Young Professional Success Tip – Always Persevere

As an ambitious young professional, you will undoubtedly face some major obstacles.  Because you aren’t content waiting for things to fall on your lap, you more than likely have some lofty goals and dreams that you want to make happen as soon as possible. In order to break through all of the adversity and negativity you will face, you MUST be able to persevere and stay focused.  It is easier said than done, but you have to do it.

Perseverance means steadily working towards your vision and pushing through the obstacles in your way.  In some ways, it is the most important characteristic for your success, both as a young professional and for the rest of your life.  Every young professional faces obstacles, problems and issues that provide a road block; your success will ultimately be determined with how you handle these.

Take a look at some successful people that you know personally or celebrities that you admire – I guarantee you that each of them faced significant obstacles to become successful and wouldn’t have reached their visions if they weren’t incredible at persevering.  I share many of these stories in my book, The Course They Forgot to Offer, as a way of showing readers the price you must pay to reach your dreams in this world.

Stay focused on your end goal, surround yourself with positive people who will support you and keep pushing forward!

Young Professional Success Tip – Have Mentors

Having a mentor and making sure it is the right person may very well be the most important thing you do for your development as a young professional.  A mentor is the following:

- Someone who you feel is successful personally and professional
- Someone who can share their experiences to make you successful faster and easier by learning from everything they have been through
- Someone who will take the time to help teach and guide you

Why should you have a mentor?

- They have already been through what you are going through and can give you guidance that will save you years worth of mistakes
- Give you specific qualities to emulate
- Make you a better person and professional
- Tell you specifically how to handle situations you have never faced before (such as salary negotiation, career transition, starting a business)

The bottom line is that you can not become successful on your own – your success will be closely tied to the people you choose to surround yourself with and the relationships you have with each of them.  One of the quickest and easiest ways to become successful as a young professional is by simply finding people that have been there, done that and are still doing it (thanks, James Malinchak).  In other words, have mentors that are still experiencing a great deal of success in the area that you want to be mentored in (such as running a business).

Young Professional Success Tip – Get Involved in Your Community

Getting involved in your local community is a MUST for every young professional.  I know what your thinking – you don’t have enough time, aren’t involved already with an organization, don’t see the value in it and are already overwhelmed with your career.  It’s fine to feel that way, but I have to let you in on a little secret:  you are wrong!  Getting involved in your community has some great benefits you are probably not aware of, such as:

- You get to help a good cause
- You meet lots of great people
- You learn more about yourself
- You get your mind off of your career and can relax
- Build better professional relationships to add to your network
- Get to help a cause you are passionate aboutOK, so now you realize that being of service to the community can benfit both the community and YOU!  But you are probably wondering how you can get involved…  glad you asked!  Here are a few great ways:

- Coaching a youth sport at the YMCA
- Being part of an after school program at the Boys & Girls Club
- Serving food at a homeless shelter
- Volunteering your time at your church
- Joining a book club at the local book store
- Getting involved with the young Republicans or Democrats
- Going to a young professionals networking event
- Mentoring a child with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America

The reasons for you to get involved and the ways you can get involved are both endless – its up to you to take action!

Young Professional Success Tip – Push Yourself and Challenge Yourself

In order to be successful as a young professional, you need to consistently be pushing yourself each day to work towards your vision of success.  You also need to challenge yourself to achieve continually greater things in both your life and career.  Taking the easy way out may seem like the way to go, but by doing so you are doing yourself a huge disservice because you will be in big trouble when you face adversity and setbacks.

Make a commitment to yourself that you will try your best at everything you do, including relationships, your social life, your career, getting involved in the community, taking care of your body and everything else that you must do to reach your vision of success.  Have a passion to succeed in all areas of your life and it will help you get to where you want to be much quicker.

I don’t know about you, but I find it much more fun in life to be slightly overwhelmed than bored and unchallenged.

Young Professional Success Tip – Stay Connected

At some point in your life, you will probably move away from some of the people and/or places that are important to you.  Use me as an example – I grew up in one state, went to college in a different state and then moved across the country to a 3rd state immediately after college.  I have friends and family that are scattered throughout the entire country, as I’m sure many of you reading this do as well.  Since we all move away from the places and people that have hold a special place in our heart, it is important to stay connected to them.  Here are some of great ways to stay connected, regardless of where you may be:

- Read the newspapers of the places you no longer live by going to their website each morning
- Use your car ride home from work to call friends and family each evening
- Spend time regularly on Facebook to catch up with people (not during work hours!)
- Set aside time each Sunday to call your family
- Join Skype (a free website to video call people) and then log-in regularly to see who is on and say “hello”
- Join the alumni organizations of the schools you went to and organizations you were involved with…  See what events they are having in your area and attend!
- Volunteer for the local chapter of a national organization you were part of, such as a fraternity/sorority or academic association

As an ambitous young professional, you are going to spend a lot of time focused on your career, which is great.  It is also important to stay connected to all of the great people and places that are part of your life.  Keep an eye on what is going on in those places and set aside time to talk to your family and friends regularly.  You never want to look back and wish you had better relationships with the important people in your life – the years go by too fast and you will never get them back!

