Learn in Your 20's, Earn in Your 30's

"Learn in your 20's, earn in your 30's" is a simple mantra that I love. The specific ages aren't important — the message is. By focusing on learning now, you can exponentially increase your ability to earn down the road.

Picture two college classmates. One is earning a solid salary by 35 — comfortable, respectable, fine. The other is earning ten times as much. What was the difference? It wasn't that one negotiated a slightly higher starting salary out of school. The one who pulled ahead sacrificed short-term compensation to learn, grow, and find the place where they could win over the long haul. This happens all the time. Being on the best long-term trajectory matters far more than the size of your current paycheck — especially when you're young.

So why do most career services offices get this backward? I have nothing against them or the people who work there, but they're stuck in a bind. It's nearly impossible to measure the long-term happiness and success of graduates. It's easy to measure employment rates and first-year compensation. So that's what gets measured — and it's the metric that drives magazine rankings every year. Students are naturally pushed to take whatever job is available and to overweight pay in ways that don't serve them.

To maximize your long-term success, you need to identify what you truly want and pursue it with a vengeance — regardless of what people tell you. Sometimes you have to take advice from multiple sources, draw your own conclusions, and pave your own path.

Entering my second year of business school, I turned down a job offer from the consulting firm where I'd interned. I wanted to start my own company and decided there was no looking back. I not only turned down the offer — I took one of their people with me. A manager from the firm quit to join my startup. I then proceeded to graduate and earn almost nothing as we got the business off the ground and searched for funding. Let's just say I didn't earn a gold star in the recruiting department for that move.

But I was exponentially more prepared to succeed because of it. I learned how to build a team, how to hunt down customers and earn credibility, how to raise funding, how to build a scalable product, how to navigate tricky management decisions, how to operate in a rapidly changing market, how to build partnerships, and ultimately how to create and run an organization.

The experience paid enormous dividends throughout the rest of my career. But it was tough at the beginning. I had to think differently and resist outside pressure. I encourage you to do the same.

Don't settle for a good career. Shoot for greatness. Throw your starting salary out the window and do something extraordinary regardless of the compensation. You'll be better off for it no matter what happens in the short term. You may not make it on your first shot — but in my opinion, subscribing yourself to a lifetime of mediocrity is the biggest risk you can take. Pursuing a passion, balanced with the realities of what’s economically viable, and constantly learning? I don't see much risk in that.