Chasing a Major Dream: To One Day Launch a Car to Market and Own an Automotive Company

The last few months, I have put myself out there and been incredibly vocal about my goals, aspirations and dreams. In fact, I, once again, have managed to both inspire and horrify half the internet with my life's dream.

Instead of poking the bear about the number of women in the automotive industry, I announced my intention to one day own an automotive company and launch a car to market. This is a mega dream, as some would say, and one that requires a lot of smaller dreams, a lot of determination and a lot of willpower to achieve.

Why we stop chasing big dreams?

When did we stop believing our wildest dreams were possible?

Not the tidy, sensible ones we rehearse in interviews or use to pad out five-year plans. I mean the kind of dreams that feel too big to say out loud. The ones where you just don't know how people will react and the ones you're almost frightened of the repercussions for speaking into existence. The ones we carry around for years, tucked just out of reach because we’ve convinced ourselves they’re not realistic. Or worse, not allowed. That's how I suppressed my dream for over seven years.

Although my dream is incredibly huge, the hardest part so far has been giving myself the permission to even chase the dream in the first place. Whether through misguided intentions or a fear of failure, I forbade myself to dream big and instead follow the status quo. But, the status quo has never served me, it's never given me confidence or inspiration and it's never wanted the best of me.

So, what changed? Well, two things.

1. I unlocked the energy with my counsellor. I didn't accept my dream until shortly after this conversation.

2. I read a book, or rather listened to a book recommend on a podcast episode of Bossbabe. I resonated so much with the speaker, Mark Pentecost and proceeded to listen to his book "Life of Your Dreams"*

In case you haven't stumbled across the videos yet, here’s mine: I want to create, design and launch a car to market, and be the head of an automotive company.

It’s something I’ve thought about for years. But, I only recently admitted it to myself, and now to others, that it’s not just a distant, abstract fantasy. It’s a real ambition. A big one.

And until now, I’ve been afraid to say it out loud. Now that I've said it, I've got to hold myself accountable for the next steps.

When dreams fade into routine and we accept the status quo

Looking back, I can almost pinpoint the moment the dreaming stopped.

It was sometime during university. I’d grown up writing constantly - stories, blog posts, even short pieces of fiction. Writing felt natural, something that gave me energy. But, in those first few years of adulthood, something shifted. I began to believe I needed to let go of those creative goals. I let go of the dream of being a writer. I started to lean into the structure, the schedule, the expectations. I started following what everyone told me to do:

1. Get a good job

2. Buy a house

3. Settle down

   
   

I swapped imagination for responsibility. None of these things I actually wanted to do, but I just felt I had to, for fear of letting people down and not meeting their expectations.

It wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision. Like so many others, I found myself pulled into the routine of doing what was expected. I started choosing paths that seemed more logical and more acceptable. I committed to work and let the dreams sit quietly in the background. I sat at minimum wage, year-after-year yearning for something more but believing I wasn't worthy.

In hindsight, this shows up clearly in how many women I’ve spoken to who’ve done the same thing, especially those trying to make space for themselves in male-dominated industries. There’s a very real tension between wanting to dream big and being taken seriously. It often feels like you can’t have both.

The dream I kept to myself for over 7 years

Around seven years ago, that spark came back. I'd finished university 3 years prior and had been through the two most chaotic years of training to teach, then teaching. After realising a dream everyone else had built for me wasn't meant to be, I found myself working in the automotive industry as a marketing assistant.

I was working with BMW colleagues on a number of projects and became completely captivated by the journey a car takes from design to market to mid-lifecycle to end of production. The thinking behind the build, the coordination between teams, the attention to detail and the scale of the challenge. As a product marketer, I knew the cars were coming years before they hit the market, I'd get to see, feel and experience the cars before the public. And, I always admired those designing the cars and bringing them to fruition from an idea to a concept to a roadworthy machine.

It struck a nerve.

That’s when the dream resurfaced, quietly though, and just for me. I started planting the seed, asking myself, what if I could launch a car? What if I could take something from idea to execution and build something that left a mark? And, what if I could inspire generations.

But that voice in my head returned, the one that told me it was too much. Too unrealistic. Too ambitious. I told myself I wasn’t qualified. I didn’t have the background or the right title. So I kept it to myself. It became one of those dreams you store away to watch someone else do, because I believed I had no power. I was 24 years old and had no money. It was a risk I wasn't willing to take.

