We need to rally together and do something about this!

I heard this statistic and tweeted about it yesterday:

@DARRENHARDY Get this stat:@end of this mo. 3M kids will graduate college-2.4M will be moving in with their parents!! They need SUCCESS!! Help me!

I got flooded with people saying the want to help, but asked how.

So, I asked my SUCCESS team to perform a fire drill to come up with a solution we could collectively use.

This is the problem we are trying to impact:

• Of the 3 million college students who will graduate this month, nearly 85% (2.4 million) of them have to move back in with their mom and dad!
• The unemployment rate for the under-25 group is as high as 54%!
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor reports 12.8 million young people (under age 30) are either unemployed, working part time or working at a job that doesn’t require a college degree, after spending tens of thousands to obtain one!
• Rick Raymond, of the College Parents of America, notes, “Graduates are not the first to be hired when the job markets begins to improve. We’re seeing shocking numbers of people with undergraduate degrees who can’t get work.”
• Sum Report finds that young adults without a college degree have been pushed out of the labor market entirely and are finding work at a lower rate than anytime since the end of World War II!

What can we do about this? We can help them separate from everyone else by developing the success mindset, habits, actions and persistence it’s going to take to have them take personal accountability and control of their future. Whether they want to compete for their dream job or (better yet) take their ambition and initiate an entrepreneurial endeavor, they are going to need the inspiration, support, positive role models and mentors to help them realize their dreams.

There is NO better way to deliver all that to them than through a subscription to SUCCESS magazine and the personal mentorship of me and my mentor Jim Rohn. This is what I had my team put together:

• Copy of Challenge to Succeed by Jim Rohn. My all-time favorite personal-development program. This is what launched my success journey. I have listened to this no less than 60 times. It’s the best there is. This will be a life-changer for a new grad (anyone really).
• Complete set (book & audio program) of The Compound Effect. This is really what they need to read and hear. There are no ‘secrets,’ shortcuts or quick fixes to success, which takes hard work, personal responsibility and positive choices, along with a well-spelled-out formula for succeeding.
• Living Your Best Year Ever System (journal, goal-designing program and 4-CD audio program). A system of planning and execution is what they need to design a plan and to stick to that plan, and this is the step-by-step, week-to-week system that will guide them all along the way.
• AND… a 12-issue subscription to SUCCESS is included for FREE!! Every month they will be re-inspired, re-motivated and re-encouraged by seeing other people doing wonderful, amazing and difference-making things in the world, despite great challenges or obstacles.
• AND… as a special gift I had them add in the Jim Rohn Lessons on Life gift book

Here the genius of Jim Rohn (my wrap-up at his Tribute): http://youtu.be/VkEkxpIEiHc

Then I asked them (this was the hardest part) to cut the price as low as possible. Our first attempt was 30% off. After some arm wrestling with accounting, we were able to cut it by 57%! (Everyone is fired up about this!)

Okay, I have done my part (there’s at least two decades of my life in the above); now it’s up to YOU:

• How many college grads do you know?
• How many previous grads do you know who are still looking for their dream job or still trying to kick-start their life?
• How many unemployed, underemployed or budding entrepreneurs do you know?

Invest in their future and buy them the Graduate Success Package
(learn more about package: www.success.com/gradpack)

• How many people do you know, who know any of the above 3?

Forward this blog to them (use email, Facebook, Twitter, yell out the window) and ask them to spread the word: http://darrenhardy.success.com/2011/05/helping-grads

Love to hear if you buy the package for a grad and if you help spread the word about this. Tell me what you do in the comments below. Thanks for helping me help our future leaders!

Since in Part 1 we challenged you to start networking toward your Big Kahuna prospective relationship, let me share some key ideas in doing so.

The most important idea I can give you is: Give first.

As you can imagine I am contacted dozen of times throughout every day by someone who wants something—an endorsement for a book, to get an article in SUCCESS, solicitation for business investment, board advisement, request for mentoring, etc.

99.9% of the time the communication is solely fixed on their agenda, what they need and what they want from me.

As Jim Rohn said, “Don’t come with your need, come with your seed.” Every once in a while someone will come to me with their seed—a seed of unsolicited assistance, a seed of a good idea, a seed of a great connection, a seed of some promotional support, with no (initial) ROI expectation.

I’ll give you an example. I was on Larry Benet’s target list (come to learn later). When we first met he didn’t pitch me on what he wanted from me. He asked what I was working on and then he found a way to assist in a variety of unsolicited ways. To this day, regularly, he is introducing people, ideas or resources to me that he thinks might be valuable… and many of them are. And all these ovations are unsolicited; he is proactively and intentionally going out of his way to be valuable.

Now, I will tell you what this has caused—a great gratitude and a great psychic debt. I don’t like imbalanced relationships so I go out of my way to try and be of value back to him… and if he asks, which is rarely, for a favor, I am eager to comply so I can pay some debt back.

