How You Can Reverse Engineer Your Career

You probably already know this, but there is no one way to succeed in Hollywood.

Everybody has their own story, their own steps, their own specifics that got them to where they are. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from them. Dreams tend to feel out of reach until there are tangible steps to take, so we need something to grasp to help us move forward.

While everyone’s stories are different, there are steps that most people take for every dream. I call this the Foundational Ladder. It’s a way to reverse engineer what you want, so you at least have somewhere to start. This foundational ladder will not be the only steps you take, but your intuition, your relationships, and your skills can show you those steps in between.

Jack Canfield has a great exercise that I lovingly call WWHH, which stands for What Would Have to Happen? It’s a question you can ask to build your dream ladder. We start by working backward to figure out the steps you need to take.

Start by drawing a rectangle on the top of a piece of paper (see example below). Inside that rectangle, write the dream you’re working towards right now. For an example, I’ll go with “Win An Oscar.”

Next, we will work backward by asking, “What would have to happen [to win an Oscar]?” We’re looking for the very last…