How To Avoid Failure In Your EARLY 20's

In every decade of your life, hopefully you learn a lot of things. And I know that for me, that was certainly true of my twenties. So for this video, I made a gigantic list. But I managed to boil it down to the top seven things that if someone had been able to communicate to me, would have saved me a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of heartache. So I hope to be able to do the same for you in this video. Also, just an announcement. At the end of this video, I'm going to be talking about some new language channels that we're starting, specifically Hindi, Chinese language channel. So if you speak any of those languages or others that I'll be talking about, stick around to the end and you could potentially work with us on those. The first thing, though, I wish that I realized that if you continue to hear something about yourself from friends, family, even strangers, it's probably true. And if I had been able to one, get the feedback that people were telling me first off that I can be extremely stubborn, that I am a lot like my father in ways in which I didn't want to acknowledge that certain relationships that I were in were not healthy. And it would have saved me years and years and a lot of pain. Bonus points here, if you can cultivate a space, a safe one for your friends to tell you the things about you that you might not want to see and even go out of your way to ask for that feedback will save you a ton of trouble. The second thing that I wish I realized is that when it comes to negotiations, 90% of success is in starting it, because no one tells you that it's time to negotiate. So when you walk into a car dealership for the first time, the person doesn't say the list price is 24,000, but now we're going to negotiate, you can expect to drive me down at least 20%, right? That doesn't happen. It doesn't happen in job interviews. It doesn't happen with regards to compensation or with regards to other intangibles like can you work from home or do you have to come in the office so recognize you're going to have to start negotiations where you think things are fixed. For me, this meant one of the. The only times that I actually did this was with grad school. There were two schools I had one that I wanted to go to and one that gave me more money. I thought I was going here, so I sent an email to these guys, said, I appreciate it, I'd love to, but I finally, financially, I just have to take this one. Not expecting anything back. They gave me 15,000 additional dollars, which is huge because I might still be paying that off today if I didn't get it. So start the negotiation and work with big purchases like rent. And of course, when it comes to financial aid and schools. The third thing that I absolutely wish that I knew, that nobody actually told me at the time, is that scarcity is often just a tactic to get you to buy. And when I look back on all of the worst decisions that I've made, whether they were romantic actually, or financial, it was when I felt like there was this sense of if I don't act now, I'm going to lose out. So don't get me wrong, there are things in life that truly are scarce. But what is unfortunately and uncomfortably the truth is that you're usually not so lucky to stumble into those once in a lifetime opportunities when you're 22, 23 years old that you'll never see again. And I can reflect back, when I would go to a new city, I'd walk into a gym and they would almost always seem to have some sort of special for that day. If I signed up right then, I could save 30%. And as I got older and smarter, I realized those specials were constant. They were just to get me not to look at the competitors. So anytime that you feel like, holy crap, this is a huge opportunity, I've got to move. Now pause, take a deep breath and ask yourself, would you be acting today if this scarcity wasn't there? And not only would you be acting on this, would you be excited to move in the direction that you're going? If not, let it pass you by as a heuristic that's going to serve you much better. The fourth thing that I wish I realized is that arguing over life philosophies, over how you live your life, is basically a waste of time. And it just shows that you're not confident in what you're doing. When I first read the four Hour Work Week, I told everybody, my mom, my dad, my friends and family, they needed to quit their job. They had to move abroad and start an online business like I was going to do. And we would go back and forth and they would tell me it's never going to work. And it was really a cause of a lot of strife and in the house, because then they pushed back on me. Reflecting back, I realized that one, I had no idea what I was talking about. Even though it worked for me, it wasn't necessarily right for them. But Two, it came from a place of being afraid to do it. So I was trying to convince them that this was a good way to live so that I could feel okay starting instead. I wish I just did it and let my results speak for themselves. So if you're especially in your younger 20s and you're making your own path, then don't tell people that it's going to work. Do it and have the patience to let the results and the proof be in the pudding. The fifth thing with regards to this is to really value experience more than book smarts. I think school is excellent for me. It taught me critical thinking, it taught me these book smart skills. But I think it also depreciated the value of experience in my mind. I thought that if I read about something or thought about it long enough that I understood it, and that's absolutely not the case. One of the most stark realizations of this was when I went abroad in college to Costa Rica. Prior to getting there, I just assumed that America was obviously the