Bubba Murarka

A while back my friend Phil Boyte asked me to speak at his yearly leadership conference for high school students.  It happened last night and it was a blast! It was sort of a homecoming as I had the opportunity to attend this conf. when I was in high school.  I was asked to speak about lesson I’ve learned to help create success.  It was a wonderful opportunity and I really enjoyed the setup - 4 sessions with ~30 students at a time & lots of Q/A time. 

I covered three points and shared stories from my personal experiences as well as stories / observations about my friends.  Phil dropped me a wonderful note today letting me know that my points really connected with the students as they were shared after the sessions.  I learned a ton through the experience as I got to refine my thinking, connect with folks with a different view point, and even got a bit of market research on how high schoolers use social networks! 

Oh, yeah, the three points were:

• Find a mentor - for your professional and personal development areas or biggest challenges.  Equally important is to become a mentor as it will help you grow just as much as it helps the other person.  Mentors can even be historical figures…read all about them to learn how they were effective.  Some of the kids asked for my email address and I really hope to hear from them. 
• Be persistent - that word is part of the blog masthead, and something that can never be underestimated.  You must persist through failures and obstacles to reach your goals.  If you can’t reach your goal immediately, come up with a plan to get there over time through incremental steps and experiences (e.g. you don’t run a marathon on the first day you start to train for one). 
• Find your passion & team - figure out what you do so well that time disappears for you and then figure out how to get others around with complimentary skills / passions.  If you have a team in place, make sure you have people doing what they are great at. 

As I’m writing these up I realize I could have cited books that helped me learn each of  these over the years.  Next time I guess.  The questions were great…I can’t wait to see the guy how said his goal was to be the CEO of Starbucks run that place some day.  I hope he hooks me up with a free latte!

What lessons would you share with a room full of high school students to help them be as successful as possible? 

update: grammar edits, minor content addition (darn post button instead of save and continue to edit)