I Hit A $1.3M Networth by 28. These 7 Decisions Got Me Here (You Can Do The Same)

0:00 Seven decisions that got me to a $1.3 million liquid net worth by 28. There was no secret investment, there was no crazy business idea or some massive lucky break that got me here either. It simply just came down to a handful of decisions that I made over the last 10 years or so that completely changed the trajectory of my life. And a lot of them were financial, but some almost had nothing to do with money either. So when I look at where I started and where I am, these are seven simple things that got me to this amount of money by my late 20s and they could do the exact same thing for you if you apply them right. So if I had to start over at 18, these are the exact decisions that I'd make all over again. Number one, I set anti-goals before I set actual ones. The weird thing about me is that I think I figured out what I didn't want pretty early. I'm very lucky in that sense. I would look around at adults when I was younger, I'd see people who were clearly miserable with their lives. We can all probably say that we know a few of these people personally. It could be even be friends of yours, but people who just they wake up, they go to the same job they hate, they sit in the same cubicle, they come home exhausted. There's a very funny movie by this. If you watch Office Space, it's one of my favorites. It's a comedy, but it's so real. And even as a kid, I related to this movie a little bit cuz I saw people who were older than me do this. And then it's like the Monday comes around and you start over.

1:09 There's nothing wrong with having a normal job working in office, okay? I did it for four years. That's not the point. The point is that I knew I didn't want that for my whole life. I saw people going to university cuz their parents told them to or people getting massive car payments because everyone else had one. It's just like it doesn't matter. I just remember thinking, what if I just did the opposite? What if I didn't automatically follow the sheep and the default path? What if I didn't spend money just because I started making more? Like you need to ask yourself it before I ask me, is like what do I want? I asked just what do I absolutely not want? What do I not want to be trapped by? And I knew it wasn't the monthly debt, the paycheck every two weeks to survive, somebody else controlling my time. That's something that really pissed me off early on is like, "Dude, I don't want to have to ask someone to take time off or to take a vacation or to go to the gym in the afternoon." It's like, "Once you know what you're trying to avoid, a lot of decisions, funnily enough, become surprisingly easy. You do not need some perfectly detailed 10-year plan. I'm not asking you to do that. You just need to know what you refuse to become. That's usually enough to just at least get the ball rolling, get you moving in the right direction. So, that is all I would ask is like one to two, maybe three decisions max after this video. Really ask yourself, what do you not want to do? And just stare at those. Just write them down on a piece of paper, make them your wallpaper. I don't really care.

2:22 That is something that really helped me and it just stuck in my mind for that long. Number two is I chose a skill that could make me money, not just a job that paid me. Why? Like don't learn these skills just for your boss's benefit or for this big Fortune 500 company. Like make it for your own benefit, right? This is probably one of the biggest decisions that I made. When you're young, I understand if you need cash flow or if you've got to pay the bills, pay the bills. But it's very easy to get in that mindset of like, "What job can I get that just pays me the most or pays the bills?" You need a skill. You need something that you can actually get good at that would become more valuable the better you get, right? For me that was sales. I've talked about that a million times, but it wasn't I wasn't just getting a paycheck. I was literally getting paid to learn. I was technically getting paid to talk to people, even make mistakes, get rejected, handle a bunch of objections, but it's just like when you close deals, when you do this, you learn how businesses make money and then you can take that to the marketplace. That is an incredible position to be in when you're young.

3:15 It's okay if you're older, but if you're in your 20s, dude, this is like you could turn into a weapon by doing this. So, I really encourage you to think about this. What job Like don't ask what job can I get. Ask instead, "What skill can I spend the next three to five years becoming really incredible at?" Again, sales are just like scratching the surface. Maybe it's paid ads, maybe it's coding, copywriting. Maybe you're really going to be good at, you know, engineering or content creation.

3:39 There's so There's hundreds I could list off. It doesn't matter, right? The exact skill matters a lot less than just finding something that you can get better at and make more the the valuable, you know, more valuable that you are in the marketplace, okay? And the other benefit I didn't fully appreciate at the time was the better I got, the more opportunities just started appearing, right? My network is growing. I got a lot more job offers, clients, you know, start asking, it's like, "Hey, are you doing this kind of on the side?"

4:02 Like, it's it's really interesting. And then you kind of the unlock of like, "I don't actually need to work for one company forever. I can sell this myself." And that's what I did with my lead gen company for realtors. I did this for 4 years at a whole company, and then I started my own doing the exact same thing. I got obviously the blessing from my boss to do this and actually go service those clients, but it's incredible. I'll talk about that in a couple minutes. So, I am doesn't have to be lead gen, but I am helping guys like yourself pick a skill as a service, sell it to other businesses so you can eventually make five grand a month or more online and eventually quit your job if that's of interest. So, again, I'll personally help you pick your service, your niche. I'll build your whole offer.

