one question I get all the time is how exactly did I go from zero to making over $120,000 per month at the age of 22 so in this video I thought I'd share the four steps I took to go from working at Tim Horton on minimum wage to now making over $1.3 million a year just from my laptop I'm going to break down how much money I was making at each stage of my journey what businesses I've tried and the key lessons I've learned learned so that you can do the same before we dive in
I just want to say I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trying to show off the real reason I'm making this video is because I know how lonely it can be in the beginning I know what it's like to feel lost and not know what business to start and I know how hard it is to believe in yourself when all your friends and family are doubting you but it was videos like this that helped me build my confidence and gave me the courage to just start hearing stories about other people's success honestly inspire ired me
and helped me in times when I was really struggling so my goal with this video is to hopefully do the same for you let's start at stage one how I went from0 to $5,000 so probably like most of you I started my career at a fast food restaurant at the age of 15 but while most of my friends were working to just spend money at the mall or buy like a new electric scooter I was working over 30 hours per week while going to school full-time all because I had to save up for college and
also help my mom pay the bills there is one day I'll never forget I took the bus from school to my mom's work I got to my mom's job and she was working at a shaa shop and I remember feeling so sorry for her because she looked exhausted she was the only person working there and she was running back and forth trying to finish the last orders before she closed the store seeing my 50-year-old mom so tired and drained honestly broke my heart because I knew she was working just to support me and take care
of us and I felt so hopeless in that moment and although this was a really hard time in my life it did teach me a very important skill that would go on to make me millions of dollars and that skill is work ethic this is something not many people talk about but it's such an important skill to develop early on in life because a large part of your success is simply to just show up even when you don't feel like it and thanks to developing this skill at such a young age I was able to
save $5,000 in my first year of working my minimum wage job now let me share the first lesson you should take from this the first step I recommend if you want to start a business is to save as much money as possible make sure you're working hard at your job because not only will this help you develop your work ethic but it'll also help you save up tons of money so that you can invest into your business now let's move on to stage two of my journey which is how I went from $5,000 to $60,000
although my my mom and I were working really hard we were still struggling my mom unfortunately never went to college so she was stuck working two minimum wage jobs in order to support us I found it really emotional to watch her struggle and be stressed out all the time I remember it got so bad that I would have to skip a few days of school to pick up extra shifts at work just to help my mom pay the bills at this point I was 16 I had no business experience but I had this burning desire
to make a ton of money I had had about $5,000 saved up so I did what pretty much every teen does when they want to make money online I started Drop Shipping I was so nervous to get started even though I spent almost a year Watching every single video on YouTube and invested so much money into courses the thought of spending my hard-earned money on something that could potentially fail really scared me but after watching a ton of videos like this I was convinced that my store would blow up and make me a millionaire it
just seemed so easy all I had to do was find find a product from China build a website run ads at least that's what the gurus say but after launching my first product I realized that wasn't the case after 7 days and spending $500 on Advertising I made a total of $0 and after a few months I eventually lost over $5,000 which was all the money I had at the time it honestly felt like the whole world came crashing down all around me I honestly just wanted to lay under my covers and hide forever if
if you've ever experienced the feeling of losing a lot of money you know how much it sucks I honestly felt so alone and I spiraled into a deep depression I had absolutely no mentors to help me and I had just given up on the idea of making money I didn't even think about starting another business because I did not want to lose any more money but looking back I realized I learned a critical lesson during this failure that was a big key to my success on YouTube and with affiliate marketing and this brings me to
the second lesson I want to share with you and it was that if you want to succeed online you have to develop skills the reason my Drop Shipping business failed is simply because I didn't have any marketing skills I didn't know what products to pick I didn't know how to make great ads and I didn't know how to write website copy so after failing miserably I decided to invest a lot more time into learning the fundamentals of marketing these were things like copywriting sales video editing and graphic design and if you're just getting started in
online business I highly recommend you learn all of these as they'll help you make money much faster in fact it was these skills that would help me make over $60,000 in profit in just a few months I took a break from business for about 6 to 12 months after my ginormous failure and I decided to get a new job at a clothing store at this point I was 17 my mom and I were still struggling financially but I had saved up enough money from my job to give Drop Shipping one last try this time I
