Stephen Barton

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Growing up in the small town of Bethany, Oklahoma with the scrappiness of my parentage and the entrepreneurial spirit of my grandfather, I saw nothing but potential in the world around me. 

After two years on the entrepreneurial mission trip Global U, I was encouraged to find people, churches, and communities that fostered the same values and ideas that I was inclined towards. Afterwards, Excel College also provided me with a context of like-minded individuals who sought the good, the true, and the beautiful. From my experiences, I hope to create products, businesses, and even whole industries that will nurture humanity into greater prosperity, such as our forefathers once did.

These experiences were not solely academic or experiential, but practical. Below I detail the everyday workings of my learnings and growth.

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EDUCATION

Excel College, Black Mountain, NC

BA in Religious Studies, Integrated Economy, & Critical Thinking

Emphasis: Product Development

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CERTIFICATIONS

Website Development — FreeCodeCamp: May 2022

• This allowings me to create, host, and edit responsive websites for the world-wide web
  

Limited Liability Company — The State of Oklahoma: December 2021

• This allows me as Voyage Coffee Co to create, sell, and distribute products and or services through the state of Oklahoma.
  

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WORK EXPERIENCE & APPRENTICESHIPS

Product Development Intern — Diamondback Truck Covers: January 2023 - April 2023

• Identified failures and successes of a product, using them as a springboard for future development goals. 
• Participated in all four stages of different product life cycles. 
• Executed 2 key research projects with presentations for product line expansions (i.e. Yakima DoubleHaul).

Student — Global U: January 2021 - December 2022

• Designed, built, and tested prototypes and products for fully online small-business based on data within the industry. 
• Efficiently communicated with numerous manufacturers, clients, and business partners. 
• Constantly showed excellent follow-through from start to finish on all projects.

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INDEPENDENT STUDIES 

Personal Development — January 2023 - May 2023

After moving to complete my practicum I went through a book club with my mentors studying The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. We would study a particular chapter, annotating as we went, later discussing how to live that out in a practical way through our day to day lives that week. After which we would bring our real life experiences back together to get feedback on how we could improve our new skills/habits.

Sales Training — January 2023 - April 2023

Looking forward to a life of entrepreneurial ventures, whether in a company or within my own, it seemed only fitting to learn what the art of selling had to offer. Going through the world-renowned Sandler Selling Course I’ve learned critical lessons about the profession such as, but not limited to, (1) how to find a customers real pain, not stopping at their surface-level inconveniences (2) strategic conversational language that gives the customer control over the conversation and why that’s ideal for the salesman (3) and how to close a deal only when you’ve found a win-win scenario.

Startup Strategy — May 2023 - Present

My immense passion for the startup community drives me towards an abundance of literature on the subject. In The Excel College, I learned that the truth on any subject rarely sits in the pages of one book. Rather, it’s between the lessons of many books. Therefore, as a result of spending an abundance of time in Startup and Product Development material I have learned many incredible lessons and been enamored with their interplay. This is why I am working towards creating an entrepreneurial roadmap that fits between four leading books on the topic. Ideally, assisting future endeavors of mine, and others, to create useful and beautiful businesses.

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Excel College

Bachelor Degree in Religious Studies, Integrated Economy, and Critical Thinking

— Description of Excel College’s Degree Program — 

By Economy (not Economics), we’re using one of the oldest and original meanings of the term derived from the Greek term oikonomia: stewardship, management of household affairs. Specifically, we are drawing from the theological concept of stewardship, leading to what the Greeks referred to as the Good Life — a virtuous life that fulfills our divinely created human nature. Using this definition of economy, our Bachelor degree has opened a pathway for students to integrate their faith into a customized emphasis. 

Not confined to the classroom alone, our students are challenged and encouraged in 5 holistic pursuits (intellectual, spiritual, missional, practical, and professional) to become men and women who excel everywhere — in the classroom, home, church, work, community, and in their lives individually. 

