My $0 to $1 Million Guide - How I Would Start Over in 2024 (#513)

Shaan Puri

Alright today I'm gonna answer the question that I get the most often which is that if I was starting over again from scratch and I had no money in my bank account I didn't have any special skills or network or people that or audience to to use how would I do it how would I make myself successful how would I make my first million if I was starting over from scratch again I'm 25 years old and it's 2024 what would I do today and I'm gonna answer this question I will give you an answer to this question I'm worked up as you could see because I got an answer to this question I wanna give you an observation about question because the question is actually I think we would all agree it's a money question it's a success question how would you make it that's really what people wanna know but they always add this if you were 21 years old again if you were 25 years old again they add this age component to it which is sort of funny because I don't care if you're 21 you're 31 you're 41 if you're broke you're broke if if you're not successful you're not successful it doesn't matter what age you are it is your day 1 you can't go back in time so really it doesn't matter what what how old you are you know the the reason I think people say if you're 21 again or 25 again is because they're like if if all the possibilities were on the table if the if you had all the hope in the world again at that age and the reality is one thing you should take away from this is should always have that 21 year old mindset should always have the belief that the whole my whole world is in front of me that my best days are ahead of me that anything is possible and that I could reinvent myself right now I could today on the spot reinvent myself and to decide I'm a different guy now I do a different thing I do things a different way that old guy he's gone he's the old me and so I think the first thing you need to do is to free yourself of the time constraint the age constraint which only adds pressure and doubt and anxiety to the equation which none of that helps you be successful I remember when I was 29 years old and I had this like excellent existential crisis because I was like oh I thought I was gonna be forbes 30 under 30 and I thought I'd be you know I have $1,000,000 in my bank account by now and I didn't have any of those things and then I was like alright well guess that didn't happen moving on and I just continued on and by 30 all of a sudden I sold my company and had a whole bunch of breakthroughs and a big part of that was just getting the weight off my shoulders of feeling like I'm behind or playing catch up instead I wanted to be playing offense and so my question my answer to this question is comes from a place of offense so let's take the age out let's think of it like it's karate we're white belts again if we started as a white belt and we wanna make our way up to a black belt in the game of success what would we do so let's break this down into smaller chunks I the best metaphor I have or best framework I've heard from my career was that everybody goes through 3 phases in their career and the 3 phases are number 1 learn earn and legacy so this learn earn legacy framework that your career will go into those chapters the beginning of your career is generally the learn.

Shaan Puri

It's when you have internships or you're just starting your first business. You're making a bunch of mistakes, or you go work at a bigger company just to see what it's like. You're getting your experience; that's the **learn phase** of your career. What's most important in the learn phase of your career is what you optimize for. So, one job offers you an extra $15,000, while the other job offers you $15,000 less. Which job should you take? Most people take the one that pays them the extra $15,000 a year, which is like $9,000 after taxes or something like that. Even though the other job would have been a far better learning experience for them, where they would get way more hands-on experience working with much smarter people on more interesting projects, which in the long run would have paid off in a much bigger way. So, why is it important to know you're in the learn phase? Because you know what to prioritize. Your key KPI is: "How much learning per month am I doing? How much am I growing per month as a person?" I'm building me as a product right now. That's the learn phase. The **earn phase** is when I've built myself as a product. I have the skills, I know what to do, I understand the market, and I can actually go and reap what I've sowed. Now, I have cash in the bank, which lets me get to the ultimate.

