I'm 28. Here's How To Get Ahead Of Most 20 Year Olds

0:00 I just turned 28 years old today. This is how to get ahead of most 20 year olds. With it being my birthday, I wanted to have a real conversation with you about your own 20s. And if I could sit down with my 20 year old self, have one conversation, these are the things that I would tell them. I've built a $1.3 million liquid net worth as of today, and so many people in their 20s are playing the game way too casually. And by the time they realize it, the rules have changed, or catching up is just a lot harder than it needed to be. So, these are seven things I believe give you a very unfair advantage in your 20s if you use them properly. Before I start, I want you to comment below how old you are and what you're working on in your own life right now. I'm very, very curious. Let's go. Point one, your 20s are the highest leverage decade you will ever have in your entire life, so use them. Right now, depending on where you are, it doesn't matter what age group or bracket, you probably have

0:46 relatively low expenses. You might be living at home, maybe with roommates, or you have a cheap apartment. You probably don't have a mortgage. You probably don't have kids. You have more time and energy in a combination that you will never have any ever again at this level. And that is just that alone is the insane advantage that so many people will just walk over, or they think that it's going to last forever. And the thing that you're not ready for is it all gets harder. The mortgage will show up, the relationship gets serious, and before you know it, couple kids are popping up, or your expenses are going to go up. What is guaranteed, too, is your free time goes down, and your mental bandwidth you have to take risks is only going to shrink and over over time it's going to get worse, right? So, again, that's just life. I'm not saying it's bad, and I'm not saying to grind 24/7 and never enjoy yourself and all that stuff, but I'm just saying there are seasons in your 20s where you need

1:32 to lean in hard. Lean into your work, really focus. And work can actually be fun if you're building something that's yours, which we'll talk about in a couple minutes, but that energy is only available to you right now in a way that will never be again. And I want you to really hear this, too. When I was 19, 20, 21, I was, you know, running businesses, I was talking to my customers. People would look at me and be like, "Oh, there's Look at this young kid. That's cute." Like it was cool that I was ambitious. You probably felt this way, too. Customers would always point out how young I was. Sometimes they would even just want to work with me because you're the cool young guy. I'm telling you dude, I noticed this a couple years ago when I turned around 25, nobody finds ambition cute anymore. By the time you're 25, 26, 27, people do not care about what you want to do anymore. They care about what you've done. What is on your resume printed right now? They will look at you and

2:18 ask, how can you actually help me? What can you do? How can you help me make more money? Because if you haven't done this for yourself already, that doesn't matter. Like 19, it's cool with the big dreams. Like that's very different than the 26-year-old with the same big dreams but just nothing to show for them yet or nothing's actually transpired. You need to use this window like your freaking life depends on it. It is the most valuable thing that you have right now is this time, okay? Point two, stop taking advice from people you don't want to become. This one's I'm going to keep this very short cuz it's very straightforward. But I'm just being honest, dude. Would you take fitness and health advice from a fat guy? Would you ask someone who's been broke their entire life and can't seem to manage money on how to build serious wealth? Obviously not. But then why are you doing it every single day almost sometimes without even realizing it. I'm not saying like your parents mean well,

3:04 your friends mean well, all these people in your life. But if the people giving you financial, career, life, health advice, whatever, if they don't have what you want or if they're not doing Let's put it this way. If they're not taking their own advice, do not take it from them either, right? And their experience might have nothing to do with the path you're trying to walk on either. You are only you. You are one of one. This doesn't mean to dis- respect and to shut off people. I'm just saying be very selective who actually gets to say in how you make decisions in your life. Find people who have already built what you want and then listen to those people obsessively, okay? Ignore the noise from everyone else. Like take it in and whatever and digest it. But when it comes to actually doing it, you got to be very, very careful. Your circle will shape your ceiling whether you like it or whether you're aware of it or not, okay?

3:50 Point three, very important. This is starts This is where it starts to get juicy. Learn how to sell before anything else. If there is one skill I could go back and triple down on in my 20s, it is this. From my appointment setting lead gen business to my income, my ability to get clients, to close deals, all of it tracks back to sales. Every single freaking project I worked on, even when I didn't make any money, was from sales in some way. It wasn't always obvious, but thing what I noticed too is the average, like the young guys today, the average 20-year-old has absolutely just horrible communication skills. Not trying to be a dick. I'm just very honest. Like a lot of people can barely hold a conversation for more than 30 seconds. They'll look at their phone, they'll they'll mumble, they'll they won't make eye contact. They have no confidence in how they carry themselves or how they speak. And then I've spoken other guys. This is usually where the consult calls come in or a couple guys

