You have to admire a motivational speaker who posts a long list of his most embarrassing and humiliating mistakes on his website -- and then calls it his Ooops List and adds an unflattering picture of himself for good measure.

It probably fits in with Patrick Combs' belief that you must do what is fun and have fun at what you do. Within certain boundaries, that is.

Although he's only in his early 30s, Combs has spoken at over 500 universities, including Stanford and Penn State. Combs has addressed Fortune 100 CEOs and VPs at leadership retreats. His first book, Major in Success, ranked in the top one per cent of all books sold at Amazon.com.

Q: What primary message do you want students to hear?

A: The primary message is that they can get a very cool job -- better than they ever imagined could be reachable. They can do it no matter what their grades or talents or their parents' occupations. It is the unassigned homework that makes it all come true.

Q: Can you elaborate on that?

A: I was the first person in my family ever to go to college. I was a B student. Somebody had to help me fill out the paperwork. I went to a state school, not a big fancy school. I thought when you got to college, all you had to do was try your hardest.

My life changed when a wonderful professor named Dr. Debra Lowe pulled me aside and said, "Patrick, you want to be successful. You must understand that the most important homework you will ever do is not the assigned homework.

I didn't know what she was talking about. I signed up for her office hours, 15 minutes every week. She taught me the unassigned things. These things are the meat of my book. For example, the importance of doing an internship. I thought only pre-med students do internships. I was mistaken.

And I wasn't involved in student organizations or campus clubs. Why should I be? It wasn't assigned. On Dr. Lowe's advice, I joined clubs. My book discusses about 20 unassigned things to do. And these things were the most fun, the things that were most real. They were self-directed activities. I wouldn't have done these things if I didn't know up front that they were going to make me or break me.

And you know what? I watched other students get great grades. They were smart people, smarter than I am, that's for sure. You could put them on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. But these people moved into mediocre jobs when they graduated. They didn't do the unassigned homework.

In my book, I go a long way to show students the things that were shown to me. But for this interview, it comes down to, "Have you done the unassigned homework?"

Q: What is the biggest roadblock that high school students face?

A: The biggest roadblock that high school and college students face is a school system that is not designed to match your dreams. By the same token, the other big roadblock is the way we all hold ourselves back without knowing it.

The most shocking thing I've learned since writing a book and giving speeches at 500 campuses is that college and high school aren't designed to teach you how to flush out your own dreams, to know what they are and to take the right steps to go for them. High school and college are designed to educate you. Big difference.

You can go to four years of high school and five years of college....You might get a good grade point average but still know nothing about what you want to do with your life.

I remember very clearly being a high school grad and college freshman and assuming that if I was a good student and got good grades that the system would take care of me and land me a fantastic job. The most powerful thing I ever learned, in addition to finding a good mentor, was that I needed to learn to set goals on my own.

I was never going to be taught that in school. There would never be a lesson in school about how to meet my own fears. When I saw a job that I would love, a voice would speak to me and say, "You can't get that job. It's for special people." There are no courses called Dream Setting 101, Success 101, Fear Management 101.

Education is essential. So is the ability to plan your own goals and make them happen. I recommend every student go to college. It's the richest environment you'll ever find, with people and resources to help you meet your dreams. If you take charge on your own, there is no better place to be.

Q: What can teachers do to help students become more successful?

A: I'm a teacher. The most important thing that I do is to believe that each and every student can do what they desire or do something fantastic beyond my own imagination. No matter how the student presents to me, no matter how intelligent or not intelligent I judge them to be in the moment, my most important job is to set aside any beliefs or judgments that I have.

I have to take all my own baggage and shut it up. I must encourage that student to follow their heart to reach the goal they believe in and desire the most. Then, I teach them the secret of unassigned homework.

Teaching goes wrong when we share our own fears and limiting beliefs with our students. I have limiting beliefs, but I try my darndest to never share them with the students. If they say they want an MBA, I try not to share my limiting beliefs.

On the practical side, I'd suggest that teachers encourage students not only to go after their dreams, but to teach them the practical steps that will help them along the way. The unassigned homework.

Q: What can teachers do to help themselves succeed?

A: I helped myself succeed this week by chasing new dreams. If I reach a dream, I reset it. I get another dream. I push through the boundaries of my own comfort zone. I'm still doing things that scare me to death. Not bungee jumping, but professional endeavours that stretch my boundaries. I help myself succeed by getting new insights and inspirations from books. I've been mentored by every great author that is published.

Q: You personally became very successful at a relatively young age. What did you do to make that happen?

