Happy New Year!! It's 2008...Are You the Person You Thought You Were Going to Be??

Success is the direct result of your efforts. I read that somewhere, or I maybe I heard it. Whichever the case, I firmly believe it and have reminded myself of that throughout the years.

It's a simple enough formula, but it gets complicated and muddled when we start lying to ourselves about how much effort we've put into something. (read Mark Cuban's post for more on this.)

90% of life is showing up. I used to believe that, until I showed for a lot things and well...I got to be seen a lot. That's all, just seen.

I believe 90% of life is taking action. Your career won't improve if you don't take the necessary steps to make it better, get a promotion or change careers altogether. Apparently paying my membership dues isn't enough for me to lose weight. A friend reminded me I have to actually show up and work out. (Oh...that's what I was doing wrong!)

In my End-of-Year Yhank You post I get gushy about how great a year it was. HPNG's end of year survey went out last week and it reminded me of how HPNG raised the bar of networking events.

Back in the day when I was looking for quality Hispanic networking events, I only found social ones. After prompting from some friends whose opinions I respected greatly, we started HPNG. "We'll see what happens," I thought.

Those same friends became our Steering Committee and HPNG's mission was to provide quality networking events for Hispanic professionals.

Interestingly, this survey has shown requests for HPNG "social" events. Yeah...we don't that. (However, there are hundreds of Latino social groups in NY that do. A quick Google search can take you there.)

HPNG produces networking events where Hispanic professionals can congregate and develop professional relationships. And by relationships, I don't mean giving your card to someone you spoke with for two minutes and whom you'll call the next day hoping you can sell them something or that they'll hire you for a job. We don't do that either. As Mariela Dabbah pointed out in her HPNG workshop, taking the time to develop ONE quality contact during a event, beats out getting a roomful of cards of people who won't remember you.

Don't kid yourself about the effort, time and money you're spending on developing yourself and your career. The begining of the year is a great time to take that personal inventory. Commit to take action. And, if you're serious about it, HPNG will have the tools for you to do that.

Success is the direct result of your efforts.

The clock is ticking, are you the person you thought you were going to be?

See you in '08!


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