From PR Classroom to Startup Founder: One Student's Business Journey

Roughly one in five U.S. undergraduates now double as founders or freelancers before graduation, and public relations majors are among the best positioned for the pr to ceo career path: their coursework in audience research, art of storytelling, and media relations maps almost directly onto the early tasks of building a company. The tension for students and career-changers is whether that classroom training actually produces business results, or whether it's better spent chasing internships at agencies.

Beckham Scott's answer arrived early. While studying PR at Middle Tennessee State University, he co-founded Southern Sunflower Seed Co. with childhood friend Levi Melton, turning a social media hobby into a flavored snack brand before he'd finished his degree.

His path from lecture hall to launch reframes what a communications curriculum is actually for.

What PR Education Actually Teaches Future Founders

A well-designed PR curriculum is, in practical terms, a founder's operating manual and a clear public relations career advantage. The same disciplines that shape a campaign for a Fortune 500 client, audience segmentation, message development, campaign planning, and measurement, are the disciplines that determine whether a new venture finds its market or dies quietly on Instagram. Naming what you already do instinctively is the first move toward doing it well.

Curriculum That Maps to Founder Decisions

Core PR coursework tends to move through a predictable arc, and each stage has a direct entrepreneurial parallel:

• Audience segmentation: the analytical basis for choosing a target market rather than guessing at one.
• Message development and positioning: the raw material of a value proposition, tagline, and elevator pitch.
• Campaign planning: a launch strategy with timing, channels, and sequencing built in.
• Measurement and evaluation: the KPI discipline that separates founders who scale from founders who scroll their own follower counts.

An introductory PR course is often where a would-be founder first learns the vocabulary of brand positioning, earned media, and stakeholder mapping. That vocabulary matters because it lets a founder execute credible outreach before there is any marketing budget to speak of.

Programs That Advertise Entrepreneurial Pathways

Course catalogs vary widely, and not every PR degree treats entrepreneurship the same way. A few real programs make the connection unusually explicit:

• University of Miami Strategic Communication offers STC 404 Advertising Entrepreneurship, a 3-credit course focused on launching new brands, companies, and agencies. It requires STC 200 and junior standing, and is typically offered in spring of even years.¹
• Boston University embeds PRLab, a for-credit student agency (2 to 4 credits) that serves 20+ paying clients per term, including entrepreneurial start-ups.²³ Its MS in Public Relations is a 48-credit, three-semester track that also plugs into PRLab.⁴
• University of Arizona's new bachelor's in communication program in public relations, launching Fall 2026, lists PR 425 Student-Run PR Agency as part of its sample curriculum.⁵
• Sonoma State University runs COMS 340 Primitivo, a student agency working with local businesses and nonprofits,⁶ and UT Austin's Tower & Bridge Communications, a partnership with Moody College and Texas Student Media, offers hands-on work in advertising, PR, social media, content, analytics, and events.

The experiential piece varies by school. What is consistent is that PR programs increasingly treat client-facing practice, not just theory, as part of the degree.

A Student Founder's Story: From PR Classroom to Southern Sunflower Seed Co.

Many entrepreneurs reverse-engineer their audience after the first product run, but Beckham Scott did the opposite, as detailed in the MTSU News profile of Beckham Scott. Some founders spend the first year after launch guessing at who will buy their product, but Scott built Southern Sunflower Seed Co. while still enrolled in Middle Tennessee State University's public relations program, applying classroom methods to make those decisions before the product reached customers.

From high school football reviews to a real product

Scott, from McMinnville, Tennessee, and lifelong friend Levi Melton played high school football together and originally reviewed sunflower seeds on social media. That habit gave them a content foundation and, eventually, a business idea. In early spring 2025, the two co-founded Southern Sunflower Seed Co. Scott says he launched the business about a year after he began experimenting with the idea, a timeline that gave him room to test demand instead of rushing a product to market.

How PR coursework shaped the launch

Scott credits his MTSU PR coursework and advisor for helping him discover public relations as a fitting major, a path that reflects communication curriculum trends. Professors Matthew Taylor and Angie Boyd-Chambers were influential in that path. Scott says his PR education helped him identify his target market and understand how to reach them. He highlighted relationship building and social media skills as the biggest skills he developed through his courses.

• Target market: PR training pushed Scott to define exactly who would buy a flavored sunflower seed, not just an abstract snack consumer.
• Channel strategy: Social media coursework gave him a repeatable way to reach that audience without a large marketing budget.
• Relationship building: Media and community relationships, core PR habits, translated directly into early brand visibility and word of mouth.

