Welcome back to the Gentleman's Gazette!
In today's video, I discuss 10 things I wish I knew in my 20s. I am currently 34 but
my life has changed a lot and is dramatically different than it was 10 or
15 years ago. Today, I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self a
few things that would help me tremendously, however, that's not possible
so I hope you can learn from my experiences. So without further ado, the
number one thing that I wish I knew in my 20s was that you cannot save your way
to prosperity. Let me start by saying that I was never embarrassed of being
broke because I was a broke student pretty much all the way throughout
mid-20s and even when we started the Gentleman's Gazette; in the first few
years, I didn't pay myself a salary. That meant, I almost never bought new clothes
or new things of any kind. My wife and I also lived in the same 600 square foot
apartment which is about 55 square meters and she had that on her own but
we just decided to stay there. Once,
a neighbor in the apartment building came over and she shared that she
sometimes goes to food shelves to pick up their excess foods because they get
lots of donations and they just have to throw them away because people can't
consume it all. So I went with her and I got this gigantic 50-pound sack of Texas
Ruby grapefruit and I still remember that day simply because this was the
best grapefruit I ever had in my life. But if you think about it, I didn't just
go to the food shelf, I actually got the food shelf rejects. Growing up, I was always
taught to make the Dollar-Euro or German mark go further and so that was my
normal. I always tried to save money to do things myself, to not splurge on
restaurants or unnecessary things. In many ways, I'm very proud of that because it
taught me a good lesson of even making the most of other things when you don't
have a lot. However, eventually, my father-in-law, Tom, shared a story at a
point where he realized that he could not save himself into wealth and instead
just had to make more money so he could get the
things and do the stuff he wanted to do. That really rang home with me up, until
then, I was just comfortable where I was at and I was just trying to make as much
out of what I had as possible. That meant I never really got the things that I
truly wanted but just the things that were at an extremely good value ratio, things that
were on sale, things that were good deals, things from vintage stores that are very
inexpensive. Now, once Tom shared his experiences, it
really dawned on me, rather than just trying to save more money and do the
things I don't really want to do simply because they're inexpensive, it is better
to simply make more money so you can get exactly the things you want and do
exactly the stuff you want without having to compromise. To me, this was
almost a liberating experience because I knew where my path was going forward. So
if you feel stuck at where you are at, maybe just working harder where you are is not
the solution, maybe you simply have to change the game and do something
completely different, even if that means a pay cut in the beginning but
ultimately, it may lead to more prosperity and ultimately, freedom. The
second lesson I learned was to set aside your pride if it makes financial sense.
It's a lesson I learned in my early 20s. My wife was doing a day job and I was
working on the Gentleman's Gazette and I was not really contributing anything to
our household income. Then my wife lost her job and we could have gotten by by
taking low paid hourly jobs at McDonald's or Target but her parents
offered to help us. Initially, I wasn't happy with that because I had always
been raised to be very independent but we thought about it and agreed to take
them up on their offer to help because it enabled us to pursue the things we
wanted to do, my wife got an MBA and I continued with Gentleman's Gazette which
eventually would lead us to financial independence. I realized that starting
off on a good financial foundation was more important than my personal pride. So
what did I learn from it? If someone offers you genuine help, take them up on
it, especially if it's family. That may also
mean that living with your parents is your best option
even though you could afford an apartment but at the same time, if you
live at home, you may be able to pay down your student loans more quickly. On the flip side, that means you never want to take advantage of other people and you really
want to work towards a point where you can thank them for your help but
discontinue with it simply because you can now support yourself.
I find that doing this in a very planned manner enables you to just rely
on help for a short amount of time and then really stand on your own feet which
can feel very liberating and accomplished. The third was that
college or graduate schools aren't always worth it. I know it's a hot topic
right now with rising costs and more students graduating with tons of debt.
