“On this path let the heart be your guide”.
If there’s one thing, aside from “be willing to work your ass off,” I would tell you, it wouldn’t matter if you recently graduated from college, earned a two-year associate degree from a vocational school, or did neither and are set to enter the workforce straight out of high school. Everything you need to know to succeed is learned at the bottom.
GO BACK AND READ THAT. Could you take a moment and let it sink in? Everybody wants to be at the top, the boss, the person in charge, and the top dog. However, only some people belong there, usually because they need to pay attention to the lessons they should have learned at the bottom. Those at the top are often valued because they are unafraid and fearless when starting at the bottom.
Examine Romantic Career Ideas
Idealized ideas are more conducive to some careers than others. Still, regardless of the career path you take, success in any field you pick will need hard work. The first job in any career is an entry-level one.
We begin at the bottom of the employment food chain and work our way up by tenacity and determination.
Bobby Flay is a successful restaurant owner in a field sometimes unduly idealized by aspiring cooks. He has some experience with food chains. However, Flay wasn’t always well-known. She has been on several Food Network programs, including Throwdown with Bobby Flay, Iron Chef America, Grillin’ & Chillin’, Beat Bobby Flay, and Brunch @ Bobby’s.
You would be mistaken to believe he did not initially earn his stripes by working at the bottom of a field notorious for monotonous jobs like dicing, slicing, chopping, and mincing.
At seventeen, Flay left high school to work as a waiter at Joe Allen’s, a well-known restaurant in New York’s Theater District, where he would spend hours creating salads. He had dreams about the Mesa Grill restaurant concept as he worked on this and “cranked out countless meals,” as he puts it in Bobby Flay’s cookbook.
Pay Your Dues to Continue Forward Progress
Because of Flay’s exceptional qualities, his boss at Joe Allen’s paid for him to spend time learning his craft at NYC’s French Culinary Institute. Following this, he took on several jobs to gain experience in the actual world of working in a restaurant kitchen.
He realized he needed to be fully prepared to manage his kitchen during this period. Dreaming big was all good, but I needed the abilities first. I still needed to have a personal perspective on food. So he decided to work as a cook, not an executive chef, at another restaurant, where he was first exposed to the tastes that would later become his signature southwestern cuisine.
Since then, Flay has built up a vast empire in the food industry, including TV series, restaurants, cookbooks, and food items. His example demonstrates that for your vision to pass, it takes knowledge to polish your abilities.
Put another way, you can sharpen the knives you use in your kitchen by working on someone else’s. The spotlight that shines on you may reveal your strengths and weaknesses if you skip the time at the bottom when you learn what it takes to live at the top.
Cold Calls: A Reality Check
The lowest rung in the staffing sector, or any sales-related profession, is cold calling, or what business people call “dialing for dollars.” That entailed going through the Yellow Pages business line by line in the hopes that someone would answer the phone and we could talk about the services provided by the company I worked for.
I wouldn’t say I liked having to do that, but it was unavoidable. Making those calls, though I was unaware of it at the time, set the groundwork for many business contacts that would eventually support the founding of my two companies, Encore Professionals Group and BF Consultants.
I learned the business by cold calling and working on the bottom rung, grinding, and cranking away.
I had yet to learn the accounting or financial roles I would fill when I started. I have yet to gain experience asking clients about their employment needs or providing professional services. I had yet to gain experience in company development or serve as a valuable resource for individuals looking to find talent for their organizations.
I learned this by cold-phoning, asking clients how I might help, and conversing with them about their problems. I learned the fundamentals from the ground up, which helped me rise to the top and eventually become my boss.
I now handle many deals from people I’ve known for over twenty years. My past relationships have been directly responsible for any business success I have experienced, and many of them began with that awful cold call.
The Bottom: A Destination Not to Exist
Instead of staying at the bottom, the goal is to get started there. Entry-level jobs are meant to be beginnings, not ends. Now is the moment to plant firm roots so you never lose your grounding, no matter how high you climb.
It’s the place that shapes your identity and the kind of worker (or employer, if that’s what you want to be, eventually). Your character is seasoned by going through the journey and understanding how it feels. You don’t have to have an appetite to taste what it’s like at the bottom. But you must be aware of the flavor.