That combination is not accidental: audience analysis tells a founder who to talk to, while social media strategy shows how to reach them in a way that fits a startup budget. For Scott, these were not abstract assignments; they became operating habits for the company, a direct answer to what can you do with a communications degree.

A Nashville Hot product, not a generic snack

The company produces flavored sunflower seeds, including a Nashville Hot flavor. That detail matters because it points to niche positioning, the kind of audience-specific product decision communication students learn to make. It also shows how a regional flavor can anchor a brand identity. Instead of competing with every sunflower seed brand, Scott's venture can speak directly to buyers who want regional heat and a founder story they recognize. Rather than waiting until graduation, Scott turned coursework plus faculty mentorship into a functioning business before leaving school.

PR Skills That Translate Directly to Startup Success

Public relations skills are not a vague "people person" trait. They are concrete, teachable routines for learning how to engage an audience, earn attention, and maintain trust over time. For founders, these routines move a business from idea to launch faster because they solve the same problems a startup faces in its first year.

Relationship Building: From Co-Founders to Investors

PR coursework trains students to identify stakeholders, tailor messages, and follow up consistently. In a startup, that same muscle becomes co-founder alignment, investor outreach, and supplier or retail conversations. Scott's connection with lifelong friend and co-founder Levi Melton started long before college, but the relational discipline he practiced in PR classes helps him sustain and professionalize those partnerships rather than relying on charm alone.

Social Media Strategy: Organic Content That Builds a Brand

Southern Sunflower Seed Co. is a useful example. Scott has credited his MTSU PR education with helping him sharpen social media specialist skills, and the company grew out of social content: he and Melton originally reviewed sunflower seeds online. Coursework teaches founders to plan content around audience questions, test flavors or formats, and turn engagement into repeat customers instead of posting without a system.

Media Pitching: Turning a Product Into a Story

PR students learn how to find the newsworthy angle, write a concise pitch, and match it to the right reporter or outlet. For a founder, that translates into early press coverage, podcast invitations, or local news features that would otherwise require paid media. A Nashville Hot sunflower seed flavor is not automatically news, but a trained founder can position it as a regional food story with a clear hook.

Target-Market Identification: Knowing Exactly Who You're Selling To

This is the difference between selling to everyone and selling to the right someone. Scott has said his PR education helped him identify his target market and how to reach them. In coursework, that means audience research, message testing, and channel selection. In a consumer brand, it means choosing flavors, price points, and content platforms based on what a defined customer actually wants.

None of these are fixed personality traits. They are skills a student can practice in assignments, apply to a side project, and refine after launch.

How to Leverage PR Coursework and Faculty Mentorship to Launch a Business

How can you turn the campaigns, pitches, and media plans you build in PR courses into genuine business assets before you graduate?

The answer lies in treating every assignment as a portfolio piece and every professor as a potential connector, while respecting the boundaries of the student-faculty relationship. Here is a practical playbook built from established public relations experiential learning models and the real example of Beckham Scott's journey at Middle Tennessee State University.

Turn Class Projects Into Launch-Ready Portfolio Assets

Every campaign brief, social media audit, or media kit you create in a PR course can double as proof of concept for a future venture. Start by:

• Saving polished versions of campaign plans, press releases, and analytics reports in a shareable portfolio (Google Drive, Notion, or a personal site), then using an entry level PR jobs guide to shape how you present that portfolio.
• Reframing class deliverables as case studies that show you can identify a target market, craft messaging, and measure results, exactly the skills Scott credits with helping him position Southern Sunflower Seed Co.
• Pitching campus business incubators with those deliverables as evidence you can execute a communications strategy, not just theorize about one.

Tap Into Experiential Learning Models Already on Campus

Dozens of programs have built structures that put students in front of real clients. Seek them out:

• Student-run agencies such as Belmont University's Tower Creative Communications, Boise State's Blue House Agency, and Elon University's Live Oak Communications (serving 50-plus students since 2007)⁴ offer semester-long, client-driven projects¹ at the capstone level.² They sharpen writing, media relations, and issue management skills² while filling your portfolio with work for actual organizations.⁵
• PRSSA chapters provide national networking, competition entries, and regional conference access that can introduce you to founders and media professionals in your market.
• Cooperative work experiences like James Madison University's SCOM318 embed credit-bearing practicum hours inside functioning agencies, giving you both transcript credit and professional references.³

Treat Faculty Mentorship as a Business Accelerant, Not a Sales Funnel

Professors like MTSU's Matthew Taylor and Angie Boyd-Chambers played a catalytic role in Scott's path, helping him see how PR coursework mapped onto the real challenge of reaching sunflower seed consumers. You can follow that pattern:

• Ask faculty for introductions to regional founders or media contacts they know professionally.
• Request feedback on your business pitch the same way you would on a campaign plan.
• Avoid treating professors as sales leads or expecting them to promote your product. The relationship works best when you seek strategic guidance, not free advertising.