What this is really is the law of reciprocation in action. If you do for others, they are psychically compelled to want to do for you. I’m not saying reciprocation is read more »

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

I’ve been agonizing over what would be the perfect gift to give YOU to show my appreciation for all your support of this blog and all the experiences we have shared together.

I thought, instead of giving you a tree, how about giving you some seeds you can plant in the hearts and minds of other people.

As my mentor Jim Rohn taught me, “The best gift you can give is the gift of personal development.”

I’d like to encourage you to give the gift of personal development to others by making it really attractive for you to do so.

Much to the panic of my colleagues at SUCCESS Media and SUCCESS Books, here is what I wrangled to help you do this…

The testimonials of those whose lives have been transformed after reading and listening to The Compound Effect book and audio have been stunning. I want you to feel the impact of being responsible for touching someone’s life that profoundly.

So here is what I organized for you…

The book and audio combo is $60 retail. Buy 5 combos to give to people you care about and what to help succeed, for only $120 (instead of $300).

That way you experience the benefit of giving to others.

I can hear you asking, “That’s great and all, but besides the good vibes for making a difference for someone else, what do I get?”

Okay, here is where it gets really good—for you!

I want to GIVE you (as in FREE) a few special items—never-before-released-individually, my private interviews with four very special people:

Jim Rohn—my mentor and whom the book is dedicate to.

Tony Robbins—who wrote the Foreword to the book.

Brian Tracy—whose endorsement is on the cover.

Paul J. Meyer—another mentor mentioned several times in the book. read more »

Friday is the 80th birthday of my mentor, the late Jim Rohn. It is cause for me to pause one more time to offer gratitude for the profound influence this man had on my life (and the lives of millions of others).

I met Jim when I walked into his seminar back in 1994. I wasn’t even there to meet or hear Jim. I was there to meet the promoters of the event. I needed to wait until the event was over so I sat down and listened to this willowy grey haired man with the most fascinating voice and intonations lecture about principles of success.

What he said riveted me. The simplicity and purity of his message grabbed my heart. And his teachings challenged and confronted my previous beliefs about obtaining success.

I just pulled off my library shelf the journal I had with me that day. In my notes are a few things Jim said that I wrote down, underlined and circled. Those few things forever changed my life.

In honor of Jim’s birthday I’d like to pass forward the gift of those words on to you…

Jim Rohn asked the audience, “How many people want more…?”

I thought, “Yes! I want more… success, money, a better body, more companionship, etc. (I was 23!)” and awaited the instructions of what to do…

I had experienced some moderate success already by that time, but I had done it through sheer brute force. I was aggressive and just outworked, out failed and out persisted everyone else to grab my achievements. I did it by doing… do, do, do. But what Jim said next would multiply my income, my goal achievement and my results… and it wasn’t by doing.

Jim continued, “If you want to have more… you have to BECOME more.” He said, “Success is not a doing process, it is a becoming process. What you do, what you pursue, will allude you—it can be like chasing butterflies. Success is something you attract by the person you become.”

“Wow,” I thought. This was the first time I had heard this twist of perspective, insight and wisdom.

Jim continued, read more »

After a keynote training I did this past weekend, a lady came up to me to ask what I thought of Rolfing.

“I don’t enjoy ralphing at all” I quickly responded. Then she explained it was a way to “structurally integrate and manipulate the whole body into gravity.” “Okaaay,” I replied. “Why, do you ask?” She explained she wanted to rise to the top rank of her sales organization so she has been paying a “personal manifestation expert” to train her.

He has her Rolfing twice a week, psychically hugging her inner child three times a day (I kid you not), setting up her feng shui money corner and chanting affirmations out loud in front of the mirror for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night. “How many prospecting calls does he have you making each day?” I asked. “We haven’t talked about that” she replied.

Now the advice doesn’t need to be as off base or absurd as this to be wrong. In fact a lot of ‘expert’ advice is wrong.

Why?

• What works for one person doesn’t always work for another.
• The background or originating experience is different.
• People have different personalities and strengths.
• The timing and application is different.
• Most ‘experts’ contradict each other anyway.
• And frankly, there is just a lot of really bad, wrongheaded and bogus ‘expert’ advice out there. In some cases the advice is dangerous. In many cases it is simply distracting, thus productively damaging and time wasting.

As a 20-year consummate consumer of ‘expert’ personal-development material, I have heard, seen, tried and tested most all of it. As a 16-year business leader in the industry and publisher of SUCCESS, I am in the business of vetting so called ‘experts.’ (That is a big part of our job for you here at SUCCESS—to sort, filter and curate on your behalf, so you get the best and only the real-deal expert advice in SUCCESS magazine or on SUCCESS.com.)

Here is the No. 1 criterion I use to determine if someone is worthy of the ‘expert’ title: read more »