If You're In Your 20's, Watch This Before It's Too Late

If you're under 30, I've got good news and I've got bad news. The bad news is that you're probably wasting more time than you think. The good news is you have more time than anyone else. Time is the greatest asset of all, but you need to know how to use it wisely. And that's what today's lesson is all about. In this episode, I want to share with you five pieces of advice I wish somebody gave me before 30 insight. Number one, master one skill that makes you money. I actually got this one right, which I'm happy that I did, because I don't know where I would be if I didn't. When you're in your 20s, you're trying to build a skill that's going to allow you to be valuable to the marketplace. You're not trying to chase titles or job descriptions or even money, okay? What you want to do here is pick one craft that the world is willing to pay for, whether it's you are a great writer or thinker or designer or coder or communications expert. For me, it was teaching, right? I was a teacher. That was my first career. I was an English teacher at the high school level. I went super deep in this field. I made sure I was a better teacher every single day. And I had a lot of practice because I taught five classes every single day, five days a week for over 10 years. And I have tons of training and certifications on training and assessment, what actually it takes to get somebody to learn something, right? If I'm teaching, how do I make sure that what I'm teaching is actually getting installed in somebody's brain? So that skill of making sure that I can transfer an idea or a skill into somebody else's brain, which is teaching, right? That's the basic art of teaching, has helped me build an empire in my business, because everything I do stems from that. Whether it's this podcast, me teaching on the podcast, whether it's me teaching my team how to perform so that we can build great products. Teaching for me was the skill I doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on when I was in my 20s. And I'm so glad I did, because even though I'm not a high school teacher anymore, the skills I gained in that experience has allowed me to leverage my own abilities in a way that I couldn't imagine and allowed me to actually earn a lot of value in the marketplace. Now, you might be hearing me say this a lot. Earn a lot of value in the marketplace. Well, that's how the world works, right? The world will pay you for how valuable you are. So in your 20s, you need to become as valuable as possible. And this doesn't happen overnight. It could take a decade, like it did in my case, where I had to work on myself so that I can become a valuable person. So how do you become a valuable person? Well, number one, you do interesting things, right? You have great experiences. You learn, you grow, you challenge yourself. You put yourself out of your comfort zone. You're constantly in a room where you are the dumbest person in the room, right? Everybody else is smarter than you. That's how you become valuable. Lesson number two, live cheap, Buy freedom. You want to live as cheap as possible. Guess who's going to buy you your freedom? Freedom isn't bought at 50. You actually build it in your 20s by keeping your expenses low. The less money you owe the world, the more you can risk. When everyone else is trying to upgrade their life by the latest car, latest watch, latest whatever, in their 20s, trying to look fancy, you want to do the opposite. Why? Think about it for a moment. Let me give you an example. Okay? So, for example, let's say you have $30,000 saved in the bank. And let's say you ask your boss at your job, hey, I'd love a promotion. I want to move up in my career. I want to do XYZ and challenge myself. And they just say flat out, no, right? Your boss just says, that position is not available, or we want to make an outside hire, or whatever reason they give you, you now have the ability to say, you know what? That's okay. I want to grow. Despite the fact that you said that, despite the fact there's no opportunity. So I'm going to leave this job. I'm going to quit, put my resignation in, and I'm going to look for a company that will give me what I need. You have now that FU vibe, right? You have that FU presence where you could just say, I can do that because I got money in the bank that could cover my expenses for six months, for a year, even if I'm stretching it to the max. The point here is that you have freedom, okay? Because you have a buffer. This buys you time, it buys you opportunities, it buys you a chance for you to do what you want. So the worst thing you can do in your young age is to be trapped, is to be trapped and not have options. And when you live cheaply and you have savings and you have a Runway, you allow yourself to have options, which is priceless. I just wanted to take a quick second to say thank you for being here. You're a learner, you're a doer, you're my kind of person. And if you want to join people just like you in our growing community of entrepreneurs, hit subscribe right under this video. You grow, we grow, we all win. Thanks. Insight number three. This one's huge. I hinted at it previously, like five minutes ago, and that's find rooms, spaces where you are the least impressive person. Your environment is your accelerator. You want to go to places that encourage you to grow, to think differently, that expand your mind. Go to conferences, even if they're not related to your job or your work. You want to go to a personal development conference or a public speaking conference, go to it so you can improve yourself. Show up your weaknesses where you feel like if you've improved them, you have a better chance of succeeding in business. The point I'm trying to make with Insight number three is you gotta get into rooms that