Dream Big, Stay Ambitious
Everyone has goals, right? Goals are what keep us going because life isn’t about getting comfortable. When you get comfortable, you’re missing out on all the things you deserve. It’s when you know it’s time to get up and work for what’s next — your next big thing.
A lot of times, I find that people confuse goals with ambition. Unpopular opinion, but let’s break that down a bit. A goal is something measurable, a means to an end, something you can easily reach by taking specific steps. For example, a goal could be to save up enough money for a trip abroad, train for a marathon, or get a new job.
Ambition is a virtue and desire for something so big it feels like a fantasy. The process and determination of reaching a goal is ambition, and that feeling sticks to you like glue until you reach it, no matter how long it takes. When a goal is big enough, ambition is believing in yourself when no one in the world does.
Take a moment to think back to your goals for the year. Now, is there one that’s been your goal for a couple of years now? What’s stopping you from getting there? It could be timing, resources, etc., but that intense craving for accomplishing that goal never leaves you. That desire keeps you up at night, you think about reaching it constantly, and you can even picture the bliss you’ll feel when you surpass it.
You can have an ambition for anything! It can be a dream you turn into reality, and with the right mindset, you can achieve literally anything you put your mind to. Manifestation comes into play because if you tell yourself “I will” vs. “I want”, then it is bound to happen because subconsciously you’ll do any and everything to get to what that is. Manifesting and ambition go hand in hand because they are both one and the same. Manifesting is bringing something tangible into your life through attraction and belief while ambition is the strong desire to do or to achieve something. Both manifesting and being ambitious require hard work and determination. Although easy to say on paper, this takes time and a lot of patience.
I am the type of person to have many goals, but there are always one or two that stuck year after year with what felt like no progress. After surpassing my goal of getting a job in a prestige ad agency post-graduation, I started to see what I liked about my job vs. what I didn’t. Back in 2019 when I was the account management intern, I realized I chose the Accounts department by suppressing my love of creativity. Yes, my job was more creative than finance or accounting for example, but it still wasn’t enough creativity compared to others I worked with within the ad agency. As I got more involved in the day-to-day of my role, I found that my dream job is in fact being a producer rather than an account manager. For some people, it takes them years to find their dream job. Little did I know, it would take me years to actually obtain mine.
Since that revelation back in 2019, my goal year after year has been to be a producer, and every week I would try to make moves to get there. Back then, I started talking to other producers, making connections within the agency and expressing my desire to be a producer but timing was never on my side. The pandemic hit and everything halted. I decided I still needed to continue in my career and move up, so I hid away my passion for production and moved on thinking this goal of mine wouldn’t happen for me.
Fast forward to moving to NYC in 2021 — I started my role as an Account Executive at another prestigious ad agency. This time, I got the opportunity to work on numerous large-scale productions from an Account perspective. Being involved in work like radio commercials, TV commercials, Experiential events, and Artificial Intelligence filters, my desire for being a producer sparked tenfold. I worked alongside producers and always wished I was the one doing their job. What put me over the edge was the time I took the place of a producer on a small-scale project. It showed me I can be a producer and figure out how to execute creative work on my own. That one project told me I can learn how to do a job all over again just like I learned how to be an account manager post-graduation back in 2019.
Never let inexperience get in the way of being ambitious. If you think you don’t have the skillset to do something, know that it’s more important to have the curiosity and eagerness to do a role than what you show on paper. I decided to voice my desire of being a producer louder than I had ever before. I started talking to producers about their day-to-day work, I chatted with the Head of Production about me wanting to switch into their department and I even started telling recruiters that reached out to me about account roles that I actually want to be a producer instead. Anytime I got close, I felt like I also took two steps back when things didn’t work out.
It can be discouraging when things don’t happen the way you want them to, but giving up can be your worst enemy. During this time I didn’t have any more leads in the production space and decided to interview at Google for an Account Manager role; a role I wasn’t super passionate about. During the Google interview process, all I hoped was for someone to believe in me as much as I did about being a producer. This was likely the lowest time for me because I was starting to lose hope. The Google process was exhausting, I had another interview set up with Meta, and the head of production at my company told me there was no scope to bring me on as a producer. But as soon as I felt like giving up, on January 11 at 12:19 PM something miraculous happened. I got a text saying, “I have an opening for an AP in interactive.”
That’s all it took for me to go all in. That small opening was all I needed to give my all and show how much it’ll mean to me to be able to get the opportunity to do this job. I didn’t care that I would be starting entry-level all over again, or the fact that there could be a potential pay-cut. All I ever dreamed of was doing a job I loved and was passionate about — a job that actually got me excited to get out of bed. I quickly replied back saying, “Stop omg,” and after a quick three interviews, I was shown that this company saw potential in me and believed in me as much as I believed in myself for the past 2.5 years.
Now, fast forward to me writing this blog post. I am sitting in my parents’ kitchen back home in Chicago, eating sour patch kids during unemployment before I start my new role as the Associate Interactive Producer at Droga5. And, I couldn’t be happier.
