Co-Op Confidential - Greg Monforte

Name: Greg Monforte
Year: Sophomore
Company: Daddis Fight Camp
Location: Cherry Hill, NJ

What does Daddis do?

Daddis is one of the best Mixed Martial Arts schools in the area.  They offer lots of martial arts training including Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. 

What are you doing?

My coop so far has consisted of mostly the regular gym maintenance and greeting and helping students when they arrive.  Gym maintenance includes the everyday cleaning and helping with side projects that need to be done around the gym.  This week I started making cold calls to potential clients who took a free lesson before but never signed up.  I am offering them a discounted deal to try to help boost enrollment.  Another part of the job that I have been working on so far is sales training.  Once the sales training is complete, I will start doing the introduction lessons for new students.  The final aspect that I have done so far is helping with in-house events.  This past weekend Daddis held a Family Fun Day.  My responsibilities for this event included making the schedule of events, setting up these events the day of, working the event, and the clean up after the event was over. 

What will you be working on?

As my coop goes on my job responsibilities will continue to grow.  I will be done the sales training soon and will start selling their program to perspective students.  At Daddis we are working towards the goal of getting forty five new members to sign up in the month of May.  Doing cold calls every day will help us reach and hopefully surpass this goal.  As summer gets closer there will be more events held in-house and at their Philadelphia location that I will be helping with.  These events include tournaments, staff meetings, and kids’ summer camps. 

Do you like it so far?

So far my coop has been a great experience and I have enjoyed it a lot.  One of the best aspects about my particular coop is I get to do experience many different areas of the job.  When my coop is over I will have experience in sales, marketing, and event management which gives me a better idea of what I will want to do later in my career.  My personal favorite part of the job is that I get to train for free.  This may not interest a lot of students at Drexel but I have always been a fan of MMA and use to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in high school.  As I got older it became harder to train because of the financial burden and time management between school, work, and training.  Now I have more time and can train for free at one of the best MMA schools in the area. 

Be honest, are there any downsides?

Even though I really enjoy my coop there are always cons at every work place.  The biggest con is that the job can be slow and a little boring at times.  When I am not training or helping around the gym my job is to sit at the front desk and greet students as they come in.  This can be boring because most of the time I am the only one at the desk.  Another con is that since I am the intern and new at the school I have to do a lot of the jobs that no one else wants to do.  This can include cleaning the bathrooms, weeding outside, and organizing the equipment. 

What are you looking forward to? 

When my coop is complete in September I would have learned many skills that I can use in my career.  One of these skills is cold calls.  If I get into sales for a career this will be of the main parts of my job.  I can practice at Daddis to get use to making calls to people I do not and get use to people rejecting what I have to say.  Networking will be a huge advantage that I will get from my time at Daddis.  They have many connections with Bellator and the UFC which could help me get a job at either one of these organizations later.  Finally if I wanted to get into Event Management I will have a lot of experience in that area when I am done.  By the time my coop is over I would have helped run close to five tournaments, summer camps all summer, and countless other events including staff meetings.