Career Advice to a 20-Year Old
The Amplified Impact Podcast
July 1st, 2023
So, I had this conversation with a young man, probably in his early 20s, still figuring out his path in life.
We all look up to those ahead of us and wonder how to get there faster.
Well, we discussed the question…how can you fast-track your success?
Now, if making money is the goal (and let’s be real, it often is), I’ve got a solid answer for you: sales.
No doubt about it.
Sales teach you crucial skills like persuasion, communication, and understanding human psychology.
It’s all about influence, my friends. And high-ticket sales? Even better.
Selling big-ticket items opens doors to more affluent customers and easier sales.
Plus, the feedback loop is tight, allowing rapid improvement.
So, if you wanna win the game and make bank, maybe it’s time to hop on the sales train.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“I would go into sales, and in particular, I would go into high ticket sales because truth is, it is just as hard to sell a $5 widget as it is to sell $100,000 widget. And I know that sounds really hard to believe, but I guarantee it’s true.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Yo, what’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. I was talking with a young buck, a guy, I think he was probably in his early, early, early 20s, still in college, trying to figure out what’s the path forward in life that he wants to pursue. You know, the goal is always, how do I you know, you you look up to your your idols, and you’re like, I’m not his idol. I don’t mean to imply that, but you look up to the people who are further ahead of you that maybe are some kind of mentor, and you think, I want to be where they are, but I want to get there faster, right? So one of the quintessential questions that I link with Charlie Munger in Warren Buffett is, at one of the shareholder meetings, a guy gets up and he goes, well, how do I get to where you guys are if I was starting right now? And Charlie goes, well, he’s really asking is, how do I get to where you guys are but faster? And it’s true, right? If you’re following the framework of the person who came before, then probably, yeah, you can do it quicker. But that is the goal, right? Like, this kid, he doesn’t want to be where I’m at at 39 or 40 or whatever I am now. He wants to be further ahead of me at 39, 40. What he wants is what I have now, but in the next five to ten years before he turns 30, totally get it, right? And so working backwards from that goal, what does he need to do? What path should he pursue in life? What career choices should he make? And I think those are interesting questions when I think about it. If the goal is to make money, and that’s the lens that we’re going to look at it through here, because I think your 20s are a great time to do a couple of different things.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:35]:
One, it’s a great time to experiment and test the waters and sow your wild oats, so to speak. But that’s what I did in my 20s because I needed to do that. I needed to work through my shit with ADHD and my personality. I needed to go live that life. And so that’s what I did with my twenty s. I just went and tried a bunch of different things. I experimented in life, and it was kind of like a wild, free liberating experience. But there comes a point then, in my late 20s where suddenly that was butting up against societal’s expectations and the fact that that path long term wasn’t setting me up for security and the life that I ultimately was coming to realize I wanted to have for myself.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:17]:
Now, the other side of that is that there’s a demographic of people who aren’t necessarily so much interested in going out and experimenting and living wild and free in their twenty s. I don’t know if fear is the right word, but they’re more oriented towards how do I get ahead right now? How do I win the game? I want to get there faster so that then I can enjoy the later years. And I’m not saying that one is right or wrong because delayed gratification is very important skill for highly successful people. But on the other side, I think you also have to live in the moment and enjoy it. I probably lived in the moment and enjoyed it a little bit too much, but then again, I don’t want to see people just go the Gary Vee route where he’s like working in the back of a liquor shop for his entire 20s, never going on vacations, never living, never having good relationships and friendships and experiences. So I think there has to be a balance there. But if presumably what this gentleman’s goal was is to make money, his goal is before 30, he wants to be, I don’t know, a millionaire, then for me, it’s very clear the path that will get you there the quickest is sales. It’s a no brainer.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:20]:
I would go into sales, and in particular, I would go into high ticket sales because truth is, it is just as hard to sell a $5 widget as it is to sell $100,000 widget. And I know that sounds really hard to believe, but I guarantee it’s true. And in my experience, in a lot of cases, it’s easier to sell the $100,000 thing because the demographic of customer that you’re typically selling to more affluent, more okay, making decisions, less guarded with their money, perhaps I think those sales in a lot of ways can be a lot easier. So if you’re going to go into sales and the reason I think sales are so important is because you learn so many critical skills that are going to serve you well throughout life. One, everything is sales. Everything. Or even if you’re not technically a salesperson, your conversation with your loved ones and trying to figure out, trying to make a decision about where to go out to dinner and you want to go to Chuck E. Cheese and they want to go to Chili’s.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:13]:
