Some ruthless and powerful individuals (my mother, my father and their adorably pompous cats) still believe that instead of being happy-go-lucky and semi-interesting, that I should have been the high school class valedictorian. I should have been number one.
I wasn’t.
I was actually number ten in my graduating class.
Ten.
That’s nine bodies away from number one. Nine bodies who would likely come to craft highly impressive resumes one day. Nine resumes that if tailored to perfection with the right blend of experience and skill, could harbor the potential to be chosen before mine.
Tenth place isn’t such a bad position. It’s respectable. At the very least it has the number one in it (Please refrain from mentioning the big fat zero it also entails) so I’ve got no shame about my performance.
Moving forward from this shameless (sorry not sorry) failure, I managed to graduate Cum Laude from the Honors college by the skin of my teeth because I was a warrior for real world experience and hands-on training. For those of you who don’t know, Cum Laude is the college equivalent of being number ten.
I’ll admit that while I earned an Honors Associates in Mass Communications and Journalism and Honors Bachelor’s degree in Creative Advertising, I blew much of my full academic scholarship money on appletinis during TGI Fridays happy hour. For networking purposes. Networking. Can we put a price tag on quality networking? Apparently we can. For the record there are significant price tags involved. Which is why I no longer enjoy Apple martinis.
No shame in that either. Back then Appletini’s were a part of my personal brand. The more neon the better. The overpriced books at the store were off brand. See? No books…but also no shame.
I made up for being a partial academic slacker by offering valuable services as a college employee. Five years between two schools practicing and mastering the skills from corporate communications to event planning.
There was no shame when I was the editor in chief of a nationally award winning newspaper and eventually became a published reporter for the Miami Herald, the fifth largest newspaper in the state of Florida. No embarrassment when I won journalism awards on the regional and state levels. No reason to hide when my face was plastered in a state leadership magazine, a virtual who’s who of individuals who would create a real and lasting impact in the world.
Quite excited when I took my success in communications to enter the field of personal brand building and scholarship coaching, helping to craft image and resumes while developing, facilitating and packaging, award winning candidates and building the blueprints for international philanthropic projects from the ground up.
My work in personal brand building and international philanthropic project creation landed me as special counsel to a small country. It was an exciting stint. My breadth of experience and carefully tailored personal brand got me through the armed gates of the Red House, serving as the lead project consultant to the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago on the nation’s first philanthropic pilot program for the national school system. Onward to serving as the public face and ambassador for this program in the local media and national broadcast television. Our public facing position: We are big on career counseling. Leadership Development. Philanthropic advocacy. Shaping aspiring great minds to achieve excellence.
No shame. No doubts. No confusion about my career path. But these things are soulless ninja’s who aren’t moved by how awesome the heads of state think your ideas are. These things…are straight up savages. They don’t care who you are or what your resume says. They take their orders from failure, from bad luck, from a sudden shift in the status quo. They creep up from the back, in the dark, quite often when you have big plans and are expecting for something even more fabulous to happen.
My experiences on the island left me soaring. But instead of walking into my next phase as the future of creative direction, or corporate communications, or whatever thing I was planning to do, I instead had my life ripped out from the ground up as if it were a weed. I stayed in free fall for better part of a decade, frustrated that I couldn’t use my hard earned skills and talents the way that I had always believed they should be used.
Some of us may miss a key opportunity living out a story like this. Yes, there are real concerns. Real fears. But also real lessons to be learned here. And one day, we may very well wake up and realize that there is a purpose…a method to the madness. If we are very brave and follow the road. If we stay committed to our gifts, plant our feet, adopt a growth mindset, and learn to adapt, we can uncover an answer that leads to a more empowering career path.
My answers came with a deep dive into self-exploration and asking the right questions.
Who am I? It’s probably the most important question we can ask ourselves. After that…
How does the Me that I truly am… define success?
Is success measured by how much money we’ve earned? Is it defined by the impressive job titles that we put behind our names or determined by our awards and honors and accolades that prove we have something worthwhile to share?
You bet it is! Who doesn’t want to walk the red carpet then pose in front of a porsche next to Oprah holding a giant bag of money in order to feel fulfilled?
I’ll tell you who…a number ten who sees the value of having the complete picture.
This number ten understands that while skill, experience, ambition and drive are crucial to career potential there is more to the equation to be considered. Because number ten was in the height of a public career rise when she was gifted one of the most powerful secrets to life itself. This is a piece of truth that can be soul changing. It contains within it the seeds of a more fulfilling existence.
Success is the progressive realization of worthwhile goals. And who you truly are at the deepest level should be the only thing that ever determines what anything is really worth.
This self-knowledge is part of a key that liberates us from the shame, doubt and fear of career conflict. It began to unfold when I was ready.
Realizing life and career goals that truly matter. Discovering meaning within the unnerving pathways. Unearthing our purpose. Taking time out to recognize and fine tune our greatest strengths, the full gambit of hard skills, soft skills, talents, and allowing it all to blend in a harmonious expression of excellence. Finding our story, our “why” and letting it lead us to the kind of job freedom that empowers us to achieve, create and excel on our own terms—terms that grant us lasting connection to a career road that is in alignment with the most authentic forms of our deepest personal brand. This is an echo in my heart now. It was my lesson. My road to my next big thing. And now it is a definition of success that I counsel my clients to always put first. For along this route…we will find a way to unleash the full culmination of who we are, who we are meant to serve and how.
I sense that many number ones often take a more direct route. Number tens by contrast are long winded…they write long bios, they take the long way, meandering through the jungle of life. Mine was a purposeful jungle that gave me the gift of new training in personal development.
With nearly fifteen years within the counseling and personal growth fields, learning to ask the right questions and finding an inspiring rhythm as a personal empowerment mindset coach and mind-body-spirit mentor, I finally got to the truest core of my own personal brand. More than twenty years creating impact in the field of communications, Nearly a decade in marketing and brand development, Seven years expanding my skills in the area of social media, photography, video production, graphic and web design. Today as the creative strategist, brand designer and lead mindset coach for a creative agency that emphasizes personal and career empowerment, I enjoy the freedom of sharing my gifts in the many colors and shades of me.
I am the founder of an online school for visionaries, personal empire builders and career seekers. I am a multimedia storyteller who helps new entrepreneurs, career seekers and internationally recognized non-profits to launch meaningful projects, brand assets and events that are in alignment with who they are.
And I am a number ten.
What I do is quite simple. I help mission based visionaries to shine. To communicate their stories. To understand their greatest strengths and develop a dazzling online and offline presence with precision, artistry and audience focused multi-media messaging. And most of all…I help career builders to uncover, brand and love the entirety of their gifts, skills and passions while unapologetically, powerfully and shamelessly doing what they were born to do. I give them tools to rise, to succeed and to achieve beyond what they thought possible.
I understand now that within every career shattering moment there can exist the seeds of purpose and personal power. It took me time to discover my seeds. Many more years to understand them, water them, watch them bare fruit and teach others to do the same. But they did blossom. And the fruit is good.
That makes me a number one in the most fulfilling job role of my lifetime.
Mom, Dad and the cats are proud.
