How to Go from High School Student to Master of the Universe

Today I want to start off by answering one particularly good question I received, here on the blog, because I think it’s definitely something that could benefit a lot of people. This is especially relevant for 18-year-olds recently out of high school, but I hope my thoughts will be useful to people in all stages of life. This comes from reader Binbin here in Bangkok:

Dear Cody,

First off, kudos to you for breaking free!!
I am truly inspired by your lifestyle. My question is…what would you tell your 18 self about earning money and opportunities with your current knowledge?
I want to explore the world but need to start earning money top fund it. How should I begin??

Best regards,
Binbin.

If I could jump into a time machine and go talk to my 8-years-younger self, there are all kinds of things I’d tell me:

A Winning Mindset:

The first step in dominating the world is to cultivate a strong mindset. This is one of the many things you won’t learn in school. The first valuable belief to instill in yourself is that you truly can achieve anything. What most of our parents told us as kids—that we can be anything we want to be when we grow up—is still true; there is no goal that is out of reach, no person you can’t speak to, no place you can’t go, no possession you can’t have, nothing you can’t be. If you really invest your time in understanding your desired end results, break that goal down, and do what’s necessary.

You can bend the rules of reality. We’re mostly limited by fear and traditional “rules” that we think apply to us. (Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll get a 1-hour recording about how to overcome fears and live a remarkable life, by the way!) Start challenging assumptions. You don’t have to go to college, graduate within four years, take a desk job, stay close to home, get an MBA, climb the corporate ladder, or anything just because it’s what society tells you it’s what you’re supposed to do. Your life is your masterpiece, and you are the painter.

Find people who’ve done what you want to achieve successfully, and “model” them. Everything in life is pretty much a game—relationships, business, money, politics—figure out the rules and adopt the most empowering beliefs that will get you where you want to go. Follow people who are really passionate about something, and have broken the rules of “reality” to achieve great success. A few people that have done their own thing and become wildly successful at it: Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk.

Continuing Education:

Parents may not like my advice here, but if I could go back and do college over again with the knowledge I have eight years later, I would have made some very different decisions. First, you need to ask yourself if a university degree is even worthwhile for you at all. A lot of universities provide a tremendous amount of value, and college life will give you experiences that will help you grow in many ways—but there are also plenty of skills you won’t learn in school (see Mindset above, for one). Some of the most successful business leaders today were dropouts: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Michael Dell, Jerry Yang, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Rose, and so on. And I know some wildly successful people personally—some of the most brilliant young entrepreneurs I know, and people who’ve been successful in the corporate world—who didn’t get degrees. That’s not to say that dropping out guarantees success—but there are other things you can invest your time in that might be more valuable than putting those years, and all that money, into traditional education.

I’d say that college is a good decision if you know what you want from your career. If you know what line of work you want to get into, and it tends to require a degree in order to be successful, or open doors, then go for it. If you’re just window shopping though, and you’re not sure what you want your life to look like, take a year and travel the world instead. Or take an interesting internship; experiment with entrepreneurship and fail; or even just read books! As much as I enjoyed and got a lot out of my college experience, I’d say I had no idea what I wanted, I had little direction, and could have made a lot more progress if I’d just gathered more life experience and gone into a degree knowing what I wanted out of it. If you’re going to go to university, pick up some hard skills—mathematics, science, economics, a business degree. Like Marc Andreessen says, “Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife.”

Whether you go to a university or not, that’s not to say education is overrated. Either way, you’ll need to take initiative to learn a lot on your own if you want to be successful. You can almost get the same education from one of the top schools—without the diploma—on your own. Look at open courseware and things like the Personal MBA program. It’s important to keep your skills sharp, stay competitive, and continue learning throughout your entire life. Most people don’t read a single book after college. Don’t be like them.

If you want to see the books that have been most influential in my life, check out the Required Reading section at the top of my resources page for my top-10 most important books.

Purpose and Goals:

As stated above, you can do almost anything in this life, despite what the haters will tell you. But the fine print is that you have to be willing to give something in exchange. Our mission here on earth is to provide value of some sort or another to other people. Napoleon Hill said that you need to get clear and realistic about what what value you intend to share with the world in exchange for the success you seek out of life. You need to figure out what your purpose is—what drives you and what you want to build; to share with the people around you.

Once you figure out who you are and what you want, you need to create a roadmap for yourself to arrive at your destination. Most people don’t clarify any well-thought-out goals for themselves. But if you spend time figuring out what few goals are most important for you—whether you set new resolutions once a year, or come up with your own system—even if you don’t achieve everything, simply making the plan in the first place will make you about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action. Check out how to set SMART goals or New Year’s resolutions—but this is useful any time of year. USE IT.

