Towards the end of Junior year, I quit the job at Tires Plus as I was undertaking an internship with my old football coach’s company. My coach was the CFO of this company, and partly the reason I went to school for business and decided to major in finance. Throughout school, I created the lofty goal of wanting to be the CFO of Disney. Interning under my old coach would be the first step. This internship ended up being timed out perfectly. On the second day of my internship, I ran into my coach outside of the bathroom and asked how everything was going. He proceeded to tell me the company they were partnered with for the last 25 years was giving them a 30 day notice that the partnership was ending. For background, the company I was interning for was a manufacturer's representative in the medical device field. They represented a manufacturer's products in the local market and essentially earned a commission for these products when a purchase order was placed in the area. The reason these types of companies are important is it allows a manufacturer to gain a sales force without having to hire and manage their own sales force. The company they represented decided it was time they built out their own salesforce internally. To make matters worse, they tried to poach all of the top sales people.
Now to the point this was lucky for me, the next few months wouldn't be a normal summer for this company. That first week I was brought into a sales meeting and was fortunate enough to hear the layout of what steps were being taken to mitigate this change. Over the course of the next handful of weeks, I would learn more and more of the behind the scenes. I had the privilege of seeing the different people be brought in that they were looking to partner with in different product markets. I also was able to get a glimpse into the background of the company with the preparation of financials. There were many meetings I either sat in, or learned about later on of what happened. This was where I learned more in one summer than I would in all of my college studies.
This experience is the core of my anti college mindset. I am fully aware that it is a privileged viewpoint, and I am also fully aware the reason this internship happened was because of me going to school. However, this experience taught me that these are the lessons you really need to learn. This is why I encourage every young person to try and gain these experiences in any way possible. If you have any inclination to what field of work you may want to go into, then I encourage you to create a list of every single company in the greater area that you are in and start to reach out to them about working for them. Let them know that you are eager to learn and want to learn the behind the scenes of how the gears turn. You will come to realize that not only will the experience of hearing people tell you “Not a chance” help you grow, but you will also meet many people that will help you along your life journey. It might take reaching out to 100 different companies in and around the industry, to get one person to hire you. It may take a year or more of working at this company to gain the trust of the higher ups to allow you to see the backend of the company, but ultimately you will realize, most people want to help you succeed if you are trustworthy, and true with your intentions.
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