OUR STORIES
Hear from our former interns about
their experience with Collegiate!
Before working at CE, I was the type of person with no confidence in trying new things. I was very shy and timid. I went into this internship thinking I wouldn’t be successful because I didn't have any knowledge of running a business or how to do it properly.
Now I can say after working at CE, that I am capable of starting and running a business. I gained experience with marketing, sales, and management. Not what you learn in college, but real hands on experience. I learned the ups and downs and how to problem solve areas I haven’t crossed yet. Not only did I learn basic business skills, I gained confidence to try new things that put me out of my comfort zone. I am very thankful for this opportunity where I learned more than I could have in a classroom.
I didn’t understand failure and perseverance until my summer with Collegiate Entrepreneurs. I used to wander aimlessly, thinking I wanted to pursue entrepreneurship without really knowing what that meant.
Like a lot of other people this summer, I struggled to find and retain employees to produce the work that I sold. Through support from the company and my executive and just a lot of perseverance, I was able to produce all of my work and really learn how significant it is to have good people under you. I know a lot more about leadership now and what it actually means to lead a team. After a lot of failure, a lot of hard work, and eventually a lot of success, I feel like I have a much better grasp on what it is to be an entrepreneur.
Stepping into the position of Branch Manager, the greatest struggle I faced was self-doubt. With only one business class under my belt, I was afraid I wouldn’t be capable of anything this job required. But then? I went and did it! Collegiate Entrepreneurs completely transformed my perspective and gave me a more structural business sense of the world.
Collegiate taught me how to isolate my problems and then solve them in a business sense - which can be applied to really anything that you do. Going into my junior year, I plan to get and internship and maybe even start my own business after I graduate. Wherever I go with my life, Collegiate has given me enough self confidence to know that I can do it!
I came into Collegiate Entrepreneurs looking for my next big challenge, and I certainly found it. Up to that point, my only professional experience was in lifeguarding, and my leadership experience was limited to my high school activities. To say Collegiate has been transformative would be an understatement. I thought that I would be strong in management and weaker in sales since I despised making phone calls. It turned out to be exactly the opposite.
I was able to get over my fear of talking on the phone and by the end of the season I preferred phone calls to text communication. Although I could get customers and employees on board, I struggled to manage effectively and keep employees around. Working for Collegiate helped me improve my strengths and highlighted my weaknesses so I could begin to improve upon them. It was challenging, but I stuck to my core principle: success would come, so long as I just never gave up. I knew I would make many mistakes, and I certainly did, but I ultimately would call it a successful summer and I am excited to do it all again.
Dani Haines
University of Maine
Revenue:
$91,764
Earnings:
$20,000
I’m a very reserved and quiet person and I’ve never been very confident either. This was my biggest struggle when I started at Collegiate but it was also my biggest area for growth.
Through working on my confidence with the help of trainings and mentorship from my executive, I was able to improve my abilities in sales, employee retention, and over all job satisfaction. Having this opportunity helped improve my confidence immensely - not only in Collegiate, but in my future career and overall state of mind as well.
Before working at CE, I was the kind of person that would sleep late, wait until the last minute to get things done, and never took much initiative. After this past summer, I became an early bird that rose up to any occasion and planned for any given circumstance.
I was able to accomplish this by changing my mindset in order to fit the Collegiate way. I learned to have an internal locus of control which made my problems my own to solve and forced me to take responsibility for my business. I don’t think I would be able to learn any of the skills I did the way I learned them anywhere else, and those lessons will stick with me throughout my whole career as I apply them to different aspects of business. Next summer, I hope to find another internship focusing on a different aspect of business, but I will take the lessons I learned from managing and selling at Collegiate to move me forward in my next chapter of life.
When I first joined the CE team, I was struggling with many things including motivation, purpose, anxiety, and focus. I am also someone who believes that stress, fear, and discomfort are things that strengthen people, so that is why I took this opportunity.
During my Branch Manager year, not only did I learn and work hard at becoming a salesman, and a manager, but I learned a lot more about myself personally. I learned about my strengths and my weaknesses, about how to control my stress, and about how to really live the way that I want to. There are many skills you will learn as a Branch Manager that will carry over to more than just your career as long as you work hard to grow. This position is not for the faint of heart, but if you are able to stick it out and work hard, it will be something that could change your life.
Before I started at Collegiate Entrepreneurs, I was a very typical college student. Just coming out of the pandemic, I didn’t really know my purpose. I was just kind of lazy. The summer before, I wasn’t really able to do anything so I felt like, coming into this year, I wanted to do something that gave me more of a purpose. That’s why I joined the team here at CE.
At first, I was intimidated by having to deal with customers; I just didn’t think it was something that I could do. As the summer went on, my ability to build rapport and answer customer questions and concerns became my biggest focal point and helped me make most of my sales. I came away with strong interpersonal skills that I plan to use in my interviews, no matter what business I go into after this.
I used to be a pretty timid, not very confident person. Working with Collegiate Entrepreneurs taught me a lot about myself and how to be a go-getter. I confronted my weaknesses head on all while getting hands-on experience in managing employees and effectively communicating with my team and my customers.
As if that wasn’t challenging enough, my car ended up breaking down mid-summer and I had learn not just how to manage a business, but how to manage a business without a car! I learned how to establish clear expectations with my employees and customers, which set me up for success. In the future, I want to run my own business again. Learning management has taught me how to present myself as a leader and puts me a step ahead of my peers. This program is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but it’s the most you’ll ever learn in such a short period of time and you'll make a nice chunk of change doing it.
As a computer science major, I would consider myself an introvert. I definitely don’t embody the typical salesman persona - eccentric and outgoing. When I heard that there was an opportunity to develop that entrepreneurial skillset, I jumped on it.
I struggled a lot with sales. In the beginning, I went by the script and focused on details. I was lucky enough to have customers within my network early on that were patient with me and gave me a chance to nail down my presentation. After a while, I developed my own way of tackling sales and became more confident in my ability to relay information about the service we could offer. I found that I was more outgoing and could articulate my thoughts and ideas more clearly. Initially, I didn’t see myself as someone who would excel in sales or business so I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I had it in me.
I am the type of person who has very high expectations for themselves. I came into Collegiate Entrepreneurs confident that I could take on the responsibilities and handle the position easily but that changed shortly after I started. I struggled in pretty much every area - sales, job completion, hiring, customer satisfaction.
With training from Collegiate, I greatly improved my sales skills and learned a lot about the process of generating leads and converting those leads into sales. I learned to have an internal locus of control, to take responsibility and do what I could to improve situations. I did everything in my power to ensure things went right and I found that if you go all in, everything will work out. It was a lot of hard work but it was all worth it in the end. Next summer, I plan to study abroad and I know that I’ll be able to take the lessons I learned here and apply them, both in my studies and in my future career in the sales world.