No get-rich-quick schemes. Only tried and true ways to create success.

Your 20s are not the time to be successful.

Being rich and accomplished in your 20s is mostly a myth.

What you see on social media is often fake, bought by daddy’s credit card or given to them on a silver platter.

There are a few outliers that buck this trend, but they are the exception that proves the rule.

This is not permission to Netflix and chill every day. I am also not arguing you buy into hustle culture and work yourself into an early grave.

Not all actions are created equally.

Some actions create liabilities.

Other actions create assets.

Asset-producing actions make time your friend.

Liability-producing actions make time your enemy.

These are the small but highly leveraged actions you make in your 20s that can build the solid foundations for freedom in your 30s.

Get a 9–5 job that you can exploit for personal growth and development

A 9–5 job will give you:

• A consistent salary

• Time to build your skills

• Access to mentors and experience

• Ability to build your networks & find a community

As much as the internet hates salaried jobs, I still believe a 9–5 is a good start to building freedom later.

Work to learn, not earn. With your current skillset and experience, you won’t be breaking the bank with your salary anyways.

Use your 9–5 to diversify your skill stack. Just don’t fall into these traps below.

Avoid these traps at all costs.

While at your 9–5, don’t get caught in these two traps:

1. Lifestyle inflation.

2. Golden handcuffs.

Lifestyle inflation is where you continuously increase your material expenses in line with your increasing income.

This trap will mean you can never experience freedom, you’ll be stuck running on the hedonic treadmill of material consumption.

I fell head-first into the next trap.

I got paid well. Working conditions were okay. My colleagues weren’t terrible. In short, nothing was bad enough to quit. And I was in a good routine to stick around.

Getting trapped in golden handcuffs means you sacrifice your dreams and aspirations for the life you have now.

But golden handcuffs are still handcuffs, regardless of what they are made out of.

Ask yourself: how much would someone have to pay you to give up your dreams? Mine was a hell of a lot more than $116,000 before taxes.

Build a smooth financial runway

The higher your saving and investing rate, the longer your financial runway.

The longer the runway:

• The more risks you can take

• The less stress and anxiety you have

• The longer you can invest in building your business

Since I was saving close to 50% of my income for a number of years, I was able to leave my job and not need a salary for close to six months.

It gave me time to reflect and experiment without the need for an immediate payoff.

To create freedom, cash is king.

Cash creates options. Cash creates flexibility. Cash allows you to move quickly. When you get close to leaving your 9–5 stockpile cash like it's going out of fashion.

Start a creative side hustle

Now that you’re comfortable in your 9–5 job, it's time to diversify.

Relying on your 9–5 for job security is a laughable joke. Just look at the recent tech layoffs across Silicon Valley.

These companies don’t care about you. Once their bottom line starts to be impacted, they will cut you out like a cancerous tumor.

You’re just a number. Remember that.

To safeguard your future, you need to start productizing yourself. Your interests, your values, and your passions can all be turned into a one-person business.

A creative side hustle needs the following characteristics:

• Something you enjoy (very important)

• Ability to monetize.

• Built on leverage.

Without enjoyment, you’ll quit before you can add value.

Without monetization, you’ll never be able to replace your 9–5 job.

Without scale, you’ll never be able to create freedom.

Create content online

Don’t lead. Don’t show off.

Document, document document.

Show your audience what you’re working on.

• What vision do you have for the future?

• Where do you see yourself in the next year?

Show victories. Show failures. Show the ugly and the beautiful.

Bring your audience on the journey with you. People love to follow other’s people's journeys.

You’ll be surprised by how many people engage with your content and how fast you could build an audience.

Build an email list and start a newsletter

Once you have people following your journey, deepen the relationship with long-form content (aka newsletter).

There are three types of traffic.

• Earned.

• Owned.

• Paid (optional).

The traffic you receive from social media is earned. You put value out there and you get engagement in return.

You’ve earned it. Congrats.

But algorithms will change. Social media accounts can be banned. You could be canceled. Tech companies could kill their own products (i.e Vine & Clubhouse).

Start an email list through ConvertKit as early as possible. It’s a free service until you reach 1,000 subscribers.

You don’t start paying until reach a threshold of subscribers you could sell things to.

Win-win.

Your email list can’t be taken away from you. Everything else can.

Takeaway: Convert your earned and paid traffic into owned traffic via your email list.

Invest in self-learning and building your skill stack

Freedom is built on self-learning.

That’s what makes freedom so difficult: it requires a high level of self-responsibility or self-accountability.

Most people would rather blame their circumstances or the economy.

You should be constantly:

• Reading books and research articles in your niche

• Taking online courses and listening to podcasts

• Ignoring mainstream news

• Hiring coaches

I invest upwards of 3–4 hours per day in my self-learning. It’s the single best practice I have that’s changed my life for the better.

Remember that your level of freedom will never exceed your level of knowledge.

Build your value ladder.

This is where the rubber hits the road.

Create a sales map for how people can engage with your one-person business and brand.

I call this the barbel strategy.

Start with:

• One product that is free.

• One high-value service that is paid (i.e consulting or coaching).

For example:

• Creating valuable content on Linkedin (free)

• Offering consulting and coaching services (paid)

Your coaching and consulting service offerings aren’t scalable, but they can make you money immediately.

Once you’ve started earning money, start building the bar in the middle.

This includes front-end offers, low-value offers and medium-value offers.

The bar in the middle is the scalable products and services you offer.

Think of digital assets — content, courses, e-books, etc. They require upfront work but can produce income indefinitely.

Without a value ladder, it becomes impossible to have a systematic way of monetizing your business.

Remember that a confused mind doesn’t buy. Make the process seamless for your customers.

Once you have enough money, hire a virtual assistant

Now it’s time to scale.

There’s only so far that you can get by yourself. You’ll reach a point where opportunities will exceed your capacity.

To avoid burnout and ruining your mental health, get a Virtual Assistant.

I currently work with a team of virtual assistants and subcontractors.

I don’t hire for friendship, I hire for skillset.

They must be at least 2x better than me at the skill I am hiring for and save me at least 3 hours per week.

Delegate and elevate.

Wrapping this all up.

You don’t need to start a unicorn.

You don’t need to invent the next social media app.

Be humble enough to start small. People overestimate what they can achieve in a year, but underestimate what they can achieve in 5–10 years.

Small but highly leveraged actions your take in your 20s will snowball into massive results in your 30s.

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