7 Things To Do Before You Graduate College: Liz Wessel (Transcript)

Full text of entrepreneur Liz Wessel’s talk: 7 Things To Do Before You Graduate College at TEDxRutgers conference. In this talk, she highlights 7 things she believes each student should do before they graduate and how these actions will affect who they grow up to be.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Liz Wessel – Entrepreneur

So I’m here to talk to you guys today about seven things that I hope all of you do before you graduate.

So I’m passionate about this talk for two main reasons:

The first reason is that I quit my job at Google, as he mentioned, to start an entire company just around one of these seven things and it’s the seventh one.

And then the second reason is because I have too many friends who have graduated from school, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education, after spending four years of their life, if not more, on their education… and then they come and they tell me how much they regret not doing something.

And I don’t want anyone in this room to feel that way ever.

So I’m going to tell you the seven things that I hear most often.

So the first one is cold email.

So I am obsessed with cold emailing. So first of all what does it mean to cold email?

So a cold email is when you send an email to someone who you’ve never met. You could email me and we’ve never met. You might be hearing me talk but we haven’t met. And so you could find my email address online and there’s a million tricks and hacks to do it. Just google it.

And then you can cold email me. And when you cold email someone who maybe of respect, a role model, someone you want to get advice from, someone you want to hear their story about!

I’m telling you right now it’s something that’s so special.

Because you realize that everyone in this world just wants to help. Most people in this world just want to help each other.

And so I’ll give you my example. I’m in college senior year, I had two job offers. One was at Google as a Product Marketing Manager, and one was at a Venture Capital Fund. I didn’t even know what marketing or venture capital was for the most part.

But I knew I had these two job offers.

All I knew was that a few years after that I wanted to start a company. So I couldn’t figure out which would be the better path. Would it be going to venture capital where I’d get to work with entrepreneurs?

Or, would it be going to a big tech company that is far from startup?

[read more]

And so I actually cold emailed a big venture capitalist, this guy named Roelof Botha who’s like top 10 in the world. And I’d never met him; I’d heard him speak at conferences. And I cold emailed him.

And I said:

“Roelof, my name is Liz! I’m a college student. I go to Penn. I’m a senior. I’m trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life and I don’t know. Here is what I want to do in a few years – I want to start my own company. So which one should I do?”

And he immediately told me to get the operating experience.

And that email changed my life. If he had told me to go the venture capital route I’m telling you I probably would have done that and my path would not have been nearly the same, and I might not be where I am today.

So I’m telling you guys cold email. I’m telling you to do this before you graduate for one main reason. You all have a huge advantage that no one in the room who’s not a college student has.

And that’s that in your cold email, in your first sentence, you should all be saying, “Hi! My name is ‘blank’, and I’m a college student at Rutgers!”

The fact that you can say you’re a college student is huge, because everyone in the world wants to help college students. Like they do. And so please use that to your advantage, include that in your first sentence.

The second tip I’m going to give is: To befriend five people who you would bet on.

Now what do I mean by bet on? I mean, five people, who you think will change the world.

Maybe they’re going to be a politician.
Maybe they’re going to start a non-profit.
Maybe they’re going to start a business.

Five people who you think will truly change the world. And I’m telling you there is never going to be a time again where there’re going to be tens of thousands of brilliant minds around you, learning alongside you, except when you’re in college!

ALSO READ: The Body Revolution We Need: Function over Form by Tiffany Stewart (Transcript)

And you can befriend the person to your right, the person to your left. There’s a ton of people at Rutgers, who are going to change the world. And I’m just asking you to befriend five of them.

And what’s going to happen is that if you are truly friends with them after you graduate, they’re going to help you and you’re going to help them.

I would not be where I am today at all had I not made the friends that I made in college – who truly helped me get to where I am, who I look at, even though they’re my age, twenty-five as role models. And sometimes I think I inspire some of my colleagues as well.

The next tip I’m going to give is: To take class that teaches a practical skill

So this one might be a little more controversial. But I studied Political Science, Mathematics and Japanese.

Now in Political Science class, you learn a lot about politics and you might learn a little bit about debating. But not really that much.

In Math, I love Math. I’m a huge Maths-junkie! But honestly when was the last time I did an algorithm, you know, like it had anything to do with Math class, in my day to day work? Almost never.

