ladies and gentlemen i filmed a rather similar video four years ago when i was 17 years old entitled three things i learned making a hundred thousand dollars by the age of 17. and here we are four years later making a video that i would have never thought i'd be making this time now i'd be lying to you if i was one of those people who never imagined themselves you know hitting eight figures or nine figures or you know maybe even ten figures i've always known that i would do it i'm just for me personally ten years ahead of my plan now if you google me it says i have x amount if you ask this person or that person you know they'll tell you i have x amount but for me i think most of these numbers are usually inflated um and i'll give you guys a more honest realistic number for me i think your net worth unless you have a company that really you know unless you've had your company appraised and you already know that you know you could get investors and this and that which you know i've never had any of my companies appraised so so i don't want to take my companies into consideration so for me when i say 10 million that is if i had two weeks to liquidate everything sell everything what could i have in my bank account so as i said this title comes from easily liquid assets as well as cash reserves so feel free to take everything i say with a green assault i mean at the end of the day you're the one listening to 21 year old dummy on youtube not me anyways i've learned a thing or two along the way um and i think especially um compared to four years ago when i made that video when i was 17 years old i was just getting my agency off the ground i really have a lot more high level insight for you guys and um you know for me i think it was always really interesting at when i hit seven figures listening to someone who hit eight figures and now really the only people that i listen to are podcasts or interviews i watch are from people who have hit nine figures because that's the next goal post that i want to get to so the first of the three main things that i've learned by getting to 10 million by the age of 21 is and i'm sorry if this sounds obvious but we'll get into some more nuances here sacrifice in 2017 when i really had my breakthrough year with my agency no one saw me like very very very seldom did anyone even see me and um i even had close friends of mine like literally my best friends this day um where for the first time in our relationship there was issues because i was always someone who would uh you know put work first even when i was 14 15 16 years old you know for me i had to stick to reading one book a week meditating going to the gym like doing everything that i needed to do from you know to to build up the vessel but 2017 was the first one really where i was like guys like i even if i wanted to i couldn't spend time with you like i'm so so busy with work and 2017 i sacrificed everything and the same thing in 2018 there was so much sacrifice there was so much sacrifice i really didn't have a social life in 2018 and it got to a point in i remember back beginning of 2019 i was in bali and one of my best friends was visiting me my mom was visiting me and i was there with my ex-girlfriend as well as my old personal trainer and the four of them almost sat me down and had an ultimatum they're like you you're not there like you're you're not here with us like you're you'll talk to us but but you're in the world of business like you're totally somewhere else so i'm not saying that you need to do this and i'm not recommending you do this but i'm just bestowing upon you what my journey was like and the biggest thing was was sacrifice like sacrifice to the point where business was all i thought about 24 7 and you know i've since then in 2020 and 2021 and you know also the second half of 2019 i've realized you know you don't need to i've realized that working harder or thinking about something 24 7 isn't actually going to get you anywhere closer to your goal a lot of times it's those moments of those meditative moments when you're in the steam room you're in the sauna where you're meditating where you're walking but without music or without texting anyone and that's really where those flashes of brilliance come to you but you know i guess i'm kind of waffling on now back on the point of sacrifice sacrifice to me is still of the three the biggest one because here's the thing if you can get to a point where you're 25 years old or you're even 30 years old or even 35 years old and you have set yourself up for the rest of your life and we'll you know this will kind of bring us on to the next point that i'll mention in just a second but if you've gone to a point where and by the way it's so funny everyone these days shits on careers like you know if you work for someone it's this and guys if you have a high paying career and you can tuck away money every single month and put that into your investment portfolio and have that grow and that's something in my team of 10 pretty much every single person on my team i'm actively pressing them to invest their money and as i said because my team are well paid a lot of them have made a lot of money through their investments in the last year so it's gone to a point where some of them very soon actually won't even need to work because their investments could literally pay for their entire life and yet i'm pressing them to do that because as i said i think if in your late 20s or even early 30s if you can set yourself up for life then you can also ask a really cool question of would i do what i'm doing if i wasn't getting paid for it and i think that's really why i'm so willing to sacrifice as much as i do at this age and sacrifice um and look don't get me wrong i said especially i learned after that period between beginning of 2017 to like mid 2019 i especially learned from that period that hey like you actually need time off and you actually need to have a bit more balance in your life and this uh monastic focus on your business doesn't actually help it grow anymore so don't get me wrong i do still have a social life and this and that but at the day work always comes first and i will sacrifice everything from my work and that's also because you know i love what i do i really really do and but that's also because the next goal post for me is i said 25 million by 25 and then 100 million by 30 and and you know when you get to those sort of figures i mean already where i'm at you never really need to work again and be and live a incredible incredible lifestyle but you know for me those are goal posts that i want to hit and i know that when i hit them probably i'll work even harder because i'll have even less of a need to work so it's is that it's it's weird it's ironic how like if you really love what you do the moment