Hubspot

Of financial freedom where your money works for money and you work for you that's where your investments generate enough income you don't need to be doing any jobs so that way you can just work on whatever you're most interested in whatever you're passionate about whatever you love and so the earn phase comes next and then there's a legacy phase which is where you see a lot of people get to when they you know they wanna go to mars and then they wanna you know buy this newspaper company to keep you know or start a foundation or go back and teach at their college or whatever it is legacy is how you give back it's how you were remembered for doing something that's beyond yourself contributing I think this framework is a good framework for a career and I think I think it is the natural evolution of a successful career that's the first first thing I would keep in mind so those first 10 years and I say 10 years because 10 years sounds like a long time but you know what's the phrase like we overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we can do in 10 so true the first 10 years you are in the learn phase you are actually just dabbling so you we are told that we should stick to it be determined do do blah blah blah that's the wrong advice it's the same bad advice that gets you when you're 18 19 years old to declare your major I even love that they call it declare like I'm gonna be like yeah you know chemistry right like you know what what are we do based on what based on what experience I'm a bio and chemistry major I knew nothing about any of those I don't even know what jobs they create but at 18 years old I'm supposed to declare my major or fall behind silly and so we don't wanna fall into the silly traps and pressures that people pigeonhole you into so what are you gonna do for your for your major what are you gonna do for your career what you know what what field are you in the answer is I'm dating around right just like we date before we get married you wanna do the same thing with your career so you're gonna be dabbling so you should be expecting to I don't know every 18 months turn over and reinvent yourself and hop into a new situation to keep challenging yourself and what you're trying to do is not you're not trying to change you're using change to find the thing that you are uniquely capable of and that's the next key lesson I can't find this client info have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases hubspot grow better so the second thing I would do if I was starting over again is I would realize that I'm in the learn phase I would start dabbling and I would be trying to identify my edge this really breaks up into 2 categories the first edge is one that everybody who's not successful yet has which is you're small and you're helpless and what that means is that people will help you like I can't tell you how many meetings I got with amazing people how many opportunities I got how many times I got to shadow somebody or ride along with somebody because I just told them like hey I think what you do is amazing and I don't know the first thing about it I I don't know how I can help you I wanna help you someday but at least I can help you because hey it it always feels good to give back right to help somebody out I'm giving you that opportunity can I just can I just figure learn this with you will you will you show me how this works and being small and helpless is a absolute edge that most people who are unsuccessful try to hide they're embarrassed that they're not successful they're embarrassed that they're starting at the beginning and because of that they throw away one of their best edges which is that people wanna help people who are at the who are beginners and so embrace that you're a beginner that is part of your edge the next thing is you got time you're not busy so for me there are so many opportunities I don't do because I have a $5,000 an hour time budget so if if something's gonna cost me an hour it needs to be worth at least $5,000 but when I was younger I would've done I did psych studies I would go take a pill or go you know try to read from this card for $7 an hour right my hourly rate was much lower back then and so I was willing to do a whole bunch of things that other people wouldn't do because I'm not busy my calendar is clear that's a huge advantage you have that's another part of your edge another part of your edge you have nothing to lose and well by the way a lot of this is mindset because the actions you take are downstream of your mindset right like the actions you take which is what people want they want the answer what I'm giving you is a way for you to always get the answer so you don't need to watch a video like this you can be the guy who makes videos like this and how do you do that you figure out the mindset first so that then the actions come quite naturally so let me finish the mindset section then I'll tell you the actions so the mindset the next part of the mindset that matters is you have nothing to lose so just like you're small and you're helpless just like you've got a clear calendar and nothing to do you also got nothing to lose you're already lost you got nothing you're starting at rock bottom but that's a pretty solid foundation and what you wanna do with that foundation is take more risks than somebody who has something to lose for me now if I go do something I have my reputation people could see me fail I have to do some things of a certain caliber and that means I might be overlooking some hidden gem type of opportunities you know I don't go to