Transcript
I started my wealth building journey about 10 years ago. At the time, I was living in a van, had $80,000 of debt, and was working at a climbing gym making slightly more than minimum wage, and I only had like $1,000 in savings. It was from that place of dire necessity that I realized I really needed to figure out this money game, because I was getting my ass kicked.
I did what anybody would do, and I went to the internet and I searched, how do I make a bunch of money if I’m starting out dead broke? And wouldn’t you know it, there were a ton of resources, lots of people out there giving advice on how to make money off of a low salary.
I thought, perfect, that’s me. So I dove in, I watched video after video, and I read countless articles and books, and here’s the thing, literally everybody was saying the same damn thing. Not only the same thing, but it was the same wrong thing. Once you understand why following the common advice will only get you common results, I’m going to lay out the exact step-by-step strategy that I can almost guarantee will make you a millionaire within the next five years.
How do I know? Because this is pretty much exactly how I made my first million dollars over seven years ago. So let’s dive in. Don’t take advice from somebody that you wouldn’t want to trade places with.
That means don’t take fitness advice from an unhealthy person, don’t take relationship advice from a single 19-year-old, and don’t take financial advice from somebody who is not making the kinds of money that you aspire to. Now the reason most people are broke is because all their friends and family are broke, and those are the people they’re taking financial advice from.
Instead, you have to find people who are where you want to be, and then just do what they did. It’s a pretty simple strategy for success, all told, but it works. Here’s why I bring this up. There are a ton of videos on YouTube right now that cover this exact topic, and they all tell you the same stories and give the wrong advice because they have not actually done the thing they are trying to teach you to do, which is make a million dollars off a low salary.
Now the first story they all like to tell is that of our boy, Ronald Reed. Now Ronald was
featured in a book called The Millionaire Next Door, which is actually a pretty good book that did some statistical analysis on the lifestyle of your average millionaire. In particular, the book made two interesting observations. First, the majority of millionaires in the United States are self-made, which means they did not start out wealthy.
And number two, the majority of millionaires in the United States make less than $100,000 a year. In fact, I think it was closer to like $50,000, but I can’t be bothered to fact check that right now. So back to our boy Ronald. Ronald became famous because when he died, he left over $7 million to his family, which is a pretty good chunk of change, right?
Well, yeah, and it’s especially impressive when you consider that Ronald was a janitor who had made less than $40,000 a year for the entirety of his life. And this got people really excited about the fact that you could become a millionaire off an incredibly low salary. Now, yes, if you just start investing right now, even a modest amount of money, say a couple hundred dollars a month, and you do this every single month for the next 40 years, then sure, you’re gonna look up at retirement and you’re probably gonna have a million dollars sitting in the bank.
Good job. But here’s the thing that annoys me about this story, and it bothered the hell out of me all those years ago when I was living in the van trying to figure out how to make money. I don’t wanna be broke for the next 40 years while I’m saving up for someday when I finally get to enjoy the fruits of all my labors.
I wanted to win the money game as quickly as possible so that I could start living the life of my dreams right now. Here’s what I did. And this goes back to the part where I said, be careful who you take advice from. I went out and I found people who had managed to amass wealth relatively quickly in under a decade.
Now, these days, I probably know a couple hundred millionaires and I can say with a high degree of certainty that practically none of them got that way by squirreling away a couple hundred dollars a month in a Vanguard index fund. No, they played the game completely differently. And it was from observing how they played the game that I created my own million dollar roadmap, a plan of action that would enable me to fast track my progress towards millionaire status so that I could get there.
in under a decade. Now as it turns out, I ended up getting there way faster, in only three years, but I got really, really lucky. Now this roadmap I’m gonna lay out is the closest thing that I have to a guaranteed process for getting to a million dollars in under a decade.
Even if you’re starting out right now only making minimum wage. The system is pretty simple. You’ve gotta change your beliefs, your thoughts, and your actions. So let’s start with your beliefs.
Now there are only two types of beliefs in this world. There are limiting beliefs, the type that hold you back from getting to where you wanna go. And there are empowering beliefs, the type that propel you forward towards your greatness. Here’s the thing, any belief held strongly enough will be made true.
So you gotta be really careful about what you choose to believe, because it will become your reality. Now these are the three money beliefs that I see holding most people back. First, that money is the root of all evil. Second, that money is scarce and that there’s only so much to go around.
