10 things I wish I knew at 20

I was with, who is now my wife for seven years before we got married. Focus is a secret weapon. You can never ever get more time. However, you can get more money. You should be reading to solve specific problems. Applied knowledge is wisdom, and wisdom is power. That would be the single most powerful piece of marketing advice that I could give to anybody. In today's video, I'm going to be doing something a little bit different. I'm going to be sharing the 10 pieces of advice that I would give to myself in my 20s. So starting off with the first one, which is to focus on health. I started my first business when I was 23 years old. Kind of fell down the rabbit hole of this whole hustle porn and grind it out and work as hard as you possibly can in doing so. I kind of left my health just go to the wayside. I was trying to spend every piece of waking time that I had on focusing on my business, on reading books, on listening to podcasts. Realistically, like your health, it compounds to every single area of your life, including your business. I think back and I think about, like, all the productivity that I kind of squeezed out of myself in my 20s. The biggest realization that I had when it came to my health was managing my energy and not my time and knowing that not all hours in the day were equal. If I could work out or either I could go for a walk or a run or do some powerlifting. Coming off the back of that, the energy that that gives you, that trickles into all the other areas of your life, is really a force multiplier. When you're in your 20s and you're going out there and you're partying and you're drinking and you're kind of living that lifestyle, you know, your health really goes to the wayside. If your health is in shambles, then, you know, your business is largely going to be in shambles as well. Problems that you have in your business are just problems that you have in your personal life that is spilling into your business. It's just a point that's not emphasized. No way near enough. Even if you go to the gym just three times per week, you're just going to get a false multiplier on the energy that you put into your business. Now, the second piece of advice that I'd give to myself is to read broad and then to read narrow. When you're young and you're just kind of figuring out, you know, how the whole thing of life works and how the whole thing of business works, you benefit a lot by reading broad and reading a lot of different fields, not just going, hey, I'm in marketing, let me read all the copywriting books, let me read all the sales books. But reading philosophy, reading a lot of autobiographies, and looking at all different kind of aspects in life. And I think that in your 20s and as you're forming yourself as a young adult, that's just really pivotal for you to kind of understand about a lot of different disciplines and a lot of different areas of life. As you kind of walk down your path of specialty, the area that you're going to commit to mastery, then it's very, very important to start reading narrowly. And what I mean specifically by that is a lot of people, they get bitten by the reading bug and they go out there and they buy all these books, which is very, very good, a very, very good thing to do in your 20s and have that nice and broad. But then as you start to kind of approach your mid-20s, even later in your 20s, and you kind of know what are the areas that interest you and you're going to be specializing, you don't get as much benefit as just reading extremely broad and just for the sake of reading, because there are endless amounts of books almost for you to occupy your time with. So then really it comes down to choice, selection, and what are the areas that you're going to invest most of your time that's going to really pay the most dividends further throughout your life. And the thing that I think that is really beneficial to do is not to just start reading broadly later in your 20s, and you should be reading to solve some specific problems, I. E. I'm at the time where I'm building a team. I need to be thinking about culture. Let me go and read about that. Let me go read about the companies that have the best culture in the world or I can't generate enough leads. Let me go read about lead generation and copywriting and paid advertising and what are the things that I need to do to solve that specific problem and reading to solve those problems and not just reading about all of business and all the different areas, because the reality of it is you're only going to be retaining such a small amount of that information. And unless you're consuming and then you're applying that to solve a specific problem in your business, you end up just spending way too much time reading and not enough time doing. People think that knowledge is power and knowledge isn't power. Right? Applied knowledge is wisdom, and wisdom is power. And the only way to get that wisdom is to synthesize the knowledge, reading about it, learning about it, and then practically applying it in your business and seeing what works and what doesn't to kind of unlock whatever those bottlenecks are in your business. The third piece of advice that I'd give to myself, distraction is the enemy. You know, I had a very, very bad case of SOS Shiny object syndrome as an entrepreneur. I would fall down rabbit holes. I'd be, hey, what's this little shiny thing? Or let me start multiple business or that looks cool, let me go and play with that right? And I had to really learn the hard way and put a down payment on success by having so much failure in my 20s through trial