How to Set your Fashion Career Goals [and achieve them]

Before starting reading this article or listening to the audio version, I want you to take a piece of paper or open your iPhone notes. Use whatever you want but write down the things when I’ll tell you to do so.

In this post and podcast episode, I talk about something that is really important and that will make the difference in your life and career: setting up your fashion career goals.  You can listen to the podcast episode on Apple Podcast, Spotify or SoundCloud or you can keep reading.

First of all, why you should set goals for your fashion career?

Goals give us a sense of purpose and are inspiring. They make us happier and more satisfied.

When you set a goal you feel like you’re living your life, that your working on something that you love, that you have a purpose.

If we don’t set goals we spend our days waiting for something to happen or hoping that sooner or later something will change.

Let me tell you something, hope is not a strategy. You cannot hope to get that dream job, to get that promotion, to change your job…You cannot wait for the universe to align for you and that one day something great will happen to you.

Amazing things happen to those who work hard not to those who wait for things to casually happen. Hope is not a strategy.

You can’t just live waiting and hoping for things to happen because you waste time and miss opportunities. Days, weeks and months pass and it’s like life is living you instead of the other way around. You need to take charge of your life and your career. 

You need to set goals. 

What is a goal?

A goal is a dream, but with a plan! And the plan is actionable and that’s what makes a goal more powerful than a dream.

How do you set your fashion career goals?

Think about the things that make you happy and excited and about something you want to achieve. Think about a dream you have.

Do you want to get promoted, get your first internship, get a job at your favorite company, get those clients as a stylist, move to NYC to work in Fashion PR?

Once that you have visualized your dream, you need to turn it into a goal by developing a plan and taking actions to make it a reality. 

A  goal needs to be actionable which means that you need to have a plan for it. In order to associate a plan and actions to your goal, you need to be specific with it.

If you just say: “I want to get a job in fashion”, this is not specific and defining actions becomes more complicated and also achieving it.

“I want to get a job in Fashion PR at a luxury company” or “I want to get a job as a buyer in New York” these are specific goals.

Now I want you to think for a minute about your fashion career goal.

Do you want to intern this summer? Do you want to get a promotion? Do you want to change your job? Do you want to get that PR job? 

Take that piece of paper, notebook, iPhone notes now and write down your goal as it’s the present: so, for example, I’m the PR at a luxury brand in Milan. Take some minutes to think about your goal, be specific and write it down before continuing reading this.

Ok now you have your goal on the top of that post-it, notebook or piece of paper, you need to think about the steps to get closer to where you want to go. 

Writing down a plan helps you to know exactly what you have to do.

Do you want to write for a fashion magazine? Well, your plan could include writing a couple of articles to send along with your cv and cover letter when applying. Or starting a blog to have something to show to the editor. Or going to fashion panels and meet the editor and ask for the contact. Your plan could include also finding your favorite editors on LinkedIn and connecting with them. 

Take again that page or iPhone note and write down at least 6 things you can think of that will help you get close to your ultimate goal.

These are some examples of activities you should write down:

• Go to networking events
  
• Book a flight to go to the job interview
  
• Find an apartment
  
• Find the dream job online
  
• Create a CV and a cover letter
  
• Find the recruiters email
  
• Apply
  

Take again some minutes to write down 6 necessary actions you need to take in order to achieve your goal.

Ok, now that you have a list of actions,  read them all over again. Of all the 6 actions, there is only one that is absolutely necessary to start with. Going to networking events is important, but for sure it’s not the first and absolutely necessary step to get a job in fashion. Find out which is the one thing you absolutely need, the one you need to start with. Probably it will be to start by finding the job? Or start from your CV and portfolio? 

Now that you know where you have to start from, think about what resources you already have and those you need to get.

Do you need to take a course to improve your skill? Do you need to set up a LinkedIn profile? Do you need to refresh your CV?

Let’s assume you have to start with your CV. Where do you start to create your CV?

Will you use a template? Will you take the course Break into the fashion industry? Will you design and write it yourself? Once you have your starting point, just do it.

Do it and if the things you’re trying don’t work, you try something else. And if you fail, you try again. Keep going, keep your destination in mind and don’t forget that mistakes are a huge learning opportunity. You can change and try new things. 

For example, almost all the students who enroll in break into the fashion industry tried themselves first to apply for jobs and then, when their strategies were not working they decide to try something different and have enrolled in the course. You need to adjust along the way. 

The overnight success doesn’t exist. You get results from the actions you take consistently, not from something you do once or a few times.

It happened that some students of the course got a job when they applied for just 4 jobs, but most of them have seen the results because every single day they show up and apply the right way to many jobs never giving up.

I got a message from a girl who asked me: Are there people that take your course and still don’t find a job?

