I have always looked at most every opportunity in life as a learning experience. I have never claimed to "know it all" nor will I ever, because I don't. This year, my MFA Ag Experience is opening my eyes to more "learning experiences" than I could have predicted before the summer began. As a member of the 2014 Class of MFA Ag Experience Apprentices, I have 3 main goals. 1. I would like to travel and explore as many (hopefully ALL at some point) MFA and local affiliate locations as possible. 2. Increase and promote participation in the Farm Supply Display Contest, which in turn benefits each participant by potentially increasing store sales, which in turn brings in more revenue, which then leads to higher profits and success for each local location, which in the end leads to MFA's corporate success. (Did you see where I was going with that? ...Pretty neat how everything falls into place when we think about it in the right perspective. We are one cooperative built by farmers for farmers and just as our founder William Hirth set forth his principles that still stand today, strong corporate support is essential to each location and our corporate success overall.) Finally, 3. Sales. by using the word "Sales" I have covered all other aspects of my job this summer. Within sales I have been working to sell MFA 100th Anniversary buckets that Ben (my supervisor) would like to get sold, but aside from selling buckets which directly involves sales, I would like to see the sales out in the field improve. This may sound like a light subject, but I'm taking it as a very, very deep subject and professional challenge. I have come to find many stores take great pride in their sales and sales margins boasting of each's success, along with their store itself. (Which I don't discount one slight bit, I have no doubt each is successful, sheeesh, how do you think MFA survived 100 years? ...Because we do things right and satisfy the needs of our customers in a timely and cost-efficient manner!) However, being an optimist, I see great potential for improvement in all areas. Personally, I think there are many areas of MFA that can improve and this summer it is my goal to help make those improvements happen - or at least get the ball rolling to make improvements down the road in the future. I believe MFA has a solid start on another 100 years of success in business and I'm excited to be apart of MFA's future successes.