A former ISU football player and businessman talked to students about entrepreneurship on Thursday.

Hussein Warmack was a student at Iowa State from 1989-94 and a three-year letter-winner as a fullback and tight end for the Cyclones.

He came back to Ames to talk to students in the College of Business and give them advice about starting their own businesses.

“You always have to think about success,” Warmack said.

After graduating from Iowa State with a degree in marketing, he got a job with Maytag and then a pharmaceutical company, but still wasn’t satisfied.

He went back to school to get his master’s of businesses administration in brand management.

From there, he started a high-paying job with the Coca-Cola Company and worked there for five years.

“It was the best job in the world, but I wasn’t happy,” Warmack said.

After that, he decided that he wanted to put his savings into a new business.

He struggled through two years of getting the business started and relations with his partner.

“You just have to go out and make it happen,” Warmack said. “I never stopped.”

In 2005, Warmack collaborated with an investor, John Hantz, to accomplish his dream.

“To be a successful entrepreneur, the first thing you have to do is dream,” he said.

In 2005, Warmack started the United Beverage Group, with Nu South Lemonade, which is now the company’s leading product.

He developed innovative and colorful flavors of lemonade, with each flavor representing a different state or city, such as Florida mango and North Carolina blueberry.

Along with being the president of Nu South Lemonade, Warmack collaborates with Jeff Anderson and Aaron Thierry from Hantz Group.

Anderson, financial consultant for Hantz Group, and Thierry, vice president for Hantz Group, have helped Warmack market his brand to what some may think are unusual markets.

Currently, United Beverage Group has signed a racing deal with RWI Racing. Its logo is on race car driver Rusty Wallace’s car – No. 61 Nu South.

All three gave advice to students about how to succeed in entrepreneurship.

“Make yourself different,” Anderson said. “Break the mold.”

The worst thing that can happen is someone saying no, Thierry said.

“You’ll never know anything until you ask,” he said.

Warmack said it is also important to study the people before you and where they went wrong and where they went right.

“Dreaming is good, but you have to sacrifice,” Warmack said. “You have to give a lot to get a lot.”

Sylvia Weber, senior in management, said that hearing Warmack’s story was inspiring.

“It was inspirational to hear from someone from Iowa State, and hear how he got that far,” she said.