College Success Tip – Learn From Your Mistakes

Bad News – you are going to make a lot of mistakes as a college student.

Good News – each mistake is an opportunity to learn while becoming a better and smarter person.

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes in college, as long as you are able to learn from them and not continually make the same ones.  This isn’t an excuse to do stupid things, but oftentimes you have the best of intentions but make some mistakes despite those intentions.

When you make a mistake, take time to figure out what you did wrong, what you should have done differently and how you can avoid making the same mistake again.  Those who are able to learn from their mistakes will grow up faster, learn more and become better all around people.

The Bottom Line:  Turn every mistake of yours into a learning experience – mistakes will collectively help you to improve in all areas of your life.  If you refuse to learn from your mistakes, you will continue to make them over and over again while slowing down your road to success as a college student.

College Success Tip – Have A Random Roommate Freshman Year

Living with someone you have never met before as a freshman is a great experience.  Your roommate may end up being in your wedding or you may never talk to him or her again after freshman year, but either way it will be a great learning experience for you.  Of course it would be easier to room with someone that you have known for years, but you have the rest of your life to do that.  Living with someone new will teach you a lot about yourself and make you more adaptable to a variety of people, which will serve you well as a student leader and eventually as a young professional.

Make sure that for all four years of college, you live with a variety of people.  Never live alone – you can do that later on in life.  Live with people who are messier than you, cleaner than you, more quiet than you, louder than you, go out more than you do, go out less than you, study more than you do, study less than you do and every other variation.  This may frustrate or annoy you at times, but it will be much better for your personal growth.

The Bottom Line:  Don’t take the easy way out on this one – living by yourself or someone you have known for awhile won’t teach you anything new about yourself.  College is all about learning about yourself and living with a variety of people is one of the absolute best ways to do this.  Each person will give you a better idea of who you are and who you want to be.

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!

Searching for the Right Place to Live as a Young Professional

Settling on your ideal place to live as a young professional is a four step process:  choosing the characteristics you are looking for you, researching those characteristics, talking to residents of the place you are considering, and finally, visiting the place to make sure you love it.

1.    Choose the characteristics you are looking for
2.    Research those characteristics
3.    Talk to the locals
4.    Visit the place

Choose the Characteristics

The first thing you must do is to determine what exactly you are looking for in a place to live.  Figuring out what makes you happy will help you to narrow down your search.  Characteristics of a place that you may want to consider are:

•    Weather
•    Median Family Income
•    Population
•    Crime Rate
•    Employment Growth
•    Median Home Price
•    Proximity to Family and Friends
•    Cleanliness
•    Traffic
•    Median Age of Population
•    Professional Sports Teams
•    Entertainment
•    Nightlife
•    Dining
•    Culture
•    School System
•    Local and State Taxes

If you know that you enjoy skiing and if you want to be close to your family and friends, then you have probably narrowed down your search considerably.  If you love warm weather and insist on a large city with great nightlife, then you can cross a large portion of the country off your list.  Setting some basic parameters will allow you to compile a list of locations; obviously the more specific your parameters, the more narrow your search.  Focus on making yourself a manageable list so that you can do research on each place, but not so specific that you are leaving out potentially great places that you may have never thought of.  The goal of this exercise is to come up with 10-20 cities that you would like to look at in detail.

Research the Places

Once you have a list of places that interest you, you can research each one.  This may not sound like a lot of fun, but it actually is!  It gives you a chance to learn more about many different places and will help you narrow your search to the places you would potentially consider for relocation.  Simply figure out which characteristics are most important to you and then examine those details for all of the cities on your list.  An Excel spreadsheet is a great way to organize all of this data and compare each of your places.

Once you have built your spreadsheet, you should be able to narrow your search even further.  You can use any process to narrow this list – choose your top five or ten based upon your most important criteria or eliminate the bottom half based on the learning of facts unbeknownst to you before you began your research.  The purpose for building a spreadsheet is to view your potential locations side by side to compare them more efficiently.  Narrow your focus to the places that are the most appealing.

Talk to the Locals

The next step in the selection process is to contact people in each place to conduct a brief interview with them.  This will allow you to learn a lot more about the place and can also be an excellent way to build your professional network.  Make a list of items to discuss with these people, making sure to address your biggest questions, concerns and curiosities about each place.  Some questions that you may want to ask include:

•    What is the weather like throughout the year?
•    How clean are the streets and sidewalks?
•    Are there a lot of great career opportunities for young professionals?
•    How is the housing market?
•    Are the people friendly?
•    Is it a transient area or are most people born and raised their?
•    Is the local economy reliant on certain industries?
•    What is your favorite and least favorite thing about this place?
•    Would you consider it a good place to raise a family?
•    How easy is traveling in and out of the local airport?
•    Is the public transportation good?
•    Is it a walk-able city or do you need to drive everywhere?

These are just a few of the hundreds of questions you could ask local residents of the places you are considering.  You may be wondering where you can find people to contact if it’s a place where you don’t know anyone.  Great question!  There are tons of ways to find local people to talk to, such as lists of alumni from the high school or college you went to, the chamber of commerce, local realtors and the tourism department.  Successful individuals are always willing to help young, ambitious people in any way that they can.  Use these resources to help find the right place and begin to build a network in those places you are considering for relocation.