I don’t know. Those are terrible examples. But you want to go to a particular place, they want to go someplace else, and now you have a sale. Now you’re having a negotiation and figuring out, how do I sell Chuck E. Cheese to my partner? So she wants to go there. Or when you’re at the bar and you’re meeting that gal and you want to convince her to go out on a date, you have to sell yourself to her in a way, right? Like, everything is sales. It’s not dirty. Actually, Daniel Pink wrote a great book on this called To Sell Is Human.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:40]:
And I highly recommend going reading that if you have any kind of internal hang ups when it comes to the idea of sales. If that feels dirty and you’re like, I don’t like that, that sounds horrible, it’s a powerful reframe because what sales really are at the end of day for me is understanding, influence, persuasion, human psychology and communication. And those are powerful, powerful traits that will serve you no matter where you want to go in life. Like how to communicate, how to do it persuasively, how to understand the human psychology of the person on the other side. Those are things that are going to serve you incredibly well. But if you can learn those skills in a world like sales, I think you can develop those abilities much, much faster because the feedback loop in sales is very tight. You learn very quickly if you communicated this well, if you understood the psychology of the person, the avatar on the other side, if you were able to connect with them in a meaningful way, you learn pretty quickly. Did it work or did it not? And in all things in life, when it comes to practicing, rehearsing and achieving mastery, that feedback loop is super important.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:49]:
It’s one of the reasons why we don’t really improve as drivers or as typists. Right? I type just as fast now and just as accurately as I did ten years ago. Despite the fact that I’ve written millions more words, I’ve typed a million more words. I’m really not a better typist because I haven’t had a feedback loop and tried to rehearse and practice with intention. Right. Without that feedback loop, you’re just doing the thing mindlessly, which is what most of us do. We go onto autopilot, we habituate the activity and that’s fine. I want to use as little brain power as possible when it comes to typing.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:21]:
I’m satisfied with how good I am at it. I don’t need to get better to improve the quality of my life. And so it’s not worth the cognitive bandwidth that would be required to invest into the activity to actually improve at it. Right? So I don’t and that’s what most of us do. However, with sales and with these very big important skills and traits that are going to serve you incredibly well throughout life, you have to practice them with intention and part of that then the feedback loop. So I would go into some sort of high ticket sales, maybe become a realtor try to sell houses and buildings, maybe get into car sales, or into luxury goods sales or into medical device sales. I think all of these things can be powerful platforms for you to develop your skills at a very rapid rate. Plus side of that too is you get paid on commissions.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:08]:
So as you improve and you’re selling more and more and more, you can make a ton of money. In fact, I think if I was starting all over, I would go into sales before, into entrepreneurship, and make my money there and then leverage that into entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship is very hard when you don’t have money, it’s very stressful. You’re always fixated on, how do I get cash flow coming in? And you’re living from not even paycheck to paycheck. You’re just trying to live on a shoestring budget, which can really affect your quality of life and the decision that you can make at the time. If you come into building a business already with money stocked away from something else, it’s way, way easier. Truthfully, it’s night and day difference. So I would probably try and make my money first in sales and then use that as my nest egg to jump into a business opportunity of some sort. So I hope this brings you guys a little bit of value, a little bit of perspective.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:55]:
I’m curious, what do you think of sales? Do you have a negative relationship with it? Is it something that you look at and think, oh, use car salesmen. That’s sleazy, that’s dirty. I would be curious to understand what is it that is causing you to have those emotions around that concept of sales, because I find this very, very common in people. So find me on Twitter, that’s at Anthony Vasino or on Instagram, that’s at the Anthony. Shoot me a DM, let me know. Let’s have a conversation. I want to understand it. I’m not trying to sell you anything.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:24]:
I just genuinely want to understand your perspective. And if you’re totally okay with sales, if you love it, but you’re curious, how do I get better at it? Shoot me a DM as well. I got some resources. I can throw you away. So that’s going to do it for me, guys. We’ll see you back around here tomorrow. Until then, stay hyper focused.
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