How have you made it? These are 9 quotes from highly successful people on their career transformations and how they got to be who they are today. It’s both intriguing and inspiring to know how incredibly successful people got started. Intriguing, because we don’t really know how a CEO gets to be a CEO. Inspiring, because we find out that powerful people, like the rest of us, had to start somewhere. When we’re in high school, people start asking us the dreadful question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Most of us don’t have a clear answer for that at such a young age. We’ve been told that unless we have a clear path and set specific goals ahead, we’ll get nowhere. But what if that wasn’t the only way to succeed? We decided to gather a group of highly accomplished people from different backgrounds and interests. We wanted to talk with them about leadership, management and the state of their industry. In addition to this, there was one key question we wanted to ask: How did you know this is what you wanted to do? Through a series of video interviews, LinkedIn Executive Editor Daniel Roth talked with nine Influencers about their careers, their personal and professional evolutions and the times when they thought they would not make it. These Influencers describe their career transformations and share tips of advice for all of us who are still figuring out how to make it in business, and in life. These are 9 outstanding quotes from people who have made it. Go here to watch all the interviews: http://www.slideshare.net/LinkedInPulse/tagged/Crazy%20Good%20Career%20Advice Go here to read the entire blog post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141203131739-30293285-the-crazy-good-career-advice-you-must-know-before-the-end-of-the-year

2. “Ignore what your
parents say. Especially if
you’re an affluent kid.
A lot of pressure from
coming from the right
schools with all the right
advantages, with
successful parents.
And try as many suits
on as you can to see
what you like. When
you land on something
you like, you're going to
know it and you’ll build a
career on it.”
Click here to
watch the interview

3. “If you can link the passion you
have for a specific activity with a
broader purpose that gets you up
every morning, that's what's been
most helpful to me.”
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watch the interview

4. “You have to take risks.
On Wall Street you can make
quite a bit of money by staying
in the pack.
But maybe I don't want to be
in the pack.”
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watch the interview

5. “One day I went to an exercise at 6:00 in the morning.
And at 6:00 p.m. that night I was in a German hospital
with a smashed spine, and a broken cradle, and a
broken career. Life promises you nothing. You better
live like life promises you nothing.
Opportunity knocks for everybody. But most people
don't have their bags packed. Or they haven't been
listening for the doorbell.”
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watch the interview

6. “My father's advice was: create a
reputation. Not an external reputation,
but internal reputation in a business and
in an industry that you enjoy.
And if you've wanted to do something on
your own, you go and do it. But you don't
flit from flower to flower.”
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watch the interview

7. “The most inspiring moment was to have the
opportunity of visiting The White House and meeting
John F. Kennedy. He was looking across a group of us
and he said: ‘People in this world are not getting along
well. But you, young people, you get along. There are
no national boundaries. The only question is
whether you can extend your helping hand to
people who are in need.’”
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watch the interview

8. “You can pretty much do anything that you put your
mind to. What I learned, though, is that if you're going to
have that confidence, you better be incredibly humble and
realize that there is in fact a lot that you don't know and
have no problem asking for help.”
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watch the interview

9. “Embrace diversity. It’s your world. And
your world is going to be more and more
diverse. You're going to have to live with
people of different educations, cultures,
beliefs, and backgrounds.”
Click here to
watch the interview

10. “I think there's nothing wrong if kids took a year off
between high school and college. There's nothing
wrong with sitting back and thinking, ‘What do I
want to be,’ before you start accumulating $100,000
or $80,000 into student loan.“
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watch the
interview

11. Watch the interviews: Crazy Good
Career Advice
Check out: LinkedIn Pulse on
SlideShare
Graphics by Jacqueline Zaccor/ LinkedIn