Visit the Place(s)

Depending upon how the process has materialized to this point, you may have found one or more places that you have fallen in love with.  If your budget will allow for it, try to personally visit as many places as you can.  You may need to narrow the list down to one or two that you want to consider.  If possible, build your professional search into this visit (much more on this process in the next chapter).  Ideally, you will visit a place and spend 5-7 days investigating whether it’s a place you would like to call home.  You will also strive to secure a few different professional options.  The most important thing to ask yourself is, “Do I see myself living here and calling this place home?”  If you spend enough time driving around, talking to people and seeing as much of the place as possible, you can usually determine whether you want to live there or not.  Make sure that you are spending enough time navigating through the place yourself, don’t just spend all of your time on highways and hitting tourist spots.  See where people live, shop, eat, go to school and go out.  Make a personal determination on whether or not it could feel like home; there is nothing scientific about this part of the process.

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.

College Success Tip – Take Responsibility

You are given an incredible amount of freedom when you step on campus your freshman year.  You should consider yourself fortunate to have this great opportunity, so don’t take it for granted.  Embrace the great opportunity that you have and commit yourself to working hard each and every day.

Regardless of whether you are paying for your college or someone else is, you have a responsibility to go to class, learn, work hard, get involved and take advantage of the amazing opportunities available to you.  For those of you on scholarship, you most certainly have an obligation to your school to give your absolute best – you were chosen over many others and the school gave you the scholarship on the belief that you would add a great deal of value to the university community, both in and out of the classroom.

The Bottom Line:  You are an adult, so make sure to take responsibility and act like one.  With the great deal of freedom you will be given comes an obligation to be responsible for yourself and your actions.

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.

Searching for and Recognizing the Best Career Opportunity

As a young professional, there are two ways to do your career search – the easy way or the right way.  Most people choose the easy way and many of those people end up bouncing around from job to job because they keep making the wrong career decision and don’t follow the right process.  Those that do things the right way put themselves in a much better position and are able to find an opportunity that will take them to where they want to be professionally.  It is all about knowing what the process is and then committing yourself to following it – the extra time you spend up front could literally save you years of your time and make you millions of dollars over the course of your career.

So what is the correct process?  There are 7 things you must do if you want to give yourself the greatest chance for immediate and long-lasting success.  They are as follows:

- Build a Network:  Surround yourself with the right people who can help you reach your vision as quick as possible
- Find Something You Enjoy:  If you aren’t passionate about it, don’t do it
- Begin with the End in Mind:  You must visualize what your successful future career looks like so that you can ask yourself whether or not the opportunity you are interviewing for will get you there the as quickly as possible
- Fight through Adversity:  You need to persevere through the difficult time of your career search, which will almost certainly come up
- Demand Excellence:  You can either settle for OK over and over again, or take the time necessary to demand excellence once and be off and running towards your vision of success
- Know Yourself and Be Yourself:  You have to know what you want and be yourself throughout the process; those that try to be someone else and “impress others” end up in a career they don’t enjoy because they were so focused on being who they thought the company wanted, rather than being themselves
- Make it Just Like College:  The students that love college the most are the ones that choose the campus that feels like home, not the one that statistically looks good on paper; make your career search the same way and choose the organization that you feel gives you the best chance to learn, grow and reach your vision

For a much more detailed look at this process, as well as a step-by-step guide to finding a great professional opportunity, pick up a copy of my book The Course They Forgot to Offer – How to Make Big Money, Have Fun & Love Life as a Young Professional.

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!

Factors to Consider When Thinking About Relocating to a New City as a Young Professional

When facing the decision of whether or not to relocate to a brand new city, consider the benefits you saw from going away to college.  For many, leaving high school seems like the end of the world.  In a way, it was the end of the world as you knew it at the time.  Although it was initially a tough move for me personally, I made hundreds of new friends, met incredible people, grew up significantly and became a much better person in college.  Moving away after college can have an even greater impact on your life as you experience the real world and take another leap of faith.  There is no better time than right now for you to make a move to a great new place!

Even happy people will tell you they have a burning desire to live somewhere besides where they are currently.  How many times have you heard friends tell you they wished they lived in the mountains or on the beach?  How many people complain about cold winters and cloudy skies?  You don’t have to be like those people who complain about their current situations, yet do nothing to fix their problems.  As a young professional, you have the opportunity to live wherever you want, so don’t catch yourself later in life regretting that you’ve never lived anywhere outside of your comfort zone.

Many people claim that moving away from home would be “too difficult.”  Of course moving is difficult; if it were easy, everyone would do it.  Most worthwhile things in this world are difficult, but those who are willing to fight battles and persevere are able to create great lives for themselves.  You need to determine if taking a risk is worth trying something different.  You may end up living in a place that’s better than any place you’ve ever experienced.  What if it isn’t a great experience?  Then you have spent some time and money taking a great chance, but at the end of the day you will have one less regret in your life and you won’t wonder what the outcome might have been.

If you aren’t sure about relocation, try this exercise right now:  I want you stop reading, close your eyes, and imagine the perfect place.  What does it look like?  How does it smell?  What is the weather like?  How friendly are the other people who live there?  Do you see any water?  Is there snow?  Is it crowded or empty?  What else did you see or hear?

Now that you have visualized your ideal place, ask yourself if you already live there.  If you don’t, why wouldn’t you move there?  If you saw the beach and felt warm weather, then why would you live in a colder city?  If you saw bright lights and the big city, why would you choose to live in a small town?  You must choose the best place for yourself and make it your focus.  Many people understand all of this but allow a career decision to get in the way.  Choose the place that makes you the happiest, great opportunities exist everywhere.