Career Advice For Young People: Look For Opportunities; Be Open-Minded

Sept. 13, 2021 7:35p

(WGTD)---It’s not that Jeff Peterson and Mark Becker can predict the future. They have, however, done an excellent job preparing for it, and along the way, capitalizing on change.

Peterson and Becker are co-owners of Geneva Supply, a Delavan-based company that for the past 12 years has served other businesses with e-marketing and distribution support. The company began with four employees, and has grown to nearly 200.  It recently took over a large, vacant warehouse in Wilmot in order to serve Chicago-area clients.

In a recent WGTD News interview, co-owner Peterson noted that his business career began modestly with a series of jobs that included working for a liquor distributorship, owning a sports bar and serving as a manager for a tool distributorship. He teamed up with Becker in 2009 to begin providing services to companies that signed on to have their products sold through Amazon. Since then, Geneva Supply has specialized in staying ahead of the curve in providing a growing and changing list of services to fill whatever needs its customers presented.

Peterson’s academic springboard was a four-year degree in business management from Carroll University in Waukesha. But he notes that e-commerce wasn’t even a thing back then. "It's always made me realize how different the next five years will be from where it is now," he said. "I think a lot of people sit back and think they know a lot about what's going on when they really have no idea what it's going to be five years from now." He urged young people to continually look for opportunities and be open-minded 

Peterson predicted that Geneva Supply will double in size over the next three years.

The company has already earned a number of honors, including recognitions from the U.S. Small Business Administration and Entrepreneur Magazine.

Becker said building the company to where it's at now hasn't been easy. "In order to get here we had to invest every penny back into the company over and over again," Becker said. "We're to the point now where life is a little more comfortable from what it was five years ago. But it was a grind. It still is a grind."  

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