We were thrilled to have our intern, Kate Hinshaw, a junior at Denison University, working with us this summer.
During her time with our team, she learned valuable marketing and creative skills; read as she reflected on her experience and how she will apply it to her own on-campus business.
As all entrepreneurs know, building a successful brand is a labor of love, like raising a child. I have seen my parents raise my sisters and me, and I know that children require the same nurturing and care as a new business as it is up to parents to learn new nurturing techniques and educate themselves on raising a respectable child.
Although I do not have children, I have a passion project that often feels like my child. Over the last two years, I have worked with a team of ten other students at Denison University to create a brand called UNCUT on the Hill. UNCUT is a digital journalism platform for student-athletes to share their stories about race, gender inequality, sexuality, mental health, injury, future career paths, and anything in between. In the early stages of raising and caring for our brand, we developed our website, social pages, brand awareness, and logos. We have also successfully published several podcasts and articles in conjunction with our mission.
While the growth of UNCUT has been steady, as young college students, there is only so much that we know about branding and developing a successful business. So, just like any young parent, I sought to learn new tips and tricks on how to “raise” my business. Luckily, through my internship with Rizco, I have gained a wealth of knowledge about branding and marketing that I have been able to apply to my “parenting” skills for UNCUT on the Hill.
As an intern with Rizco, I have spent my summer learning countless vital marketing and business techniques, including brand audits, pay-per-click advertisements, messaging, printing, research, web development, content writing, and overall business organization. This experience has been invaluable because it will help me in the long run with my ability to grow and care for UNCUT. During the last days of my internship, the Rizco team tasked me to apply my newly obtained “parenting” knowledge to my business. I started by completing some legal steps to promote our legitimacy. Then, I created a MailChimp account for our future email blasts. Next, I worked on developing a system to analyze the data of our website, podcasts, and articles. Additionally, I met with my co-founder to set goals for our next semester at school. We decided on a list of lofty but attainable goals that we know we can accomplish with our new parenting techniques.
While there are still many aspects of brand development that I hope to tackle during my free time before going back to school to help improve the UNCUT brand even farther, what I completed during my time at Rizco will be invaluable to our future success. Our child, UNCUT, will go much further with the knowledge I obtained from Rizco and will help nurture our brand in the future. Just like raising a child, I will continue to nourish UNCUT and grow it to be the best brand it can be.
