The Summer of “The Hustle”
I call this the summer of the hustle because I know that I will need to stay on my toes to keep up with the team at 2ULaundry. I just finished the first week of my internship and so far, so good. Honestly, I don’t know if there is anywhere else I could be working where I would see my tangible personal impact. This summer, I have the honor of interning at 2U Laundry, a growing laundry/dry cleaning delivery service, in Atlanta Georgia as part of the marketing team. Currently, I am very excited about the work the company has planned out for me during these next two months. During the onboarding process, they took inventory of my personal interests and aligned the work and projects I was given around objectives that are going to allow me to grow my knowledge and experience around marketing and business operations. I decided to take this internship because of this very fact. I not only get the pleasure of working at a start-up in a fairly new space, but I also get to work very closely with the very people who run and manage the day to day operations, marketing, growth, and data analytics.
After the first week, I have been in important meetings where I was even given the chance to voice my opinion and I have had the opportunity to sit 1-on-1 with the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of the company. The rest of the staff has also made my transition onto the team pretty seamless and I can’t thank them enough for welcoming me. This internship has given me a tremendous opportunity for growth, however, I think I also bring some unique skills to the table as well. To the team, I bring forth a unique perspective on how the business interacts with its customers as well as its internal employees. My interpersonal skills and ability to read the room have been a great asset to me. Most jobs I have had in the past have involved customer service skills and communication. I have even been tasked with a project that involves creating a recruitment-retention plan for a specific group of employees.
The world of marketing is face paced and full of jargon/acronyms for everything, so I have really had to just sit back, listen, and learn a lot and it’s only the first week. By the end of the summer, I will have so many new terms memorized which can’t hurt. Not only have I been able to see daily operations, but I was also given the opportunity to spend a day with one of the delivery drivers, Jose, who explained his job to me and his aspirations as an entrepreneur. We definitely made a lot of personal connections and I really enjoyed what he had to say about the company and his role. I definitely appreciate his time and his insights into how the backbone of 2ULaundry functions and operates.
I am really looking forward to the next 7 weeks and can’t wait to hone in on my projects for the summer which includes recruitment, apartment event marketing, competitive research, community engagement, and enhancing company culture with an internal newsletter. All of these projects fall under things that I value and have interests in. 2ULaundry has given me a grand opportunity to explore their business, create value for it, and learn a lot in the process. I don’t feel like an intern at 2ULaundry and I think that speaks volumes for what is to come.
Written by #WakeEntrepreneur, Donovan Martin, Class of 2020