4:38 I'll teach you how to sell it. I will get you making money in the next 3 to 6 months if you follow exactly what I tell you. That's my quote-unquote promise. So, you can apply below. We can get into a call if your application checks out. And we'll roll from there. Number three, I treated every dollar I made like a soldier. I became almost obsessive about like to the penny of where this money was going. I started obviously like it had a job, right? Some dollars pay bills. That's probably what the the, you know, most aspects are going to go in the early stages. That's okay. Some went into savings, but then more started to roll into investments. And and eventually some went into businesses and things I could generate even more money.

5:12 I wasn't making huge amounts of money. I've talked about this before, but even if you're making five grand a month and you spend five grand a month, dude, this is like 20 grand a month or 30 is not going to fix that. You have a spending issue. It doesn't matter how much money you make, it's all going to flow into the same hands, right? You're just going to lifestyle creep your your way to life. It's horrible, right? But I wanted to build the muscle early. If I wanted I wanted to know that if I can eventually make 10, 20, 30 grand a month or more, I wanted to be able to actually handle it.

5:36 Cuz earning money and keeping it, obviously we know, those are very different skills. I call them skills cuz it's true. And eventually you want those dollars doing something more productive in assets, in other investments, businesses, whatever the hell it's like in, compounding is amazing. You don't want your money to just disappear. You don't have to be perfect, again. You're going to have bills. You're going to have to spend money, but you're also allowed to enjoy your life. But, you also need to have some respect for the money you're making cuz again, the first 10 grand you save can eventually become 20, dude, or 50. Or, if we're talking again in when you're 50, 60, 70 years old, that can go and snowball into 100 grand, right? It really, really can.

6:14 That is where the snowball starts, but nothing happens if you don't start doing this right now, okay? So, understand that. Number four, I never let a setback send me back to zero. This one was really driven by fear. And I think some fear around money can be healthy. I I think it's really bad if you're super frugal and you're 35 years old and you're still talking about like cutting costs, okay? It's a whole different issue. That's not good. But, again, I used to see people where one bad month could completely them. A big bill comes in, the the car breaks, something happens at work, or even if you're a business owner, if you lose a big client, you can be screwed. And then suddenly they're putting everything on a credit card, or they don't even know how they're going to get through the next month. I knew I never I could never be in that position. I don't even know what I would do. So, I saved so aggressively, probably to a borderline like psychopathic level, but it just didn't matter. I'd rather have too much cash sitting there doing nothing than have a random one-time event wipe me out. The best example, I've told this story a million times, I'll quickly tell it again. I had a car, I still have that the BMW E90, in 2019, it needed a huge repair. There was so many things wrong with it. It needed $2,500. $2,500 back then was a ton of money to me. I remember paying that bill and it still They get physically hurt, but it didn't destroy me. I still I had saved enough that I could say and just, all right, write this off, keep it going. And that's the whole point. You want life's problems to be problems, not like a financial ruin to you and and make you hate your life for 6 to 12 months. If you got to do what you got to do, you got to do it. But, because once you start again making more money, the expenses just get bigger, too. The more money, more problems thing, as cheesy as it is, it's real, dude. You got more taxes. You got employees. You got, you know, businesses. You huge expenses coming up. People also know when you have money, and it suddenly every everyone has a reason why you should spend it. So, you're basically fighting a battle every day against lifestyle inflation, peer pressure, convenience, and just your own desire.

8:03 We we are humans, right? We have human nature to want better and nicer things. I'm not, like I said, saying to not do those. But, just don't be an idiot. Don't let every increase in income become an increase in those expenses. Build yourself a financial floor that is so like almost impossible to punch through, okay? Number five, I mastered delegation both in my business and my personal life. When I was freelancing, I eventually got to around 12 grand a month in profit, and I was working insane hours. I It was great cuz I didn't have a boss. I was doing my own thing. But, dude, I I hated my life at a certain point. I remember thinking like, "I'm making good money, but this is not scalable." There's only so many hours in a day. I could personally just not do everything.

8:43 There's just wasn't enough time. So, I started to hiring offshore talent to handle pieces of the work. It completely changed everything. I'm effectively making $100 an hour doing something, and I can pay someone $50 an hour to handle that exact same task at the same or even better level quality. And that's that's all this thing is. Yes, you're going to make more money freelancing technically, but the pie will get bigger when you actually grow and scale a legit business, a legit organization, right?

9:08 So, now I can use that hour on something that generated more money, which is what I did and I still do. Sales or client relationships, actually growing the business. And the exact same principles apply to your personal life. I don't like cleaning. I hate grocery shopping. I don't want to spend my Saturday detailing my car and stuff like that. Like, you can pay people to do those, and that's what I do personally now. So, it's like, "Why would I pay someone to do something I could do myself?" Because it's like, dude, I I hate all these things for one, and that's not the question. The question is, "What is your time actually worth?" If you get paid $1,000 an hour or $500 an hour, whatever it is, but you can spend 100 or 200 outsource, that is a trade that you should take all the time, right? It doesn't matter. Maybe I could work, I could go to the gym, I could spend more time with my family. You can literally do anything, and that's the point. You start realizing your time is the one thing you're never going to get back, and that's even if you're 20s, it doesn't matter. You need to realize this sooner than than later, okay? I promise you, you're going to hate your life if you don't. Number six, I built a life that didn't depend on my next paycheck, or if you could call client invoice or whatever you're whatever you're at this point. Just think about like what that means. You get paid, you pay your bills, you spend your money, and then you wait for the next paycheck. I know what this phase is like, and I know a lot of you probably are at the same thing, too. I wanted to get as far away from that situation as humanly possible. And this is I think what's very important, the difference between four number four and this point. Number four, I was making sure one bad event couldn't knock me to zero. Here, I'm talking about building like an actual moat, an actual foundation where an income source disappearing doesn't control my my future at all. At this point, right now, I've got a network. I know how to find clients, I know how to sell, I have incredible business experience, but on top of that, too, I have literal assets.

