It is hard to believe that what seems like yesterday, I was cleaning my silver 1998 Pontiac Grand Prix in my driveway. My mom would always yell at me when applying the tire foam since it would stain the driveway. I am pretty sure both parents and neighbors thought I was totally crazy for always obsessively cleaning my car from top to bottom every day. I always used to joke about how I learned to be so clean from my mom's vacuuming and after a while, I thought that my best friend from home and I should go out on our own and be our own bosses. We would basically clean anything that moved from sport cars, to soccer mom vans, to hearses, to huge trucks. It was great to get some extra cash and eventually it became so large we went off and started to hire people. Our business was off and running!
Now that I look back on it, this experience taught me so much from keeping the books, to dealing with customers to dealing with the good and bad. It was a challenge and I absolutely loved every second of it, even though it was not always smooth sailing. College then came along and one reason I chose Valpo was because it was somewhat close to Detroit. Through the car detailing connections and the valpo one, I was lucky enough to attend the International Design Forum for three years in a row!! This slammed my career into high gear and through networking and a lot of luck, one professor in mind, I was able to get my foot in the door with Meguiar's International. This was a much better work environment for me than the previous summer's internship where I was doing more financial work than marketing.
This senior year I have been busy doing administration work for the company website and also trying to find recruits to join the team! I think that I was able to land one and it will be interesting to see how things play out. Who knew that my passion for cleaning cars would turn into a career. I have learned so many things while on the job and at school but the old saying that my dad used to tell me when driving to school, "life is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" is so true. The future should be a wild ride, but one thing is for sure...I will most likely obsessively clean my car forever!