started with a completely different strategy instead of investing all my money into a single product I would do small tests first to see if I'd get any sales I would only allow myself to spend $100 to $200 per product that way I wouldn't lose all my money but after testing four to five products I still made no sales I was so close to giving up and just accepting another crushing failure but I decided to test just one more product it was this dog water bottle at the time this product was trending and going pretty viral
and within 6 months I scaled this product to over $60,000 in profit I honestly couldn't believe it I had finally found a winning product and at that time seeing that amount of money in my bank account was lifechanging and that's how this part of my journey taught me the power of persistence I was so close to quitting again but I stayed strong and it all paid off it made me realize that you can succeed in any business as long as you're following a proven plan and you don't give up but although I found success with
Drop Shipping I realized that the business wasn't sustainable in fact if you're a beginner I actually don't recommend you start Drop Shipping and the reason is because it requires high level skills and can be risky now that I look back there were a ton of other businesses that I could have started that were a lot better that had a lot less risk involved and I'll share more about that soon so I ended up closing down my drop shipping stores and invested all of my money into the stock market and I just waited for my next
opportunity which leads me to stage three how I went from $100,000 to $1 million at this point I was1 18 I had $100,000 saved up from Drop Shipping working different jobs and from the stock market at this time I noticed Tik Tok became very popular this was back in 2020 when the platform was relatively new and I saw an opportunity to share my finance knowledge that I learned over the past couple of years because at that time there wasn't any girls my age talking about that stuff so I used the skills I developed over the
last year and started posting content and within just a few weeks my account took off I was getting thousands of views sometimes even Millions every time I posted and honestly I was so excited I felt like I was adding so much value to the world and helping young people become financially independent people would comment on my videos and say thanks to you I started investing I started a business this honestly lit me up with so much joy and as my Tik Tok started to grow I decide to expand to other platforms like Instagram and YouTube
the first year was pretty slow but after landing more and more sponsorships and selling more affiliate products ended up making around $50,000 a month as a 19-year-old I can't even describe the feeling going from making literally no money to struggling financially for years to then making $50,000 a month honestly felt unreal it was like I honestly won the lottery but as awesome as it was it wasn't always $50,000 every month it went up and down quite a lot and that made me realize that I need a more consistent income stream which led me to the
last stage of my journey this is the stage where I went from a million to $5 million at this point I was 19 and I had about a million dollars in Investments and in my bank account and I decided to break down my income streams and look at which one was the most stable and likely to scale I was making $115,000 from sponsorships I was making around $5,000 from YouTube AdSense I was making around $10,000 from affiliate marketing and I was making $20,000 from coaching and at that point I realized affiliate marketing was a gold
mine I was barely investing any time into making that $10,000 a month and I realized it was extremely scalable and so I decided to go all in on affiliate Market marketing and realized how powerful the business model really is I realized this was the business I should have started in the first place and the business I recommend beginners start because with affiliate marketing you don't have to create your own product you also don't need thousands of dollars to get started and you don't need specialized skills the only thing you need to learn is how to
create viral content so while I loved running Sarah Finance I decide to cut down on sponsorships and focus most of my energy on building my affiliate marketing business and it quickly became my biggest income stream I was now making anywhere from $30 to $50,000 a month from affiliate marketing and about $20,000 from YouTube and sponsorships now you might be thinking that's easy for you to say since you have thousands of followers but the truth is you don't need a large following to make money with affiliate marketing in fact I discovered a new method that does
not require you to have thousands of followers or even show your face and it's making people like Lena over $90,000 in just one year it also made another one of my students $66,000 in just a few months now I don't have time to go into detail in this video but if you'd like to learn more about how you can get started I actually share this exact method inside my affiliate marketing course so if you're interested in checking that out I'll have a link for it in the description of this video but fast forward to now
I can't tell you how much my life has changed in just 5 years I've gone from being depressed and financially trapped to now making over $5 million by the age of 22 with all this money I've been able to buy my dream housee travel anywhere in the world and most importantly take care of my mom here's a photo of me and my mom when we were on vacation in California she no longer has to work and we get to travel the world together I still work hard but it's a big relief to know that I
no longer have to worry about money and my mom is taken care of and she no longer has to struggle or work a job so if you're watching this video and you're still in the early stages of your journey I just want to say that I believe this is 100% possible for you I know that you may be struggling right now and it may feel like a world away but if you avoid the mistakes I made and follow a proven plan and just don't give up then you can 100% achieve your dreams
