4 Tips for Recent College Grads

Congratulations Class of 2019! Post-grad life will be the most accelerated, challenging and invigorating stage of your career thus far, if you allow it.

Below are four cheats found in The Cheat Code to encourage you to celebrate your accomplishments and continue to blaze a trail in your career. 

  1. Toss Your Cap in the Air

After four years, give or take, you’ve finally graduated from college. Congrats! This is the beginning of the rest of your life. If I were the commencement speaker at your graduation, I would want you to hear these seven pieces of advice: 

  • Be Yourself.

“Be yourself, because everybody else is already taken.”

  • Reinvent and repurpose your weaknesses into strengths.

A weakness can be transformed into a strength with the power of perception. It’s all about how you think of it.

  • Audacity differentiates.

Find what makes you unique in a sea of graduates with the same degree.

  • Think big.

There is always a way to make a small idea bigger. Find your big ideas.

  • Just ask.

If you don’t get what you asked for, you’re only right where you started.

  • Little things matter.

Trivial tasks form good habits. Remember what your parents taught you-- smile, plan ahead, pick up after yourself. 

  • Everything that exists was built by somebody.

From the viral Steve Jobs video, he addresses the a personal revelation that everything in sight was created by someone. Every person has the ability to create.

2. Drop out of Dropping Out

If you are graduating from college this spring, this cheat will follow you into your career. To finish what you’ve started is a sign of integrity. Don’t tarnish your reputation by being the person who can never stick with a job, company or responsibility. Being a reliable co-worker or employee will take you farther than any of the career drop-outs.

3. Screw the MBA (read below before you overreact)

I’m not here to bash those of you who are choosing to pursue a Master’s degree-- what I am trying to do is reassure those of you who are not, that you are going to be fine. 

This cheat is also a warning for the students going to get a degree for all the wrong reasons. Don’t hide behind school to avoid truly finding your interests and what will make you happy. Hard work and good ideas will speak for themselves, regardless of the frames hanging in your office.

After utilizing education to learn the basics of business, the best form of learning afterward is experience. You’ll learn the most from trying and failing than any other method of education. Get out into the real world and don’t look back!

4. Kiip Moving 

Graduating college is not the means to an end, but the means to multiple new beginnings. With this degree you can set out to reach goals, travel, learn, experience and create. The worst mistake you could make is to stop here, to settle. Don’t waste your time, money or education. Kiip moving.

This post was originally found here: Startup Advice: Brian Wong - 4 Cheats for Recent College Grads