We live in a strange time — a time of instant gratification. We seldom think about it but we’re living in the future that we could only imagine as kids. Almost everything is available with the click of a button, personal drivers, dates, food, living space, music, tickets, you name it there’s an app for it. It’s a beautiful thing. It has also changed the way many people think, especially millennials.

Millennials (defined as 18–34 in 2015) are now the largest, most diverse generation in the U.S population. As a millennial myself, I can attest to the fact that we value community, family and creativity in our work and we’ve been shaped by technology. The fact that tech has shaped us is why we are used to getting things right away. As nice as it is to get things with the snap of a finger, that’s not the way you become successful. It’s a long and consistent grind.

Not only do you have to work hard, but you have to work harder now because of the economic climate we’re in. It’s a known fact that many of us have started our careers during a economic downturn and it’s something that we will have to deal with for years to come. How we respond to this will determine how much money we make, the good news is we’re still surrounded with massive opportunity — it’s just not found in the same places that our parents found it.

Our parents found opportunity by going to college, getting good grades, working for large corporations, climbing the latter, putting money into a 401(k) and saving for retirement. The game has changed, contractors are becoming the new workforce and in the future employees won’t exist. Sound scary? It’s bittersweet really. Uber is a great example, the ride-sharing startup has 160,000 contractors, but just 2,000 employees. That’s an astonishing ratio of 80 to 1. It’s not just on-demand companies that employ significant contract workforce’s. Microsoft has nearly two-thirds as many contractors as full-time employees. Even the simplest business structures, sole proprietorships, have increased their use of contract workers nearly two-fold since 2003. With the right discipline this freedom to create your own hours can be a wonderful thing for you. With lack of discipline it can be detrimental. So how do you succeed in this new world? I’ll tell you what’s worked for me.

From 2007 to 2010 the U.S. has printed and distributed 16 Trillion dollars! Clearly, there isn’t a shortage of money, there’s an abundance of it but there’s certainly a shortage of long term think and creativity. I’m sure that your parents told you that you have to get a good job and “make money”, well they’re wrong, only the Federal Reserve can print bank-notes. You have to start thinking of how you can get money, and by using your creativity you can get money from various ways. The three ways to generate massive wealth from personal experience are by becoming a personality (“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business….. man”- Jay Z), by creating value through a business (starting one) or creating value for a business (investing in one, joining one etc…)

I’ve written a list of ideas and action steps for each way to help get your train of thought in motion.

Becoming a personality:

Podcast (great way to get attention and generate reoccurring ad revenue)

Blog (great way to get attention, and sell your products/services)

Newsletter (great way to get attention, and sell your products/services)

Write a book (great way to get attention, and get residual income)

Create quality video content via YouTube videos (great way to get attention, generate ad revenue, and sell your products/services)

Periscope/Meerkat (great way to get attention)

Webinars (great way to get attention and sell your products/services)

All of these methods help you get two things, attention and money, because attention leads to money.

Action Steps:

Choose one of the above methods to get money. Do what it takes to setup the infrastructure to build content on. Set weekly/monthly goals, e.g. if you setup a blog, set a weekly goal of at least 2 quality blog posts a week. If you setup a podcast aim for 1–2 quality podcasts a month (and scale it up as you grow). Be consistent — make sure that the quality of your content and when you release it is consistent. This is what ultimately defines your brand. Constantly improve and be different — seek ways to dominate your space by going above and beyond what others are doing. If others are releasing a 3 blog posts a week, release 4 or release one that is better than all 3 of there’s.

Starting and building a business

eCommerce (straight forward, highly competitive).

Build a product that is different than what’s out there that helps either consumers get what they want or businesses get what they want.

What do businesses want? — More money.

What do people want? — Social status, health, relationships, money.

Building a business is pretty straight forward you’re looking to make a profit by fulfilling a need in the market place. You can achieve this either by selling a product to consumers, or selling a product to businesses, it’s really that simple. The hard part is determining what that product is and finding product market fit.

Action steps (non-eCommerce):

Write at least 5 business ideas down each day. After a month of doing this you’ll have a bunch of ideas. Choose the 5 best ideas. (best ideas = help a lot of people and solve a real need/want) For each idea speak to 5–10 different people and ask if they would be interested in paying for such a thing. Choose the idea that receives the most promising response (you want genuine responses, so press them and say “would you pay upfront right now?”) Attend programming meetups, hackathons, visit stackoverflow.com, and network with technical people. Write specs for the product and outline your vision. Bootstrap or raise funding from friends, family, or an angel investor to begin funding the development of the product. Once the product is built begin marketing the hell out of it! (read: Traction — A startup guide to getting customers, and visit growthhackers.com)

Creating value for an existing business

Traditional method — If you have a unique qualification or direct experience in marketing, sales, programming, design, law, business dev, the good news is, there’s no shortage of companies that could use your help. Either join them, or do contract/consulting work for them.

Come up with unique ideas for existing businesses/incumbents and share the ideas with them for free! (great way to build relationships with key people, and you never know how this value add will come back to you)

Introduce two decision makers at complimentary businesses. (by being the link between two people, you’ll have created value for both parties)

The action steps in this last section are self explanatory.

See, in this new economy you need to stand out and be creative. With the internet we are all fortunate enough to have the ability to reach hundreds of millions of people, and do things our parents and their parents only dreamed of. It’s up to us to use for all it’s worth and separate ourselves from the pack (the middle class).

It won’t be here for long. We’re quickly moving toward a world of the have’s and have not’s. OK, I lied, we’re living in it. Which side do you want to be on? I don’t mean to scare you with what I’m about to say but these are the cold hard truths. The value of the dollar is decreasing (because as I mentioned earlier the fed is printing a shit-ton of it!), school tuition is increasing and employment uncertainty is at an all time high. Don’t believe me? Here are some relevant data points conducted by a policy think-tank — the University tuition and compulsory fees are expected to have about tripled from 1990 to 2017 and because the nation’s money supply is constantly being expanded the dollar is rapidly declining.

You have to realize that we are in a flawed system and if you play by the rules you’re going to lose. This is not to say break the laws, I highly encourage and live by being ethical. The point is the old system that your parents believed in has failed them, and will fail you too. You have to play by the new rules.

Build up your personal brand or build up your companies brand. Build relationships with great people. Create value for those people. Be ethical. Be fearless.

The point is you have to start kicking ass. Follow me and share this with your millennial friends and I’ll show you how to start kicking ass in my next post.