Happy New Year and welcome to 2022! I hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday season with family and friends. A new year brings new hope, new energy and renewed excitement for what lies ahead.

When you’re No. 1, you see everything from a lone and lofty perspective.

“You’re on top of this mountain,” explained Dr. William T. Hold, a 2012 inductee into the FSU College of Business Alumni Hall of Fame. “If you can be No. 1 enough times, you become the mountain. That’s where you want to be.”

Florida State University President Richard McCullough hailed the rise in the national status of the College of Business and emphasized a continued march to preeminence – with an appeal to donors for construction of Legacy Hall, the college’s future home.

Courtney Porter showed College of Business students an “Open Talent Continuum” that included “traditional” work on the left and “open” work on the right. From left to right, the continuum featured on-balance-sheet employees, managed service providers, contractors, gig workers and crowdsource workers.

Blackstone Real Estate executive Kathleen McCarthy offered a “fun fact”: More data has been created in the last two years than in previous human history, she said. “So the proliferation of data … you need to process it somewhere,” she said – and that makes it a relevant real estate topic.

The College of Business Student Leadership Council gives. It gives to the college’s students, alumni and faculty members through an array of events and programs that help students launch careers in business.

About 170 College of Business students packed into the FSU Champions Club at Doak Campbell Stadium today as the 27th annual Real Estate TRENDS Conference got underway with an afternoon of networking and career advice from top industry professionals.

It includes faculty and staff members who help College of Business students get their career goals in order. It features alumni and business executives who offer participation in networking events and other opportunities. It even boasts liaisons who point students to comprehensive assistance at the FSU Career Center. The Center for Professional Success offers those direct services and more -- now housing under one roof programs and amenities that the College of Business had provided separately.

Danny Persaud remembers the day he became a builder of businesses and uplifter of people. He was 7 years old and on the street with his family of five, who months earlier had immigrated to the U.S. from Guyana, in northern South America. He recalled the despair, uncertainty and biting chill of that winter night. “That’s when an entrepreneur was born,” he said. “The look I saw in my parents’ faces, especially my mom’s, I vowed that day we would never go hungry. We would have everything we wanted. I would make it happen, whatever it took.”

Wendy Clark asked for a show of hands. “Anyone in the room ever been underestimated?” she asked. Dozens of hands went up. “Yes, we all have been,” she said, and she emphasized the anger it elicits. “It is ‘game on’ when somebody underestimates you,” Clark said. “So do not get angry. Do not get dispirited. Someone has lowered the bar for you in their underestimation, and now you are going to crush it.”