And Japanese is – it’s a good skill. But I don’t actually live in Japan and I never have to speak Japanese. Thank, goodness! Because my skills really are not that at par.

So what I will say is that I took one graphic design class in college. And that one graphic design class has helped me in my day-to-day life more than all of my other classes combined.

And I’m not saying that those classes aren’t extremely valuable. I learned so much. And I had a great time in college, because I studied what I loved.

But at the end of the day that graphic design classes helped me so much.

My co-founder took a Negotiation class. He’s the guy who negotiates, when we get term sheets from venture capital funds. He’s helping me negotiate the terms on those term sheets, because he knows, like, the actual method that you do and, ‘Oh, it’s a secret, but you actually do this!’ etc.

So I’m just telling you guys, if you take one very practical skill class which could be a computer science class, negotiation, a writing class, it will pay off dividends! And it’ll be really cool when you’re in the workplace after college to be able to say, ‘Oh! I’m doing this because I learned it two years ago!’

The next tip I’m going to give is: To start something

Start anything. Start a conference, a TEDx! Well it’s already been done. So don’t start that.

Start an extracurricular club; start a business. And I’m going to tell you three reasons why you should start something:

Reason #1 is that it’s going to leave a legacy. And honestly this is like a selfish one. It’s just really cool to come back to campus a few years later and see that something you started is still happening. It’s just really cool.

Reason #2 is that it’s an amazing experience to be able to see how difficult it is to project manage and execute on something. Once you get into the real world…

Again and I call it the real world because I always felt like college was this, like, a fake world of fun and learning and education, making friends, and always seeing them. In the real world, you’re like, all of a sudden, you know, doing all these things that don’t involve any of what I just talked about.

And so at the end of the day… And the adults in the room are laughing because they know it’s true.

At the end of the day, as I was saying on point number two, you’re going to learn how to execute. And once you get into the real world of work, you’re going to see that actually executing projects is pretty much all you do. And it’s really hard and it’s great to get that experience during college versus after.

And then the third reason I would say is because it’s never going to be easier in your life to start something than when you’re in college.

When you’re out of college there aren’t business plan competitions going on every quarter every semester that you can just compete in and then potentially win a grant and win free money almost, to start a business.

There aren’t Deans who are here to support you and help you start an entire conference, and give you an auditorium for free.

Corporate sponsors are way more, just like that cold email, corporate sponsors are way more willing to help you when you actually say you’re a student and this is a university project or university-related activity versus then after when you’re just a random New York City-living, you know, recent grad.

ALSO READ: What If Advertising Was Honest? - Sylvester Chauke (Transcript)

So I definitely urge you guys to start something.

For me actually, I started a business in college and it was the first time that I realized, ‘Wow! This whole business thing is fun! I want to start a business one day!’ And now I did.

And I would not have started one at the age of, I think I was 24, when I started this business. Had I not already had that experience at the age of 19!

The next tip is to find THE Professor

Now when I say THE professor, everyone’s THE professor’s different. But for me it was who is like the top-ranked professor in this specific category. So I wanted to study entrepreneurship, so I went through all the Entrepreneurship classes at Penn in Gordon.

And there was one class that had the highest ranked professor. So THE professor usually means like the professor who everyone leaves the class and is just talking about how cool or how smart or how engaging that one professor is!

Now I sat down with one professor. His name was Ethan Mollick. And I went to the Dean of that school and I said I want to take this class and they said ‘No way! We’ve never had an undergrad take this course!’

And I said, ‘Okay, well! I’ll be the first one then!’

And they said ‘No!’

And I walked away and I said, ‘Okay. I’ll come back when I have the slip that’s going to tell you that you’re going to enroll me in it!’

So I went to the professor. And for every day I went to his office in the morning and I said, ‘Can you please let me in? I started a business. I promise you I’m qualified for this class! Can you please let me in?’

Here’s another excuse. ‘Can you please let me in? Here’s a bagel.’

And finally I got into the class. And by the way, that class because of that professor Ethan Mollick who I still keep in touch with, he would meet with me outside of class, and he would help me with the business plan that I had to come up with during class.

And by the way that business plan is what inspired the business that I now have 40 employees working full-time for me today; that we have tens of hundreds of thousands of students around the country using in tens of thousands at Rutgers.

So I can safely say that that professor changed my life. And I know that it had nothing to do with the class, it had to do with the professor!

So please find the professor you think is going to change your life, or who really will make a class engaging and much more real.

