I Quit My $145k Tech Job at 24 After Learning 3 Truths

The average salary for a 24-year-old in America is $35,000 a year. So, with my salary at $145,000 at just age 24, I was in the top 1% of all earners, basically the Bill Gates and my friend group. As someone who grew up in a home that had declared bankruptcy when I was four, on the surface, it looked like I had achieved the American dream. Money, power, wealth, but just a few months into the job, something started gnawing at me inside. And after realizing three painful truths, before I knew it, I was in my boss's office, handing in my resignation letter, quitting my $145,000 a year job at 24, with no backup plan, no alternative source of income. So why did I quit? What made me do such a crazy thing? And do I regret it? Well, in this video, I want to walk you through those three truths and what ultimately happened because I left my job. Now, to understand how we got to this point, you need to understand my childhood. You see, as I mentioned earlier, I grew up poor. My family had divorced when I was four. I went to live with my mom. She had declared bankruptcy as a result of the divorce. My mom was a barista. I would sleep in the back of the kitchen while she was working. When I was with my dad, we'd go to the soup kitchen and we'd beg for food. And this was kind of just... the life that I knew. I was used to not being able to afford things, skipping meals to save money at a very young age, and so I really grew up knowing the pain of not having money. And as a result I got really into this idea of entrepreneurship. It wasn't like I wanted to be the next Steve Jobs. I didn't want to build something great. I just wanted to be able to afford three meals a day, something I hadn't really experienced before. And probably to everyone's surprise, including my own, I actually started having some success in my early 20s. I'd built this business up to actually almost $1,000 a day, and I was traveling the world, living this amazing lifestyle. Then one day it all came crashing down. My business literally went from $1,000 a day to zero. overnight. Google had changed some things in their algorithm completely wiping out my business and I didn't know what to do. And before I knew it, I was down to my last pennies. You know, it's really cool. I still have my mint.com account. So I logged in just to see like how broke was I then? And in my lowest point, I was at $1,461. This is the actual screenshot. And so because of that, I said, listen, I need to make a change. I need to find a way to actually get myself out of the situation. I can't just keep building these businesses and then falling back into poverty. And one of my realizations to get me out of that life of poverty was I need a real stable investment portfolio that can generate money for me, whether the markets are good, whether the markets are bad. I want to live off that and not have to work all the time. So I set a new goal, $5 million. If I can just make $5 million, live off the 6% of that $300,000 a year. I'm set for life. I could do whatever I want. And this became sort of my life goal, my life mission. But I needed money. So I contacted a few recruiters, a few people that could help me get a job. And to my surprise, I ended up getting a great job, like way better than I expected. I remember when they offered me the job, they initially offered me $105,000. And I was like over the moon ecstatic. That was so much money. But I still negotiated just because that's what you're supposed to do. And they ended up going up to $145,000 and a vice president title. Again, I'm 24 years old. This is like more than I could have ever imagined. And I have to be honest, life as this new 24-year-old vice president of marketing at this new hot startup was pretty great. I was going out with friends. We could go to nice restaurants. Dating was pretty good as a VP at 24. Everything kind of seemed to be going my way. And this is exactly where all the problems actually started. See, the first painful lesson I had to realize was This life I was living, this career that I was going down, was what I now call the great temptation. And every great leader, everyone who has done something amazing in life, has encountered in their journey this great temptation. One of my favorite examples actually comes from history, Alexander the Great. Alexander set out to conquer the world. And at 24 years old, he had nearly done it. He had beaten so many enemies, taken so much land, and the last... frontier, the last big hurdle for him to clear was conquering Asia. And at the time, Asia was mostly ruled by Darius III. And so Alexander gets in this battle with Darius III and they're going back and forth, you know, men are dying left and right. And looking at the slaughter, looking at the battlefield, Darius III says, let me write a letter to Alexander and make him an offer he can't refuse. And in Darius's letter, he basically says, listen, Alexander, this war is insane. We're both losing tons of troops. This is destroying the nation, why don't we split the world? I will rule half