Learning to use a hustler’s mindset and manifestation to reach your goals
+millennials are dominating AI use and the cultural moments | news that caught our attention this week
Making the jump to leave an organization where you’ve grown up professionally is one thing, but starting your own company is a different level of crazy / intensity.
I’ve written about this quite a bit - but beyond the immediate identity crisis, developing a thick skin against what your former ‘coworkers think of you,’ to going from a piece of the puzzle to running sales, marketing, accounting, you name it - it’s a lot and definitely not for everyone.
I worked with today’s featured contributor, Jamie Maglietta, years ago at CNN and have watched her journey from afar as she’s risen through ranks, developed new skill sets and jumped bravely into all kinds of new roles. And then more recently attending Harvard and now building her own business as a media consultant, line producer and content creator.
Beyond highly recommending her as someone to work with [🎙 take note all you aspiring podcast hosts], I’m excited to collaborate with her and lift her up as she crushes this new adventure. Read more about her very practical tips on how’s she’s navigated her evolution below.
-Melissa⚡️
how to relentlessly chase your goals through visualization
Jamie Maglietta owns Sophia Van Ames Consulting and founded (ON CAM) Ready in 2023. She offers services in long-form production management, podcast and television show development, career advising, courses, media training, and UGCs. Jamie worked at CNN for nearly 12 years and Fox News Channel for nearly 6 years. She has worked as a producer and reporter which allows her to help train clients with current experience that helped her excel in TV news.
“A dream is a wish your heart makes,” those Disney lyrics from Cinderella were ones I sang often as a kid, but I didn’t realize how powerful this one line would be until I became an adult.
Hi, I am Jamie Maglietta. I am currently building my own business offering services as a media consultant, Unscripted Line Producer in production management, and content creator. I am also co-creator of ‘The Media Mix’ with Claire Atkinson and host of the podcast, ‘What Do You Do Exactly?’ My next project, is a podcast called (ON CAM) Ready focusing on media preparation tips and social media. I just launched my website oncamready.com. I am also developing other programs with clients. I have nearly 20 years of experience in production at CNN and Fox News Channel. Most recently I worked as a Line Producer on a live to tape interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. I also regularly work with brands, like Cupshe, creating user generated content (UGC). It may sound like a lot, but as I invested in freelancing and my own business I realized I needed to diversify to survive.
Where I am today, I manifested, but it wouldn’t have been possible without hustling and support.
This isn’t the first time I manifested my dreams into reality. When I look back on my career, most, if not all, of my achievements were manifestations – dreams my heart made that I went after.
However, I am not one of those people who read books about manifesting or harnessing visions. Instead I follow my gut. When I want something I can see it and I can feel the steps to get there.
Like, “wash, rinse, and repeat,” I follow these steps, “research, visualize, and hustle.”
Sure a dream is a wish, but only you can make it come true. Many refer to this as the Hustler’s Mindset. I truly believe coupled with manifestations, it can make a person unstoppable, no matter their background, ethnicity, or financial situation. Hustling is the key ingredient and, in my opinion, the core to manifesting.
Let me try to break down my “hustle” for you.
I wake up at 5am for my freelance job in Unscripted. During my downtime I am teaching myself more efficient ways to enhance my skills in production management or I am networking and catching up on (ON CAM) Ready emails. After my current shift ends I switch gears and begin to create social media content, work on my website, connect with prospective clients, and plan events for the Producers’ Guild of America in Atlanta. Then I pivot toward podcasts I am producing or hosting. My days are long. At some point I workout and shower. I tend to walk while working, which I call WWW. I simply try to make the most of every hour of every day. My “hustle” is not for everyone. Grinding out each day has been in me since I was a kid making daily to-do lists.
Growing up in the small town of Roselle Park, New Jersey, my mother inspired me to go after my big dreams of traveling the world, performing on stages, and appearing on-air. She would always say, “Jamie, look for the back door.” She knew we didn’t have the means to make everything possible and she knew the obvious path wasn’t always the most promising direction. These words stuck with me. By 20, I found a way to travel around the world. My back door was Semester at Sea. At 24, after many auditions and “nos” I wound up performing opera on the Miss New Jersey stage and securing first runner-up. At 25, I landed my dream opportunity of being on-air after building connections that helped me record content for foxnews.com and appear as a live guest on foxnews.com/live.
With each achievement I would naturally take a moment to reflect and see what’s next. After appearing on Fox News Channel as a guest, I thought ‘I made it,’ but while visualizing - which is when I focus on seeing myself in 5 or 10 years - and I did not like who I might become. The more I practiced being on camera the more I felt different, changed, and self-conscious. I pulled away from this dream and re-imagined a new life: As a mother, TV producer, and media business professional. Through kids I stayed true to this but along the way I stopped manifesting. I still hustled, but my hustle lost vision.
