The Art of Starting (Over) From Nothing (5 Actionable Tactics)

When people think about “starting from nothing”, the prospect can seem pretty daunting.

After all, not having anything to fall back on can be pretty scary when you think about everything that life throws at you. But what if this was a false belief?

This article will look at the advantages of starting over, starting from the bottom, and of course – how to start from nothing and how it could be one of the best things that ever happened to you.

You’ll also learn:

• The right way to start from nothing
• Some tools to use on your “climb up the mountain”
• How to solidify your newfound position when you emerge victorious

Let’s…start.

This article is also available as a podcast:

Looking Into the Void After Starting From Nothing

When you start something over or when you start from nothing, there’s a big…expanse that lies before you. There’s a massive chasm of possibility, work, and even struggle ahead.

It’s one thing to be starting from nothing when you’re 21 or 22 and fresh out of college…it’s another thing to start from nothing or start your life over at 42 or 52. They’re exciting and intimidating for different reasons.

For the guy fresh out of college, starting from nothing can be an exciting possibility because it is the opportunity to build and grow. It’s intimidating because you have a large mountain to climb, the journey is far, and you don’t have any real knowledge of the terrain.

For the person who had to start over again or start from nothing at a later age for various reasons (divorce, health issues, bankruptcy), it is seen as less exciting and more demoralizing because you’ve watched all the work you’ve put in for X number of years just sort of…slither down the drain.

Whichever camp you find yourself in (or anywhere in between), look at it as an opportunity to build better with conscious intentions.

If you’re early on in an endeavor (like your career) and you’re reading this, take it as an opportunity to meticulously construct the steps needed to put you on the path to greatness.

If you’re later on in your life and you’re trying to rebuild, look at it as an opportunity to revisit and reorient things. You may not have much in a material sense, but you have something else that’s priceless: experience.

Life is all a matter of framing and the more optimistically (but realistically) you can look at your situation, the better.

My Personal Experience with Starting From Nothing

Everyone starts from nothing in a sense, so my experience isn’t necessarily unique – but early on in my career I was forced to do a “U turn” and reinvent myself.

I didn’t have an opportunity to do an internship in the career I wanted to pursue because I spent the summers working an actual job so I could make money that would carry me through the school year. As a result, after college I sort of just slid into my career (which was design) and started working.

Unfortunately, it was only a couple of weeks into the job that I knew for a fact that I could not see myself doing this for the rest of my life. An internship would have helped me to see that earlier on, but again – I didn’t really have that luxury.

At that point, I had two choices: I could just continue doing this hoping that someday I would “magically” like it or start looking around to see if there were any other options.

I knew the former could happen, but what if it didn’t? I would waste a whole bunch of time just “waiting around” for a train that may just never come. So I started to research other options.

I thought about it and I had several “pluses” in my corner:

• I graduated from a great institution with a degree that was applicable to many areas
• I had a “knack” for picking things up quickly and applying them
• I was young (21 at that time) and had no dependents

The only real thing standing in my way was my willingness to retrain myself in another field and pretty much cancel out my 4 years of specialized concentration in design.

I had to be willing to lose in order to gain.

So I took the latter route and I got a job in marketing. The first company I worked for hired me because I had some skills in front end programming and I had worked on some interesting projects. There was potential there.

It wasn’t the best job, but I was still gaining experience…at $10/hour. I put my head down and worked. I saw what skills were needed in the marketplace.

I went to work on developing them. One of them was copywriting.

Sometime in my first year of working, I was able to scrape up enough coin to pay for a marketing copywriting course to learn how to write good marketing copy. That course was well out of my affordability range but I paid for it anyway.

Now, in the present day, that course has paid for itself 10x over because it opened the door for much more. I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.

This was because I was willing to reorient myself and re-skill myself. I was willing to start from nothing in a sense. I had no idea what was involved in being a good marketing copywriter.

I just went to work on building the skill, step by step, brick by brick.

That’s what you’ll do when you find yourself needing to start over in life.

How to Start From Nothing: 5 Actionable Tactics

The above story wasn’t necessarily meant to be “motivational”, it was just one example to provide some insight I have in this area, even though it is nothing compared to what others have experienced.

But regardless, whether you’re starting your life from the beginning or you’re reorienting yourself after a bad breakup or a job loss, I hope that these 5 tips will help you get started on the right foot.

1. Get Excited (and Maybe Even Motivated)

Starting over is a way to reorient in a new, better, direction. The only one who can get excited about that is you. No one else can live your life.

Getting excited is what’s going to start the wheels in motion of any significant change. This can even be seen in the same light as “motivation”.

All motivation is is simply the spark to produce action. It doesn’t get you to the finish line, but it will get going.

There’s lots of ways to get motivated. Think about your end-of-the-road goals, the benefits you’ll get from starting over, or even just watch some YouTube videos.

If you want some of my thoughts on motivation, check out this podcast:

2. Manage Your Time

Making a shift in life is not simple. It requires effort, diligence, time to learn, skill acquisition, and new modes of learning.

Setting aside time for learning, experimenting, and maintaining a basic standard of living is a juggling act that requires time management.

Unless you can manage your time, you’re not really gonna make it.

This is really the essence of self-management.

To learn more about self-management, check out How to Manage Yourself.

3. List Out Priorities

When you start from nothing, it will seem like there’s so much stuff to be done (and there is).

But not all of them will make the same impact.

According to the Pareto Principle, only 20% (or less) of things you do throughout any given day will actually move the needle in your life.

Your job is to identify what that 20% is and focus on it intensely.

For example: if you’re trying to snag a new job, you have other things that need to be done. However, the job searching part of your day is the most crucial because it will literally determine how the rest of your life unfolds.

Therefore, finding a job and dedicating quality hours to it is your “primary priority”.

List out your priorities from greatest to least and start on the highest priority tasks first.

Afterwards, see what tasks you can give to someone else to do or just eliminate them entirely.

This is called the “ABCDE Method” and I’ve used it to great effect in my life.

4. Develop a Strong Work Ethic

Developing yourself in a different areas will take some legwork, no matter what that area is. You need to develop the mentality and mindset of always being on mission. You need to be extremely task-oriented and goal-driven.

This means again, putting in quality hours towards “impact activities” and going harder at them than you did before.

You’ll need concentration, persistence, and determination. All which are components of a strong work ethic.

5. Generalize, Then Specialize

This mainly goes for the realm of work, but it can apply to other areas as well.

When you first start out in something, your surroundings are very hazy.

You don’t know what the standard for excellence is, your knowledge of tactics and strategies is limited, and you just have a shallow understanding of “what it takes”.

Over time as you progress (like your career for example), you start to pick up on the way “things are done” and you start to learn the nuances of things. This opens the door to specialization.

In fields such as medicine or science, the fields are just too vast to become expert in multiple areas.

This is why many people who go into medicine or science will specialize.

Because of their specialization, these people are often highly compensated.

Determine what you want to specialize in and start working towards that. Get a broad understanding of the field in general, then go deep.

A great book that talks about this is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

Starting from nothing or starting over isn’t necessarily easy but it can be very rewarding if done right.

In order to take the biggest advantage of it, you need to be motivated and focused on achieving tangible goals. After a period of working and living this way, you’ll eventually lift your head up (after working so hard) and see the tremendous progress you made.

At this point, you feel a mixture of excitement, happiness, and pride in what you’ve built out of the rubble of your previous life.

Have you ever had to experience to start from nothing or just starting over in life? What happened? How did it go? Let us know in the comments.