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 – Build Positive Relationships

A very quick and easy way to significantly shorten your road to success is by simply aligning yourself with successful people and building positive relationships with them.  Getting where you want to be is much easier if you are surrounded by successful people who know your vision of success and want to see you achieve it!  

Who are the people you want to align yourself with and build relationships with?

• Leaders in your company
• Leaders at other companies in your industry
• People that your respect
• People that you want to be like

How do you meet these people?  Simply ask them out to lunch or to grab a cup of coffee.  99% of the time successful people will gladly set aside 15 minutes or more to meet with you and provide guidance – all you need to do is ASK!  Most people are either too nervous or too lazy to simply ask someone they respect out to lunch.  Once you have access to this person, prepare a list of questions for him or her – find out what he would do differently if he was your age again.  Ask him what the most important characteristic is for success, share your vision with him, and find out information that you feel will be beneficial to your future success.

You will continue to build new and stronger relationships as your career grows – these relationships will collectively make your road to success much easier because you have now built a network of supporters who want to see you succeed and will help you in any way that they can.

Lessons I Have Learned as a Young Entrepreneur – Always Hope For The Best, Plan For The Worst

I have two sides of me that compete against each other. In one corner is the guy who believes everything he wants to accomplish is going to happen tomorrow. In the other corner is the guy who thinks it will take a hundred years to accomplish everything he has his sights set on. Which one of them will win? Well the truth is neither because success doesn’t happen overnight if you have huge ambitions, but if you work your hardest and you execute a winning plan it will certainly happen for you at some point. I have learned that you always need to plan for the absolute worst, but hope for the absolute best. If you do not have a plan if an idea fails, then what will you do? It is important to make sure that one bad idea or wrong move doesn’t cost you your entire business, just that it sets you back a little bit and then you learn from it by never replicating that error.

One of the biggest flaws I personally have as an entrepreneur is that I usually underestimate how long things will take to complete – everything from writing blog entries to publishing books. That is why for me it is critical that I hope for the best but plan for the worst – in other words, make sure that it won’t hurt me too much if it takes longer to complete a project than I originally anticipated. I believe that every business needs to always know what the worst thing is that could happen to them and then have a plan to deal with it and move on. It’s no different than a government going over all the possible scenarios that could negatively affect their country and then having a plan for every scenario they can think of to minimize the damage and garuntee the long term viability of the country.

Happy Mother's Day to the Best Mom in the World!

With all due respect to every other Mom in the world, I have to be honest….  I have the absolute best Mom in the entire world!  I feel so fortunate to have the love, support and friendship of my Mom in my life and owe everything that I ever accomplish to her.

As I have found out over the past couple of years, the bigger risks you take in life and the more “differently” you do things than other people, the harder it is to find people that truly support you.  Whether it has been to study abroad, relocate to Arizona, start my own business or any of my other crazy ideas over the years, my Mom has always supported me 100%.  She has never doubted me, questioned my abilities or told me that I couldn’t accomplish something – she only ever asks one question and its always the same one…  How can I help you?  It is so rare to have people like this in your life and I’m so blessed that my Mom is one of those people.

Happy Mothers Day Mom…  I love you!

Looking for the Perfect College Graduation Gift for Graduating Seniors?

Grab them a copy of my book, The Course They Forgot to Offer – How to Make Big Money, Have Fun & Love Life as a Young Professional. For a special discount, signed copy and free shipping, purchase the book off of my Facebook Fan Page!

“Tom Healy has a life-changing message that makes a huge difference in the lives of students and young professionals!”
- Joe Theismann, NFL Network Analyst, former Super Bowl Champion and All-Pro Quarterback of the Washington Redskins

FIND OUT THE SECRETS TO SUCCESS AS A YOUNG PROFESSIONAL

Do you feel like you missed out on the college course that prepared you for the real world? Would you like to learn the easy way to make big money, have fun and love life? Let this book show you how to get the absolute most our of life as a young professional and beyond!

In this book you will discover:

- How to choose the perfect place to launch your life and career
- How to search for and earn a great professional opportunity
- How to manage your finances the easy way
- How to build positive and profitable relationships
- The personal and professional characteristics essential for your success
- Challenges, regrets and learning experiences from young professionals and established individuals
- Stories of success from those that achieved greatness as young professionals

For a special discount, signed copy and free shipping, purchase the book off of my Facebook Fan Page!

Tom Healy joins the CAMPUSPEAK staff; will head up RBC efforts

CAMPUSPEAK, Inc. is proud to announce the addition of Tom Healy to the staff as Recruitment Program Specialist. Tom will guide the expansion of the company’s Recruitment Boot Camp (RBC) workshops and consultations. In this new role, Tom will be taking RBC in an exciting new direction.

Tom Healy is a 2006 graduate of Ohio University, where he was an active leader of the fraternity and sorority community, serving in leadership roles for the Interfraternity Council and Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. He remains actively involved with SAE in a number of volunteer roles. Tom has spoken at colleges across the country, published multiple books for students and young professionals and advised students on marketing/branding their student organizations through social media.

“Adding Tom to our CAMPUSPEAK staff is a big win! His creativity and energy will enliven the RBC program in so many ways. He is a great speaker and facilitator and will be able to communicate our proven techniques of values based recruiting in a most effective way,” said David Stollman, CAMPUSPEAK partner and creator of the RBC program.

