From Job Hopping to Living the Dream Job
hello everyone
i’m gonna start by painting a picture
for you metaphorically of course with
the help of some photos because i can’t
actually paint
here’s a photo of me in 2017 i was
working in a corporate job
this was my fourth job in four years so
clearly i wasn’t very good when it came
to sticking to just one job
i didn’t really hate this job but i
didn’t particularly love it either
every time i quit a job i thought there
was a problem with the job
maybe there was another job that was
better suited for me because every job
i’d done left me feeling so dissatisfied
and like i had no purpose in life
on paper i seem to have it all a great
college degree
a good job a decent life living in
mumbai but deep down i knew that this
was not what i wanted to be doing
and that there had to be more to life i
just felt so restless and uneasy and it
made no sense because this was the life
that i wanted all along
i consciously worked hard to build this
life for myself to work my way up the
corporate ladder and now that i was
there it didn’t really make me happy
during my last job i finally had an
epiphany that my problem wasn’t with any
of my jobs in particular but with jobs
in general
i just didn’t want to be working for
someone else now i’m sure a lot of
people who work
feel this way but what can you actually
do about it right i mean we all
about our jobs but
at the end of the day we’ve all got
bills to pay and what does one even do
in life you study hard get into a good
college
get a good job go to b school get an
even better job and your life is said
right
at least that’s what we’re made to
believe and i definitely believe that
too
now here’s a photo of me exactly two
years later in 2019
it took a while but i finally found a
job that i stuck with for longer than a
year
in this photo i am in czech republic for
work in the past three years my work has
taken me to countries like iceland
vietnam the us dubai indonesia singapore
kazakhstan czech republic thailand and
of course a lot of places within india
as well
and the best part is that i didn’t
actually pay to go on most of these
trips
in fact i was being paid to go on some
of these trips
my current job involves traveling to
different places and creating content to
share on my youtube channel and my
something that i never knew could be a
job even when i started doing this
myself
i’m my own boss now and i finally have
something that i wanted for a very long
time which is freedom
financial freedom so that i don’t have
to rely on anyone for money
location freedom to be able to work from
anywhere in the world and time freedom
to be able to work anytime
and not work if i don’t want to be
working so how did i go from this job
switching
lost and confused person to basically
living my dream life right now traveling
the world
at least before the pandemic happened
and getting paid to do something that i
love doing which is taking photos and
videos
that journey is basically the crux of my
talk today sprinkled with some learnings
and insights
now of course i’m not assuming that all
of you or even any of you for that
matter wants to pursue a career in
content creation
i’m not here to tell you to forget about
your plans quit your job and travel the
world it’s honestly not as simple as
that
but i’m sure everyone listening to this
has a dream life whether that involves
working in consultancy
investment banking doing something
off-beat like i am
or maybe you haven’t figured out what
your dream life is quite yet
but irrespective of what your dream is
i’ve come to realize that there are
essentially five pillars that have
helped me build my dream life and that i
think will help you build your dream
life as well
the first pillar is experimenting until
college my life was fairly predictable
i grew up in a small city called velour
in tamil nadu and
i was always a good student who talked
her class now i’m not saying this to
brag but we’ll get back to this point
later again in the story
so after scoring really good marks in my
12th board exams
i got into one of the best colleges in
the country for economics
lady sriram in delhi through college i
did everything that was expected of me
i got decent grades i had a lot of fun
like any college kid would
i sat for college placements and got
myself a job in finance
partly because i enjoyed that subject
but also because i thought that it was a
smart and stable field to be in
i was all of 20 years old then and i had
no
idea how the real job world works so
with that naive enthusiasm i packed my
bags and moved from delhi to mumbai all
ready to start my life as an independent
corporate working woman
i was honestly feeling amazing about
this living by myself independently in a
city like mumbai
with my job as a financial analyst
living the good life right
of course it’s another story that my job
involved me working from 8 am to
sometimes
4 to 5 a.m and i barely got to see
mumbai while i was there but it felt
like i was living the dream life
which i was except it wasn’t my dream
life i was living a life which i was
made to believe is the ideal life but i
soon realized that i didn’t enjoy it at
all
i also saw my seniors around me at work
living a similar life
and this is what my future would have
looked like had i continued down that
path
nothing wrong with that part of course
but it just didn’t make me happy
