Dreams are essentially things you want to do, be, or have. My dreams this year include establishing a professional brand (thing I want to be) and traveling abroad (thing I want to do). I made progress into both this month: I spoke on social media at two speaking engagements to start branding myself as a speaker and social media expert, and I found a travel buddy and booked my flights for a trip to Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatan peninsula! I want to share these two personal case studies of how I used the concept of “dreamlining” in order to achieve my dreams.
For those who are unfamiliar, dreamlining is applying a timeline of defined steps to what you would consider to be a dream. It requires you to think big as if you had all the time and money to live your millionaire experience, set targeted monthly incomes to finance the dream within six months, and execute immediately on concrete steps to make the dream happen.
Here’s how I did both:
I decided to beta test a career as a speaker and social media expert.
Case Study #1: Beta Testing a Career as a Speaker
Think Big: My goal was to start specializing in one skill or area of expertise so that I could stand out and brand myself professionally in that skill or area. I decided to try speaking about social media. It was a total thrill speaking to a chamber of commerce on how to leverage social media to grow small businesses and to an audience of 100 at an employment non-profit on how to use social media to find a job.
Targeted Monthly Income to fund the dream: $0. It costs nothing to beta test a career!
Four Key Steps:
1. Redefine what it takes to be an expert. Realize that you have valuable expertise to share; you just have to think about what you’re good at relative to the audience you are speaking to. What do you do that others wish they could do or do better? What passions could you speak about off the top of your head?
2. Use a combination of networking and marketing to create opportunity for yourself. In other words, let others know what you’re good at. I was first invited by the chamber of commerce because an AT&T co-worker who sat on their board knew I was knowledgeable about social media because I had explicitly mentioned that I was good in social media and open to teaching about it in a non-related meeting.
3. Perform low-risk and time-efficient beta experiments of your dreams. Testing out what it’s like to be a speaker didn’t require monetary investment or a time-consuming and conventional job search. All I had to do was ask if people were interested in learning what I have to offer and spend some time creating a PowerPoint deck.
4. Leverage others’ competitive advantage for efficient results; use Pareto’s 80/20 rule. I was able to do an entirely different presentation for the employment non-profit on two days notice because I reached out to an AT&T recruiter (@campusdiva) to get advice on content instead of spending time researching from scratch; I got 80% of my content ideas from 20% of my time used.
A friend inspired me to visit the Yucatan peninsula with this photo of Tulum
Case Study #2: Destination Central America
Think Big: My goal was to travel abroad; I had listed Greece/Turkey, Costa Rica, and several places in Europe and Asia as options. I ended up booking a trip to Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatan peninsula, as well as a separate shorter trip to Costa Rica! I’m so excited about exploring Central America!
Targeted Monthly Income to fund the dream: I need to save or make $183/month for five months to fund a May departure for the Guatemala, Belize, and Yucatan trip (estimated $915 total), and $141/month for six months to fund a June departure for Costa Rica (estimated $845 total). Traveling is really not that expensive; I’ll teach you some tips on hunting down travel deals.
Four Key Steps:
1. Schedule in liberation so you can start thinking big. The first step to making a successful travel plan is to schedule vacation or negotiated unpaid time off. It’s much easier to start dreaming and planning once you have solid dates of free time that you are committed to filling up.
2. Ping constantly. I prefer traveling with a travel buddy, so I made efforts to go find one. I asked different friends about their travel plans to make a list of potential travel buddies. I also initiated conversations with those I don’t talk to as often; I usually ask people “how are you” in addition to wishing them “happy birthday” on Facebook. You’ll be surprised how far a simple “how are you?” could go – I found my travel buddy for the Guatemala/Belize/Yucatan trip this way!
3. Share your goals to build a reservoir of feedback and ideas. I would ask people who returned from trips about their interesting adventures so that I could get a sense of what’s out there. When people ask me how I’ve been, I would share my travel favorites with them, and some would reply back with their own travel favorites. In fact, my friend Cynthia was the one who first shared with me beautiful pictures of the Yucatan peninsula, and that significantly influenced me to want to explore it!
4. Outsource the heavy duty research to experts. Once Central America was determined to be the location, I went into STA to look up different sample itineraries and spoke with an STA travel agent to get a sense of what was do-able in each country – all for free. That made it easy to plan our own itinerary for Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatan peninsula modeled after one of their trips.
——————–
What are your dreams; what are the things you want to do, be, or buy? More important, how will you get there and how can people help?
