On a recent trip to the doctor, I met an older gentleman on an Uber ride. We exchanged story's and anecdotes of life. Something he said stuck in my head when he was discussing his younger life, and his 50 year career on television and radio...
"The door to success is labelled 'push.'"
How cool is that? We discussed the various times that we have both found success in our lives, and with that quote I concluded that indeed success is simply a door we need to push to open. For me this was a timely reminder.
I recall a time before I worked for myself when I was fascinated by the financial markets (I still am, and consult with technical analysis, and trade to this day). I never went to college, and left school before my final year, so I had no right to apply for finance related roles. Even moreso the fact that I barely scraped by in school, had to repeat a number of classes, and could not add 2 and 2 together. Not exactly the 'talent' required to work in the niche of finance.
Even so, I really wanted to break into the industry. So how did I do it?
It took a few years, but here's how I did it...
First, I analysed the available companies to work for in my city. As the niche of finance (derivatives such as forex, CFD's, options, futures etc) was fairly small in my city at the time, there were not a huge array of options available.
I found out which company I wanted to work for, and simply started applying for jobs as I would see them arise. Needless to say I had a few failed attempts, but alas I would continue.
I managed to make it past the recruiters at certain times and would be fortunate enough to get an interview at the company. Unfortunately these all fell short.
I applied or over a dozen roles at the same company over the span of a year and a half, and did not get any of them. Ironically, even the role I started with, I technically didn't get. Yep, you read that right.
Basically, there were two fresh university graduates that got roles over me. The abbreviated version of the story is that they created a new role as I had been hanging around like a bad smell for over a year at that point.
As it transpires, the two that were chosen for the roles over me lasted two weeks, and three months subsequently.
The moral of all this being that you can choose to do anything, you just have to make a conscious decision to go after it, and keep pushing.
