Looking to Come Home After College?

Posted on by Jeremy Overton Posted in College Students

I always knew I would come home after college.  I had a girlfriend that I loved and eventually married.  I had close relationships with my family and I loved the area.  I went away to college and virtually ignored the people that I had grown up with for four years.

I was very fortunate to find a career (financial advice) that afforded me the opportunity to earn a great living near my hometown, working with many people that helped mentor me as I was growing up.  I realized soon after graduation that my career would have progressed faster had I taken a different approach.

I often wonder what I would do differently if I had known what I know now.  I thought I would share a few tips for high school and college students who think they would like to come home after college, too.

These tips will help you think differently about your options, and taking even a few of these steps will help you stand out in the minds of influential people in your community.

  1. As a high school journalism student, get to know local businesses and their owners.  Thank them for their ad business in a unique way and show them that you are committed to making their investment a valuable one.  Ask them for suggestions and implement them.
  2. Interview, interview, interview.  Start building your network while you can afford to do nothing but build your network.  You can do this in a variety of ways, but realize that the closer you get to graduating and needing a job, the less likely influential people in your desired field will be to want to talk to you.  Get out and talk to the big dogs in high school and the first few years of college, keep them posted on your progress and ask for feedback and advice on a regular basis.
  3. Spend the summer before your senior year in high school (or any other summer) talking to business owners about what they do for a living and what their plans are for retirement / transition / succession.  Find out what they’re most afraid of and most excited about (in that order).
  4. When you’re finished with your interviews, write a story about a local business that is successful.  Submit it to your school paper and the local newspaper.  If it gets published, print the article and have it framed.  Later, you can present it to the business owner.

These are just a few of thousands of ways you can begin to influence the perception decision-makers in your community have of you. Especially if you’re into journalism, or writing in general, you have a real opportunity to make a lasting impression if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.

Small Business, Big Problems: Why SBOs Struggle With Complexity

Posted on by Jeremy Overton Posted in Business

Why can’t you solve the toughest problems in your small business?

You lack the time to understand (or you refuse to).

You lack experience: you’ve simply never dealt with this problem before (or seen anyone else deal with it).

You’re simply not curious enough (out loud):

When you aren’t curious, you’re more likely to jump to conclusions, get overly emotional and ultimately sabotage progress.

Your accountant doesn’t know the answer to developing a plan for massive growth in your business.

You can’t afford enough time with your attorney for them to hash out every detail of your purchase contract, employment contract or employee handbook.

Sooner or later, you’re going to have to take the initiative to solve the big problems in your small business. Otherwise, they will grow until they consume all of your time, energy and productivity.

Complex problems don’t go away on their own, but for some reason they’re easy to ignore.

 

 

 

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Five Steps to Overcoming Objections Using Virtual Hindsight™

Posted on by Jeremy Overton Posted in Business, Concepts I understood but didn't know what they were called, Relationships

Next time you reach an impasse during a planning / brainstorming session, or while helping a friend or client get out of a rut, try these simple steps to achieve Virtual Hindsight™.

The following model succeeds by focusing on success as a “future state,” and describing it in detail.  Your future state can be awesome, but remember, it has to be reasonable!  Once you set this waypoint, it’s easy to “look back” and determine what steps had to be taken to achieve the desired state or goal:

  1. Gain commitment to solving the problem: “Everyone wants this to get better, right?”
  2. **Assume Success, Speak it, Write it and Believe it: Speak in positive, present tense terms about the future state you want to reach.  “I’m only working 30 hours a week” works better than, “I’m working less.”
  3. Solidify and Quantify: “How much better off are you today?”
  4. Look Back at What Got You Here and Express Gratitude:  “What obstacles did you have to overcome to get here and who helped?”
  5. Fine Tune (bonus): “What would you do differently if you started today?”

If your process is successful, you’ll free your client, friend, spouse, or business partner. Once they gain clarity about the stressful, problem-focused world they’re living in, they will realize that multiple solutions exist for their problems. Virtual Hindsight ™ will help them get out of the muck and gain new perspective.

In cases of overwhelming success, step four will lead to the subjects offering multiple plans of attack. Once you have commitment to assume success, suddenly the most analytic critic can become the life of the party. The very same characteristics that make him or her a general liability in most future-focused planning meetings will come to life as a tremendous asset.

If it fails, (usually because of an unwilling participant) then you’ll know who not to invite to the next brainstorming session.

**Without Virtual Hindsight™, a problem-focused individual or group will have a hard time seeing their future clear of the obstacles that come up during the planning process. Practice using this process whenever it seems natural, and in combination with other problem-solving stories and drawings.

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