Choosing a Profession: Start with “Why” and a Goal
A year ago today, I was in the same spot as many soon-to-be college graduates. I finished college and still did not know exactly what I was going to do with my life. While this was something I would need to sort out sooner rather than later, I did have a plan to get there. Although I ended up straying from my original path and was fortunate enough to find my way to memoryBlue, I could not have made it to where I am today without keeping two key things in mind: starting with the “why” and keeping my end goal in sight.
I spent my final year of college as a student teacher, but early on I knew that teaching was definitely not the path for me. Although it is certainly a respectable profession, I spent my time as a student teacher with the wrong mindset. I had originally planned to become a teacher in hopes of taking on high school coaching as my primary responsibility. However, it became clear to me that coaching would only be an extracurricular activity that I could participate in—not something I should base my career path on.
Though I spent the majority of my student teaching tenure with the understanding that I would not go into teaching, a lesson from this experience helped me gain perspective on how I would eventually choose a career. During my brief stint in education, it was always stressed that you must enter every new curriculum with the end goal in mind. For example, a quarter spent teaching the Civil Rights Movement must be planned with the knowledge that you needed to end with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This philosophy of starting with the end goal in mind and then working toward to what you want to accomplish was something that stuck with me. It allowed me to broaden my horizons and focus on identifying the most important aspects of my prospective career. I learned that I wanted a career where competition, ambition, and skill would allow me to succeed early on, without years of extra schooling, and a profession where talent reigns over seniority.
From there, I determined that sales was the career choice that met these requirements most. Luckily, I stumbled across memoryBlue, a company that prides itself on providing entry-level positions for many successful software salespeople. While technology was certainly not a strongpoint of mine, (I am still without a smartphone), I wasn’t wed to sales in a specific industry as part of my end goal.
memoryBlue has offered a competitive atmosphere where an entry-level salespeople can not only thrive at the position, but can also set themselves up for greater opportunities in the future. Their weekly trainings develop the skillset of employees to the point where even our newest employees can see tremendous improvement and results.
During the first memoryBlue training I attended, my beliefs in our model were cemented even more. In a training on Simon Sinek’s “start with why” philosophy, we discussed why people buy. People buy not because of what a company produces or how they do it, but why a company does it. An example given during the workshop was the Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream” speech. A speech given at the Lincoln Memorial (the “what”), which when promoted via social activists throughout the country (the “how”) definitely helped draw attendance, was attended by the masses due to their beliefs in that messaging and the Civil Rights Movement (the “why”).
memoryBlue has a similar formula. While we do offer lead generation (the “what”) to high tech companies that are expanding their outbound prospecting efforts (the “how”), memoryBlue excels because we bring in talented people who want skill and ambition to be valued more than tenure (the “why”). memoryBlue’s “why” worked for me. Focusing on the company’s “why” and my personal goals drove me to one of my best decisions ever.
Would memoryBlue’s “why” be a fit for you? Find out.
