What business did you start in college?

College is an experience unlike any other that one will face in their lives.  It is the transition years between juvenile thinking, and professionalism.  Within this transition, we as college students are striving to find our innate purpose in life.  This conquest drives us to not only challenge ourselves, but also challenge those around us.  Many find their ambitions of success beyond college as their personal motivation for the success they have achieved while at their university.  Needless to say, a college or university campus is pulsing with determined and motivated students, looking to put their education and ideas into practice.

As a marketing or advertising major, you find yourself surrounded by wonderful new products, services, or ideas every day.  You drop your mouth in awe at the products and services you discover that you believe you could have easily come up with yourself and been the one to become rich. Or, you kick yourself because the product or service you did come up with is now being commercialized on TV.  But why do we hold back from these possibly million dollar ideas? Is it because we are scared of failure? Or possibly, we just lack the proper direction on the path to entrepreneurship.

Some of the greatest ideas have come from college students. Take Facebook for example. Mark Zuckerberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg) was only a sophomore when he launched the popular social media site, Facebook. Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University before they began working on Google. Okay, you are right, these are extreme cases, I know. Let us take a look at a small business idea formed by students at the University of Pittsburgh called, The Xclusive Life (http://thexclusivelife.myshopify.com/?oid=1031_5). The idea behind their start up business is that they would print only 100 artistic t-shirts for purchase, causing the shirts to become more of rare pieces of art, rather than an item sold to the masses.

With the diverse types of students, majors, and ideas that circulate through your college and universities, why not take the next step into formulating your own business? Take your future into your own hands and utilize the talent around you.  Find the best students in marketing, accounting, management, graphic design, computer science, etc. and begin turning those otherwise disregarded ideas into a future. You are given everything you need to be successful post college; the only step missing is taking action. So let this be your direction toward entrepreneurship and take action now, do not let your possible success story go unachieved.

Grab a pen and some paper, or open up Word, and detail line by line what it is you want to achieve. Let your mind flow — it’s more important to get everything written down. Let this sit for a day, and then go back to it again, because there are bound to be goals your subconscious mind came up with that just took a little longer to surface. Hopefully, you have a decent sized list.

Second, go through each goal, one by one, indicating if achieving the goal is a “must”, “should” or “nice” accomplishment; and indicate the desired time frame (ex. “I must achieve this goal in 2 years”). File the “should” and “nice” goals away — achieving your “must” goals are too important. Organize your list of “must” goals by date, with the goals due soonest first, followed by those further out in time. You’ll now have a prioritized list of goals.

Take a look at your list. Properly set goals are measurable, specific and achievable. Making “$1MM in 60 days” won’t work. Nor does “being financially independent in 10 years”. As you think about each of your goals, quantify them, avoid generalities and be realistic. For example, “I must book 6 speaking engagements over the next 12 months” seems to pass muster. And it sounds reasonable.

Now break down each into bite sized chunks and tasks you’ll need to do to achieve the goal. Following our speaking engagements example, your tasks may include contacting 10 speaker’s bureaus, writing your bio, and attending 3 industry trade events over the next 90 days. You can further break down each task with due dates and measure your progress along the way. If you follow these steps for each of your goals, you’ll have a logical path to follow, and a much greater sense of accomplishment along the way.

As Robert Heinlein once said, “”In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” Change the way you think about goal setting today.

Photo credit by Fanginhoon.

Keys to Success
Good consultants solve problems. But great consultants understand their clients. They help them think things through vs. diving into their pitch bag and layering the attorney’s desk with brochures. They’re in it for the long haul, and don’t get discouraged or disappointed when clients don’t buy (translation: you just haven’t shown enough value yet!).

Each attorney said the key to breaking through their busy schedule is persistence. If you have a solution or idea they need to hear, schedule a 10 or 15 minute appointment. And be prepared to wait. Just don’t wait too long — this could be perceived as a hard sales pitch. Instead, reschedule. Lastly, don’t just drop off free gifts. If you have something important, which will help their business, they’ll want to hear about it, so make the appointment.

One lawyer on the panel made it very clear what he wanted from his consultant — lunch. Since we all eat lunch, at least a few times per week, who’d say no? Especially if you have something of value to bring to the table, besides picking up the check!

Photo credit by somnyus.

Twitter
How do you cultivate relationships in 140 characters or less? Not sure it can be done, but I’m going to focus more on @ replies and direct messages with new and existing followers. Second, to create more fun and interaction, I’m going to add polls, quotes and other things of interest more frequently. I don’t have the biggest following, but of the people I follow who do, it’s an endless barrage of self-promotion, MLM offers and the like. I’d rather tweet the same interesting post 3-4 times a day than blast out marketing messages. Third, and maybe this should have been first, I’m going to focus on Twitter lists targeting my geographic area, monitoring for tweet-ups and participating in real world networking. It’s much easier to connect with someone when you meet face to face.

Facebook
Right now, my blog posts automatically feed to Facebook, and I’ve installed the Selective Tweets application so I can tag choice tweets to appear on Facebook. This passive approach hasn’t created much interaction, other than lots of “likes” on my posts. Instead, I plan to offer exclusive material to my Facebook fans. Also, and being really careful not to abuse, send messages and content to them directly via the messaging center on the fan page. An ideal outcome would be a combined tweet-up and Facebook meet-up in the Lehigh Valley (where I live).

LinkedIn
I used to feed my Tweets directly to LinkedIn as status updates, until a close friend told me he couldn’t keep up with me anymore. If he felt that way, I imagine many others did as well. So I’ve changed the application to only accept tweets with the #in hashtag. This way, I can be much more selective, and when linking to a recent article or post I’ve written, can leave it on LinkedIn as a status update for a day or so to get maximum viewership. Going beyond a commitment to write more recommendations, I plan to answer more questions and be more than a lurker on the groups I belong to. Finally, instead of waiting for an introduction, I’m going to turn the tables and introduce people to my network.

Blogging
This goes beyond my own blog, and maybe should be labeled “commenting on blogs”. Every blogger out there, regardless of fame or perceived fame, is driven hugely by their ego. I’ve always wondered who’s reading my blog, and the only proof I have, beyond what Google Analytics tells me, are the comments made. I can assure you, I will read each and every comment that comes in. Even some of the ones Askimet marks as spam. I’d venture to guess other bloggers do the same thing. So, I’ve reached a simple conclusion — the best way to engage with someone is to leave thoughtful, meaningful comments on his or her blog. It’s also proof you’re reading the material, and regular comments on blogs are a sure sign you value and appreciate the writer’s hard work. I doubt this will go unnoticed. If you have only limited time in your day for social marketing, I’d focus 95% of my efforts on entering thoughtful comments on blogs. It’s that powerful.

So there you have my two month plan. Lots of writing, reading and typing. Buying coffee for fans and friends who want to meet in real life. And truly enjoying social marketing. Will you join me?

Photo credit by eduardtrag.