20 Secret Tips From Young Movers and Shakers

by Marquis Cabrera

My friends and colleagues are extremely successful young movers and shakers who are engineers, CEOs, lawyers, consultants, founders, film makers, designers, and, most importantly, awesome people. Recently, I crowd sourced some for their best pieces of advice for future movers and shakers, here it is:

1. Courage and creativity are a daring combination. "Truly impactful work in science comes from simple questions that have never been asked. In order to find them you need the creative thinking and the courage to be original." - Jose M. Orozco worked for NiH Director Francis Collins and is a MD/PhD Candidate at Harvard Medical School.

2. Fate favors the bold -- calculate the risks and take them. "Fresh out of Cambridge Business School, I maxed out my credit card on a one-way flight to Shanghai. I had never been to Shanghai, spoke just three words of Chinese, and only carried a single dollar bill in my wallet. My dream was to change how students applied to university by connecting them to mentors and reliable information over the web. I had considered the risks and decided to go for it. Fifteen months later ChaseFuture.com is the world's fastest growing admissions consulting platform and we've helped over 50,000 students apply to university." - Greg Nance, Founder and CEO of ChaseFuture, Truman Scholar

3. Listen. For real. Whether in business or in our personal lives, modern professionals tend to interact with others as a means to attaining our individual needs and wants or furthering our own agendas. All too often--while "listening" to our colleagues, friends, and family members--we are merely waiting to say our piece, either presupposing their positions or unwittingly ignoring their expressions altogether. Genuinely listening to others not only helps us to better understand them and increase the goodwill in our relationships, but it also opens us up to new approaches, ways of thinking, and consciousness of complexities we may have previously overlooked. *Note: the author is still working on this skill - Chris Hollins, Harvard MBA finishing up his JD at Yale Law School

4. Create super fans, not customers. 100 users whom love you is better than one million users whom sort of like you. We were able to grow 40% month over month without marketing or advertising. The traffic was purely word of mouth. That's the power of delivering happiness and care to the users. - David Chen - Co-founder and CEO of Strikingly

5. Take care of your whole self. This is due; that is pressing; these tasks are important. The list goes on. In the rush to accomplish, finish, impress, it is easy to forget that self-care--care of the whole self--is essential. Without it, we cannot be our best selves and, as a result, we cannot produce our best work. I find that spending time with my family, creating a piece of art (no matter how small!), and enjoying a novel on the Metro allow me to reconnect with parts of myself that are often shifted to the side when other things compete for my attention. Take a moment to do what makes you truly happy. Find a way to disconnect for just a few minutes each day, or for many minutes every few days, to breathe, rejuvenate, and care for yourself. - Marisa West, Harvard University and Yale Law School Grad


Read the full article online: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marquis-cabrera/10-tips-from-successful-s_b_4258040.html