and so i took a leap of faith and
decided to quit my stable and secure job
even though i had no idea what i
actually wanted to be doing with my life
in hindsight it was definitely easier to
take that kind of risk because i was
only 20 years old at that time
but thus began my series of experiments
to figure out and build my dream life
like i mentioned i had no idea what i
wanted to be doing i knew it wasn’t
finance and i also knew that i wanted to
try something creative because i’ve
always been a bit creatively inclined
so i started job hunting and eventually
landed myself a job in this ad agency
called lolintas in bangalore
i did that for a while then went on to
study advertising worked in digital
marketing and then eventually worked in
marketing which was my last job
and during those four years i
consciously tried to work on a lot of
other different things on the site
one such experiment happened back in
2016 when i started my own blog
i had a website where i’d write about
honestly anything because i didn’t
really start that with the intention of
becoming a blogger or making a career
out of it i had no agenda with it and it
was honestly just a creative outlet for
me
and something i enjoyed doing a lot
little did i know then that this casual
experiment of mine that i started on a
whim
would go on to help me discover my true
passion and lead me to my dream
career of youtubing and being a content
creator i’d always known youtube as a
consumer of content but after a year of
blogging on the side along with my job
i got the idea that i could also start
making videos on youtube
of course it’s another thing that i knew
nothing about filming or editing videos
but the idea of making videos excited me
so much that i knew i had to give it a
shot
so this one weekend when i was off from
work i took my phone
filmed a very random vlog and got my
friend to teach me the basics of editing
which is just cutting clips and adding
music and that’s literally how i got
started on youtube
i’m here today talking to you guys
because i essentially built my entire
current career off of experimenting
sometimes it’s easier to try things when
you’re going in with the mentality of
experimenting rather than
doing something that you’re trying to
succeed at so the first pillar of
building
your dream life is experimenting i truly
believe that the path to finding your
passion
is through experimenting and along the
way you will acquire so many different
skills that will definitely come in
handy later on in life so it’s not
really time wasted
this brings me to the second pillar
which is getting used to being
uncomfortable
now remember how i told you i was always
a good student so back in school i would
always stop my class
my family teachers friends literally
everyone who knew me sort of expected me
to do well and get good marks and with
that came the pressure of constantly
living up to that expectation
and making responsible choices in life
growing up i secretly always wanted to
be an actor or do something creative but
i never
allowed myself to think that that was an
option i had because i was a smart kid
that’s not an option smart kids have and
that’s not a responsible thing to do
so when during my last job i decided to
quit my job to take up youtubing
full-time rather than going to b-school
which was my original plan
that was one of the scariest and most
uncomfortable decisions i’ve had to make
not only was i leaving behind a steady
income and job but i also felt like i
was letting a lot of people down by not
doing the responsible thing
and taking up something so frivolous as
my career
it was also a huge risk because at the
time i had less than thousand
subscribers which is honestly
not enough to just quit your job and try
youtubing full-time so i don’t know how
i got the courage to do that but i also
didn’t know how i would be making money
once i quit my job
i did have some money saved so i knew
i’d be okay for a while but i didn’t
really know how
i would sustain this and make this into
a career
but that was just the start ever since
then it’s been one uncomfortable
decision after the other
and i’ve now come to realize that real
growth only happens outside your comfort
zone
now with experience i’ve learned to get
used to being uncomfortable and it’s
been one of the most rewarding life
lessons
whether it’s traveling solo learning to
build a whole digital business online
with no prior experience
or even giving this tedx talk for that
matter all of these things have been
outside my comfort zone but at the same
time these are all things i’ve wanted to
accomplish
and the only way to do that is to push
yourself outside your comfort zone and
do these things anyway
there’s a huge difference between
wanting something and being willing to
do what it takes to have it
i’m sure a lot of us want to be rich
travel the world have all these amazing
life experiences
but just sitting and hoping it would
happen is not a very good strategy to
apply
nothing worth having in life comes easy
and if you want a particular kind of
life you have to consciously work
towards building it and that becomes a
lot easier if you get used to being
uncomfortable
now all this is well and good but does
this mean you drop everything you’re
doing in life in order to pursue your
passion
absolutely not the third pillar which