and error and, and really just by letting my focus get depleted. Constantly obsessed with what the latest, shiniest thing was. So the advice that I would give to myself is like, hey Sabri, like just put your head down for three years and master something and do not get distracted, do not come up for air until you have truly mastered this thing and you really have a firm grasp of how to do it before you look at all the other things on the horizon. Focus is a secret weapon in the day and age that we live in, where there's just constant ads in the newsfeed, this constant new podcast coming up, there's always new books, new series, new movies, new tweets and Tiktoks and Instagrams. It's never ending inputs and distractions to really deplete your focus off what the main thing is. A short amount of time, like three years, just 36 months, completely laser like focus towards a goal and mastering something, mastering a skill that will compound. It's not like just mastering, hey, let me just look at Facebook ads, let me master that and then in a year the whole platform changes or let me find out how to get the most organic reach on Instagram. And then the algorithm changes and the half life of that knowledge base, it just depletes. And in three years time you never ever get the dividends because that skill just doesn't compound. There is going to be multiple things that come in and try to take your attention that are going to present themselves as great opportunities for you to pursue. The major thing that you need to just be thinking about is, is this really the thing that's going to help me get to the outcome that I'm trying to get to right now? A lot of the time if you just stop and ask yourself that very simple question, the answer is no. It just comes back to keeping the Main thing, the main thing, not getting distracted by the endless opportunities that will be presented to you. The fourth piece of advice that I'd give myself is really to master communication and copywriting. If I could tell myself one thing about a skill to acquire in business, it would be put your blinders on and stay on the track of really, really mastering the art of communication. And that is in all forms, whether it's the spoken word or the written word. Either it's videos, if it's public speaking, whatever it might be. There is no other skill in business that will serve you better than the ability to communicate. That comes down to the stories that you're able to tell your customers, that you're able to tell your team members, that you're able to tell the stakeholders and the people that are in your life. It is just an absolutely pivotal skill in all the different aspects that you encounter. And it's not going to be just in business. Your ability to communicate with people is going to serve you in all the other areas of your life. With your partners, with your family members, with your friends, with people that have problems about you, with trolls, with anything that's going to come up. It's just your ability to effectively communicate a message and to get people to buy in to your vision or the offer that you're making to them. Everything from how do you go out there to complete strangers, all different walks of life in all different countries around the world and effectively communicate to them in a way that is just so simple that they walk away really understanding the message that you're delivering, but not only understanding it, but feeling compelled by the message that you're putting out there. So much so that you win the hearts and wallets of your prospects. There are people every single moment just pulling out their wallet and buying things from you without you having a one to one exchange with those people. I started on the telephones, right, really learning the art of like tonality and cadence and pausing. Being able to speak to people in a way that there aren't any of the other communication cues like body language or any of that stuff involved. And it is just the voice and it is just the tonality of that voice. And I got into sales when I was 17 doing that. It wasn't until I progressed from learning not only how to communicate over the telephone into that one to one setting, but really focusing on communicating through the written word where you can reach way more people. It's something that I feel like I got started on even later than what I would have liked it I would have liked to get started foundationally as how to write copy, how to communicate, how to write cheap words that can make you millions. It's through the art of applied psychology and persuasion, through copywriting. Do you learn how to communicate because you're writing an ad, you're putting money behind that ad to get eyeballs to then get those people to take the action that it is that you wanted to. So it's a very short feedback loop and you learn very, very quickly what works and what doesn't. And then you can apply those same methodologies and those same learnings and those same principles into all the other areas that you use communication with. Albeit, you might not be asking somebody to download an ebook or to buy a book or to book in a phone call, but more or less you're asking for an ask. And the first ask that you're asking anybody is for their attention and is for their time. And then it's your ability to be able to effectively communicate with them beyond that point that gets you the outcome that it is that you want. I would have said, hey, like this copywriting thing, this is one of those core skills, Sabri. These are one of those things that you're going to be doing this for the rest of your life. You're