Now that you know what you want, you should surround yourself with like-minded people. Take a good look at your friends, seek out people on social media, blogs, meetup groups, and at networking events for others who want to do similar things as you. Build a support group for yourself—you’ll find simply by hanging out with people that are doing what you want to do, have the things you want to have, and are the way you want to be, you’ll begin to change. One of the best decisions I ever made was to build a mastermind group with a small group of friends in college where we met weekly to hold each other accountable to our goals.

Entrepreneurship & Location-Independent Work:

If you truly want to be in charge of your time, your location, and the projects you get to work on, then self-employment is for you. Even if you work for someone else, if you want to become “location independent”, then take all of the lessons I’ve given above, and focus all your energy on limiting distractions and making enough time to invest and concentrate on your own projects. Creating value for others and finding ways to give back are the most important things you can do, but it is far too easy to allow yourself to be overwhelmed with other people’s agendas and never make any progress towards your own goals.

I’ve been asked a few times if lifestyle design can work for people in the “developing” world, and my answer is a resounding YES! Just like anyone else, you need to take stock of your skills, your abilities, and what you’re passionate about—and identify the things that others find valuable (i.e., worth paying money for). Anyone who is like Binbin, living here in Asia, I actually think you’re especially well-positioned to take advantage of geoarbitrage and the global economy. If you can identify ways you can provide value, especially if you can work online, look for unconventional ways to take advantage of those skills. Can you start doing freelance work for firms in the US or Europe, rather than just doing business locally? Can you sell your services online, to a global market, at a higher price that will allow you to work fewer hours and leverage your time to do more of what you love? Even just start part-time, as a side job. But get started.

Blogging:

Like my friend Sean Ogle, probably the most life-changing thing I ever did was start this blog. Go start a blog and start talking about the things that interest you! Blogging gave me a good excuse to keep reading, keep learning, to talk about the current events, ideas and technologies that interested me. Blogging also gave me a means to reach out to interesting folks from all walks of life, ask questions, and make friends with people around the globe. I’ve expanded my network of friends to include people I would never have imagined; I’ve made friends on the other side of the globe, landed clients on five continents, had incredible mentors, become involved in great collaborative projects, gotten into conferences, been interviewed in papers and massive media sites, had free business books sent to me, gotten access to countless great information products, and been involved in organizing incredible events—all because of this blog.

Additionally, on the social web, the barriers are very low. There really is almost nobody that’s out of reach—entrepreneurs you look up to, your favorite author, who knows! If you find yourself especially inspired by someone—start a conversation with them! If you need an excuse, simply take Karol Gajda’s advice and thank them for their writing. This really is the best way to pay a blogger without having to spend any money.

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On that note, I hope you will leave a message for me, and as I said, I always enjoy getting great questions from readers. Your feedback keeps me going most days, and it’s what keeps me creating useful content here! The best way to get in touch with me is to ask your questions in the comments or leave your comments on my Facebook fan page.

Feature photo by andresrueda.

I started Thrilling Heroics in 2006 to encourage young professionals and entrepreneurs to pursue an unorthodox, exciting lifestyle and career, strive for excellence, and make a positive difference in the world! If you’re a regular subscriber, I thank you for continuing to visit and support this community. No one can succeed without the friendly cooperation of others, and you have each helped make Thrilling Heroics a success! And whether you’re a regular reader or a new visitor here, I also wanted to share 23 things to help you get to know me a little bit better:

• I’m from California’s capital, Sacramento. But I’ve spent over a year living abroad in Southeast Asia. My homebase is in Bangkok, Thailand, and I occasionally travel around the region to places like Krabi, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, etc.
• Professionally, I’m a web developer and internet marketing consultant: I help lifestyle designers and social entrepreneurs develop online businesses and web presence, and help teach them to leverage social media networks to build authority and expand their business globally.
• I have been self-employed since 2007, and working remotely as a digital nomad since November 2008. In my travel experience, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit about 20 countries (all of North America, across Europe & the Mediterranean, and now Asia).
• I recently co-founded an awesome lifestyle design community for college students and young professionals who want to learn to build their own businesses, live anywhere, and take their lives into their own hands.
• I used to speak French fairly fluently thanks to my high school language professor who got me passionate about travel and cultures. I am also learning to speak Thai, ever so slowly.
• Music is my biggest passion, and I love love LOVE electronica: house, techno, downtempo, chillout, everything. Some of my favorites are Thievery Corporation, The Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers, Kraftwerk, and Zero 7.
• Two of my very closest friends passed away by age 22: Chris Cravens and Kareem Khan will always be missed. Take life by the horns, because you never know when you might suddenly lose it.
• As a fan of Tony Robbins, Tom Peters, Napoleon Hill, and Dale Carnegie, I naturally was a member of Toastmasters International back in the States, and founded a mastermind group for ambitious college students.
• In 2006, I got to meet multi-billionaire Warren Buffett. Probably the world’s greatest money manager ever, and one of my biggest role models.
  
