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!