College Success Tip – Turn In Work You Are Proud To Put Your Name On

Make sure that any assignment, project or exam you turn in is something you are always proud to put your name on it.  This doesn’t mean that you need to pull an all-nighter studying for a quiz that is 1% of your grade, but make sure you are always doing quality work you are proud of.

Just make sure to do the little things like following the instructions, checking for mistakes, turning in a clean copy and putting forth a strong effort.  Also make sure not to plagiarize and steal other peoples ideas.

The Bottom Line:  Never turn in work you are embarrassed to put your name on and know you didn’t give an appropriate amount of effort into completing.  That one poor assignment may stick in your professor’s head for the rest of the semester and could affect your grades on other assignments.

College Success Tip – Surround Yourself Well

It is crucial for your college success that you surround yourself with the right people.  Their characteristics could include being intelligent, responsible, dependable, loyal and ambitious.  Of these people, make sure that you develop a core support group that will be there for you during the best of times and the worst of times; you’ll have lots of both while you are in college.

It is also important to have multiple groups of friends, not just one group.  For instance, if you are in a fraternity, those can be your closest and best group of friends, but make sure you have friends in other fraternities, outside of the Greek system and through other organizations.
If you are having difficulty meeting people then certainly get involved in different organizations and also make sure that you are being outgoing, likeable and introducing yourself to people.  This may feel uncomfortable but you have to put yourself out there sometimes.

Finally, surround yourself with a diverse group of people.  This will build character and teach you more about yourself if you have friends that come from different types of families, have different majors and different levels of intelligence.  The more diverse and different they are, the better it will be for you.

The Bottom Line:  The company you choose to surround yourself with will have a huge impact on your personal development, so make sure to choose wisely.  College is a great time to meet lots of new people, so take advantage of this and surround yourself with positive people who will make you a better person.

College Success Tip – Start Building Your Network

Building your network means that you are forming relationships with key individuals who can help you either personally or professionally.  These individuals will help you get to where you want to be in your life and career faster, due to their knowledge, connections and experiences.  You will leverage the relationships you have with these individuals to accomplish things more quickly than you could ever do on your own.

How do you find these individuals?  They could be successful people who are friends of your family, parents of your friends, alumni of your high school or college, people you have heard speak and introduced yourself to, or anyone else whom you believe is successful and you can form a relationship with.  You may even seek these people out of the blue and simply introduce yourself because you admire something they have done either personally or professionally.

If you start building these relationships as a freshman and meet two new people each semester, that would mean that by the end of your senior year you would have at least 16 people in your network who could potentially help you.  Do you think that would be beneficial?  Do you think it would be easier to meet two new people each semester than meeting 16 people while you are searching for a career?  Do you think that a relationship built over a few years would be deeper and more meaningful than one that is built over a few weeks?  Visualize the power of having a large network that you build over a few years and then get started now!

Connecting with alumni of your school has never been easier – you can either obtain a free directory from your school or simply look for them online and then introduce yourself to those who you would like to get to know (set up a profile immediately at www.LinkedIn.com).  You can even attend alumni events in your area while you are home on breaks.

Finally, you should have at least one mentor.  This is someone you deeply respect and who is willing to look over you.  Mentors are there to answer your questions and you can share with them absolutely anything that is on your mind.  You won’t form this relationship over night, but by surrounding yourself with successful people you will certainly form a relationship like this eventually.  Mentors have already experienced everything that you are about to embark on and are able to see things much differently than you.  They will be able to guide you and help you to do what is in your best interest.

The Bottom Line:  Building a network will take you time, but this network will ultimately serve you for a lifetime.  By getting started now, you will have a tremendous advantage over everyone else your age.  Think of what you can accomplish if you have a strong network built of successful people in your corner who want to see you succeed.  Even if you only meet two new people each semester, you will have 16 people who have your best interest at heart – and you’ll have all of the people they know and all of their experiences on your side also.  This takes work up front, but will make your life a million times easier in the future.

College Success Tip – Get to Know Your Advisors

Similar to the importance in getting to know your professors, also make sure to get to know your advisors.  This includes the academic advisor you are assigned, advisors in the organizations you are involved with and the advisors in your major.  They are paid to advise students, so make them earn their paycheck!

From an academic standpoint, advisors are a great resource for helping you plan your schedule, showing you the right classes to take and telling you about certain professors.  They will usually have “inside information” as to when certain classes will be offered and any upcoming changes.  If you have a good relationships with them, they may even be able to find you a spot in a “full” class.

