Mike Abasov

— Why would I learn that? Will I get paid more?

I’ve heard these questions a lot of times. Indeed, why would you spend time learning about something that doesn’t have a direct impact on your future salary? Why would you read that book, if it doesn’t have answers to the questions on hand? Why would you meet these people, if they have no connection to your industry? Why? Why? Why? Be-fucking-cause! 

Learn it before you need it

First of all, things change: your questions on hand change, your job evolves, you change too. Something that doesn’t seem beneficial today may be critical tomorrow.

When learning HTML back in 2005, I had no idea how influential this knowledge would be. But when the right time came, this interest became a foundation for my freelancing job and, later, my social media obsession.

The same is true for networking or anything else.

Do I have any idea when Psychology 101 or Politics 110 will come handy? Not at all, but I still study them. And meanwhile, they are already altering my perception of the world by helping understand better how things work.

See the world differently

You have probably experienced this yourself. You learn something new, and it changes how you view the world. 

For example, after taking an advertising course, all commercials start making sense. Or after learning to play the guitar, you start hearing strumming patterns and classic blues leaks.

The more you know the more you can do; the better judgments you make; the smarter alternatives you see; the more successful you become.

Talk to me

Smart people are also fun to talk to. I love chatting with someone I meet beyond the classic “what brings you here?” and “what do you do?” Why not talk about sports, religion, space invasions?

When you have something to share and you are interesting to talk to, people will seek you company. While if you are a boring dumb-ass… well, you’re just a boring dumb-ass.

Curiosity is key

Be curious. Learn beyond your curriculum. Decide for yourself what to learn and then learn it. Here are some things I’m trying out right now:

• Philosophy of death, free video lectures from Yale.
• Daily facts in pictures.
• “Linchpin”, a book by Seth Godin (review coming up).

Anything you’ve learned recently or want to check out? Share in the comments!

What are your goals?

I remember how a psychologist would come to my class and ask this question. According to her, people are much more successful, if they have their goals written down, than those who don’t have goals at all or even have them but not on paper.

I never took her words seriously. But later, when reading many business books, I stumbled upon this advice a few times more. And so, I decided to try.

My life changed.

What’s on the list?

I don’t know how, but having goals in writing (on my creative wall) is so effective!

First of all, it feels good every time I accomplish something. Secondly, I’m always on top with what I’m doing and know how it influences my future.

Last Sunday, I wrote about The Stairway Concept of Living in my newsletter. If you missed it, subscribe for free, and I’ll send you a copy.

Combining The Stairway Concept with clear and meaningful goal-setting gives incredible results. In fact, that’s exactly what’s made my 2010 so great with all the networking, jobs, etc.

Here are a few goals from my list. Maybe, you’ll find them appealing:

Short-term:

• Go to at least 3 networking events every month.
• Read 2 books / month.
• Meat 5 awesome people / month.
• Write at least 20 blogpost / month.

Long-term:

• Become completely financially independent from my parents in less than 1 month after graduation.
• Meet Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, and Keith Ferrazzi.
• Get Canadian citizenship.

Top goal: Work as a project manager at a remarkable branding agency.

Set goals, then accomplish!

The above goals keep me up at night. These goals push me forward when I feel like giving up. These goals make me climb another step every day.

Think about yours. Can you state them clearly? Can you put a quantitate measure and a deadline? Are they achievable? Is that what you really want?

Here are a few more questions to consider:

• What’s my passion?
• What do I really want from life?
• What’s my measure of success?
• Who’s my idol? What do I need to do to reach her level?

Wanna help others? Share your non-secret goals in the comments, and let’s talk!

Life is much easier than you think. Anything you do or don’t do is most of the time a question of your will. 

If you really want it, you’ll get it. If you don’t want it, you are going to fail or stay idle, which to me is not much different.

Getting good marks in school is easy. After all, the system is created this way. You study, follow the rules, put in time and effort, and you succeed. Simple as that. It doesn’t make you any smarter than others, but it is a stepping stone to your happy future.

There are no profs that “won’t let you pass.” There is no “too tough material.” I’ve taken a lot of courses. Sometimes I do well, other times—not so much. But when I look back at any of my marks, I can see exactly what happened. 

Here, I prioritized other courses over this one. There, I was too lazy to read the textbook in time. And in this one, I worked my ass off to get this A+.

