Modern Career: How to Actually Be Successful in 2023

The modern career is something that I hold highly, because I believe it’s greatly misunderstood. 

Anyone who grows up in the traditional lifestyle and education system is taught: 

Go to school

Graduate with a degree

Get a job and work for the next 40 years

Retire once you have enough money to stop working

Once upon a time this was the most effective way to live a good life, but that is no longer the case. 

Out with the Old, In the with New

The working world used to look very different. 

There were endless limitations that made career maneuvering difficult. 

People used to be limited by location (remote work wasn’t possible)

Finding a job was long and cumbersome (there was no LinkedIn or Indeed) 

Acquiring new skills after graduating college was either extremely expensive, or in some cases just not possible. 

Fast forward to the present and all of these limitations no longer exist. 

We have remote work, unlimited job opportunities via the internet, and we can acquire new skills everyday online. 

Working 40 years at a company used to be the best way to secure yourself and your job. 

But in today’s age the best way to create security is to acquire high income skills and create income based on those skills. This can take many forms: 

• A 9-5 job

• Consulting or freelancing (selling your skills)

• Digital products (selling products based on your skill set)

• All of the above. 

The modern career combines all of these.

People study and learn new skills through their job.

They then sell those skills as a service and eventually sell products to teach people how to do it themselves.

This is the way of the modern career. 

Social media and the internet have given us a toolset that allows any individual to create an income by selling their knowledge or skills.

And this is the only way to create your own income security.

No matter how badly we want to believe our company cares about us, we are— at the end of a day— a number on a spreadsheet. 

Retirement is a Myth

The idea of retirement in the modern age is a never ending chase for money that leaves people unfulfilled and disappointed when they realize they will never have enough money to stop working. 

But most people haven’t even stopped to question what was the point of retirement in the first place? 

Retirement as a concept was important because work used to be physically demanding. 

The majority of jobs before the industrial revolution and the internet— required a large amount of physical work.

As you got older, it became harder to perform these jobs.

Naturally it makes sense to save up money to one day be able to stop the physical work as you reach elderly age. 

But in today’s world a majority of the jobs (white collar) require little physical work, and can be done up until your brain starts to fail you. 

So unless you truly want to stop working and play golf everyday, what exactly is the point of retirement for you? 

I encourage you to come up with 3 reasons. 

If you do want to aim for retirement to spend more time with family, friends etc. That is a noble goal and I encourage you to pursue it. 

But if you are just saving for retirement ‘because that’s what you’re supposed to do’ I would think again. 

Between inflation, and social security running out in 11 years (yes that is accurate), retirement as a certainty seems like anything but. 

Your Optimal Life

This letter might seem have a bit of doom and gloom painted into it, but the point is to wake you up. 

It has never been more possible to truly design the life you want—professionally and personally. 

The internet has created a new form of leverage: digital leverage through content and code. 

Before the only type of leverage that existed was monetary leverage, but now we have the ability to leverage the internet to create the life we want.

Naval Ravikant is famous for this though process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtyWqj2ESiQ 

My hope is that if you made it this far into the letter you realize you have more options than you have been told. 

The schooling system is designed to create workers, not creators or founders.

The traditional system is still operating on a pre-internet philosophy. 

It’s time for that philosophy to change. 

Start creating and building yourself up— acquire the skills necessary to become high value (sales, marketing, writing, product building etc). 

All of these will set you up for the modern career. 

PS— the career accelerator course releases on Nov.17th (completely for free)

If you are interested in learning how to level up your career and land a job you actually love, fill out the form below 👇