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Success doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to become successful by 30, take responsibility to start planning the blueprint for your life now. The foundation that you build today sets the tone for your future.
Becoming successful by 30 requires perseverance, consistency, and resilience. While success might fall into your lap, it’s often achieved through discipline, learning from mistakes, facing obstacles, and sheer hard work.
Today, we’ve spoken with Mark and Dylan, two successful business owners under 30. They run a brand called Huge Supplements, which is one of the fastest online supplement stores.
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We asked them which tips they applied to achieve the position they’re currently in — here’s what they had to say:
1. Get out of your comfort zone
Success doesn’t grow in comfort zones. Life goals aren’t achieved when we follow the same patterns, spend our time focusing on the same things that haven’t brought us success, or hold onto old behaviors that don’t get us ahead.
One of the biggest things that hold people back from becoming successful is getting stuck in their comfort zone.
For example, if you prefer to spend all your time with your friends and family in the same place where you grew up, you might miss out on life-changing opportunities available in other places. Consider changing jobs, and towns, or seizing a lucrative chance when the opportunity presents itself.
Even if it doesn’t, if you know you would have a better chance to achieve your dreams somewhere else, you may need to take the initiative and create your own opportunity. It’s important to take a risk now to become successful before you turn 30. Take opportunities that can boost your financial or career success.
A comfortable job that doesn’t challenge you, advance your career, and push you to success can prevent you from becoming who you want to be before you’re thirty. Do what it takes, be bold, and take a step that scares you but puts you on the right path to hitting your goals.
2. Manage your money
Saving, budgeting, and learning how to use your money wisely are some of the best ways to achieve and maintain lasting success. Even if you don’t make a lot of money, it’s important to learn how to manage your finances properly if you don’t do so already.
The good news is that there are a ton of helpful resources, from apps to podcasts, to help you save, track, and invest your money.
Related: 6 Simple Strategies for Better Money Management
If you are deep in debt, you should prioritize paying down high-interest debt. Get smart with money by setting financial goals for spending, saving, and retirement. If you want to be successful and financially free, it all starts with managing the money that you do have.
Educate yourself about investments and consider putting some of the money that you save through wise spending into something such as a business, course, or another kind of education that will improve your goals for a stable and successful future.
3. Pursue your passion
If you’re under 30, this is the best time to figure out what you excel at and what you enjoy doing. Thanks to a wide variety of opportunities today, you don’t have to get stuck in a mediocre job doing something you don’t love for the next thirty years.
Take the time to ask yourself questions that can help you figure out your passion. Write them down. Break big goals into smaller, actionable steps with estimated deadlines. What do you dream about doing or becoming? What drives you to invest your time or money? Answering these questions can help you uncover your life purpose.
4. Develop marketable life skills
Once you’ve nailed down your central passion or passions, it’s time to start building the skills that will help you start a business, launch a brand, or land that dream job in your chosen field.
Achieving success by age thirty in any career requires certain life skills that will help you break through to that next level of success. Marketable life skills aren’t just the functional skills or training that you need to do the best job possible.
These include mental strength, coping skills, and a drive to succeed even when you face setbacks or roadblocks in life. It takes imagination and thinking outside the box. It also means tuning out distractions such as social media, television, gaming, partying, or anything that holds you back from giving your passion the time and focus that it needs to develop and thrive.
At the same time, character traits alone won’t land you a job at a top firm, become an influencer in your field, or make it into the echelons of power. You’ll need to hone your problem-solving skills and get the education, training, or practical abilities needed to make it big.
5. Build your network
The road to success can be a lonely road as you put in long hours to achieve your dream. But, it doesn’t have to be. It’s important to let the people who are important to you know that you care about them. It’s also vital to create a professional network to help advance your career.
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Rome wasn’t built in a day, and most people don’t achieve success early on in life without honing strong working relationships with individuals who can boost their careers to the next level.
Some of the best ways to network are to make professional social media connections, attend career conferences, hand out your business card to professionals with whom you connect, and have your elevator pitch ready to go if a golden opportunity comes up.
Networking isn’t all about self-promotion and getting your pitch across, either. Seek mentors who will help you grow, learn, and infuse you with their experience and positive potential.
Final Thoughts
While everyone defines success differently, it’s important to decide what that looks like for you. Maybe it looks like a fulfilling personal and professional life. It may mean becoming an entrepreneur, raising a family, starting a company, going back to school, or achieving a satisfying work-life balance.
The key is to write down or create a visual plan for what you want to achieve by age thirty.
First, figure out where your passions and talents lie. Next, get your finances in order, whether it’s paying off debt, controlling your spending, setting aside savings for retirement and the future, stepping outside your comfort zone, developing mental toughness and putting in the work, and making connections with the right people who will help lift you towards the life you want rather than pull you down.
Whatever success by age 30 looks like for you, the best way to achieve it is to create a holistic roadmap. Once that takes you step by step through the journey to get you where you want to go.