going to be writing emails, sms, crafting ad scripts, VSL phone scripts. You're going to be speaking to people, your management team, your partner, your kids, your parents. Like, it's going to spill into all those different areas. And if you just really concentrate on this as being one of the main pillars in business, then all the other things that you're going to do, like ads and funnels and communication, all of those things again, are going to be force multiplied and you're going to get much more juice out of all of those activities. The fifth piece of advice that I'd give myself in my twenties is, is to focus on your next three moves. So much when you're young is you're thinking about right now, your move right now, right? You're thinking about today leads, you're thinking about today money. And everything is like, there's a sense of urgency about, like, what is it that I'm doing right now? And is it going to one, give me the results that I want or the dopamine rush that I'm chasing? You just get caught up in this kind of play by play, rather than zooming out, looking at life like a chessboard and thinking about like, what are my next three moves? Let me focus obviously on the right now and what I would need to do right now to be quote, unquote successful or to get through this next plateau, how is that going to place me for my next move and then my next move after that? There is a lot of the time a false sense of urgency. As you're younger in life and you don't have the wisdom of hindsight and you haven't been through it all, you really do overestimate how much that you can achieve in a quarter or in a year. You're really, really rushing to get to that outcome rather than thinking, if I do this one thing and I do it correctly for the next 12 months, that will put me here. And if I'm here, this is the next move that I will make. And then I will focus on that diligently and very focused for the next year, and that will place me here. After I have accomplished that, then that will lead me to the third move, which is the real move that I want to be making and that will land me here. That was just something that I didn't have the foresight to really look at. I was always thinking about the next move, the next move, the next move, without zooming out and thinking, like, what's the next 10 years look like? Where do I want to arrive? What are the next three steps that I need to take in order to get me closer to what that 10 year vision of what it is that I'm trying to accomplish. The sixth piece of advice that I'd give myself is that the person that you choose to spend your life with is the most important decision that you'll ever make. For me, you know, I was with my, who is now my wife for seven years before we got married. I knew that it was very important to make sure that selection was correct before I went into that relationship, got married, had kids and really built a life with that person. However, no one ever sat me down and was like, this is the most important decision that you'll ever make. The time that you spend with your partner as you get older in life goes up and up and up. Whereas you look at the relationships, for instance, that you have even with your children, right? The sad reality of it is that on average, you're going to be spending 90% of your time with your children in the first 18 summers that they're alive. And then that time dramatically goes down. It's the same thing with your parents. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, it's the same even with their best friends. However, with your partner, it spikes later on in life. As you get old together in all the things that you do, from business to raising a family, to just spending and living your life on earth, is going to be largely dictated by the quality of the partner that you choose and making sure that you're on the same page with that person for anybody that you know is in their 20s. And what I would tell myself in the 20s is to really make sure that you don't rush into that decision and you take your time, you don't think about all of the other pressures of society or anything like that. And you make sure that before you go down that road is you sit down and you basically come up with a one pager with your partner and he'll be like, hey, like, these are all the things that I'm trying to get out of life. This is what's important to me in a partner. This is what I can bring to the table. This is what you can expect from me, and this is what it is that I want. Just having that really difficult conversation up front. I'm not talking about on day one, on the first date or anything like that, but after you've been dating for a year, two years, or whatever it might be to really get clear of like, hey, is this a good fit? Long term, it sounds like very simple advice, but coming from somebody that has seen lots of my friends with partners and people get married and things not work out, more often than not, they don't work out because the communication was bad and they just didn't have that hard conversation earlier on. If you get those things right, then your life will be a lot easier than if you avoid having those hard conversations up front. And maybe cutting a relationship after a year, after two years, after three years, after five years with somebody, if you're not on the same page, I can say that confidently as, as I look back, I think about, like the time that I put into making that decision. There isn't any bigger decision that I will ever have to make in my life. If you're in your 20s, if you're going through this right now, forget all of the noise that happens to