Name: Trent Goens

Year: Senior

Major: Economics

Minor: BIP

CFS Class: Field Studies in Business Culture

Employer: MT Holdings

To give some context, MT Holdings is a private equity backed holding company that was started in mid 2017. They are buyers of servicing companies across the country that work on commercial units of HVAC, refrigeration, and kitchen equipment appliances. They have a target exit strategy of 4-5 years from inception and look to triple the value of the equity through mostly organic growth. I am the first intern they have had, and I am a senior, with two previous internship experiences, one in developmental real estate PE and the other in PWM at Merrill Lynch, The internship experience has been very interesting so far. At MT Holdings, the team is very small, 3 or 4 people total. Mostly, you only work with one team member and sometimes you are by yourself, due to the traveling nature of the job. The general workload is strictly cold outreach. The first week there, they throw you into the fire and in a matter of time get you up to speed. It is not easy by any means and the first couple weeks can be very challenging to get used to it. It is interesting though, because nobody at NU is going to cold call for a living, we want technical experience!! Well the dynamic of the small team is one such that you are in such close contact with the CEO, CFO, COO, and mostly the head of M&A. You are observing and participating in due diligence, deal structuring, and institutional portfolio board meetings. In this position, you are able to see multiple arenas of PE and M&A in just one position. Although the benefit of being immersed in those more technical fields is high, you learn only from a distance in those regards, because the intern is not given any of the technical work actually. Cold calling can become very mundane and boring. Doing the same thing over and over is just the nature of the beast. I have learned that it is a difficult skill to learn, and it is one that can be very helpful. In addition, the people you work with have a great network and knowledge of the business world, which is valuable in its own right. However, if you are looking for something that is well-structured, you should look elsewhere. In fact, there are some days and weeks when I work from home due to everyone’s schedule and there is no supervision, but high expectation. There is however, always things to do, people to call. So unlike some more structured internships when work comes and goes with the days, this workload is constant, but independently given and completed. Overall, this is a good internship for an upperclassman who still doesn’t know where they want to go for a career and has previous work experience.