How I made it: three successful young graduates share their stories

Greg James, Radio 1 DJ, 26: 'Determined people succeed'

I genuinely think that the majority of people will decide that their dream job is too hard to achieve, too competitive and "oh well it's all about luck". All of these are true actually, but why should that stop you? The really determined people will always succeed and, in many ways, need people to give up and find it too much like hard work to make way for them.

Of course it is a very tough time economically to find employment straight after university, but it is by no means impossible. It might take several months longer to find a job after graduating than maybe it did five years ago, but there is work out there. My chosen career has always been competitive but I never thought about other people going for the same jobs. It's human nature to compare your progress to your peers but I suppose my advice would be to try not to. Be focused on what you want and how you are going to get it.

You have to have a plan in place, even if it's a sketchy one. Have short-term and long-term aims. In my final year at university, my short-term aims were to gain experience at BBC local radio, work on the local community station, try and get some real FM presenting experience and get a meeting/pilot at Radio 1. My long-term aim has always been to get a show on Radio 1. It sounds easy for me to say it now, but I always thought that with really bloody hard work, dedication, a willingness to put myself out for them and a load of luck, I could get to Radio 1. You also have to be a complete nerd about the business you want to get in to. Know as much as you can about it, then you can feel part of it and understand how it works.

I hate saying this to people but really, this piece of cliche advice is key. You must never get down-trodden by the knockbacks because there will be loads. You can achieve your dream job whatever it is but … here comes the cliche … you simply must not give up on it. Be prepared to work hard and for long hours and at the start probably for little or no money but it will be worth it in the end. The best jobs aren't supposed to be easy, that's what makes them challenging. If you like a challenge, don't listen to the nay-sayers, just keep your head down and go for it. And look, one day, you might even get to write your own sanctimonious Guardian article.

Pamela Nash, MP for Airdrie and Shotts, 27: 'Keep clear goals'

I do not envy anyone graduating now ; it was difficult enough when I graduated in 2006; even then there were not many jobs for new social science graduates. I was living alone and found it difficult to stay afloat, and was surprised and embarrassed about the situation I found myself in.

I knew it was important to balance earning with improving skills and employability but I found it hard to get a part-time job. While job hunting I wrote to my MP to have a moan about the situation for graduates generally, but also to ask if there were any opportunities in his office. He asked me to meet him and offered me an internship. This was lucky; but also a result of me trying everything I could do to get on. Eventually I landed a part-time job in House of Fraser, Glasgow which allowed me to earn money three days a week and gain relevant experience the rest of the time. After a year I was promoted to a full-time position as a parliamentary assistant.

Pressures on graduates this year are higher than ever before with the number of opportunities being squeezed. At a time like this it is important that you keep clear career goals and do everything in your power to get there; taking on voluntary work or learning additional skills is vital. Get as involved as possible with organisations in your field of work; for example as well as being active in my local Labour party, I also joined associated campaigns and thinktanks and stood for election to the Scottish youth parliament.

Do not worry when you have to take on a job you'd rather not to make ends meet. Sort out your finances as soon as possible and make sure you are getting the benefits you are entitled to if you are still looking for work, and live within your means.

Most importantly, do not lose heart. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, so be ready.

Jonnie Shearer, Pussy energy drinks founder, 30: 'Aim high'

University was great fun, although it didn't really help much with setting up a business – so looking back I wish I'd gone straight to work.

It was during university that I tried to sell a food concept to various airlines. None of them went for it, so while still a student, I spotted another opportunity.

I decided to create a natural energy drink. At the beginning we had no money to spend on marketing, so I thought of the name Pussy to get us noticed. Being normal gets you nowhere and if we had a normal name I felt we would have a 0% chance of working. We were competing against brands who spend tens of millions on marketing.

It took about a year to get the £30,000 I needed to create the product – I borrowed the money from friends and family. During this time I worked out of my bedroom at home. It was a bit of a nightmare, my mum would be hoovering in the background as I took important sales calls or would accidently pick up the phone on my behalf. During my first sales pitch I sat down with a burly nightclub promoter who told me he wanted me to pay him £10,000 a year to stock the drink, or take it for free: "Piss off Pussy I'm busy," he said. Clearly it's difficult to get yourself taken seriously when you're young and just starting out. But eventually we negotiated a decent deal and now the company sells 500,000 cans a month and is worth tens of millions of pounds.