4:36 that, you know, that I've employed before. The young guy who can communicate so clearly and so effectively, is a sharp as a tack. He's got the good tonality. They're naturally upbeat. I've met these guys and just told them straight to the face, "Brother, it doesn't matter what the hell you touch, you are going to get filthy rich. You are going to win because that skill alone, right? The guy who does it, he closes more deals. He makes more money. He probably does better with women. He's easier to be around because he's more confident and upbeat. That one skill will compound in every single area of his life. And we are in a world right now, too, where AI is taking over freaking everything and people are getting more and more socially brain dead from screens and short form content, all this [ __ ] So, I am just incredibly bullish long term on people who can genuinely sell and communicate at such a high level. That

5:21 skill alone is going to become more and more rare, I believe, not less valuable. I don't think AI is taking over sales people anytime soon. And every billionaire says this for a freaking reason. Almost all of them says, "Lean into sales first." There's a reason for that. It is the foundation of their under everything, okay? So, just learn it early, get very good at it, watch how differently your life plays out over the next couple of years, okay? Point four, do everything in your freaking power to build a remote cash flow business. Most specifically, if you can, a service business. I own my time. I can work from anywhere. I built something, took me years, but I have done this to where it generates income without me having to be in a specific building at a specific time for a person. I want to tell you honestly because a lot of people will never experience that. It's not that it's impossible, it's just a lot of

6:07 people will never actually try. Again, it goes back to the thinking in your 20s, I'll get to that eventually. Of course I want to own a business. Of course I want to do it. Then why aren't you taking action on it right now, right? Think of what it means to have location freedom. To work wake up and genuinely decide where you're going to work from today or even if you want to. To not have a boss approving the time. To have the income whether I'm in Toronto or whether I'm in Japan where I was a month ago. It is because I've I've built this through the path of just taking my skills and it doesn't matter. Learn anything, sales, marketing, content, copywriting, whatever has a real market of people already paying for it. Get decent at it and then figure out a service that you could sell around that. Start freelancing on the side while your expenses are still low. That's a key plan. You need to keep your job. You're not going to be able to quit right away. You don't need a business plan either. You do not need a fancy

6:53 website, a logo, all this [ __ ] You need a skill, you need the ability to sell, which we just talked about, and your first couple paying customers, right? The remote cash flow business does not have to be a huge change in your life. Even think about like even two, three, four grand a month on top of what else you're already making. That creates options that you didn't have before. And then you could eventually quit. Even if it's just small, it's going to be messy. Just start something. I've talked about this a bunch before, but that business for me, like I talked about earlier, was lead generation appointment setting. I did it for realtors. I did it at my old 9-5 for 4 years and then I quit to do it on my own. Obviously fully remote. That's what has built all of this wealth the last few years. So I'm helping others like yourself start a freelancing business by learning a skill, selling it as a service. It does not have to be lead generation, but I will help you choose your own, get your first few clients so you can make 3K to 5 grand a month online. My promise to you is that

7:39 you're You're to get paying clients by the end of this year if you follow what I tell you. You can apply below, I'll see you you're a good fit, and we can hop on a free call to discuss further. Now, point five, set goals that scare the [ __ ] out of you. Be delusional with this, I mean it. A lot of like the small stuff, don't play the small boy games, okay? That is just not going to It has small urgency. You're not going to even feel pressure to to do it. If your target is comfortable, so will your effort. And all of that is just going to create very baseline, average, [ __ ] results. The people who move the fastest are almost the ones who targets seem like it even seems weird to say it out loud. Write down what you actually want, not the, you know, version that you tell someone that might judge you. Like the real number. If you want to be a billionaire, write it down. If you want to be worth a hundred mil, if you want to sell a company for 50 million, whatever. The lifestyle, the number, the

8:25 business, all of it. Put it somewhere where you see it, and then just reverse engineer it every single day, ruthlessly. And that means sales calls, maybe that means, you know, certain customers or metrics that you have to hit. Cuz that is what happens when you set a big goal and take it seriously. Your decisions start filtering through it automatically. You stop wasting times on things that just don't you move you forward towards it, right? That's the problem. And you start saying a lot of no's to things that feel good, but will cost you the momentum. The goal becomes almost like a compass, right? Because a lot of people will set goals that are just a little bit better than where they already are. They just, yeah, maybe I'll invest a 500 bucks a month. Why not invest five grand a month, dude? And then they get obviously slightly better results. And just don't do that, okay? Think way bigger than what feels rational, and end the You just go build.

