Transcript
Most people have it completely backwards. They think, when I have the money, then I will become rich. But that’s not how it works. It’s actually the other way around.
Once I started thinking like a rich person, long before I had any money, that’s when my external financial reality started to match what I believed inside. And that’s how I became a millionaire in my 30s. That’s when I realized that there are these seven wealth codes. These are specific ways of thinking and being that actually make becoming rich a natural byproduct of how you’re living.
So the first wealth code that I discovered is that I create my life. Believing that you create your life is the foundation before anything all starts. We don’t get to choose our circumstances or what family we’re born into, but we do get to choose what we do with those circumstances.
So I could totally have complained that I grew up in a family that really wanted me to get a expensive college education and I ended up with over six figures of student loans. I could have complained about that and let that dictate the rest of my life. But because I adopted this belief that I create my life, regardless of the mistakes and circumstances that got me here, I can choose what to do with that going forwards.
And I remember one specific moment when I decided, yes, I have all this debt because I didn’t know any better, my parents didn’t know any better, but I’m gonna take this as an opportunity to become so good at money and become bigger than my debt and basically use my debt as a challenge to force me to level up even more.
Compared to someone who didn’t have debt or someone who didn’t have any financial challenges, they wouldn’t have to level up as much as I had to. So I turned that into an opportunity rather than something that would ruin the rest of my life. From that moment on, it took me about four years to get completely out of debt and then another four years to become a millionaire.
So amazing things can happen the moment you decide I create my life. Okay, wealth code number two is that it’s all about leverage. So imagine our caveman predecessors way back in the day when they just discovered leverage. In the past, they would try to move.
boulders just with their pure muscle force and really get nowhere. One day someone, a caveman, he discovered that if you just stick a stick underneath the boulder and then you push down on the stick you can move a massive boulder that is a thousand times heavier than you are.
That’s the moment when mankind and civilization actually started to advance beyond just cavemen gathered around a fire. This concept of leverage is what allowed us to build the Egyptian pyramids and do all kinds of huge feats that are way beyond our own strength and limitations. So in this modern day and age don’t be a caveman.
Use leverage. Leverage what you’ve got. Now if you look at celebrities like the Kardashians and you complain and maybe think that oh they got rich for no reason they’re just hot. Well that may be partially true but that’s not the only reason why they’re successful.
The Kardashians knew how to leverage what they had. They had a bit of fame, they had a lot of looks, some celebrity connections and oh my god did they leverage that into a multi-billion dollar family empire. So you look at Kylie Jenner, she’s one of the youngest billionaires in the world.
One thing that we can all learn from her is the girl knows how to leverage what she’s got. So think about what you can leverage in your life as well. You also have things that you can leverage and if you don’t think that you do it’s really the attitude that you don’t think you have anything to leverage that’s more the issue than the fact that you actually don’t have anything to leverage.
So one thing that absolutely changed my life was when I took this online assessment it was called the CliftonStrengths top 5 tests or something like that. I will link to it below. You take a quick assessment, it takes probably 15 minutes and this test will tell you what your five superpowers are.
These are abilities that come so natural to you that you don’t even know that you have them. Once I took this test I realized that my strengths were learner, achiever, futuristic, competition and activator. Those terms all mean different things but essentially these strengths basically pointed out the fact that I was meant to be someone who could teach and inspire people and at the time I was working a course
job on Wall Street just sitting behind five computer screens all day and I wasn’t leveraging any of my strengths. But once I figured out what my strengths were I could then redirect my career decisions and eventually start a business that every single day allows me to leverage all five of my strengths.
So again I will link to the test below. I’m not an affiliate I just think it will change your life so try that. Fine let’s say you take the test and you find out that you really don’t have anything that you can leverage, which is not true by the way.
But one thing that all of us have that we can leverage is our time and it doesn’t matter who you are we can all find ways to leverage our time. One really simple way is to start adopting a systems mindset. We all have 24 hours in a day how can we use every single hour in the most maximum efficiency possible?
One really really simple example is I used to have someone come and help me clean the house and every single time the cleaning lady came for three hours I would have to be on top of her and making sure she’s doing this and that and making sure she’s wiping down that and doing it this way and using that material and it was honestly a waste of time.
I might as well have done the cleaning myself. But one day I sat down it took me about an hour to actually create a really detailed checklist of how I wanted my place to be cleaned and then from that point on whoever the cleaning lady was even if I switched I could just send them this checklist and every time the house would be cleaned exactly the way I liked it without me using any of my own time.
So what’s something repetitive that you do in your life that sucks up a lot of your time that if you just create a simple checklist or some sort of simple system or an automation using all the free softwares we have or AI or even chat GPT how can you leverage your time?
Another really easy way to leverage your time is to think about delegating. I have a personal assistant who helps me with things like Amazon returns or just you know running errands around LA and that saves me a lot of time. So there’s about 2,000 working hours in a year right and if my business makes a million dollars a year well then my hourly rate is $500 an hour
So does it make sense to pay someone $25-$35 an hour to go do something so that in that hour I could do something that makes me $500 an hour? Absolutely! Let’s say you make $100,000 an hour, divided by 2,000 hours in a year, your time is worth $50 an hour at least.
