Thanks for your help Thursday at Towson University

Last Thursday I asked for 5 minutes of your time to give your thoughts on entrepreneurship, social media, and personal brands. I received some great comments from you that I shared with the class.

I was shocked that the class was packed full and most students were taking detailed notes. I thought I must on fire that day with my presentation. It wasn’t until the final 5 minutes of class that one young women raised her hand and said “Professor Maurer said that your material would be on the final…do you know which material he might test us on?”. Nice one Tim. I assured them that Professor Maurer had no idea what I was actually going to talk about.

I like to learn as much as I can from any audience and this one was engaged and interested in talking. I love that. Here are some of the things that I learned specifically (there were about 40 students in the room):

• only about 10% called themselves “active” social media users
• 95% were on Facebook, the 5% that weren’t had been but were taking a break
• about 7% were on Twitter and most of them were not using it often
• about 5% had heard of Words with Friends (the largest multi-player game on mobile phones)
• 1 student was using linkedin
• 3 students actively used groupon (the vast majority hadn’t heard of it)
• there were no students that had personal blogs
• all of these students were concerned about their ability to get a job after graduation
• only 1 student considered themselves entrepreneurial
• less than a handful wanted to own their own business

For the most part I wasn’t surprised by much of this information. The biggest social media takeaway that we find is that social media is largely a mobile device medium. If your audience doesn’t have an iPhone, android, blackberry, etc. then they generally will not be active in social spaces.

Now the great part

The great part about Thursday was the phenomenal responses I received from you. The students couldn’t believe that I had posted 3 hours prior to class and received the response that I did. They were also delighted to hear “real world” responses from people on these topics.

[Side note: These students favorite part of professor Maurer's class is that Tim is a real world business person so he speaks from experience not just from a textbook.]

Here are the key takeaways from you, the real contributors:

• There is more to life than a paycheck.
• Pursue your passions and success will follow.
• Servant leadership has been the most effective leadership style for me.
• Experiment with different things in social media. It’s a conversation; it should live and breathe and move.
• Find what you love and can help people in the process of doing…then no matter what you get paid you will still be rich.
• Strive to give more than you get – people who only focus on getting their needs met will never have enough.
• Let people know you care about them – then they will care about what you know.
• Acknowledge your mistakes, take full responsibility for them, figure out how to not make them again, make amends where necessary and possible, and then move on – carrying that baggage gets very heavy indeed and we weren’t meant to be that heavily yoked.
• Always be open to learning – and realize that some lessons come from the most unexpected sources.
• Don’t get locked into thinking something must be done a certain way since it’s always been done that way – don’t be afraid to go against the grain.
• Work on your business not just in it – in many businesses management functions of planning, developing strategy, measuring performance, and evaluating results do not get the time and attention to detail that they require.
• Understand your financials and make sure you have accurate data to help you make decisions.
• Understand the cost of capital and make sure you reinvest in your business – many owners take too much out too soon and as a result struggle with cashflow.
• Too much debt dramatically increases anxiety and stress levels and can suck the joy right out of going to work everyday.
• Your brand is your truth, expressed consistently.
• Listen to how those around you describe you – do you like what they are saying?
• Nothing is more powerful than a “free agent” with a powerful brand.
• Now is a great time to work on your brand before larger life commitments hem you in.
• Find older wiser mentors to help you along the way.
• Balance is completely underrated.
• Be intentional, faithful, hard-working, creative, practiced, authentic, humble.
• Have relationships that inspire you, challenge you, humble you, keep you balanced, provide rest, and make you better.
• Live generously with everyone you come into contact with.
• Don’t be surprised when you fail. Let it hurt. Learn from it. Become better and don’t make the same mistakes again.
• Pursuing a dream profitably is much harder — and will take much longer — than I expected, but there is nothing like sleeping soundly with the knowledge that you are doing good work to the best of your ability, that you are responding to unmet needs, and that you are helping people.
• Live by the Rotarian Code: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Is it beneficial to all concerned? Does it build goodwill and better friendships?

The best part of my day on Thursday was being able to read through this list from such a great group of people. You couldn’t get much higher quality wisdom to start a career than what is on this list. For those of us a little further down the road this is a great reminder of what is important.

Keep moving forward,

Greg