5 Biggest Mistakes I Made in My 20 s

we see successful people today and can easily assume that they have everything figured out back in their 20s but that's not true that's wrong being in your 20s is so tough you have no money no experience and no idea what you're doing but the good news is that you have an abundance of energy and time and if you use them correctly you can set yourself up for successful fulfilling life in my 20s bootstrapped profitable business that supports me full-time purchased two properties got married and had kid in this video I'll be outlining the five biggest mistakes that made along the way my hope is that by sharing it with you you're able to avoid my errors and get further faster the fourth one might surprise you so we should start off with the mistake that teased in the thumbnail for this video got married in my late 20s and regret it don't regret getting married but do regret waiting as long as did met met my girlfriend in college we were together more than 6 years before proposed and in the intervening years it wasn't like there was ton of doubt knew that she was the one from the first year of us being together we traveled the world together we bought condo together before we even got engaged and there's two weird cultural phenomenon that definitely affected me and if it's affecting you to want to just try to pull the wool away from your eyes little bit the first is that marriage is just piece of paper just arbitrary just this you know Superfluous contract that you know the government has to file somewhere and that's not what marriage is about when got married made the most solemn vow that will ever make in my life to the person that love the most that's very big deal and if you're someone who takes your own words seriously and you want the people around you to take your word seriously then making such solemn vow should be transformative to you because before you made that commitment before you put those words out into the world you didn't have to live up to them but now that have the standard that hold for my relationship is higher it makes everything better and as counterforce to that our love is deeper because one of the major questions that underlied the entire relationship is completely off the table we don't talk about divorce in any way shape or form we take seriously till death do us part yes very pragmatically from planning standpoint from from future projection standpoint it helps but it really also just helps you relax in the moment with the person that you're with because of the fact that you've both made that commitment the second meme that I've seen floating around in culture relative to marriage is that it is something to do after you've gotten your house in order so what did was basically try to follow that Meme you know pay off your debts buy house start your business do all these things and then get married once the castle is metaphorically built but the reality is what makes the castle special what makes the life that you've built special is building it with someone building it with someone that you care about and throughout most of History that's how life worked people got married very young they started having kids very young and they did not have everything squared away yes maybe family set them up with little bit of something to help them get momentum but it was kind of seeing that adulthood really started when you got married now we try to live out the core steps of adulthood and then get married and then kind of start the next chapter and if could go back would have married my wife way sooner would have gotten engaged way sooner and things like student loans and not knowing where we were going to live and all this other stuff we still would have figured out we probably would have figured it out sooner with less stress with less concern because we knew with certainty that we had each other my second biggest mistake is tied to waiting to get married and it's waiting to have kids my wife and became parents at the age of 29 just before the end of our 20s similarly to marriage there is another cultural meme going around that kind of rationalizes or or kind of lays out framework for how to live your life and it's that you know your 20s are for being young your limited time with full bottle of Youth and it's going to get poured out and it's never going to be the same it's never going to come back and having kids is like ending the party early cutting the party off early and stealing your ability to experience and enjoy that youth and have found that to to be profound lie because as much as youth is lovely thing to experience it pales in comparison to getting to be dad getting to be parent and every year that you put off having kids because you want to enjoy your youth drink up your youth make the most of this time is actually one left year that you're going to get to share with your children and you know as as friends of mine who are on similar timeline they're they're not having kids till their late 20s their early 30s their mid-30s have talked about it the way I've described it is having kid is one of the few times in life that lives up to and exceeds your expectations you're pregnant You're Expecting the baby to come you're like this could be like one of my favorite people ever and it is and you love them more than you even expected to it it transcends whatever expectation you had for it and so as you're thinking about the limited amount of years that we're all going to get cuz we all eventually expire would rather spend more of those years with my all-time favorite people would rather and not everyone's lucky enough to have this have my parents still be around to know my children rather than waiting till later in life so if could go back would subtract few years of enjoying my youth and add few more years with my kids and as secondary thing like less profound philosophical you don't sleep you're so tired when you're parent and it's way easier to be tired and still function in your mid-20s like my battery just doesn't recharge the same way it did even like 3 4 years ago and man for those sleepless nights that would be GameChanger but let's let's carry on to mistake three so the third mistake made is in very different Lane and it's that spent half decade with strong aversion to selling so this one's going to be little bit of change of pace much more professional than personal but my first job out of school was selling life insurance and that is somewhat common role for folks that aren't technical to have coming out of school and there is pathway there where you become financial adviser you help people manage their money assets under management provide ton of value it's really good thing but the reality is is that there's lot of other financial service jobs that are basically selling products people don't really need in very kind of forceful intense way because it's completely commission-based role and you basically got to eat WI kill that experience turned me off of intense hardcore sales for long time there are people that need