This isn’t the important part of the story, but last night I… accidentally… watched The Bachelor. It was the first episode where the 22 girls do the walk up and do the 2 minute intro. One of the girls was a Jewellery Designer. My girlfriend on the couch next to me said, “that’s so cool! how do you become a Jewellery Designer?”. My response: “You just start”.

Before this woman was a Jewellery Designer (capital J and capital D), she just started designing jewellery (lowercase d, lowercase j). This is like anything worthwhile – you don’t become something until you start. You don’t get that title with the capital letter until you’ve done it. If you ask “how do you become an Author? that sounds so cool”, the answer is you just start writing. If you keep writing to the point where you publish a book, you’re an Author. If you ask “how do you become a Painter?”, the answer is you start painting.

Perhaps in a job you get the title before you’ve done the work. But very few jobs provoke the response “wow, that sounds so cool, how do you become that?”.