Last week I had the pleasure of volunteering at Business Horizons.  I got the chance to sit down with about 30 students and give some insight on the professional/college world. Business Horizons is a truly amazing program that is hosted by Wade Den Hartog and ABI.   Over 100 high school students around Iowa got together [...]

How important can the Common Point of Interest (CPI) be?  How about the basis for an entire relationship? Today I asked a co-worker of mine if I could have 30 minutes of her time to learn more about what she does, her experiences, etc.  And whenever I meet someone new, I always like to start [...]

I love coffee shops for a few reasons: One, it gets me away from my dirty apartment.  Two, I can easily entertain myself by people watching. And three, you never know who you’ll meet… Like tonight.  Recently, I’ve noticed an influx of Independent Business Owners…. A.K.A. People in the cult of Quixtar. I first was [...]

So Ryan tagged me with my first meme to share 8 random facts about myself… So here goes: Sometimes I think I suffer from ADHD.  I’ll never find out for sure…  Just my theory. I spent a semester studying in New Zealand and caught the travel bug.  Now I’m planning on graduating early and go [...]

Being a college student puts us at a significant disadvantage to young professionals.  What separates us is experience. Experience in the work place and, more generally, experience living in the real world.  But, as Napoleon Hill said, "Every adversity comes with it the seed of an equivalent advantage." So why is being a college student [...]

One thing I’ve yet to mention is my life as an intern.  This summer I’m interning at Principal Financial.  It’s a great internship, one of the top 100 companies to work for, and I’m learning a lot.  But one thing I’ve noticed (somewhat depressing) is the lack of drive some people have. You know who [...]

July has been an extremely busy month.  In the last two weeks I’ve been to St. Louis, Omaha, and have been playing catch up.  My apologies if I’ve been late on e-mails, posting, or any other forms of communication.  But I’ve finally caught up (kind of).  And will be back on here a lot more. 

Here’s a question to ask: Who can I help the most in my network? Is it my best friend?  Or family?  What about my peers?  What’s funny is that usually it’s neither of those people.  Obviously they are the people closest to me, but not always the people I can help the most. Typically, the people [...]

Honore de Balzac wrote:  "Passion is universal humanity.  Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless."  Life just isn’t near as exciting without a passion.  Last night my buddy and I talked about how hard it is to settle on what your passion is while you’re in college.  It’s rare to find someone [...]

I’ve recently been talking with a bunch of my friends that just graduated.  When I ask them how they got their job, there is two common responses.  1)  Through their network2)  (And more often) Through the internship they had the summer prior to senior year. Whats funny, is that when I ask how they got [...]