Which means to pay someone $25 an hour to go do something actually could make sense. So rather than just thinking about the cost of paying someone to do something, think about the trade-off of what your time is worth also. Another really easy thing we can all do is start using grocery delivery apps.
I love Instacart. I have not set foot in a grocery store in months. For a delivery fee of $10, they’re going to spend two hours grocery shopping for exactly the things that I want. Even for people who don’t make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, the dollars per hour trade-off absolutely makes sense.
So it’s all about leverage. Wealth code number two. Okay, wealth code number three is the more value I provide, the more money I make. Are you someone who believes that the more that you work, the more money you’ll make?
In other words, are you convinced that the amount of money you make is directly tied to the amount of time that you put in? Because if that’s the case, then we have a problem here. Because we all only have 24 hours in a day, so there will always be a ceiling on what you can make.
If you’re not operating from this wealth code, you’re thinking, if I want to make more, how many more hours can I take on at work and what additional jobs can I take on? But if you’re operating from this wealth code and you want to make more, you would think, how can I provide more value?
Where are the opportunities where I can provide more value so that I can make more? I love this because this basically means as long as you can find ways to provide more value, there is no ceiling on what you can make. If you want the simple formula for making lots of money, this is it.
One, find an in-demand product or service, something that provides value because people need it and want it. And once you find that and start offering it, then two, find a way to either go for
scale or go for depth. Scale meaning provide more of that to more people so you’re providing more value in kind of volume and numbers or find a way to provide more value to the same people so more depth a higher level of service so that you can charge more.
It’s either scale or depth and using technology there’s so many ways to do that so a perfect example of using scale is what I did. When I first started out I was teaching personal finance classes in little workshops locally. There was a limit to how much scale I could have from that so then I went on to YouTube where I could record one video once and reach potentially millions of people all around the world.
That allowed me to offer my services at scale. Another example of going for depth in order to provide more value is my client Jisoo. Shout out to you if you’re watching this but she was a Korean translator and she realized that to certain clients when she positioned herself as a cultural consultant translator versus just a translator she could actually charge three to four times more so just by offering a deeper level of service beyond just word-for-word language translation she was able to charge three to four times more.
So again the more value I provide the more money I make. This will break you out of the trading time for money equation. Wealth code number four you might be a little surprised but it is I love to receive. So think back to the last time someone complimented you.
How did you receive it? Did you actually take a moment to breathe and say thank you what a nice compliment or did you do what most people do which is sort of downplay the compliment and say oh no it was nothing or no no you’re you’re you’re more whatever.
Sometimes the hardest thing is just to receive something good and nice from somebody. We’re so conditioned to feel guilty or obligated or undeserving but the ability to receive is a prerequisite to being able to receive more money. Like if the universe deposited a million dollars into your account tomorrow would you be able to receive it?
Would you be able to hold it?
that amount of money and energy in your life? Or would you feel absolutely nervous, undeserving, anxious, and would it like freak you out? If you’re being honest with yourself, it would probably freak you out because you’re not prepared for that. So preparing your energetic container and your ability to receive more money, more compliments, more goodness, more wealth, more of everything, that is a prerequisite.
And we can all start with the little things. Receive compliments. Practice receiving little things with joy, with zero guilt, with a lot of gratitude, and stretch that container to be able to receive more and more. And that will carry over to how you can receive money as well.
I know it’s counterintuitive. It’s great to be generous and to give a lot, but if you really want to make massive amounts of money, you need to first learn to become an excellent receiver first. Okay, wealth code number five is, and I might get some pushback for this, is I expect and deserve to enjoy the finer things in life.
Honestly, I used to judge extravagance and people who like spent their money on luxuries. And every time I, you know, walk through the airport and saw all of these expensive duty-free shops with like $5,000 handbags, I would kind of judge the stores for selling them in the first place, as well as the people who would drop that kind of money on things like that.
Until I realized that what I was doing is, since I couldn’t have it at the time and I knew that I couldn’t, I would judge it instead. It’s sort of like, oh this is for them, it’s not for me, and therefore I have to sort of make that okay by making it bad.
That way I won’t feel bad about myself for not being able to have those things. When in reality, come on, like who doesn’t want nice things? Maybe you don’t see the value in spending that much money on those nice things, but we all want nice things. We all can appreciate the finer things in life.
Like a lot of the times things are expensive because the quality is really good or maybe it really is that awesome. It’s really just about raising your standards. Expect and want more quality in your life. A lot of the times you get what you pay for.
It is true. Like the things that you get at the dollar store are literally
not as good quality and don’t look as nice as the similar things that you could buy at a boutique sort of bougie store. I’m not saying you should spend your money on extravagance and luxury, but at the very least, when you see someone who has those things, rather than judging them for it, consider thinking, cool, good for them.
