Ninety-eight percent of U.S. companies have 100 employees or less, though Fortune 500 and Fortune 1,000 companies have half the available jobs, said Keat Wilkins, the Oct. 10 VIP Distinguished Speaker.

“There’s a whole bunch of small businesses for every giant company,” said Wilkins, cofounder and president of Sense Corp, a business and technology consulting firm. “The small business sector is extremely important to how America performs overall.”

Wilkins graduated from McCombs with an MBA in 1989, and began his corporate journey at Citibank where he performed market research evaluating customer attitudes toward their mortgages. He was eventually laid off from Citibank, an experience he now views positively. “Nothing forces you to think about what you want to do like getting laid off,” he said.

While at his next position with Tyco Healthcare, Wilkins learned about technology and met the person with whom he cofounded Sense Corp in 1996. “Running a technology-oriented company is not what I’d have expected to do when I graduated from McCombs,” said Wilkins, who had very little technical or computer knowledge upon entering “the real world.”

When it began, Sense Corp was a “virtual company” without offices — just some “smart guys” with laptops. “We made it nine-and-a-half years with no offices,” Wilkins said.

Recounting such initial mistakes as misspelling each use of the phrase “data warehousing” on his first million-dollar sales pitch to Shell Chemical, Wilkins detailed potential perils small business owners may encounter. At one point, Wilkins faced an ethical dilemma when a client asked him for a kickback in exchange for $15 million. If he didn’t comply with the client, he was told he would be fired. Admitting it was not an easy decision, Wilkins rejected the kickback and was able to retain his job when the client’s employee was fired shortly thereafter.

In 2001, the Enron scandal was exposed. The energy giant was Sense Corp’s biggest client, and their loss created a “hard December” for the fledgling business. Wilkins asked his employees to not quit despite how dire the post-Enron future looked for them, and, amazingly, not one of them did. “I think that says something about the organization and the people who work in it,” Wilkins said.

It was after leaving McCombs that Wilkins believes his real education began. “When I got out of school, what I was prepared to do was begin learning what it is to be a business person,” he said. “After all this time, I’m just beginning to learn what it means to run a company.”

Wilkins wishes he would have taken greater advantage of the networking opportunities available to him when he was at McCombs. “Being able to connect with people along the way is very important,” he said, adding that networking skills are the ones that make you most valuable in the workplace.

Corporate responsibility is a topic about which Wilkins is passionate. This responsibility is toward the community and toward the internal ethics of the business itself. Citing a recent study that concluded MBA students cheat regularly, Wilkins challenged audience members to be ethical in their business dealings.

“Business leaders need to look beyond just the bottom line,” he said.