For the most part graduates who are fresh from college are only too grateful to land whatever starting position they can get in what has been a mad economic climate for some time now, but often this is when most dreams die. The idea of what you wanted to be when you first started out may live on, but you’re made to look at things a little more “practically” and you’re willed to be thankful for the servitude you’re now seemingly resigned to.

The true spirit of entrepreneurship can never be stifled though, no matter how much of a concerted effort the status quo makes to kill it off. If there’s a little voice inside of you that says you were not meant to just pay bills and die, taking one or two annual vacations en route to retirement, then I hate to break it to you, but it’s going to haunt you for as long as you continue to yield to corporate slavery.

That little voice is there for a reason and while it might be difficult to try and balance its demands and those made by your salary-paying boss, you will at least have to try and appease it by working towards eventually freeing yourself so that you can do your own thing. You have to take active steps towards living your life by design, however small those steps may be.

I’ll tell you what – it’s much more pleasurable to get into a business venture that was conceived out of creativity or spotting an opportunity when there was no need for you to do so as a result of having to pay your mounting bills or anything like that. So as much as being in that space might be out of reach right now, you have to work towards making it happen.

Start with what already forms part of your everyday life, for example many fresh employees are given jobs nobody really wants to do, such as being sent to networking sessions. Make the most of this and look at it as an opportunity.

Often all you’ll really need to do is report back on what the session was all about so it’s mostly meant to be an educational process for you and a bit of window-dressing on the part of the company so that they can always legitimately say they were represented. On more of a personal level however, this is where you should make some personal contacts.

The best way through which to do this is by doing what is suggested you should do – networking. Talk to the other attendees and exchange contacts, after which time you should open up the communication channels by providing value to your contacts. Is one of them in trouble with the law for example? If so, just do your bit to perhaps recommend some good Oakland auto accident lawyers to them.

That simple gesture will have cost you nothing at all, but it’s a transfer of value which will naturally be returned in future as whomever you went out of your way to help will be willing to at least listen to what you might have to propose in future.