Personally, I went to law school in Germany but a year in, I realized I hated
it and after the internships, I also never wanted to work in law, however, at the
time, I would have created all of the debt if I would have just dropped out so
I just stuck with the school. Looking back, if I had just started my business
right then and there, I'd probably be much further ahead today, I would have
also learned a lot very early on, at the same time, I would likely not have met my
wife because I met her during an exchange semester in 2006. That being
said, for someone weighing going to college or not today, I think it really
pays to ask yourself why am I going to college? Do I just go so I can party hard
and have to wait until my grown-up responsibilities set in? or do you maybe
just go to college without knowing what you really want just because everyone
else in your peer group is going? If those are your main motivators, maybe
this is not the time for you to go to college. After all, these are two very
expensive reasons and you may end up with debt for a very long time
afterwards. At least, take a look around at all the positions.l There are many
companies that offer trainee programs with short paid training programs and a
guaranteed income there after. Also, often, they are very in demand positions
so you just would go into an industry that pays well for years to come. Or maybe you just have a passion and want to solve a big problem and you start
your own business, in the beginning that can be hard, you're not going to make
money but eventually, it'll pay off. The fourth thing I would tell myself, if
you can dream it, you can build it! Growing up, I was never really exposed to
entrepreneurship. My parents were employed, their friends
were employed, and I simply didn't know anyone who was an entrepreneur. Because
of that, I thought naturally, my future would be as an employee, however, it took
me some time to realize that I never performed my best when I was an employee
but I was much more content and satisfied when I was working for my own.
Looking back, deep down, I knew I wanted to do something by myself but I simply
didn't have the guts or to believe that I could do it. So if I knew that if I can
dream it, I can build it, I probably would have started my business earlier. Five, I
would definitely tell myself to abandon things earlier if they're not working. By
things, I simply mean stuff. It can be relationships, it can be ideas or
business ideas, or just something that you're working on, maybe a job. Personally,
I ended up graduating from law school in Germany even though I knew I hated it a
year in. Then when I came to the US, the economy was bad and I told myself that
if I want to be attractive in a job market, I need to have a degree from an
American University. So the easiest way was to get a Masters of Law from an
American University, of course, in law school, even though it was something I
knew I didn't like. If you take a step back, you can see it's this sunk cost
trap. You already invested money in it, it has gotten you so far, and it's now
easiest to just take that next step in that same direction even though you know
it's the wrong direction. I've seen it over and over again with friends, they
get to a certain level, they get adapted to a certain lifestyle and to a certain
paycheck, and now they're afraid to take the pay cut and pursue something they
really want to do simply because they're afraid that it would throw things off
and they don't know how to pay for their bills but honestly, they would be more
happy if they would just pursue their passion and not the paycheck. Six, thinking
too much or too little about the future can hurt you.
Yes, it's good to think about the future but to also live in the present. For
example, when I met my wife, Teresa, I was broke, she was broke. I was going to
school in Germany, I had to go back and if you would look at it from a very
objective rational point of view, looking at the future, you'd probably say yeah
there are probably no chances for this to go well.
Well now I've been married to my wife over nine years, we have a daughter, we
have a successful business, and a house and we're extremely happy together. So
sometimes, it pays to really live fully in the moment and take it step by step if
it feels right. Seven, life can sweep the rock out of you in a moment's notice. In
2012, both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other.
My mom had breast cancer, my dad pancreatic cancer and we thought they
were going to die. At the time, we didn't have much money but probably just enough
for a plane ticket to go over there and spend the rest of their lives with them
together, as I thought. Fortunately, as events turned out, they are both in
remission now, they're both alive and happy but having a little buffer that
allows you to either help out people that are very dear to your heart or just
visit a family member when you really needed is extremely available and it
just shows you, you can prepare for the future but you can never really prepare
for all the eventualities. So again, it's good to plan but live in the moment and
understand that you can't just prepare for everything out there and you have to
take things as they come to you. The eighth thing I wish I would have known earlier
was that you can teach yourself anything if you really want to. I probably would
have second-guessed my desire to go to law school if I knew that I could learn
things at first and figure out if there was something that I want to pursue or
not. That being said, aside from law school, I'm pretty much self-taught. I
never knew anything about websites when I started the Gentleman's Gazette
so I learned it. I learned about WordPress, about SEO, URLs, servers, hosting,
and how the whole internet works. With the Internet today, you can truly learn
anything, there's a course for everything, there are free resources, just like the
Gentleman's Gazette where we teach you how you can become a gentleman
and dress up and become your best version of yourself. At the same time,
there are paid courses, for example, when we started our shop, we had to take
pictures so I looked at how much it would cost to pay for a photographer and
it was enormous so I just took a course at CreativeLIVE so
I could take my own photos and understood how it all worked.
