What Does Trajectory Mean in Career and Business?

Your trajectory is your path to your goals or success, whether that be a business venture in any way, shape, or form, or whether you want to try and tame the corporate world of careers. Your trajectory is the path you choose to follow to get to where you want to go.

It had dawned upon me I hadn't actually covered off what your trajectory really is. Given there are over 25+ articles I have now explaining the mindset and some of the actions behind my own trajectory - that took me from a boat yard worker to a 6-figure eCommerce brand, an IP acquisition, and then onto the C-suite all by my mid-20s - I figured it would be best to lay down the foundational understanding of trajectory and how to move along the path. If every other article in this publication serves as the mindset, advice, and actions between the stepping stones of your trajectory, this is to serve as the holistic overview for how you actually go about managing and altering your trajectory before the mindset, hustle, and hard work are required to start moving the needle.

What Factors Shape Your Trajectory?

I believe in life anything can be as simple as you want to make it, so I will break down the graph of your trajectory, and the actions you must choose from, into 4 points:

• Recognition

• Action

• Complacency

• Failure

These 4 actions will form the fundamental handling of your trajectory; it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. Before we delve deeper into the 4, let's create this view with some context. If you were to zoom out and think about your life so far, you may start to see which decisions fell into these 4 buckets. You can recognise an opportunity, that something needs to change, or that there's something else you should be doing. You can either take action on that recognition, start moving the needle, and continue to try and try again until it works - or you can recognise the need and do nothing about it, or stop after the first failure in action. At a macro level, are there nuances to this approach? Sure, life isn't black and white, but starting to think in this mindset may simplify the process for you on your way to your goals.

To use my own life as an example of these 4 points: After being kicked out of home at 18, I started working in a boat yard. I worked there for about 1.5 years, recognised it was a roadblock on my future, and took the action to change. I spoke to a gentleman applying vinyl to a boat one day, and the next week I started my sign-writing apprenticeship. That was one step forward in my trajectory completed.

After working for $14-$16 per hour as a sign writer, I was frustrated mentally and recognised I needed to start working on bigger goals. I took the action to start my eCommerce brand from after work until I needed to sleep. I kept trying until it worked - I scaled the store to 6 figures and quit my job. That was another step forward for my trajectory.

And this same process goes on and on. The same decision framework took me to running my own business, selling software in an IP acquisition, accepting a C-suite role offered to me by the board of a private company, and leveraging the position to then create my own products with an internal team and have full outcome ownership. But it all could have never happened had I recognised I wanted more or that something had to change, and chosen complacency over action. Think back to your own trajectory so far - where could you be if you chose action and made 3 more steps forward?

Now, everyone's life happens at different rates, but if it's any motivation, 3 steps in my trajectory took me from $14-$16 per hour to $30k per month in 2 years.

How to Change Your Trajectory and Shift Your Baseline

Now we have the 4 buckets most decisions fall into, and some real-life context behind using this decision framework. Let's start to look at the breakdown of the 4 items and how they work with each other. Let's assume you are on a chart, starting at step 10. I will assume, as you are able to read this and are also on a device, you at least have some of the basics covered in your life, hence why we aren't starting at 0.

Now consider there is a dotted line running horizontally from this point on; that is now your baseline. If you choose complacency over action, your life will remain on this line - or potentially get worse.

Picture you have a green dot above the horizontal line. Let's say that's step 11 - this is your next step if you choose to reach it. Below that at point 9, there is a red dot - this is where your complacency or poor decisions took you one step backwards.

Now, as you travel on your dotted baseline as you work through life, events, jobs, business ventures, etc., at any time you can choose to recognise you want to improve in an aspect of your life. You can choose the action and the hard work that must be taken to hit the next step, while not letting any failures push you back down to your baseline. And after enough time and some luck, your new baseline will be at step 11. You have just moved the dotted baseline up. Now you are back to your own recognition: do you want to stay on this baseline? Take action to get to step 12? Or will you choose to drop the ball and let a failure take you back down to step 10?

The same applies for failing. Maybe you start slacking off, you let your fitness slip, you get too comfortable and get outcompeted. Just as you can go up in your trajectory, it's also very easy to go down.

I will come back to this article in the future and update it with a graph chart for reference, but I hope the example has at least created a visual in your head:

• You can recognise something needs to change, take the action through failures, hit the goal, and move up.

• You can recognise something needs to change, let a failure push you back, and return to your baseline.

• You can recognise something needs to change, do nothing about it, and come to the realisation that nothing will change.

• You can recognise something needs to change, do nothing about it, drop the ball, slack off, and lower your own baseline.

Staying in Control of Your Trajectory

Ultimately, your trajectory isn't just something that happens to you - it’s a direct reflection of the choices you make after recognising a need for change. The formula isn't overly complex. It always comes down to whether you lean into action, push through the inevitable failures, or default to complacency.

Every new level you reach simply establishes a new baseline, presenting you with the exact same choice all over again. You can stay comfortable where you are, risk sliding backward, or put in the work to hit that next green dot. Your timeline is entirely your own, but the fundamental mechanics remain the same. Recognise the opportunity, execute with action, learn from failure, and never let complacency make your decisions for you.