the world and you'll rule the other half. And mind you, Alexander is only 24 at the time of receiving this letter. This is more than anyone could have ever dreamed for Alexander. And most people would, you know, be blessed to even receive this offer. But there's one problem. Alexander didn't set out to conquer half the world he wanted to conquer the whole world he had a bold vision for his future and he realized this offer is just a bribe to get him to give up on his dreams but i love what alexander actually does he writes back and he says in the future when you communicate with me send to me as the king of asia do not write to me as equals and this is such a like bold vision he has no business calling himself the king of asia Darius III is still there, but this is what he believes is his. And this isn't some just random occurrence that happened for Alexander the Great. Caesar Augustus had a similar encounter. Mark Zuckerberg early on turned down the offer to sell Facebook for a billion dollars at 22 years old. Snapchat early on turned down four billion dollars from Facebook. It's almost like there's this universal law that if you want something badly, that if you set out with a grand vision, you will be tempted along the way. People will try to bribe you to give up on your dream and settle for less. And so the first painful lesson was this was not my goal. This $145,000 a year job wasn't my ultimate dream. It was a bribe that was literally going to keep me from my dream. But that wasn't enough to get me to quit my job. I had to go through a few more painful lessons. And the second painful lesson that made me quit my $145,000 a year job 24 years old was the harsh reality of simple math. You see, my dream was to retire on this $5 million portfolio and live off of it for the rest of my life. And making $145,000 a year felt really good. It felt like I had achieved so much in life, but the math just didn't add up. You see, $145,000 a year in San Francisco is really more like $80,000 a year after taxes. And I was living pretty lean. I was in a tiny apartment. I didn't eat out that much. And so my living expenses were only $45,000 a year, which for San Francisco is pretty low. But what that meant is after taxes, I could only save $35,000 a year. So if my goal is $5 million, $35,000 a year contributed to that portfolio would take me like 140 years. And I know you might say like, well, what about raises? What about, you know, your investment portfolio compounding, blah, blah, blah. Sure. Maybe it's 97 years if you account for, you know, raises and things like that. But it was very clear that at 24 years old. I would be dead before I reach my goals. And this doesn't even account for the fact that this whole fallacy of job security is sort of a thing from the last generation. You know, our parents had these jobs where they could work 20, 30, 40 years and retire. And the company was stable. The company was secure. They would never fire your parents because they were loyal employees. That world doesn't exist anymore. Look at what has happened in the last couple of years with big tech. These big tech companies are laying off hundreds of thousands of people. ruthlessly. You know, one of the stories I saw was a Google engineer that was 16 years into the job just fired. No conversation from the CEO. No, hey, listen, we know it's been hard. Just went to log into his computer one day and couldn't access his own stuff. This is the way companies treat us today. And so job security and relying on this old mentality that our parents grew up with is not the way to live our lives. And the other part of this is it actually assumes that you can Be healthy and work that entire time. What if you get in an accident? What if something happens to you and you can actually earn the same wages that you're earning today? You're risking so much of your future on a very uncertain thing that you think is stable. Just sit down and do the math. Do you have dreams that you've maybe given up on? Do you have something that you're yearning for that you really want in life? And is the activity you are doing today going to get you there? in a reasonable time when you can actually enjoy the thing. And if it doesn't, I think your decision is pretty straightforward. The path that you're on today will not get you to where you want to go. You need to get off that path. And the last thing, the thing that really pushed me over the edge and made me quit my $145,000 a year job was the realization that you will always regret not going for it. You know, if you really take a step back and look at everything you enjoy in life, all the things that you have, they came from some leap of faith. some stepping out into the unknown and believing that there's a plan, believing that you can make it happen. You know, the funny thing is when you want to make that leap, when you're about to step off the edge of the cliff, it feels so risky. It feels like everything could come crashing down in a moment. But what I've found is once you actually take that first step forward, once you actually engage in