Young Professional Success Tip – Have Confidence and Look The Part

In order to experience immediate success as a young professional, you must have confidence in your abilities.  Two big mistakes that young professionals make are that they are either not confident enough (which makes you look weak and uncapable of handling significant responsibility) or they are too confident (otherwise known as being cocky, which nobody wants on thier team).  

Arrogance vs Confidence

When a young professional is arrogant, they feel as if they are better than everyone else around them, which makes them difficult to work with and they are too close-minded to be coached and taught the proper way to do things.  Self-Confidence, however, means that you have assurance in your abilities and are aware of both your strengths and weaknesses.  People want to do business with confident individuals that they like and that are knowledgable about what they offer.  

How Do You Get Confidence?

Here are a couple quick ways – gain as much experience as possible, react positively to every situation you face, surround yourself by successful people and strive to learn as much as you possibly can.  You should also “look the part”, in other words make sure you are clean cut, well dressed and look established.  This sounds simple, but look around at all of the people in the workplace that look like they rolled out of bed without taking a shower or ironing their clothes.

A Final Word

If you want to reach your vision of success quickly, then you must have a confidence in your abilities.  People will want to do business with you, have you join thier team and even have you lead them!  Carry yourself confidently, look the part and bring your “A” game every single day and you will quickly increase your chances for immediate success!

Young Professional Success Tip – Understand Your Industry

A great way to add a ton of value to your career is to have a great understanding of how the industry you work in functions.  In my book The Course They Forgot to Offer, I talk about the importance of having a “360 degree view” of your industry; you need to understand all of the different players in your industry and how each of them works together.  For instance, let’s say that you are an account executive at a radio station and sell media to companies that are trying to gain exposure to their target customer.  You will need to know how each of the following functions; the radio station, media buyers, advertising agencies, radio talent and all of the other players.  If you cannot understand each person’s perspective, it will be difficult for you to give any of them a lot of value.

What is the benefit of understanding your industry?

- You are able to be better at what you do
- You can speak more intelligently about your industry to everyone else
- It gives you a better chance at earning great opportunities as you try to advance your career
- You may be able to identify a need in the industry that would allow you to start your own business

Make sure to have a clear understanding of how your industry functions – you’ll be much better at what you do and open yourself up for some potentially great opportunities!

Young Professional Success Tip – Be Consistently Great

Any professional football quarterback can throw for 400 yards and 4 touchdowns in a game.  Any professional baseball player can have a week where they get 7 home runs.  Any CEO can have a quarter that does 150% better than the previous quarter.  And any young professional can work a 70 hour week and produce huge results.  The hall of fame athletes, greatest CEO’s and best young professionals are the ones who are CONSISTENTLY able to be great.  Those who work hard every day, learn as much as they can and produce huge results on a consistent basis are the ones who will ultimately become successful in their careers.

Being called consistent is one of the greatest compliments you can receive if it means that you are consistently great in what you do.  Very few people work hard at all and even fewer work hard every day.  If you are able to consistently work hard it will be very difficult for you to not become successful.  A great key to success as a young professional is to be consistently great and to keep giving your best while producing great results.  If you have a clear vision of your successful future, then you can stay focused on that and persevere through the difficulties to become great.  Be consistently great and you can’t help but become a huge success!

Young Professional Success Tip – Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths

As a young professional, you must be well aware of both your strengths and weaknesses.  Don’t worry if you aren’t sure of what they are, you just need to do the following:

- Write down a list of what you think you are really good at and bad at
- Ask your co-workers to do the same
- Have a couple of friends that know you well make a list
- Have your family members each make a list

Tell them to be completely honest with you as it will only make you a better person and professional.  They can even fill it out anonomously if that would make them more comfortable.  Once you have these responses, put together a master list of the strengths and weaknesses that came up the most.  So how do you turn these weaknesses into strengths?  All you need to do is invest in materials that focus on these areas (such as a book on balancing work/life or a seminar on communication in the workplace).  Tackle one weakenesses at a time, don’t try and do them all at once because it will lead to no improvement at all.  Once you feel that one of your weaknesses is no longer a weakness, move on to the next one.  Within 6 months, you should easily be able to identify your weaknesses and improve them so that they don’t hold you back from your vision of success!

Young Professional Success Tip – Accept Responsibility For Successes and Failures

This seems like a simple tip, but very few people consistently are able to do it.  Always accept responsibility for what you do, regardless of whether it was a huge success or miserable failure.  If you have the greatest idea in the world that makes your company a ton of money, then make sure people are aware that it was your idea and don’t be afraid to receive positive acknowledgments for it.  On the other side, if you make a huge mistake or have a terrible idea, you need to step up, take responsibility for what you did wrong and offer a solution to fix it while making sure that you don’t make the same mistake again.

Never make excuses for your actions – just take responsibility for them.  Also make sure that you don’t place the blame on others to try and deflect attention away from your mistake; it makes you look weak and immature.  Just remember to accept responsibility for all of your actions, good or bad.  Learn from the successful things you do, as well as learn from the mistakes that you make.  It will make you a better, more professional person.