Maybe it was because my job became all consuming, or my worries and planning were invested in my children, but I lost my creativity and visual energy. That was until my children were able to do more on their own and began grammar school. I began seeing myself with a graduate degree and I was set on Harvard University. Then a colleague told me about the online program and I was hooked. I began manifesting this into reality. I began investing in more professional skills, my interest in writing, and podcasting, all while working toward my degree. School helped inspire me to invest in myself again. It also forced me to hustle like never before. I knew it would take me years to complete my graduate degree, but I was relentless until I walked in May of 2022 at Harvard University.
While working the weekends at CNN, helping keep top rated shows on the air while teams were working remotely, I had this “ah-ha” moment. I saw everyone working from home and creating live shows from a beach or the back of their cars and I thought I could do that too, and I will one day.
Once I committed to working from home and also making the most of my graduate degree, I landed another dream opportunity. I began working for “Reliable Sources”, and my hustle paid off, because I was eventually hired full-time from home. I would appear in the office on Sundays for the live show. I found myself living out my dreams of podcasting, creating new and fresh content, and working with an inspirational anchor, Brian Stelter. Each week we were charged with creating a show with topics that drove conversations. It was a weekly bootcamp in innovation with an entrepreneurial spirit that made me see a different future. While in graduate school I saw climbing the ladder at CNN. During “Reliable Sources” I saw myself launching my own business.
After the show was canceled in August of 2022, I remained positive, tweaked my manifestations and began my journey of entrepreneurship. Now that I am on the other side, I wanted to share some tips for those of you looking to do the same:
Research
If you have an idea of what will make your heart sing, investigate roles and companies that might support your interests. One great way to do this is to read lots of job descriptions.
Network
Reach out to people with job descriptions that sound interesting to you and ask them all about themselves, their journeys, and what they do exactly.
Use this information to continue researching.
Visualize
Once you find a role or a job that feels right, start to imagine yourself in that role.
See the steps you would need to take to get there. Ask yourself if those steps are ones you are willing to take. If not, what steps could you skip or sidestep to continue on your path?
See the journey, picture it.
Manifest
Manifesting your goal, its reality is more than seeing it and willing it. You need to see yourself on the stage, or traveling the world, or reaching 100,000 followers on TikTok then you need to commit to it. You need to see it and stay positive about it. There is no “maybe” there is only “Yes, it will happen.” Commit.
Hustle
I use a Hustler’s Mindset where I, like an entrepreneur, see the bigger purpose and work toward my goals with relentless commitment. So figure out what mindset works for you and commit.
Wellness
Pay attention to your physical and mental needs. Feed yourself the food and exercise you need to remain balanced and healthy throughout your journey. When you manifest and commit, it can become exhausting at times, and you need to be in a good headspace to push through the hurdles.
Support
Manifesting your dreams and having a strong mindset are essential but you need a team to help keep you on your path, lift you up, and step up when you need to step out. You also need mentors and believers along the way – people who give you chances.
for more head to the MTD blog x connect with Jamie on Instagram x world with her at Sophia Van Ames Consulting
hope, fear, and ai
The Verge polled 2,000 people about how they’re using AI, what they want it to do, and what scares them about it the most.
“Some look at the past year’s rapid progress and see opportunities to remove creative constraints, automate rote work, and discover new ways to learn and teach. Others see how this tech can disrupt our lives in more damaging ways: how it can generate misinformation, destroy or diminish jobs, and, if left unchecked, pose a serious threat to our safety.”
"AI is about to change the world — the problem is, no one's quite sure how."
"More than three-quarters of respondents agreed with the statement, 'Regulations and laws need to be developed regarding the development of AI.'"
more here
💎cultural gems💎
The cultural moments and news that caught our attention this week:
Google it? People now are searching with TikTok and Reddit. “When I was just starting to access the internet, Google was an authority, but … the parent company that owns Google has misplaced the consumer’s trust. We don’t see Google as the central authority on search anymore.”
Is GenZ down to clown? The circus is counting on it. Congrats to our partners at
on their feature in The New York Times about their work with Cirque du Soleil to reach more GenZs.Influencers built up this wellness startup - until they started getting sick. A break down of how Daily Harvest, a vegan food startup, created one of the largest episodes of food born illness in 2022.
Google says 2 billion logged in monthly users are watching YouTube Shorts. This number is up from 1.5 billion users just last year. If you’re already creating short form video, you should be posting it to Shorts as well.
Your teen wants a smartphone. Read this first. TLDR: Children’s brains aren’t neurologically developed enough to handle the addictive nature of smart devices. What does this mean for parents? Delay getting your kids any smart devices.
I saw ‘Barbie’ with Susan Faludi, and she has a theory about it. “It seems to me that a big theme underlying the movie is shock and horror over what happened to us — what happened to women — from 2016 on, with the double whammy of Trump and then Dobbs. And in particular, I thought abortion was the subtext to a lot.”