If you are interested in becoming a youth motivational speaker you need to attend this upcoming Youth Speaker Boot Camp in Dallas TX A friend of mine, Josh Shipp, is one of the speakers at an upcoming one-day boot camp for the Youth Speaker market in December in Dallas TX. If you are going to learn about the youth speaker market you may as well learn it from the master, Josh Shipp! Take a look at their web site for all of the details.

www.youthspeakerbootcamp.com

The past couple of weeks have been very busy between speaking and the conference I am planning at work.

I did want to mention some of the places I have been speaking at this past week and a half.

ITT Tech in Pittsburgh had a large job fair for three of the local campuses. In order to kick the fair off right they brought me in to speak on “Finding Your Passion and Not Your Job.” I want to thank Dana Melvin from ITT Tech in Greentree for arranging this engagement!

A few days later I was at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA speaking on behalf of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. I spoke to a group of freshman on the information technology industry in Pittsburgh and how these students can get more involved in technology careers. Becky Campbell from Seton Hill is to thank for arranging this event. Becky came to the event fairly sick, thanks for being a trooper Becky!

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Finally, just the other day I was asked to speak at the Community College of Allegheny County to a group of high school students who attend a special school within the college. There were about 200 students in attendance. This was my first non high school speaking engagement in some time so I was looking forward to it. I think it went very well! The one thing I like about high school students over college students is the fact that you can be silly with high school students. College students are more serious and more business like than high school students are. I tell a story about a “3-Pack-a-day-rooster” that we met in Thiland a few years back. In order to grab the students attention I had two of the students come up on stage and give their best rooster crow. Vinny and Tim did a great job! College students would never do that.

Charles Bostaph and Carol Johnston made this event run very smoothly. Thank you for your support and for making this event very special!

Sorry for the delay in not posting for about a week, but life can sometime get in the way of blogging.

Hope you enjoy some of the photos from this past week or so.

I am reposting this podcast with motivational speaker Josh Shipp. This podcast was originally posted on Successful Motivational Speakers.com but I want to give the interview a larger audience by reposting it here.

A little about Josh…(right from his web site)

Josh Shipp is an internationally known speaker for school assemblies, youth conferences, colleges, and educational events. He is celebrating over seven years of ENTERTAINING, INSPIRING, and EMPOWERING audience’s world wide, and he’s still in his EARLY TWENTIES.
His message is simple, yet powerful. Entertaining, yet challenging. He has spoken to over ONE MILLION PEOPLE, hosted a REALITY TV SHOW, and has shared the stage with BILL COSBY. Josh has the ability to connect on a rare level, to inspire, motivate and get young people to THINK about their lives. Abandoned, neglected, and abused as a child, Josh’s personal story of triumph over tragedy inspires youth to overcome life struggles and to live life to the fullest.

Right click here to listen or

I just finished speaking at Allegheny College In Meadville, Pennsylvania today. The group was small but very engaged. I was there promoting a few events we have coming up at the Pittsburgh Technology Council like our @pgh.cafe and the Education Meets industry event. The @pgh.cafe is on October 20th and the EMI event is on October 25th.

They asked me to speak on career advice for college students so of course I had to share some of the principles outlined in my new book “The 7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Graduated.” It went very well and the feedback I received was great.

Two of the students who were at the event were marketing and PR majors. The one young lady is truly being innovative in her approach to job searching. She is doing a direct mail campaign to Allegheny College alumni by mailing them a postcard to introduce herself to them and then trying to line up meetings with each of them at their upcoming homecoming game. This job search strategy kills two birds with one stone.

1. She makes great contacts with Allegheny College graduates that could help her find a job.

2. She promotes the college by bringing some of the alumni back to campus for homecoming.

This is a great example of how to be truly innovative in your job search strategy.

I do want to thank Jim Fitch from Allegheny College for being such a great supporter of the Pittsburgh Technology Council and my work a speaker!

Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the event.

A few months ago I interviewed Jeff Yalden a prominent professional speaker in the youth market. Jeff and I talked extensively about his start in professional speaking, how he markets his business, his recent MTV gig, and much more. If you are interested in public speaking or motivational speaking you will be interested in this podcast.

This podcast can also be found on a site I don’t really maintain anymore Successful Motivational Speakers.com. I plan reposting some of those podcasts on this site for more exposure. As well as interviewing more successful people in different industries.

There are several different ways you can listen:

Download mp3 version

Tuesday night I had the great privilege of speaking at West Virginia University’s Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity.

This was the first public speaking opportunity I have had to speak about my new book “The 7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Graduated.”

I focused on the last chapter of the book, Find Your Passion and Not Your Job. I made a post about my speech on Tuesday.

I do want to thank Jonah for all of his hard work to make the event possible.

As you can see from the picture above I will be wearing my WVU sweat shirt proudly even though I live in Pittsburgh the home of WVU’s arch-rival the University of Pittsburgh.