This post is based on a short presentation I watched the other day by Gary Vaynerchuk, given to a group of NY intern students. What I really got out of his talk, and what I’m talking about today, is spending your undergrad/20’s taking risks in order to find your passion.
While still in college, or while you still don’t have a family and a shitload of fixed expenses, you should be working as hard as you can to 1) find your passion 2) monetize that passion, so you can 3) follow your dreams. NOW is the time to take those risks, try new things, create new experiences, and put yourself in uncomfortable situations, for the sole purpose of figuring out what exactly your passion is.
Now this might seem obvious to many of you. College is all about figuring out who you really are, and what you want to do for the rest of your life, right? So in that case, I would take this a step further and say college should be about finding what you really LOVE doing. If you’ve already found this, fantastic you’re ahead of most of us. Now, you should be trying to figure out how to monetize doing what you love, so you can make a good living doing it for the rest of your life.
Start a club on campus around your passion, start a blog about your passion, or start a business doing what you love. See if there are others who have the same passion who can help you out, see if there are people willing to pay for what you want to do. The biggest point here is that YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IF YOU DON’T TRY!
You don’t want to be in your thirties stuck at your (possibly very well paying) desk job and look back and say, damn, I wish I would have risked it all to find out if I could have made this good of a living doing what I really love, instead of doing what I’m doing now. Because by that time it might be to late. AND, I guarantee that if you find a way to make money doing what you love when you’re young, there’s good chance you’ll become rich as fuck.
Watch Gary’s presentation here: http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/advice-to-ny-creative-interns/
Update 11/20/13: Check out this great article I found on YFS – YOLO, and 5 More Reasons to Start a Business While in College
While We're Young 
Awesome post River!
This is key for me”YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IF YOU DON’T TRY!” and it couldn’t have come at a better time, I’m about to launch my first startup. Being 17 years old it’s quite a scary but fun thing to be doing! Lots of questions going through my head!
When your next available would I be able to ask you a couple of questions through email or whatever suits you?
If not that’s no problem, your blog posts provide loads of tips!!
Thanks!
Hey Josh, my pleasure. Congrats on trying something like that out at such a young age! Feel free to email me any time at riverjangda@gmail.com I’d love to chat.