be around you and chatter and pressures and all like all of those things, and just think about what's right for you. What is it that you want, what is it your partner want? And make sure that you go into it eyes wide open of what both parties want. The seventh piece of advice that I'd give myself is not to defer life. It comes back to my earlier point of being caught up in the hustle. Just Thinking about, like, hey, I need to invest as much physical time into my business as possible, and the person that works the most hours is the one that's ultimately going to win, I can confidently look back and say now that that's not the case. I'm not saying that hard work isn't important. It is the baseline of importance. It is something that no matter what needs to happen, specifically in the infancy stage of your business, however, that doesn't mean that you just defer all other areas of your life. What happens if you invest five years in your business? You defer all the other areas of your life. You stop calling your parents, calling your siblings, reaching out to your friends, asking them if there's anything that they need, being connected with your partner, or all the other areas of life that make a rich life. If you defer all those things, things can happen. You might, God forbid, be diagnosed with a terrible illness. You might die. Right? There's a lot of these things that happen to people all the time. And if you're deferring that to, hey, like, I'm gonna Invest, you know, 10 years in my business, and I'm gonna ignore absolutely everything else in my life, you might not get any more life. There might be. It sounds grim and it sounds intense, but. But realistically, I believe that you can have it all. There are compromises that need to happen. But as much as you emphasize on the areas of your business that you want to grow and the problems that you're going to try to solve, you can never, ever get more time. However, you can get more money. The sport of business, you only get better as you get older. It's not like sports where, like, you've got a short window of youth and then it's out the window, and then you never, ever get it again. Business is a endurance game. It's a long. If you look at most people that you look up to in the business community and admire, I would say that a lot of these people are in the later years of their life. If you approach it as a sprint and you're just going balls to the wall, all out, grinding to your eyes bleed and neglecting everything else, it's going to catch up on you. You're not going to be able to have enough juice in the tank to play a long game and taking, you know, two, three, four holidays a year, even for a week, it puts just a lot more wind in the sails. You come back completely fresh and recharged, and you'll actually get more gains in your business by doing that than just working 365 days a year and not taking any of those things and neglecting all of those different other areas in your business because the last thing that you want to be is a successful business person where the rest of your life is in shambles. The eighth piece of advice that I'd give myself, friendship is really everything outside of your. Your partner and, you know, your family. Having a life to share with your friends is an incredible thing. When I was in my late teens, I had a huge, huge social circle of people, right? From all different groups of life that I would socialize with. Realistically, as you kind of approach your 20s and later on in your 20s, the focus really becomes for me, or it did for me, is becomes more about quality over quantity, Having a really strong group of friends that you can share with, that you can go to for help, that you can decompress with. Oftentimes it's great if they have nothing to do with business. So you're not just going from business and then talking about business completely. And a lot of people feel that, like, hey, like, when I'm not working on my business, I need to be listening to podcasts. I need to constantly be consuming content that's going to further my cause with growing my business or getting more quote, unquote, success in their life. It's an area that a lot of people under index in because they believe that, hey, they just need to, like, focus on their goals and focus on their business. But, you know, for me, I've been fortunate to have a very close group of very, very good friends that I can rely on throughout my business journey that I can go to and have some fun with that I don't even need to talk about. All this stuff with the keys that I would have told myself in my early 20s is to really make an investment in those friendship circles. They give you so much in return just by having that network of friends around you in your life that is outside of your business, that's outside of your professional network, and is even outside of your family. The ninth piece of advice that I'd give myself is to laugh often in the business community. And I know for me, when I was in my 20s, it was like very serious business. I had like a stigma in my mind of like, what a business person was and what it meant, right? Like an identity attached to what it meant to run a business and to be operating a business. It was very uptight, it was very stressed and very serious, right? As I kind of navigated this thing in my 20s, no one really ever sat me down and was like, yo, these are the things that you need to be thinking about. This is what's important. These are the kind of rocks and icebergs to look out for on the horizon. It was only realistically in my early 30s that I started to think, like, hey, I just need to be