So, I went on a field trip to Detroit with my media entrepreneurship class last week, and it was truly an enjoyable trip! We met some amazing people — and I learned that I knew nothing about the city I’ve spent my entire life in! When I graduate, I am making it my priority to go and explore the city!

I liked the line up for this trip because it was very diverse and creative. We were able to see entrepreneurs from different backgrounds and listen to how they were successful in creating and KEEPING their business running well.

The person I enjoyed the most was Shanley Pearl, who runs “Hungry in Detroit.” She is a social media consultant and does digital marketing for other companies. Listening to her story was inspiring for me because what she is doing is similar to what I want to do in the near future. Sometimes you have to find what works for you and nine times out of ten it will be the brand or business you create yourself.

During her talk it only reminded me that social media is really a platform for creators to bloom and have something amazing. People are making so much money from the things they create and the cool part is that it is ready and available for anyone to come in and get their piece of the pie.

I loved how open Shanley was, telling us how she does what she does and what we should do if we were thinking about doing it as well. I think her path to where she is now is so unique and the fact that she is doing it in Detroit makes it even more insightful because I normally don’t see people doing things like that in the city. She even shared with us the tools she uses which was so helpful because I hate looking through the app store to find what works and what doesn’t (haha).

My second favorite speaker had to be Tamara Kamara, the head of the web team for the City of Detroit. I loved how she showed us that our lives were the result of project management. If anything, she put a lot into perspective for us because she was honest.

What I took from it was that breaking things up into different phases is essential when it comes to getting a task completed. Life is unpredictable and if there are interruptions it doesn’t me you stop and give up, it just means you have to do it differently. I was very appreciative of her telling us to follow our passion.

I know especially journalism majors get a lot of back lash about choosing this field because of the money aspect. I have always had a hard time getting past that because I would feel that they might be right. All in all I know I’m going to do what makes me happy and make my career work for me.

Learning more about Bamboo Detroit, Eric Thomas and Dave Kwiatowski are doing in Detroit was also really amazing and I will definitely be checking out some of Dave’s spots soon.

And again thank you to Amy for this experience!

I think I am one step closer to creating something that will change my world for the better…