17 Lessons to Younger Me
Biggest lessons/learnings from a younger version of me
Most advice is bullshit.
Not because the lessons aren’t valuable, but because the person sharing them will never have the exact same life context & scenario as you.
So take these with a grain of salt.
But when I was 21, I was super lost. I was a really late bloomer in establishing independent views about how the world worked.
If I could teleport back to my 21 year old self, and give him advice, here are some of the things I would share.
🌎 | The world is malleable - Society is designed to make you think the world is rigid. People will tell you, “that’s just the way things are.” This is a lie. The world is closer to Play-Doh than rock. The only true laws are physics. Almost anything else about the way the world works can be bent to your will with enough effort and intention. Most of the “rules” we live by were invented by people just like you and enforced by others that are too lazy to question them. If you need to make something happen outside the normal societal construct, your default assumption should be that it can be done
👅 | Seek and surround yourself with taste - Taste is the invisible force that makes things popular. The difference between people liking something and not is if the maker has taste. Finding people with taste that don’t want to start their own thing is rare. If you find them, do everything you can to hire them. You can teach people skills. You can’t teach them taste. If they don’t want to work for you, find a way to partner with them on something. Natural taste is a gift
💨 | The most important trait - When you hire or partner with people, there’s one trait that matters more than anything else…a bias for action. People that bring intensity to what they do and have a super high bias for action will move mountains. Talkers talk. Doers do. As soon as you get a sense that someone doesn’t have a high bias for action, move on
🐺 | Building alone sucks - I used to have a lone wolf mentality. I wanted full control, I wanted to direct the creative. I wanted all the upside. Here’s the thing…99% of the time, you don’t have the competency in every area to be able to build something of value yourself. And in the 1% of cases that you do, it’s lonely and not fun. Your goal is to find high agency people and build with them. Don’t build alone
📈 | Leverage is the 8th wonder of the world - Leverage is the difference between hobby businesses and generational wealth. Content takes advantage of internet distribution leverage. Capital and headcount are other forms of leverage. Here’s an example of why leverage is so important. Consulting is zero leverage. 1 hour in gets me 1 hour of pay. I can’t increase hours in a day. I can only sell each hour one time. Courses use digital leverage. 1 hour in to make a course could mean infinite pay. I could sell the course 1 million times with no additional work. That’s leverage. Your goal is to get leverage working for you as soon as possible
🤔 | How to think about failure - Here’s the thing about failure…the people that say failure doesn’t affect them are full of shit. Failure sucks. But here’s why failure is important. You only have two goals if you want to be an entrepreneur…build valuable skills that you can use to do something or learn how to recognize patterns. That’s it. The only way to actually learn skills is to do something yourself. When you try to do something without the skills to do it, you will fail. And that sucks. But the sawdust of failing is skill acquisition. You can only truly learn those skills by doing it at least once, and that usually means failing. Failing a lot means the sting starts to hurt less, because you realize the only way to build skills is to get stung
🧩 | Pattern recognition - As mentioned in #6, the other thing you want to learn is how to recognize patterns. Pattern recognition is being able to pick out the winning moves amongst all the possible moves in the game. Every game is made of winning and losing moves. By definition, to see the pattern, you need to know what both winning and losing moves look like. If you only win, you won’t be able to see the patterns when you play a new game. When you can’t see the pattern, winning is unpredictable and inconsistent. Failure is getting a front-row seat to what losing moves look like. You need to see the losing moves to be able to identify the winning moves in a new space
🤝 | Incentive Alignment - The entire world operates on a single principle…incentive alignment. Is the person you’re working with incentivized properly to do the thing you want them to do? If yes, they will do the thing up to their skill level. If no, they will fall short of max effort. Charlie Munger famously said, “show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome.” If you’re not getting what you want, the other party doesn’t have the right incentives. To change this, ask yourself, “If I were them, what would make this a no brainer deal.”