the process, it doesn't feel so risky anymore. It feels like, you know, this is almost what you were meant to be doing. This is the path that you were meant to be down. And for me, my ultimate regret would have been staying in a job that is not letting me live up to my potential. You know, because of this experience, I've actually adopted this mindset that if I get comfortable too long, if things feel too easy and I start to get complacent, that makes me uncomfortable because I know Deep down, I'm meant for more. And I believe the same is true for you. You know, I don't need to give you this motivational speech. I don't need to hype you up. I'm sharing my experience because I know it will resonate with you. These are innate human desires that we all have to be something more than we are. And the painful reality, the thing that we often don't admit to ourselves is some of these windows, some of these moments of opportunity do close. You know, when I was at this job, I was 24 years old. I had no girlfriend, no wife. no kids, no real burdens or responsibilities that I had to consider in my decision making. So I was very free to take risky leaps. If it all goes belly up, it's not like my kids will starve. It's not like, because I don't have kids. It's not like I'm risking something greater than myself. And I knew that if I waited too long, I might not have this freedom in the future. And I can tell you this, having gone through this myself, the pain of regret is... way, way worse than the pain of failure. You know, if you fail, it means you put yourself out there. It's something that we celebrate in culture, people going for it, but people not going for it and just living with that regret. That's something we don't really speak about, but it's one of those things, you know, later on in your deathbed, you will remember these moments when you didn't do it. Some practical tips that helped me go through this and actually make the leap. One was understanding that there's no perfect timing. There's no time when all the stars will align. You kind of just got to make the stars align and get going. You can also fall into this trap of paralysis analysis where you're just, I need to learn more. I need to be better. If you're doing something that you've never done before, by definition, you are not qualified to do that thing. And the only way you will become qualified is to actually do it. You can't become qualified to start a business if you haven't actually started a business before. It's this paradox, this catch-22. So whatever you want, whatever you want to go for, you just have to sort of deal with that. feeling of, I don't know what I'm doing. This is imposter syndrome. You are an imposter, but by doing the thing, you will become genuine. You will become the person that actually does the thing you dream of doing. And sometimes maybe this thing that you want to do, maybe this risk that you want to take is just too, but that's actually okay. When I wanted to leave my job and start a company, which is what I ultimately did, I didn't just quit my job. and completely say, now I have all this free time. I want to start this company. I dipped my toes in the water. You know, I started working late nights. I started working on the weekends, started formulating and building my company. Now, my company wasn't up and running. We didn't have customers or anything like that when I ultimately quit, but I'd done enough to sort of convince myself, hey, I'm going on this path and I actually enjoy this. I believe that this is what I'm meant to be doing. My advice would be, if you want to do something, but it feels too risky, it feels too uncertain, just start doing it in your spare time. You have the time. We all have 24 hours, and I'm not one of those people that says just sleep less. That's sort of Arnold Schwarzenegger's thing, sleep faster. No, I just think cut out things that are not meaningful to you. Cut out maybe as all the Netflix that you're watching. Maybe tell your friends, hey, I'm trying something new, so I can't go out to the bar four nights a week. I can only go out once, or maybe not at all. Find time to sort of... start moving in the direction of your goals. Another thing that you can do to really de-risk taking risks, and it's so powerful, is just shrink what I call your monthly burn. Your monthly burn is just how much are you actually spending every month. And if you have a stable job, a stable income, there's a good chance you're spending the majority of that money. And it's going to things like rent, to eating out. to maybe cars, movies, you name it. What you can do is actually start to downsize your life a little bit. You don't have to immediately go crazy and move out of your place, but maybe eat out a little bit less, learn to cook, maybe stream a movie instead of watching the movie in a theater. Find ways to sort of shrink what is your average lifestyle so that when you make the leap, you have more savings, more time to actually make things work. And it doesn't feel like this massive pressure like you only have two months to figure