But it is those first years, where you evolve so quickly, where you really have to go for it, that are the most invigorating. My advice to young graduates eager to make in the world of business? Always aim to be the best at everything, and just go for it.

The Warren Buffet Story

Warren Buffett is a man who has made millions but he also started working at his father's brokerage when he was 11 years old, that's an age when most other kids were playing hide-n-seek and didn't know how to spell 'brokerage'.

This financial wizard is by recent estimates, worth $46 billion but how he got there is the fascinating story.

It all began in the family grocery store back in Omaha. Buffett's great grandfather started the store in 1869 and it was in the Buffet family until 1969, till his uncle finally retired.

 But it's at this store, where he began going around his neighbourhood selling gum. This was before his stint at his father's firm.

Warren Buffett told CNBC's Liz Claman, "My grandfather would sell me Wrigley's chewing gum and I would go door to door around my neighbourhood selling it. He also sold me six Coca Cola for a quarter and I would sell it for a nickel each in the neighbourhood, so I made a small profit. I was always trying to do something like this."

From small beginnings come bigger things and so after selling gum, soft drinks and working with his father, by age 14, he had bought a 40 acres farm in Washington, Thurston County.

But he confesses that he never enjoyed the farm as much as he enjoyed investing in stocks. But the first stock he bought was "Citi Service preferred stock. I had three shares and made all of $5 on it. I had bought it at $38.25 and then I sold it around $40, it went down to $27 in between and after I sold it at $40, it went to $200!"

From that poorly timed stock sale in 1944, he learnt a lesson that became his legendary investment strategy - which is essentially - patience pays, so buy them and hold them. He figured out two other critical things about himself in the 1940s - what he is good at and what he likes to do.

This pivotal moment in his journey came in 1956, when he was just 25 years old. This man who was rejected by Harvard and now armed with contributions from family and friends and $100 of his own money starts a limited 

partnership with seven people.

Over the next nine years, Buffett turned a $105,000 into $26 million - a stunning 24,000 per cent increase! He had invested mostly in textile companies, farm equipment manufacturers and even a company making windmills.

Thirteen years later, Buffett forms another partnership that becomes one of the greatest teams in the history of investing. He convinces longtime friend Charlie Munger to quit his investment partnership to join Buffett as his Vice President of Berkshire Hathaway.

And now with the 82-year-old Munger, Buffett sits on top of the greatest holding companies ever.

So, it's understandable that this man is looked up to for investment and business advice all the time. But what's the secret gift he's got? How does he pick the right investments all the time? He explains, "I look for something that I can understand to start with, there are all kinds of businesses I don't understand."

"I don't understand what car companies are going to do 10 years from now, or what software or chemical companies are going to win/do ten years from now but I do understand that Snickers bars will be the number one candy company in the US - like its been for 40 years. So, I look for durable competitive advantage and that is hard to find. I look for an honest and able management and I look for the price I'm going to pay."

While Buffett's big acquisitions have made headlines; wise investments in companies like Coco Cola, theWashington Post and Gillette have provided the capital to make those acquisitions possible. Since taking control of Berkshire in 1964, the company has acquired 68 subsidiaries. In March of 1964, Berkshire acquired its first insurance company National Indemnity.

In 1972, See's Candies for $25 million, in September of 1983, Nebraska Furniture Mart and Borhseim's in 1989. In 1998, Berkshire acquired Dairy Queen and Geico in January, Net Jets in August and General Re Corp in December. In April of 2002, Fruit of the Loom and most recently Buffett is looking abroad for new business.

Recently, he bought 80 per cent of the Israeli Metal Works Company and he did it without even seeing it. He was approached by the promoter via a letter and what was in that letter convinced him that 'this was the kind of the person I wanted to do business with and it is the kind of business we wanted to own.' How does this 'daring bit of investment fit in with his usual careful way of investing?

He explains, "I had to size up the business but that's a background of being in stocks. If you put your whole net worth in stocks when you are 20-21 years old - you have not visited the businesses but you are really analyzing their financials, you are trying to assess whether they have durable competitive advantage, assess the quality of the management and the integrity of the management and then you try to figure out whether you are buying it at a reasonable price and that's it, that is all we do."

He's never had anything lacking - his acute business brain has made him a lot of money. He also feels that the youth of today are living better than John D Rockefeller. His own style remains the same - he lives in the same house for 48 years, carries no cellphone, has no computer on his office desk, does not move around with an entourage.