• I am a serious Apple fanboy and not ashamed of it: I own a dual core Apple iMac desktop machine, a 13-inch aluminum body MacBook (my ideal travel laptop), an iPhone 3G and an iPod nano!
• I code websites by hand in XHTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and jQuery. I’m a huge WordPress evangelist for its ease-of-use and built-in SEO benefits.
• Being a codemonkey and a night owl, I keep a work/sleep schedule that most people would find strange. I frequently work until 5 or 6am and get up between 11am-noon. Don’t call me lazy please, it’s just how I am.
• I despise rainy, cloudy weather. It makes me depressed. I would much rather be soaking up the sun on a beach somewhere (which is a big part of why I came to Thailand!)
• Unlike most dudes my age, I can’t stand watching televised sports. None of ‘em. I like sports bars and pubs, but could care less about the Superbowl game on the bigscreen. I’d rather be reading business news and blog RSS feeds or watching TED Talks.
• I’m a regular attendee at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Three days of incredible bands and DJs in the southern California desert! I’ve seen Paul McCartney, Portishead’s reunion, Roger Waters (Dark Side of the Moon in the desert!), Kraftwerk, Rage Against the Machine’s reunion, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, M.I.A., Thievery Corporation, The Crystal Method, Tiesto, Fatboy Slim, Justice, Bjork, The Killers, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and many other incredible shows in Indio, California!
• I’m a huge photography enthusiast, and sell some of my travel and landscape photos I’ve done over the years. I actually studied photography and computer graphics for three years in high school, then worked in a dark room and as a glamour shots photographer!
• In college, I studied a lot of literature, religions, anthropology, philosophy and arts. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities & Religious Studies, and a minor in History.
• I have three phone numbers and just one phone (thanks to international call forwarding and Skype). It’s my least favorite communication form though. I love interacting with people and talking with new people in person, but for some reason I have a strong aversion to being on the phone.
• Two things I miss from home: driving, and my golden retriever! I used to have a thing for customized street cars and fast driving.
  
• I have a strong fear of heights, but I’ve also gone skydiving out of a plane at 13,000 feet. It was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had!
• When I started writing Thrilling Heroics in 2006 I had a strong desire to attend Stanford University for grad school, and I still would like to one day, perhaps after I’ve been successful in business and made a name for myself. I’m drawn to Silicon Valley for its innovative, entrepreneurial atmosphere, and I love following the research and trends that come from Stanford’s professors.
• Since I started blogging, I’ve become friends and interacted with some of the coolest people online: Rajesh Setty, Ramit Sethi, Jun Loayza, Adam Baker, Jonathan Mead, Chris Guillebeau, Kare Anderson, Pamela Slim, Monica O’Brien, Ben Yoskovitz, Penelope Trunk, Clay Collins, Guy Kawasaki, Andrew Warner, Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, and many, many more.
• I have an unhealthy addiction to information! But on the bright side I love continually learning, about everything, including online business & startup advice, social entrepreneurship, social media trends, content marketing, travel, outsourcing, productivity, personal finance, personal development & personal growth, “pickup” & social dynamics, reason & philosophy, and much more.

If we don’t know each other personally yet, please feel welcome to introduce yourself. I am always happy to bring readers into my extended network! There are many ways to connect with me online:

You can connect with me on Facebook—please share a short message, and tell me something about yourself. What do you do professionally? Where do you blog? What projects are you working on? How did you find Thrilling Heroics?

Follow me on Twitter—this is probably the best place to engage with me in discussion. Aside from email, sending me an @reply is the quickest way to get my attention and I try to spend a decent amount of time here involved in discussions and answering people’s questions.

Ways You Can Help the Thrilling Heroics Community Grow and Thrive

In our interdependent society, it’s impossible to achieve great success without the help of others. The best way to get friendly cooperation is to give it. When you make it a habit to encourage others and to help them better themselves, most will reciprocate when you need their help. This is especially true in our online social communities. Thrilling Heroics is a part of a larger network where I try to help others as much as possible and receive a ton of support from my peers in exchange.

Help me give generously to the Thrilling Heroics community, and you will benefit in kind. You can help me by leaving your feedback and encouragement in the comments (encouragement is what keeps me going!), correcting my errors and adding in the areas where I’m weak, answering questions and offering support to other commenters and community members, and so on. Get involved and help the Thrilling Heroics empire thrive by subscribing to the RSS feed, joining my exclusive newsletter (and get a free telecall recording!), and sharing with your friends:

• Give Thrilling Heroics a thumbs-up on StumbleUpon
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• Donate to help pay the hosting bills, ensure more free CC-licensed articles & support the continued development of my free open-source ThrillingTheme

Thank you again for continuing to visit and support this site.

