Intern Position: Business Assistance Team Member
Company / Industry Background: Lenawee Now is a non-profit organization dedicated to economic and business expansion throughout Lenawee County. By attracting new businesses, helping to grow established businesses, and supporting entrepreneurial endeavors in Lenawee, Lenawee Now is creating an economically viable and vibrant region. In addition to business attraction, retention, and start-up activities, Lenawee Now provides critical services to support business growth including access to funding sources and talent enhancement.
General Summary: As a BAT member, the Student will interact with entrepreneurial clients and assist them with business plan writing, customer discovery, market validation, competitive analysis, financial proforma creation and review, interacting with outside consultants, investment pitch decks, and identifying potential funding sources.
Essential / Job Functions:
Primary responsibilities could include:
- Working with Clients
- Working with clients to determine their needs and offer business counseling.
- Visiting client facilities to review their operations.
- Research
- Finding the best solutions and techniques to implement in order to solve clients’ challenges.
- Studying the market to determine the client’s customer needs, interests, etc.
- Gathering supporting information on a given topic or theme that will be used toward writing, designing, or decision making.
- Organizing ideas into an actionable plan that will yield measurable results
- Writing
- Creating original content with solid grammar geared toward the intended audience
- Formatting writing for use as an editorial, article, blog post, press release, presentation, speech, flyer, talking points, etc. that will be disseminated to the client and potential client customers in written or verbal format internal and external communications
- Representing Lenawee Now at special events or while making contact with subject matter experts to collect information for project(s)
- Accompanying directors to presentations, meetings, and special events for the purpose of observing and/or supporting their role
- Financial Analysis
- Determining the return on investment of projects and making recommendations for future actions support other internal initiatives as required
Educational Components:
During this internship, Student will become familiarized with the daily demands of a highly engaged, growing economic development office. He/she will work in a dynamic team environment where he/she will practice and hone his/her professional behavior and marketing skills in the areas of:
- Effective written and verbal skills
- Detail-oriented and highly organized, able to assist on multiple projects and tasks simultaneously
- Excellent time management and prioritization, able to succeed in a fast-paced environment
- Proactive and goal-orientated, inquisitive and eager to continuously learn
- Problem-solving, analytical and creative thinking
- Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications (including Word, Excel and PowerPoint)
- Working cooperatively in a team environment
Example Output
- Competitive analyses
- Product/Service marketing pieces
- Investment Pitch decks
- Five-year financial proformas
- Customer discovery reports
- Business plans
- Market research
- Clients ranging from Crypto-currency to Dog daycare.