How He Hustles: Matthew Randall

I've been lucky to have many cheerleaders and mentors in my life. These are people who inspire me to work harder and do better, but also believe that I can succeed on my own. When I began working at York College's Career Development Center in May 2012, my hard work and determination to do well was fortuitously noticed by the Executive Director of the Center for Professional Excellence, Matthew Randall.

Matthew with Liz Murray of Homeless to Harvard fame

After news spread around the Academic Services department that I had a sharp eye for grammatical errors, Matthew began asking me to look over documents for him and graciously accepted the cheeky comments I left in the margins. Since leaving Career Development, Matthew has continued to provide me with challenging opportunities that help me grow as a young professional and I couldn't be more thankful.

Aside from being a brilliant mentor, Matthew is famous in the world of professionalism and has been quoted in numerous articles, including The New York Times. He continues to roll out new seminars to enhance the student experience at YCP and gets to hang out with some pretty awesome celebrities like Maya Angelou, Liz Murray, and John Walsh.

Fortunately for us, Matthew was kind enough to share his tips on how to hustle and succeed professionally.

Advice from Matthew

• Avoid perfectionism: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.  Many times ‘good enough’ is actually sufficient.
• Don't stagnate: Once you become proficient in something, select a new skill/attribute/behavior to develop.  It expands your skill set and can introduce you to a whole new network of professionals.
• Seek honesty: Find a mentor/peer that will honestly communicate to you about your performance.  Many co-workers will tell you that “you’re fantastic” or “you’re great! I cannot think of anything you can improve on." Don’t buy it. We all have blind spots and need to sharpen some skill or behavior.  Find someone who will point out your strengths…as well as your blemishes.
• Realize that no job is permanent: After I finished my MBA, I was hired by a large, respected accounting and consulting firm.  I thought that being an employee in this organization was my path to a stable and rewarding career.  Some years went by and a few high-level executives within the organization made some serious errors.  Within a matter of 6-7 months, the entire organization went out of business. Thousands of employees, including myself, were suddenly out of a job.

How He Hustles: Vito Grippi

During my four years at York College, I've had numerous great teachers, but I can honestly say that Vito Grippi, adjunct writing professor at YCP, is one of the best--and not just because he's now my boss and could fire me if I said otherwise. Taking Intro to Creative Writing with Vito two years ago made me actually like creative writing despite the fact I normally feel more at home in the academic sphere. Not only did I have a great experience in Vito's class, but my younger brother was also influenced by Vito's teaching in freshman comp, going from an incomprehensible understanding of essay writing to effectively piecing together decent rhetorical analyses.

Of course,Vito's resume is much more extensive than just teaching adjunct at York. Presently, he's the digital editor of Story, a freelancer, and soon-to-be entrepreneur, but even these accolades don't do justice to his wide array of experience. His education reads like a cacophony of words that don't seem to belong together: table tennis aficionado, restaurateur, accountant, music engineer wannabe, small performance car part business owner, and finally, writer.

Photo Credit: Vito Grippi

Vito's became serious about writing when a professor encouraged him to pursue writing as a career as opposed to accounting, which was the original reason Vito came to get his undergrad degree at YCP. "I jumped ship almost immediately. I changed my major to writing and finally felt like I had joined my people. I started out thinking I would be a music journalist. So within weeks I had started contacting small, local entertainment magazines. Nightlife Monthly, which is no longer in business, was the first to give me a writing gig.  That led to others," said Vito.

After making connections in the writing world and pursuing a MFA, Vito and fellow writer, Wayne Cresser, started Shaking Like A Mountain while Vito worked as features editor for an entertainment weekly. Despite loving his work, Vito searched for a job that would lead to more financial stability. "I figured I could actually work part time while earning the MFA. That’s sort of how I stumbled into teaching. I had tutored as an undergrad and I came back to see if I could tutor while in grad school. I set up a meeting with the writing program director and I think I actually caught him while he was trying to fill an intro composition course because he almost immediately offered me the course," said Vito.

Despite all of these accomplishments, Vito is hesitant to describe himself as successful, "Success implies you’ve reached something and that would probably make me stop reaching. Maybe I’ll know when I get there."