you don't need to make money from it anymore you probably actually work harder but anyways i digress all of this is to say sacrificing your 20s i think your 20s honestly are for sacrifice and you know this is definitely a generality this doesn't apply to every single male but also you know as men and you know i know that 88 of my audience or something like that especially on youtube is are males as men we also usually settle down a lot later you know early 30s mid-30s et cetera et cetera so we also you know if you sacrifice up until you're 27 you still have many many good years to go out there have a good dating life meet a bunch of very interesting people um and you know if you can sacrifice those early 20s uh it really does set you up for the rest of your life and this brings me on to the second thing i learned making 10 million by the age of 21 and that's invest and invest as soon as you can not necessarily because you're gonna have explosive gains um but because you just get into the routine of it you know i really you know i you know 30 or 40 of my liquid net worth was made up by investments and i've really only been investing the last year to 18 months and as i said those 30 to 40 gains have come from cryptocurrencies as well as alternative investments like watches i've made a very pretty penny on my watch collection which a lot of people don't really realize um how profitable it can be now when i was 16 for the first time i read uh money master game and actually re-read it again in 2017 when i was in paris and at that time my agency was just getting off the ground i think i was doing six six to eight thousand a month uh this is like back in april or no early may of 2017 so no i think i was doing close to like 10 000 anyways at that point i got some momentum so i read money mass the game and he has like um a what would your uh your needs tier be like how much money would you need to fulfill your needs um what would your sort of wants to be and then what would your like most luxurious extravagant lifestyle be and for me i put it down as i need to make fifty thousand dollars a month to be my most extravagant lifestyle and um you know then you times that by how many years you have left or and you also times that by a certain percentage which gets you to how much your investment portfolio would be in order to sustain that lifestyle uh without ever touching your principal just from the passive income from your investments so for me that number was six million dollars and i always wanted to hit six million dollars by the time i was 25 um and obviously doing it late into last year like really literally just as i was about to turn 21 years old was a pretty insane achievement and as i said next i'm looking at 25 by 25 and then 100 by the age of 30. but here's the thing write it down find out what that number is to you like find out with your current living costs right like how much do you spend per month and then how much would your investment portfolio need to be in order for you to literally just live off of that maybe that number for you is just 300k right 300k lets you live an incredible life and that's the other thing you can start looking at other countries as well some of my favorite places on earth are cape town bali these places are so cheap even places in a certain place in spain italy you know if your investment portfolio is bringing in a fifteen thousand to twenty thousand a year yield you can actually live decently in places like those and if you've got business running or you're working for uh you know a company remotely then that's supplementary income too maybe for you your number is one million dollars you need to get to one million dollars and from a six to eight percent yield per year um you can basically live off that and i know for some of you guys these numbers sound insane like three hundred thousand or a million dollars but go online and go on to and i'll get tristan throw it up an online compound calculator right and just put let's do a reasonable starting round let's just put 10 000 as your principal right that's initially how much you can put into investment portfolio and let's say every month you can contribute 500 to that and then you know let's let's pop that on screen what that comes out to over the space of 30 years and by the way that is at an eight percent increase in your portfolio value every single year and i hear some people say oh eight percent isn't realistic oh well yeah you're right and neither is hundreds of thousands of percents that i've done through my main investments that i made most you know most of my money cryptocurrency and i know some people were like oh yeah but that's just crypto only well but if i look at my alternative investment my watches i made a 40 to 50 return in 18 months so i mean the s p 500 i think has done a 40 return in last year right and granted with all the money printing we know why that's the case but still the people who are getting hit the worst right now are the savers and the people who are earning earned income as in not income from their investments or business you need to understand with all this money going into these different asset classes whether that be cryptocurrency whether that be um you know alternative investments like watches or even fine wines or or collectibles or real estate all of these prices are getting propped up because so you know this money needs to go somewhere and it's honestly gonna get to a point soon where all the stuff is so expensive it's out of reach for common people the earlier you can start getting invested the better it is for you and as i said guys and as i said guys the second point is not something where you're going to hit that goal or achieve that within two years or one year you know but going back to that first point of sacrifice i mean if you can sacrifice for 10 years and by the way you know a lot of people go you know you start your business august of 2016.