best country in the world. And little things like that I hated dancing, that dancing was for women. And of course you get there and you realize there isn't necessarily a greatest country. There are pros and cons to different styles of life. Things that I love of the Costa Rican style and things that I really appreciate about where I grew up. Additionally, I found out that I loved dancing and it wasn't just something that was for girls. A lot of people can do it and enjoy it. The point is, if you have strongly held convictions about things that you haven't experienced, pause and again, realize that this is probably one of the biggest areas of growth for you. So lean into those things that you think you know a ton about this person or this type of living. If you go explore that and experience it, it's going to lead to tremendous, tremendous personal growth. The sixth thing here, this is really. I've always had a love of trying to tell the truth. This came to me very early, in my early 20s. But what I didn't understand is that there is such a thing as a lie of omission. And so to me, telling the truth was just not fibbing, not fabricating a story. And what I didn't realize is that all those times that I technically told the truth, but I left out a crucial piece of data to the person who was listening, I was creating deception in their minds. And when I look at relationships, especially romantic ones in my life that I have had, that my friends have, people that are older than me, the number One thing that I see that people can do to improve their relationships is to remove those lies of omission. Those lies that you tell yourself you're telling to spare that other person pain. The lies that you say you have to tell in order to keep things going that you're afraid it'll end. If you can remove those lies, it goes a tremendously long way to actually improving the stability and the happiness that you get from that relationship. And the last thing that I wish that I knew is that growth often comes when you do the opposite, the exact opposite of what worked before. So when I was younger, say 10 to 20, what worked was listening to adults, right? Was not having any faith in how I thought how I should be doing things, but instead to study hard, to not do drugs, to kind of follow the straight in our path. And that served me very well up until I was 20. Then there was a shift where I had to do very much the opposite. It was hard for me. I had to go against what a lot of people in my life thought was best for me. I quit my job, I went abroad, I started this business. I really did kind of blaze a very different path. But again, growth means doing the opposite. Now that I'm 31, I've realized that there's a lot of value in not thinking that I have all the answers and coming back to some of the traditional things that I might have heard from my dad or from older, wiser people and exploring them more fully. I say this to you just to recognize that if you're feeling stuck in your life, it's often not just a little thing. Oh, if I just did this differently, if I watched a half an hour of less TV a day, that is going to be the breakthrough for you. Sometimes it's a completely radical paradigm shift that actually opens up a whole new way of living. So just keep that in mind and don't close out possibilities to yourself. So I hope that this has been helpful to those of you in your 20s and maybe even beyond. But I mentioned that there is an announcement and I want to tell you about that. If you are someone who speaks a foreign language, and in the past, we've had foreign language channels. We've got Russian, we've got Spanish, we've got Portuguese, we've got Italian, and they're kicking butt. I'm super, super happy with this. But there's a lot of other languages out there that we haven't touched on yet. Specifically, I'm thinking of some of the larger ones, especially on YouTube. So you've got Arabic, you got Japanese, Mandarin. Tough because it's not on YouTube. But I think there's something we can do. And the last one is Hindi brought to you by T series that just made this very aware of how big Hindi India is on YouTube. So what we're doing is we're starting these other channels and we're allowing fans of ours to be basically channel managers where you'll get access to all of our videos, all the thumbnails, you can dub them, upload them about once a week. And the deal that we make with you is any revenue that you generate, including ads, including core sales of things that you translate, you get to keep half of. Now, the person that is going to be best for this, and I've seen the success of some of these other channels is someone that is primarily motivated by a desire to spread this stuff. Because the first couple of months, quite frankly, it's don't expect to earn a lot of money. It's a small channel, even though it's proven itself across a number of different cultures, it doesn't necessarily pay your rent at the beginning, but if you stick with it, it can lead to some significant income. That all to say, if you're someone that is interested in this, read the description below, find out how you can apply to potentially be the manager of this channel. And I just want to reiterate this for me isn't a money making opportunity. It's something that I want to be able to do with you. And so that you're not just working for free, you are getting compensated based on the value that you create. But for me it's about spreading this message to literally millions of other people. I think the Russian channel has had 50 million views. The other channel have sometimes over 10 million views each. So if that interests you with your language, your culture, please please apply below. So I hope that you guys have enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next Sam.