Testimonial
Jim Thompson, Executive Director

“When the Association Executives of North Carolina created a new vision and mission statement we realized quickly we wanted certain groups to recognize us, but we had no idea what we wanted to say. That’s when we were introduced to Lea-Ann. What a treat that was. During a 1-week Advisory Workshop, Lea-Ann guided our organization down a path that helped us understand our value proposition, better than even some strategic planners we’ve used before, and helped us develop clear and well thought out messaging that we can take to our key audiences. We learned a lot about our organization during this process. I had some pretty high expectations going into this process and let’s just say that Lea-Ann exceeded them. Great work!!”

- Jim Thompson, Executive Director

#theDREAMinitiative of recent college grad Jayme Epstein

Posted on Sep 8, 2013
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Dreams can come true when we are passionate about them, but how many of us realize it all starts with writing them down?

[success]With a goal of helping people to spark a new professional dream, Sleddogg launched “the DREAM initiative”! I contacted people who I knew and people I didn’t know to find out if they had a dream of realizing aspirations beyond what they are currently doing. I challenged them to share. I gave them some fill-in-the-blank questions and challenged them to write it all down; which is actually the next step in achieving clarity. I asked them to share their dreams for a business or nonprofit idea — or a professional career.[/success]

Jayme EpsteinRecent college grad Jayme Epstein lives in Florida and works as a Project Accounting Administrator. She graduated magna cum laude from Texas Tech University with her bachelor’s in Marketing and cum laude with her bachelor’s in Accounting.

Jayme’s strong educational background and experience working for Disney as an intern has enabled her to become a strong strategic thinker with an exceptional work ethic and interpersonal skills.

She is very driven in her career.

When I was little I wanted to be…a Sportscaster. I remember the first time I watched a Yankees’ game on television with my dad; though, at that point I did not understand the game, I knew I loved it and wanted it to be a part of my life. Also as a child, I was quite the little diva and dreamt of being on TV myself, so a sportscaster was only fitting.

Now that I’m grown up, my dream is… to be a Strategic Marketer in the sports and entertainment industry. I want to move to New York and launch a career in marketing with ESPN and ultimately end up working for the New York Yankees.

My new dream in one word: Yankees!

The challenges I am afraid of – My two biggest fears would be failure and disappointing my family. New York is a very tough place to live, very fast paced, very busy, and most of all very expensive. I am scared that I will not be able to support myself living in New York and am not a fan of asking for help. I also fear that I will finally land the job and then be utterly horrible at it.

Can my dream be a reality? Yes! My reality date is: I hope that by January 2015 I will be living back home in New York working for ESPN and continuing my journey to working for the Yankees.

My DREAM date is… In order to get there I have begun working with Lea-Ann to gain as much knowledge and experience as I can. I also continue to work at Walt Disney World (who owns the majority of ESPN) to grow my network and maintain support from my leaders within the company. I believe that if I keep working at it and being open to new teachings, my dream can become a reality. I am not one to give up easily and am very willing to put in the effort necessary to achieve my goals and I believe that working with and learning from Lea-Ann is going to be the biggest help/factor to getting me to my dream career.

While on a trip to Florida I met Jayme and was immediately impressed with her. Not knowing what I did for a living, she shared with me her pride in her work ethic while maintaining a dream of doing something else. She said that she lacked the experience needed to land a job she is aiming for and was frustrated with being held up in a catch-22 situation.

Jayme wants to work in the field of marketing but can’t get the experience needed to get a job because employers won’t hire her and give her the experience she needs.

We brainstormed together and spoke of volunteering and learning from others who volunteer.

First step: write down her goals. Step 2: allow me to shout them out to the world (here) so that it becomes a pledge.

[success][/success]What do you think? Can YOU help Jayme achieve her dream? Please post your marketing/sales/social media/etc. training videos here for Jayme. As always, let me know what you think in the comments, or tell me on Twitter.[success][/success]