8 Career Cheat Codes For Your 20s | Career Advice

Okay, these are the top eight career rules that I've learned from working in business over the last decade of my life. And this video is for you and you should stick around for just the next three minutes to change your perspective on work and career if you are under 20 years old. First, just so you trust me, I have worked at three businesses across the business development and sales and marketing roles. I've also been hired to work on sales initiatives and develop sales programs by over 30 businesses. And I've started three businesses of my own across software, print, publishing, and marketing. And finally, I have written several books on economics, business, tech, and related subjects to these. The point I want to emphasize here is that I can relate to you as in if you are under the age of 20, just like me, I know the feeling of trying and, you know, working with people a lot older than you and getting these positions and jobs and money in environments that you just have very little exposure to or have had very little exposure to prior. That can be intimidating in a lot of ways. And I personally have also messed up and just cost myself an enormous amount of time and stress and anxiety and money by just going about things the wrong way and by forgetting the eight lessons that I'm gonna share with you in this video. And that all starts with number one. Okay, so number one is that the whole machine, quote unquote, of business is really just people having conversations, emails that are sent between people, so really digital conversations, and then contracts. As in if you take the US government or Apple or anything, any organization or business smaller than that, it just breaks down into people, emails, and contracts. And that means there is no intimidating matrix in the business world where things just happen and that you as a young person really can do that exact same set of things. It just comes down to knowing and interacting with the right people. And what that means is things are a lot more flexible than you think if you do, again, just know the right people and you do interact with them in the right way. Okay, now number two is that if your role or your job isn't exceptional, for example, if you're not a general manager or making $300,000 a year when you're 20, then the amount of effort you would have to put in to get that amount of status, money, role, or just the amount of enjoyment you get from that job at a different job is relatively minimal. Now, what that means is that if you don't like the role you're at, just leave. For example, if you don't like your job but you make a million dollars a year from it and you're 21, then that's one conversation. But there is zero reason that you shouldn't leave your job if you don't like it and you make, say, $60,000 or $70,000 a year at, say, 24. Okay, number three is that having contextual and cross-domain knowledge will rapidly increase your value and productivity on teams. So don't just specialize, specialize at the intersection of different domains of knowledge. Okay, now number four is that even if you don't want to work a lot, your employers and also the people around you are primarily going to remember the few unique or exceptional things that you have. So if you're the guy that just brings up a new idea or proposes something at a weekly meeting or goes the extra mile every so often, then the relatively little effort and time that those things take are going to get massive yield there, whether that's getting promoted faster, meeting new people, getting to work on things and in roles that you prefer, and also just having to put in less effort across the board. Okay, now number five is that relationships beat systems, and I kinda touched on this before, but to put it bluntly, people will go the extra mile for you and just make things happen if they like you and if you two have a relationship. For example, a very recent video of mine was how I got $143,000 job offer when I was 18. Okay, now number five is a quick one that I think just helps with anxiety and stress about your performance or potential, and that is that if you just work a lot and just stay consistent and put in effort and time, then you are automatically going to beat a vast majority of people across any domain that you work in. As I said, most people just either don't like their jobs or don't want to work a lot. Or to add to that, they're just bad at what they do, which you'll see a lot more as you start to work in big businesses. Okay, now number seven is just quote-unquote sharpen your sword in that very few people actually just sit down and think about the systems, the workflows, the processes that they're accustomed to at their job. And that goes back to that quote of sharpen the ax before you cut the tree. Like if you can just sit for an hour and come up with one thing that will decrease the effort or the time required to do something else that you have to do for your job by 10%, then you're gonna save 100, 500, 1,000 hours for you or your team just by sitting down for that hour. And the people around you are not just crazy geniuses or smart even if they have experience or are older than you. So question everything, question the system, and just come up with ideas and think about those ideas regarding potential improvements in anything you're doing. And before I tell you the last one, which I think is the most important, I wanna tell you about Odoo. Odoo is an integrated suite of business apps that takes kind of all these different tools that you would use for your business as a business owner or an employee. So say a CRM tool over here, a website builder there, a course management tool, inventory, all these different apps. And Odoo pulls them together into one system and it is the number one business software in the world with over 15 million, and yes, that's 15 million users. I use them for two businesses of mine and I can guarantee that they will help you save money and also just be more efficient and productive, again, either as a business owner or if you work at a company where they could yield the benefits of just integrated and condensed tools. And you can click the link in the bio to either book a demo or just check out the website. Okay, now number eight, and I struggle to emphasize the importance of this, is just talk to interesting people. Like trust me, you will get so much more out of just reaching out and talking to 10 interesting people whether that's about what you wanna do for your career and work, how to make more money or get promoted at your job, or if you wanna figure out how to be a better employee or do better, or if you wanna figure out how to grow the business or do better at your job. So I think you should just all the time be reaching out to these people. And if you do that when you're 18, 20, 25, the yield that that will deliver to you, the opportunities, the doors that'll open are just absolutely just life-changing down the line. So if you're in school, go to your alumni network platform. Otherwise, just go to LinkedIn and search for people in roles that you want or doing similar things to your role. And not only is that socially useful and enjoyable, but again, in a material sense regarding your career and your work, you will be that much better off. And that's the video. I will see you in the next one.