10:44 I have over a million dollars invested at the age of 28 that's going to compound in and of itself, not even counting my cash, right? So, it's like I am okay. And I again, this is going back to even the risk I didn't need to start over when I was starting my business because I technically had all those skills. I had the network, I had the skills. So, it's like again, I just need you to experience this that it's like if everything was working and disappeared tomorrow, I would still be okay.

11:07 Obviously, I don't want that. I still want the business, I still want my cash flow. I need it to a certain extent, but if everything off and just disappeared and dried up, I would be okay because of the investments, because of the money that I saved, the skills that I built, everything. I don't need my next paycheck to be okay. You should strive as far and fast as possible to get to that exact same point. That's where I think the concept of you money starts. I'm nowhere near my number yet. My number's personally 10 million.

11:33 I want to get to 10 million before I even think of never working again. So, I'm I'm far off from that, obviously. But, I'm I'm on the start line. I'm on I'm finally on the track and I'm about to get walking. I'm about to get running, right? So, again, you don't want to just retire forever. You're going to work, dude. Like, I'm I'm, you know, working technically right now. It's fun. You want to find things you enjoy. But, because you have options that somebody else doesn't control your life with a paycheck, that's what you want to get to. I'm not saying don't rely on money. Everyone needs money to an extent. But, this is the fun part, right? This is where you want to be eventually. You can get your by any age, right? And I know it's cheesy, but age is just a number, okay? And final point, I did not I still do not let money be the end-all be-all. This is probably the most important thing. That's why I saved it for the end. You could do all six things, make a ton of money, build a business, invest, become a multi-multi-millionaire.

12:21 Money itself is just a number, and you could still be miserable. It's useful. It's a tool. It gives you options. But, dude, if you make the number and I've done this. This is why I'm saying it from experience. If you make it your entire life, your entire purpose, you're just going to be chasing something that never, ever ends. There's always a bigger number. It could be 50 million. It could be a billion. I'm guilty of this, like I said, but I still want to enjoy the game. I still want to build more. But, something like the last ever since 25, 25, maybe it's the frontal lobe developing. I started realizing that it's like, dude, I need more going on in my life than just money. I want you should be like get jacked, get fit, have hobbies, travel, be an interesting person, like give back, like I said in my last video. Go do stuff. Go walk outside. Take the Wednesday afternoon off. Go to the gym at 2:00 p.m. because you can. These like These are things that make it fun. That's the stuff that makes the money matter. Because what is the point of spending like 20 years building financial freedom if you never use it, right? So, that for me is my scoreboard. Sometimes it's money, but most times it's freedom. The money is the tool that gives you the control over that. So, again, that's really what all of these things are. I didn't want to like blindly follow the the default path. I wanted skills. I wanted control over my time. I wanted leverage, and that's where I got. That is what the 1.3 and even just 2, 5, 10 million will represent to me. It is not the finish line. It is simply just the proof that the decisions I made years ago actually came to fruition. It's like actually, holy Like, this is insane. Like, that's And that's like, "Dude, if you're comparing yourself to me, don't." It's like, "Oh my god, I'm nowhere near 1.3."

13:53 I had that comment a couple videos ago where it's like, "I'm nowhere near this. Like, I guess I'm just screwed." Just that you're completely fine, dude. You don't need to be. You just need to start making decisions that your future self will at least be somewhat grateful for. Look at your future self in the mirror and be like, "Is this guy going to really enjoy me, you know, DoorDashing every other meal and having nothing left over at the end of the week?" Like, obviously don't do that, right? But don't be an idiot because you're going to have like a lot of time to to mess up here, and you don't want that. So, again, right now, present moment, do these things. Seriously. Like I said at the beginning, go from steps 1 to 7, and if you've got these things moving in the right direction, the compounding eventually starts doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you, which is the fun part. That's where this gets exciting is your money just makes more money. Your money starts to work harder than you ever will. Even on your deposits, your your deposits are meaningful. Your compounding, your snowball's saying, "Get your stupid deposits out of the way here, dude. Go spend this money elsewhere." So, anyways, that's it. This video's ending. I'm going to leave it there. As always, if you made it this far, I want to see you win. I want to see you crush it. Comment below what you're working on, and we will see you in the next one. Peace.