You will also have advisors for the organizations you are part of.  Many of them have been advising this organization for a number of years, so you can potentially learn a lot from their expertise.  If you have a desire to be a leader in the organization it will only benefit you to have a good relationship with the advisor – chances are they play a role in determining who is elected to certain positions.

There will also be advisors for your major, in the career center and other places.  Shake their hands, introduce yourself and get to know them.  You never know how they may be able to help you, and chances are they will at some point.

The Bottom Line:  It will never hurt you as a student to build great relationships with a variety of people, including advisors.  Get to know them and be likeable – it almost always come in handy when you need it most!

College Success Tip – Don't Be Afraid to Ask For Help

Very few people in this world ever really “know what they don’t know”, but it is important for you to try your best to understand what you don’t know.  In other words, have a good sense for what you don’t know and then be willing to ask for help.  For instance, if you aren’t sure what a professor is looking for on an assignment, send him an email and ask.  If you are in a leadership position with an organization and having difficulty accomplishing something, go into your advisor’s office and have an open conversation.  Share your thoughts and feelings – chances are the advisor has seen this situation plenty of times before and can offer you a quick suggestion that will solve everything.  Much easier than trying to do it yourself and struggling, right?

Other examples would include seeking career counseling from the career services department and going to the health center if you are sick.  If you feel as if you may be dependent on drugs or alcohol, seek help immediately!  Your campus has knowledgeable professionals that are paid to help you in any way that they can.  Take advantage of this resource if you need help in any way.

You will also want to have a solid group of people around you that can give you advice whenever you need it, such as your parents, mentors and a peer group.  We’ll talk more later about building a great group of people around you and how this will benefit you immediately and for the rest of your life.

The Bottom Line:  Don’t be afraid to ask for help, whether it is a small question on a term paper or a huge career related issue that is keeping you up at night.  Have a good understanding of what you don’t know and never hesitate to ask for help – you are never alone and will always have people who are trained to help you and support you.

How to Decide on the Perfect Career Opportunity

Congratulations!  You have been offered a position with one or more companies; now you need to decide which opportunity will be the best for you, both in the short run and the long run.  Below is an easy but extremely effective way to determine what opportunity will be the best for you – just consider the following five questions:

Which organization has the best culture?

Finding an organization with a great management team is important.  Find a place that offers a lot of opportunity to learn the skills necessary to be successful.  Find people who will build positive habits, want to teach you, will inspire you to improve and challenge you to become better each and every day.  Also find a culture that rewards ambitious people who produce results.  Look for an organization that allows you to utilize your strengths and allows you to do both the things you are good at and the things you genuinely enjoy doing.

Stability is also an important factor in the strength of an organization.  Find an organization that puts you in control; a culture that rewards successful people and allows their performance to dictate their future with the company.

Which organization has the most potential for growth?

Find a place where you can learn; sitting behind a desk and pushing papers is a waste of time, so find an opportunity where you can make money and add value to yourself by learning.  The more you learn and the more responsibility you have, the better you can market yourself for your next opportunity within the company or for a different organization.  Look for an opportunity where you can utilize as many of your skills as possible.  Rather than be selling 100% of the time, possibly you could find something where you do some marketing, advertising, sales, promotions and public relations for your company as opposed to one role all of the time.

Do not even consider taking an opportunity that you think will be easy or unchallenging; you will only hurt yourself if you don’t find an opportunity that will push you and make you better, smarter and more capable of achieving great things.  If you are not challenged, you will become bored and complacent.  It is better to take an opportunity that might be too difficult than one that is too easy.  Being slightly overwhelmed is a lot better than being bored.  You are better off being challenged, learning, reaching your potential and being stretched thin than being bored, half asleep, unchallenged, and learning nothing new.  It’s better to push yourself too hard than not hard enough.

Where will you be the happiest?

Find what you love and do it; you will be a happier and better person because of it.  Doing something you love will make you a million times happier and this happiness will make the other areas of your life better and more enjoyable as well.  You will face difficult decisions in your career, ranging from choosing between the opportunity you love and the one that pays the most.  You must choose the opportunity that makes you the happiest and you are the most passionate about.  There is not enough money in the world to make you happy if you hate your career.  Do not get fixated on your compensation when you first graduate, it really is not a big deal.  The difference between $45,000 and $50,000 may seem substantial when your bank account is in the hundreds, but that $5,000 will not be a big deal in the future.  Find something that makes you happy, challenges you, you are passionate about, will teach you and makes you want to wake up in the morning and not hit the snooze button!