make you feel uncomfortable. Growth compounds faster when you're uncomfortable. Insight number four, build in public. A lot of people forget this step, and it's one of the best ways for you to market your business. Building in public not only does that, but helps you become accountable to yourself. Now, a lot of people I know who are starting in business or starting in this world of online entrepreneurship are like, I don't know what to post online, I don't know what to post on social media. I don't want to post my avocado toast. Don't, okay, don't post your avocado toast. Share your work. Share what you're working on, the journey you're building, what are your milestones, what are some of the things that you're struggling with? People resonate with stories. And if you share your story, as you build, as you grow, you're going to start seeing people responding to that. They're going to be aware of, number one, of what you do and what you're building, but also of who you are as a person. You're going to get opportunities that, that come out of nowhere just by being visible. And what I love about building in public is you don't have to think of anything to post. You just post what happened, okay? You post what you're working on. You post reality. You don't have to come up with a script. You don't have to come up with some sort of storyline. The point here is, is that people love a good story. People love rooting for the underdog and building a Public is a great way for you to market your story and market your business. Part of my podcasting journey and building this podcast over 11 years is sharing the journey of building my businesses, building Webinar Nature, my software company. So many of the lessons that I learned along the way came from that business and me sharing in public. Just recently I started sharing in Public Building in Public. An experiment I was doing and we're going to have a podcast episode all about it where I was building an app over seven days, building an app using AI, seeing if I could pull it off and actually create something in seven days. And, and I got so many DMs and so many responses about the product itself, even like, hey, when can I buy this product? This seems cool. This would never happen if I didn't build them. Public insight number five Play long term games. It's very challenging. I understand when you're younger to think long term, but I'm asking you, I'm pleading with you to play long term games. What I mean by that, relationships, reputation, consistency. These are the greatest assets that you can build right now, right now, in your 20s. Don't chase an overnight win or a quick dollar. Chase the habits that make you better every day. Don't be in such a rush. Give yourself time to become something valuable. A lot of people don't read biographies and I highly encourage you read biographies because whether you love or hate these people, they, they're going to teach you that all of them that are successful today took years, right? And they played long term games. Elon Musk, early days, was creating an app called Zip2. You never heard of Zip2, but it was for coding photos. What does that mean? Who knows? All you know him now is Tesla and SpaceX and his craziness on social. The point here is, is that he started with something foundational, something that allowed him to have the skills he has today to build the wealth he has today. Sarah Blakely, right, the founder of Spanx, she used to sell fax machines door to door. She learned how to sell, she learned how to negotiate. She'll learn how to talk to people face to face and look them in the eye. These are the skills that she built along the way. These are long term games. Again, love or hate these people, you can learn something from them and their dedication and their long term vision. Now we're going to get into action now, but before we do, we need to understand that what are some things that we got to look out for as we take action. I think I have found through Just observing the young people around me, my own nieces and nephews, for example. People that are under 30 often fall into two traps. One, they try to do everything at once. They want to be a highly successful career person in their job, they want to build a business, they want to have a side hustle, they want to have a YouTube channel, they want to get into crypto, they want to be a fitness model all at once. And then they burn out and then they give up and they think this is a pipe dream. That's one group of people. The other group is they do nothing at all because they are afraid of failing early. They get overwhelmed and they just don't take any steps whatsoever. People like this are like standing at a open buffet. Like say, for example, you're on holiday and you're at the hotel and it's dinner time and there's an open buffet and you want to taste every little thing before you decide what you want to put on your plate. And by the time you decide, the buffet is closed, right, or you're full from all the tasting. You don't want to do either of these. What you want to do is you want to try a few things. You got to do things in order for you to understand what you like, what you don't like. And what do you want to double down on, Right? For me it was teaching. And I didn't just fall into teaching, I tried a bunch of other things that I liked and some things I didn't like so much, some things I loved, like teaching. So in order for you to find out, you got to do stuff, whether it's part time, full time, volunteer, try something new once a week, see if you enjoy it. If you do continue to do it and see if you continue to enjoy it. And then once you find your thing, go all in. So you need to take action with what I shared with you today. Number one, master one skill that makes you money. Something that's going to allow you to leverage