Braydon Morgan Builds Business Skills to Support Career Goals
By Scott Jackson
After an early pivot in his college journey, advertising student Braydon Morgan is using business education to round out his skill set and prepare for a future in marketing and entrepreneurship.
Morgan, who is set to graduate in May 2026, initially started college as a business major, but after shifting to advertising, he realized he would still benefit from the hard skills business training can provide. This led him to pursue his business administration minor as well as a professional sales certificate through the Carson College. He says the combination strikes a balance between creative expression and business competence.
Training that applies beyond business
Morgan says by far the most beneficial class experiences he’s had at WSU were through the Carson College’s marketing program—particularly Marketing 379, Professional Sales.
Morgan says hands-on projects and sales simulations gave him practical experience that applies beyond the classroom or traditional business settings. He placed third in the class’s sales competition and was a top-six finalist in the college’s 90-second pitch competition.
“I think sales is honestly the most universal skill that you can learn from college,” he says. “You don’t have to apply these skills to roles that are exclusive to sales; you can use sales in your professional life or in your personal life.”
Morgan credits the program with teaching not just technical skills essential to sales but also interpersonal skills like active listening and confidence while communicating in professional settings. He says learning to ask better questions was a turning point in how he thinks about connection and persuasion.
“You can talk to anyone if you just know how to ask the right questions,” he says. “This class is so good at giving you the prompts to learn how to ask better questions, which you can apply to your entire life.”
Connecting class lessons with real-world experience
Morgan, who has also served as student program coordinator for the Center for Entrepreneurship, said the role helped him pick up practical experience coordinating events, connecting students to opportunities like the Business Plan Competition, developing promotional content for social media, and even a bit of graphic design.
In the summer of 2024, he took those skills abroad while interning for Irish startup Skippio, a service allowing customers at events to order food and drink through an app and skip waiting in line. He said the internship experience came with a host of valuable lessons, many of which were connected to business and marketing.
“Understanding how the company wanted to be seen by its customers and how it fulfilled customer desires was an important skill,” he says.
Preparing for what’s next
As he nears graduation, Morgan is weighing several career paths. He says he would be happy founding his own business, doing marketing work for a large outdoor company like Arc’teryx or Patagonia, or even doing social media management and brand development for an ad agency.
He encourages other students outside the business college to consider sales and marketing coursework.
Regardless of the direction his career takes him, he believes the combination of advertising and business training has set him up with a versatile foundation.
“My dream job is to be an entrepreneur in some way or even an ‘intrapreneur,’ using my ideas to benefit an existing company,” he says. “If I work for a company, I will apply those forward-thinking, adaptive skills there—and having general business skills like knowing how accounting and marketing works will be helpful wherever I go.”