Advice from Vito

• Don’t be afraid to try stuff. A lot of what I’ve learned has happened because I told people I could do it before actually knowing how. Someone needed a website and I offered to do it. Then I spent the next few weeks figuring out. A big-time logo designer asked me if I did copywriting on a freelance basis and I immediately said yes, no hesitation. I’m not even sure I knew what a freelance copywriter was. He asked me how much I charged and I said “whatever you think is fair.” He said, “I’d feel terrible giving you anything less than $50 an hour.” So that became my starting fee. I think you should try to learn everything. My dad wouldn’t let me run the family restaurant until I learned how to prep, clean, work as a line cook. I try to apply this to everything I do. 
• You have to put in the time. My father came to the United States and has become really successful because he put in the time. He had no idea how to run a restaurant, or how to cook even. So I take that approach, just try to jump into new things. I also don’t say no to much work that comes my way, which is great for building up a client base and paying the bills, but can really wear you down. I’m trying to get better at turning things down. The downside of all of this is that if you’re constantly busy doing work for others, your projects, the ones you really care about, always get put on the backburner. At the same time, I’m at my best when I’m busy. If I have multiple projects going at once, and if I feel anxious about it, that’s a good thing. 
• Take education seriously. I had an English teacher in 7th grade who would make us memorize and recite poetry. We would have to stand at the front of the class and recite the poems. This caused me so much dread. I hated that guy. One time I forgot to bring my textbook to class and he taped a book to my right hand and made me stand at the front of the room for the entire class. He was the worst, and yet, now looking back I wish I had paid closer attention to him. I think I would have learned a lot from him. I wish someone had told me to take my classes in high school more seriously too. I really limited my opportunities early on because I just assumed I would eventually work in the restaurant business. Education didn’t really play into that. It took me a long time to really appreciate learning and books. But part of me also wishes I would have tried to make a go of it on the table tennis circuit. I could have been something. 

When You're Not The Cinderella of Twitter

I love hearing stories about social media accounts that have become famous overnight or "gone viral." It's like the Cinderella story of the modern world: Person posts cool content, a few awesome people and one particular opinion leader see her at the Internet ball, and poof! instant internet fame with thousands upon thousands of followers, leading to happily ever after.

Photo Credit: Andy Sabis "Cinderella and Charming"

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to think of what I could do to have my Twitter or Instagram account go viral. What hashtag will get X famous person to read my post and suddenly I have tens of thousands of followers? Admittedly, I haven't quite given up this dream yet (maybe this will be the post that goes viral!), but I've also started thinking up more practical, sustainable ways to grow my following.

So far my plan has been working pretty well. I'd been hovering between 110-120 followers since October, but at the end of January, I started making tactical and thought-out decisions to increase my follow rate. I'm happy to say that in the past 2-2.5 weeks I've increased by followers by 100 with minimal effort.

As you can see from the chart I pulled from Twitter analytics, my following has skyrocketed. Since I'm having a good run at this, I thought I'd share my tips that have worked for me so far.

1. Post at least 5x a day: For my internship, I was asked to come up with a social media guide for our alumni volunteers in order for them to learn how to be most effective in getting event attendance. I knew from my experience what works best for my sites and accounts, but I was curious to find out what actual studies had to say about the frequency of social media usage. I found this cool tip sheet that recommends posting to Twitter at least five times a day. At first I didn't think I would have enough to say, but between retweets and engaging in conversations with people I admire online, five posts a day is nothing.
2. Find your niche: When I first started tweeting and developing my online presence, I was really hesitant about limiting myself to a specific type of tweeting. I wanted to be able to talk about everything, but I think this initial fear was based on the fact I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to share my random musings that are quintessentially me. A week or so ago, I was able to let go of this fear after listening to Amy Porterfield's podcast on Instagram usage. She mentioned how she often had more interaction with her personal posts on her various platforms, and this sort of reassured me that if I post good, meaningful content regularly, my followers are still going to be interested in the "life behind the business," so to speak. Basically, I think if you tweet about your passions and throw in quick sound bites of your life, you'll find a lot of success online. 
3. Start a conversation: This piece of advice may have had the most profound impact on me and am so thankful that my new mentor decided to share this tip. He explained that in order to get noticed on Twitter by various accounts you follow, it's imperative that you start a conversation with them. At first this sounds like a no-brainer, but I've always felt awkward about the appropriateness of jumping in on a conversation that's not specifically directed at me. However, my mentor told me that whenever someone posts a link, they're generally asking you to join in on the conversation. Now whenever I see that someone I admire on Twitter posts a cool link, I'll tweet back and add my two cents, hopefully opening a dialogue (and a lot of the time getting a follow back!)