Jason Scott Earl is a assistant professor of business management with a doctorate in structural management, and MBA in strategic planning, and a master’s degree in structural engineering. From Santa Barbara, Calif., he taught at BYU-Idaho for five years and worked for 15 years in various companies including his own. He and his wife, Natalie, have five children.TIGER STATUE“One of the great American success stories is Standard Oil. The tiger is their logo. The year I was born, 1973, they broke it up into a bunch of smaller oil companies, one of which was Exxon. It was the first company I worked for out of college. I graduated from BYU in engineering, went to work for Exxon, and it was an awesome experience. The year I left Exxon was the year they acquired Mobil and became Exxon Mobil, and they became a very different kind of company. I like to think of the birth of Exxon and when I worked for them, and when they ceased to exist as a big part of my history. They’re now the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. They’re ranked number one or number two in the Fortune 500 list every year. We talk about them a lot in my business classes and my students get tired of hearing about Exxon.”WOODEN iPAD CASE“This is for an iPad. They’re made in China and they sell them online. They’ll put any logo you want on here. I’ve used this one for a couple years now. They work great as far as keeping your iPad safe. All the classes I teach are small business start-up [classes] and some of my students started doing this [in the class].”BYU-IDAHO STONE“I have original stone from the building and I’m planning to get BYU Hawaii carved into it. I taught at BYU-Idaho for 5 years. We lived in California for 7 years and we moved to Idaho to teach after we sold the company. I got a call from the department chair here in Hawaii because he just needed somebody to come in for a semester to teach a class. We came here winter semester and we fell in love with the place, especially the students. An opening came up and I applied for it and now we’re here permanently.”WHITEBOARD NOTES“I teach strategy and entrepreneurship classes. I’m the very first faculty member they’ve ever had in the entrepreneurship program, it had always been volunteer missionaries. I’m the odd guy out because I don’t really fit in with the business program and I don’t really fit with the entrepreneurship one. I think that’s why they put my office where it is, it’s right in between. I love teaching these classes. If I could summarize what we’re trying to do it would come down to these 3 words; strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship. See, what should happen is you have something you’re passionate about, you should have something you’re good at, and something that keeps it going whether that be cash-flow or customers. If you can pull those three things together then I think you can have an exciting career and you can build the kingdom, and you can make concrete (smirks).”GRID STRUCTURE“This is an advanced composite isometric grid structure. My thesis in engineering was in using advanced composites. This is something we developed. BYU got a patent on it and they license it out now. There are mountain bikes made out of this and towers made out of this structure. Some of the lightest frames in the world are made out of this material. This weighs about a third of most aluminum bikes. They go for 11,000 bucks. It’s one of our first inventions and I didn’t make any money on it so… (laughed for a second). This is why I always tell my business classes if you’re going to develop some new invention, new product, always get the patent and get your name on the patent because people are going run off with your ideas.”FAMILY CARTOON“My wife and I met at BYU, both in engineering classes. She left me to go serve a mission which was awful, but she came back, we got married, and had five kids. My little sister does drawings of families and this is our little caricature. We have four boys and one girl. She rules the house.”TOY MOTORCYCLE“As an entrepreneur, one of the big things we believe in is managing the risk. Most people see entrepreneurs as crazy cowboys, but the truth is we abhor risk. We will do everything we can to manage the risk. I went from a sport bike to a cruiser. I have an old school, really slow one. The reason why is the day my son was old enough to ride a bike and he wanted to be just like his dad was the day I sold my sport-bike. I suddenly realized I couldn’t handle that risk. That’s the rule: we don’t take the risk, we manage it. I used to have one of these, but I now have a toy.” CONCRETE“After working for some companies, I joined a start-up company. We started with three employees and jumped to 63 employees in 18 months. We made concrete products. So this one, it doesn’t seem that impressive until you hold it up to the light. It’s translucent concrete. (Laughs at the reaction of the interviewer and photographer after seeing the concrete under the light.) Isn’t it cool? You have the structural reinforcement of concrete but it would also act as a window, it lets natural light in. We wanted to use it in third-world countries, but what ended up happening is that people who wanted this were people with multi-million dollar mansions. They wanted walls they could look out of and see people walk by. We went after a market in the third-world but we ended up going for Beverly Hills.”LICENSE PLATE“One of the most common financial terms is EBITDA. It stands for earnings before interest taxes depreciation amortization. It’s a big deal because if you know the EBITDA of a company then you know their real cash flow. I always tell my students to never get a vanity plate because I don’t believe in vanity plates, but if you do, that’s what should be on it because it’s so important.”
Writer: Alyssa Walhood~Multimedia Journalist