Which opportunity aligns best with your vision of success?

Choose the opportunity that will lead you towards your vision of success.  When evaluating your opportunities, figure out which one will lead you in the right direction.  This doesn’t mean that you will spend the rest of your life with this same organization, only that this place will give you the knowledge, skills and experience to move towards your ultimate vision more quickly than any other opportunity you have.

Which opportunity offers what is most important to you?

Earlier, it was explained how important it is to identify the characteristics you want your perfect city to possess.  There are no right or wrong answers, just know exactly what you are looking for and go find it.  The same holds true in your opportunity search; determine what you are looking for and what traits are most important to you.  Just a few things to consider:

- Salary
- Benefits
- Retirement Plans or Pension
- Bonus or Commission Structure
- Vacation Days
- Growth Potential
- Culture
- Training & Development
- Daily Commute
- Amount of Travel Required
- Company Vehicle and/or Computer Provided?

For me personally, having flexibility and plenty of vacation was extremely important.  I like spending extended time with my family and friends around the holidays since I live across the country from where I was raised.  I also wanted to have this flexibility in the event of an emergency where I might need to go home on short notice.  A year after I graduated from college, a situation came up where someone I was close to had cancer and was only given a few weeks left to live.  Because I had flexibility in my career, I was able to book a flight and spend a day with him just days prior to his passing.  I will always cherish the time I spent with him that day and will never forget the joy that it brought him.  So for me personally, having flexibility around the holidays and in the event of an emergency outweighed other factors when looking for my perfect opportunity.

Ideally you will be able to find an opportunity that offers everything that you want, however this may not happen right away.  When comparing a variety of options, make sure that you focus on those opportunities that align best with your vision.  Throughout the process, make sure to be aware of what you truly want out of your career.

Why Every Young Professional Must Have a Vision of Success

The first step in being successful as a young professional is to determine what you would like to accomplish in your personal and professional life.  Understand what you are truly passionate about and what would give you excitement every single day.  To accomplish this, two factors are completely necessary right now: having a commitment to being successful and knowing what you must accomplish in order to feel successful.

If you were building a skyscraper, would you just start laying down materials or would you need a blueprint that specified how everything needed to look?  If you were going to start a business, would you have a business plan or just cross your fingers and hope you made money?  Your life is no different – your blueprint or business plan is your vision of success and it will guide you throughout your building process towards success.

The sooner you can create a well defined vision of what success looks like to you, the sooner you can begin working towards your goals and dreams.  Don’t get stuck with the majority of young professionals who wake up, go to work, go home and repeat this process five times a week with no idea what direction they are headed in.  If you are waking up in the morning without any reason for going to work other than to pay the bills, you won’t be very motivated, and your day-to-day activities will not have much purpose.  If you aren’t inspired or motivated by anything, your days will be longer and less enjoyable than the days of someone who has a meaningful purpose and specific goals in mind.  The same holds true for your personal life; without strong relationships and involvement in a variety of activities you will have trouble feeling a sense of purpose.

The biggest mistake business owners make is spending too much time working in their businesses and not enough time working on their businesses.  They are involved in the day-to-day grind and aren’t able to take a step back and look at how they can run more efficient and effective businesses.  The same principle applies to your life; it is easy to continue through the daily grind instead of questioning things.  It is essential, however, to take that step back on a regular basis and to evaluate what you are doing well, what areas you must improve on, and how you can more efficiently accomplish your goals.  This is otherwise known as your vision of success.  Having a clearly defined vision of success will allow you to remain focused on what you want to accomplish while never losing sight of your true desires.

If you were to randomly ask 100 young professionals what their visions were for success in life, I would bet 95 of them would look at you with a blank stare and be initially speechless.  How scary is it that the vast majority of young professionals are unable to tell you what they are trying to accomplish in life, either personally or professionally?  I have found that the young professionals without a well-defined purpose or vision had no idea what they were working toward, if anything at all.

The sooner you can develop your vision and know it by heart, the more likely you are to have daily, monthly and yearly actions that are propelling you in this direction.  The more clearly defined your vision is and the better you understand what you need to do to accomplish it, the more likely you are to make decisions that will lead you to your dreams.

