Advice to my 30-year-old self

At the time of writing this, I’m a couple of weeks away from turning 40.

In my mind, I turned 30 quite recently. But it's been 10 years.

I started to write down some advice for a colleague of mine that just turned 30, but soon I realized it’s mostly advice to my 30-year-old self.

When I turned 30, I didn’t have kids yet, and CXL was just an occasional typo. A lot has happened since. You can live a whole lifetime in a decade. Don’t waste it, build. 

Dream bigger, be more ambitious. I took plenty of risks, had been taking risks since my early 20ies (became an entrepreneur when I was 27), but I didn’t dare to dream as big as I am dreaming now. Self-limiting beliefs definitely held me back. I should have been more aggressive, should have believed in myself more. I wasn't unconfident, but I had a lower bar of what I'd be happy to achieve. Luckily the more you eat, the hungrier you get.

Surround yourself with people that cheer you on. Putting yourself out there is hard. You need people that believe in you, and push you toward greatness. Without my wife, I maybe wouldn't have started ConversionXL blog (which was the major catalyst for all things to come in my life).

I wasn't sure if what I have to say is good enough. I'm not a native English speaker, that created additional hesitation. She believed in me, and that made all the difference.

Start building an audience. This was one of the things I did right this past decade. If you don’t have an audience yet, start cultivating one like your life depended on it. It’s your biggest and best personal safety net. Whenever in doubt how to spend your time, create more content, add more value, invest in personal brand building. Write, and capture emails.

Put yourself out there, don't shy away from controversial and strong opinions. In fact, it's necessary to cut through the boring vanilla, people like strong opinions. The nail that sticks out gets hit - occasionally - but do it anyway. It's okay that you are not the smartest person. Be okay with being wrong, and called out on it. Say thank you and move on.

Aim to become the best at something. Your 30ies is a time to build. Having a skill that people value goes a long way. Being at the top of your game opens up a whole new level in life. Put in the work to become the best, and show the world what you know.

Like attracts like - you get access to other top people, which are in 98% cases interesting human beings. People who do cool shit want to hang out with other ballers. Being surrounded by ambitious go-getters who all support each other has added massive value to my life.

Being the best gives you the privilege of choosing what to work on, and you can charge top dollar for your work. It’s a really sweet life if you can get it. And you can - if you make it your goal, show up, and put in the work.

Think you're too old for something, like learning a new skill? If you keep it up, you'll be decently good at it in 2-3 yrs. You can be absolute world class in less than 10 years. So if you're 30 now, you'll be at the top of the world when your 40. The alternative is that you'll be 40 without that skill. And you still have a lot of life to live.

Get a mentor. Don’t make all the mistakes yourself, don’t reinvent the wheel. There are people that have seen far more stuff than you, and that experience is worth *so much*. It saves you YEARS of trial and error. Yes, years. You can literally skip years, and jump ahead. My career benefited so much from mentorship. 

Decide on the kind of business you want to build. I didn't know it's a decision I should make, but it's an important one.

If you're cool with an annual income of ~500k, it's easier to achieve it as a solopreneur. No team to manage, no overhead. You can decide quickly, and implement fast.

But you can't build a $100M company alone. Nor $25M, few have gotten to $5M alone. That's when you need a team. I started ConversionXL as a personal blog, and before I built CXL Institute I ran coaching programs. I was personally making 3x more money than I’m making now.

In around 2016 I decided to play a bigger game, build something that’s bigger than myself. There are days when I second guess that decision.

Spend time with your parents while you still can. You never know when they’re gone for good. My mom got diagnosed with cancer when I was 36, and she passed a year later. Not spending more time with her is by far my biggest regret (except failing to save her life).

Losing her was a personal wakeup call for my health, too.

Take care of your health. After 30, your body starts to age faster and faster. By the time you're 40, there's a significant physical difference between people who take care of themselves and who don't.

There’s a 70%-80% chance that you die of one of 4 things: cancer, stroke, heart disease, or a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s. Your best bet is prevention, and prevention for all four is pretty much the same: minimize sugar and simple carbs, eat veggies, fatty fish, and protein. Exercise 2-3 hrs/week, with a focus on resistance training (weights) and interval training.

The younger you are, the easier it is to get in shape. I was 36 when I had the wake-up call - finding myself flabby and weak. Over the last 4 years, I fixed my diet and started working out regularly (kickboxing, weight lifting). I used to be the chubby guy in the group. I’m now the fit guy. The results have been nothing short of great, should have started way earlier. 

Bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle. Thirties is when a lot of your friends will have kids. Geographic distance and busy family lives will slowly make you drift apart from your friends - unless you’re proactively preventing it. Host parties, invite people over, ask friends out for lunch, get friends to work out with you, join the same gym. 

The grass is greener where you water it. Take care of your closest relationships. 

Check in with yourself every now and then. Are you growing? Are you still having fun? If the growth has stalled, work on new skills, take on new challenges. Standing still is falling behind. If the answer is "no" to both, time for more dramatic changes.

Around the age of 37 I went from the peak of my career in conversion optimization (I had just been named as the most influential name in the business) to something else. I took off my CRO hat (literally), and went from "I'm a CRO person" to "not sure what I am", and was having mixed feelings for a while. Confused - "which skills am I developing now, what's my craft?" Changing your identity, self-perception can be hard. But the pain of staying the same was bigger than the pain of change. Forming a new vision can take time, and that’s okay.

Now I'm having so much fun. New challenge, new growth. I have passion again, and I’m filled with curiosity. 

Read a ton of books. I don’t mean fiction. Minimum 2 per month. Over 10 years that makes *a lot* of books. A book is a shortcut. Someone spends a decade working on something, thinking about something. They distilled their lessons learned into a piece you can go through in a few hours. A lifetime’s worth of thinking for a lousy 10 dollars. It’s the ultimate deal, the fastest way to accelerate learning.

If you put in 10+ learning hours/week (books, courses, etc) consistently for a year, you'll get insane results. Think about what 5 or 10 years of that will do to your future. Most folks are doing the bare minimum. All top performers I know are ferocious learners.

Write, consistently. If you want to learn something, read. If you want to understand it, write.

Commit to writing a blog, a newsletter, or just sending a daily social media message. It stimulates your thinking, makes you understand things better, forces you to do more research, and practice articulating your ideas.

Writing can build your career if you let it. It built mine.

Be patient, play the long game. Most things are like weight lifting. You won't make much progress and certainly no visible success in 30 days, but you'll see a ton in 3 years. Ordinary things consistently executed will produce extraordinary results.

Don't get afraid, get curious. When you run into new tech that you don’t get - that's fine. But choose a path where you can enhance your technological aptitude. When you don't "get" something at first, it's time to get curious instead of becoming afraid. Seek mastery, not comfort.

And don't forget to have fun.