What My GM Internships Taught Me About Running a Small Business
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
I interned at General Motors twice. Once in 2020 as a Global Brand Marketing Intern and again in 2023 as a Graduate Marketing Intern for the OnStar brand. I appreciate every single moment of it.
I just did not know I would still be thinking about it all the time. But this what happens when you spend time inside a company that big and then go build something of your own.
Everything you absorbed starts showing up in the decisions you make without you even realizing it at first.
Here is what I took with me.
Audience research is EVERYTHING!
One of the first things that became clear working at GM was that nothing, and I mean nothing, moved forward without understanding who it was for first.
I sat in actual market research sessions with real car owners. I worked directly with their ad agencies to complete projects, pulling real data, using real tools, and seeing firsthand how all of that research shaped every creative and strategic decision that came after it. The insights did not come from guessing. They came from a deliberate process of finding out exactly what the audience needed to hear and when.
As a small business owner it is tempting to skip this part. You think you already know your customer. You have been serving them. You talk to them. But there is a difference between knowing your customer and actually studying them. GM taught me that distinction and it changed how I approach strategy for every single Social Spark client.
Messaging and visual placement can not be overlooked.
I learned quickly that at a company like GM, the placement of a word on a visual is not an accident. The size of a headline, the weight of a font, the hierarchy of information on a page, all of it is intentional and all of it is strategic. Every visual asset goes through rounds of review because the way something looks directly impacts whether the message lands.
I carry that into every piece of content I review for clients. Where does the eye go first? What is the most important thing on this graphic? Is the message clear in three seconds or less? These are GM level questions that every small business deserves to be asking too.
Don't wait for problems to happen.
At a company operating at a global scale, legal review is built into the process not bolted on at the end. Brand guidelines, usage rights, compliance, approvals. All of it exists for a reason and all of it protects the brand. Running a small business it is easy to treat legal as something you deal with when a problem comes up. GM taught me it is something you build around before a problem ever gets the chance to.
I watched a brand be reborn.
During my second internship I had a front row seat to something most marketing professionals never get to witness up close. OnStar, a brand most people associated exclusively with vehicle security, was being repositioned and rebranded to include entertainment and a broader lifestyle experience. It was a fundamental shift in how the brand understood itself and wanted to be understood by the world.
Watching that process from the inside was one of the most educational experiences of my career. Repositioning a brand is a strategic, cross functional, deeply intentional process that touches every part of how a company shows up. I think about that every time a client comes to me ready to evolve their brand and does not quite know where to start.
Behind the screen.
I watched commercials being filmed that I later saw on television. The campaigns you scroll past, the ads you skip, the spots that somehow still get stuck in your head, they all started somewhere. They started with a brief, a strategy, a creative concept, rounds of feedback, and a whole lot of people in rooms making decisions.
Getting to see that process from the inside changed how I think about content at every level. Even a small business Instagram post deserves that same level of intention. The scale is different. The principle is not.
The people and the city were the real education.
I presented to CMOs and directors with decades of experience. I communicated with teams across Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Mexico. I participated in meetings that reminded me daily that I was sitting at a table most people never get access to and that I needed to show up accordingly.
But the people who have stayed with me the longest are the members of my intern cohort. We came in green, figured it out together, and many of us are still in each other's lives today. Some of them still work at GM. All of them are doing incredible things.
And then there is Detroit itself. I am from Plant City, Florida but I have a residence in Detroit and I still see GM's fingerprints on that city everywhere, not just because it is an automotive hub. The marketing, the community investments, the culture is all woven into the fabric of a place in a way that reminds me that marketing done well does more than sell products. It shapes places, people, and how a community sees itself.
That is the kind of impact I think about when I sit down to build strategy for any brand, big or small.
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