Well, that is a course, I teach you strategies, I give you CV, Cover Letter and email templates and resources to use but if you don’t actually put your own work behind it, then you won’t see the result. Watching the lessons won’t bring you anywhere if you don’t apply them consistently. This is for everything in life. It’s not enough to get your gym membership, or hire a personal trainer. If you want to get fit you need to put your hard work, you need to workout every single day. That’s the same for Break into the Fashion Industry and all the courses you take: you need to do the work.

It’s like when people attend a prestigious fashion school and then pretend to get a job in fashion just because they have paid a lot. If you don’t work hard, if you’re not proactive, then you won’t get what you want. 

 The tools and the resources we get help us to continue on this journey to reaching for our goals. 

Now let’s go back to your page, read again all the actions you have written down and after that you have the first one, assign a number and an order to the others. What is the second step? And the third?

Do it! Step by step to your end goal. 

I want you to write down every single morning first thing first in the morning your goal 10 times. 

I am a stylist who works in Los Angeles and dress celebrities.

I am the buyer of a department store

I am a designer and I have my own fashion brand

I am a web merchandiser of a luxury e-commerce

Write down your fashion career goal 10 times every single morning from today.

You’re now probably thinking that writing it down every single morning 10 times seems something crazy, but trust me that it’s necessary to maintain your focus. Writing them down and not taking actions, of course, won’t change your life, but writing them down motivates you and reminds you every single day to take actions. Writing them down will make your unconscious work and act for you!
It’s hard to attain a goal if you don’t actually sit down and define what you want to accomplish. It’s almost likely you’re going to fail if you don’t do it.

When setting up your fashion career goals, don’t be afraid to dream big, the top companies, the best jobs.

I had a consultation with a student the other day and she was about to apply for a visual merchandising role. She knew she wanted to work in communication so I asked her, why she was applying for a visual merchandising job if it’s not bringing her to the goal?

I asked her “Why do you want to waste precious time of your life getting a job in visual merchandising when you can do a PR internship and be already one step closer to your dream of working in communication?

She said she was applying to that visual merchandising job just because it seemed easy to get because it didn’t have lots of requirements.

Keep a focus on what you want to get and do the actions that will take you there. Don’t lose your focus.

Having a plan written down with the actions you need to take will help you get to your end goal. If you want to work in PR and you’ve just graduated, one of the actions of your plan is to get a pr internship and then turn a pr internship into a full-time job.

If you have your goal written down, you won’t lose the focus and you won’t end up making decisions that are unrelated to your end goals such as applying for an internship completely unrelated.

To help you stay focused on your end goal, together with writing it down every single morning, it also helps to have a visual mood board where you can see it every morning. Save your favorite Pinterest images, screenshot your favorite editor, stylist, the person you admire. Add a photo of the office of your favorite companies. Create a mood board, print it and put it where you can see it every morning and use it as your desktop wallpaper and phone as well. 

So I’ve said that in order to achieve your fashion career goals, you need to:

• be specific
• write down a plan
• identify the first step and then all the others
• write it down every single day
• create a moodboard

There is something else that is really important in order to achieve your fashion career goal: consistency.

Your goals need multiple and several attempts to be achieved. Achieving a goal is not about something you do occasionally, it is about something you do every single day. That’s why writing it down every single day will help you stay motivated and remind yourself every single day to take action. 

I want to give you an example. My dream was to leave my full-time job to become my own boss. I wrote down a plan for this: in order to leave my job I have to turn Glam Observer into a business, so I had to think about how to make money from it. Money doesn’t come overnight so every single day for the last 3 years I get up every single morning and work to make it happen. It was hard, it’s still hard. I still get nos, I didn’t see money for the first year and even now all the money I get, I reinvest back into the business. I make sacrifices but I’ve kept going and today I’m here where I wanted to be and every single day I give my best and put in actions my plan. You maybe don’t want to become your own CEO, maybe you want to become the senior editor at vogue, but like for my business, success doesn’t come overnight, you need to work every single day even when it seems like there is no more hope. Like I said, hope is not a strategy and being discouraged is not an option!

Don’t just give your best in the first week and then slow down the pace. It’s like going to the gym. If you’re motivated and you decide you want to be fitter and stronger you need to go to the gym every single day of the year and then the next year. Working out for one month won’t bring you any results. You need to be consistent to reach your goal. 

It’s not easy, you have to be intentional, show up every single morning, act every single day.

But what would it feel like to go to work every morning happy to do your job? What would it feel like to have realized your dream?

I want you to start today! And I want you to never stop. Once your first goal has been achieved, what’s the next one? And the next? 

I’d be happy to know what’s your goal. Tag me on a story at @glamobserver  

I hope you find it helpful, my mission is to give you tools to achieve your goal of getting into the fashion industry.

If you want more tips to get a job in fashion, register for my free online masterclass on 4 proven strategies to get a job in fashion