9:11 Go build the bridge that gets there. It's very simple in theory. You just need to practice it. You need to put in, you know, one foot in front of the other, and you're going to build that momentum. Which that goes on to the second last point, which is save and invest, keyword invest, as aggressively as you possibly can, once you've got the cash for it. I want to give you like a number that I think should matter. If you can get to a million invested before the age of 30, you are genuinely set for life. I did this. So I'm I had a little bit over a million invested at the current time. So, I've still got a couple hundred grand in cash, but if I wanted to, I can invest that on on dips or whatever. But, I looked at the math. I must have messed this up somewhere before, but I didn't realize how much of a number that it balloons into. Less than to not even in my 50s, by 48, that number turns into 10 million for me. If I don't contribute another freaking

9:56 dollar, dude. The math on the time that you have over the course of even if you started at 30, okay, we cut this decade, you were going to be so far behind by the time retirement comes without doing anything, okay? You do not need to be fancy here. Do not need to be the world's best investor. Just letting a million compound at historical market averages, it is insane what the number turns into. Not even counting dividends or anything like that. So, the issue is a lot of people aren't going to hit a million by this number, but the mindset of pushing towards it aggressively changes you. And I it makes you think of like how can I get this money just in that bucket as fast as possible. You stop treating investing as something you'll do more of later. Get the hard [ __ ] over now. That is what I focused on. Still going to deposit, I'm still buying 8 to 12 grand a month of Bitcoin, the S&P, and tech, you know, focused

10:42 index funds. But, I'm just like, damn, I've I've kind of done the hard part. The top of this mountain is kind of behind me, and I'm just coasting at this point. So, you do not need to get fancy. Stack and invest the cash as possible as much as possible, and let time do the heavy work. Let time do that real big strenuous lifting that you just don't want to do yourself. And the people who get this right will look like freaking geniuses at 40 plus, right? They But, the thing is they they're not. They just started early. I'm inherently an idiot. I'm an a lazy person by nature. I do I want to do the least amount of work for the most amount of return. That's just always how I've been, okay? That is as simply as it gets. I I can't put it any simpler than that. Get your money working for you as fast as possible. Keep your burden low so you can invest aggressively. That's the only way I'm

11:27 able to do this is because I don't live a a lavish lifestyle. Talked about this a million times. If you see my car channel, I drive a 17-year-old car, okay? It's really not that difficult. I'm not saying again, I'm not saying you don't enjoy your cash flow. That's why I keep consistent cash flow coming in so I can still live a a good life, but I know investing, profit to investments comes first. Everything else is secondary, okay? Do that. Do the math. Literally plug this in. Plug in a million in your early 20s, whatever age from 21 to 29, it doesn't matter when you start. Just get that money invested before 30 and you are set for life, dude. It's as simple as that. Final point, just realize that freedom is the scoreboard, not money. This is one that I obviously want to close on because I think it's the most important thing to really understand. Money is a tool. That is all that it is. It should not be your goal,

12:13 okay? It should not You should not be chasing money 24/7. The second you make money the main thing, you get on this treadmill that really I don't believe you're going to get off. You're going to have a very, very hard time stepping off the thing because there's always more money to chase. There's always someone doing more than you, a bigger business or a finish line that just keeps freaking moving, no matter how fast you run. The goal here is freedom, dude. The ability to wake up and decide how your day goes. This is the life that I've been living for a couple years and I can tell you sometimes it's even hard to get out of it because it feels so good. Again, with that million number plus this, it's like, damn, like I don't need to do anything that I don't want to anymore. I don't have a boss. I don't need to ask permission. There is no trading time for someone else's thing. The ability to work on what you want, when you want to, from wherever you want. That is all That's the whole

13:00 thing. This whole video, my whole freaking channel can be based around this thesis and most people unfortunately will never get there. And again, it's not because they didn't make enough money. It's just they didn't define this. They didn't say, "Okay, what is freedom to me?" Whether it's my cost of living, and how many kids I want or whatever. They just constantly chase this bigger monetary money number which has no vision unfortunately behind it. So again, you know, we're growing, somehow they feel stuck because the lifestyle grew with it. The never actually hit, right? So, just understand what is freedom to you. Not like be very specific, just like the goal thing. What does my life need to look like in a way? What does that number require monthly? What is the investment portfolio you need to generate? What is the business cash flow? Just get a number attached to what you really, really want and then build towards that. Every decision

13:46 filters through that lens. Does this get me closer to that specific thing or no? Okay? That's it. I'm literally still working towards that myself year I get closer. The decisions get a lot cleaner and everything is just it's it's coasting nicely and that is exactly what I want for you. That is the whole game, like I said. So, as always, I'm going to cut it nice and short there. If you want to see me win, I I I worded this a little wrong. As always, if you want to see you win, I'm excited to see you crush it. We will see you in the next one. Like I said at the beginning, leave a comment with what you're working on below and I'll send you a cookie. All the best.