Why I started this site:

By the time I graduated from college in 2006, I had become rather unenthusiastic about my major, as I had with most of my education. I believe it was a reflection on the poor public school system in the U.S.—an antiquated institution that was crafted during the industrial era to brainwash train young people to gladly take their number and accept social norms. (Translation: I don’t think public school teaches kids any of the skills necessary for true greatness.)

I had gone through the motions. I was going to college because it’s just what you do. I chose a major that probably wasn’t best for me because I just had to finish in four years. Then I took a crappy staff job because it basically fell in my lap.

This all turned out to be very boring. Like many a poor sap, I ended up pushing paper, going to a lot of dumb meetings, and basically sitting around watching my life end one minute at a time.

I must have gotten lucky somehow, because it was at this point that I became interested in technology, startups, and entrepreneurship. I started watching Stanford lectures online, listening to podcasts, and I got this crazy idea in my head that it would be cool to get an MBA from one of these top business schools and start something big.

Meanwhile, I watched a lot of my good friends fall into the same trap I had fallen into: taking shitty jobs after college and buying into this myth that that’s all there is to it. 1) Get a career. 2) You’re not gonna like it, but just do it like everyone else and keep your mouth shut.

This ain’t no race. And I am certainly not a rat.

To fight off the apathy, I started a mastermind group with some friends where we discussed our careers, entrepreneurship ideas, and personal development. Sort of a Napoleon Hill/Tom Peters-inspired support group where we would encourage each other to kick asses.

I also started this blog, which had a huge impact on my life. That might sound nerdy, but yeah:

Starting a blog was a defining moment in my life.

Blogging gave me a good excuse to keep reading, keep learning, to talk about the current events, ideas and technologies that interested me. Blogging also gave me a means to reach out to interesting folks from all walks of life, ask questions, and make friends with people around the globe. People I never imagined would take a naive 22-year-old kid seriously.

It was when one of these new friends needed help—an amazing serial entrepreneur who I was incredibly lucky to call a mentor—that I started the next chapter of my life: working for myself.

Books like The 4 Hour Workweek and a few fantastic blogs convinced me that jobs are for suckers. I started doing freelance web development for small businesses on the side, and I quit my job shortly thereafter.

I’ve spent over a year-and-a-half learning to master the whole self-employment thing, and now I’ve set out on a year-long journey to live abroad and do remote work on the web. It’s rarely easy and it’s not always fun—in fact I frequently want to pull my hair out—but I enjoy the freedom that freelancing and entrepreneurship have given me. And the philosophy that underpins my choices is that I make the rules. I’ll say that again:

This is my life. I make the rules.

This blog is all about breaking the traditional “rules” that we think apply to us. It’s about challenging assumptions. There is no such thing as a One-Size-Fits-All lifestyle. You don’t have to go to college, graduate within four years, take a desk job, stay close to home, get an MBA, climb the corporate ladder, or anything just because it’s what herd mentality tells you you’re supposed to do. The world is a complex and beautiful place with a wide spectrum of possibilities, and full of unpredictable opportunities. Your life is your masterpiece, and you are the painter.

A few other like-minded rule-breakers out there—folks like Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferriss, John Bardos, Clay Collins, and Andrew Warner—are preaching similar nonconformity. Here at ThrillingHeroics.com I approach this philosophy from a career/lifestyle point-of-view, and you’ll find discussions on personal development, travel, productivity, personal finance, entrepreneurship, web marketing and collaboration, lifestyle design and more.

Optimize your Life, Rock your Career, and Make the World your Playground!

That’s my motto. My number one priority here is to encourage my peers—young professionals and entrepreneurs—as well as readers at any stage in their career, to strive for excellence and make a positive difference in the world by doing what they’re truly passionate about.

For over three years Thrilling Heroics has been my baby—my “pet project.” It is and always will be “the professional blog of Cody McKibben,” but it is also a community-centered project where I hope to encourage others to pursue an exciting, unorthodox lifestyle and career. I’ll try to highlight individuals who are breaking the rules and living their dream lifestyles. While this is my “personal” site, there are many ways you can join or support the community, like joining our community on Facebook and subscribing to the exclusive newsletter, and I leave the door open for guest posts and other contributing writers in the future.

Is the idea of an unorthodox career—living passionately—exciting to you?

Well, I’m recruiting believers. Sign up here. Follow my journey and learn from my mistakes while I attempt to sidestep the traditional corporate world, concentrate on personal growth, travel around the world, and create my ideal lifestyle!

Can’t get enough heroics?? Follow me on Twitter.

Hey Jun, so give us a little professional background on how you got to be where you are and what your role is with Future Delivery.

As an undergraduate at UCLA, I got a taste for entrepreneurship by founding Bruin Consulting, the UCLA Undergraduate Case Competition, and the Veridical Group. Each experience taught me something new about myself and really amplified my abilities as a leader and consultant, and my business sense.

