1 Single Piece of Advise I'd Tell My 20-Year Old Self
1 Single Piece of Advise I'd Tell My 20-Year Old Self
You've got to treat yourself like a business.
If I could travel back in time and reach out to that 20-year-old me…
My expression would turn from calm Matt to my favorite drill sergeant in a split second.
Heck, there are lots of things I wish I could tell that 20-year-old punk me.
But the most important thing?
Treat Yourself Like A Business
When I say that, I don’t mean…
Spending unnecessarily on office equipment to look good…
Taking investors’ money, losing it, then blaming my employees later…
Or telling co-workers, “we’re like family,” then firing them 2 days later…
What I actually mean is:
Start having a career plan and break it down by decades
Start acquiring profitable skills that I can use to freelance
Stop wasting money unnecessarily and start investing early
Start your personal branding on social media
Are any of them sexy? Of course not.
I did not talk about buying Bitcoin early. Or that Amazon will be the biggest stock to buy.
Do any of them sound as glamorous as “I built an AI Cryptographic Algorithmic Trading System bla bla bla”
No. Because screw sexy.
The things I listed above are bulletproof.
And even if you’re in your 50s… guess what? You can still start today.
A Career Plan
I know everyone wants to start a business. But how do you start a business with no funds?
Sure, you can use OPM (other people’s money), but you’d need a rock-solid skill set that could take years to develop.
That’s where a career plan enables you to identify your passions early and form a plan for each decade.
Once you decide on a path, it’s important to know how the road ahead looks for you.
Plan in blocks of 5 years
Identify what’s the highest level you could achieve in your chosen career path.
Now determine how to reach that level by breaking it into blocks of 5.
For example:
1-5 years: Operations Admin to Operations Associate
6-10 years: Operations Manager to Senior Operations Manager
10-15 years: Operations Director to Vice President of Operations
15+ years: Vice President of Operations to Chief Operations Officer
Find out what it takes to get from one block of five to the next. Are they certificates? Is there a certain kind of experience that is in demand?
You have 5 years within each block to figure it out. If you can do it sooner, do it.
Profitable Skills (Freelance)
It’s always nice knowing you have a backup. You could be the highest earning in your job, but your company could always lay you off. What happens, then?
From your career choice, identify profitable skills within your career that you could use to sell services.
For example:
If you’re in Human Resources, you could offer resume writing services or career coaching
If you’re in Marketing, you could offer Lead Generation services to businesses
If you’re an English teacher, you could offer freelance tutoring or virtual tutoring
You can get creative. Use the skills you acquired in your job and be creative in offering them on your own.
But no matter what, do your research in Google Trends or Upwork, and first, determine if it is in demand and if it pays well.
Start Investing. Like Now.
This is not to be taken as financial advice. But here’s my opinion:
Don’t invest in crypto. Don’t invest in single-company stocks.
Index funds - personally, that’s what I’m invested in.
There are many that you can choose from, but my personal favorite is the S&P500.
If you had invested $10,000 in the year 2000 and stopped investing anymore, you would be sitting on $40,467.11.
That’s an extra $30,000 for just leaving your money lying there.
Start Your Personal Branding
Businesses may fail. Money may be lost. Jobs may be taken away.
But your personal branding is something that is tied to your name - something that you will own for life.
With personal branding, you build the following:
Attention
Followers
Community
In today’s era, where attention is the new currency, your thought leadership on a specific topic will increase your chances of:
Starting a business (because you now have a community)
Becoming a thought leader (because you now have attention)
Moving up or across the career ladder (because you now have the eyes and ears of interested niche-specific followers)
Be Bulletproof. Then Be Amazing.
You don’t need 1M yet. In these volatile times, you need multiple avenues of income streams first. Even if those income streams are small.
Because if one stream gets knocked down…
You want to know that your bills are still getting paid
You want to know that food is still being put on the table
You want to know that you don’t need to turn to desperation
You want to know that you can secure another opportunity quickly
You want to know that you can tell your employer to shove it at anytime
When you’re bulletproof, there’s no fear.
And those bigger and richer goals suddenly seem much easier to attain.