If you’re in your 20s and have any aspiration to start a business or work for yourself or make a dramatic career change, you should do that as soon as possible. Ideally today.
You don’t appreciate how little time you have to easily go after it and how much harder it’s going to be later.
When I moved to Argentina and lived out of my backpack to try to get my first bit of self-employed income going, it felt very risky. It felt like I was taking a huge leap.
But looking back, I didn’t realize just how unrisky that decision was. I didn’t have any kids. I had hardly any financial responsibilities. There was really nothing bad that would have happened if I spent a year or two doing that and I failed. The absolute worst case scenario was that I would be back where I started with a year or two of entrepreneurial experience.
Today I have three kids and a house and I can’t responsibly take the same kind of risks that I could back then. But as a 22 year old, I was completely blind to how much harder it was going to be to take that kind of risk at 32.
When you’re in your 20s and you just graduated from college, you have this idea that, oh, well, I have plenty of time to do the entrepreneurship thing or to try that new career. You feel like you have all the time in the world. But you don’t.
Even if you wait to have kids until you’re 35, that only gives you about 12 years.
Each year you delay is costing you 10% of the easiest period in your life to take a big risk.
So if you are in college or you’re in your 20s and you think that you might want to start a business, completely change your career, move to a new city, do something radical like that, you should do that as soon as humanly possible.
Ignore the scared voice in your head. The downside is basically non-existent.
Even if it fails, even if it doesn’t work out for you and you have to go back to what you’re doing right now, you’ll still have that experience and that time under your belt so that if you do want to come back to it later in your 30s, your learning ramp is going to be much shorter because you’ve already invested that time.
I wish somebody had told me this when I was 22 because I didn’t realize or appreciate how easy I had it. And I’m extremely grateful I took full advantage of it anyway, because otherwise I would not have the life I have now.
Don’t waste that time while you have it.
Start today.
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100% endorse this idea! When I think back to my 20s, the "risk taking" really cued me up for success.
Taking a year-long overseas trip after college showed me other ways of living and engraved incredible independence in me.
That made it easier to quit my first job, a boring engineering grindfest, and try a series of (failed) businesses before landing on one that gave me time and financial independence in my early 30s. Even if some (most?) of it was just luck due to low interest rates and a growing economy, getting my hat in the ring was the ticket.
Far riskier to NOT try a bunch of things in our 20s, if you ask me! At the very least, we end up with entertaining stories of failure (god damn multi-level marketing companies...ask me how I know...).
19 year-old here. I have read your advice and will endeavor to implement it.