Meet Aaron Matthias! He is a junior and a double major in Marketing and Family Enterprise from Long Island, New York. His interests and hobbies include lacrosse, soccer, going to the gym, anything that has to do with protein, cooking, chilling with friends, bartending, watching movies, listening to music – mostly Drake, dancing (hip-hop), community service, and long walks on the beach.
Last semester, Aaron got accepted into a marketing and sales internship through a recruiter on LinkedIn. The company is called The AroundCampus Group and has affiliation with 200 schools in the U.S. including Stetson University, and is ranked in Forbes top 10 for best marketing internships. As soon as classes ended on May 6, 2014, he jumped on a flight to Chapel Hill, NC to begin week long training at one of the best Marketing and Sales Academy in the nation. Seven hundred students were chosen out of ten thousand applicants. He said, “It was a rigorous week but fun as well. I would describe it as finals and spring break combined through the rigors of day to day studying and classes and the Chapel Hill night life next to UNC.”
After graduation, he was sent on a flight back home to Stetson to begin his internship. Now you may be wondering, “well what do you do?” Each university has its own University Planner that goes out to students and Directories. AroundCampus has contracts with these schools to put together the planners and directories and go business to business to have them advertise their specials and services to students in order to save them money and bring in more customers. So his task was to go to all the businesses in DeLand, have them advertise in Stetson’s planner to bring in new customers (students). Sounds easy right? Try hearing 35-40 no’s a day for 2-3 weeks with doors slamming in your face, owners telling you to never come back, insulting you, and downright degrading you as a person. Now normally people would just quit at that point because they weren’t selling anything. Unfortunately, his partner did and was riding solo for a while. He didn’t have an office, nor set hours. But day to day work started at 8:30am and ended at 5:30pm. With that being said he sort of fell off of his usual motivated self. He got down, and didn’t see the need to continue in the program because of the success he was not having. Aaron felt as if he went through rigorous training for nothing, pretty much.
Then his regional manager, Juan Hurtado, who is the face of the company and who Aaron views as “…the best marketer/person I know, made a visit to Stetson just to see how I was doing.” To briefly paraphrase the conversation between Hurtado and Matthias, Hurtado pretty much said that there is always going to be bumps in the road, obstacles ahead of you, but if you let them stop you, then you will never reach success. He also pointed out that Aaron should use the 3 weeks of disappointments to prove to everyone that he can sell, market, and learn from any mistakes he made, and that is exactly what he did.
Aaron began making sales after sales, to the point where he was turning no’s into yes’s. He could predict business owners’ rebuttals and why they “couldn’t” advertise. He was so prepared that he would have an answer for everything. Then, an intern who worked at another school, came to work with Aaron at Stetson and took the town by storm. A new competitor came into town called Campus Special and they were stealing his business. Clearly, he was not happy with that so he worked harder than them. When they were eating lunch, he was making business calls. It got to the point where he began recognizing their cars and new where they were at all times. He says, “Nobody puts me in a corner.” At that point it wasn’t about the selling, it was about helping businesses bring in customers. That was the difference between the competitors and Aaron. The competitors were in it for the money and Aaron was in it for the experience and helping businesses gain more of a customer pool.
A month in and his deadline came at Stetson University. In his head, he thought his internship was over and ended up getting mad at himself for feeling as if he did not put his best effort in at the beginning, but ended up finishing so strong. Then, his regional managers, Juan and Healey, advocated that he get moved to another location, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He told them that if he did get relocated, he wouldn’t let them down. So it happened, he moved to a new market with a deadline that was a week away. He needed to make a big impact within a week. Aaron started riding along with an intern at Embry, but he wasn’t social nor was he the strongest seller. His new partner just wasn’t excited about the product or about what he was doing. Business owners obviously pick up on that, so they would automatically give him a no. So, he started coaching his partner like he was coached. Long story short, Aaron helped him make a complete turnaround. The kid was having great conversations with owners, building rapport, and making sales. He finally looked happy. Aaron told him, “No matter what has happened leading up to this point, forget about it. I want you to put in all your effort for these last 5 days.” And he did. He finished the last 5 days with 4k in sales while Aaron was at 7k. At that moment Aaron took a step back and said to himself, “Wow! I just completely transformed this kid’s mentality and motivated him to something he never thought he could. That’s when I knew I was unstoppable.”
Aaron’s regional managers were very impressed with his coaching and selling that they moved him to work with the team at UCF. He was there for 3 weeks living out of a hotel. His first week there, he made 7k. Second week 2k, last week 8K. He was at the point where he was coaching all three members of the intern team at UCF. Aaron was doing the jobs of his regional managers (in their own words). He was ranked top team in the nation and he knew he had made a difference and an impact.
He ended the internship with a little over $27,000 in sales in 2 months and 2 weeks. It was the most challenging internship he has ever done, but definitely the most rewarding. Aaron recently got invited back to Chapel Hill, NC for a top performer celebration weekend. Three people out of his 30 person region were chosen to attend, and he was one of them. Since then, he has been getting job offers for after graduation making six figures, plus future internships. So this internship was definitely worth it to him.