{"id":2205,"date":"2011-08-19T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=2205"},"modified":"2018-04-03T09:00:02","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T16:00:02","slug":"im-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/19\/im-23\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m 23"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is my birthday. For the last five years, I\u2019ve written a birthday post where I share what I\u2019ve been up to in the last circle around the Sun. I\u2019m continuing the tradition, to share what I\u2019ve learned and what my hopes are for the future.<\/p>\n<p>While I believe it\u2019s the growth you make as a person, not a checklist of accomplishments, that defines your life, here\u2019s a few milestones I crossed in the last year:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I graduated from university<\/li>\n<li>Started running ScottHYoung.com full time<\/li>\n<li>Doubled my business from 2010<\/li>\n<li>Moved to Vancouver<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The year before, when I lived in France, changed me a lot. Although this year didn\u2019t have the same level of travel or excitement, it was a great year learning new things with many new friends.<\/p>\n<h2>Graduating from University<\/h2>\n<p>I graduated from the University of Manitoba, with a Bachelor of Commerce in April. My major was entrepreneurship, for which I received the top mark in my school.<\/p>\n<p>University was an amazing experience. I made friends, lived abroad, competed internationally and learned a lot\u2014most of which was never inside a classroom. I\u2019m happy to be done, but I\u2019ll miss the connections and atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>For those wondering whether I\u2019ll do a masters, the answer is probably no. After five years of b-school, I grew tired of business academia. The qualitative fields rely too much on \u201cexpert\u201d wisdom, which reeks of superstition. The quantitative fields are more interesting, but rarely practical for a small-business entrepreneur.<\/p>\n<p>Despite my major, business school prepares you for working in a large corporation\u2014not to be an entrepreneur. Had someone told me this, going into school, I would have done a technical degree with a business minor.<\/p>\n<p>That said, I don\u2019t feel the choice of major (at least in my case) was terribly important. I learned so much from being in university, that the trivia I picked up in my classes seems almost beside the point.<\/p>\n<h2>Becoming a Full-Time Entrepreneur<\/h2>\n<p>Technically, this business started supporting me full-time in early 2010. However, as I was still a full-time student, April marked the first time my business became my full-time occupation.<\/p>\n<p>One surprise was just how little work it took me to run my business full-time. After 5 years of juggling writing, product launches and marketing with full-time classes, having to only run my business seemed incredibly relaxing.<\/p>\n<p>I could use this extra time to reinvest aggressively in my business, but I don\u2019t plan to do that. I\u2019m earning enough income to support myself, so I\u2019d rather put my effort into other areas of my growth.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve always had the belief that it\u2019s easier to be (relatively) poor, when you\u2019re young. As you age, your peers have more established careers, and judge you more by profession or income. While I\u2019m definitely not poor, I see no rush to become rich just yet. I\u2019d rather spend my twenties aggressively learning and taking on cool projects which are more risky than lucrative.<\/p>\n<p>My biggest fear as a writer is that my biggest accomplishment will be creating my career as a full-time writer. Even now, when I get interviewed over half of the time it\u2019s about how to become a full-time blogger, a topic I don\u2019t write about. I desperately want to avoid being an \u201cexpert\u201d whose only expertise is setting up the business for which they dole out advice.<\/p>\n<h2>Moving to Vancouver<\/h2>\n<p>Vancouver is the fourth city I\u2019ve lived in, so moving shouldn\u2019t be terribly remarkable. The major difference this time is that I\u2019m no longer in school or at a job, which in the past had always generated my social circle.<\/p>\n<p>Living in a new city while working from home makes the process of meeting people more interesting. I found making friends in university very easy, so switching to a completely new context has made me a beginner again.<\/p>\n<p>I would consider myself an outgoing person, if not by birth then at least by practice. But the boilerplate advice to \u201cget outside\u201d or \u201cmeet people\u201d is just a first step.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s the best way to make new friends, in this context? Date women? I don\u2019t know yet, but it\u2019s nice knowing I haven\u2019t figured everything out yet and my life is still an adventure.<\/p>\n<p>As an aside, if you\u2019re in Vancouver, I\u2019m generally happy to <a href=\"mailto:meetup@scotthyoung.com\">meet up with readers<\/a>. I\u2019ve met with a couple since I moved to Vancouver and had a great time.<\/p>\n<h2>Plans for the Future<\/h2>\n<p>In the immediate future, I\u2019m going to be reopening Learning on Steroids in September, following a one-week free bootcamp on learning faster. I had a lot of fun putting together the last bootcamp in February (you need to get the email newsletter to join the bootcamp, but don\u2019t worry, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/newsletter\/\">that\u2019s also free<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>In October I\u2019m going to be embarking on what is probably the most challenging project I\u2019ve ever taken on. I normally don\u2019t wait for projects like this, but I wanted to do one more push for my business in September, which may be my last for as much as a year from now.<\/p>\n<p>One of the goals of my life is to always have each year bring a new adventure. It\u2019s easy to get comfortable and let time breeze past you. It takes deliberate effort to reinvent something about your life each year, so that you\u2019re always looking at the world through fresh eyes.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve read this far, I want to thank you. I\u2019m incredibly grateful that I\u2019ve not only managed to find people who are willing to read my rants about life, but enough that I\u2019m able to do this full-time. Whatever successes and failures the next year brings, I want to thank you for letting me share what I learn with you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is my birthday. For the last five years, I\u2019ve written a birthday post where I share what I\u2019ve been up to in the last circle around the Sun. I\u2019m continuing the tradition, to share what I\u2019ve learned and what my hopes are for the future. While I believe it\u2019s the growth you make as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[681,2],"tags":[181],"class_list":{"0":"post-2205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-nc-mindset","7":"category-news","8":"tag-birthday","9":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I&#039;m 23 - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/19\/im-23\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I&#039;m 23 - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today is my birthday. 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