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Week 4 - Kunlek's Journey

1/31/2020

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Happy February Everyone! 
​

This is an update on my fourth week interning at The Lightning Jar. We sent out our January newsletter yesterday, and I was so surprised to see how much was packed into one month - all the events and so many wonderful people we met on the way. 

On Monday, Wally Lother, a Financial Advisor at VSECU visited us and taught a course on “Financial Planning Basics”. I had an opportunity to learn more about creating budgets, investment concepts, and credit fundamentals. This was followed by a one on one financial planning session where I learned a lot about my own finances. If you want to retire in your 50s, then you should give Wally a visit at VSECU, and guess what? It is free of charge! We heard other people wanted to attend so we are going to do it again in March.

On Wednesday night, I audited the StartUp 802 course at the Community College of Vermont (CCV) in Bennington. I had an amazing time and was so happy to meet all of the people wanting to be entrepreneurs. They were hardworking, really engaged with their peers and they were all from different age groups and backgrounds! I can’t wait to see their amazing ideas grow in a local business! StartUp 802 is a 6 week course designed to help people understand the entrepreneurial mindset. It also exposes them to various principles to make business dreams come true such as practicing pitches and developing a networking plan. It's been a collaborative project between CCV and The Lightning Jar, and taught by Robert Braathe, who is an amazing instructor and an entrepreneur himself. He has worked for Disney, GAP, and Apple. He is also the founder of BE Your Start.

Lastly, it was quite a learning experience to see how much work goes into putting together the newsletter. While a bit challenging to understand the website it's built on, it was cool to see the final product and how many subscribers it has (over 500 people!). I had fun putting it together with Joelle, especially looking back at all of our fun times with all the people we met to get the word out about what is happening at The Lightning Jar and in the Bennington community. 

I am really happy that my January has been wonderful. We faced some challenging projects but with a lot of hard work we got accomplished our goals. Can't wait for week 5!

 








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Week 3 - Halfway Point of Kunlek's Journey

1/26/2020

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Hi there!  I can't believe it's my third week at The Lightning Jar and how I am already at the halfway point of my field work term. This week, we focused mostly on the internal organization and all the things that need to be done for it to run. I got a deeper understanding of how an organization runs (inside and outside) from the budget allocation, events planning, marketing, understanding grants, collaboration with other organizations and much more. It's all pretty incredible and a lot of work. 

Additionally, we have successfully planned two events for the first two weeks of February - “Joe w/ Jo” at Powers Market (details at The Lightning Jar Facebook page) and “Pizza and Podcasts” - details to come this week on our Facebook page! It was great to meet people from both Powers Market and United Counseling Services who were more than happy to collaborate on these fun and community-focused events. We also focused on the space and how to make it more open and functional as well as Joelle teaching me how to create a budget. I didn't realize all the things you need to think about. As hard as it was, I enjoyed learning about it and look forward to our event on Monday, Financial Planning Basics. 
Something that was really cool was visiting local artist Jackie Kelly at her studio. We met her through one of our connections at a Joe w/Jo event and we just finished decorating our walls with her amazing work. There are so many beautiful paintings filling the walls of our space till the middle of April. We are planning to change the paintings quarterly. Our members really like them as they are so colorful and bright. The Lightning Jar wants to provide its walls for local artists to show their work - if you are an artist and want to collaborate then we would love to talk and plan with you. If you are passing by our area, feel free to stop by to enjoy Jackie’s stunning work. Check out her story in our January Newsletter where she talks more about how she began painting and how she paints for great causes.
We've also begun creating an Instagram account for The Lightning Jar, and I look forward to building that up more as there is so much to share. Can't wait for week four!
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Week Two! - Kunlek's Journey

1/18/2020

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Hi Everyone!

My second week has been wonderful at The Lightning Jar! 

Joelle and I met Jim Verzino, an entrepreneur who has co-founded many socially responsible businesses focused around energy, waste management and workforce
. I learned a lot about the challenges for entrepreneurs in Vermont because of its many geographical locations, but also the opportunities the "Vermont" branding in the US market. Jim has already become one of my role models looking at his many contributions to the community and the environment.
I am also really happy with our success at organizing  “Buzzword Bingo!” at TLJ this past Tuesday evening. We were joined by James Salerno (Hale Mountain Research and BAM - Bennington Area Makers) and students from Bennington College who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. The event was planned to be both educational and fun. Sharing lots of laughs with food and drink, we learned a lot watching TED Talks and Shark Tank videos, but we also learned the most listening to each others opinions and dreams. The TED Talks on what happens when you answer SPAM was a highlight getting many laughs and hearing about a man becoming an entrepreneur at 66 was inspiring. Why don't we have a "70 over 70" list?! Thanks to James and his generous gift donations, everyone went home a winner with awesome prizes!
I also had an amazing opportunity to sit in on the interview for the Working Communities Challenge grant. The team who applied was a collaboration of different organizations from the Bennington community. It filled me with great happiness to see so many like-minded people putting a huge effort to fight the issues of generational poverty in Bennington and thinking beyond - to make a change in the bigger economic system of the community. 
On Friday, Joelle and I were invited to speak about The Lightning Jar at the Bennington Rotary Club's January meeting on Friday. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to share our vision with rotary members and thinking of how we can collaborate to build a Bennington as an entrepreneurial hub focused on improving the quality of life. 
In the last two weeks, I have met so many awesome people, and all of them have made me see the wonders of the Bennington community. Each day I am finding one more reason as to why the Bennington community is the best. Thank you to all I have met over the past two weeks of my journey, I can’t wait to keep meeting new people and also working with those who I have already met.