And then third, that making money is hard. Simply put, most people believe making money is bad, limited, and hard. Now if you truly wanna make money, these beliefs are not gonna serve you. Instead, you have to adopt empowering money beliefs such as making money is a vehicle for positively impacting the world.
I cannot help others if I cannot first help myself. And it is from my overflowing cup that I can fill your cup. Because money is infinitely abundant and there’s no reason we cannot all become wealthy, which we can prove because the average person on the planet today is living better than King Louis XIV did 300 years ago.
And finally, making money is not hard if you have the right strategy, systems, and skills. Now it’s from our beliefs that our daily thoughts are forged. In particular, these are three ways that you have to start thinking about money. First, that wealth is the ratio between what you make and what you spend.
For instance, if you currently make $50,000 a year, but your living expenses are only $5,000, then each year.
you work, you create nine years of wealth. That means if you maintain that lifestyle for the next five years, you would be able to retire for like the next 45 years. Okay, so you probably can’t reduce your living expenses to $5,000 a year. But this is just an extreme example to show the point.
The mistake that most people make is that as they start making more money, their expenses also increase. This is called lifestyle creep. And this is a problem because if you’re making a million dollars a year, but it’s costing you a million dollars in expenses, then despite the fact that you make a really good income, you will literally never be able to retire.
Think about that. Now, the second way that you have to start thinking about money is to raise your baseline temperature. See, we all have an internal money thermostat. That is a dollar amount that feels normal.
Any amount over that number feels like a lot, whereas any number less than that feels doable. For me, I used to think in $1,000 increments because $1,000 was like 140th of my income. It was about the cost of my rent, so it was a good amount of money, but not a ton.
Now, the first jump that you probably have to make is to start thinking in $10,000 increments, then 20,000, then 50,000, then 100,000, and so on. And this is important because as you start moving through the levels of wealth, you’ll acclimate to these numbers and eventually plateau. So you have to constantly reset your internal thermostat to normalize higher and higher numbers.
After all, who do you think is gonna have an easier time pitching a customer on a $50,000 service or product? The person who thinks that $1,000 is a lot or the person who thinks a million dollars is a lot? Now, how you think about money impacts how you act towards money.
So think bigger, act bigger. And here’s the third way that you have to start thinking about money, or rather, how you have to stop thinking about money. Now, a lot of people think it takes money to make money. This is wrong and limiting.
It does not take money to make money. It takes creativity, financial literacy, and consistent right action. Now, it’s that last word upon which this whole.
money-making game is won or lost action, which is where we’re gonna turn our attention to next. There are three things and only three things that you can do with money. You can spend it, you can save it, or you can invest it. Now, there’s a trite little phrase that people like to say that goes, the poor spend, the middle-class saves, and the wealthy invest.
In my experience, this is generally true. Now, obviously, if you’re trying to build wealth, spending isn’t gonna get you there because, as we already mentioned, wealth is the ratio between what you make and what you spend. Spending less is a great way of increasing your wealth, but the mistake most of us make, however, is in thinking that we can save our way to wealth.
Now, you can do this, but the truth is, that path is incredibly difficult and will take a very long time to get you to $1 million. No, the quickest and easiest way to win the money game, and this is the lesson I learned when studying all those people who had amassed great fortunes really quickly, is to simply increase your earning capacity.
See, you can only cut your expenses so much. You can take it to zero, but that’s it, whereas the upside to your earning potential is limitless. You could literally make a billion dollars in a year. It’s crazy to think, but it’s true.
So the question is, how do we invest to get $1 million? And the answer is simple. We invest in assets. See, there’s only two things you can put your money towards, assets or liabilities.
Here’s the simplest way to think about this. Assets put money in your pocket. Liabilities take money out of your pocket. That car which requires insurance, taxes, and a monthly payment is a liability because it’s taking money out of your pocket each month.
But if you take that same car and rented it out on Turo, and now it’s putting more money into your pocket than it’s taking out each month, well, now it’s an asset. Assets are good, liabilities are bad. So on our wealth-building journey, the goal is to acquire more and better assets or things that put money into your pocket.
Now, when we put money into an asset, it’s called an investment. But if you recall from the beginning of this video, I talked about how the common wisdom says you should invest in an index fund, in the stock market.
do your 401k match, get a Roth IRA, and invest a couple hundred dollars every single month for the next 40 years. And sure, this is a fine way to invest if you’re okay waiting 40 years, not such a great way to invest if you want to build wealth more quickly.
