Get busy. It's the first day of the rest of your life! Is it possible to catch up after messing up?

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: [on] MANAGEMENT

A high-school junior, the daughter of a 30-year friend of the family, called me and asked if I would answer a few questions about what it takes to be successful in business for an article she was doing for the school paper.

I was flattered and told her I'd be glad to help. While she was framing her first question, I relaxed, ready to pontificate a bit on business success.

I immediately sat straight up in my chair at her first question. It went like this, "There's a lot of pressure in our school to get a 4.0, but my mom says that you said you never did well in school and yet you did well in business. She says that you told her that usually the A+'s from school end up working for the C's in the real world. Is that how it works?"

Trapped! What do I tell her? The facts were that I did not do very well in school, at least for most of it. It wasn't until I was a junior in college when the dean of students came to me and said that if I didn't change my work habits I would not graduate. At that late stage of the game, something clicked in me, and I did change and I even made the dean's list that year and the next. But I really was a late starter. No. 4.0 for me.

I don't know if I'll ever say it again, but I have been known to say something like that business about the As working for the C's.

How do I explain that to study is good? How do I excuse being able to run a business after blowing high school?

So we talked for a while and pretty much decided that we agreed on these ideas.

Different people wake up at different times in their lives. Some "get it" in time to make a 4.0 in high school. Some don't wake up until much later. Some never do. You will know that you "get it" when you find yourself saying, "This is the first day of the rest of my life, get busy!"

Of course, it becomes harder and harder to make something happen the older you are when you decide to do it. My hat is off to those who get out in the work force, get married, have kids and then decide to go back to...