If you haven't found your dream, surround yourself with dreamers
The FIFA Women's World Cup kicked off last Thursday, so it felt only right to share my interview with two trailblazers in the women's football space: Carol Joy and Jacquie Agnew.
Carol & Jacquie are the co-founders of Pro Talent Sports, a for-women, by-women football agency for top-level and rising-star women footballers
Jacquie was the founder of Lewes FC Women, and during her twelve-year tenure as first team manager, the team won seven trophies, including two as league champion.
Prior to her involvement with Lewes FC, where Carol raised significant sponsorship income for Lewes FC Women for the first time by encouraging local businesses to support the town's rising women's team, Carol co-founded and ran a successful management consulting business.
đș Watch the full interview here:
đșïž The Journey
Itâs a common misconception that successful people have had it figured out from day one - because youâre only seeing the end result.
The truth?
Most people donât know immediately, so donât panic.
Carol confessed that she found her dream along the way:
I met some fantastic people there [at university] who really inspired me because they were visionaries.  I wasn't a visionary ⊠but I met people who had vision and they were absolutely driven and motivated and I thought, wow, this is really something special, what drives them forward?
Her advice, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is to remain open minded to opportunities that may present themselves:
âŠso while I couldn't honestly say there was something I did, I certainly recognised something that I wanted to do when I met it.
⊠keeping an open mind is slightly the opposite of living your dreams, because I didn't have any [dreams], but be ready to take signals that come in from outside from people who inspire you; take up some signals that might lead you somewhere that you hadn't thought of before.Â
So, if you donât know where youâre headed straight away, focus on the short term and be ready to take cues at the right time.
Read more about my philosophy on âthinking short and long termâ in Chapter 1 of Build The Invisible, Luck & Opportunity.
â Finding Your Strengths
I think if you know your character and you know what you're good at, that should be part of your career planning, I feel, not just which qualification do I need to get that job, but, am I going to be any good at it?
Be realistic if you're not going to be good at something because you could be incredibly good at something different, or parallel, or that provides an auxiliary service into the thing that you thought you would end up doing.Â
I realised fairly early on that a career as a professional footballer was off the cards(!).
But, my job as a lawyer is, as Carol explains, âan auxiliary serviceâ to the thing that I love: football.
I think part of the open mind is also knowing yourself and finding out where your strengths really lie because in the end, they will probably satisfy you. It's a paradox because you think you're only going to be satisfied by achieving the thing you want, but actually, be satisfied by being good at something and successful because you're good at it.Â
So, take an audit of your strengths and find a pathway that allows you to lean into them.
đ± The Cultivators
I heard a quote from Albert Einstein recently, which reminded me of my interview with Carol and Jacquie:
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Jacquieâs approach to business, and life, starts with asking how can I add value?
Youâll probably laugh, but I'm a cultivator, so I love to build things from scratch and I like to sew, to cultivate, to harvest, but primarily, I look at the environment around me, similar to what we do in the marketplace, and I go, okay, how can we build this in a way that we can add value to what we're trying to do. So, that's me really, I'm a builder.
I fully endorse the idea of being a cultivator, as Jacquie says.
It means youâre someone that grows, nurtures and encourages the things, or people, around you.
And, it all starts with asking yourself how can I add value?
âïž The Ribbon of Life
As soon as I heard it, I loved Jacquieâs analogy about the ribbon of life:
I use it as a motivator, so you have a ribbon and you cut so much off for sleep or for this or for that and then you're left with your time to do your stuff ⊠life is too short when you look at your ribbon, and you need to be able to maximise whatever time you've got, doing whatever you do, to the best that you can do it.
For Jacquie, its a reminder to be purposeful, and deliberate, in everything she does.
In my view, its the principle that underlies success.
In case you missed it: