How Harvard Business School’s OPM Program Helped Shape the Career of Peter J. Burns III

How Harvard Business School’s OPM Program Helped Shape the Career of Peter J. Burns III

Peter J. Burns III is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in starting up niche market replicable business enterprises. An innovative businessman, he creates and implements many new concepts from the ground up. Critical to his success: Participation in the Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management (OPM) program.

What is Harvard’s OPM program?

It’s designed for business owners and founders who have at least 10 years of operating existence, serve as a chief executive or a C-level exec, and are actively involved in a business or hold a significant equity stake in one.

The Harvard curriculum helps entrepreneurs who are already building, leading and growing successful businesses focus on leadership and personal growth. It spurs individuals to develop a broader global perspective, gain a deeper understanding of operations and glean greater insight into operational excellence.

Celebrity students who have enrolled include actors Katie Holmes, Tyra Banks and Channing Tatum and rapper LL Cool J.

Peter J. Burns III was the perfect candidate—and to date was one of the youngest people accepted into this prestigious program.

The Harvard Background of Peter J. Burns III

Burns entered Harvard’s OPM program in 1986 at the age of 29. Yes, by that age he’d already had 10 years of experience running a successful company.

His official career as an entrepreneur started when he created a company that imported mopeds (motorized bicycles) to the United States from Europe. That was on Nantucket Island in 1977. At the time, it was one of the most successful recreational rental companies of its kind in the world.

The moped rental company had $3 million in annual sales—netting over half of that amount.

Burns wrote the business plan for that company while he was enrolled as a first-year student at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, while he was enrolled in a 4-year Army ROTC scholarship.

When Burns was selected from among worldwide applicants to be in the Harvard Business School’s OPM program, he recalls being 20-plus years younger than most of his classmates.

“I was classmates with such business giants as Peter Norton (Norton Antivirus,) the owners of the revered Donegal Mills Plantation and the fifth generation of the venerable Gieves & Hawks,” Burns says. "I was with the titans of the entrepreneurial world and was blessed to be among them as ‘The Kid’ of the bunch.”

Peter J. Burns III, Serial Entrepreneur

Since his college years, and early business success, serial entrepreneurship and the establishment of unique businesses has been a major part of Burns’s life. Over the span of four decades in business, Burns has started, operated, sold, and/or expanded more than 150 businesses.

Some of those businesses and operations include:

?Creation of the first “Dolphin Tour” business, using jet boats on guided tours through wild dolphin habitats (Water Tours 1995).

?Establishment of the first integrated media rich commercial email marketing business (Cybertising 2000).

?Inventing the “Insert-A-Zine” niche-publishing concept (NightLife Magazine! 2001).

?Pioneering the expanded market for Cost Segregation Studies, introducing a Patent Pending for unique applications (CSS 2008).

?Expanding to the massive commercialization of cost segregation (HL Cost Seg 2016).

?Co-founding the first financing organization for “Creatives,” i.e., singers, film producers, artists (FundingWagon.com, 2013). 

? Founding Ethiopian Capital Partners as a bi-lateral platform of commerce between the U.S. and Ethiopia (Expatrepreneur.us 2013).

? Co-founding Luxury Travel Product Placement company that acquired empty time in luxury villas in exchange for luxury products and remarked to Closed User Groups at 40 percent less than the villa owner could rent out own villa. (HL Villas 2016).

? Co-founding Avia Travel Services by assembling a partnership with an expansive travel booking engine, joining it with an airline ticketing entity and creating a "one-stop-shop" for the corporate group and employee travel at significantly discounted rates. (Avia 2017).

And many more…

Opportunities with Peter J. Burns III

Growing up as a young entrepreneur, experiencing the ups and downs of starting businesses, and having decades of experience, Burns developed a passion for mentoring. He combined his passion for starting new enterprises with his affinity for offering guidance to aspiring and existing entrepreneurs by creating Burn$ Funding.

Burns$ Funding uses unique and innovative methods (involving the use of bridge loans and shelf corporations to repair credit and gain access to funding) to provide aspiring entrepreneurs and existing business owners with access to capital to fund their own business ventures.

Interested in hearing more about business opportunities? Check out the Peter J. Burns III website and read more about this Harvard trained and real-world-seasoned entrepreneur.