Then later, we started doing video and neither my wife nor myself have any
background that we just went online, learned from others, figured it out and
tried it ourselves. Even today, I'm a big believer in learning. Just yesterday,
I learned how to read notes and play them on a piano with a $9.99 from Udemy.
There's tons of knowledge out there and you just have to pursue it and you can
learn a lot of things that cost a whole lot less than college. Even if you think
you're too old to learn, never let age put a cap on your
curiosity because it's never too late. The ninth thing I wish I had known
earlier was that I should consult mentors or organizations with
like-minded people that can really help you grow from a business point of view
but also personally. I started the Gentleman's Gazette in 2010 and for the
first five years, I was pretty much on my own. Eventually, through a meet-up that I
went to twice, I met someone and he was part of an organization called
Entrepreneurs Oganization and they had an accelerator program helping smaller
businesses getting to 1 million. It costs 15 hundred dollars a month and at that
point in time, I had never spent that amount of dough on anything in terms of
training related other than my university education. However, it was a
fantastic experience where I could learn from experts in their field as well as
peers that were in the same shoes that had the same problems that I did. I
learned a lot about my business and other businesses and I saved a lot of
time by not having to reinvent the wheel. Today, I count some of the members among
my closest friends and it is just an incredible support community. Both myself
and my business have grown much much faster than they would have on our own,
therefore, I would encourage anyone out there to join peer groups and networks
of people that share a passion with you or an interest or maybe business. It's
just incredibly powerful and even if you can't find an organization, I bet there are
mentors who can help you and groom you. Last but not the least, one of the most important things I would tell myself is
to delegate, delegate, delegate. It's particularly true for entrepreneurs but
honestly, it is true for anyone out there and it's one of the ways to truly become
happier. When I moved to the US, my mindset was that I could either pay
someone to do things or I could just do it myself and save the money. So I would
always end up doing things myself, sometimes it would take me way longer
and I did a much crappier job than if I would have just hired it out.
For example, when I did my books, I hated it, I sucked at it, and as soon as I hired
someone, the books were excellent, the taxes were done for me, and I was much
happier and with that extra time, I made ten times as much money as what I had
saved on just doing it myself beforehand. Time is the only truly limited resource
we all have and if you can free things up and let experts do the things, you can
focus on what makes you really happy or makes you more money. Frankly, we became
so much happier once we hired a gardener and a person who cleans our house
because otherwise, you always stress out because you want certain standards but
you also want to do it yourself and save time ,at the same time, it just is so much
mental real estate that's covered up by that that you really can't do the things
that you're really good at. Of course we're all different so you have to
decide what are the things that you like. For example, I like grocery shopping so I
don't want to outsource that. We also like to cook so we don't hire a meal
service but cleaning and a personal assistant who will just fold all the
cardboard boxes and bring them out is definitely something we're willing to
invest in. Now the eleventh thing is a bonus tip and fortunately, I already knew
about that in my 20s. It is you can never be dressed up enough. Now, that's a bold
statement and of course there is no point in showing up in a tuxedo outfit
to a baseball game but what I rather mean by that is you can always dress up
in your environment a few notches up and for example when I fly I always wear a
jacket and my tie because it's my brand and it makes sense and I'm comfortable
in that skin at the same time I once ended up sitting next to a bank
executive and I had an issue getting a credit line that I needed to grow my
business now after talking to him he believed in me and he made it happen I
even got a phone call from my business banker the next day and he wanted to get
some coffee with me and he had never done it before and at the end he was
like oh by the way how did you get the credit line increase and I told him
about the experience and it's just another example of why dressing up and
showing your best self will never hurt you
In today's video I am wearing a typical outfit that I would wear when I fly for example
it consists of a jacket a vest I can take off if it gets too hot but it keeps
me warm a light blue dress shirt with a tie that is patterned it's from Fort
Belvedere it's a larger pattern than my houndstooth waistcoat and it works well
with the orange pocket square I have both of these items can be found in our
shop for my pants, I am wearing a pair of Navy corduroys paired with a navy and light
blue shadow striped sock from Fort Belvedere which you can find at our shop
here my shoes are brown Oxfords that have some broguing on them
which is ideal because you can wear it with basically any kind of daywear outfit
you can even wear it in the evening if you have to and so it's one versatile
shoe that you can bring on when you travel somewhere
