Pushing For “No”

I have spent most of the spring semester searching around for internship opportunities. I spent hours on LinkedIn but funnily enough the only internships that I considered were through other connections.

I met a family friend of my roommate who is one of the most prolific entrepreneurs I have ever encountered. He started with almost nothing and now is the owner of several successful companies and lots of real estate in his area. Suffice it to say I was very keen to work for him.

We began communicating about what in internship with him might look like. He had never had an interview before but was very interested, especially because when I met him the first time we hit it off.  We corresponded for some weeks about the various things I could do for him and I was very excited. Everything he wanted I knew I could do. He wanted me to totally revamp his marketing which up to that point was merely word of mouth and a few Facebook posts. I would create social media accounts and content, and he wanted me to start a blog and a podcast. I was super pumped.

But the weeks kept passing and I really needed him to make a division. I had already begun work on creating content and brainstorming how to reach new target audiences. I thought that I had thoroughly sold myself and that I had the internship in the bag. But it was always in the back of my mind that he had never officially hired me. Aware of this I finally pushed him to give me a final answer.

Though I really believe he has a great entrepreneurial vision he is a terrible communicator and very forgetful. I knew this going in but his eccentricities didn’t deter me. That being said I did not expect him to take so long to make a decision or that he would forget about our scheduled meeting and even neglected to save my number. In the end, I was forced to ask him to make a decision and at that point, he could not be bothered.

I was very disappointed and yet thankful that I could move on and look for other things.