Michael Wayne

It is 8 AM on a Monday morning, we have 15 lawns to mow, and I receive a frantic call from my employee, who was unsure of what to do. Our trailer had been broken into the night prior and over $1500 of equipment had been stolen. As a 15 year old business owner, I was stunned. I had never dealt with a situation like this before, but I immediately resourced to the one thing that was most important, solving the problem. I drove to our lawn supply store and replaced every item that was taken from us. By 9 AM, my lawn care crew was on the job sight and handling our busy day of work. Despite the insurance claim check I later received, the most valuable part of this entire experience was the lesson learned; solve the problem by creating a solution.

I consider this ability to solve issues as a huge strength of mine. The short narrative above was just one of the many instances throughout both my lawn care and vending businesses, where I was forced to quickly attend to problems, and conquer them with solutions.

Another big strength of mine is my ability to captivate and motivate groups of people towards a common goal. One way I displayed these skills in high school was through my position as president of the Varsity Club; a group tasked with building school spirit and raising awareness for athletic accomplishments. At football games, for example, we used to generate roughly 50 students in the stands, sitting and paying little attention to the game. Through daily announcements, a social media presence, and word of mouth, we were able to roughly triple attendance with students dressing in unison to one theme and cheering from start to finish.

In the future I hope to implement these core skills towards a position at a venture capitalist firm, and eventually at my own start-up where I am able to collaborate and innovate to improve the world, one venture at a time.