Why This Pattern Is Repeatable

Scott's story is not a one-off. He used applied coursework (audience analysis, social media strategy, relationship building) to de-risk a small launch alongside his co-founder. Any student who documents class projects, engages experiential programs, and cultivates faculty mentorship with professionalism can replicate that same low-risk path from coursework to commerce.

PR Degree ROI for Entrepreneurs: Career and Business Outcomes

The table below shows approximate 2025 national wage data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for communication roles that share the same core skill set founders rely on to grow a business. These figures reflect employed wages only. They do not capture founder equity, startup income, or entrepreneurial upside, so think of them as both a career safety net and a signal of how much employers value audience analysis, media strategy, and relationship building. While no published research isolates formal PR education as a variable in founder funding or startup survival rates, studies of venture-backed startups show that roughly 24 percent were launched by founders with formal business education, and about two-thirds of VC-backed startups have at least one executive with a business school degree. Among unicorn startups, approximately 24 percent have at least one MBA-holding founder. These figures suggest that structured business and communication training correlates with high-growth outcomes, though the data do not separate PR degrees from other disciplines, so any direct causal claim would go beyond the available evidence.

PR Education Vs. Self-Taught PR: What Founders Should Know

The question is not really whether to learn PR or skip it. The real decision is how deeply to invest in formal training before diving into execution. Research consistently suggests founders should learn fundamentals thoroughly enough to avoid amateur mistakes, then practice DIY outreach until the scale and complexity of their communications demands specialization. Here is how the two paths compare for startup founders weighing their options.

How to Measure Founder PR Like a Professional

Start With Outputs, Outcomes, and Impact

Founders often overcomplicate PR measurement. A more useful approach is to separate three layers. Outputs are what you produce: press mentions, pitch emails, owned content published, social posts, and podcast appearances. Outcomes are what those outputs generate: audience growth, engagement, share of voice, branded search lift, and message penetration. Impact is the business result: website traffic, leads, pipeline influence, and revenue attached to PR activity. A strong PR education teaches you to distinguish these layers instead of treating every mention as a win.

The AMEC Barcelona Principles, now in version 4.0, push communicators toward stakeholder audiences, all relevant channels, and qualitative and quantitative analysis. The principles are explicit that advertising value equivalency, or AVE, is not the value of communication.¹ The PESO model (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned), a marketing & communication framework, remains useful, but current guidance says it works best when measured holistically around human engagement, search rankings, and AI-surfaced visibility³, not as four separate dashboards. For solo founders and small teams, that means fewer vanity metrics and more decisions that can change strategy.⁴

What a PR Student Should Be Able to Measure

After campaign planning, research methods, and capstone courses, a PR student should be able to set measurable objectives, track outputs and outcomes, and connect them to organizational performance. The goal is not to memorize a single benchmark. It is to understand which signal matters at which stage. Benchmarks are not tied to a specific degree level in the available guidance, but founders can benchmark against company milestones: new customer acquisition, product launches, hiring, and funnel velocity.⁴

Apply It to Southern Sunflower Seed Co.

For a small consumer brand like Southern Sunflower Seed Co., a founder might track how many monthly media placements or creator mentions the Nashville Hot flavor receives, how much branded search comes from that coverage, what percentage of mentions are positive or neutral, and how many site visits or orders can be attributed to PR-driven links. Relationship building and training in social media for communicators from PR coursework become measurable when audience growth and engagement move with campaign activity.

The Monthly Founder KPI Set

Choose 3-5 KPIs, not a full analytics stack.⁴ A practical set might include:

• Share of voice: Your brand's share of relevant media or social conversation compared with competitors.
• Priority placements: Number of earned mentions in outlets or creator accounts that reach your target audience.
• Branded search lift: Growth in searches for your brand after a campaign or product launch.
• Engagement: Comments, saves, shares, or direct messages tied to PR content.
• Attributed visits or leads: Website traffic or inquiries that arrive from a media mention or PR link.

Related Articles