When the Pitch Doesn’t Go as Planned: BUS306 Students Learn the Real Art of the Pivot

Sometimes the most valuable business lessons emerge not from perfect conditions, but from the messy, unpredictable reality of putting theory into practice.

BUS306 students recently had the opportunity to learn from Mike Halpert, founder and CEO of Ver Coach, a Durham-based VR sports vision training company that’s working with athletes from high school courts to Major League Baseball spring training. But Halpert didn’t just come to share his entrepreneurial journey. He came to teach our students something far more valuable: how to navigate the gap between what we plan and what actually unfolds.

After walking students through his best networking and relationship-driven sales strategies, Halpert issued a challenge: compete in teams to generate leads for Ver Coach’s innovative VR training technology. On paper, it was straightforward. In reality? Not so much.

The timing was off. The campus was quiet when students hit the ground. The audience was off, too. College students aren’t exactly the target market for athletic performance tools. Everything that could make this difficult did.

And that’s precisely where the learning happened.

Our students had to get creative. They had to problem-solve on their feet. They had to embrace what every entrepreneur knows but business textbooks can’t quite capture: the art of the pivot. When conditions shift, when your ideal customer isn’t where you expected them to be, when the plan meets reality and reality wins, that’s when you discover what you’re actually made of.

The results were mixed, yes. But the experience was rich. Because in the real world of building a business, you rarely get perfect conditions. You get Monday afternoon on a college campus with a product designed for competitive athletes. You get moments that test your adaptability, your resilience, and your willingness to try something different when the first approach doesn’t land.

Halpert’s commitment to supporting the next generation of founders shone through not in setting students up for easy wins, but in creating space for them to practice failing forward. Learning through doing, adjusting through trying, growing through the honest work of showing up even when it’s hard.

For our students, we’re nurturing those who will face countless moments where conditions aren’t ideal, doors aren’t open, and the path isn’t clear. This experience planted something essential: the knowledge that you don’t need perfect circumstances to practice your craft. You just need courage, creativity, and the willingness to learn from what is, not what you wish it could be.

That’s the kind of education that builds not just businesses, but the humans who lead them.