Or solved world hunger? Wrote a New York Times best-selling novel? Made a million dollars online? Shouldn’t I have a corporate empire by now?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the inside of my mind.
Thanks to social media, young people are becoming famous and rich with the drop of a hat. You just need to look at the likes of Charli D’Amelio, the 15-year-old TikTok star who has amassed over 100 million followers on the app.
There are more examples that we’ll talk about a little further on, but it seems to becoming more and more common for young people to be successful, thanks to the online world.
Anyone can be the next Jeff Bezos
Thanks to the internet, literally everyone and anyone has the means to become the world’s next billionaire, or trillionaire if your imagination stretches that far. If you have a good idea and run with it, there’s really no stopping you.
Selling online opens you up to a world of customers – literally. Instead of opening your little bricks and mortar store on the main street of your little hometown, open up online and you’re reaching billions of people, not the hundreds of family and friends that you know so well.
Even if you have a talent for the arts – you can go onto the streets of your hometown or the nearest city and start busking, but if you put your videos online on YouTube for the world to see, it’s more likely that you can get scouted and noticed and even build your own fanbase.
Easier said than done
Before you rush to put 100 singing covers on YouTube or set up shop selling your homemade candles on Etsy, know that success isn’t instantaneous. For some people, overnight success means five years of hard work. It sometimes just takes one person to share your work for your sales to go from 5 per month to 5,000 in a day. Sometimes, it’s luck.
We can look at examples like Grace Beverley who runs her own fitness brand that started out on Instagram when she was studying at Oxford. Grace grew a large following of people who were interested in fitness advice. From there, Grace created some fitness products and sold them through her social media. Grace is now a millionaire. Go figure.
Founder of brands Shreddy and B_ND, Grace made the list of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 at the age of 23 and has her first book coming out this year, which I predict will very quickly be making the best-sellers lists.
As someone who is the same age as Grace, I often look at my own situation and think, How can I make the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list by next year?? – time is running out!!
Racing against the clock
Is life a race? It certainly feels like it. Well, it did when life was normal. Now it kind of feels like life is on pause as we work from home and are no longer in motion.
But then, is there a perfect time to think of the ‘next big thing’? Is this the time to think of the next GymShark clothing brand, founded by then 22-year-old Ben Francis?
Another example of rising to the top very early, the brand is now worth over £1 billion with Ben Francis at the helm of the empire. Again, founded whilst in university, have I missed my opportunity now that I’ve graduated?
What does the future hold?
I know, I know, I’m still so young, but seeing others like Grace Beverley and Ben Francis create million dollar empires at the same age as myself, makes me think that I’m already past it.
But then again we only need to look at the likes of Vera Wang who came onto the fashion scene when she was 40, Alan Rickman who started acting in his 40s and Colonel Sanders who founded KFC at age 65.
So yes, who knows what the future may hold? I may be running my own million dollar empire in five years’ time and make it onto that Forbes 30 under 30 list or maybe success will come when I’m 55.
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