may be a bit dull compared to the others
but it’s probably one of the most
important ones
is having a plan as someone who’s quite
spontaneous
and just likes to wing it in life this
is something i’ve really had to push
myself to do but when i quit my job to
give youtubing a real shot
i’d already built my audience on
instagram to a level where every now and
then i’d get
some paid brand deals now it wasn’t a
lot of money but what this did was that
it helped me realize that these kind of
paid opportunities did exist and if i
kept at it those opportunities would
present themselves to me
i also had some money saved having
worked for almost four years and
in order to be mindful of my expenses i
moved out of mumbai and back with my
parents so that i could save some money
and also spend my money on travel and
other things which helped me grow my
channel
i also worked on developing skills that
i could monetize i took up some
freelance writing gigs which sort of
helped me make some money in those
initial months when i wasn’t really
making any money through youtube
and on top of all of this i was also
fortunate to have a very good backup
which is my college degrees
and my work experience so i knew that
even if this whole youtube thing doesn’t
work out
i could always go back to working at my
job in fact some of my previous
employers have also told me they’d be
happy to have me back
so even though that wasn’t the ideal
outcome i knew that if things didn’t
work out i could always go back to
working at a job
so even though we hear a lot of stories
about how people quit their nine-to-five
jobs to pursue their passion and travel
the world
there’s honestly a lot that goes behind
the scenes and it’s never as easy as
that
more likely than not unless you want
some kind of lottery there’s honestly a
lot of planning and work that goes
behind the scenes and you also need to
have a reasonable timeline for yourself
because there’s no such thing as an
overnight success
in my case it took me seven months of
doing youtubing along with my job
or to get to a thousand subscribers and
another six months after i quit my job
to get to 10 000 subscribers
and today i have close to 300 000
subscribers on youtube and close to 100
000 subscribers on instagram and none of
this happened by accident
i planned for it worked hard every
single day and made it happen
now even though i had a plan in place
and everything was going great
some things just aren’t within your
control last year in march i was on a
trip to the us
at that point for a year i had been
traveling every single month
and working with brands that i love and
just living an amazing life
and suddenly lockdown was announced in
india i barely made it back home in time
and with that all my plans from future
trips to brand collaborations
went down the drain overnight i lost so
much potential income because a lot of
brand deals got cancelled and i had no
idea when i’d be able to travel next and
continue posting travel videos because
that’s mostly what i did at the time and
this brings me to the fourth pillar
which is being able to adapt to change
no matter what field you’re in this
ability to adapt and do it quickly will
help you be more successful
so in my case what did i do when
lockdown happened and in effect my whole
career was sort of threatened
well i mostly just spent the first month
watching netflix but after i got over my
whole feeling of being defeated
i decided to launch my online store
where i started selling my lightroom
presets and thus created a new revenue
stream for myself
i also switched up my content and
started creating a lot of lifestyle
vlogs at home
and found an audience that enjoyed that
type of content as well
and despite 2020 being such a horrible
year i think i managed to make the most
of it because i was able to adapt to
change
and the last pillar which is something
that feels like you have no control over
but in reality you do to some extent
and that is luck we often think of luck
as this magical external force that
could strike anyone at any time but in
reality
you can work towards stacking the deck
in your favor and increasing your
chances of getting lucky
so in my case by attempting to create
better content and improving my
production quality
i was able to stand out among the crowd
because i had money saved i was able to
afford travel which is not something a
lot of people have
and in turn make travel content i also
moved back to mumbai eventually when i
started making decent money from youtube
and that helped me get lucky in a lot of
ways because i put myself in a location
that
favored me to get a lot of cool work
opportunities and in that sense i
created my own luck
so even though luck is an external
factor i like to believe that you can
create some of your own luck by creating
favorable circumstances in your life
that help you get lucky
so now before i go just one last thing i
want you to close your eyes and picture
your dream life
try to picture every single detail
possible where do you see yourself
living what kind of work do you see
yourself doing how much money are you
making
try to picture every aspect of your
dream life and see how it makes you feel
this can be your reality as long as
you’re willing to take control and
intentionally build your dream life
because no one else
is going to do that for you that’s my
talk thank you so much for listening