Editor’s note: For the next in “Busy Business,” we spotlight an on-campus, Terry-based magazine.

Valdano Besic’s vision was simple: make a magazine by students, for students and about students.

“UGA didn’t really have any magazine that focused on entertainment, fashion, sports, television and music in terms of the business aspect of it,” he said. “If you are under Terry, you can’t write about anything you want. You have to keep it focused.”

Initially, Besic — a senior from Zenica, Bosnia majoring in business marketing and social media — wanted to get involved with a publication loved by both its readers and writers.

So Besic set out to find a writing position he could get excited about — but it proved to be a more difficult task than expected.

PESA is a Terry College-based magazine that is by students and for students. Courtesy PESA

“When I first came here I didn’t have anything I wanted to participate in,” he said. “As a marketing major, I wanted to get involved with something at Terry, but there were only business fraternities and I was like, ‘Nah, I don’t wanna do that.’”

Unable to find what he was looking for, Besic decided to start his own publication. The venture began as a newsletter for the Professional Entertainment and Sports Association in Terry — a club founded in December 2010 by Kamilah Gray.

“We originally had a newsletter and Valdano liked working on that and suggested us making it into an e-magazine,” Gray said. “He took off running with that and we now have FTR, a PESA publication.”

From a small start of just 10 members sitting around a room, PESA now has more than 160 members and three daughter organizations, with Besic’s FTR, or For The Record, being one of them.

“Kamilah recruited PESA’s whole executive board,” Besic said. “And this last semester we had so many people sign up for it, it was crazy … we packed out a large room in Sanford.”

Inspired by Gray’s success founding and recruiting members for PESA, Besic was excited — instead of nervous or unsure — about the magazines’s potential.

“Doing those kind of things and seeing the end result, you aren’t scared to start something else,” he said.

His focus would be helping students understand the value of hard work, steps to success and success stories. The first issue, published digitally in November of last year, featured Will Pattiz, a former student and now four-time entrepreneur, as well as an article Besic wrote entitled “10 Steps to Sweet Success.”

“On top of that, it gives you entertainment, morals and teaches you stuff about integrity of your work,” Besic said. “It’s been a lot of great things that, as a beginning magazine, you wouldn’t expect.”

That first issue garnered more than 80 Facebook likes and hundreds of views on the first day.

“It was a huge success,” Besic said. “A lot of businesses read it and it gives students something to look forward to. We have a marketing coordinator and she’s done such a good job.”

With positions in advertising, marketing and writing, FTR has a dozen students working directly on it, as well as many other contributing members from PESA.

“The great thing about us is that we allow anyone in,” he said, “Anybody with a love for entertainment. You don’t need to be a business major or any specific major, just have a love for what you do and we have something for you.”

Besic hopes to double the number of students involved with it by next semester. The ultimate goal, he said, would be to have enough resources and people so that FTR would be a regular, monthly publication.

“It really is building up and getting foundations,” Gray said. “So right now the funding comes through PESA, but probably for next semester FTR will be its own individual organization.”

Part of what makes it so successful, Besic said, is having such a devoted staff.

“It was a challenge,” he said, “But I feel like it’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve done here.”

And though designing and editing all six pages of the first issue took a lot of time and hard work, Besic said the experience and outcome were well worth it — and anticipates growth with each quarterly issue.

“If you write about something you believe in and it’s something that you’re not just being forced to do,” he said, “it comes out as the most beautiful work.”