conferences I don't go to certain meetings but you should if you're in that boat boat where you have nothing to lose because you got everything to gain the last thing is you now need to find your personal edge so those first ones are the the common edges of losers right the loser's edge and losers have those edges and you should embrace the loser's edge because the loser's edge is what may helps you become a winner now you need to find your personal edge your personal edge is gonna be the thing that comes naturally to you it comes easy to you maybe you're funny maybe you don't mind grinding things out when everybody else gets fatigued maybe you're maybe you have an eye you have really good taste and may and you know even though you're not a great designer or product builder today you can identify great design and product building and understand it and taste is a it could be part of your personal edge my friend chris williamson told me this today on a call he goes yeah you're like a bear riding a unicycle I go what he goes you know a bear that's cool but not altogether that special a unicycle that's cool but not not not that special a bear riding a unicycle that that's fucking amazing and so a bear riding a unicycle is a way to think about finding that unique combination of things that makes you you so for some people it might be that they are a really talented programmer but they also love to study anatomy and biology and they should actually go into that field the crossover of computer science and biology for some people it's that they're just really good with they're really good people person and that's cool but now how do you pair that with you know you're you're willing to work twice as hard as the average person or you love sports or whatever it is you try to find an overlap of 2 or 3 things that are true about you that create a unique combination for me for example I'm a successful business guy but I'm not the most successful business guy right there's people who are worth 100 of $1,000,000 I'm not but I'm more successful than 98% of people on the business side but then I'm also kind of entertaining and funny I'm good at talking and there's a lot of better talkers than me but they're not that successful business side there's a lot of better business people than me but there's kinda boring when they talk and so my overlap is some combination of I love you know creating content I love being curious about things and turning into content I'm good at talking and I'm successful that became my first million a podcast that really nobody else could host it was unique to me it was my bear on my unicycle and I only found that when I started following my personal edge and so you wanna find your personal edge and if you don't have one today don't worry that's okay you're again you're a blank slate ask your friends what are some things about me that are true where am I more above normal people or more than normal people when it comes to some area of my life maybe other people can see it for you or maybe you say look it's my opportunity to develop that that I'm gonna become a great writer by practicing I'm gonna become a great salesperson by practicing and that'll be one of my things so you wanna create your personal edge alright so you've decided you're in the learn phase you're dabbling you're you're discovering your personal edge alright that all comes together and what happens the scoreboard still says 0 because the scoreboard is this lagging indicator of how many companies you've sold how many 1,000,000 of dollars you have in the bank but you are building up you are not actually at 0 you have made a ton of progress but there's still one more unlock that you have to do and that's picking the right project so what projects would I pick if I were in this category there's a a general question I'll I'll I'll give you some like common questions fork in the roads that people come to so a fork in the road I often get is should I start my own company or should I should I join an existing company and get experience that way and smart people will tell you both things right generally people just say the thing that they did and they say that's the best way to do things so you know I think the the real takeaway is that either way works which one should you choose well again when you're optimizing for learning there's a really specific thing you're actually trying to do you are trying to get around the smartest and most ambitious people you can doing the that also wanna do the thing that you wanna do it doesn't matter if that's your musician and you wanna you then you should be hanging out with other musicians that are trying to make it I have friends that are big tiktokers or viners or youtubers they all moved to la they all moved into houses together or on the same street as each other and they hung out with other people who were super driven at the same thing that they wanted to do that's why I moved to silicon valley and that's one thing I would do again I would pick up and move to a place where I could find other people that are just like me chasing the same dream as me because that is contagious and you'll be sharing information so you won't just be learning your lessons you'll be learning from the other people around you and that it will become normal to see people succeed at doing this it's very underrated how important that is to see other people just like you that you know are not so much more special than you succeeding at the thing you wanna do it's what will keep you going even when times get tough and so that's the first thing