Hi everyone, my name is Jon Li, and I’m a rising sophomore studying Economics & Strategy and Statistics, with a potential minor in computer science. As I’m constructing this blogpost, I just realized how quickly time has passed by. I still remember the night before my internship; I kept reminding myself: This internship is going to pass by quickly, so you got to give it your best shot! While I had continuously followed this principle, it’s still unbelievable that my busy and fulfilling internship is only a week away from ending.
The venture I’m working for this summer is DOOR CLUB LLC, whose mission is to facilitate tenant rent collection and management process for DIY landlords, as well as connect contractors and landlords for any minor repairs or services that need to be performed in the rental properties. My internship majorly covered three areas: Market Research, Market Analysis, and Content Marketing. I had a few experiences with each of these function areas, but my internship with DOOR definitely pushed my skills to another level.
In the first half of my internship, I was primarily focusing on market research and market analysis. During my first meeting with Jake, the CEO, and founder of DOOR CLUB LLC, I was asked to perform market research and analysis on our Contractor stakeholders. While this task seemed easy to me in the beginning, and Jake specified the report only needs to be five to ten pages, I soon realized there were significant challenges due to insufficient information. Also, considering it was my first week of work, the first two days of my internship were truly difficult to get through. However, after the first two days of research and asking for recommendations from Jake, I discovered the direction I wanted to proceed with. By Friday afternoon, I have completed a fifteen-page report with detailed explanations of the industry analysis, competitors, and other related areas. Once I turned the report in, I had a tremendous sense of satisfaction and, surprisingly, a tiny bit of sorrow for finally completing the work.
The second half of my internship was more focused on content marketing. Each week, I constructed blog posts for our landlord stakeholders as well as preparing social media content, hoping to drive inbound traffic to our services. Compared to the market research and analysis portion, the content marketing tasks were more subjective and controllable because I was crafting the content myself and can determine the style of my writing. However, content marketing has its difficulties as well. I needed to choose my wording and writing style carefully to ensure the landlord stakeholder will find the article worth to read; I also had to be cautious with the tips I’m suggesting because I have not personally been a landlord and therefore had to rely on ideas from other landlords online; finally, I tried different lengths and topics to compare the effectiveness of each Blogspot. However, the most interesting part for me was that I had become a self-educated landlord in the areas I researched, which is yet an unexpected but welcoming consequence.
Looking back to my internship, I can confidently conclude that this internship is one of the best experiences in my entire life. Not only did I get to gain on-hand work experiences and keep pushing my limits, but I also met many new people and formed new connections. Most importantly, though, I learned that the more time and effort I invest in my internship, the more return I will get out of it. I really want to thank Jake for choosing me in the application, as well as the Skandalaris Center for facilitating this program. While I do not know what the future holds for me, I sincerely hope this experience will be a memory I can always cherish in my entire life.