The Way of the Entrepreneur
Meet Beckie Hayes, MBA ’12
Beckie Hayes, MBA ’12 was an experienced professional even before she got her Elmhurst MBA. A science major in college, she built her career managing an engineering staffing firm that, under her watch, grew from a $6 million business to a $25 million one.
Still, she wanted the formal business training she had never really gotten. So she put together a spreadsheet of MBA programs and evaluated their different features and offerings.
“Elmhurst stood out,” she says. “The faculty has real-world business experience. I felt you could learn content anywhere; but I wanted to learn from professors who had put the theories into practice in the business world.”
She wasn’t disappointed. Her peak experience at Elmhurst was a capstone course in business planning. “That’s where it all came together—strategy, marketing, finance—all in one class, like a summary of the whole program.” For the final project, class groups were tasked with creating a business plan, and the assignment catalyzed a major aha moment for her: she wanted to manage her own business—”and I wanted the business to be something I was passionate about.”
Shortly after graduating, she founded Merchab Consulting Group, Inc. Now she’s helping small- to mid-size organizations get to the next level.
I’m showing people how to get what they want out of their businesses, using proven methods and tools. It’s exciting for me and something I can believe in.
Hayes on her entrepreneurial venture
You could say it’s more than an entrepreneurial triumph: Hayes is preaching what she practiced—and has turned business success into personal fulfillment.