It all comes down to what you want, and what you are ready to do to get it.

Here’s an amazing motivational video. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

My story

I was 17, studying in my first year at a university in Ukraine, when I almost failed every course in that year. I was bored with school. I felt like every piece of information thrown at me in class could not be more useless.

I had no idea whatsoever about what I wanted to do with my life. For a while, before applying to study economics, I wanted to become a programmer and make video games or websites. Before that, I was fascinated with the idea of becoming a professional actor.

My parents thought differently of my future, not wanting me to turn out to be one of the many poor actors or computer nerds (in Ukraine, both of these professions usually pay badly). So I went into economics.

It was not until a year and a half into college until my life changed. I found my passion. It was marketing.

The next 3 and a half years I remember as a line of never-stopping events that have shaped and keep shaping my future, my present and myself.

Your story

Hopefully, you know by now what you want to do in your life. But there is a chance that you don’t.

Trust me that finding your passion might be one of the most important and life-changing events that you will ever experience.

You will become more productive. You will see the path clearly. You will be able to plan your life and make decisions. There will be less hesitation. You will be proud of yourself, and you’ll start to grow.

As you are still studying and figuring out your future, I advise you to think seriously about how you want to spend you life. It will be harder to do so later, having a full-time job and other commitments.

If you already know your passion, share how you have found it in the comments section. I think that other students will find it helpful.

If you are still wondering around, here are a few tips that helped me and might be useful to you too.

Action plan

1. Try
Try anything you find interesting. Join student clubs, register for interesting electives, cooking classes, anything at all. Try as much as you possibly can.

In my story, I got into a student club and started working on their marketing strategy, although I’ve never had any interest in this aspect of business before. On the other hand, I liked creating things, and this looked like a good thing to try. 3 months later my life changed forever.

2. Switch
If you don’t find something exciting or useful anymore, drop it. If you don’t like your major, change it. If you don’t see new opportunities in your Toastmasters club, try AIESEC.

It may sound radical at first, but there is nothing more time-wasting than an activity you no longer enjoy.

3. Analyze
Sit down with a piece of paper and write down answers to the following questions:

• What do you like?
• What makes you happy?
• What career paths are possible for every thing you have listed?
• Which of the paths include many of your interests compared to only one or two?

The career that gets the most points might as well be the one for you. Now find a way to try doing the job on a small scale and switch, if you change your mind.

After a few cycles, you will find what you were looking for. I strongly believe that you will find it, as long as you are actually interested in finding it.

And when you do, let me know!

So here we are. You already know that, in order to become really successful, you need to step up your game, which we will, from now on, call personal branding.

Sure, personal branding is not yet a must for becoming successful but only in cases where success is directly related to your achievements.

If being successful means to you being the best at doing what you love, then dive into the activities described below and start building your brand now!

Warning

I should warn you that taking these steps will make you forget 2 words from your vocabulary: boredom and free time.

Boredom. You will never be bored, if you are actively working on achieving success by doing something you like. You will be excited, full of passion, tired but fulfilled. Bored — never. 

Free time. You won’t have any free time, because you won’t need it. Don’t worry, you will still party and have fun, and date. But those days when you didn’t know how to entertain yourself are forever over. You can now find entertainment in work, and this is your first step to happiness.

Action Plan

Here are 5 simple activities that will help you start branding yourself.

1. Join student clubs.
Check out any student clubs you find interesting and get into a few! You’re not making any commitments, so don’t worry about joining too many — you can drop them along the way.

For every club you’ve joined, participate in their events. Try them out!

You will meet new people, and people = opportunities. Every job I had, I had got because of the people I knew. Networking is extremely important.

You will also figure out what you like, develop your palette of interests.

2. Become active online.
Yes, it’s time you get on Twitter. Start tweeting about the stuff you like, the books you read, the things you do to become successful. Tweet about this article, after all!

Putting yourself out there will help you show everyone who you are and what you do, leading to conclusions about why you are better than your competition, why you should be hired.

I don’t advise you get into blogging right away, but if you feel like it, go ahead!

3. Learn. More.
Curriculum is good. Extra-curriculum is extra-good. Start reading blogs and books about your profession, watching documentaries and going to conferences. Absorb avery bit of information and be hungry for more.

Then share your knowledge with your new friends from student clubs and followers on Twitter.