I personally wouldn’t spend my money on those things, but really awesome for them that they were able to create the money to be able to have those things and that they’re enjoying those things. That’s a really different mindset from actually judging them for having those things. It’s really about operating on the same frequency as and being in cooperation with the frequency of quality and luxury and wealth, rather than separating yourself from it and making yourself an enemy to it.
Because that will have the subtle but powerful effect of essentially repelling wealth and luxury from you, and we don’t want that. Now, if you don’t have the budget, I’m not saying go blow your money on luxury things, but you can at least appreciate those things, and a lot of times even just choose to be around those things without necessarily spending your money on it.
So something that I would often do is I would choose to walk around in nice neighborhoods and enjoy the beautiful houses and the cars that people around there drove, or even get dressed up and walk around Fifth Avenue into Chanel and Dior and all of these luxury stores that in the past, I would have felt ashamed to go into.
There are so many ways to operate on the same frequency as wealth and luxury without actually needing any money. Wealth code number six, I know my value, and I’m not afraid to charge for it. What’s that saying of children should be seen and not heard or something along those lines?
But there’s a lot of messaging from society that you should just stay put where you are and not ask for too much. Otherwise, you’re being greedy, you’re being extra. But this is a key shift that you have to make. If you offer value, be confident and make sure you fucking charge for it.
The prerequisite for that is obviously to be someone who offers value, like be really good at what you do and be someone that…
in demand and then the second part of that is to have the confidence to know that you offer a lot of value that you are someone who deserves to charge a lot and then the third part of that is then to charge for it and that involves essentially the skill of self-promotion and a little touch of shamelessness selling and self-promotion that is how you get that exchange of money otherwise you just offer and give and give and give and you never get that financial energy exchange in return so if you work at a company and you know you kick ass at your job make sure you ask for bonuses for raises on a regular basis and you communicate why you deserve it these are all concepts that i’m really excited to share with you in my upcoming book so i’ll keep you posted on that meanwhile if you love this type of content and want to stay in touch with me make sure to join my insider email list call to freedom this is my weekly email newsletter where i spill all the secrets on what it really takes to create a life of financial freedom but anyway back to the video so this wealth code it’s about knowing your value and charging for it and that will especially apply if you are say a business owner you can have the most amazing product or service in the world but if you don’t know how to sell it to people then you’re never going to get paid and you don’t really have a business you just have a charity so one major hurdle to overcome in order to really embody this wealth code is to get over the idea that selling is somehow sleazy or greedy if you really believe in what you have to offer then be proud to tell people about it and to charge for it because obviously you can’t do it for free nor should you and nor should someone expect you to do it for free if anyone ever gives you a hard time about charging for your services or asking for a raise for very valid reasons that is more of a reflection on their poor relationship with money more than anything to do with you so never take that personally selling yourself self-promotion and charging for the value that you provide is something that i had to master in order to become a millionaire in my 30s okay last time
Final, wealth code number seven, I expect my money to work hard for me. Be honest with yourself. How many of you actually expect to work hard for money? But do you expect money to also work hard for you?
If not, then why? Is that a one way, are we in a toxic relationship? Is this a narcissistic relationship? If you work hard for money, your money should also work hard for you.
That is fair. That’s a reciprocal relationship. Now, I really had to wrap my head around this because my family is Korean. I don’t know if you know this, but Korean people can be the hardest working people in the world.
All we know how to do is work and then save. Work hard for money and then save the money. But what about turning around and making that money also work hard for us so that later we can eventually stop working so hard for money? And the key to this is mastering financial literacy.
Learning to make money work hard for you is a different set of skills. Working hard for money, you need to be good at engineering or law or whatever, or entrepreneurship, whatever it is that you do to earn that money. That’s one set of skills. But then making money work hard for you is a whole different set of skills that we didn’t learn in school.
So you have to go out and get it on your own. Learn to invest your money. Go read books. Take my courses.
Watch my YouTube videos. It really is a different skill set that you need to pursue. But before you can do that, you have to first expect that money should be working hard for you so that when it’s not, you’re like, wait a minute, what’s wrong with this picture?
Let me go find out how to fix that. You know, rich people are actually lazy. That’s why they can wake up and do whatever they want with their day because they are making their money work for them. They don’t wanna work for money.
They want money to work hard for them. So now I wanna hear from you. Which of these seven wealth codes resonated the most with you? And share your insights below in the comments.
The good news is that all of these wealth codes, you can adopt them right now before any money comes into your life. We’re always in charge of how our financial future plays out. You are bigger than money. You’re bigger than any money situation.
that life has thrown at you, and I believe in you. If I could do it, digging out of $100,000 in debt to become a millionaire in my 30s, then I truly believe that anyone can do it too. That’s it for this video. Thank you so much for watching.
Also, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter, Call to Freedom, for even more behind-the-scenes secrets on how to create financial freedom. Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next week, same time, same place. Bye.