Lessons From My 20s

I'm turning 30 on Thursday. It's true. I've been a bit of a workaholic this past decade. I'm driven by an intense desire to help create a better world in the future than the one we have today--a world that is more sustainable, abundant, and joyous. And I'm excited about the decades ahead as Millennials begin to take leadership globally and the connected world fully emerges.

For my birthday this year, I took time for some serious reflection over the past few weekends. I ended up with a 1284 slide presentation on everything I learned in my twenties about life, entrepreneurship, and making a difference in world. I'm calling the presentation "Lessons From My 20s" and am sharing it freely with anyone who may be interested.

In the presentation is everything I learned building iContact in North Carolina and Connect and Hive in San Francisco and while at Harvard Business School.

You can download the full slide deck at http://hive.org/20s/

Please feel free to pass on the link to your friends or anyone who may benefit from it, especially if they are interesting in making a positive difference in the world.

Part 1 on "Life" has 566 slides covering the following topics:

Goals
Purpose
Vision
Networks
Mentors
Happiness
Health
Meditation
Habits
Communication
Money
Investing
Love
Values
Life Lessons

Part 2 on "Entrepreneurship" has 449 slides covering:

The Big Opportunities
Leadership
Business Planning
Product Development
Innovation
Venture Capital
Marketing
Building Systems
Building a Team
Strategy & execution
Steps to Get Started

And finally, part 3 on "The World" has 269 slides covering:

Human Rights
Human Progress
Systems Thinking
World 2050
Millennials
Climate Change
The Innovation Age
Staying in Touch

Thanks for checking out the deck! If you have any thoughts or questions feel free to ping me anytime on [email protected].

Here's to working together to create a more connected and compassionate world in the decades ahead.

Best,
Ryan

42 Comments
 

Mostly very good, thanks for sharing.

The 'life' stuff though is utter nonsense though, it reads more like propaganda. Medicine and electricity are not human rights. It is not my or my countries job to move away from fossil fuels. If there were only 1 billion people on Earth we could all do as we please.

The biggest issue the for the West is the declining quality of the population in Western countries. Too much obesity, too much depression, and most of all, too many socially inept kids who will become socially inept, miserable adults.

 
Best Response

I think the format is solid but the save the world stuff is a bit ambitious. I think you can generally take the stuff he says but apply it to more selfish goals, replace "save the children" with "buy a porsche" and imo it'll be useful regardless.

 
fixedfaileddelivered

Mostly very good, thanks for sharing.

The 'life' stuff though is utter nonsense though, it reads more like propaganda. Medicine and electricity are not human rights. It is not my or my countries job to move away from fossil fuels. If there were only 1 billion people on Earth we could all do as we please.

The biggest issue the for the West is the declining quality of the population in Western countries. Too much obesity, too much depression, and most of all, too many socially inept kids who will become socially inept, miserable adults.

I meant the "world" stuff, not "life".

 

Thanks for recycling every business leadership book written in the past 50 years.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw
 

From someone in their early 20s, thanks for the advice! Awesome read, ER...presentation.

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
 

SB for you friendo. I opened this deck cynically thinking (what the hell could he have to say in a 1,000+ page powerpoint?" I expected navel gazing nonsense but it's all great.

 

Great upload, will have a more indepth look at it next weekend.

CNBC sucks "This financial crisis is worse than a divorce. I've lost all my money, but the wife is still here." - Client after getting blown up
 

Not sure if this is actually @RyanAllis or a wannabe posing as him lol...

Either way, like aforementioned, this slide show is getting a lot of press. If wondering about Allis, this guy has been working on startups for the last ten years and sold his most recent one (iContact) for 169 million. As I understand, he's worth about 40 million. This guy has been pretty successful and definitely a workaholic. Like I said, I don't know if this is actually him, but if it is that's really cool. Thanks for participating in this community if it is you.

 

pretty sure it's him. he's posted a few blogs here before on his experience at HBS. apparently the user base has gotten much nicer because he got absolutely flamed before.

sure it's easy to hate on this guy, you could say he's cocky, narcissistic, whatever, but he's trying to share insights with others for free (not for profit as far as I can tell) and he's very charitably inclined. power to you bro.

by the way, he's a Heels fan, so that's a plus.

 

Here's something I learned from my 20s: take yourself less seriously.

People seem to give advice because they discovered a few things that seem to work for them, and then think those same lessons might be generally applicable to the masses. That's not always true, though (especially when it's shaded by your world view).

The hubris that goes into a deck like this is mind-boggling. I salute you, sir, for being an even more deluded narcissist than me.

 

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Not everyone is meant to make a difference. But for me, the choice to lead an ordinary life is no longer an option.
 

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