As he puts it, "I have had everything I wanted all my life. At 20, I was having the time of my life doing what I did. Today, I'm eating the same things I always eat - burghers, fries and cherry coke. Only my clothes are more expensive now but they look cheap when I put them on!"

At 76, he married his long-time companion, Astrid Menks at a low-key ceremony at his daughter Susan's house. He is also amazingly healthy for someone on a burghers-coke diet. He's also surprisingly down to earth. He moves around freely unencumbered by a security detail. He does have a few guards with him during the annual shareholders meeting but he says he doesn't feel the need to put himself in a cocoon.

Which probably explains, why he wasn't nervous about visiting a factory in Israel, which is close to the Lebanese border. He says of that visit, "Our plant there is about 8-10 miles from the Lebanese border and there were maybe a rocket or two that hit the parking lot or something like that but it can be dangerous being in this (US) country as well."

Buffett is comfortable in Omaha in part because people leave him alone with the exception of a random fan or two. This billionaire doesn't even have a chauffeur - he drives himself around in a 2006 Cadillac DTS, recently purchased after he auctioned off his old Lincoln Town Car, which was famous for its Thrifty license plate. And no, he does not want a yacht or many mansions. He just wants to be left alone to enjoy a good football game in his sweatsuit on a big screen television - with popcorn.

It's really no surprise that America's most prominent investor chooses to live far from the nation's wealthy-elite in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami. He says that when he was in New York, he had about a 100 ideas about where to invest but it was over-stimulation.

In Omaha, he needs one good idea in a year and he feels he can think better and with less distraction. He feels there is a sense of community in living there.

His investing theories have been talked about ad nauseum by almost every business/finance writer and is a cottage industry all by itself.

But one he finds closest to reflecting his views is a book written by Larry Cunningham - 'The Essays of Warren Buffett - Lessons for Corporate America' is required reading in a one of a kind course start at the University of Missouri School of Business.

The course is called Investment Strategies of Warren Buffett. It turns up Buffett is hot on campus too. The class now in its eighth year and is the brainchild of Buffett's friend Harvey Eisen.

Harvey Eisen recalls, "This course is a breakthrough in terms of reality meeting academics. I said why don't we have a course like this and the academics scratched their head and said 'well we don't' and I said 'why don't we' and then we got it done."

Dean of the University of Missouri School of Business Bruce Walker bought the idea. He says, "We want our students to be exposed to many different approaches to investing."

The Buffett playbook is taught, analysed and written about but it is best summed up like this.

Harvey Eisen explains it, "Number one - Don't lose the money and number two - don't forget rule number 1! Number three - look for unique companies that are hard to replicate - he calls that a moat around the business. Number four - he talks about the circle of competence, which means in simple English, do what you know.

"Everybody in the stock market knows about the economy or about the Federal Reserve. Warren focuses on what he knows and he has made enormous successes at that."

He does not want his managers to report in at any committee meeting of any kind and he lets them get on with the business of running their businesses. But there is one thing he requires of each CEO. Buffett says, "I asked them to send me a letter, that I would keep in a private place that will tell me what to do tomorrow morning, if they are not alive in terms of their successor."

But what about his own successor? He says, "The succession plan is very simple. Our board met a few days ago and we talked about that every in single meeting and we have at least three people inside Berkshire, who in many respects will do my job better than I do. I can't give you the names but the board knows which one of those three they would pick, if something happened to me."

Warren Buffett has also given away $31 billion of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and he 'hopes it will accomplish just what they have set out to accomplish. I have observed their Foundation very carefully and Bill & Melinda decided initially they were spending about a billion a year. They have decided they were going to try and figure how they are going to save most lives, relieve the most human suffering.'

Ultimately, that's what money is really meant for, isn't it?

If you are poor at 35, you deserve it

You are poor because you have no ambition.

Jack Ma: Before I founded Alibaba, I invited 24 friends to my house to discuss the business opportunity. After discussing for a full two hours, they were still confused — I have to say that I may not have put myself across in a clear manner manner then. The verdict: 23 out of the 24 people in the room told me to drop the idea, for a multitude of reasons, such as: ‘you do not know anything about the internet, and more prominently, you do not have the start-up capital for this’ etc etc.
There was only one friend (who was working in a bank then) who told me, “If you want to do it, just try it. If things don’t work out the way you expected it to, you can always revert back to what you were doing before.” I pondered upon this for one night, and by the next morning, I decided I would do it anyway, even if all of the 24 people opposed the idea.