life insurance I'm not saying that people don't need life insurance have life insurance it is product that has place that is valuable but in that environment that found myself in found that was incentivized to see everyone in my life as Mark that could potentially pay me as opposed to certain demographic of person that could help with product that they needed and by recoiling from that then spent years not really selling not really wanting to sell not really thinking that it was an ethical moral role in which to fill and I've only recently emerged from that and the thing that clicked the thing that helped me emerge from that was something that Alex horos says which is that sales is the transfer of belief and if you can transfer your belief into someone else they're going to buy what it is that you're selling but the prerequisite to that is to have product service an offer that you believe in and my problem for long time was that didn't really believe in what was selling only recently have we started to create create that consistently within Piper and deeply believe in what it is that sell now which is video services that we provide and our coaching group the piper video Guild it is so much easier to sell and it feels so much better because of the belief that underpins the work so if could go back would spend less time resenting sales and more time searching intently for the products and services that deeply believe in and then going and selling the out of him fourth mistake is very personal I've never talked about this publicly before because candidly it's embarrassing and was one of the darkest periods of my life my dad's bald his brothers are bald and my hair started to thin in my late teens so there was fear that might also go bald at very young age and dermatologist recommended that start taking propa also known as finasteride no substantial warning about the side effects that could come along with it well the reality is that how the drug works is that it reduces your testosterone as way to reduce the likelihood that your hair effectively Burns off people that are super high testosterone it's very common for them to have like big beards and bald heads because that's what excess testosterone will do in your system well as someone in their 20s was tested after being on the drug for multiple years and my testosterone was way way below what normal level would be for young man in his early 20s and my dihydro testosterone was also criminally like 1/4 of what it should have been and the side effects that came with that are easily googleable the worst of which for me was severe depression crippling depression that left me basically incapable of falling asleep would have to basically lay in bed and watch ESPN again until my body just passed out because could not be alone in dark room with my own thoughts it took while to figure out that this was the cause I'd been on the drug for years it took years for me to get better and ended up participating in lawsuit against MC citing propa as the cause of this pain and suffering that experienced now legally can't say unequivocally it was propa that caused my testosterone to drop to such extreme levels but what can report is that in the year after getting off finasteride my dihydrotestosterone and testosterone climbed substantially experienced way less crippling anxiety which allowed me to stop binge drinking every single weekend and in general massively improved my quality of life deeply deeply regret taking that medication and as result I've moved forward with my life being very loathed to ever take any sort of prescription in any way shape or form have focused to much much greater degree on eating quality Whole Foods drinking clean water and just focusing on all the inputs into my body so you could say that there was silver lining to that terrible experience but if could go back would not take that medication and while I'm not doctor would encourage most of my friends to think very very carefully before they did themselves my fifth mistake was waiting or being conservative to invest in myself if that sounds nebulous and not as significant as the first four mistakes you're probably right but there's still point here that hopefully you can value from 2023 has been the best year for Piper creative my company's total revenue we have more sales we have more clients we have more recurring Revenue than we ever have in the history of the company and that just so happens to coincide with being the year that have received more coaching about how to be an entrepreneur how to run business how to market then in all previous years of my career combined at the beginning of the year we made very conscious effort to buy the knowledge and get access to experts that had done what we were trying to do at Piper before that means we joined Josh Nelson's seven figure agency we hired YouTube Consultants like Jake Thomas and Patty Galloway and what do you know our YouTube channel is doing better than ever bought online courses from people like Justin Welsh and Nat Eliason also received coaching from growth partner 8 figure agency and Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business accelerator and while I've also learned that there's an extreme to the opposite direction and just receiving coaching getting coaching and never necessarily Translating that into action right now it feels like I've found happy medium where am executing at level higher than ever have in the past which changes the trajectory of the company and means that we will be bigger and better sooner than we otherwise would have so if you have the ability to go out and pay for consultation from some people who have done what it is that you want to do recently that is the most important Point here the reason group like seven figureure agency by Josh Nelson is so good is because there's bunch of people who just built seven fig marketing agencies in the last year in the last two years telling you exactly how they did it it's transformative it's Illuminating and it's also so inspiring to be in those communities surrounded by people who have such high ambition and are so generous with their information inspired by these groups inspired by the impact that it has had on us Hannah and have launched the piper video Guild which is aimed at doing the same thing for anyone looking to Market themselves with video we've spent the last 6 years producing thousands and thousands and thousands of videos garnering tens of millions of views for ourselves and for our clients and in our private Community with amazing members people that have built multi-million dollar companies we are sharing exactly how to have captivating thumbnails how to produce videos that drive retention that keep you watching to the end and how to convert those video views into revenue for your business so if that's something you'd be interested in check out Piper video guild.com genuinely hope that it will help you avoid the mistakes that made maybe change your perspective on one or two of these elements I'll see you in the next video