So the question then becomes, where should we invest to get the biggest bang for our buck in the shortest amount of time possible? And this is where you’ll hear people talking about crypto, or angel investing, or real estate, or forex, and all sorts of nonsense. And all these people, while being well-intentioned and technically not wrong about the validity of these investment vehicles, they are completely wrong if your goal is to become a millionaire as quickly as possible.
If you’re currently earning a low salary and want to become a millionaire within the next decade, here’s the only thing you should bother investing in. Yourself. Specifically, you must invest to increase your earning potential. And that’s exactly what I’m going to outline for you next.
See, this is how I personally would go from zero to a million dollar net worth in under five years if I was starting all over again right now. Number one, I’d pick a high value skill. Elon Musk says that you’re paid in proportion to the magnitude of the problems you solve.
So if you want to make more money, you’ve got to solve bigger problems. The biggest problems people have revolve around four things, money, health, relationships, and status. Helping somebody improve one of these four areas is a surefire way to make more money. Personally, my preference is to help people make money or more specifically help businesses make more money.
Why? Because if you help them make more money, then, you know, they have more money. They can pay you. It’s a virtuous cycle.
Whereas you help somebody lose weight. They maybe don’t actually have any more money they can give you. So in the beginning, develop a skill that’ll make other people more money. And you’re going to be on the fast track to making more money yourself.
Now, recently, we did a video where we broke down six skills in particular that have helped me make millions. I’m going to put a link for that down in the description. But real quick, for those that don’t want to click over there, here are some of the best money making skills given the current market environment.
Copywriting, accounting, digital marketing, graphic design, coding, and video editing. All right, part two.
Two, get good enough at that skill. Most people think that you have to master a skill in order to make a ton of money, and that’s just not true. In fact, mastery is a waste of energy and completely unnecessary. There’s marginal benefit in being great versus just good enough, given how much more effort is required to make the jump from good to great.
Now, instead of trying to be the best at one thing, just focus on becoming good enough at more things. Combine those skills synergistically, and then you’re gonna watch your earning potential skyrocket. So here’s five ways to get good enough at any skill. Read books, watch YouTube videos, take online courses, and then practice that skill a ton, like way, way, way more than you think is necessary.
And then finally, network daily with experts. And you can either pay to get inside groups to mastermind with these people, or you can just go hang out with them on Twitter or hit them up on YouTube or Instagram. I mean, come find me over on Twitter, at Anthony Vecino, I’d love to help you out.
Now, part three is that we’re gonna deliver free value using our good enough skills. And in this step, we’re building network, experience, and social proof. The goal is not to make money yet. First, we have to build something way more valuable, goodwill, and reputation.
Because here’s the thing, you’ve probably heard people say, it’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. Well, this is wrong. The correct way to say this is, it’s not about what you know, it’s about who knows you. So right now, nobody knows you, what you do, or how it can help them, which means they couldn’t give you their money, even if they wanted to.
Sure, you could build a website and then start running ads to drive cold traffic, but here’s the problem. You have no proof you’re actually any good at the skill you’ve been developing. And this is problematic for two reasons. One, without proof, nobody’s gonna believe you can help them.
Number two, without proof, I mean, do you even believe you can help them? I mean, if you’re a sane person with a little bit of self-awareness, you’re likely to doubt yourself. I mean, you hear people all the time talking about how you gotta fake it till you make it, but here’s the problem with that.
You’re not fooling the most important person, yourself.
Without true conviction in what you’re doing and your ability to help people, you will always struggle to convince those people you can help them. So it starts by building conviction and confidence in yourself, which we do by doing the thing. See, knowledge is knowing the right answer. A skill is having the ability to apply it.
Up to this point, you’ve acquired theoretical knowledge, but now it’s time to transmute that into real-world ability. And this is done in the crucible of real life where theory smashes headlong into practice. So here’s how we can deliver free value to people through the lens of the skill of copywriting.
You can adapt this to whatever high-value skill you choose. Part one, we’re gonna find an ideal client. We’re gonna subscribe to their email list, and then we’re gonna study their onboarding email automation. You’re gonna look for opportunities to improve it, and then you’re gonna send those improvements via DM or email to that person.
And then you’re gonna suggest other areas that you could help them, but you don’t ask for anything. Your only goal here is to add value without expectation of return. And then here’s the most important part. You’re gonna repeat this 100 times every month.
Yeah, seriously, 100 times. Here’s what this actually looks like in practice. You’re gonna find 100 ideal clients, and you’re gonna reach out to them every single day. And by the end of the year, you’re gonna have reached out to 1,200 people and gotten practice improving 1,200 email automations.