it out or you're gonna go bankrupt. I'm not a fan of that approach because when you're trying something new you do need to give yourself time to actually get good at the thing and there's a lot that you just don't know so you know reducing your burn having the ability to extend your runway can be very helpful. Now with these three painful truths you know deeply embedded in my heart I had to do the deed. I had to go into my boss's office. and actually tell him I was leaving this job, this dream job of mine that he had given me just nine months before. Walking away from it all, no income lined up, no true plan, just an idea of a business that I might want to start. And so I still remember the day I walked into my boss's office and I said, hey John, listen, I'm going to be straightforward. I'm leaving the company. This is my official two week notice. I just said, listen, there's this thing I've always wanted to do. I'm going to go for it. I don't know if it's going to work out. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know I'm going to regret not going for it. You know, I kind of expected him to be upset, to be disappointed. After all, he'd staked his career on hiring me. Of course, it reflects bad on him if I do poorly. But instead, he just said, listen, man, go for it. Like, I'm excited for you. And it was really reassuring. He's like, listen, if it doesn't work out, you always have a home here. I'd hire you again in a heartbeat. But I'm proud of you. I'm excited for you. And I want you to do this. To his credit, John, amazing boss. If you're watching this, thank you so much. You know, not every boss will react this way. I think there is something deep inside the human soul that resonates with people going for it. Many people had a dream that they grew up with, and they can still remember the day that they sort of put that dream away. They put it in the cupboard and said, and I wanted to do that, but, you know, life got busy, next thing I knew, I had kids, I had all these responsibilities. When you are that person that is actually... going for it not putting your dream in the cupboard people support you you would be amazed at how people actually cheer you on that are genuinely rooting for you and want you to succeed and you know the funny thing was before I quit it felt like this massive risk like I was risking my whole life and I was gonna go broke again you name it but the moment I actually had that conversation with John and I left that room I felt like it was the least risky thing I could have done like I was guaranteed for this new thing, not because I knew it would work out, but because I knew I was pursuing my dreams. The big risk was actually that I never quit, and so I just had this immediate sense of weight and burden lifted off my shoulders. And the company I ended up starting, when I left that job, went on to sell for $110 million, achieving really all of my life dreams, all the goals that I ever hoped. You know, a couple years ago, I actually ran into John. I was walking through the streets of San Francisco, and he was off. He was in a new job as well, but he was doing this thing. And I bumped into him, and I got to say, hey, John, you know, I have achieved all of my life dreams. In many ways, I owe it to this man. I was so broke and he gave me that job and I didn't realize it at the time, but if I hadn't been put in that role where I could earn the money to save up and actually go for my bigger dreams, I may have never been able to do it. I might not have been able to take this leap. And so sometimes a job is a job that is there to support you. Not for life, but maybe in a season, in a phase of life. I don't want to take anything away from those nine months that I spent working for John. They were some of the most important months of my life because they allowed me to take this leap of faith and achieve my ultimate dreams. So don't get upset at the job that you're in. Don't blame the job, you know, for pulling you away from your dreams or anything. I would say take a look at the job that you're in. Ask yourself, what season of life was this job meant for? How was this job meant to serve me for my ultimate vision? for my ultimate dream? Is it going to take me all the way there or is it something that's going to prepare me for what's coming? I think most jobs are really just there to prepare you, but you have to know what it's preparing you for and then you have to go do that thing when you're ready. And if you want to learn more about me and what I ultimately did after quitting my job and how that led to $110 million at 31 years old, I also just filmed a video on my whole life story. I'll put the link over here, click it, I'll give you all the background and hopefully it inspires you.

Watch this next: https://youtu.be/y5ks4FhoGfQ

If you're new here my name's Michia (Muh-ky-uh). I'm a serial entrepreneur and investor. Since selling my last startup for 9 figures, I'm investing my own money into the next wave of founders at my VC firm, L7V. 

I'm sharing everything I learn here so subscribe and stick around.