15 Things Rich People Did when They were Young Adults
Hello Aluxers, it’s great to have you back with us for an exciting Sunday article, especially since some of you fit this demographic perfectly or are close enough to it to reap its full benefits. This article is inspired by the things that successful people do when they are young adults.
You always hear about the success, the award, the IPOs, about the mysterious founder to made it against all odds.. But what you don’t hear about is the early days, the small things they’ve done differently for years before they got that initial traction.
We like to say:
The best time to start was yesterday, the second best is today!
It’s the small choices you make every single day right now that will dramatically alter what your life ends up being.
Pay close attention, for this article could just be the wake-up call you need!
That’s the main reason why today, we’re taking a look at 15 things successful people do in their 20s that make them rich later in life.
- 1. Extreme Determination to Succeed
- 2. Sacrifice
- 3. Save every Penny
- 4. Avoid Bad-debt at any Costs
- 5. Read as much as Possible
- 6. Put Yourself out there and Take Risks
- 7. Find what You’re Good At
- 8. Make Connections
- 9. Learn to Manage Time
- 10. They Build Lifelong Skills
- 11. Build Productive Habits
- 12. Find the Right Life Partner
- 13. Work in Sales
- 14. Start a Business
- 15. Find a Mentor
If you are one of the Aluxers who prefer visuals over the dull text, here’s all of the content of this article covered in our Youtube video:
With that out of the way, let’s jump straight into the article and discuss the things that successful people do int heir 20s:
1
Extreme Determination to Succeed
No.. no… no… you don’t understand! Success is the one and only priority! Not only do you have a burning desire to crush it at life, but every action you take is through the lense of success.
The odds of you winning this race are so slim, that only those who are constantly bringing their A game will manage to break through.
Without this determination to succeed, you will get sidetracked, you will be unsure, you won’t know in which direction to go.
All of this builds willpower, an internal strength that will allow you to overcome hardships and keep pushing when everybody else would’ve quit.
If this requires you to work 2 jobs and sleep less than 6 hours a night, then that’s what you have to do.
If there’s even the smallest hint in the back of your mind that you could possibly do something else, then you’re probably going to fail. A water dam erodes from the smallest crack in its structure, it’s never the strong points that break it down.
Weather or not you’re going to make it, rests on your shoulders!
2
Sacrifice
Everything in life has a price and success is quite expensive. In your 20s, you trade in your social life for hours upon hours of trial and error.
You barely see your friends, if you see them at all.. You’re not out there partying & getting drunk.
Most likely, in your early 20s there’s little to no room for an emotional life, because making this leap does require your all.
Or from something you do part time..
These people you look up to, they sacrificed waay more than you think. Most of them lived waay below their means, that’s where the ramen noodle phase in every successful entrepreneur’s life comes from.
You’re sacrificing time, relationships and almost all your money for this greater goal that might not even become reality, because you would rather play to win, than be satisfied with mediocrity.
3
Save Every Penny
For the first 5 years every single penny goes right back into the project, so there’s not much left anyway; but after that, the business should pick up momentum and you should see a decent flow of money coming in.
This is where some people fail in their journey. They buy a fancy car, a fancy watch, move into a fancier apartment and think that they’ve made it, when in reality this is the early phase of their financial collapse.
If you’re in your late 20s and money’s already coming in, SAVE ALL OF IT!
Keep living like you’re poor and take the money and invest it in anything that you understand well enough for your money to keep growing in time.
These investments are what will make you wealthy in the long run, not that semi-successful business that you’re operating.
4
Avoid Bad-debt at any Costs
Bad debt is the enemy of success, you know why? Because it has a particular power to weigh you down. You can no longer fly towards the sky if you’ve got a pile of debt chained to your feet.
You can’t even run with it.
Debt keeps you where you are until you rid yourself of it!
That’s why debt was designed in the first place. It keep employees and the population docile.
It limits creativity, it limits your ability to take risks and it’s always floating above you like a dark cloud.
If you’re looking to be successful in your early 30s, this will require incredible financial discipline for you to rid yourself of debt and make those investments we spoke about earlier.