you're trying to do you're actually trying to pick either the company or the job that is gonna get you around the smartest most ambitious people that wanna do the same thing as you wanna do for me that was starting a startup and moving to silicon valley for you that might be joining whatever this generation's Google is you know and and getting around really smart people that are all flocked to this thing right like openai or one of the one of these companies where it's a talent magnet for young ambitious motivated people the next thing you need to do you gotta pick the opportunity whether it's a job or your company or starting a company that will let you do actual work versus being an observer on the fringe so unfortunately for most people they go take a job at some prestigious company and they think I'm getting the experience because of course working at facebook in 2024 is like you know that's I'm getting experience but they're employee number 42,000 sitting on the fringe not even knowing what's actually going on inside facebook not getting any access to the real problems and so whichever path you choose for me I chose the path of starting a company and that's the one I would do again but if you choose even if you choose joining a company here's your criteria you have to be working on the a + problem every company has the a + problem at any given time sometimes the a + problem is we're getting sued and we need to deal with this sometimes the a + problem is our growth stopped and we have no idea why and we gotta get this thing back growing again sometimes it's we're growing so fast we can't even keep up with operations hey could somebody go move to atlanta and spin up our atlanta office because we need we need more people in atlanta right like I know people that were early at uber this was what was going on uber was working they couldn't even keep up with demand and people who made 1,000,000 of dollars and became really smart at uber were people who were like yeah I'll go move to kansas city I'll I'll boot up kansas city as a market and they're like do you have any experience with kansas city they're like hell no couldn't even find it on a map didn't matter they were willing to go work on the a + problem I'll give you a personal example when I got when we got acquired by twitch they were like your job is where they bought our esports platform and they were like you're now the director of esports okay cool supposed to work on this esports thing and my friend said something to me that my cofounder furkani said something to me that stuck with me he goes he was he was looking at the overall company dashboard and he's like they're making some I can't say the number it's not I'm not allowed to but some huge number starts with a b and ends with a 1,000,000 in revenue and so they were like he was like don't you think that when we're here you know I don't know how long we're gonna be here our vesting date is is a year from now like don't you think we should work on something that at least moves the needle 5% like he's the way he said it was wouldn't you feel like a bitch if we worked here for a year and we didn't even make a 5% swing in the company and I was like I would feel like a bitch if that happened you know I don't like now that you say that I can't go back to just work he's like do you think the thing we're doing right now can swing it by 5% I was like hell no you know like this is that that's not what this is gonna do this is gonna do these other things but it's not gonna do that and so we basically went on strike from day 1 and we were like we're just not gonna do work until we figure out what is the a + problem what is the thing that actually matters in this company and we're just not gonna busy ourselves until we find that and luckily we had a big company knows nobody knows what the hell you're doing anyway so the 1st 2 weeks I was just walking around asking people questions trying to figure out what actually matters here and I found a project that was like actually a big project we pitched it to the ceo and we're like hey this is a big problem do you have anyone who's solving this and he's like no it's like cool I'm free he's like you're free I thought you're supposed to be working on the thing I'm like no but this is bigger right and he's like yeah it is bigger and so we he created a special team and we ran it to do that thing and we actually made a big impact this happened again I remember when I was at twitch and the top streamer on twitch was this guy named ninja he got sponsored by red bull and he was like the star he was on tv all the time and then fortnite was in its heyday and ninja was the guy and then Microsoft came and paid ninja like $20,000,000 to leave twitch and go over there and we lost our our biggest streamer overnight it's like if you know the warriors you know if somebody came and took steph curry off the warriors just paid him and he left it's like oh shit and it was an oh shit moment I said well that's probably the a + problem right now so what did I do I dropped everything I was doing and I started working on that nobody had told me even what to work on but I wrote a memo I said hey it looks like he left here's some data analysis on how big of a problem that is or how little of a problem that is here's my strategy recommendation on what we should do and I just sent it to the ceo right when in doubt put a letter in the ceo's mailbox and he's like this is great here joining put me in 3 group chats right away which were like the team the exact teams that were working on that and he's like hey you know