Jan 2, 2025
“Follow your passion!” is, perhaps, the most common career advice most young people get. However, professor, author and entrepreneur Scott Galloway calls this advice “bulls–t.”
In an interview with financial influencer Codie Sanchez, Galloway said, “Anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich.”
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Many wealthy, successful people are older and more disconnected from the economic realities of someone trying to build wealth in the current economy.
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Instead of following your passion, Galloway offers four ways young people can become rich despite the many headwinds they currently face.
1. Focus
Galloway’s first piece of advice for any young people looking to make money is to “find something you’re good at” and “focus” on it.
The value of intense focus has been echoed by other famous business leaders, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
However, legendary investor Warren Buffett offers a simple strategy to help people improve their focus, according to author James Clear.
Buffett is said to have offered his “two list” strategy to his personal pilot Mike Flint to help him focus more intensely and improve his career. The strategy involves creating a list of your top 25 career goals and then creating another list of only the top five items from the first list. By focusing on the second list you can prioritize the goals and targets that are most important to your career.
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2. Build your savings muscles
“The one thing that’s in your control is spending,” Galloway told Sanchez. “If you’re young, you’ve got to figure out that savings muscle.”
Unfortunately, this muscle is underdeveloped for most Americans. As of September 2024, the personal savings rate was just 4.6%, according to the Federal Reserve. Rising interest rates and inflation over the past few years may have squeezed many households.
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Surprisingly, 52% of Americans said they either met or exceeded their savings goal in 2023 despite these challenges, according to New York Life’s recent “Wealth Watch” survey.
Even more surprising is the fact that younger Americans managed to save more than older ones. Gen Z Americans saved $6,441 last year while millennials saved an average of $9,299 compared to $4,060 for Baby Boomers.
Turns out young people are already building their savings muscles.
3. Take your time
“I can get you rich, that’s the good news,” says Galloway. “The bad news,” he continued, is that it will happen “slowly.”
This philosophy also echoes Warren Buffett. Billionaire Jeff Bezos once asked the Oracle of Omaha why others didn’t copy his simple strategy and he simply responded: “because no one wants to get rich slowly.”
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The power of compound growth really gains momentum over longer time horizons. For instance, a person who starts investing $1,000 a month at a 10% rate of return would only have $73,261 after five years, but that same strategy would deliver $5.3 million after 40 years. Building wealth like Buffett and Galloway takes time, patience and consistency.
In other words, building wealth is a marathon not a sprint.
4. Protect your wealth with diversification
Galloway admits that a “little bit of concentration” could help someone get rich, but to stay rich they need to diversify their portfolio.
Younger people looking to get ahead need to understand the risk-reward ratio of every opportunity they come across. It doesn’t make sense to put all your money into a single stock or asset for the chance of a sudden windfall when it exposes you to the risk of losing all your money. Instead, a well-diversified approach stabilizes your finances and puts you on a steady path to financial freedom over time.
“I’ve never believed in risking what my family and friends have and need in order to pursue what they don’t have and don’t need,” Buffett once wrote in Berkshire Hathaway Owner’s Manual.
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Vishesh Raisinghani is a financial journalist covering personal finance, investing and the global economy. He's also the founder of Sharpe Ascension Inc., a content marketing agency focused on investment firms. His work has appeared in Moneywise, Yahoo Finance!, Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, Mergers & Acquisitions Magazine and Piggybank.
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