A: There are four main things that helped me:

1. I did the unassigned homework. Just about anybody you interview who gets a phenomenal job out of college has done the same thing.
2. I followed my mother's advice. She always told me, "Do what you love." So, during college, and after college, I faced a lot of choices. Some choices would make me money, some would make me friends, some had status, some seemed more fun than others. I picked the ones that seemed like fun and I did what I loved.
3. When you first tell people you want to be a motivational speaker, they don't really think it's a good choice. They think you are going off the deep end. I didn't make a lot of money at first. But within a few years, my choice proved to be an enormous success -- in terms of financial success, personal growth and happiness.
4. I never let myself believe that I could fail -- even when I felt terribly insecure. When I begin to develop a new skill, a new talent or start a new job, I am terribly insecure. But I don't let myself believe that I can fail.
5. The most important thing of all is -- when you look around at students in high schools or college, if they are not doing homework, they are entertaining themselves in one way or another. What made me different was that I entertained myself with my career. I had genuine fun with my career, genuine fun doing internships or working on school clubs.

Many of my classmates had genuine fun getting drunk. I hardly drank at all in college. I am not putting it down. It just wasn't my thing. If you hardly drink in college, you have an enormous amount of time and I applied that time to unassigned homework. You meet a lot of really cool people that way, too.

Q: When you speak at campuses, what questions do students typically ask? That is, can you identify a theme or issue that comes up repeatedly?

A: Yes, there are three themes that come up over and over.

The first is, "How do you figure out what you're passionate about?" The first part of my book answers that question. It won't be answered in school. If anyone is worried about that, the important thing is to do the unassigned homework rather than try to figure out what you are passionate about. I was 16 when I figured out what I was passionate about. Most people are 19 or 21.

The second big question is, "How do you begin going after a dream job? Where do you start?" I also tell people my favorite first step is to go to a bookstore and find a book about that particular job or industry.

When I tell people that I was a video game tester, people always say, "Patrick, how did you do that?" I tell them I was paid $15 an hour one summer to play games. Then I say, "Did you know if you go to a bookstore, there is a book that instructs you how to get into the field?"

Then I tell them about the Dilbert cartoonist. When asked how he became a cartoonist, Scott Adams says he went to a bookstore and got a book on the subject.

On a personal level, I didn't know anybody who was a professional speaker. I got a book called Speak and Grow Rich by Dottie Walters. Then when I wanted to write a book, I didn't know anybody who had written a book. I found a book called How to Write a Book Proposal. I hadn't known that you have to write a proposal first.

The third question I get asked is how to deal with fears, worries and insecurities. We all wonder this. No matter what age you are, you deal with insecurity. It is the only force in the world that can stop anyone from doing anything they want. My book devotes an entire chapter to the six big fears that come up for people and the solutions.

The solution that helps me most on a daily basis is asking for help. It's hard to do. When you ask for help, you look like a dummy. But if you are willing to look like a dummy for one question, you can look like an expert for the rest of your life on that particular issue.

I always suggest two pages on my website. The first page is my bio. It now reads very impressive, because I accomplished a lot of things at a young age.

But you can't read my bio without going to the second most important page -- my list of oops. It's my list of failures and mistakes along the way. That's to remind people that every single successful person is successful because they endured a lot of embarrassing mistakes and failures and didn't give up!

Q: What is your new book about?

A: My new book is tentatively titled Confessions of a Motivational Speaker. It is a book of stories from my life. Many are already available for free from my website.

It contains stories like the day I delivered a baby on a sidewalk for a stranger. When I was 21, I was on my way to work when I came upon a woman lying on a sidewalk. I called an ambulance, but it didn't arrive in time. I held my hands out and caught that little baby. It was the most magnificent high. It was embarrassing, though. I started yelling, "I love you. We have a baby girl!"

That was the second best day of my life. The first was when I delivered my own baby girl. I was a pro already!

Q: You mention being inspired by many authors. Are their particular favorites?

A: Yes. I am presently very enthusiastic about a book by George Leonard called Mastery. Currently, it is my greatest inspiration, my greatest personal endeavour and growth opportunity. I would like to aim for mastery, to make my life about mastery rather than results. This book does a brilliant job of explaining mastery.

My all-time favorite is The Alchemist, by Paulo Coehlo. It is an incredible fable that is so powerful that when somebody hands it to you, they tell you that you have to read it. Then after, you tell all of your friends that they have to read it. It's the book that taught me how to listen to my heart, how to recognize my destiny. People get all sorts of things out of it. There are tons of things about passion and dreams.

I also like How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.

At the University of Tampa, my book and The Alchemist are required reading for all incoming freshmen. It's the best combination!

I hope to encourage my children to read these books someday. Of course, my kids probably won't want to read my own book. They'll say, "Oh, that's just Dad!"

Publications

Major in Success
by Patrick Combs
Published by Ten Speed Press
2000

Net Sites

Patrick Comb's Goodthink website

Learn how to rise above mediocrity

http://www.goodthink.com/

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