Hey, friend.
Happy Wednesday! Off to London tomorrow morning for a few days of British merriment, and terribly excited about it. So much so that I'm using the word "terribly." Okay, and "merriment."
Earlier this week, I opened the admissions doors for my two-week online bootcamp, The #entrylevelboss Academy. Enrollment is open until May 29th, and the first day of class is May 31st. You can learn more and sign up here.
Now, let's talk Dream Jobs.
I am in a very, incredibly bizarre position in that the first job I ever got hired for was, accidentally, the only Dream Job I ever remember wanting.
Not kidding. It was a total fluke.
Here's how it happened: Sometime around 2006, I remember a friend asking me what I thought the coolest job in the world would be.
We had just gotten pedicures. I thought about it for a second. And I was like, "You know how OPI nail polishes all have those really cute names? How cool would it be to just like... name nail polish colors all day long?"
We were in high school. I figured, Puns are fun. OPI loves puns. I could just like, be called into a room to name new colors. What a fun thing!
Flash forward to five years later, and I'm starting as a "marketing assistant" at my first internship out of college. It's for a professional beauty product manufacturer. They make nail and beauty products and are, in many categories, direct competitors to OPI. I don't notice that at the time, though.
Throughout the summer, I get some advertisements passed onto my little desk, and I make a few changes to the words. It's not hard--in fact, it seems quite obvious to me that the words should be phrased this way, and not the other.
And the creative director notices. She thinks I'm pretty good at it, too. She gives me some more advertisements to look at. And then some more. And then, even when I leave that internship, she hires me as a freelancer so that I could keep doing some more.
Flash forward some more. I get hired to work with another beauty product company. I get hired to work with a fashion company or two, too. I also do a lot of other work along the way.
I mention to a friend recently that I know a truckload of bizarre facts about nail polishes. And she says: "Didn't you say something once about wanting to name nail polishes one day? Isn't that kind of.... well, isn't that kind of what you do?"
Freaky, huh? But then, that's the funny thing about Dream Jobs. You spend all this time fretting about the possibilities, about being able to do anything. You stress out about finding your passion--your one true purpose.
You stress and you fret and you worry so much that you don't notice the little baby steps right in front of you that will lead you right on down the road, the ones that are pointing you in the right direction.
Funny thing indeed.
If you have a secret Dream Job in mind, or you're frantically freaking out about just trying to get any job, at all: I invite you to get off the Find Your Purpose train and start taking baby steps instead--by joining me in The #entrylevelboss Academy.
Because it may be called a Dream Job, but it takes deliberate action if you want to start walking in the right direction. There's a better way than panicking. Join in today, and I promise: I'll be able to help.
Big love,
Alexa
PS: Did you JUST graduate from college? Welcome!!! This Friday, I'm doing a Q&A email all about the questions that come up right after gradation. Do you have a question to add to the list? Hit reply and send it over this way--it may wind up getting answered in this week's Q&A.