As Orange Element’s marketing intern during the last few months, I was responsible for social media management and client outreach. While I stayed on top of our content, I was also tasked with helping my manager Hannah with day-to-day tasks and client work. While my internship is coming to an end, this position helped me learn a lot more about the internal operations of a marketing and creative agency. Below are my top three insights I’ve learned while interning here at Orange Element.
1. People are everything.
People are what make businesses move. They are the blood and sweat that keeps the ball rolling. Part of working with people is forming the correct mindset on how to handle situations. To be entirely cliché, I will quote an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This applies entirely to business and the day-to-day operations at a firm. At the beginning of my internship I was so anxious to make an impact that I was strong-arming my ideas in order to get something done. During this process, I understood that this isn’t how things should be done within a culture if you want to build trust and friendship. Instead of pushing my own agenda, I found it was more important to focus on helping other people. The most important person I could help was my supervisor Hannah. She had the task of managing me as an excited, outspoken intern new to the working world. She reined me in and helped me grow as an individual, allowing me to create my own creative environment where my ideas could flourish. It’s important to show appreciation for these kinds of people in an organization. These are the people who support you and become the champions of your story, pushing your ideas throughout the organization so they can be executed. When starting a new job or internship, I will begin by asking, “whom can I positively impact by being here?”
2. I can always learn something new.
Coming into this internship, I thought I knew it all. I was a little narrow-minded and naïve. Throughout this internship, I realized how little I actually knew and, more importantly, how much I could learn and contribute to the team. I’ve realized ideas form through collaboration, giving everyone the ability to build upon an idea or take it in a completely new direction. I am trying my best every day to stay on top of the newest trends and build my foundational knowledge so I can make the biggest contribution to the team. A part of this process involves breaking down the false assumption of “I know everything” and instead asking people around you what they think. My focus moving forward should be “What can I learn today?” and “How can I contribute?” These two driving forces will allow me to make an impact daily, while improving my foundational knowledge I contribute.
3. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I’m leaving with the understanding that legacy isn’t created overnight. It’s not something that can happen from one article or blog post. Legacy is built over time with consistency and integrity. I believe that Orange Element focuses on this long-term strategy instead of pursuing short-term gains. Instead, short-term gains are carefully considered because they aren’t a part of the founding values of Orange Element. As an agency, they show patience and speed in the workplace. “Patience” and “speed” describe how I am trying to work every day. I’ve tried to create long-term patience for my goals and aspirations while working with speed to execute the micro-tasks, building up to that long-term goal. This same model of patience and speed can be applied to my previous two insights of learning something new and the importance of people.
Read my other blog posts from my internship here.