After I graduated from UCLA, I worked at an international consulting firm for about three months. At the three month mark, I realized that the corporate life was just not for me. I mean, the pay was good, the job was steady, it was around 55 hours a week (not bad for consulting), and we even had an amazing Flavia machine in the kitchen! What drove me to step aside from the corporate world was that I felt unchallenged, and that I was in cruise control. You go to work, come back home, eat dinner, you might have time for the gym, and then you sleep. It became an endless routine!! From my experiences as an entrepreneur, I knew that my passion was in having my own baby (company).

I stepped aside from my corporate job and teamed up with Yu-kai Chou, my Delta Sig pledge brother who co-founded Bruin Consulting and the Veridical Group with me. Together, we founded Future Delivery. This is a startup company; therefore, I wear at least twenty different hats. My main responsibility is that of Chief Marketing Officer. I am in charge of everything having to do with our branding, advertising, lead generation, conversion, and client fulfillment. I am the face of Future Delivery, so I must always make sure I look my best!

What is the new FDCareer roleplaying game all about? Give our readers a run-down of the community and why it’s such a great benefit.

Many of you play video games and watch TV all day. Many undergraduates go to class, play and party all night, and ignore their careers until right before they graduate—which in many cases, may be too late. We created the FD RPG so that undergraduates and young professionals can have fun while developing themselves professionally.

In the FD RPG, every time you gain an internship, get a high GPA, or become a leader of an organization, you gain experience points and level-up on the site. As you level-up, you gain prestige, new abilities, access to new areas of the site, and will be able to recruit with more prestigious firms. We’ve also implemented Quests that help you develop career-wise. For example, a Quest for a Consultant could be a business analysis case. You will have to solve a company’s problem—could be profitability or an acquisition—and you will submit your solutions online to be reviewed by our expert panel. A Marketing Quest could be to gain social influence on Twitter by gaining more followers.

Monster.com is about helping people apply for a job.

Vault.com is about helping people research companies.

FD Career is about getting students and young professionals prepared for their careers. It helps you discover what you want to be, and how to get there.

You’ve got a great blog where you share your journey with entrepreneurship. Can you share some of your thoughts on the startup life and your opinions on work-life balance?

Hahaha… there is no work life balance. To be a successful entrepreneur (not that I’m successful yet), your work and life have to be one thing. That is the key. My personal relationships, family relationships, and girlfriend relationships have suffered because of the path that I have chosen. But these are the sacrifices that you have to make in order to put yourself in the position to be successful.

For example, I probably have time to hang out with my friends from UCLA or high school once or twice a month. I do see my girlfriend a lot during the week, but this is how we spend time together: her sitting in front of the TV watching a show or movie, me sitting by her side with my laptop and earphones on so that I can concentrate and meet my project deadlines.

This life is NOT for everyone. Cody, I chat with you all the time at 3am because we’re both still up doing work. We don’t even complain about it because we know this is the life that we have chosen, so all we can do is laugh. Though the road is tough, you will love what you do.

I keep pushing because I truly believe in the idea, I love my baby, and I love my team. If we fail, I would gladly start another company will all of them.

I’ve heard some rumblings about a sort of reality show that you guys are putting together to showcase your experience starting up a company?

Glad you brought it up! Our first video will launch this week! Hopefully it’ll launch before this is posted so you can link to the first episode. [See Episode 1, Part 1 here, and Part 2 here, also see below. —Ed.]

The Living the Startup Life video series is for all of those people who have a great idea but don’t know where to start, for everyone stuck in their corporate job afraid to leave their company to pursue their dream career, and for everyone who just wants to watch some guys have a lot of fun while succeeding or failing.

Lastly, would you mind sharing a bit about your education and how your experience has helped you become an avid entrepreneur. I’m interested if you have any good tips for students or twentysomethings that want to start their own businesses and really exercise their entrepreneurial muscles!

Why yes I do. My major at UCLA did NOT prepare me for my entrepreneurial quest. The three main things that prepared me to pursue the entrepreneurial life were:

1. Finding a mentor who guided me on my path to become an entrepreneur
2. Getting a taste of it while starting an orginzation and a company as an undergrad
3. Reading business books in class instead of paying attention to the teacher

• The E-Myth Revisited and E-Myth Mastery by Michael Gerber
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

If you do these three things, then you will be prepared to become an entrepreneur.

Thanks for your willingness to share your wisdom with the Thrilling Heroics community, Jun.

If you have any questions about entrepreneurship, Jun is genuinely interested in helping you guys out and making new friends on this great online web community of ours, so please feel welcome to contact him at Jun.Loayza (at) FDcareer (dot) com or on his blog Living the Startup Life. If you are interested in the FDcareer RPG, I highly recommend it! In my experience on the community site, I’ve already reached level 25 (currently #7 on the leaderboard!) so feel free to connect with me if you have questions about blogging, WordPress, or web development, and keep an eye out, because I will be creating some web design and blogging-related quests for you guys in the next few weeks! (Check out a little more about the FDCareer RPG in this intro video below.)