your value. Number two, live as cheaply as possible so you could buy yourself some freedom, buy yourself some Runway, buy yourself options. Number three, right, you want to find rooms, spaces where you're the least impressive person, where everybody else is better than you. Number four, build in public, share the journey. That's your social media content. And number five, play the long term game. Give your time, give yourself time to become successful and understand that, hey, in order for me to be successful, I can invest in relationships, my health, my business skills. And that's going to take some time and I. As long as I'm working on it and I'm putting in the time and I'm just telling myself this and I'm actually doing things, then I'm on the right track. So before I go, I want to leave you with something that's important, something that I want you to just implant in your brain and not forget. If you are under 30, stop trying to look successful. I want you to start being useful, start working on becoming a person of success. A person of success is someone that has skills, that has value, that's important, that's interesting, that can help people. That doesn't happen by accident. That happens by working on yourself, by taking courses, by reading books, by being in those rooms. I talked about that. You are not the smartest person. Right. I thought that rich people, they were lucky or they were connected or they just, you know, stumbled upon how to get rich. No, the truth is what I learned is they just stayed in the game longer than everybody else. They were consistent long enough. I know a lot of really wealthy people in my space. As an entrepreneur, I know these people very well, intimately. They're my friends. They're not the smartest people I know. They're not the most charismatic. They're not the most witty or funny or interesting or good looking or anything like that. They're actually pretty average. But they were consistent and they hung in there and continue to do what they do long enough for them to outlast everybody else who gave up. And as they are going through this, as they're hanging in there and as they're being consistent, they're getting better at what they do. And a lot of us, we think that these successful people, they're just like these superhumans. No, they're not. They're not. The only difference between you and them is that they didn't give up. They decided I'm going to be successful. I'm going to work on it every single day of my life until I'm successful. The word until is super powerful. I will go to the gym and work out until I am healthy, until I'm in the best shape of my life. So use that word, until to help you have that long term vision. So your challenge that I'm giving you is this week, do one thing. Your future self will thank you for something that is a little hard, maybe even boring or even a little scary. Send that pitch that you want to pitch to an investor or you want to post that video online that shares, you know, you're building in public and you're Starting a new business. Learn that skill, Read that book. Think of what you need to do. What is a down payment? You need to pay right now so that you can reap the benefits of that down payment in your 30s, in your 40s, in your 50s. Because one day you're going to realize what I realized that all that discomfort I went through in my 20s and 30s got me. The freedom it bought me. The freedom that I have right now, in my 40s and Will in the 50s and 60s, hopefully. Right? And I'm thankful for all that pain and anguish and hard work and consistency and sacrifice. Because I'm now getting to enjoy the rest of my life instead of continuing to struggle. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If I could talk to my 25 year old self, I would tell young Omar, hey, listen up, kid. You're not behind, you're just early. The people who win in this game of life aren't fast starters. They're the ones that keep showing up when others quit. They're the people that continue to persevere even when things don't look so great. Okay? So breathe. You've got time. Use it wisely. Invest in yourself. Continue to invest yourself. Even in the beginning, when it feels like those investments aren't paying off, they will. Nothing goes to waste. They say you can't fast forward mastery or success, but you can improve your chances of it by starting today. You're guaranteed to fail if you don't start. Start the path now. Start investing now. Start taking on what I shared with you today. Now, if this episode gave you a spark, share it with another person who's under 30 who needs a push. Maybe somebody else that's in your family, your friends, maybe a youngster, a niece, a nephew, somebody that you know that needs to hear this, even if you're not under 30. And of course, if you want to continue to learn from me, I encourage you to join our Three Things newsletter at 100mba.net news it's five minutes of real insights every single week. Super simple, but powerful. Until next time. You can do this. I know because I went through it, okay? And it's tough. It's not easy. No one said it's easy. Those who say are charlatans and really jerks, people that you shouldn't be listening to. Anything that's worth anything is difficult and that's what makes it valuable. So that's what I love about the journey is who you become, what you have to endure to be there. And those challenges make you a better person, make you more valuable. Valuable. Make you somebody that you're proud of. And at the end of the day, that's all we want to be, right? We want to build something that's significant. We want to be successful in our own way, but we want to be proud of ourselves and how we did it. So just keep moving forward. Don't give up. Because that's the only guaranteed way to lose, is to give up. All right, I'll check in the next one.