Alumni Spotlight – Daniel Jericho

Learn to Start is proud to be working with the next generation of lower, middle, and high school students in reimagining what the 21st-century education system should look like. Hear from one of LTS’s incredible alumni, Daniel Jericho, as he shares how LTS has impacted his personal and professional life since graduating from the program.

Confidence

How has being in Learn To Start impacted your confidence as a person? My endeavors in LTS taught me how to conduct a cold approach in both insurance sales, which I do currently, and pickle sales, which was one of the companies I created during my time in LTS. They also helped me gain the confidence to go up to somebody I do not know to sell them myself. This skill helps me significantly on a day-to-day basis in my work and personal life. LTS has also greatly improved my public speaking skills. I have a natural slight speech impediment that can sometimes lead me to get tongue-tied while speaking, and LTS has not only helped me to avoid those instances by forcing me to speak often but has helped me learn to recover in conversation or presentation when I do slip up.

Preparedness

How has LTS defined or redefined preparedness for you in your personal and professional life? LTS redefined preparedness for me in both my personal and professional life. Before LTS, preparedness to me was practicing a script and reciting it when the time came. Whether it was for a Spanish class presentation or a discussion I arranged with a teacher, this is how my interactions were planned. After starting LTS, I began to be prepared through knowledge and field experience. For each pitch I gave in LTS, the only planning that I did was the work I did constructing my business in and outside of class, and at all times following I could speak about it freely.

Receiving Feedback

How has LTS impacted your ability to receive feedback? What was your experience with feedback prior to the program? LTS really helped me learn to receive feedback properly. Throughout much of my youth, I took feedback as an insult, believing that people were criticizing me not to help me improve, but out of disrespect for my feelings. After starting LTS and receiving feedback on my business models, pitches, and projects, I began to learn that feedback can be very constructive to my own development and that listening to feedback, regardless of its value to me, can help me improve as a person and as an entrepreneur.

Connection to College

Did LTS have an impact on your college application process? LTS had a really large impact on my college application process. Not only was my Teacher, Jeremy Hall, a great resource to consult in the construction of my essays, but I also gained experiences through the program that I was able to write about. My Common App Essay (the main, largest essay for college applications) was entirely based on my life experiences and how they interacted with my LTS endeavors to make me a better and more knowledgeable person. Further, after being deferred from the college I am currently attending, I wrote about new progressions I began in LTS such as a software automation program for my insurance company’s CRM and my studies for licensure in health insurance sales. I feel as if this supplemental information about what I was working on in LTS during my senior year really helped bolster my application to the school, and without LTS, I am not sure if I would have had reserved time to work on projects like these.