​I hope to see you on January 27th at The Lightning Jar (12-1pm) for the Financial Planning Basics workshop hosted by The Lightning Jar and VSECU. 

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Bennington College Student - Field Work Term                            My Journey @ The Lightning Jar

1/10/2020

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My name is Kunlek Tenzing and I come from Nepal. I am a student at Bennington College. My studies are focused on “Social Entrepreneurship”. I am interested in finding ways on how one can provide a platform for rural farmers to become entrepreneurs. Currently, I am an intern at The Lightning Jar (TLJ). TLJ is an entrepreneurial center in Bennington that provides a coworking space, resources and connections for startups, students, creative minds or anyone who needs help making their business dreams come true.

I started my internship from the 6th of January and I can’t believe how many awesome entrepreneurs I have already met in the last 5 days. All of them are doing amazing work contributing to the local economy of Bennington. I met Kevin (marketing guy) at one of the events ("Joe w/ Jo"), and we had a conversation on different ways to reach different age groups. I met Laurie, a branch manager at VSECU, from whom I learned the values and mission of VSECU in environmental protection, energy efficiency and social goods in Vermont. I also met Kate, a well being psychologist who helps entrepreneurs figure out how to enjoy their work and keep stress manageable. And my mentor Joelle Greenland, director at the Lightning Jar, who took every free second of her time to teach me something new from business planning to leadership skills. 

The Field Work Term of Bennington has given me a wonderful opportunity to be engaged in the real world - it allows me to put my knowledge into actions. It has also helped me to connect myself with the town and increase the sphere of my network with people of similar interests. I am really happy to be part of TLJ and really excited for what's coming next. Stay tuned for next week's post - Week 2!
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Happy New Year! - Top 40

1/10/2020

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As we launch strongly into 2020 (can you believe it's 2020?) I wondered what could really be useful to our community of entrepreneurs?

I recently was talking with with a former boss/friend, who I always considered more of a mentor, with a door that was open to all, and an infectious laugh that was accented by his Tennessee drawl. He even pushed a lemonade cart down the halls of our department just so he could hear how people were doing and what he could do to help them in their jobs. He knew the importance of strong working relationships and how loyalty was developed in a company.   If Norman was getting a cup of coffee in the kitchen he'd be the first to greet you with a huge smile and say, "what great things are in store for you today?"

To say Norman is a prolific learner and reader would be an understatement. He reads more than any person I know - and the perfect person to ask "what book would you recommend on this subject?" Over the course of almost a year, Norman set a goal for himself to deliver the very best article, every business day, and finish with a weekly review of the best books he'd read. The culmination of this work lead to his list of The 40 Best Books of Striving Strategically. Found at his blog Striving Strategically, the list is his way of providing, "the most useful thing you’ll read on any given day based on what I curate from my own research." I don't know about you, but I have very little time to sit down and read a 200 page (or 20 page) book on leadership, efficiencies or performance measures. Hence Norman's expertise - his ability to read and unpack the essence of what an author is trying to convey in a manner that is understandable. He has written hundreds of book reports, chock full of condensed knowledge - knowledge that he gladly shares with others searching for answers. 

So, I now share this amazing list "The 40 Best Books of Striving Strategically" with you - because sharing and spreading knowledge is important at The Lightning Jar - it's what builds and supports an entrepreneurial ecosystem filled with creative people wanting to learn, create and build.

Here are the first 20, but all 40 provide amazing insights. Hope they prove helpful in making your business dreams come true - Happy 2020!: 
 
The Best Book On Strategy: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy ;
The Best Book For Decision-Making: Sources of Power;
The Best Book To Cure “Busy”: Essentialism;
The Best Book For Self-Improvement: How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big;
The Best Book To Understand Data: Naked Statistics;
The Best Book For Lean Management: The Lean Startup;
The Best Books For Understanding Purpose: Man’s Search For Meaning + Bad Blood ;
The Best Book For Second-Year Managers: First, Break All The Rules; 
The Best Book For Fixing Your Worldview: Factfulness; and
The Best Book For Confronting Issues: Difficult Conversations
​The Best Book For Introducing Business Strategy: Playing To Win
The Best Book For Creating Change: Switch;
The Best Book To Introduce Behavioral Economics: Nudge;
The Best Book For Making Change Successful: Transitions;
The Best Book for Examining Our Motivations: On Desire;
The Best Book To Know What To Say: Words That Work;
The Best Book To Understand Uncertainty: The Black Swan: 
The Best Book For Organizational Development: Work Rules! ;
The Best Book For Negotiation: Never Split The Difference; and
The Best Book For Starting A Data-Driven Practice: Lean Analytics

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