In this video I discuss handling tough career choices…
VIDEO SUMMARY
After you land that dream job, and you are working and getting a paycheck, you are faced with a whole different set of issues. This gets into career planning decisions. Career choices are some of the most difficult choices you will have to make in your life. And some of the choices I am talking about are:
- How long do you stay at a job?
- Which job should you choose?
- Which career options should you focus on?
- What career options should you give up?
These are really challenging questions that everyone struggles with. And I want to be clear: In these videos, I am not trying to give you the right answer of what you have to do. These are tough questions, and the right answer is going to be different for everybody. My goal is simply to share with you my experience of thinking through these choices. And you might disagree with some of the choices I made. But I think it is helpful to hear how somebody else navigated their career, as you think through these questions for yourself.
So let’s jump into this. I got my first dream job when I was 25 years old. I was working in Hollywood as a film producer for a small studio in Los Angeles. For those of you who do not know what a producer does, they handle all the business aspects of making a film. Everything from cutting the checks, to managing the budget, hiring and firing, and managing operations. So for every film production, you have a creative team, making the creative decisions, and you have a producing team handling the business side. And do not get the wrong idea. It was not like I was running the show. I was only 25, this was an entry level position, and I was part of a larger producer team. I made a lot of coffee runs. But I was involved in every aspect of making a film from beginning to end, and that is what I wanted.
So at this studio, we made exclusively low budget movies, but we made a lot of them. These were mostly TV movies, for the Lifetime channel, ABC family, the SciFi network, and others. And we would manage the entire film life cycle, from initial development and writing the script, to hiring the actors, to shooting the film, to editing, and finally selling the film through worldwide distribution. We were making roughly 30 films a year, which means we were starting a new film every two weeks. So at any point in time, we had 8 films in production at the same, shooting in different locations all over the world. Now if you can imagine, producing one film is hard enough. So producing eight was a lot of hard work. But I loved it. This was everything that I had worked so hard to achieve, and it was my dream job.
But there was a problem. Over time, I began to realize that I was deeply unhappy. How is it that I was in this amazing dream job, and could still be unhappy? There was something about this job that was not a good fit for me. My biggest frustration, was the celebrity culture of Hollywood. There is a level of superficiality and fakeness that impacts everything you do, that I just have no patience for. Well, for a film producer, 50% of your job is dealing with celebrities. In contrast, the part of my job I loved the most was the business aspect. I loved making money, and I loved the process of making a film. And dealing with celebrities was taking me away from that. So my day to day tasks were very different than what I wanted to spend time on.
There was one moment, where this all really came into focus for me. I am sure you will have moments like this in your life, that are so impactful that you can remember them with crystal clear clarity. This was one of those moments for me. So one day, I am standing in the hallway talking with one of the owners of the studio. And the owner says to me, “Zach, my vision for you, is that in 10 years, I see you as President of Production at the studio.” And so we are having this conversation, where this person is giving me all these compliments, and all I can think in my head is “Oh my goodness, I do not want that job.” That was the moment when I realized this dream job was not the right place for me.
So there are four key points I want to make in all of this.
- You never really know what a job is like, until you are inside that job. When you are going for a dream job, you develop this idea of what the job is going to be like. And then when you actually get the job, you realize “Oh, this is what the job is actually like.” So you can do all the research in the world, but there are always going to be differences between your ideas and reality that you have not considered until you are actually sitting in that seat.
- Look at your boss’ life, and your boss’ boss’ life. You need to ask yourself, is that the life you want? Do not just look at your job, look up the chain of command at your company, because that is where you are headed in your career. Do you want their jobs? Are there elements of their jobs that you dislike?
- Do a frequent evaluation of your job. If you want to be happy in your work, it is important to be very self aware. You should be asking yourself, what parts of my job do I enjoy? And what parts of my job are a source of frustration? More than anything else, this will help you make career choices that will keep you moving towards doing more of the things that you love.
- A dream job is not a destination, it is a stop along your career. When you are working towards a dream job, it is really easy to get in the mindset that there is a destination out there. And once you get to that destination, you have made it and you are done. Life does not work that way. Your career lasts your whole life, and you are always changing and growing. The industry is always changing and growing. So you need to get that mindset, that a dream job is not a destination, it is just a stop along your career path. Once you land your dream job, you are probably going to be in it for a while, but you should also be thinking about what you are learning that will prepare you for the next step along your career path.
So those are some thoughts that I went through. Not long after I had that important conversation, I left that job, and went to work for a Real Estate Investment Firm. That was a big change for me, and a very tough decision. But I am so happy that I made it, because I have had such incredible and rewarding experiences since then. At this point, I have been lucky enough to have had multiple dream jobs. And even though I do not work in Hollywood today, I do not feel any of my time there was wasted, because I learned so much about business that I still use today.
At the end of this video, I am going to link to another video where I talk about my experience at the Real Estate company. That is the moment, when I was working at one of their hotel properties, where I made the decision to focus on accounting and get my CPA certification. So I talk a little bit about what motivated me to do that.
My main point is this. Go after your dream job, and you will figure the rest out along the way. Work hard. Be ethical. Be nice to people. And this is one way you will find fulfillment in your work.
If this video series has inspired you to pursue your dream job, leave a comment down below. Let me know what you think.
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Neither Zach De Gregorio or Wolves and Finance Inc. shall be liable for any damages related to information in this video. It is recommended you contact a CPA in your area for business advice.