A Four-Part Strategy For Creating New Opportunities
This is what I would do if I were just graduating.
By my count, college graduation was about 13 years ago (hot damn!) for me, almost to the day. It’s hard to believe how much time has passed since then, not to mention how drastically my life has changed.
When I first came out of school, I did a bit of soul-searching for a year to try and figure out who I actually wanted to be. Never mind trying to figure that out during school — at 35, I still can’t really shake that feeling.
But that’s okay! I’ve since come to peace with not knowing. And besides, life is long; I still have plenty of choices and opportunities ahead of me.
Thinking back about 13 years, though, has been a fun exercise, to say the least. What would I do if I knew then what I know now? Would I have ended up in another field? How might things have been different for me?
I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned so far, and you can apply this strategy to investing: now is the time to be disproportionately risky.
Take bigger risks while you’re young
Here’s what I mean. You just graduated, right? This makes you a young, capable adult with the capacity and skills to earn money. Not only that, you still live at home, so food and shelter aren’t really worries.
Listen, I know everybody’s situation is different, but to me, that’s when you should be most risky. After all, you’ve just survived a whole four-year stretch living off of Top Ramen, dinosaur chicken nuggets, and an uncomfortable amount of water, sunlight, and sleep.
The first big risk I took (which comes up a lot in my writing) was in 2010 when I accepted an unpaid internship opportunity in New York City. Financially, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I knew it would be a valuable experience for me. Fast-forward to today and I can even trace meeting my fiancé back to that initial opportunity!
Whatever your ambition, whether sleeping on a business partner’s couch or going full-on digital nomad for a year, you’re ready to absorb that risk, trust me.
If you decide to put it off, just know that these things can become even harder decisions down the line. That’s when things like aging parents, mortgage payments, and a growing family come into play.
But you’re you! And you’ve got some real time on your side. Here’s how I’d choose to spend it if I were back in your situation today.
Adopt a shoot-for-the-moon mentality
A funny thing happens when you set your sights extraordinarily high. Sure, in the end, you might not hit your goal on the mark. But even getting close to it can be considered a substantial win. Or, as Les Brown once put it:
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
Before you can accomplish anything great, first, you have to have the dream. Not everyone will understand it. Some people (even those close to you), will outright condemn it even. Don’t worry about them — it’s not their dream. Trust that only you know exactly what you’re doing.
This came up when I watched the movie Contact recently. In a last-ditch effort to try and raise funding, Jodie Foster’s character went on a rant after a guy said her idea sounded “less like science and more like science fiction”:
“You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an ‘airplane.’ You know, you get people to go in and fly around like birds — it’s ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right?!”
The point is: big ideas often sound crazy. In fact, the bigger the idea, the crazier it’ll likely seem. All that matters at the end of the day is how you feel about it, so dare to be audacious and dream big.
Create the things you really want to see
“Be the change you want to see in the world” is a popular quote I often see attributed to Gandhi, and I think the same advice applies to creativity.
Take Greta Thunberg, for instance. She wanted to live in a world that took a stronger stance on climate change. What did she do? She created a sign that said “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (School strike for the climate) and cut class to stand outside Swedish Parliament. That sign has since grown into a movement, landing her on Time’s Person of the Year list in 2019.
I subscribe to the idea that one piece of content can change your life. It has to be the right piece of content, consumed by the right audience, at just the right time, but… what a wonderful world we must live in where that alone can help somebody get closer to their dream.
Fresh out of college, there are very few rules around the things you could be creating. You don’t need anybody’s permission, for starters, and you most certainly don’t need to worry about things like key performance indicators or clickthrough rates. You can simply have an idea, then… create.
My advice: create to your heart’s content. Put things out into the world just because you want to, or just because they fill a need. It won’t matter whether they “strike a chord” with your target demo, or “go viral” within a certain niche. They just need to come from a place of authenticity.
Hit up the “top 1% of X” for dream gigs
Here’s some advice I very rarely ever see these days: Just ask! Reach out to the leaders of your chosen field directly, seeing what they need.
“You won’t get anywhere in life if you’re too afraid to ask,” is something I feel like my mom used to occasionally say. And she was right! There is such a thing as good timing and the right connection can change everything.
Let’s take it back to my unpaid internship in New York City. Know how I got that opportunity to begin with? I cold-emailed the CEO of the company and copied a few other members of his team. The subject of my email was “Your next awesome team member” and I approached it by saying how I was a huge fan of their work and felt I had a lot to offer the team.
Had they never even responded, no hard feelings. In my mind, the worst-case thing that could’ve possibly happened was them simply ignoring me.
Today, if I were fresh out the gates from college and looking to make a splash, this would be my strategy:
- Make a list of my top 50 people, brands, & companies
- Create a piece of work that fits their specific needs
- Reach out to them one by one, with authenticity
- Approach interactions with a give (not get) mentality
People sometimes forget that CEOs, athletes, performers, and celebrities are still just ordinary individuals like you and me. Sure, they often have entourages, assistants, or handlers, but they can certainly be reached.
If you come at them from an honest place and communicate the value you’d be willing to bring, it could very well lead to something. And whether it’s person 5 or 45 who reaches back out, what you will have done for yourself is create a unique opportunity out of nothing.
Document the process of chasing your dream
This is advice I tend to give a lot, yet it always seems worth saying. Document your approach — the successes and failures — to reaching your dream.
It can seem counterintuitive at first, but by capturing the process while you’re in it, you’re essentially uncovering a new potential content stream while bringing others along on your journey. And, as we’ve discussed, both content and connections have the power to change things.
The benefits of even attempting this are three-fold. First, like journaling, it’ll help you get all your ideas out of your head. Second, it’ll help you hone your skills and creativity. Lastly, it will become an asset itself, whether for you or the many others who’d like to follow in your footsteps someday.
Who here has seen a documentary in the last year? Whether it was about Michael Jordan or Mr. Rogers, I’ll bet you were glad those people knew to carry a camera with them that day. Today, that footage is priceless.
Shoot for the moon. Create to your heart’s content. Reach out to extraordinary people. Document everything.
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