having, like, way more fun. And that's even one of my goals this year, is just to have a lot more fun with everything that I do. Because at the end of the day, like, all these milestones, all these targets, everything that you're shooting for in business, like, what is it all for? If you're not having fun as you get older in life and you look back and you're on your deathbed or you've got grandkids running around with you, the things that you're going to really remember is, you know, those really good memories in life, and you're going to remember a lot of the hardships that you had to go through to get to those good memories. But if you're not laughing, if you're not having fun, if you're not able to see the positive side of things, even in the most stressful of situations, you're really going to get to a place where one, you age yourself and you just don't have nowhere near as much fun as you could is you actually had an emphasis on, like, these are the things that I want to achieve this year, next year, this decade. But the thing that I really want to have as a check and balance is I'm going to ask myself at the end of every month is, did I have fun? Am I enjoying it? If you go too many days in a row that you ask yourself at the end of the day, did I enjoy my day? Did I enjoy the things that I'm. That I'm doing right now, that I'm working on, that I'm focused on, and the life that I'm trying to build. If you don't answer like a resounding yes to those for too many days in a row, that means that you are doing the wrong thing. Because if you're not having fun, then what is the point of doing all of this stuff to begin with? And the tenth piece of advice that I'd give myself is, the more that you give, the more that you get. You know, I stumbled upon, if I put out marketing material that provides value in advance to people, then they're like, wow, this is like such an awesome experience. Like, this person's actually providing value to Me, before asking for anything, I found out that that was infinitely more powerful than just going out there and applying, like, the stock standard direct response kind of sales pitch template of just trying to sell people and hitting on their, you know, emotional triggers and then showing them, like, the big kind of dream state that they want to get to. The whole process of just providing value to your market whilst also writing it in a compelling way was just way more powerful. But I wish I really, really knew the extent of that. Realistically, there isn't a limit to it. Like, the more that you're able to give out into your marketplace, the more that you will actually receive. And the best way to do it is just to do it completely, completely, selflessly. The way that people go about it is like, hey, I'm going to give this so then I get this in return. But that's actually not the right mindset to have. I'm just going to give an incredible amount of value to my marketplace. I'm going to think about where I was before I was able to solve this problem and what I would tell that individual and what are the steps and the information that I would give them to get to where it is that I am now. And I'm just going to provide that to my marketplace. And I know that there will be a percentage of those people that in return will be like, that was an incredible experience. Let me find out about what else this person has to offer. It's very, very important just to be conscious of that that is going to happen, but not to try and engineer the amount that you give to your marketplace based on that. You know that you're going to be receiving that. It just doesn't come from a place that's incredibly genuine. And people can tell that you aren't giving with all of your heart. While it might sound a little bit esoteric, people can really feel that. They can feel the authenticity in your message. If you're not feeling, like, nervous about how much that you're giving away, you're not like, shit, am I giving just a little bit too much? Like, this is free, right? This is a YouTube video, or this is, you know, an ebook. Am I giving too much? If you're not feeling like that, then you're just not giving away enough information. You really need to be pushing the envelope of what it is that you're comfortable with, knowing fully well that the more that you give out unconditionally to your marketplace, the more that it is that you will ultimately receive. And as a framework and as a methodology. That would be the single most powerful piece of marketing advice that I could give to anybody. To simply go out into the marketplace and to provide more value than any of your competitors are willing to do. And in exchange, you will receive more than any of your competitors are able to because you're simply giving the most. So go out there, give as much as you possibly can to your market, give as much as you possibly can to your team, give as much as you possibly can to your friendships, to all the relationships that you have in your life and don't expect anything in return. I think you'll be very, very surprised by what the results of what transpires as a result of that. So there you have it. That's the 10 piece of advice that I would give to myself to 20 year old Sabri. Either I wanted to shortcut and save myself a lot of heartache. I hope wherever you are on your journey that you got something out of these and they help you. If you're enjoying these videos, please like subscribe and hit the bell button as we're dropping a video like this every other day on YouTube. And if you've got any questions, just leave a comment below with heysubri and I will do my best to get to it.