Last week I was honored to be inducted as an honorary member of the Oklahoma State University Golden Key Honour Society. I was one of two this year, the other being Dr. K.D. Berlin who among other achievements led a team to develop new treatments for a variety of cancers, particularly ovarian and cervical cancers. Me? I help people talk pretty so, needless to say, I was very humbled to share the stage.

They tell me my selection was because of my commitment to higher education and outstanding job in my capacity as a visiting professor. Anyone who saw my tweet on this noticed my mention of being the first Journalism and Broadcast Professor to be nominated but more important to me was the fact I was the first Visiting Professor to be nominated. Visiting Professors at the University hold their position simply for the love of teaching with no commitment from the University other than a yearly contract. I won’t complain about this, it is by choice but I think it is reflective of the value Visiting Professors can have for all learning institutions.

I was asked to talk for 7-10 minutes about… me. What follows are my comments.

I want to thank everyone here today for this honor and I am truly humbled to share this with Dr. Berlin and even more humbled to stand before a group who has achieved such a high standard of academic excellence. My congratulations also to everyone in this room, those who are being inducted today and those with them who supported them in their efforts. I know greatness isn’t created in a vacuum.

I have been asked to talk a bit about myself and, “how I have gotten where I am today.” My background is in Public Relations and I have had the privilege to introduce and talk about some absolutely amazing people in my life – from heads of foreign state to my beautiful and intelligent wife who was honored as a “Woman of the Year“. It’s funny, in PR you never talk about yourself – it’s the first rule so I am a bit intimidated by this challenge.

It’s a good question and ironically one I have been asking myself a lot lately. Maybe it’s a rite of passage as you grow older.

I have a good friend who does some amazing things with technology, very dynamic and inspiring. He had helped me with a project of sorts and regarding one particular creation I said to him, “you have to tell me how to do that.” His response was great, “first you start by moving around a lot as a child then at the age of eight you get your first computer…” Bottom line, he didn’t get where he is overnight and he is very self aware of this.

Every person in this room also has a past, a history which led you to where you are now. But it’s my belief it’s not so much what happened to you but the experience and what you do with that experience, how you engage it at the moment and afterward which truly lead us to where we are.

We’ve all had good bosses and not so good ones, great professors and not so great ones, great moms and… well, my mom is great so I don’t have a comparison on this one. I value every moment I had with each. Sure, every lecture might not be the best but I assure you there is value in each one, in the moment, in the words, in the experience – find it and you will benefit. Every day took the opportunity to learn from others and from the experience of others. We have a role in these engagements, learning opportunities and I learned this early on. For that I am fortunate.

So let me answer the questions posed to me and then get to the good stuff.

Why do I love education so much? Easy, I walked away from it. After a year away at school I came home and told my mom I was dropping out. She didn’t kill me (did I mention she was great?) and spent the next year experiencing how important having a college degree was. I went back and finished my degree with high marks and fully embracing each course and professor. Working my way through school I also took every opportunity to learn from my bosses and the owners of each business.

Why am I a good professor? Thank you for thinking so. Let me tell you why this might be. I had great professors and I try to emulate those qualities I admired so much – more important I am passionate about what I teach. I love communications and public relations and the value it has in our society. My belief, as my students will tell you, is our country was founded on the principles of public relations and continues to shape its future – good or bad.

Why have I been successful in life and in business. The answer lies on a paperweight which sits on my desk and simply says, “Fortune favors the brave.” I’ve had it for more than 18 years.

I could tell you all the sordid details of my past but there isn’t much to learn from my past because it isn’t your past. It isn’t your experience.

So let me try to create an experience for you this evening. Let me share some advice, advice which isn’t mine but was given to me by others but shaped my life.

Do what you love but more importantly love what you do – Every job, every class, every professor, every boss has value. Find that value and every day you will love what you do, you will cherish those experiences. Even in the most mundane there is value and experience. This will benefit you every day you work.

Work is hard and not always fun – I remember lying on a couch as a young man and telling my mom I didn’t want to go to work one day because it wasn’t fun. She told me in only a tone a mother can have that work wasn’t fun. If it was fun we would get up every day and say, “I’m going to fun today, see you when I get home.”

Readers are leaders and leaders are readers – This advice was shared to me by an executive at State Farm Insurance where I started my corporate life. As I looked around the offices of those I admired both professionally and personally I noticed the large number of books and the fact that they weren’t perched on a shelf but were sitting on their desks and every day they spent time reading and making notes.

While you are looking for books, look up the name Peter Drucker – His philosophy, his words are timeless and now more than ever resonate in the real world. If I had to generalize one of his most important contributions to the business world it is that making the world a better place is a viable business model.

Be business savvy, understand how businesses work – It doesn’t matter what profession you are in, whether you are a chemist, a professor or employee of a large corporation, business will dominate your every move.

Regarding your future – look to the future to find your future – Meaning don’t focus on what is happening right now, focus on what is about to happen – the future of your degree or industry you want to work in. Read what industry leaders say the future will be – they are right because they are normally the ones who are defining the future. A side benefit to this is the candidate pool is much smaller there than it is in an area everyone is focused on.

Personal note – choose wisely your spouse or life partner – Make sure you support them and they support you. You never know when one of you is going to say, “Hey, I have this great opportunity to be a visiting professor, what would you think about completely shifting our lifestyle?”

Work hard, make good decisions and do the right thing – Advice you get almost daily. The question I get most often is how will you know which decision is the right decision? In my experience it’s normally the hard one.

Along that same topic, it is impossible to make a decision with enough knowledge to guarantee 100% success so quite trying and just decide – It isn’t until you make the decision that you will have enough information to make it correctly because at that moment information floods in. Here is the good news, if the decision was the wrong decision can, no, you must change it, fix it.

Strategy w/out tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat – That advice has been handed down since 500 B.C. and was first offered by Sun Tzu. To this I would add you need to know the difference between goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. My students know the difference because I preach it in every class I teach. Knowing this information will give them a competitive advantage for the rest of their life.

Support others and support those who have supported you – For a moment let me talk about Oklahoma State University. Yes, you paid tuition to attend but the University also supported you. They took a chance accepting you as a student, holding a seat for you, professors spending additional time for you and administrators going above and beyond, all for you. As you move on don’t forget about your experiences here and don’t forget to support those who have yet to have that same experience. Whether you financially support the University, the Foundation or Alumni or support it in other ways make sure you support it.

Finally, my last piece of advice is unique to me. Its impetus… well, a squirrel trying to cross the road. An indecisive squirrel which I will tell you now the outcome isn’t in favor of the squirrel. I was driving down a virtually empty road with one of my best friends and a squirrel started to cross. It got about half way and as I sped toward it I new it would make it across if I hit the brakes which I did. He wasn’t so sure and turned around but about half way back he decided to try to make it across after all and promptly turned around again and made its way back across my path. Even with my effort to slow down I ran over the squirrel – there was nothing I could do. Had he followed is first inclination, to cross the road, he would have survived but he was indecisive. The lesson from this is simply and probably obvious. In life don’t be the indecisive squirrel for he is the one which always gets run over.