]]> http://www.thrillingheroics.com/rpgs-arent-just-for-kids-anymore-young-entrepreneur-jun-loayza-reveals-the-interactive-web-game-that-will-rock-your-career/feed 5 http://www.thrillingheroics.com/announcing-an-awesome-new-community-search-tool-for-the-blogosphere http://www.thrillingheroics.com/announcing-an-awesome-new-community-search-tool-for-the-blogosphere#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:51:36 +0000 Cody McKibben http://www.thrillingheroics.com/?p=378

I hope you all have the opportunity to spend quality time with your loved ones today, and to those students who are celebrating their graduation from college this weekend or will be graduating in the weeks ahead, I give you my sincere congratulations! As a special treat for you guys, I’d like to share a link to some of the best commencement speeches, including wise words from greats such as Kurt Vonnegut, Winston Churchill, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Will Ferrell.

Here I’d like to share my favorite commencement address, delivered by Steve Jobs at the 2005 Stanford University graduation ceremony. Jobs is a creative and technical role model for many, and an incredible public speaker. Of course for anyone who’s passionate about Silicon Valley like me this is an exciting address to hear, but Jobs offers something for everyone. The CEO of Apple and Pixar shares his experiences with adoption and growing up in a working-class family. He talks about love and loss, about his fight with cancer and embracing one’s mortality.

Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for a short time, and he relates stories about how he dropped out of college when he didn’t see the returns for his parents’ financial sacrifice, sharing what he learned as he continued to audit classes that appealed to him. If there is one big take-away, Jobs encourages new grads to find what they love to do, citing that “work fills a large part of your life,” and that following your passion is of the utmost importance.

“…it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Congratulations to all of you who’ve worked so hard to graduate from your degree programs this summer.

[source: Gawker]

• Budget your finances! Don’t just throw away all your receipts. I know it doesn’t sound fun, but for one to three months, record each purchase you make and categorize it. Use Quicken, Microsoft Money, or paper-and-pencil. This will let you know where all your money is going, and then you can start to plan ahead and set a budget so you don’t go over. Cody’s super-easy hint: Although you have to be disciplined to do this, I use a credit card for virtually all my purchases (earn the rewards points in the meantime and pay it off at the end of each month), which makes tracking my spending a lot easier–no cash purchases to remember! You could also use a debit card. Once you have recorded what you spend, here is the easiest two-category budget plan EVER!
• Pay your bills on time! Use a calendar like Apple iCal, Outlook, or Google Calendar, to send yourself reminders a few days before your regular bills are due (rent, utilities, credit cards, etc.). Or use Quicken reminders, or check out a service like BillQ if it works for you. Paying on time is the best thing you can do to ensure you build good credit, which you will need later! Cody’s helpful hint: Most online banking services allow you to do online bill-pay and schedule payments for ANY available business day. So, take your bills as soon as you get them in the mail, go into your online banking, and set up a payment to be delivered by the due date, and then you can forget about it! This means the money is available and earns more for you as long as possible, but the bill still gets paid on time.
• If you have credit card balances, keep them on a 0% card. Mildly shady, but entirely legal. If you have debt, which many of us do, at least keep it on low-interest or zero-percent cards. Better yet, put your purchases on a rewards card! (I once got a card that gave me a free iPod Nano for transferring a $2000 balance.) There are a thousand credit cards out there with 0% introductory rates (usually for the first year), so take advantage of that and then simply transfer your balance to another one when the intro period is up. (This is not to encourage you to continue to maintain a balance though; pay off as much as you can each month until it is GONE!) Cody’s word of caution: Just be careful, read the fine print, know when the introductory rate is up, and AVOID balance transfer fees (many cards charge 3% of the transfer amount, but there are plenty you can find that have no transfer fee for new cardholders). Check out Jim Wang’s posts on 0% balance transfer offers and other credit card offers. Also see the next step for a tip on how to lower your credit card interest rate.