When I first started Alibaba, I was immediately met with strong opposition from family and friends. Looking back, I realised that the biggest driving force for me then was not my confidence in the Internet and the potential it held, but more of this:  “No matter what one does, regardless of failure or success, the experience is a form of success in itself.” You have got to keep trying, and if it doesn’t work, you always can revert back to what you were doing before.

As with this quote by T.E. Lawrence – “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream in the dark recesses of the night awake in the day to find all was vanity. But the dreamers of day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, and make it possible.”

Jack Ma: People lose out in life because of these 4 reasons:

1. Being myopic to opportunity
2. Looking down on opportunities
3. Lacking understanding
4. Failing to act quickly enough

You are poor, because you have no ambition.
Ambition is living a life of great ideals; a magnificent goal in life that must be realised.
In this world, there are things that are deemed unfathomable, but there is nothing in this world that cannot be done. The depth of one’s ambition determines the potential of one’ future.
The Story of Juliet Wu Shihong – one of China’s first-generation professional managers, who gained success by working her way up the ranks from a cleaner, a nurse, a marketing executive, through self-education and learning on the job.

She had been the general manager for the world’s most famous multinational IT groups’ Chinese branches (Microsoft 1985-1998; IBM 1998-1999). She is also China’s first successful international corporate executive to join the executive team of a domestic private firm. Wu was seen as a symbol of the new generation of business executives that China has produced in its economic reform and opening-up.
When Wu started off in a big company working from the lowest ranks, her daily job was to pour tea and sweep floors. Once, because she forgot her staff pass, the company’s guard stopped her at the door and denied her entry. She explained to the guard that she was indeed one of the company’s employees, and that she had merely left the building for a short while to purchase office supplies.
Despite her pleas, the guard still did not allow to enter. As she stood at the gate, she watched as those of similar age to her, but smartly dressed in business attire walking through without having to show their passes.
She asked the guard, “Why are these people allowed through without producing a pass?” The guard dismissed her coldly nonetheless.
That was the turning point for Wu – she felt great shame, her self-esteem trampled on.
She looked at herself, dressed in shabby clothes and pushing a dirty push cart. Looking back at those dressed in smart attire, her heart felt a deep ache from the sudden realization of the sorrow and grief from being discriminated. From that moment, she vowed never to allow herself to be shamed like this again, and to become world-famous.
Since then, she used every opportunity to enrich herself. Every day, she was the first to arrive at work, and the last one to leave. She made every second count, spending her time learning the ropes. Her efforts soon paid off; she was made a sales representative, and quickly progressed to being the regional general manager of this multinational company in China. Wu did not possess strong academic qualifications, and was revered as the ‘Queen of Part-timers’. Subsequently, she assumed the position of GM of IBM China. This is the Wu Shihong, the heroine in China’s business circle.

If not for the incident, Wu Shihong would not have had the ambition to become rich, and her life would have taken a very different path then.

• You are poor because you do not have the desire to become successful.
• You are poor because you lack foresight.
• You are poor because you cannot overcome your cowardice.
• You are poor because you lack the courage and determination.

• With ambition you can overcome all inferiority and maximise your potential!
• With ambition you can persevere, continuously learn new things and strive for perfection.
• With ambition you can defy all odds, and create miracles when others daren’t.

No matter how poor your family is, do not doubt your own abilities and lose sight of your ambition.

• When your family deems you worthless, no one will pity you.
• When your parents do not have money to pay the medical bills, no one will pity you.
• When you are beaten by your competitors, no one will pity you.
• When your loved ones abandon you, no one will pity you.
• When you have not accomplished anything by the time you are 35, no one will pity you.

Go big, or go home. Otherwise, you’re wasting your youth.
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About Jack Ma: Jack Ma is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He is the Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group, a family of highly successful Internet-based businesses. He is also the first mainland Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes Magazine and ranks as one of the world’s billionaires.Ma was named the Financial Times’ 2013 Person of the Year because he personifies the Chinese internet, referring to him as the “godfather of China’s scrappy entrepreneurial spirit.”.

 By Zach Ho ·vulcan post