You must be able to clearly explain to anyone what your vision is for your future and what is necessary for you to feel successful in life.  When people ask you where you see yourself in 10 years, they will be amazed at how clearly defined your vision is for yourself.  They will admire you for this and probably be jealous at how well you have things figured out at such a young age.  Once they understand your vision, they will also be impressed at how your actions consistently align with your goals.  Create your vision and work towards it every day – starting today!

Young Professional Success Tip – Take Exceptional Care of Yourself

While you are working to strike the perfect balance between your life and career, you cannot forget the importance of taking care of your body.  If you overextend yourself and don’t take proper care of yourself, you will become less productive and more stressed, regardless of how hard you work.  Some simple and effective rules to follow:

• Eat healthy foods, avoid lots of carbohydrates and sugars (do some research if you need to)
• Work out regularly, at least 3-5 times per week (again, do some research on the proper amount of physical activity)
• Eat consistent meals throughout the day (don’t skip on meal and eat a huge one to compensate, or vice versa)

The best things you can do are find information on eating healthy, work out and take care of your body.  Find out how often you should work out, how to create a balanced diet, how many hours per night you should sleep, and learn other great practices for living a healthy lifestyle.  Believe it or not, you can either increase or decrease your chances for success significantly based on how you treat your body.  Abusing yourself and running yourself into the ground could crush your chances of reaching your vision of success, while taking exceptional care of yourself can definitely give you the energy and boost you need to get where you want to be more quickly!

Young Professional Success Tip – Have Balance

Balancing your life and career sounds easy, but will more than likely be difficult for you if you have set big goals for yourself.  You will be focused on building your career, learning as much as possible, having a social life, spending time with family and all of the other things that are important to you.  A few of the many things that will be pulling you in different directions:

• Career
• Family
• Social Life
• Faith
• Community Involvement
• Volunteer Work
• Plus sleeping and eating!

Chances are good that you have a strong desire to be successful at everything you are involved with, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.  So how do you balance all of these items and spend the appropriate time on each?  Here are a few suggestions you can easily do right now:

• Prioritize what is most important to YOU
• Develop a manageable routine that allows you to do it all without being stretched too thin
• Build in time each week to relax your body and mind
• Give yourself time during the year to rest and recharge the batteries – weekend road trips with minimal sleep don’t count!
• Don’t be scared to turn your work email off on the PDA during nights and weekends

Everyone is going to want a piece of you and of your most valuable asset:  your time.  Co-workers, charitable organizations, kids, friends, family, a significant other, people you are mentoring and many others will all want to be around you.  You must give each of those parties the time they need and deserve, but not anything above or below that.  You simply cannot give the same amount of time, or access, to each person.  Know what amount of time you need to spend with certain people and doing certain things, then build a balanced calendar that allows you to appropriately balance it all.  This won’t be easy and is a constant work in progress – the important thing is that you do your best and focus on having balance.

Young Professional Success Tip – Understand Wealth and Control Your Finances

Young Professional Success Tip – Understand Wealth and Control Your Finances

Now more than ever, it is critical for you to understand what true wealth is and have control of your finances.  Most young professionals have no financial plan or strategy, which ends up costing them significantly in the future.  Our current national savings rate is negative, which means that the average person spends more than they make.  Nevermind saving for retirement, building an emergency fund or saving for a childs college education – most people aren’t even making enough to cover their bills!

I have bad news and good news:

BAD NEWS – Financial uncertainty is a huge cause of stress and anxiety right now for millions of people.

GOOD NEWS – It is easily avoidable, especially for young professionals with time on thier side.

There is a huge misconception that wealth is determined by how much you make, the cars in your driveway, the size of your house and how expensive the watch on your wrist is.  Wealth isn’t measured by what you MAKE, it is measured by what you SAVE.  Cars are a depreciating asset (they go down in value), homes fluctuate in value and people won’t pay you nearly what you paid Best Buy for the flat screen TV on your wall.  The point I’m making is that your wealth is what is in your bank account, plain and simple.  In my book The Course They Forgot to Offer, I lay out a simply financial plan for all young professionals to begin immediately and practice for the rest of their lives.  It will show you the easy way to build wealth, regardless of whether you make $30,000/year or $300,000/year.

Make sure to educate yourself on personal finance and work with a professional advisor – don’t be like the average America who spends more than they make and takes more time to plan a vacation each year than they do planning their finances (I’m not kidding!).