92.

Revisit Your Strategy

If you're hitting a wall and nothing's working, it might be time to take another look at what you're doing and possibly adjust your strategy. This is where your friends and colleagues can prove invaluable. You may need to consider some drastic steps—things that, before, seemed inconceivable.

During my senior year in college, I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. I decided that what I really wanted to do in my career was to work in television production. I began to network. Through a friend, I met with the program manager of a local television station. He told me that if I really wanted to work in TV production at the network level, I needed to move to Los Angeles.

To many people who live in the Bay Area, L.A. is like a combination of Sodom and Gomorrah—a cultural wasteland where everyone's superficial and phony. You simply do not move to L.A. Moving to L.A. means selling out and abandoning all your principles. I believed that, too.

But you go where the work is. If I wanted to work in television production, I had three choices:

• New York...but I was from there and had zero interest in moving back
• A small market...but I was a big-city boy, and living in a small town was not an option
• Los Angeles

How badly did I want the work? Was I willing to do whatever it took to pursue my dream? In a word, yes. I moved to Los Angeles. And yes, many of the things I was warned about turned out to be true. It can be superficial. The architecture is generally terrible. There is an enormous emphasis on appearance—and more plastic surgery than I've ever seen anywhere. But I built a career there in television production at the network level.

What are you willing to do to make your dreams come true?