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Life Update: I'm moving back to Chicago

I quit my job, started my 2nd book, and learned a lot

Too much eating and not enough moving creates physical obesity.

Too much feeling and not enough expressing creates emotional obesity.

Too much consuming and not enough action creates intellectual obesity.

Am I more or less likely to hit my goals with this person in my life?

Am I more or less likely to hit my goals with this behavior in my life?

An underrated sign of wealth is how little you worry. If your Uber costs a few extra dollars, it's not a big deal. If your friend is moving and needs some help, you can take some time off. If your car makes a weird noise you take it to the shop that week.

Peace > Possessions.

Why wait to live the life you want to live?

Why postpone your happiness for a distant "someday"? Why not start living your dream now (or at least parts of it)? If you know what you want to do with your life, why are you doing anything else?

Life is just time and what we do with it. Are you spending yours the way you want to?

Had an older friend tell me this recently:

"Truly connecting with people is rare," he said. "If you like someone, tell them and keep them close."

Life Update: I'm moving back to Chicago

For those who are new, let me catch you up…

Quick summary of my past year:

A year ago, I was a college student (and business owner) at the University of Illinois. I was running a ghostwriting and marketing agency making more than my professors while balancing school and hanging with friends.

I was happy but yearned for more

I wrote my first book ‘You Can Just Do Things’ which became an Amazon best-seller.

You can grab your copy here :)

I dropped out of college and moved across the country with nothing but a mattress to join Acquisition.com (a private investment and advisory firm) full-time as a written media strategist.

Why dropout? I wrote about the decision here.

Was the youngest and most inexperienced in most rooms so I worked 80 hour weeks to compensate. I prided myself on being the first to turn the lights on and last to turn the lights off.

Early career advice: Work harder than you think you can. First, because the more you work, the more context you get, the faster you catch up to speed. Second, because the harder you work the more you increase your capacity to work hard. Just like in cross country, the more miles you run, the more miles you can run.

Worked my way into our highest level workshop and had dinners with our biggest clients. Wrote about how to climb the career ladder quickly here.

Summary: Start doing the work of the role you want BEFORE you have the role.

Helped launch $100M Money Models - which broke the Guinness World Record for fastest selling non-fiction book in under 24 hours.

Craziest 72 hours in my life. Will have to write about it more some time.

Played lots of pickleball

I’ve got a mean backhand. Don’t @ me.

Started doing full-body workouts (6 sets to failure) 6 days a week.

Hamstring curls (6 sets)
Quad extensions (6 sets)
Chest press (6 sets)
Lat pulldowns/rows (6 sets)
Bicep curls (6 sets)
Tricep pushdowns (6 sets)
Lateral raises (6 sets)

I admit, it was a lot of volume. But it worked.

Peered up the career ladder and realized I didn’t want the life that the path I was on provided. Will definitely be writing more about this soon.

Nothing hits harder than some Panda Express and late night thoughts ya feel?

Reflected a lot on what “success”, “wealth” and “winning” meant to me.

Call me soft, but I actually think it’s far more ambitious to define the limits of your ambition. Anyone can be reckless in their pursuit of more. It takes wisdom to realize when you’re sacrificing the war of life to win the battle of business.

Quit my job and decided to move back home to Chicago to be closer to family (and write my 2nd book).

Read a statistic: by the time you turn 18, you’ve spent 90% of the in-person time you’ll ever spend with your parents. That made me sad. I like my parents :)

Ok. At this point, you may still have some lingering questions:

1/ Who the f*ck are you and how did you have a business and best-selling book in college? My career path here.

TLDR: I googled “how to make money online” at 15 and fell down the rabbit hole of self-improvement and online business. I became obsessed and have been “doing online stuff” ever since.

It's pretty cool and crazy that the weird internet hobby that I started at 15 is now the hottest industry (social media / marketing) that everyone wants to get into.

2/ How did you even land a full-time job at Acquisition.com?

I used The Permissionless Approach (doing the work upfront) and created pitch decks. *This is what my 2nd book is about! (how to create career opportunities)

3/ You seem like a risk taker, were you always this way?

Absolutely not. I’m actually super risk averse. I don’t make a big move until I’ve thought deeply about every option. I use The North Star Filter to make most of my big life decisions.

4/ What drives you?

My politicians answer is I want to max out my potential and be the best version of myself that I can be.

The real answer is more likely that I have crippling insecurity and am perpetually dissatisfied with where I’m at. I’m sure I’ll dive deeper into that at some point lol

5/ Where did you learn marketing / copywriting?

The unsexy answer is I learned from everywhere.

When I stumbled across the skill of copywriting, I obsessed over it.

Every waking hour that I had that I wasn't physically in class during high school, I spent learning and practicing copywriting.

I would wake up an hour earlier and hand copy the best advertisements.
I would tweet ten times a day.
I would reply to comments while walking in the hallways between classes.
I would listen to writing & business podcasts while I was in class with my head slightly turned so my teachers couldn't see my earbud in.

6/ What is this newsletter again? Why do people read it?

The simplest articulation of why this newsletter exists is that it’s a way for me to share what I'm learning in real time as I advance my career, build wealth, and grow up in public.

In short: I write about what I wrestle with.

Why do people read my newsletter? I can imagine that they (you) enjoy watching sense-making happen. More specifically, you enjoy watching a mind like yours make sense of a reality like yours.

Me “figuring” helps you figure.

7/ Are you single?

You sly dog, are you shooting you shot with me? 🫣

Yes, I’m single and just now starting to date.

For the longest time, I thought it was largely a waste of time (and hot take: it is when you’re super young). But I’m slowly starting to explore what being with someone else means. I will also likely be writing about this topic in the near future.

— # (#)

Erm... what else? Let’s see… I like to play basketball. I’m a twin brother. I have a goal of benching 225 lbs (I’m at 215 rn). And I want to travel a lot more this second half of the year.

Ok. I think we’re on the same page now. Do you feel good? I feel good.

I’ll leave you with the Instagram caption I poetically crafted at 11:58pm on Thursday:

❝

a year ago, I moved across the country with a mattress & something to prove.

sometimes you gotta leave home to see what’s always been true.

the best things in life aren’t the things you pursue.

it’s the ones who love you for just being you.

Vegas, thank you for chapter one.

Chicago, I’m back for chapter two.

Until next week,

Jay “Chapter Two” Yang

Author of You Can Just Do Things

Ps. This meme is going viral

Pps. If you’re still here, reply to this email and let me know what’s new in your world! I see every email (even if it takes me a bit to respond).