I began my day at the Broadwell Hill Learning Center being greeted by Shiloh and Tala, and of course getting covered in hair as they begged for attention. Once they got their hellos, I began talking with Kathy about how she raises her worms and the concepts of verma-compost. I had never known that worms could be so picky about their environment. They hate light, need the right amount of moisture, and like certain foods.
This was also the first time I learned how Athens’ Own takes a lot of food waste from local businesses to create multiple different composting bins. I think this is a great method, and I think in the future if larger businesses could begin employing this form of off grounds composting for their food waste, this could be a great way for local farmers to build composting businesses, and to slowly heal the earth we have been filling with trash for the last century or more. It was around this time that I joined Constantine to talk while he replaced the wheel bearings on the Athens’ Own truck.
We began our discussion with the topic of how to use my Holistic Goal. Constantine talked about how creating a personal holistic goal can make it easier to align community and team members together. By seeing where each others goals are similar, you can create plans together to help one another achieve those goals. An example could be how my holistic goal includes having meaningful work; work that helps others. Because Athens’ Own has the goal to help community members and to create a better local economy, our goals are parallel and can work together to help reach those individual goals.
Con also used the term “compounded interest”, a common financial term, but he used it to describe how a person can “invest” in another person’s human capital, and in the long run this can lead to them receiving “interest” off each other, by taking in interest in one another. By taking the time to help one another, you can in turn benefit yourself. This works in to the marketing world by showing how taking time to include people in the marketing discussion, who may be without a business major, can make a marketing team stronger. Application of this could be using biology and conservation science students to help create a marketing plan for Broadwell Hill and Kathy’s verma-compost business; using students with Journalism or Communications majors can help a marketing team plan different ways to publicize a company like Athens’ Own. I thought this was a great way to think outside the business box, by creating a team with multiple different backgrounds. This can help to stimulate compound growth by utilizing human capital.
A specific discipline Constantine took particular interest in was that of an actuarial. This discipline uses numbers and statistics to help create an idea of what the future might look like; specifically for Con, what the world will look like for my generation’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren if people continue to take our forests and environment for granted. There needs to be a push for people to realize that the health of their communities and the Earth is a necessity, , and for people to start thinking about how to get the word out to millennials especially, because we are the next people to work for the world.
In the context of the Athens’ Own, Con describes it as being “in” internship, rather than being at an internship. The difference is that Athens’ Own wants to create a work experience that is indicative of the real world and that helps those who are “in” internship cultivate new thought paths while on their malleable journey towards the Worker Readiness Certification. Con described the opportunity to use modern gaming styles as a way to get students more involved in an internship experience, and also to get them involved in the revival of Earth. This game would have levels, one could be an individual project, such as reading At Home with Holistic Management, and others could be team based, such as a project similar to Ohio University College of Business cluster. Each level would use different incentives and goals to help keep the “player” motivated, but also to help them build up interest in the community and economy around them.
My main takeaway from our discussion was the importance of teams, and how the way to make influence is to work in groups, even if they’re not your typical persons. Thinking outside the box, and trying to find ways to get millennials involved with each other and with their surrounding communities is the only way we’re going to be able to insight change. Before I left, Constantine was putting back together the wheel bearing and began to explain to me how you would typically tighten the final bolt that much, but for how the car had aged that’s what was appropriate. I took this in my own small metaphorical way of thinking of how certain teams, like the parts of the bearing, will fit together differently, and just like our discussion about making unique teams, the car needed its own unique touch to work its best. I also learned that I should never over tighten a wheel bearing if I ever need to work on one in the future.