🙏🏻 | Where to start when you have ambition and no skills - Here’s a tactical one. Walk around with a notebook for 7 days and write down the things that you naturally find yourself talking/thinking about. After 7 days, you’ll have a list of topics where your authentic interest lies. When you have zero skills and zero direction, the best thing to do is start working on something within your authentic interests. This is because it’ll give you the best chance to keep working on it long enough to build some skill of value. The easiest way to “action” on that interest (in 2024) is to make content. That may not always be the right play, but for now it is. Make content about that topic in the format that you’re least likely to quit (video, audio, writing). And just keep doing that as long as you can. The more effort and intensity you bring to it, the sooner interesting things and other opportunities will start happening
🛑 | Not quitting - This is an easy one, but literally all you have to do is not quit. The bar is so low in society for winners that if you stick with almost anything for a decade, you’ll be one of the best in the world. This means it’s probably more important to pick the right hill to climb than to know if you have the willpower to climb it. It’ll work if you just keep climbing.
💂🏻 | Corporate Jobs - Corporate jobs are the right move for 99% of people. There are several benefits to working one. First, they pay you to learn a skill of value. Second, they teach you the basics of how the majority of the world works (e.g., how to write and email and buy lunch). Third, if you hate it, it’ll give you something to run from. But it’s important to know the truth about corporate jobs. Unless you get equity in the company, you will never be max incentive aligned at a corporate job. Again, this is okay for 99% of the world because they don’t really care about being max incentive aligned. But if you’re in that other 1%, and you have the entrepreneurial itch to control your own destiny, it’s important to know that there will eventually be a time where the corporate job takes more from you (time, opportunity, momentum) than it gives (money, skills, perks). When that time comes, leave immediately.
🧮 | Outliers - Power laws exist everywhere on earth. 80% is made and won by the 20%. On the internet, it’s more like 99% is made and kept by the 1%. To be the 1%, you have to be original. You have to be an outlier. It’s easiest to do this if you are a one of one. The best way to be a one of one (really the only way) is to lean 100% into your unique combination of skills, interests, and abilities. Your natural drift. Nobody on earth will have the exact same combination of skills, interests and abilities. This is the moat that never evaporates. Find it, and pursue hard
⏰ | Time horizons - It’s cliche, but thinking in decades is the only way to win big. A year just isn’t enough time to let compounding work aggressively. Warren Buffet made most of his wealth after the age of 65. This is because it takes compounding a while to get going. It can be hard to implement this thinking in practice, especially if you don’t have the money saved or consistent income to pay your bills this week. A helpful and practical frame is to do whatever you can to reduce burn and then make short-term money moves to cover burn. Maybe this means you reduce your monthly family spend from $10K to $6K and then take one brand deal per month worth $6K to cover that burn. After the burn is covered, everything else should be long-term focused with decades of reputation on the line
🥷🏻 | Don’t rob from tomorrow to pay for today - Lately I’ve been staying up super late to finish something that I want out ”today”. That basically means I sleep terribly and then have a negative effect on the next couple days. Short-term thinking would say this is okay. Don’t fall for this trap. If you think in decades, the difference between one day and the next is immaterial. Set guidelines for workload so that you can be at max productivity each day. Don’t sacrifice tomorrow for today
❤️ | Health - Health is the most important thing. Here are the things you can do that actually add up. Sleep above everything. Make sure to sleep as much as you can. Drink electrolytes in the morning. Cold showers/cold plunge before working out actually works super well. Limit alcohol, drugs, and sugar. High protein, carnivore style diet. Creatine. Don’t use phone right when you wake up or before bed. This will get you 95% of the way there
🎯 | Self belief vs belief in strategy - There’s a difference between questioning your self-belief and your belief in a strategy. There will be times when you’re lost. This means you might have picked the wrong path to go down. Never question your self-belief, but always be willing to question if the strategy was wrong. Don’t confuse these things
💪🏼 | Work - “The magic you’re looking for is on the other side of the work you’re avoiding.” This is a Hormozi quote. Here’s the thing about trying to find the lazy, shortcut way of doing things…you might be able to find a short-term win, but you won’t have built the skills to allow you to do that thing at a high level for a long time. This means after the short-term luck runs out, you’ll only be older at the same skill level. Lucky wins don’t compound because they’re inconsistent. Do the work
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