The next tip is: to go on an adventure.

So I’m about to give you guys really bad news. When you graduate, there’s no such thing as spring and summer break. There’s barely a winter break, barely. Maybe, if you go into academics it’s different.

But for the most part, you’re not going to ever have spring break or summer break again. And while I totally understand that you might need to get a job or work, I’m sure you can find one week during one of these spring or summer breaks… to go on an adventure and figure out where is your comfort zone? And do you like being out of the comfort zone? Or, do you like being in it? Because both are OK.

But what do you enjoy doing? You’re never going to have this opportunity to just be completely carefree and I’ll have to worry about that one like assignment – that’s not class assignment, work assignment – that’s going to be due. And your boss is going to be texting you. And all these things are going to be happening.

You can just be completely carefree! It’s spring break. Take a break. Go for an adventure. You can go on a road trip with friends, you can go study abroad for a semester.

I actually lived abroad in Japan one summer in college, my sophomore summer. I got an internship in Tokyo and it was because of that internship that I actually realized I wanted to work abroad, when I was older. And so I did.

My second year at Google, I went to, I moved to India, and I led a brand team in India. And that was amazing! And I promise you I never would have moved to India. I had never been to India. I would have never moved to India had I not had that abroad experience during college! So not everyone can live abroad but try to get some kind of an adventure out of college!

ALSO READ: The Science of Dubstep: James Humberstone at TEDxOxford (Full Transcript)

The seventh tip and this is a little bit self-serving but I promise it’s a real one.

It’s why I quit my job at Google just to start a business around it is that… You should all try to get work experience!

Now I said get work experience. I don’t just mean have one internship that you do every single summer, or be a camp counselor every summer, or be a receptionist at the local dentist every weekend. Try to get as many work experiences as you can, and I’ll tell you why.

When you graduate from college, if you get a new job, if you have a new job every six months that looks really bad. But during college you’re totally okay to have a new internship every summer. You’re totally okay to have a new job every year of college, maybe even every semester.

I can’t tell you enough that this is the time where you should be trying to figure out what you love doing, what you hate doing, what you’re good at, what you’re bad at! Seeing some of the people in the room who are not students nodding their head and I promise you all of us agree.

This is the time to figure out what you want to do with your life, at least with the next couple years. And I’m not going to say, with your life.

For me I actually got approached in my sophomore year of college by a Fortune 500 company – Anheuser-Busch. And they’re a manufacturer of beer; they make Budweiser and a bunch of other beers.

I don’t know why they approached me. I think it was a mistake actually. But they asked me to be a Campus ambassador for them.

Now first of all, I didn’t know what marketing was because they said it would be marketing. I thought marketing is making TV commercials and I was like, ‘Why did they want a Math and Poli-Sci major to make you know TV commercials for them?’

I also didn’t drink beer. I was a Blue Moon fan a little bit. But they don’t own Blue Moon. So I didn’t understand why they were reaching out to me.

And so I’m doing this job and all of a sudden they realize that I loved marketing, like I loved what I was doing for them. I was learning about grassroots marketing. I was learning about how to speak publicly about this company that I barely knew anything about. It was really amazing!

And it was because of that experience that senior year I ended up deciding I want to work in marketing. And I went to Google as Product Marketing Manager. It’s also because of this experience that I decided I would quit that job at Google a few years later and start a company. So that all of you guys could actually get this work experience.

So I can’t urge you enough. Get work experience!

And I said I would only give 7 tips, but I’m going to give an eighth one. Because at the end of the day nothing ever actually goes the way it should go. So I’m going to give an eighth one! And that’s be grateful.

I enjoyed college and I still enjoy life so much because I’m so grateful for all the opportunities I have. And if any of you guys are sitting there thinking, ‘Yeah, but my life is so tough!’ You’re sitting in a room. You’ve probably eaten food in the last 24 hours. You’re probably going to Rutgers!

Based on the show of hands, you go to Rutgers, which is a tough school in the world. And you’re getting an education taught by world-class professors.

You should feel so grateful for the opportunities that you have. And if you start thinking about everything in a way that, ‘Wow! I’m so grateful for this, or for that!’

It might seem silly, but the world is going to be a lot friendlier of a place towards you! And these seven tips are going to feel like a breeze.

So thank you so much for taking the time. I’m very grateful to you and I hope you enjoy the rest of college.