The First Time I “Called My Shot”

Nov 1, 2018Stories, Video

Transcript:

Hey, hey Monica here. It is Thursday, November first and I am in Orlando, Florida for the AskLive event. I'm super excited. Tomorrow I get to speak on stage with Ryan. So Ryan Levesque is the creator of the Ask Method and this is his event. Super excited about that because of something that I did. So, in his courses, I did something exciting and he wanted me to come talk about it to his audience, which of course- and sorry if this video's a little weird, it's my first time I've been doing a live on my phone out and about. So audio is terrible I'm really sorry, I'll have to dial that in. So, I landed in Orlando and I remembered like, it hit me like a ton of bricks that, that Orlando is where I ended up after the first, the very first time I called my shot.

And so that's a term that I've been hearing a lot lately and I just wanted to talk about it. And, I was a freshman in high school, college, sorry. Obsessed with Disney, like ‘obsessed'. I'm sure you don't know any Disney obsessed people in your world, right? Disney creates people obsessed with them. They do a very good job of that and you definitely learn from that. I was one of those people. I went to college when I was 18, so 18 years old. And, I was like, “Summer after I'm a sophomore, I'm going to go work at Disney world.” I thought this my freshman year, I told a few people I was really excited about it. I just thought I would drive down to Orlando and figure it out. That was the plan. Right? I'm going to go to Orlando, I'm just going to figure it out.

I really wanted to do it for a couple reasons. First of all, who do you know that gets to do that right? I grew up in a small town and, I had gotten to go to Orlando for the first time. That was actually my first airplane ride. I'm with my friend Julie and her family. They took us and it was like so nice. I went to Disney world with the band too. Did I? Am I making that up? Maybe I just made that up. I hope I didn't. Anyway, I know my first airplane ride was with Julie. I was just obsessed, right? Disney world just blew my mind the first time I went there. So I was like, “I want to go work there. I want to experience more of that.” And so I, I called my shot. When I was a freshman I said, “Summer, after I'm a sophomore I will go.”

Now I had no idea how's I going to do that. And so here's what's interesting, is this is the first time I really experienced this, once you call your shot, once you set your goal publicly and think about it and give it intention and say, “I'm going to make this happen no matter what”, things start to happen. So, I didn't know this was the thing then, right. I was a freshman in college. I didn't know. I was just like, “I'm going to go do this.” So, I was telling people about it not obsessively, cause this was the beginning of my freshman year. So I had like, a whole year and a half to go to figure this out. And then it was pretty cool.

So I started telling people and then one of my sorority sisters, Lisa, she was like, “Oh hey you know, they have this internship program.” And I was like, “What?” Because it wasn't at my school- the internship program. Our school wasn't big enough. I went to, well, it's now Missouri state, I went when it was southwest Missouri state. But our school didn't have this program but she knew about it and there'd been a couple of people from our school that had gone up to Missou, the University of Missouri to interview. So she was telling me about it and I was like, “Yeah, I'm down for that. Let's go.” And so we drove up to Missou and did the interviews, which by the way are brutal.

I don't remember this number, but I think it was like 25 percent of people make it. I don't even think it was that high. There's some crazy statistic. They basically were at the beginning of this big meeting. We're all there. We're all hopeful. Everybody's like, “I want to work for Disney!” And they were like, “Slow your roll, nobody makes it in. Okay. Just so you know.” And so, you go through and then you talk to the person and you're like trying to be all like Disney energy and happy, which is not too big of a stretch for me. So I was like, “Okay, I nailed that interview. This is good.” Well then Lisa comes back and she's like, “Monica, they're doing character auditions in Knoxville, Tennessee.” I was like, “Knoxville, Tennessee?”

This is an 11 hour drive. Right? So we hop in the car with our other friend Damiel, another sorority sister. Drive, drive, drive. We drive to the hills of Tennessee and I get really car sick. We get to the- I mean, not super car sick, just like queasy.- and so we get to the auditions and it's a three-part audition. You have to act like this person, like a character, like charades, that's the game. And so I'm there and I'm like, “Okay, that part went pretty well.” I had to act out Mickey on the beach. So I played some volleyball, some stuff like that. And then, the next one was you had to do a choreographed movement, I think it was, I don't remember exactly, but you had to move and then there was like a full-on choreographed dance. I don't dance, I don't even kind of dance. I can dance like freestyle, but well, not even that well, but I bombed it. I don't even… Bombed, bombed it. And so I thought that was it. But then there was an interview portion. We get to talk to somebody and so I was, “Okay, I bombed it. There's no way, no way I'm getting this.” And I'm back in the sorority house,. It's my sophomore, I think it was the spring, spring of my sophomore year, I was like, “Okay, well I guess I'm going to need to make some other plans unless this interview won't relevant Missou.” So I give myself two chances and then I thought, “You know what? No, I will just go ahead and drive down there my original plan.”

So I decided that that was the plan. So I get this little envelope in my mailbox in the sorority house. It's tiny. And anytime you're looking for an acceptance thing, tiny envelope? No, not good. Right? I open it up. It was from Missou. It's like, “Hey, you know, thanks for interviewing. You didn't make the cut. So sad. So sad.” And I believe it was the next day I've got this big packet. I was like, “Well, that's interesting.” I made it through the character auditions. Holy Moly! I don't know how I did that. I was like, Home Alone style. Totally! And so, I got to go via character at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World the summer after I was a sophomore and it was incredible. The whole experience was amazing. I got my duck-torate degree. Yes, as in quack, quack, duck, and I learned a ton of stuff and met some really, really amazing people and just had a blast.

But, I wouldn't have done that without this vision of, ‘I'm going to make this happen.' And as soon as I declared that to be true and it was gonna happen then like the world just brought these things to make it happen,

And so I'm sharing this with you today for two reasons. I landed in Orlando and literally, my plane hit the ground and there, this whole story reminded me of that. And then also because I'm encouraging you to call your shot, right? I want to hear what your shot is. I want to know. My shot is to replace- to have a $15,000 a month revenue by the end of the year. That's my shot. I'm going to make that happen. I don't know how yet. No clue out. My plan is to build some funnels, launch some products and information products and build out ScriptDoll- one is the copywriting software that I co-founded and now I'm taking ownership of. My hands are a little all over the place. But my first plan is to be excited I'm in Orlando, get onstage tomorrow and make some new friends. I keep thinking about my friend Rick Barker who I met through Ask actually, and he used to manage Taylor Swift back when she was nobody. And he said, “Well if you want a gold record you need to make 500,000 fans.” So I'm gonna go make some fans.

And then I want to know what your shot is. Call your shot. Think about it though. Thinking about what you really want when you're 18 and in college. Some things are pretty easy to know what you want. Right? But I found that the older I get, the harder it is. The harder it is to call my shot because I sort of know the consequences of what that shot, like, what that is. And I know the power of calling your shot so I'm a little little more careful with it these days. I just wanna let you know that too because sometimes I have some fear of calling my shot because sometimes I'm like, “If I get that, do I really want that?” I know all the repercussions of that.

There's my shot for you today. There was my shot for you in college. Let me know your shot. Leave it in the comments or send me a private message because I would love to know. All right, I'm off to AskLive. I hope you have a fabulous Thursday and I'll talk to you tomorrow.