Be number one in a small pond first. It teaches you how to swim before the ocean.

Competence is built more easily where the stakes are survivable. A smaller setting gives you real responsibility early, actual feedback, and the chance to be wrong without it ending anything, which is precisely what a larger one will not offer a beginner. Being best in a small place is training rather than a destination.

Look for the room where you could be genuinely useful now rather than the one with the best name attached. Take on more than you are strictly qualified for while the consequences are small. Move up when the place has stopped teaching you anything, and not before.