That’s a ton of reps, so chances are you’re actually starting to get pretty good at the thing. And by the way, this means you’re gonna reach out to three clients every single day for a year, which might sound like a lot of work, because it is. The question is, though, do you want an extraordinary life or an easy life?
Yeah, that’s what I thought, so let’s continue. Now, here’s where the rubber really needs to rub. Most people are gonna completely ignore you. Truth is, your work probably just isn’t that good yet, so they might look at what you send them and think, yeah, you can’t actually help me.
That’s okay, don’t get discouraged. A small percentage of people will reach back out, though they probably still won’t engage you for more work quite yet. If they do, awesome.
That’s okay put these responders on a list and then follow up with them every single month Just adding more value stay present in their lives on a long enough time frame without actually asking for something and you’re gonna start Building goodwill and cultivating one of the most powerful influence concepts Reciprocity which you can learn more by checking out the book the psychology of influence by Robert Cialdini Which is like one of the best books I’ve ever read now again This is gonna be a lot of work because in the beginning all you have is brute force and hard work to get the flywheel Going so you’re gonna have to commit three to four hours every single day to this strategy for at least a year And then it’s time to move to step four, which is we’re gonna convert free to paid Now if you did the previous three steps chances are good You’ve got some people you’ve been doing work for now It’s time to add some fuel to the fire by establishing authority and overcoming obscurity to establish authority You’re gonna need to craft a compelling offer create a landing page and then start collecting testimonials I’m not gonna go into detail on how to do all this right now But I do plan on releasing a couple of free crash courses on this topic to our beyond the apex community Which you can join for free with the link in the description below now Here’s the number one rule for overcoming obscurity That served me well over the past decade to build multiple seven and eight figure businesses and raise over twenty five million dollars the capital From private investors.
It’s this you ask for the referral not the sale and to do this you go back to those 1200 people You delivered value to in the previous year you let them know about your compelling offer and then you ask them Do you know anybody who might be a good fit for my services?
And if so, would you do me a favor and make a connection if you’ve actually done a good job of delivering value to these People without expectation then I would bet you could easily get 25 paying customers from this one ask alone now if you’re charging Let’s say $2,000 a month for your copywriting services.
You multiply that times 25 and BAM That’s $50,000 a month, which is six hundred thousand dollars a year So not too shabby and you’re probably able to do this within the first three years so plan to dedicate one year to learning
one year to delivering free value, and then in year three, you can start monetizing. All right, so now let’s move to step five, which is the most important part if you wanna hit a million dollars. You need to over-deliver value. If you live and breathe by this simple concept, you will have more business than you could ever need.
Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Now, if you consistently over-deliver value, then you will always have a full pipeline and the ability to raise your prices. Listen, from our previous copywriting example, you can make the jump to $1.2 million in two ways. You could double your clients, or you could double your prices.
Which do you suppose is easier? That’s right, raising your prices. But you can only do that if you’re actually delivering value in excess of what you’re charging. So that means during this phase, you need to bust your ass doing whatever it takes to over-deliver value so your customers don’t even blink an eye when you go to raise your prices in the next year.
All right, and that, my friend, is literally my million dollar roadmap. It’s a bit different than the conventional wisdom that says you just put a couple hundred dollars away every month, you put in your 401k or your Roth IRA, and then in 40 years, you finally get to retire.
Now, if you wanna achieve a million dollars in way less time, you’re gonna have to play the game far differently. And this is just what’s worked for me. And I know if you adopt the beliefs, the thoughts, and the actions necessary to execute this game plan every single day for as long as it takes, then I can all but guarantee it’s gonna take you way less than 40 years to become a millionaire.
Hey, what’s up, guys? I really appreciate you checking out the video. Hope you got a ton of value from it. If you wanna go even deeper into entrepreneurship, investing, productivity, and how you can get to a million dollars way faster than the conventional game plan, then I highly recommend you check out the Hyper-Focused Entrepreneur Newsletter.
This is something that we put a crazy amount of work into each and every single week to bring you hyper-actionable tips that you can start applying into your life right now. So I’ll leave a link for that down in the description below. Also, we just launched last month the Beyond the Apex community, and already we have over.
450 people in there. It’s fantastic. There’s a bunch of premium courses that you can sign up for, but there’s a ton of free resources as well. So if you wanna check that out, there’s a link in the description below where you can join for free and check it out.
And I truly hope to see you on the inside, guys. Now, until next time, stay hyper-focused, my friend.