Students fueled up at breakfast for a busy day and headed to their first company meetings in Stewart Hall. Business Plans were underway from the day before and students began getting the details in place. After company meetings, Jeff Munneke who works for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx joined us for the morning keynote address. In the beginning of his speech, he talked about how nervous he was at his interview for the Timberwolves. He was saying how he was very sweaty and was stumped on the questions he was asked such as, “What animal would you be and why?”. Jeff recalled that he wasn’t feeling confident on his interview because he felt he had bombed it. In the following week, he got a letter in the mail saying he was hired. For a moment, he felt like he was getting punked. His first day, the boss said he hired him because he was so enthusiastic. The boss wanted to take a chance on him because Jeff had made a good first impression. Jeff explained to us that you have 15 seconds to make your first impression and that it’s very important to represent yourself the best way you can. People use judgement as defense mechanisms in order to make us wary of people that may not have the values, morals, personalities, or characteristics that a person is comfortable with. He went on to explain that first impressions are important because it may be your only impression to make, once the judgment is made there’s nothing you can do to change it, and people’s first impression tend to be self-fulfilling. He built off his statement by explaining if someone makes a good first impression, a person will easily pick out the good of that person. If someone makes a bad first impression, it’s easier to pick out all the bad in that person. Jeff also talked about his tips for building a long term relationship, sharing that you need to act successful, create compelling reasons to listen, be interested and not interesting, and treat whoever you are talking to as the most important person in the room. Jeff then finished off his speech by saying asking open ended questions are the bet thing to do. It can build relationships with people that can be useful in the future. Practice makes perfect, so he challenged students to ask open ended questions this week starting with W’s: who, what, where, when why, and how. See if you can ask a student you don’t know an open-ended question this week.
After our speaker, students headed over to our breakout sessions. In the session, there were representatives from Allstate that came to speak to us about the importance of having insurance. In the beginning of the session, we were asked if we could share stories about a time where we were pulled over and a timed we were in a car crash. Some stories were funny, like when someone was pulled over because their bumper sticker had read, “CAUTION: New Driver” and someone being pulled over because a cop had thought they were thirteen. We then went on a more serious note about car crashes. One of the student campers had shared her story about someone rear ending her and the whole back of her car was smashed in. There was another story about someone going over the median and crashing into their car. The representatives then led into statistics, saying that in the first year of new drivers, about 78% will be in an accident. He also shared that the top cause of death in Minnesota between fifteen and seventeen year-old’s were traffic crashes – more than double the combined rate of suicide, unintentional injury, cancer, and homicide! The representatives then ended the session with a slideshow on what insurance was and why it matters.
Student broke for lunch and headed back to company meetings to continue working on business plan finance statements and brainstorm sessions for marketing and finance. When the meeting was finished we all went to break out sessions about ethics and philanthropy.
The ethics speaker truly got to everyone’s hearts with his message and brought tears to people’s eyes. After dinner, students headed into a long night of company meetings. Some groups worked late, until 10 p.m. to finish the majority of their business plans, refine product details, and finalize the presentation. Then it was rec time where we played board games and pool in the dorms. Everyone is looking forward to their business plan presentations tomorrow!