One of my friends in school is quite brilliant. She’s young, highly motivated, gets straight A’s and holds down a full-time job. Everything is going quite well- according to her master plan.

This morning I found a blog (randomly) created by 15 year-old Jordan Chank- a resident high-school student in Canada. Jordan, through the power of New Marketing (the web and all its bells and whistles) has created a platform where he can experiment with niche markets, build his brand and make some extra cash on the side (extra being around $10,000 as a consultant). He’s a programmer, linguist, consultant, web designer, coder, photographer and physics-buff.

The world is growing smaller and smaller, as globalization takes a stronghold. Having a job nowadays is not an end in itself. It actually is the end.Why? Because being simply employable and having the basic skills required for the job is one of the greatest dangers that you face.  Because once you’re employed, chances are that you’d work very hard to remain employable, especially in this age of retrenchment. Staying under the radar and not working to do something remarkable is the bane of many Kenyan employees’ existences. Having a job and standing out is a paradox in and of itself. And that’s what’ll get you retrenched.

So do what Jordan did. Work on branding yourself, on writing, on learning Nordic languages (he’s proficient in two), on traveling, on learning C++, on investing and saving… Build yourself into something more than just an easily replaceable commodity. How? Just as the world is my oyster, Google can be yours. And just because you’re so cool, here are a few resources you can use. This post also goes over a few.

Resources

1. Track your money through mint
2. Download the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People In Context
3. Wanna learn Japanese? Chinese? Hungarian? Teso?
4. Post-graduate degrees can be financed rather easily even for internationals (thanks Doreen for the heads up!) More scholarships can be found here!
5. 10 Blogs and One Site that will boost your happiness!
6. Get Rich Slowly, and make some money while you’re at it.
7. Learn how Chris travels all over the world for an average of $340 per flight!
8. Need some inspiration? Read Mariatu Kamara’s story- The Bite of the Mango or check out 1000 Awesome Things.
9. Build your résumé and post it on the web for everyone in the world t see (let me know if you need any help coming up with yours!)
10. Play Monopoly, read a random blog, or learn a new skill like knitting, deep-sea diving, public speaking or Setswana.

As Seth mentions in Meatball Sundae, “the number of individuals trained in human factors, mechanical, electrical and software engineering, and in industrial and interaction design (all at once) is small indeed. And that’s the skill set leveraged by Ideo.”

FYI: Ideo is the world’s best design company.