Spring 2018 BEC342-2 Mentor Blog

For this final meeting my mentor and I kind of wrapped up the year. We looked at what challenged me this past school year, what made me grow, and what I learned from these challenges and growths. The main topic that frequently resurfaced in our conversation was growing in doing things on my own. For example, as I was searching for internships this summer I had many choices both here and Wheaton and back home. Both of these choices I would most likely have worked along side some of my friends and felt comfortable in this environment. However, as I was talking with my mentor he kept challenging me to branch out and go for something on my own. In doing so, he said this would allow for me to gain some serious growth and self-reliance. This is an aspect of my life that I needed challenging in and felt somewhat insecure about. I did not want to be called out for this inefficiency in my life but I greatly needed it. After being challenged to grow in this area I went out and found a six week long internship in Steamboat Springs, CO. I will not know anyone in the company and will definitely be pushed out of my comfort zone. In this company I will be doing a multitude of jobs including, Business/Sales Development – Identifying prospective buyers, creating sales/new partners through calls and product sampling.  Both direct to consumer and wholesale sales prospecting and
development. Manufacturing/Production Planning -  Understand product development cycle, production planning, quality control, forecasting goals, inventory management. Business Operating Systems – CRM process; order to cash processing, customer analytics. Distribution – Fulfillment processing, inventory management, quality control. Marketing – Direct to consumer strategy, specific sales channel marketing strategies. I am eager to push myself this summer and am very glad that my mentor has pushed me out of my comfort zone.