it's been five years you've been running your business like you know they think it's like nuts that i've been able to hit the numbers i've been able to hit and they also i know a lot of people also look at my age and they're like oh but you're 21 like that's insane guys what age doesn't matter in my industry right so you need to remember i've been in my industry for five years and then for the three years prior to that or two and a half years prior to that i was reading a book a week i was meditating every single day anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour some days i was a complete loner at school i would sit alone at lunch times and i'd be meditating in the school bathrooms so going onto that point of sacrifice i've been running my business for five years and the two and a half years before that i was sacrificing you can go back to my youtube channel on 2015 when i was making videos about me going to the used bookstore because i couldn't afford new books and and me sharing what goals i had for the year and you know trying to hit those goals and uh you know me highlighting books and me in the gym and sharing what i'm tr you know how i'm training and all this stuff so so i've been sacrificing for seven and a half years so don't expect that after a year of sacrifice you're gonna be able to you know especially in terms of your investment portfolio numbers that you wanna hit you're gonna hit it right it might take you seven ten years but who cares especially if you're young if you can set yourself up for life like that i think the ultimate freedom you know to me wealth is not how much money you have in the bank for me wealth is how much money do you have in your investments and what multiple is that in regards to how much you spend because the other thing if you have an investment portfolio of one million and that yields you let's say seventy thousand or sixty thousand dollars a year but you only spend thirty thousand dollars you're you're so wealthy you have no idea and really where all of this starts is by having cash flow comes in and this brings me on to my last point you need a cash flow business ladies and gentlemen i executed this game to t i've been running my agency ig meter for five years the first 18 months we were creative agency and then we went through a six month weird like purgatory phase or like half creative half social half ads um well i guess that doesn't really make it has but you get my point well i guess that doesn't really make a hole but whatever you get i'm a high school dropout excuse me and then for the last three years we've been solely an advertising agency and the business i run is very unsexy it's very uncool but the main thing that's allowed for me is over the space the last two years especially has been a consistent 100k a month every single month from that business in terms of cash flow so i can take 30k a month from there and live off that you know minus taxes and the other 70k can go straight into my investment so every single year i can contribute very easily an extra six to 800k to my investment portfolio and from 800k and a more realistic 10 for me which is as i said looking back what i know that i can yield because because for me even when it comes to real estate i don't want to invest in the us i don't invest in the uk i want to invest in emerging markets where the yields are much better and it's much more exciting so for me at a conservative 10 a year what my business ig media does for me is it adds an extra 80k per year to my income right passively right so every year i run that business my what i get to live off from my investment portfolio goes up by an extra 80k now here's the thing i don't really care what business model you do you can try an agency or you can try you know i guess for me the most important thing is that you do have a business model where you know you can fall scrape your knees you know kind of fail for six to twelve months and and there's no issues because you didn't spend ten thousand dollars on stock for your amazon fba business or you know you didn't burn through uh money trying to run ads for an unprofitable store etc etc and in the past i've tried many different business models you know in 2014 i used to flip instagram account in 2015 as i was getting really into the gym i used to personally train my friends parents and then try to make conversation with people at the gym and sign them on as a you know on these uh packages three month packages et cetera et cetera 2016 i started getting into photography videography and i started servicing clients and then that's kind of how my agency was formed so i've had this whole crazy evolution and then obviously these days i have an agency i have a software business i have an education company i have an e-commerce business and if i had to drop all them and keep one you'll be my agency because as i said for me it's kind of like those people who have four cars in their garage and you know one is that fancy sports car and and one is maybe they have a harley davidson and then one is a uh this other specific car and you ask any owner hey if you have to keep one which one would you go for you they always go for that reliable one where they know what the outcome is gonna be and i said for me my agency lets me build that investment portfolio i have because the only one where every single month i earn free cash flow from it so if you want to win at this game here are the steps and they're actually kind of jumbled up from the order in which i gave you the three things i learned first things first find a cash flow business once you're done with that sacrifice right and just know that you're gonna have to roll up your sleeves and you're gonna sacrifice and if you're not willing to do that i don't know what to tell you and then thirdly start getting invested as soon as possible and write down that number right you know that real true financial freedom number for you know where it's like you know you know all these people online who are like oh passive income guys passive income doesn't exist right here's the thing and i've even seen this with my agency because sometimes i have to oscillate my focus and you know look at some other businesses if you know for two three months and i'm so lucky to have such an incredible cmo by my side who manages most of the company you know our team our clients the only thing that i really have to do is sales calls and sometimes checking calls with clients so even with that in place sometimes i'll have to turn my focus away from the agency for two or three months and i come back and there's so much broken right it's called entropy inevitably things fall apart so don't believe that there's any sort of passive income this thing it doesn't exist guys for me the only only true passive income is your investments and i mean even some investments take work you know in terms of finding them management you know you look at real estate having to manage the properties or you know even having a management company to to take care of them but still a lot of work but as i said for the most part if you're looking at cryptocurrencies if you're looking like stocks and if you're coming at it and same thing with alternative investments if you're looking at it from an investor's mind not a trader's mind that to me that is really the only true passive income so as i said find a cash flow business model sacrifice and then invest as soon as you can and if you want any reminder at any point and if you're feeling down and you're thinking oh why isn't this coming to me quick go look it back in my videos from 2015. they're still all on my channel go look at my videos from 2017.
