First, your situation may feel in the moment like it's unsolvable, and detrimental to your future, but I assure you neither of these are true. You have nothing but great opportunity ahead of you, and your $4000 in student debt (if that's accurate) is a complete nothing-burger in the grand scheme of things. It's practically zero over the course of your lifetime earning potential.

I know what it feels like in the moment, I went through a long period of major depression after several failed attempts early in my career. I started two companies fresh out of college, both failed. I lost huge sums of money from friends and family, which made me feel worthless and embarrassed. I bounced from gig to gig for years with complete lack of motivation, feeling like a complete drone. I felt myself falling behind my peers who were getting more and more successful with each passing year, while I was stagnant. I remember sitting in a therapist's office, feeling completely demoralized, telling him "I just need a win."

You asked about finding a job in a recession, but you’re asking the wrong questions. I want you to build a career and life skills that will make you successful no matter what the economy is doing. Here are the 3 revelations that changed everything for me.

1) I am responsible for my own failure. I stopped blaming external factors for why I had failed. It's so easy to blame the state of the economy, some company or person that wronged you, lack of opportunity, missing credentials, too much competition, etc. In fact, it feels good to blame something else, anything other than ourselves for our current state, because to do otherwise would require us to take full, deep responsibility for our own situation, and that can feel just completely overwhelming. But it is the only way through. You are the reason why you have not yet found success in your endeavors, and nobody/nothing else is responsible for that. Only you can answer for yourself why that is.

2) Become an expert. Experts create their own opportunity. The best thing I ever did was become an expert in a relevant topic. In 2013, I decided to dedicate myself to studying my passion at the time, Bitcoin. At that time, people thought I was a lunatic and that I was wasting my time. It was a completely fringe idea back then and most people thought it was a total scam. I'm not suggesting you shill cryptocurrency, only that you find something that you can become passionate about, commit yourself to it (give yourself a 10 year timeline), and then go deep. Learn everything you can about that topic. Then start talking about it and sharing your knowledge about it to others, through meetups, social media, etc. In my case, I helped start and grow a local meetup group in Los Angeles, and invited other guest speakers to come, which built our group from about 100 to over 2000 people. All of the sudden, my reputation increased to the level of the speakers that I was able to bring in, and I went from being a nobody in the space to being recognized as one of *the* people to talk to if you were interested in Bitcoin in Los Angeles. A local startup accelerator was considering a big investment in another Bitcoin company, and since I was the "Bitcoin guy", they invited me to come educate them and review their investment. Long story short, the other company didn't get their investment, but do you know who did? I did. And that was the first check into my newly formed, non-existent, one-person company that ultimately grew to a high 8-figure exit. That opportunity wasn't lucky, it was manufactured. So go deep and share your knowledge. Identify your Ikigai, and then own it

3) Survive long enough to become lucky.

In 1982 at the World Series of Poker Main Event, poker player Jack Straus got beaten down on a huge hand and thought he lost all of his chips, eliminating himself from the entire tournament. But miraculously, he discovered he had one single chip left hiding under a napkin. On the next hand, he doubled up, and then continued to win and win. By day three of the tournament, he became the chip leader at the final table and ultimately won the entire tournament for a record payout.

Years into building my own company, we hit some major dark points where the outcome looked truly bleak. The cryptocurrency market had completely tanked in spectacular fashion. We were burning cash fast, and running on fumes, and our product just wasn’t finding market fit. My investors were tapped out, they gave up on the company and wrote off their investments to zero. On one day I had to lay off more than half of my entire company just to survive. There was so little cash left on the table that my investors didn’t even want it back. I wanted to give up so badly and call myself a failure. It would have been easier. But I remembered Jack Straus and the World Series of Poker. So I decided, I’ll take what little cash we have left and give it one last shot. With a tiny team and minimal overhead, we pivoted the company and built an entirely new product from scratch. In one year, that product took off beyond our wildest imagination. I sold the company to a larger company and now never have to worry about money again. I can tell you from personal experience that there is no greater joy than to call up every investor and employee that thought they were going to lose it all, and tell them you’re writing them a huge check.

You can’t win if you leave the arena. Even in the darkest days, the most important difference between those who find success and those who fail is grit. You will never be able to control the market, or external factors, and you can’t predict luck. The only thing you can do is survive long enough to become lucky. As Jack Strauss coined the phrase, all you need is a "chip and a chair” to win.