Sixty things to do before you graduate, a 30 day starter plan, and the exact format for documenting all of it. Tell me where to find you and it opens right here.
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How to leave college with a story instead of a one page PDF nobody reads.
I have started six things. Four died. Two worked. I have never written a CV, and people still keep asking me to come work with them.
That is not because I am talented. It is because for four years I kept doing things that made no sense to the people around me, and every single one of them left behind a piece of evidence. A page. A poster. An event. An invoice. A group of people who now know my name.
Add up enough evidence and you stop needing to describe yourself. The evidence describes you.
So here is the only rule in this entire guide:
Money is optional.
Success is optional.
A story is not.
If a thing you did leaves behind nothing a stranger can look at, it did not happen. Not to the world, anyway. That is the whole game.
People hear "do dumb shit" and think I mean be reckless. I don't. There is a real definition.
Any project you start before you are qualified to start it, that produces something a stranger can look at.
That is it. Both halves matter. Starting before you are ready is what makes it dumb. Producing something visible is what makes it count.
Run everything through this before you start:
Does it make something exist outside my head?
A page, a poster, an event, a video, a spreadsheet, a paying customer, a WhatsApp group of 60 people. Something with edges.
Can I start it in the next 7 days, for under 500 rupees, without anyone's permission?
If it needs funding, a co-founder, a laptop upgrade or your parents' approval, it is not your first one.
Does it put me in front of a stranger?
Selling, asking, hosting, posting, pitching. Anything where someone can say no to your face.
Two out of three means go. Zero out of three means you have found a hobby, which is lovely, but it is not this.
This is where I lost most of my time, and where you will lose most of yours. I am calling it fake work. It feels like effort. It produces nothing anyone can see.
The test is brutal and it works: at the end of this week, can you screenshot something and send it to a person who does not know you? If no, that week was fake work.
You are not collecting money. At 19 the money is going to be small and that is fine. You are collecting these four, and they compound in a way a salary never will.
Things that exist in the world with your fingerprints on them. Links, photos, screenshots, receipts, a room full of people who came because you asked.
The number of times you have done the uncomfortable thing. Asked for money. Sent the cold message. Stood in front of a room. Handled someone being rude to you. Reps are the only reason confidence exists.
People who know what you do without you explaining it. Not followers. People who would reply to your message in under a day. Twenty of these beats twenty thousand followers.
Skills you picked up by accident because a project needed them at 2am. This is the only way I learned anything useful. Nobody taught me. A deadline did.
Once a month, write down one new entry under each of the four. If a month passes with nothing under any of them, you drifted. Fix it next month.
Nobody has ever asked me for my marks.
Everybody has asked me how I got 200 people in a room.
The levels are not about skill. They are about courage. Start at whatever level makes your stomach turn slightly, not the one that terrifies you. Tick things off as you go.
All of these can be done alone, from your room, without talking to a single human out loud.
Now money enters. Not a lot. The point is the first rupee, because the first rupee changes your brain permanently.
This is where I spent most of my time and it is the highest return level by a distance. Hosting makes you the centre of a network without you having to be the most talented person in it.
Do not start here. Come here once you have 20 ticks above. These are the ones that produce the stories people repeat back to you years later.
Reading a guide is fake work too. So here is the part where you stop reading. Pick one thing from the menu. Then run this.
Repeat this twelve times and you will finish college with twelve pieces of proof. Most people finish with a transcript and a list of adjectives.
This is the part everybody gets wrong, so read it twice. A story kept inside your own head is not a story. But there is a real difference between documenting and bragging.
The subject is you.
"Thrilled to announce", "humbled to share", "blessed".
Adjectives instead of numbers.
Only the wins get posted.
Nothing in it is useful to the reader.
The subject is the thing you made.
"Here is what happened when I tried X."
Numbers, even ugly ones.
The failures get posted too, in more detail.
Someone could copy your steps.
Use this format. It works whether you write, film, or post from a company page.
Four of my six things failed.
I have never once hidden that.
The failures are half the story.
A failure you documented is proof. A failure you hid is just a bad memory. Same event, completely different asset.
Most of what you start will die. That is the design, not the accident. But there is a right way to do it and almost nobody does it.
When you start anything, write a date on it. Eight weeks out is a good default. Write down what has to be true by that date for it to continue. One number, not a feeling.
Example: "By 30 September, ten people have paid. If not, I kill it."
The post mortem is the deliverable. My four dead startups are not wasted, because four honest write ups exist about why they died. That is four pieces of proof that I can think, that I can be honest, and that I do not blame other people. Half the founders I know cannot demonstrate any of the three.
What kills people is not failure. It is drift. A thing that never got killed and never got finished and just quietly stopped, so it never became a story at all.
Two years of this and you will have a pile of scattered things. Here is how you compress the pile into a sentence.
The formula is: a specific thing plus a number plus what it proves.
"I am passionate about marketing."
"I am a quick learner and a team player."
"I have strong leadership skills."
"I did an internship at a startup."
"I have hosted 14 events. The biggest had 200 people. I have never spent more than 8000 rupees on one."
"I started an agency before I knew how websites were built. First client paid me 12000. I learned on their project."
"I have started six things. Four died. Here are the post mortems."
Not a PDF. A live link you can send in a DM. Five sections, nothing else:
Update it on the first of every month. It takes 20 minutes. It will outperform every CV you would have written.
I have fallen into all seven. Some of them twice.
Waiting until you are qualified. You will never feel qualified. I sold websites before I could build one. The qualification arrives during, not before.
Two months on a logo for a business with zero customers. Polish is procrastination wearing good clothes.
"I will start posting once I have something worth showing." Backwards. The posting is what produces the thing worth showing.
Five projects at 20 percent each. One at a time until it dies or works. Then the next.
Not telling anyone in case it fails. It will probably fail. Telling people is the only thing that makes the failure worth something.
Someone on your feed raised funding at 19. You do not know their story and it is not yours. Compare against what you did last month.
You do not have to choose between marks and this. You have to choose what gets your best four hours, and it does not have to be the same thing every semester. Do not drop out. Just stop treating college as the only thing happening.
You have the best hand in the room. Year one: level 00 and 01, get to 12 published pieces and your first paying customer. Year two: level 02, host relentlessly, build the room. Year three: one level 03 bet that could actually work, plus a real one page site. Do not take a single unpaid internship where you fetch coffee.
Skip level 00 as a phase, do it in parallel. Six months of selling something small, then go straight to hosting. By the end of year one you should have run at least three events and earned money from at least two different sources.
One project, run hard for six months, documented weekly the whole way. Then spend the last six months converting it into a one page site, a case study, and 30 conversations with people in the industry you want. One deep story beats ten shallow ones.
Nothing changes except you now have more hours. Ninety days: one thing built, one thing sold, one event hosted, twelve posts published. You can build a story faster after college than during it, because you have full days. Most people waste that window scrolling job boards.
The rules, if you remember nothing else
You are about to feel motivated for roughly 40 minutes and then go back to your feed. So fill this in now, on your phone notes, on paper, anywhere.
That is it. That is the whole thing.
Nobody around you will understand why you are doing any of it. My friends did not understand why I was selling lighters in school or hosting parties or starting an agency I was in no way qualified to run. That confusion is the signal that you are doing it right.
Four years later, none of that looks dumb. It looks like a story. And a story is the only thing you can carry into a room that nobody else has.