So you’ve decided to stop letting time pass you by, and to embrace your calling in this world?  Since you’ve established your goal, the next step is getting started.  But how does one get started?

There’s a term that I will use often in my future blog postings, and that term is “The Entry Level”.  What I mean when I use this term is what you will probably end up doing when you decide to start down a new career path.

What I consider to be the true entry level of any field is the one that requires the least amount of preparation or investment.  One of the main mistakes that a lot of people make when they want to start down a new career path is that they overestimate how much preparation they will need to do, or how many supplies they will need.  There is simply no substitute for actually practicing what you want to make a living doing.

Let’s say that it’s your dream to one day have your own daily talk show.  You might consider buying a webcam and setting it up at your computer desk, posting your opinions about various subjects to YouTube.  If you wanted to, you could even have special guests!  With the minimal investment of a webcam, and the preparation of having a few topics set aside for you to discuss, you are now in the entry level of the talk show industry.  Your next step could involve stepping up your production values, working on your charisma, or just simply developing a huge backlog in an effort to generate a following.

Or maybe you want to be a professional model.  Your entry level would be to purchase a camera and get someone to take photographs of you on a regular basis.  Or maybe you’re lucky enough to know someone who wants to be a professional photographer, who would probably jump at the opportunity to have a person to hone his or her skills with.

That brings me to another point that I would like to make about networking.  You should try to find people with whom you can grow with, who are at the same level as you in their own career path.  Maybe you can develop a partnership, and find yourself an ally to climb the ladder with.  Or, like in the above example, you can benefit by having a contact that can help move your own career forward, and vice versa.

I use an example such as this to illustrate how your eagerness to learn, and a hunger for growth can feed off of someone else’s.  There simply is no substitute for doing something when it comes to learning it.  You can read about it forever, but until you actually do it, and develop a muscle memory, it’s little more than a goal or an aspiration.  After all, the question is “What do you do for a living?”, and not “What do you want to do for a living?”  So just do it.  Stop living in the future!

My generation is probably one of the most ambitious generations of all time.  We have high hopes, and big ideas, and we all want to be millionaires.  Our major fault is our failure to back up these dreams with action.  Often times, the number one obstacle holding us back is our failure to get started on our goals, always putting them in the future, or awaiting some event to trigger them for us… such as winning the lottery, graduating college, a government program, etc.  What I’m trying to tell you is that you need to make it happen yourself!

Take me for example.  I’ve been in the planning stages for way too long. I registered www.swollenthumb.com in 2004 for crying out loud!  I have so many projects backlogged that it was like a kinked hose with a lot of pressure on it, which would burst through if only the kink would be fixed.  For so long, I didn’t know what the first step was.  Finally, in mid 2008, I set a date of January 9th to launch my business, for better or for worse.  With the implementation of David Allen’s program, “Getting Things Done” I am finally ready to unleash my projects, one by one.  Right now, I am in the entry level of my profession, which simply put, is providing value to as many people as possible.

What about you?  Are you in the profession of your choice?  And if not, what can you do to get started?  Can you identify the entry level of your dream career?  Remember, if it’s not something you can get started on in the near future, then it is not the entry level.  And remember that if there’s a fire in your belly, and you have the desire to get out there and create, then don’t let anything hold you back.