During the Practicum phase of Excel College, students continue to develop holistically, while concentrating on an emphasis that interests them personally. With the support and accountability of mentors and coaches, students design a customized learning experience that develops not only one-dimensional skills and experience according to set and relevant outcomes, but virtuous habits that lead them to become honest workers, family members, and citizens. In our model, we let the experts train our students on a basic skills level, while we equip them for a life of holistic flourishing. 

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Product Development Intern

During the first three months of 2023 I had the incredible opportunity to be the first ever intern at Diamondback Truck Covers and the first student from The Excel College to complete their practicum in an out-of-state company. 

Diamondback is a company that never compromises when it comes to their values and sets up every conceivable chance for their employees to do the same. Started by Ethan Wendle (my mentor) and Matt Chverchko, Diamondback is undeniably the best manufacturer of heavy duty tonneau covers in the market, selling directly to customers. This forces new levels of humility, transparency, and dependency on a clear vision and values, as each customer insight impacts them in a way unparalleled in the rest of the industry. 

In my time, I got to see from a micro and macro point of view what the challenges look like when organizations face company-wide growth. Operating in all four stages of product development I, myself, had to overcome the challenges of self-education within new programs and processes that were needed for the team. I sought guidance from my peers and during my internship I brought the first solely “fishing” oriented product from customer research to live product launch for the company primarily by myself. 

Today, the product I launched can be found on Diamondbacks accessories page as the Yakima DoubleHaul. This brand partnership was a long time coming as Diamondback hadn’t quite secured a product specifically for the nearly 50% of their customers who enjoy the hobby. From this process I developed many skills such as data collection/analysis, product-market fit, brand partnering, small-batch ordering for a large company, and product pitching. 

The largest opposition to this was my lack of data analysis skills at a professional level. To overcome this, I studied the habits and processes of many professionals whose sole responsibilities consisted of searching through data repositories, collecting specific information, and creating a responsibly convincing story from it for their respective corporations. I then created my own outline, filled pages worth of data and information from customer reviews on individual products to high level statistics, and pitched to the decision makers. Coming out of the internship, I now see the value of data and find it to be a holy grail of sorts for creating change through the products, services, and missions that companies strive towards every day.

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Global U Student

Global U was a nine month international and interdenominational mission trip aimed at equipping gap year students with the hard skills of entrepreneurship and computer programming. In doing so, students started ecommerce businesses with the help of mentors, created their own websites from scratch, and pitched to investors for seed capital. All while assisting existing ministries in poor countries in their efforts to reverse the longstanding negative effects of different disasters and socioeconomic challenges.

I entered Global U right out of high school in 2019. After having my view of the world expanded, spiritually enlightened, and innovatively diversified, I decided to rejoin for a second year. During my second round, I found many new friends and worked on a company of my own. Due to the educational side of Global U, and running my own business, The Excel College was also able to accredit my time abroad towards my practicum. 

However, this time around brought many unique challenges, primarily because my business sold a physical product while everyone else had digital products. Along the way I learned on my own how to land customers without having anything tangible to show them, locate and utilize whatever resources were available, and how to get through TSA without my wiry prototype looking suspicious.

Global U taught me how to get feedback from very unique and knowledgeable people by leveraging my network. It taught me, albeit the hard way, how to hold work-life balance in harmony with the grind of startup life. Most importantly, I learned how the people around you are so much more important in life than your ideas are for them.

In between the two years I started Voyage Coffee Co. An ecommerce coffee company that offered portable coffee makers in the size of a water bottle with hopes of making it fully mobile. I negotiated with foreign manufacturers, set up my own website(s) and ran the business for a year before deciding to shut it down while in The Excel College as I was unable to run it between my jobs and schooling. However, starting that voyage led me to never want to stop inventing, innovating, and making products that service the needs of the markets.

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Appendix 1

FreeCodeCamp Certified Website Developer

Appendix 2

Oklahoma Certified Business Owner

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Appendix 3

CPR Certified - Black Mountain Home for Children

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