Resource: Countries with Least Amount of Debt
5
Read as Much as Possible
This might sound like a cliche, but cliches come from truth.
The more you read, the more you earn!
For 20 dollars and a couple of days, you get to absorb the knowledge someone accumulated in their entire professional and personal life. This is the greatest arbitrage the world has ever seen and most people are simply unaware of just how valuable this is.
You are literally learning from the best people in the world, how they did it, what their mistakes were and how to think about life, for pennies on the dollar. It would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to even get in the same room with some of these people and you can simply buy that wisdom with the price of a movie ticket!
Top CEOs read over 50 books per year, while the average person barely reads 1.5!
This is also why top CEOs earn hundred times multiple over the average person.
If you’re looking for something to do in your 20s that has the largest long term up-swing, READ!!! A LOT!!!
These days, you can even listen to these people tell their stories. Interviews, audiobooks, podcasts, knowledge is available everywhere.
Even better, if you go to alux.com/freebook and sign up you can get an audiobook for free thanks to our friends at Audible. You are literally getting free knowledge, but how many of your really take advantage of all these resources you have at your disposal.
In order to get that mindset right and committed to this journey, we’re recommending two books:
Extreme Ownership by Jocko willink & You Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins.
If you go to alux.com/freebook you can get one of these for free if this is the first time you sign up!
6
Put Yourself out there and Take Risks
If you’ve got any shot at making it in the next 10 to 20 years, it all comes back to your ability to embrace risk and make the leap.
Unless you’re willing to push yourself into what you find uncomfortable, you will not be able to grow.
Your ability to learn and adapt is what is going to make you rich and successful, but in order for them to kick in, you need to be in a different space than you are now. Growth comes from effort and effort exists outside of what you already know and dominate.
You’ve seen this quote shared by everyone on facebook, back when sharing quotes was a thing you did casually! But it’s the truth.
If you want something that you don’t have, you need to do things you’re not already doing.
This isn’t rocket science!
7
Find what You’re Good At
Almost every successful person out there went all in on their strengths and passions.
Most people have no idea what they’re good at, who they are and what brings them satisfaction in life, thus chaining themselves to a life of mediocrity.
Your goal is to figure these things out as early as possible in life! Highschool would’ve been a great place to do so, but their too busy teaching you about every river out there and every cell that makes up a leaf to have time for this.
So naturally, you have to figure it out yourself.
How do you do that? You try a bunch of things! Trial and error.
The more things you try the more you start to gage where you fall and what you need to go towards.
If you find what you’re good at, even if you don’t hit it big at least you’ll be happy that you’re not slowly dying inside in a cubicle doing work you hate for people who don’t like you that much.
Resource: These are the 15 SKILLS You Need To Develop If You Want to be RICH
8
Make Connections
Connections are like those boosts in video games. It helps you move through the levels quicker.
If you’re in your 20s, this is the perfect time to connect, why? Because other successful people are more or less in the same segment of their journey as you are. Of course not everyone you’ll meet will make it, but those few of you who do, will have a different appreciation for each other and be more than willing to help each other out.
In this process you will learn the art of building relationships, of gaining other people’s trust and leveraging your connections for growth.
Here’s something to think about:
The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.
When you finally understand the power a personal network can bring to your life, you’re finally successful!
9
Learn to Manage Time
Your 20s are so chaotic that you’re forced to learn time management. That is of course if you’re serious about making it and not wasting your time on trivial activities.
The sooner you learn the value of time, the sooner you will take yours more seriously.
Do not let others rob you of it, for the quote is true:
Time is more valuable than money!
Because time is a currency multiplier!
What that means is time isn’t worth the same for everyone. The more valuable you are as a person to the marketplace, the more your time is worth.
This is a rookie mistake early entrepreneurs make, they believe their time is worth as much as everyone else’s.
Only after you learn to manage yours you begin to understand how much each hour of your life is worth.
10
They Build Lifelong Skills
Skills are like an investment in yourself that accrues both interests and appreciates in value as time goes on.
Imagine learning one skill in your 20s and then monetizing it for the rest of your life.. How epic is that?