Now here are a few other, little-known hacks that you can use, and then laugh and taunt your friends for being stupider than you! Remember, the little things add up:

• Call your bank/credit card to get a better deal! This sounds so simple, but 99.9% of people DON’T do it! Here’s what I suggest, every time your bank charges you an overdraft fee, an international fee, or any other kind of fee, or if your credit card charges you a late fee for receiving your payment a day after the due date for instance…CALL THEM! And ask nicely. Give your defense if you have to. The worst that can happen is they’ll say no. And you’ll be no worse off than you were before placing the call. But I guarantee you, 95% of the time they will say exactly this, “Well, we normally don’t do this, but I’ll give you a one-time fee-waiver.” Remember, they want to keep you as a customer, so financial institutions are usually willing to part with 10 bucks here and there, and the majority of people won’t call them out on those fees, so they’re making plenty already. If the customer service rep denies you, just call back in a few minutes and speak to someone else! Also, here’s a fantastic guide to lowering your credit card rate with one phone call. Cody’s additional $0.02: in addition to the FreeCreditReport site they recommend, check out the Federally-mandated AnnualCreditReport.com for your free yearly report. If you pay your bills on time and you have a 700+, you have a LOT of leverage with credit card companies! (And you should look into getting some fantastic rewards cards!)
• Use coupon codes and discounts when shopping online. This one’s pretty simple, but when you shop online, especially around the holidays, try to take advantage of promotional codes and discounts. I don’t recommend going out of your way to buy the things you see coupons for (that’s why companies print coupons, don’t you know? So you will SPEND more!). But, if you already plan on getting a few items online, check a site like CurrentCodes.com to see if there are any special deals for the particular website you’re looking at purchasing from–discounts, free shipping offers, etc. This saved me about $30 on a Lost Season 2 DVD set once! That’s pretty good for a coupon.
• Open up a high-yield online savings account! This is one of the SMARTEST moves you can make! Most banks these days only offer annual percentage yields under 1% on their savings accounts, unfortunately (actually the national average right now is only 0.54%). But, there’s an easy solution that not everyone has caught onto yet. If you’re willing to do your transactions online and go without a paper statement, a high-yield online savings account is the perfect solution. There are a lot of banks doing this, but here are some of the top APY rates. All of these are FDIC insured and have zero fees, zero minimum balances:
  • I use the EmigrantDirect American Dream Savings Account, which returns 5.05%
  • HSBC Direct offers 5.05%. Try entering the promo code “start” and see if it gets you an opening bonus…
  • E*Trade Complete Savings 5.05%
  • CitiBank Direct at 5.00%. You need to open an EZ online checking account along with the e-Savings to get the bank fees waived on this one.
  • I also have an ING Direct Orange Savings Account, which is now up to 4.50%. If you would like, I can send you a referral and you can earn $25 for opening an account with a minimum opening balance of $250 (hey, it’s good if you want a quick 10% return!) Just email me if you’re interested (see sidebar for email).

  It only takes 10 minutes to set one of these up (literally!). All you need is your personal info and your regular bank checking account info. And you’ll immediately be making 6 to 9 times the national savings average! It’s easy. Do it.

Finally, I recommend you always continue learning about financial stuff and keep up your financial intelligence. For something you can read daily, check out the master of all personal finance and entrepreneurship bloggers, Ramit Sethi, at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com. Read his 5 Steps To Getting Rich first, and then he’ll lead you through budgeting, saving, investing, and retirement. Read my one-on-one interview with Ramit Sethi. Also check out J.D. Roth’s Get Rich Slowly.

One of the most important (and funniest) realities is to write like you’re a human! With a lot of HP and Intel engineers applying to our Executive MBA program, I see horrible things like this come across my desk from time to time:

Here’s a doozy, this intern says he “planned, designed, and coordinated engineers efforts for the development of a mission critical system”. ZzzzzzzzzzZzz. What did this guy actually do? I honestly don’t know. Let’s call this type of writing style resume mumbo jumbo and let’s agree that usage of this style is tantamount to saying nothing at all.

What was the mission critical system? Why was it critical? How in the world did an intern plan, design, and coordinate the engineering efforts? I’m a fan of giving interns real world work, but it’d take a world-class intern to plan, design, and manage engineers on whatever this mission critical system is.

A few to-do items:

• Google your name. What comes up? If its a bunch of dirty Myspace images, think about cleaning up your online rep. Think about starting a blog!
• Don’t just give your job description. Try to convey how you grew in each position, and why you made a transition to a new job.
• Your personal interests and extracurricular activities ARE important! They can distinguish you from the competition.
• Don’t use any buzzwords in your skills/qualifications area if you can’t back them up with some good examples.

And for recent college graduates, like myself, the author recommends that you include all types of work experience, no matter how unrelated they may seem. As he says, “Any job teaches you something.” What was that something? And how does it apply to what career path you’re pursuing now?

A Glimpse and a Hook (Rands in Repose)

Already in this series we’ve heard from Pam Slim, who specializes in helping people transition out of corporate life and into self-employment, but you actually encourage young people to stay and excel within the corporate world. Why?

I’m fond of saying that not everyone is cut out for the life of working for oneself. Not only is being an entrepreneur costly, nerve-wracking, and incredibly hard work, but because of the way our economy is structured, it’s simply impossible for everyone to be one. It reminds me of a psychology study my husband told me about recently, which showed that 75 percent of people believed they were above-average looking.

