Ep 148 Career Day Advice for High School Students May 27, 2016

So what would your advice be to a bunch of high school students if you are advising them on careers and communication? This show is a little bit different today. This is going to be a recent speech I gave to a high school in Charlotte, North Carolina as a part of their career day. Hope you enjoy it.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

I could be in India coaching Gandhi right before he gives a speech or presentation to 100,000 people. Another day I could be in a castle doing media training and public speaking training with a prime minister right before he's about to run for election. Then the next day I could be a judge of a beauty pageant in Serbia and coaching the contestants on how to speak more effectively and give presentations. I'm TJ Walker and I am a media trainer and a presentation coach. It really all started back in 1975. I was a student at Quail Hollow Junior High School at the time. Now it's a middle school and I won a contest based on a character from a sitcom, a Fonzie look alike contest. Back then I actually had hair, it was slicked back. And I won this contest. My prize was I got to do the junior high school newscast the next day. The closed circuit tv. That was my first time being in front of a camera. Now at the same time I was developing an interest in politics and I was one of those little student government weenies running around for student council. So I started giving speeches and presentations and talking to students, running for office and occasionally doing the news for the junior high school newscast. Everything I've done since then, it's now been more than 40 years at some level, deals with speaking to the media, giving presentations and dealing with politics. None of it had to do with anything. I actually studied. When I went to college at Duke, I majored in philosophy. But when I was in school, I wrote for the student newspaper, I did commentary for the student radio station and the student TV station. And I started interning with politicians and coaching them, rehearsing them. I don't know if it's coaching. I didn't know much, but I helped rehearse them before they had debates. And I was doing this while I was still a student. So my own career, it's a combination of interests, passion, some talent, and spending just a whole lot of time learning, reading every book on the subject. It came outside of the traditional academic environment. And in some fields that's the case. If you want to be a great brain surgeon, a chemist, a physicist, then you really do need to focus on traditional academia. That's the way to succeed. But there are a lot of fields, and media is one of them, where what's going on in the real world is better in many ways than what goes on in the academic world. So you've got to learn on your own, and you've got to study what it really takes to help people. Now, I envy a lot of you. I envy all of you because you live in such exciting times, and I know you've heard parents and teachers say that, but what's different now is you don't have gatekeepers. It took me five years to publish my first book. Every one of you could publish a book in the next five days and be selling it on Amazon and making money. The hard part is, frankly, is figuring out, out of everything you could talk about or write about, what do you care about enough to actually spend time writing about it or creating a podcast about it? Now, you can see me here. This is the set of my daily TV show and podcast where I talk about public speaking and dealing with the media, giving presentations. But there's nothing I'm doing that you couldn't do right now. Anyone can create a show, put it on YouTube, and distribute it on itunes. For so much of my early career, I spent time knocking at doors, begging TV stations, radio stations to take my show, to hire me. And I got a lot of rejection, and it wasn't fun. And in fact, one year when I first moved to New York City, I think I made $2,000 the whole year. It was a lean year because there were gatekeepers everywhere. Now, thanks to the Internet, thanks to the cloud, thanks to YouTube, thanks to your ability to create a website, there are no gatekeepers that keep you from customers, clients, fans, supporters. And that just opens up a whole new opportunity for you to have an interesting career. Now, I have a good mix for what I do because I enjoy media, I enjoy speaking, I enjoy politics, business, and for me, every day is a little bit different. I might work with a billionaire fund manager one day, a professional athlete, someone who's won a Super bowl, ring another day, and someone running for parliament in Australia the next day. It's an interesting mix. I like that variety that works for me, and I go to all sorts of interesting, fun places. In the last year, I've done media trainings and presentation trainings in Thailand, in Budapest, Hungary, in Cairo. This has allowed me to see the whole world. And it's a fun, interesting experience. Your career may take you someplace else, but the thing I'd ask you to think about is what is it you enjoy doing the most that you're good at and someone's willing to pay for? Now, it's possible to enjoy just watching professional wrestling, but if you don't want to talk about it, you don't want to create it, and you don't want to wrestle hard to make an income from that, it's also possible to just love playing tennis, but be the worst player in the world. Just because you have a passion for something doesn't mean you aren't horrible at it. So the real trick, I believe, for most people in finding the best career niche is what is it that you truly enjoy? What would you be reading about if no one paid you? I am reading all the news about politics and business leaders every single day. Doesn't matter if anyone's paying me for it. That's what I enjoy doing. And I've been a news junkie since I was before a teenager. You need to find something that you enjoy. And then my advice right now, while you're not supporting a family and you're not some old guy like me, is experiment. Dabble. Don't be afraid to fail, because the consequences are zero. If any one of you today decided to start a podcast on how to use Snapchat effectively, you might be a huge success. You might actually make a bunch of money from advertisers, sponsors. You might be able to turn that into an online course on a platform like Udemy and make a ton of money. And you know what, if it didn't work, what have you lost? Absolutely nothing. So that's one of my biggest challenges for not just young people today. That's the same Advice I give 50 year olds and people like me is create content. Could be a YouTube channel, could be an online course, could be a series of five second vine videos. But figure out what it is you care about the most. What do you have a passion for? And then how do you like to express yourself? I like to talk. Although I didn't used to be that way and I find it's easy for me. You may prefer to write, that's okay. Start a blog on vegan recipes for dessert if that's your passion. And if you do it and build a following, you could make a nice living from that. Now everything isn't about money. And you should certainly have hobbies and passions that aren't about money. But I'll tell you this. When you have the intersection of your hobby, your interest, your passions, what excites you and what's good, and you can make a lot of money from it, and it means you don't have a boss, and it means you don't have to be fired, and it means you don't have to worry about next month's rent and you can live anywhere. That is the ideal world. At least it is for me, and I think it is for a lot of other people too. So that's why I would urge you, beg you, figure out what it is you enjoy most. Don't wait till you graduate from high school or college or business school or graduate school. Because I believe in the future, those things for most professions are not going to matter as much. What matters is your expertise, your passion, what you've created. And in the modern marketplace, it's what you create now that's of value. All of you know more about the Snapchat format than I do, because I've never been on it. So all of you could either write a book today, or an audio book or a YouTube video on Snapchat, perhaps build a following and start a career that way. Don't wait. Don't wait till you're 23 or 25 or 30. Start now. Thanks for your time. I would love to talk to you in more detail. If you have any questions, feel free to email me tjediatrainingworldwide.com and something that might help you. I have I'm not charging this. I'm giving this to you free of charge. I have an online course for high school and college kids on how to present more effectively. If you send me an email, I will give this course to you at absolutely no charge, plus a couple of my presentation books. Thanks again. Hope to hear from you.

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