how to win in your 20s

Hey there,

I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I wanted to share some things that I believe are true about your 20s.

Not because I've figured it all out. I'm 21 and I'm still very much in the middle of it.

But I think the things I've learned so far, especially through building Elevenstoic and going through some really intense personal stuff, are worth putting out there.

And to be completely honest, most of this goes against what people around you are probably telling you right now.

Take as many shots as you can while you have nothing to lose

This is probably the most important one.

Right now you don't have a mortgage. You probably don't have kids. You don't have some massive reputation that could crumble if something doesn't work out.

Your downside is basically zero.

And still most people our age are terrified to take a single shot. Not because the risk is actually that big but because they're scared that someone they won't even talk to in five years might think they failed.

I had that exact fear when I started. I thought people from school would judge me. And yeah, some of them probably did. But I don't talk to any of those people anymore so it really doesn't matter.

I tried a lot of things before Elevenstoic became what it is now. And every single one of them taught me something that made the next thing better.

Success is not this thing where nothing happens and then suddenly you win. It's more like you're building a bridge brick by brick and most of the time it doesn't even feel like you're making progress until you look back and realize how far you've actually come.

So if you're in your 20s and you're not taking shots, you're kind of wasting the only time in your life where missing doesn't really cost you anything.

Pick one thing and go all in

I know this is hard because when you're young everything feels exciting and you want to try everything at the same time.

I've been there. I had multiple ideas running at once and all it did was feed my ego while actually draining me.

I felt busy but I wasn't really building anything.

The moment things actually changed was when I cut everything except Elevenstoic. The content, the philosophy, the app. One direction.

And I think about this a lot because you know that guy who got rich doing dropshipping and day trading and crypto and real estate all at the same time?

Yeah, me neither. Because that guy doesn't exist.

You have to pick one thing and get so good at it that people can't ignore you. Everything else can come later.

The lonely chapter is real and nobody talks about it

This is probably the part of this email that matters most and I almost didn't include it because it's hard to talk about.

There's going to be a chapter in your 20s where you don't really fit in with your old friends anymore but you also haven't achieved enough yet to be part of a new group.

You're kind of in between and it's genuinely lonely.

Your old friends want you to come out. They want you at the parties and the trips and the random Thursday nights.

And when you start saying no because you're working on something, they start saying you've changed.

And they're right. You have changed. That's literally the point.

I lost most of my friendships from before Elevenstoic. I talk to maybe one or two people from that time.

And to be honest, it was painful. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't.

But the version of me that was trying to keep everyone happy was the same version that wasn't building anything real.

And I think your goals will be with you longer than most of these relationships. That's not me being cold, it's just what I've experienced so far.

Stop watching and start building

This one changed everything for me and I think it's probably the most underrated shift you can make in your 20s.

I spent a long time consuming. Watching other people create content, build brands, put themselves out there.

And I was sitting there thinking I wasn't ready yet. Which is basically just another way of saying I was scared.

The thing is that when you actually start creating, even if it's terrible in the beginning (and trust me, mine was), you learn in a way that consuming will never teach you.

Every piece of content I made at the start was bad. But each one taught me something the next one built on.

And over time the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be started to shrink.

But here's the thing that nobody really tells you about this.

The hardest part of building isn't the work itself. It's that your phone is literally designed to pull you back into consuming.

Every notification, every algorithm, every scroll is engineered to keep you watching instead of doing.

You sit down to work on something that matters and within minutes you're back on your phone. Not because you're lazy but because your brain has been trained to chase small dopamine hits instead of sitting with the boring thing that actually moves your life forward.

That's pretty much why I built the Elevenstoic app.

Because I needed my phone to remind me to build instead of pulling me back into noise. Lock screen, home screen, notifications.

Every time I pick it up I see something that brings me back to what actually matters instead of getting sucked into content that I won't even remember tomorrow.

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Learn to love the boring part

Nobody cheers for you skipping a night out.

Nobody cheers for you waking up early to work on something that nobody cares about yet.

And I think that's exactly why most people don't make it because the winning happens in the middle where nobody's watching.

A single workout is never impressive. A single piece of content is never impressive.

But a thousand of them? That's what separates people who actually build something from people who just talk about it.

And if I'm being honest, I still struggle with this sometimes. There are days where I don't feel like doing anything and the work feels pointless.

But I've learned that those are usually the days that matter most because anyone can show up when they're motivated. The question is whether you show up when you're not.

Your real competition is yourself

I think the last thing I want to say is that your competition isn't really other people.

It's the version of you that stays comfortable.

Think about the person you'd never want to compete against. Focused, persistent, always learning, says no to everything that doesn't make them better.

That person is future you and your job right now is to become them.

And you're not going to become them by doing what everyone else is doing.

You become them by being okay with looking different, feeling different, and living different than the people around you.

That's not a sacrifice. That's a trade. And I think it's a pretty good one.

If I had to sum this up in one sentence

Figure out what you want. Ignore the opinions of people who don't have the life you want. And do so much that it would be unreasonable to not succeed. (Hormozi)

That's it. That's pretty much the whole thing.

Your 20s aren't the main event. They're the preparation.

And how you prepare right now is going to determine everything that comes after.

Just one life.

Richard, Founder of Elevenstoic

P.S. If this email made you think about something you've been putting off, put Elevenstoic on your lock screen. Not because I'm telling you to but because the reminder to actually do things instead of just reading about them is probably worth more than any advice I can write in an email.

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