If you haven’t heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, then you may be missing out on some great advice for your life and business. On top of being a successful entrepreneur, he is also a social media influencer and is commonly known for arbitraging the market with his social ideas. If you are not looking to become an entrepreneur that is totally fine! But I wanted to talk about a video he created about The Greatest Years of Your Life, What to do After College; and I believe that what he has to say is really important, so I wanted to share some of the ideas he talks about in the video.
If you want to access the video, you can watch it below (he does use vulgar language so be prepared for a few swear words).
These Next 5-Years Are the Easiest (and Greatest) in Your Life
He states that after college or around age 22 that these are the easiest years of your life. Yes you may have student loans, car loans, and those things are tough, but you are not nearly tied down as much as you will be when you are 40. You don’t have kids yet, you don’t have a family to take care of, and you don’t have a house payment. You aren’t married yet and you don’t have a bunch of promises to fulfill. Some 20-year-old’s do have some of these responsibilities, but for the most part, most of you don’t have these limitations yet. So now is the time to take risks and follow your passions! Create the job you want to do for yourself so the next 40 years you are working you will love your work life.
If you don’t know what you love or what you are passionate about that is okay. Instead of letting that get you down, you should let that empower you. It’s okay not to know! In fact, it’s great not to know because you can start at ground 0 with what you want to do. You probably see friends getting married and buying houses, but they don’t have something that you do. You have the opportunity to create the work life you want for yourself. You don’t have shackles keeping you tied into jobs you don’t love. You have a rare and powerful opportunity.
“This is exactly when you can live with four roommates in a basement and eat fast food.”
-Gary Vaynerchuk
You can live for dirt cheap by having a ton of roommates and living in a cheap apartment. Still try to live in a safe neighborhood, but you can find cheap rent. Take the extra money you make to travel and follow your passions. If you live an inexpensive life you can afford to work part time and spend the rest of your time doing what you love and something you are good at. You can also use that extra time to create a career for yourself, start a band, start a blog of your wildlife photos and if you do these things you may become popular. If people love your work then you have the opportunity to grow and create new business experiences for yourself. If that doesn’t happen then try a new passion that you love. You have the power to do this at this age because not being tied down is the greatest opportunity you have and you have the time to do these things.
Attack the Life You Want to Win
He starts by saying that you are in the best 5-year window of your lives. If you are 22 and just graduating from college or even 22 and didn’t go to college that this is the time to attack what you love and do what you want to do. This is the time to work your butt off because you can pull those 18 hour days to create the life that you want for yourself!
What are you really passionate about? What do you want to do every single day for the rest of your life? Once you figure out what that thing is, learn how to turn it into a business. Read articles, learn how to differentiate yourself from people in that industry and work towards the life you want to create for yourself.
Everyone comes up with these great ideas, but the ideas are not converted from ideas to processes. They are just ideas that get lost in the world of endless dreams. To make your dreams come true, you need to turn ideas into processes. You need to show up every single day and do it. You need to create and document and learn to make your dreams happen.
“What you should do is go and travel and learn. Go and start that business you always wanted. Hook up with those teammates you always wanted and start that band.”
-Gary Vaynerchuk
That being said, it’s not going to be easy.
“The current state of entrepreneurship seems like a party, popular, cool, but it’s literally everything but those things.”
-Gary Vaynerchuk
That’s because you need to work and work hard to achieve the dream life you want. It’s not going to just happen for you.
LIFE IS HARD; THE WORLD IS HARDER
The world is a hard place. It creates fear and self-esteem issues driven by the need for money that we all have. It tends to drain our confidence and leave us feeling miserable at times. These years need to be the best times in your life because this is when it will be the easiest to accomplish the goals you have for yourself.
Stop caring about what other people think about you. Figure out who you really are, not who you want to become, and what you want to do. Once you know these things then you can become humble and learn.
I Wish You the Best of Luck
We can afford to set the foundation for our work lives for the next 40 years. We can set up the processes now and chase the dreams we want. This is the incredible opportunity that we have, and if we don’t take advantage of it, then we are not going to get a chance like this again. We don’t have the baggage which gives us the power to choose what we want to do and work hard for it.
I’ll say it again, don’t throw away this incredible opportunity that you have. You probably don’t know what you want to do with your work-life yet so take this opportunity to create the work life for yourself and set the foundation for your future self. If EVERYTHING you have tried fails, then you can always get another job. You won’t regret giving it a try; you’ll regret not doing it.