Fall Speaking Tour: Kick-Off At Simon School of Business

Seriously, this is why I love my job!  It was a solid 3-hour workshop at the Simon School of Business (www.simon.rochester.edu) which included me presenting The Rockstar Approach to Networking, leading break-out skill-building activities, facilitating an alumni panel, and fielding a ton of really thoughtful and thought-provoking questions from nearly 100 bright students from University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business.  And it was a blast!

I think after the 3-hour workshop, someone commented that we forgot to take a break for the bathroom because everyone was so engaged!  The energy of the room was fantastic, and I probably stayed another half-an-hour after the workshop taking pictures and answering questions – the half moon was in full-effect.

I’ve never been to Rochester, NY before, but I will definitely be back – the U of R campus was absolutely beautiful – I was blown away by what a great learning environment it provided, and really enjoyed how actively the students participated in the workshop.

But most of all, it was such a great reinforcement of exactly why I decided to leave a high-paying consulting job to share my message and help people land their dream job… take a look at some excerpts from thank-you emails I received after the workshop!

“”Networking like a Rockstar” was one of the best and the most relevant session I have attended till date at Simon. Thank you for the absolutely wonderful and engaging three hours. It has opened up so many unexplored areas, and those that I definitely need to focus on before I attend any networking event”

“I’m writing to thank you for the wonderful session you held for us at the Simon School on Aug 13th, 2013. It was extremely informative and interactive. You spoke about a number of undesirable approaches that we so often unwittingly adopt and also ‘showed us the light’ in those situations. I have visited your website and signed up for email feeds. I particularly loved your inspirational blog article about how you gave up your dream job for something more enriching.”

“Thank you for presenting today at Simon. The information you gave about networking is so valuable to us as job seekers. Two things that I really appreciated were your concrete examples of dealing with the “Half Moon Effect” and your Rockstar analogy/attributes, which I can relate to coming from a music background and setting oneself apart. New approaches and ideas to networking are always welcome in my mind, and I think that we would even become better people if more considered and acted upon the communication skills you outline.

I will be strongly encouraging [the Career Center] to invite you back again next year, and for the benefit of future students I hope that you will be interested.”

Do I have a dream job or what?  I don’t remember ever getting this much positive feedback when I had a corporate job – and you can be sure I’m definitely interested in going back next year.