sean's in on this and they're like why he doesn't he's supposed to be doing this other thing and it's like he has good he has good thoughts on this and so there's a way to work on the a + problem even if you're in a big company or if you're an entrepreneur by definition you should always be working on the a + problem it's forced and so I learned that skill because I first started my own companies and I knew you just gotta always be working on the one big thing what's the one a + problem right now so that's the second principle you have to do during this early phase so what would I actually do I would be whether I start my own company or join 1 I would be finding a way to work on the a + problem at all times the last one is I'm creating luck I'm creating a landing area for luck and I want lady luck to come when she's flying by to see the surface area on my back and say that looks like a good spot to set up camp for the night and how do you do that well I heard this great thing I've said it a couple times in the podcast but you know what great things are worth repeating there are four levels of luck you gotta be aware of them and then actually manufacture them so luck is not something that happens to you it is something that you can create and increase the odds of happening in your life the first level of luck is just blind luck that's the one where you didn't do shit you just got struck by lightning alright fair enough nothing really really you could do for that first level of luck except for appreciate it when it does happen sometimes things truly do fall in your lap but that's rare 2nd level of luck is you're taking a bunch of action you're just doing a bunch of shit and then good things happen to you and this is fortune favors the bold and so you should be looking at how do I just do more things show up to more events make some introductions for people you know just publish an analysis of something on the internet and maybe somebody smart will read it and think hey this guy's awesome I would love to meet him you know these are the things you do to create luck content is an amazing way to create luck so if I was 25 again I would be creating content in not because I think I could create a big audience in fact I almost think that would be a disservice if everybody's now listening to some 23 year old 25 year old who's got no experience no track record of success I'm not trying to present myself as a thought leader what I would be trying to do is publishing my thoughts which puts pressure on me to have good thoughts and go learn some shit in order to hopefully have a small group of people who are interesting think that I'm interesting and that increases my surface area for luck so I'd be creating content on a regular basis publishing my thoughts I think when my intern came on here the episode called you know my intern my 18 year old intern became a millionaire one of the reasons why is because he said that he either he wrote it or his friend wrote an analysis about a stock why the stock was good and like of course you're 18 years old what do you really know about stocks but it forced him to think why this could be a good buy and he published it and then someone interesting followed him because of that and that became a launch and then that guy became his investor and like all this series of events played out because he was putting his thoughts out there on the internet and I think that's just like a core thing I would be doing on a regular basis but not to become popular and not to be I always say you don't wanna be well known you wanna be known well so I would not be trying to be popular and get the biggest audience possible I would be trying to put my original thoughts and most unique analysis out there so that the right people find me the people that I wanna be known well by because that's how new opportunities are gonna happen okay so let's say I've gone down this path for me that would be I would start a company well what company it'd be any company where I feel like there's a you know a problem and a solution fit for me now that would be a service company I didn't do this at the time but with the benefit of hindsight I would say cool I would do some basic envelope math I would say well I wanna have can I have 10 customers paying me $10,000 a month ten customers now $10,000 might sound crazy but like for a business the business has spent $10,000 on things but I would say but that would be my benchmark ten customers paying me $10,000 a month that's a $100,000 a month of income which is fucking baller if you missed that part so if you're doing a 100 k a month you're doing 1.2 a year you're doing the work mostly so it's you know 90% profit margin you hire 1 or 2 to work with you and now you know you're 85% profit margin you're making a $1,000,000 a year profit that would be my goal of what I'm trying to get to now what type of service would I would I do well I would work backwards from what's a service that I think I could pull off that doesn't I would not limit myself to my skills so what I would do is I would go on upwork or I would go on fiverr or I would go I would look at other agencies that are already existing I'll try to figure out what is a agency or consulting service that people are willing to pay 10 k a month for on a retainer like on a recurring basis that either I could do myself or I could hire people overseas sort to do them right like I'm an investor in shepherd you can go on shepherd you can say hey I want web developers in latam that I pay a 1,000 you know I pay a 1,000 to $2,000 a month and then you could