The biggest mistake you can make when it comes to chasing your dream is keeping it to yourself. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a keynote speaker, famous songwriter, or real estate tycoon. Whatever your dream is, it’s going to take a community of support to realize it.

Last week I was speaking with someone who told me that he wanted to get out of tech sales and move into real estate. It was a scary idea for him as he would have to leave a familiar job and a comfortable salary for an unknown industry to start again.

I understood how he felt, having taken a few scary career jumps myself, and suggested a couple of people in real estate who he should speak with. But upon hearing my suggestion he hesitated and explained: “I don’t want to waste their time until after I get my real estate license.”

While this may seem like a rational and courteous thing to do, it may not be the right approach. By delaying these conversations he could be delaying his dream.

Each of these potential connections holds keys to pieces of valuable information that my friend could use to find clarity and direction on his path into real estate. What’s more, is that he could even find a mentor or a future business partner.

The bottom line is that if you have a dream you want to accomplish, you may be doing yourself a disservice by holding it inside. Instead, you could start telling the world now so that the world can support you on your journey.

You Never Know Where Help Will Come From

Three years ago I found myself at a stuck point in my career. I had moved up the corporate ladder a bit but was unsure that I wanted to go any higher. I even started this blog in an effort to try to “find myself” with hopes that it might help me discover a new career along the way. Entrepreneurship sounded exciting but I had no idea what that meant back then. One thing was for sure: nothing was working out as quickly as I would’ve liked.

On top of this, I was doing nothing to dig myself out of my situation. I had told a few confidants about my intentions to leave my job, but for the most part, it was still very much a secret. I was keeping my plans locked deep inside of me hoping to get struck by some stroke of inspiration that would send me down my rightful path. But for months, nothing changed and I sat in my job getting more frustrated by the day.

Things didn’t start to change for me until the fall of 2016 when I began to speak my truth. The clearest example of this came at a sales training I attended while still at my job. Going into the training I was anything but excited.  Why did I want to be trained more on a job I no longer wanted?

Little did I know, one connection in that training would change the whole trajectory of my career. I sat through the training and watched in amazement at the woman who conducted the workshops. For two days she captivated a group of busy salespeople and shined while doing it. I remember thinking, “What exactly is this woman’s job? She seems to love it.”

I was so intrigued that I decided I needed to dig a little bit deeper. What if she possessed the key to the path I had been looking for?  During one of the breaks, I approached her on the side and asked more about what she did and who she worked for. She replied with a smile “I work for myself. I’m a coach and also do corporate training.”

At the time I had never heard of a coach, but the fact that she worked for herself was enough to raise my budding entrepreneurial ears. Knowing I needed to find out more, I asked her if we could connect over a call the following week. She agreed and our discussion was set. I didn’t know where it would lead but it was a small step towards a new possibility.

Fast forward to today and I can now point to that engagement as being the catalyst to my coaching career. On our first call together I learned all about what she did and felt a lot of her story resonate with mine. Like me, she too had been burnt out from her sales career and wanted something new. She gave me a few coaching resources to start learning about the industry and for the coming years, we touched base every few months. 

Finally, when the time came for me to start my own coaching business in 2018, she was the first person I thought of for support. Today she is my business coach and has been my guide through my first year of coaching. Coaching is the career I was always searching for, but I never would’ve found it if I didn’t start asking questions before I knew what I wanted.

Getting Velocity Behind Your Vision

You might be reading this with a crystal clear dream in mind or only a hint that what you’re doing isn’t for you. No matter where you sit on the spectrum, it’s time to start getting the world to work for you. You never know who is going to be able to help you find clarity and reach that dream career you’ve been searching for. But one thing is for certain, by telling no one nothing will change.

Your goal going forward should be to speak your truth. If you know you want to be a songwriter then tell the world your intention even if it doesn’t feel real quite yet. If you think you might want to be in real estate, then tell people that. The deeper you can dig into who you really are and show people that, the more people will want to help you. People are wired to help, and your goal should be to lean into that.

So next time someone asks you “what do you do?” perhaps try to reframe the question in your mind to “what do you really want to do?” and try to answer that way.

As soon as you start speaking your truth people will recognize it, offer to help, and you’ll finally start to getting velocity towards your vision.