Nate Riggs: Social Business Strategies; communication, social web strategies, & passion in Columbus, Ohio.

I’ve been meeting a ton of really talented college students lately, some with wide-eyed aspirations of working in communications.  That gets me really excited – especially the ones I first meet on Twitter or LinkedIn or even through MeetUp groups.  These are the students with the potential the bright young business rock stars of the next 10-15 years.

Why?  For one, they’re brave.  They adopt new ideas and tools and quickly learn to apply them.  They’re not scared venture away from the safety and comfort of their Facebook friends, and use the rest of the interwebz to meet new people.

Cheryl Harrison was one of these types of students.  If you want to see some Trust Agent-like application of social media tools, check out her Fast Friends networking concept.  She launched it the first time during her senior year at Capital University and now she’s doing it again.  It’s a really good idea that’s worth spreading.

Hannah DeMilta is a Otterbein student who is on the rise for the same reasons.  She uses the the web as a gateway to building relationships, but also knows how to close the loop from web to real life.  When most of her fellow students are tied up in college drama, Hanna does things like intern with Al Jamiat at Sandbox, or even attend events like TedxColumbus.

Dear Students: Please Get Your Hustle On
Why are Cheryl and Hanna rising stars?  Because they’re getting their hustle on. Their focused on using the tools they have now to blueprint their social graph for the next five years. If you’re in college and your already using tools like social networks and blogs and Twitter, your off to a good pretty good start. Keep adopting and learning.

The question is then; how are you using the tools?

Are you racking up points in Mafia Wars, or are you looking for clusters of people that can help point you to job opportunities in a down economy?  Are your searching for events that teach you industry knowledge that you need, that’s not taught in college classes?

Are you wasting time writing resumes to upload to Monster.com, or are you working on positioning your Google Profile so you can control what people see when they Google your name?

Are you still reading books?  What about blogs?

The Key to Being Successful
One of my mentors taught me something a few years back.  Ken Galloway ran three companies during his career. He’s a millionaire.  When I asked him what he did to get there, he answered: “The key to success is pretty simple.  Always out-work your competition.”

And that’s called hustle my friends.  The best part is that, other than your time and energy, hustling is free.  You don’t even have to be a student or recent graduate to hustle.  Everyone can hustle, but only if YOU choose to do, rather than to try.

What do you think?  What are you doing to hustle?  Why?