40 Things You Should Do for Your Career Before You Turn 40

By Shari Storm

Last week I was asked to speak to the Crashers at the Michigan Annual Conference. If you aren’t familiar with the Crash movement, it’s a group of 35 and younger credit union employees who ‘crash’ various conferences. There is a much better description of their mission here: http://trust.coop/

Since my two favorite things are lists and giving advice, I pulled together a list of things that young credit union employees should do for their career before they turn 40.

Lot’s of people helped me out with the list. What would you add?

1. Take one year of accounting
2. Take one year of finance
3. Take a mentor out to lunch
4. Every day, ask a question you think you already know the answer to
5. Ignore an email that makes you angry
6. Join Rotary
7. Subscribe to (and read) a magazine fully outside your area of expertise
8. Do something that leads to rejection
9. Run a long distance race
10. Pay off your credit card debt
11. Interview for other jobs at least once a year
12. Read Og Manidino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World
13. Visit other credit unions
14. Attend chapter, league or national conferences
15. Become a competent public speaker
16. Memorize the proper use of there / their, your / you’re and its / it’s.
17. Shadow a branch teller, a call center rep and someone in your collections department for a day
18. Hike the hill in your state
19. Practice good table manners
20. Learn about managing introverts and extroverts
21. Take golf lessons
22. Visit another country
23. Hire someone
24. Fire someone
25. Understand how your personality impacts others
26. Ask your marketing team to let you work on a marketing campaign
27. Establish a standing date night with your significant other
28. Learn the art of running a perfect meeting
29. Climb a mountain
30. If you have children, line up flexible, dependable, quality child care
31. Run your IT department for a week
32. Read Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott
33. Memorize 20 key credit union statistics
34. Pay attention to Filene, Finovate and Ron Shevlin
35. Take up a hobby that makes you lose yourself
36. Talk to every new employee and get their perspective of your credit union
37. Never stop looking at your credit union through the eyes of a member
38. Be interviewed on television
39. Attend your credit union’s examiner / audit exit reviews
40. Protect your health

Shari Storm is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Verity Credit Union and is the author of the book “Motherhood is the New MBA”, available here: http://www.amazon.com/Motherhood-New-MBA-Parenting-Skills/dp/0312544316/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314126290&sr=1-1