Well, that’s exactly what successful people do early on in their careers. They learn as many valuable skills as they can and then focus on the few that provide them the highest return.
Statistically speaking the most valuable skills you can install in your personal software are:
- Self-Discipline and the ability to Self-Motivate
- Sells & Marketing
- Emotional Intelligence & the ability to control your Emotions
Through this combination you can continuously learn new skills and market them in exchange for value from the marketplace without breaking your soul due to the stress of everyday life.
They’re all incredibly important, so much so that we spent the last year developing our premium product Mind Mastery that focuses solely on learning to meditate, developing your EQ and taking control of your emotions.
It’s a 21 days challenge and depending on when you’re reading this article you might not be able to purchase it. Go to alux.com/mindmastery and see if there’s a reward waiting for you!
11
Build Productive Habits
Skills are NOS that accelerates the growth process, while habits are the fuel that keep the engine running day in and day out. These two ingredients are the part of the recipe of winning for successful people.
They act like the compounded interest that when allowed to take effect for extended periods of time lead to incredible results.
Always remember that:
Success is the sum of small actions repeated daily!
In the past decade people figured out that they can massively alter their lives if they changed their daily habits.
There are 2 books we recommend on this topic for those of you interested in building better ones: Atomic Habits by James Clear & The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Of course you can always go to alux.com/freebook and when you sign up get one of these as a free audiobook, courtesy of Audible.
12
Find the Right Life Partner
Uhhh, this is a controversial one, because most successful people tend to get married later in their lives, so why include this here?
Statistically speaking, if you’re in your 20s, you’ve already met the person you are going to marry. It’s in very fringe cases where at the lovely age of 37 you meet someone completely new and grow to marry each other.
The downside is, you’re very likely to get divorced and lose half of your stuff in the process, because the business is eating too much of your life and didn’t take the time to develop yourself emotionally in order to successfully manage both the personal and professional life.
Successful people take this opportunity to find a solid partner who’s goals are aligned with theirs, so that they’re both going through the same journey supporting each other in the process.
Identifying the right partner in your 20s or even 30s is a massive boost in the likelihood of a successful life.
13
Work in Sales
We brushed a bit about sales and marketing when talking about skills that pay off for a lifetime.
What we found when researching successful young entrepreneurs is that they understand their customers and know how to sell their product or service to them.
Having experience in selling helps you be comfortable around people and pushes you to verbalize what you need from them.
All your life you will be selling people on yourself, your ideas, your business, your goals everything you will do successfully depends on you convincing someone else or even yourself that this is the right call.
No matter how tough times get in your business, if you’re able to sell, you’re going to be ok!
14
Start a Business
You want that big financial reward later in life? Start a business now and learn what it takes to grow it in the following decade.
Even if the business fails, the lessons you learn in the process elevate your way of thinking by such a substantial degree that your likelihood of living a successful life increases.
Yes, you have a small shot at turning it into a massive success, but if you don’t start it, your chances are 0.
Do the math and see which bet you would rather make.
One of the biggest advantages of starting a business is that it teaches you to think systematically. You’re not thinking about the business as a whole, about the steps that need to happen in from creation to getting paid.
Solving all these puzzles requires a lot of hard work and if you do manage to best them, you’re left with valuable life skills which you can deploy in all aspects of your life.
15
Find a Mentor
The last item on the list of things successful people do in their 20s is finding guidance. Someone who cares about your success so much that their willing to give you some of their time and knowhow in order to make sure you get to the finish line.
You will have multiple mentors in your life, first your parents and later on people who have mastered different aspects that interest you in your life: from health, relationships and business.
We know how hard finding a quality mentor can be. When we created this Sunday Motivational series we did so to act as a digital mentor for as many people as possible. You’re already here watching these articles so it might be the right time to find an in person mentor to take your journey to the next level. We’ll always be here for you, but someone who cares for your needs specifically can be that extra push you’re looking for.
Just to keep things interesting around here, we’re curious to know: How old are you? Please answer in the comment section and we’ll be sure to say hi if you do.