create a web development agency then you could go and you know what I would do is I would go and would email everybody every real estate agent in my city very easy contact information is fine I would say hey I was on your website it doesn't look great but you know hey look at this example website this other guy his website's awesome I make awesome websites like that if you ever wanna want a website like I'm happy to to do it for you or hey you know that's probably a lower ticket item that's probably like you know $500 a month and I'll do that for you and you get way more people to do it or you go to a senior living facility and you say hey guy who runs a senior living a nursing home you know if you ever met people who run nursing homes they're not the best at marketing they're usually like older people who are in the hospitality business maybe the real estate business and you'd say hey I'd love to sit down with you because I think I can help you fill your occupancy in your senior living facility because I know that filling occupancy is directly translates to cha ching in their ears and so occupancy rate goes up means more beds booked means more money for them and I would say if I could bring you one new occupant per month what would you be willing to pay me they say well we well we make 6 $1,000 a month off each person so I would pay you the 1st month's rent I pay 6 grand for every person you can bring in you say fantastic so I just gotta get you 2 people a month and I'm making 10 over $10 a month off this one facility and then I would figure out how to create content or do cold calling or do lead gen or throw events or go to the hospitals and partner with people and and figure out hey hospital when you kick people out when they're still old and sick but you don't keep them anymore where do they go and they're like oh we just all send them to this one facility and I'm and I would say hey how can I get you to send me those leads because we have a great facility to take care of those people and so I would I would go find an industry that needs help getting customers and I would help them get customers either through their website through their facebook ads their marketing whatever and I don't need to be an expert because you know what's it to to a blind man the one eyed man is king that's what I would go look for I would go look for the blind man I would go look for someone who's running a senior living facility is probably terrible at marketing probably doesn't know how to run a Google ad and so if I just sit here for 8 hours on youtube I'm pretty sure I can become the smartest Google ad person in their life that's what I would do and so I would try to figure out a way to do this product productized agency and try to get to that 100 k a month bar and I'd be okay at the 1st month getting to 1,000 a month 4,000 a month 10,000 a month but slowly but surely be be trying to build up to that to that level and the math I said earlier about 10 customers paying 10 k it doesn't matter whether it's 10 paying 10 or it's 20 paying 5 or it's 30 paying 3 I could do this all day by the way you are just trying to do math to get figure out how you get to a $100,000 a month oh okay I need to be able to service let's say 25 customers do I think I can find 25 humans on earth that are willing to pay me $4 a month to help them get more customers yes alright like that's what I would do and then by the way I would take that agency and as soon as I get it to a 100 k a month I would go try to sell it because I'm doing let's say 800 to 900 k a year of profit and I would go try to sell that for 4 times profit and I'd have $4,000,000 that's what I would try to do alright so now let's pretend I'm somewhere in the middle of that process and I get a little bit of money here's a common mistake people make get a little bit of money you get 10 20 grand you've been listening to podcasts from schmucks like me and you're like oh I think I should be investing angel investing s and p 500 bond what's a bond and you start trying to come up with some like financial strategy complete waste of time you don't wanna be making 8% on $80,000 a year it honestly doesn't matter if your goals are to be a multimillionaire a successful person who's gonna do big things with their life of course if to you $8,000 is like the jackpot then do that but most people listen to this podcast that is titled my first million are not gonna be happy at that level they're trying to be in you know the 7 figure 8 figure 9 figure club and so how do you get there you'd get there by not wasting time and energy on the wrong things the wrong thing would be you have a very small principal amount of money and you're going try to earn a you're going try to beat the market and earn a 12% or 15% annual return on $42,000 it just simply doesn't matter so the advice the good advice you'll hear about this is well you should invest in yourself and so most people hear that they're like yeah you're right I should invest in myself and then they're like where do I put the money where the fuck does the money go how do you invest in yourself what do you do and the most would have no idea what you actually do and so here's what to me investing in yourself means let's break it into 3 categories category 1 buying back your time so the first investment you wanna make in yourself is to get your creative energy back so when you're doing life you're unfortunately forced to do a bunch of life bullshit and life bullshit sucks away your creative forces life bullshit is running an errand doing a return having to go you know