“Tom’s ability to develop books, online resources and other educational products will add new dimensions to Recruitment Boot Camp offerings. We are especially excited for the upcoming rollout of our online skills training and our coaching program,” Stollman said.

Recruitment Boot Camp has helped hundreds of fraternity and sorority chapters across North America master proven strategies for dramatically boosting recruitment results. After attending RBC, some chapters have doubled, tripled and even quadrupled their memberships in just one semester. Some communities have increased their bid acceptance by 50-percent in just one year.

RBC provides recruitment education strategies for schools, chapters and national organizations. For more information about how RBC can help your organization, please visit http://www.recruitordie.com. To reach Tom Healy, please email him at healy@campuspeak.com.

Happy 89th Birthday To My Pup Pup

There is no person in this world that I am more inspired by than my grandfather.  He is the best person that I know and I’m absolutely thrilled that he is healthy, happy, active and loving life at age 89.  One of the most important things that I learn from him everyday is to make the absolute most out of life – at 89 he is going to the gym, going out at night, meeting new people, learning new things and always surrounding himself around great people.  Very few 29 year olds can say they do those things consistently!!

Among his many accomplishments are raising and putting his two amazing daughters through college, being an incredible Grandfather, being the oldest employee in the history of our school district, volunteering his time weekly at our church and being one of the most well known and respected people in our community.  He truly is an inspiration to us all!

Happy Birthday Pup – you are the best!

Why it is Easier to Start a Business Sooner Than Later

As some of you know, I have begun working on a book about why every young professional should start a business.  I am a VERY strong advocate of being an entrepreneur.  Their are so many misconceptions that exist – you need to be “born” an entrepreneur, you need lots of money to start a business, you have to be great at something and many other myths that are 100% FALSE.  The truth is, anyone can start their own business.  It isn’t easy, but it also isn’t impossible for anyone.

I had the pleasure of sitting with a friend and her son yesterday – he is 18 years old and has indicated an interest in being an entrepreneur at some point in his life.  As we were talking, I made a very important point that I would like to share here – it is much easier to start a business when you are younger.  I’m sure many of you are thinking the complete opposite; that it would be easier later in life to start a business when you have experience, knowledge, money and the guts to take a chance on a new business.  That isn’t the case and I will explain why.

Let’s say that you are 22 years old and a recent college graduate.  Chances are that even if you are living on your own and responsible for all of your own bills, your total monthly expenses are under $2,000 per month.  Obviously if you live in New York City and L.A. this wouldn’t be true, but for the vast majority of 22 year olds, $2,000 per month will get the job done.  If you are living at home, you might be able to survive on $1,000 per month.  The point is that you have very low monthly expenses as a 22 year old.

Fast forward to when you are 30 years old and you will likely have some or all of the following – home mortgage, car payment(s), a spouse, children and an overall higher standard of living than you did at 22.  You might have monthly expenses of $4,000 per month or $8,000 per month; chances are they are significantly higher than they were for you at 22 years old.  For the sake of this conversation, lets say your expenses are $6,000 per month.

So if you were going to start a business, do you think it would be easier to start something that would produce a $2,000 profit per month from the start or one that would produce $6,000 per month from the start?  You can have 10 years of experience, money saved up and a great work ethic, but at the end of the day you will need to make 3 times more money to even survive.  Also, it will most likely take more start-up money (from your savings or an investor) to build a business that produces a profit of $72,000 per year rather than one at 22 years old that produces $24,000 per year.  Other reasons to start the business at a younger age include:

• More time to work on your business (life only gets more complicated as you get older)
• If you fail you will still be young and have plenty of time to rebound and move on
• You have time on your side – you can slowly build your business and won’t need it to quickly grow
• If you start a business at 25, you will have 5 years of experience owning a business by age 30
• Chances are you have less responsibility (no spouse and/or wife) if you start a business early on, so if you fail you are only letting down yourself, not an entire family

I could go on and on, but I just want everyone to be aware of the massive advantages of starting a business when you are young.  Every person has a different situation and circumstances, but in general, there is no better time than now if you have an interest in being an entrepreneur.  Even if it is only something on the side, get started on creating your own revenue stream and see what happens!

"I'm glad we got laid off"

The following is an interesting article that shows 10 situations in which people embraced the “recession” by creating wonderful opportunities for themselves.  Some started new businesses, others are using it to finally spend more time with their families.  The moral of the story in all 10 is quite simple – great opportunities ALWAYS exist…  its up to you to find them.  Check out the article and enjoy:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/news/0906/gallery.silver_lining/index.html

College Students & Graduates… Seperate Yourself

A recommendation to those of you that are still in school, as well as those that are already in the “real world”….  let this current economy be a lesson that you need to always seperate yourself from others out there.  How do you do this?  By working exceptionally hard and learning as much as you can.

Students – focus on getting involved in a variety of activities, becoming leaders in student organizations, building relationships with successful professionals in your field of interest and securing internships everytime you have a break from school.  Simply walking into an interview with a college degree isn’t good enough anymore, especially for those of you who are ambitious and have a strong desire to become successful.

Graduates – being in the office from 9-5 Monday thru Friday and doing what your told might not be enough to keep you employed, let alone be promoted.  Look for ways in which you can learn more about your industry, such as trade journals, industry websites, taking on increased responsibilities and offering to take a respected colleague out for lunch to learn from them.  None of these things will guarantee your success, but they will certainly separate you from everyone else who is just trying to keep their job and do the bare minimum.  Combining these learning experiences with a strong work ethic will put you in a much better position.