Hiring manager: “Congratulations, you’re hired. Starting pay is 30k, but it can go up to 90k later.”
Me: “Alright, then I’ll come back later.”

Lame joke, you say?

Sure, you can call it lame. You’re free to do so. Before you do though, make sure you’re not behaving the exact same way in your own career. Otherwise, you’d be calling yourself lame, and you don’t want to do that, do you?

Why am I saying this?

Well, if you’re reading this, you’re most likely at a point in your life where you want to take your career more seriously.

Maybe you’re starting your first professional job, or you’re looking to transition into a new career path. Tech, project management, marketing, design…

You’ve seen people online who have the job you want, and it all seems amazing. Cool, exciting, adventurous prospects.

But then, you look at the opportunities you actually have directly available to you, and they don’t look nearly as glamourous.

No cool office.
No sweet starting salary.
No PTO.

Just old-fashioned hard work.

Ugh.

I’ll come back later.

Now, you don’t literally say or even think this. That would be too obvious. But you behave like it anyway.

In neglecting to take action on the opportunities you have right in front of you, you’re basically doing the exact same thing as the person in the joke.

And I mean exactly the same thing.
Making lame excuses.

If this is something you struggle with, I want to challenge you to change your frame of mind.

You know that unglamorous and unsexy opportunity right in front of you? Think of it as the first part in your hero’s journey.

You know the part in every hero’s story where they go through hardships? Where they have to start at the bottom and pay their dues? Do some unsexy, uncool, straight up hard work that goes largely unrecognized for ages? Maybe even get ridiculed for it?

Turns out the real world works the exact same way.

Sandwich maker.
Door-to-door sales.
Mailroom clerk.

Just some of the famous first jobs of various multibillionaires.

It’s not cool. It’s not sexy.
But it’s a place to start.

It’s where you lay the seeds.

I know it’s tempting to come back later and see if your prospects have magically improved. But they won’t. Because that’s not how opportunities work.

So take action.
Take that first step on your hero’s journey.

Even when it seems uncool.
Even when it’s hard.
Even when it seems like a step back from the comfortable life you have created for yourself.

Don’t do stuff that makes you feel dead inside, but don’t shy away from some hard work either.

Let it excite you instead.

After all, this is where you become the hero. This is where you make the sacrifices that will pay off big time in the long run.

This is where you earn your future success.

Your origin story starts right here.
Make it a good one.