Do you want to work for yourself? Those dream jobs don’t just happen, they’re created.

While traveling through Northern California last October, I tuned in to a local newscast. The newscaster was telling his co-anchor that the speaker at the Rotary Club meeting that morning had to cut his presentation short because he was being flown to Disneyland to carve elaborate Halloween pumpkins for the park’s festivities. The newscaster concluded the story with the well-known line: “Nice job if you can get it.” He was right in the first part. For a creative kid at heart, being a professional pumpkin carver is a dream come true. It was his random thought “if you can get it” that missed the mark. The fact is that people rarely “get” a great job; they create it!

For all the emphasis on growth in the “job market,” I am continually amazed at how many exciting alternatives there are to all of 9-to-5 work. And just like traditional job seekers, they can’t wait for the ” Mr. Work” knocks on the door, people who want to do satisfying work, and make their own decisions, must also be proactive. Francis Bacon defined a wise man as one who “makes more opportunities than he finds”. Here are a couple of other savvy entrepreneurs who made it.

Sports lover Don Shoenewald was just 18 years old when he went to the front office of the Philadelphia Eagles wearing a homemade eagle costume and asking for a mascot job. They weren’t interested. Undaunted, Shoenewald continued to appear at Eagles football games. Very soon fans adopted him as the unofficial (ie “unpaid”) mascot. Thirteen paid team mascot jobs, four mascot character creations (including those for the New Jersey Devils and San Jose Sharks), and 18 years later, Shoenewald founded Mascot Mania, the only professional mascot training school in the world.

Despite what your high school guidance counselor may have told you, showing up as a guest dressed as a bird isn’t the only route to self-employment. For Dan Zawacki, it all started when he was working as a sales representative for Honeywell and decided to give away 120 live lobsters to his customers. Dan was so amazed by the response that he decided to open a small side business shipping live lobster complete with pot, crackers, butter and bibs to crustacean lovers from coast to coast. That was until his boss heard him host Lobster Gram, Inc. on a local radio station and promptly fired him.

At first, Dan worked out of his bedroom, storing his lobster in a used tank in his father’s garage. His first year he earned only $4,000. Ten years later, his company sells about 9,000 lobster packs a year for $99 plus shipping. Overall, not a bad story.

If you dream of making the transition from employee to manager, the first thing you need to do is believe that you can do it. Then the next time you see some entrepreneur doing what he loves, he tries to think, “Great job, now all I have to do is get it done!”