Working With A Startup: A Recap Of My 12 Week Internship With Jane Wick

Introduction to Jane Wick, VIP, & GORP

Through the University of Arkansas' Venture Internship Program (VIP) & Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program (GORP), I have been fortunate enough to intern with Jane Wick LLC over the past 12 weeks! Jane Wick is a local startup here in Northwest Arkansas founded by Windy Elstermeier. In Spring 2024, Jane Wick will be launching beautiful & durable gun range backpacks designed to support the unique needs of woman shooters.

This semester, Jane Wick was a part of the GORP Fall 2023 cohort. Led by Phil Shellhammer, The Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program (GORP) is a business incubation program focused on the development of entrepreneurs who are creating innovative products and services within the outdoor recreation industry. GORP offers support for entrepreneurs in the idea-to-launch stages of business development.

The Venture Internship Program provides college students from the University of Arkansas the opportunity to work with startups within Northwest Arkansas. VIP was an amazing way to get hands-on experience working with real problems, projects, & people, and a great way to make valuable connections. I had the opportunity to apply what I had been learning in my classes & was also able to learn new & useful skills not taught in classes!

Recap: My 12 Weeks With Jane Wick

These past 12 weeks I have been working as a marketing and business development intern for Jane Wick. I had 2 main responsibilities: to run and grow Jane Wick's social media presence and to develop an 18-month marketing strategy.

Here's a brief overview of what I learned & experienced throughout my internship!

Consistency Matters

With startups, every little thing that you work on helps drive the business forward. Sometimes it was hard to visualize just how much of an impact the work I was doing for Jane Wick would have. It wasn't until the last few weeks of my internship that I was finally able to look back at the work I had done and realize I did leave my mark!

In a matter of 12 weeks, I was able to accomplish the following:

• Created an 18-month marketing strategy on how Jane Wick should approach marketing during 3 different stages: Pre-Launch, Launch & Initial Promotion, and Ongoing Marketing & Growth.
• Researched & provided tips on how Jane Wick might approach blogging, SEO, website development, social media marketing, content creation, influencer marketing, email-list building, data analysis, and more.
• Curated lists of relevant influencers, local & firearms-related magazines, blogs, publications, media outlets, women's-focused & general firearms shows/expos/competitions that Jane Wick could reach out to & partner with.
• Grew Jane Wick’s total overall social media following by 36% by creating & posting 5-8 pieces of content per week (Instagram, Facebook, & LinkedIn)
• Grew Jane Wick's organic reach by 2,553% & engagement by 6,283% through utilizing Reels (Instagram)
• Created & developed a social media & content analytics tracker (on Microsoft Excel)
• Created a Jane Wick LLC LinkedIn account
• Created a Jane Wick LinkTree
• Grew Jane Wick’s email list to 51 new emails
• Created 3 different Jane Wick customer personas
• Created a "Get-To-Know Jane Wick" video that reached almost 2,000 LinkedIn accounts
• Filmed & conducted several interviews at the Jane Wick day at the Range event

Benefits of Exploring Change

One of my biggest takeaways from this experience was the importance of exploring change - it comes with anxieties & unknowns, but it's really just growth in disguise!

I had the opportunity to have an “easy” last semester of college. I already had a job lined up after college and there wasn’t necessarily a need for me to have another internship. However, I’m so glad I didn’t opt into taking the easier route as I would’ve been missing out on so many wonderful experiences, new connections, and new learnings.

Here are a few highlights of events and opportunities I got to experience this semester:

• Attending Sam's Club’s LatinXNA event at the Sam’s Club Home Office with Windy on my first day! We got to learn about NWA’s growing Latinx community & how Windy's business can help support the Latinx community.

• Participating in Startup Junkie's NWA Start-Up Crawl! It was such a great opportunity getting to tell others about Jane Wick & getting to learn about all of the other local startups in the community.

• Helping put together the Jane Wick day at the Range event! This was one of my favorite experiences I got to be a part of this semester. We brought together 4 women (myself included) who had little-to-no experience with shooting firearms before, went to an outdoor range, and recruited the help of professional firearms instructor Cara Conry (founder of Spirit Firearms Training) to teach us the basics of how to safely use & handle a firearm. I was able to film & interview each woman at the end of our range day and it truly was amazing to witness the transformation within each woman from feeling nervous & anxious to feeling confident & empowered after learning how to properly handle and fire a gun. This transformation that each woman experienced is exactly what Windy strives to encapsulate with her Jane Wick backpacks & future products - inspire, educate, and empower women. Getting to experience that come to life that day was truly something I will never forget!

Final Thoughts

Working with a startup like Jane Wick has been enriching, eye-opening, and has allowed me to learn different skills and insights that I know will be valuable in pursuing my future entrepreneurial endeavors.

Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into working with a startup within the gun industry - an industry I had little-to-no familiarity with. But throughout these 12 weeks, I could not imagine a better startup or founder to work with & have developed an appreciation for the work that Windy is doing with Jane Wick! I have loved getting to work and learn from Windy each and every week & am super excited that I got to be involved in the beginning stages of a company that will revolutionize the way the gun industry views women gun range bags & accessories!

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