognizes that mentorship only became an official part of her job when she began at the Fishman Center. However, she admits she will always be drawn to helping others and giving the advice she does as director.

“Failure is not fatal. You learn from it,” Bocklage said. “Don’t get stopped by the big picture. Get launched and then learn on your feet.”