Local Minnesota Celeb Provides Powerful Advice for Rasmussen College Business Students

Local Minnesota celebrity and author Joe Schmit visited the Lake Elmo campus April 24 to share several nuggets of advice to business students.

Schmit is an award-winning broadcaster and the current sports anchor for KSTP-TV. He is a long-time youth mentor committed to community organizations—Big Brothers and Big Sisters at the top of his list.

Schmit was invited to come on campus during Rasmussen College’s School of Business Week to share stories with powerful lessons from his book Silent Impact: Stories of Influence through Purpose, Persistence, & Passion. His goal at the event was to inspire everyone to recognize daily opportunities to make an impact on others, and how to be a great leader.

School of Business week focuses on helping students plan their career in business with confidence and clarity. There are also many ways for students to participate and take pride in owning their business career path.

Becoming an impact player

Through research, Schmit has discovered that we make our biggest impressions when we are not trying to be impressive. He calls this phenomenon “Silent Impact.”

“The words we say or don’t say, the things we do or don’t do, and the ways we react or don’t react can have a huge influence on those around us,” said Schmit. “This is your silent impact. To be a leader you need to be aware of it.”

Schmit says an impact player—one who’s aware of their impact on others—has purpose, persistence and passion in their personal and professional lives.

“If you want to be a leader, you need to be an impact player,” said Schmit. “An impact player makes everyone around them better just by being there.”

To become a more aware and intentional human being, you need impact resolutions. Take a personal inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. Think of a positive thing you want to do more of—things that will make you better, stronger and a greater leader. Then, think of a negative thing you want to do less of.

Working on these will help you become a better impact player, and a better business professional.

Be purposeful & persistent

You need to have purpose in what you do and say 100 percent of the time if you want to have a big impact. Once you realize everything you do has a purpose, you will want to be persistent in that behavior.

“You need to be persistent in your positivity,” said Schmit. “You need to constantly work on being positive.”

When Schmit was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in May 2008, he used humor to help him stay persistent in his positivity of making it through the cancer. He is now in remission. Schmit said it is important to find what your trigger is to keep you persistent in your positivity.

He advises the best way to be persistent in your positivity is to get rid of negativity in your life; fight off negative thoughts, words and friends.

“I’m not brazen enough to say that my attitude cured my cancer, but being positive does help and certainly doesn’t hurt,” said Schmit.

And—make sure to be persistent in your professional life, too. Schmit said it is important to be persistent in the fundamentals of your job, in your humility and to trust you’ll have an impact. If you want to make waves in your career than you must always keep working on it.

The better prepared professionals are the people who get the raises, according to Schmit, and these types of people are not only thinking of how they’ll handle the good things but also the bad.

“The best bosses are the toughest bosses, but they are also fair and communicate and have trust,” said Schmit.

Don’t forget your passion

Everybody should develop a passion. Passion is loving what you do. It is having a true sense of purpose. It follows you everywhere in life. Once you find it, use it to fuel your purpose and keep you positive and happy.

When you’re around other people, who do you find yourself generally drawn toward? Passionate and positive people?

The goal is for you to live life passionately and positively; you never know when you’re going to be the person in somebody else’s life who needs this influence from you. We all get so busy that we forget the impact we have on others. For example, when you’re a leader, let people know you care.

“You can be the person that becomes [someone else’s] biggest influencer one day,” said Schmit.

Takeaway

Think about the people in your life who have greatly influenced you. How did they do so? Can you go back and thank them? Sometimes a thank you later on in life—dubbed the “second thank-you” by Schmit—can make somebody’s day or year.

Going forward, remember to have passion in what you do, day in and day out. Live fearlessly and be devoted to making a difference in somebody’s life. Live your life with purpose and persistently be positive. When you put this all together, you can be an impact player.

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