Turning dreams into reality starts with permission and self-belief

Earlier this year, during a counselling session, we were exploring ideas around purpose and career. I desribed this big energy inside of me that I couldn't identify. I didn't know what it was or how to channel it, but I just knew I wasn't fulfilling my desires. The conversation moved towards ambition and the kind of person I aspired to be. It was the part of me that still wanted something bigger, even when though I tried to ignore it.

At that point of the conversation, I didn't process that it could be the dream I'd suppressed all these years. I knew, and I've always known, that I'm destined for something big, some form of greatness. It's a really hard feeling to describe other than a mega energy at my heart. I've always know I need to change the world in someway, but beyond the need to create a charity and donate. It's been at my core to change the way we think as a society.

I told my counsellor about this energy, probably for the first time out loud. She immediately picked up on how much energy my unknown vision held. She helped me realise I’d been suppressing it, not because I didn’t believe in it, but because I was afraid of how others would react. It took a few days to really understand what the dream was. Before I said anything to anyone, I allowed it to sit with me for a few days, simply listening to myself and my inner dialogue. I didn't hear rejection this time, but an excitement to start and the need for a game plan.

That session shifted something. It helped me realise I wasn’t being “realistic” by keeping quiet, I was playing small. In fact, I realised I wasn't really playing at all.

Women with big dreams need space to speak them

At the same time, I’d started reading Life of Your Dreams by Mark Pentecost*. It wasn’t full of empty affirmations or complex business jargon, it was practical, clear and gently challenging. It encouraged me to take ownership of the bigger goals I’d always held but never nurtured. It asked, quite plainly, what would happen if I stopped waiting for permission? If I, as Mark says, actually allowed myself to "get in the game."

Reading it alongside my own reflections gave me the push to speak the goal clearly. Not as a hypothetical. But as something I truly want. Take into account some major personal changes too, it significantly allowed me to strive much further than I've ever gone before. Even if I stopped now, which I won't, I'll know I've done more in the last 4 months than I've ever done in my life to achieve my dreams.

That clarity reminded me of something I’d written before, about the way we internalise limitations, particularly as women in industries like automotive. We begin to question whether our ambitions are welcome in spaces we’ve already had to fight to be part of. And, after speaking my truth on the internet again, I was certainly met with some of that friction again.

I’ve written previously about the barriers women face in this sector, especially in Surviving social media content that landed on the wrong side of the internet. That piece was about visibility and resilience, but also about the quiet ways women are told to sit down, be grateful and not expect too much. The connection between that experience and this moment now is clear: dreaming big in public often feels like a risk. But it’s also necessary.

Overcoming the fear of dreaming big

I think many of us, especially women, get very good at shrinking ourselves. We learn to aim slightly lower than our counterparts, speak slightly softer for fear of conflict and appear slightly less ambitious for fear of putting ourselves in the spotlight. Almost like we have to be silent heros.

We do it to protect ourselves, to appear agreeable and to be taken seriously, but, over time, it costs us more than we realise. We forget how to dream, or we remember, but no longer feel entitled to say it out loud. Almost as though our dreams are beyond us and we should quit short of manifesting them to the universe.

And when we do say it, we brace for the backlash. The assumptions that we’re naïve, unrealistic or full of ourselves, or, as I seem to get more recently, "women". So we choose silence instead, because being silent means we aren't doing the wrong thing and we aren't setting ourselves up for failure. So, it continues to keep us stuck and unable to find a way out of the stuckness.

Saying my dream out loud - just for added measure

I’ll say it again, and I'll say it proud: I want to design and launch a car to market one day, and I want to own an automotive company.

Let's be clear, I haven't mapped every single step and I only have a few steps planned ahead of me, but it is more than I've ever done before. This dream belongs to me, whether you think I'm delusional, clueless or overambitious, it's still my dream.

It’s about choosing not to shrink what matters just because others might not understand it. It's also about realising that this is a long journey, with a lot of opportunity along the way to make and inspire change. And, to show those afraid to dream that they can, safely.

What’s stopping you from following your dreams?

This isn’t really about cars. It’s about claiming the version of your life you’ve put on hold because it felt too ambitious, or too far from where you are now. I know, I can imagine myself as the head of a company with a car about to launch, but I've still got so much left to learn.

The truth is, your dream hasn’t left you, it’s just waiting for you to take it seriously and listen without judgement. Dreams are designed to be achieved. And, let's not forget, the impossible has already been done. We've gone into space, we've travelled the length of the planet and we've found the cure for diseases we never thought we could. If none of us dream, we all stand still.

So here’s a question for you: what have you stopped yourself from saying out loud?

And what would happen if you said it now?

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