take the bus to the airport because you can't afford a uber ride whatever so the very first thing you could do is you're gonna identify any area of your life where you are leaking creative energy spending time on something that you a don't enjoy and b doesn't make you money you're gonna buy that back so you're gonna be a 24 year old with a housekeeper and people are gonna think you're spoiled you're gonna be the 27 year old who doesn't return the blender that doesn't work because it's not worth your time to go to the store and drop it off you are going to buy back your time you're gonna hire an assistant overseas for $800 a month using shepherd promo code sean in order to buy back your time and not have to deal with tedious back and forth of scheduling or whatever it is if you're doing a productized service you're gonna hire a designer so that you don't have to do the design work anymore so you're gonna buy back your time that's category 1 of how you actually literally invest in yourself category 2 how do you invest in yourself you invest in the knowledge as tidjie lopez likes to say and the knowledge is of course books you give yourself an unlimited book budget but you go beyond that you're gonna buy your way into a you know any conference or group or member members club where you know that people who are where you wanna be hang out and you're gonna get around them more often because proximity is power and the more time you spend around people who are the way you wanna be the more you will automatically through osmosis become like them the third one is so you you've bought back your time you've bought your way in to being around proximity around other people that you want sometimes that's moving to a better location it's conferences it's membership clubs it's masterminds whatever 3 is invest in yourself by leaving money on the table oh shit what is he talking about that sounds smart that's some that's some uno reverse card bullshit right what how do you invest in yourself by leaving money on the table you invest in yourself by saying no to clients that are gonna waste your time you invest in yourself by taking a lower paying job with a badass person right let's say I take 25 k less to go work for a badass person which by the way I did I took a multimillion dollar pay cut in our acquisition because in one I was gonna get to work with the ceo and then the other I was gonna be 3 layers below the ceo and so I just decided I'd rather be around smarter people and you know optimize for that and so I believe that what you should do is you should take pay cuts to put yourself in great opportunities around amazing people or working with amazing people you maybe you take a little less equity maybe you take a little bit less salary in order to be with the right people and so that's the that's the last way you invest in yourself because you say yeah I left that 25 k on the table but I also invested that in being in a better opportunity for myself which is gonna lead to good things down the road alright let's move to the next next questions we got a couple left here so this idea of do I try to make a bunch of money first or do I do something mission oriented which is the justin mears quote 1st get your nut then do something noble I believe this is true this is the life version of put your oxygen mask on you before you put it on your kids like like you see it here on an airplane so I think there was a certain threshold of success which is you've built skills you know how to build shit you know how to sell it right you know how to figure out a product and you know how to market it so you gotta build that core skill set it doesn't really matter whether you're selling you know you know these cans or you're selling life changing you know pharmaceuticals it's kind of the same thing you need to build a core skill set first don't don't worry about the product in that meantime the second thing is gonna be you need enough money enough runway to chase a noble mission so like if you go to her to chase a noble mission but you don't know where the rent comes from every month you are gonna lower your odds of success pretty dramatically just because you didn't give yourself enough runway to go do something bold and audacious and ambitious of course don't fall into the trap of perpetually waiting the next year maybe next year I'll have enough time money experience to go do the thing I really wanna do I believe you should always go do the thing you really wanna do I don't think the thing you really wanna do has to be a noble world changing mission especially at the beginning and so I wouldn't put that pressure on myself so to summarize my answer on what I would do if I was young broke and starting from scratch again in 2024 I would break my career up into 3 phases the learn earn legacy I would spend my learn phase dabbling trying to find the thing that I really love to do that I am uniquely good at so it's that zone of genius the thing the market wants that you're good at that you enjoy doing the bear on the unicycle and you you try to find that thing I would take advantages of my edges I would identify my edge and I would take advantage of the edges of losers during that time I would optimize around getting around the smartest and most ambitious people I could find I would do the actual work the a + problem I would create luck I would not worry about investing I would only invest in myself along the way and that is as I get a phone call that is my answer of what I would do if I was starting over from scratch yeah so I guess I just start a marketing agency