4. Increase productivity.
You might not feel this pain yet, but as you become more and more active with your life, you’ll understand how scarce the time is as a resource. So start early! Here’s a list to consider: speed reading, time management, life-hacking, utilizing commute time.

The more efficiently you can use time, the more you will be able to achieve before graduation.

5. Read this blog.
And subscribe to the “Awesome Sunday” newsletter, for god’s sake! :)

Summing up

Every point mentioned here, I will be discussing on the pages of this blog in detail. There is a lot more to learn about personal branding and other aspects of improving your college life. But these few tips will get you started.

Are you doing any of these already? What exactly? How is it working out for you?

You go to school. You study. You nurture your marks and learn what you can, trying to have fun along the way.

If we look at it from a different perspective, your time in school is like an old arcade game. You make different moves, and you collect points as you play. These points are essential to your final score. 

To get more points, you can use some secret pathway like in Super Mario Bros. Or collect bananas instead of cherries like in Ms. Pacman. In the real life, you aslo can do much more than just study.

You can work part-time, and not at a coffee shop but at some small position in the industry. You can go to conferences, network, read books and blogs, make time to be in student clubs, and much much more.

You can start building your own brand.

By the time you graduate, you might grow your resume substantially. All your successes and failures add up and make a huge difference in what you become and how high you get.

It’s just like in Pacman, when you were asked to enter your 3-letter initials, and the game would place you somewhere in the Top 10. Or not place you anywhere at all.

You should look at your time in college as a game — a game you can win by simply playing it better. Moreover, you can look in the same way on your whole life, as described by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith in “Trust Agents.”

You are the only person who decides how successful you will become. I challenge you to play this game.

Will you?

Hello fellow students,

Over the course of the last few months, I’ve been trying to find my voice on this blog. I talked about social media, marketing, professional development, etc., creating inconsistent content and, probably, boring you. But it’s time to put an end to this!

From this day forward, I going to write useful posts and try to help every student who’s looking for ways to succeed faster and is striving to be the best in their profession. I’m really excited about this!

Why this topic?

I’ve been a student for the last 5 years. I’ve been in every stage possible: from not knowing my purpose in life and almost failing courses… to finding my passion and getting straight A’s (well, once, and this will never happen again :-).

I’ve worked, and I’ve studied, and I’ve participated in many student initiatives, and I graduated, and I transferred,.. and I talk too much.

Being originally from Ukraine and living in Canada, I can honestly say that I have a lot of international experience too.

So I want to use all the knowledge that I have gained to help you.

I am going to be sharing my experiences, tips and thoughts about living the next level of learning — the level where you do more than just go to classes an parties, the level where you grow everyday and, hopefully, succeed sooner than any of your peers.

So welcome to the new Mike Abasov’s blog!

The Next Steps

I will be blogging every day, except for the weekends, big international holidays, and lazy days. In order to keep track of my posts, I advice you subscribe to this blog.

Every Sunday, starting next week, my email newsletter will be coming out with great additional information on how you can improve your college experience. This content will not be published on the blog; it will be exclusive to subscribers, so fill out a very short form now!

All my posts are going to be very topical and useful to the max. Check out the new About page to find out what I mean. Simply put, no boring crap anymore. I know you’re glad :-).

Thanks, everyone who supported me and provided feedback on this change. Especially to Derek Jensen, who helped me out more than I could expected.

I’m looking forward to seeing your pretty faces in the comments section bellow,
Mike

Social media influence your business. No matter what industry you’re in.

It’s easy to say that “my business doesn’t need this,” but it’s not true anymore. Any brand, any product, any idea are now influenced by social media. To make a good example, lets look at things that don’t even need branding — commodities.

Commodities used to be unbranded for the longest time, but this changed too. Here are 2 examples.

1. Diamonds. A complete commodity on the wholesale level. But suddenly, the word spreads about blood diamonds, and our perception shifts. Suddenly, Canadian diamonds are better than African. Surprisingly, a commodity turns into a brand and generates more revenues than ever before. All through word of mouth communications, which in essence are social media.

2. Oil. You though you couldn’t care less where it comes from. But suddenly, the word “spill” rings the bell in a much different way than before. Influence from social media? Tremendous! BP failed big time on this particular arena.

So yes, in the world where even commodities can be greatly influenced by social media, you consumer (or B2B, or personal) brand is even more affected. And there is no more time left for hesitations.