I bet the same thing is true of would-be entrepreneurs. A lot of people believe they have what it takes to run a successful business, but in reality, few probably do. When considering employment, young people should look at an array of options, including those that involve working in the business world.

At the end of the day, most people will end up employed in a more conventional work environment, so it may be wiser to develop the skills and the attitude that allow you to succeed and achieve your professional goals within the context of that setting. Maybe someday you will have the opportunity to “go entrepreneur,” but your happiness and success shouldn’t be contingent on it.

So tell us about your book They Don’t Teach Corporate in College. What makes you an expert on the challenges facing young employees in the workplace?

Well, you see, I graduated from college as a straight-A student hell-bent on skipping up New York City’s corporate ladder. But after six months on the job, I was so stressed out that I was ready to join the large numbers leaving the business world for graduate or law school. Eventually, though, by sticking around and paying attention to the few people around me who weren’t dropping from stress-induced coronaries, I developed many of the skills crucial to staying sane and building a career.

I wrote They Don’t Teach Corporate in College because I thought that if I shared my experiences with other twenty-somethings, maybe I would save them some of the pain I went through. The premise of the book is that the business world is not a natural fit for graduates who leave school expecting results from a logical combination of education and effort. Suddenly, the tenets of success they were taught since kindergarten don’t apply, because getting ahead in the business world has little to do with intelligence or exceeding a set of defined expectations.

If twenty-somethings want to survive in the corporate world, they have to treat their first jobs like first grade and learn the practical lessons that will help them climb the ladder painlessly. They Don’t Teach Corporate in College focuses on tangible tactics that twenty-somethings can put to work immediately to be successful and satisfied working in the business world.

You say that twenty-somethings experience lower morale and higher turnover in the workplace. What can young professionals do to avoid such challenges? And what can organizations do to improve their employees’ experience and productivity at work?

There’s no doubt that the business world can be frustrating at times, so I recommend that twenty-somethings combat poor morale by understanding their hot buttons (i.e. what pisses them off or stresses them out) and plan in advance how to react without getting angry or upset when those buttons are pushed.

They should also try to banish irrational expectations regarding what their organization or boss SHOULD do (i.e. my boss should give me a raise, the company should have a policy against this). Life does not always play out in a logical or fair way and twenty-somethings do themselves a grave disservice when they hold on to a fantasy of what work or people should be like. Finally, young professionals can motivate themselves by focusing on the big picture and acknowledging little but significant career successes along the way.

I tell managers of twenty-somethings that they should aim to understand each individual’s unique capabilities and go out of their way to develop mutually-beneficial relationships. The manager should position himself or herself as someone who is available to help twenty-something employees grow and improve, taking them to lunch to learn more about their career aspirations and the type of work that get them excited.

Twenty-somethings don’t want to be micromanaged, but they do like to receive timely and consistent feedback, and to have assignments customized in a way that helps them meet their individual performance goals. Managers shouldn’t be fooled by twenty-somethings’ assertiveness and independence – there’s a lot these young professionals don’t know and they’re looking to the more experienced managers to help them learn it!

Continue reading at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com: Heroines of Personal Finance and Entreprenuership #3: Alexandra Levit. Also pick up her book They Don’t Teach Corporate in College and check out her blog Water Cooler Wisdom.

You were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the series “Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young” in 2004. What were your main findings?

Student loans and student credit cards have multiplied very fast and under the radar so that large amounts of debt are now a rite of passage for a majority of young people. Two thirds of college graduates borrow loans to get through college, up from less than half as recently as 1993, and they graduate with an average of $20,000 in loans and almost $3000 in credit card debt. Combine that with a changing job market that offers fewer benefits, and a higher cost of living, especially housing, in many metropolises and you have a lot of middle-class, educated young people falling behind, to say nothing of the fate of McJob Nation; the two out of three kids with no college degree have seriously fallen behind in income and stability.

Since graduating in 2002 you’ve freelanced as a writer and editor for several publications. What are some recommendations you can make for aspiring professional writers?

Think hard about it. I don’t know many “professional writers” as opposed to people who happen to be lucky enough to occasionally get paid to write. Boyce Rensberger, head of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT, told the New York Times on June 10: ”I feel a little queasy encouraging young people into journalism. It’s such a precarious industry right now.”

I think if you want to write for a living you need to be pretty hardcore about your craft and your subject area or field. You can build up knowledge of your field by working a related job (in politics, the law, nonprofits, fashion, etc.) and you can build up your craft by writing, writing, writing, and being in a writers’ group, and taking classes or workshops, and working in media-related fields. I freelanced as a writer’s assistant, fact-checker, and copy editor before I started writing full time. If I were starting out now I would definitely blog too.

Continue reading at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com: Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship #2: Anya Kamenetz. Also be sure to read Anya’s new Yahoo! Finance expert column and grab her book Generation Debt if you’re interested!