How To Find Your Dream Career
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Every quarter, I meet with two of my best friends for a “Board Meeting.” Each of us get about 1 hour to provide updates on our life and career, and request support, guidance, perspective, etc. We’ve been doing this now for a few years, and it’s one of my favorite things on my calendar. If you’re thinking to yourself “what a nerd!” you’re right. It is indeed very nerdy.
During our last Board Meeting, my friends and I discussed hobbies, and things we do simply for the sake of enjoyment. We also talked about a challenge we all shared — trying too hard to turn the things we enjoy and could make money on, into our Dream Careers.
As an example, my friend loves personal finance, a few years ago, she launched a personal finance course and group coaching program, but after delivering it, she realized that it wasn’t authentic to what she wanted to continue doing for her career.
As another example, I offer ManifestHer Workshops to groups of women who want to hire me to facilitate a day of connection and goal setting, and I love doing this, but ultimately, I don’t want to do it as my full-time career.
As we started talking through our experiences accepting money in exchange for these services we provide, my friend said something pretty profound, it was something to the effect of “our downfall isn’t offering services that allow us to monetize what we enjoy, our downfall is thinking at the intersection of what we enjoy, and ways we know we can make money, that we should be doing something… They don’t necessarily need to overlap. Sometimes it’s okay to just keep something in the lane of enjoying it and being good at it (skill).”
I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about this since our last board meeting, and the thinking has netted out to a framework that I’m realizing is probably useful to those feeling unfulfilled in their career, contemplating a change, or whom just love a good framework.
Okay, so to tee it up… Your Dream Career exists at the intersection of three things:
What you enjoy
Your skills
Ways you can make-money (For those struggling to come up with ideas for how to make money, read this blog post I did on the standard 12 forms of value)
Here’s that, visualized:
Now the challenge my friend and I were both facing?
Well, we thought our offerings were in the Dream Career bucket, but they were actually in the Side Projects buckets.
Without having this framework, we didn’t quite have a way to articulate this, but now, with this framework, it is so clear to me: We were experiencing the natural friction of trying to make a Dream Career out of something that was supposed to be, at best, a Side Project. As you know, when. you try to force anything, you can cause yourself pain, confusion and frustration… and that’s exactly how we’d been feeling.
Okay, dear reader, so how do you action this insight? Here’s your recipe.
Step 1 — Brain Dump
Get out a sheet of paper and make three columns. At the top of each column, write “What I Enjoy,” “My Skills,” and “Money-Making Things.” Here’s an example of some of the things on my list:
What I Enjoy: Working out (Stair Master), Reading/Learning (e.g. Books), Mentoring Young Women, Writing/Creating/Storytelling (e.g. Books), Comedy, Self-Care, Trying New Stuff (Consumer Brands, Experiences, etc)
My Skills: Marketing, Sales, Strategy, Leadership, Inspiring/Motivating, Storytelling
Money-Making Things (from this list): Products (e.g. books), Service (e.g. writing books), Agency (E.g. marketing/selling books).
Step 2 — Play Around with Dream Career Ideas (Note: You’ll probably identify some Side Projects and Hobbies too)
Once you’ve brain dumped, you’ll see how the ideas can start flowing like crazy… Endless career opportunities await you. As an example, here’s just three ways my list could play out:
Idea A — Use my Sales/Marketing/Strategy skills to start a Stair Master fitness boutique (like Soul Cycle), where I am an Inspiring/Motivating instructor.
Idea B — Use my Sales/Marketing/Leadership skills to work for a software company that sells software to the Consumer Brands that I love trying (ahem, this is actually what I do).
Idea C — Use my Inspiring/Motivating/Storytelling skills to write and sell books that help young women.
Step 3 — Score and Stack Rank the Ideas from Step 2
Using the ideas you generate in Step 2, start an excel document (or borrow mine) where you can stack rank and score your ideas against key criteria for success.
See the image below for some ideas for criteria and scoring to get you started (note: the Joy Potential is a very subjective dimension, but accounts for like, the vibe of the idea, meaning, does the idea of it light you up big time?).
Score each idea across the dimensions, sum the scores up and then sort the ideas by total score. In this instance, Idea 4 has the highest score, and therefore, theoretically, this would be the best Dream Career for you!
Step 4 — F*ck Around, Find Out
If you’re looking at your Stack Rank list and feeling really excited to go and pursue one, go do it! It could take time, it might take a fair amount of effort, but you can trust that if you build a career at the center of what you enjoy, your skills, and making money, you will indeed enjoy a “Dream Career.”
Another thing to consider before you take the big leap is how closely these Dream Careers line up to the industry, goods/services, and roles you’re interested in, per the framework I offer up here.
If you’re looking for support in how to get into this Dream Career, I’d suggest reading my book, ManifestHer, where I provide a useful goal setting framework that helps you take your big dream and break it down into actionable work that helps you get on the path to achieving that dream ASAP.
Step 5 — Iterate, iterate, iterate
Over the course of your life and career, so much can change. Don’t pigeon-hole yourself to staying in your lane for longer than it feels good to do so. You can always develop new things you enjoy, you can always develop new skills, and for someone who wants to apply themselves meaningfully, there will always be opportunities to make money.
You got this! 💪
