Latest / The Empire of Wealth / If you_re trying to get RICH and in your 20s or 30s_ please watch this.

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If you_re trying to get RICH and in your 20s or 30s_ please watch this. · The Empire of Wealth

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Start here, just exactly like I did.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Cash flow, cash flow, cash flow.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: More money in the short term or long term? A
• 0:11
  lot of people, when they first get started with their career,
• 0:13
  they think so far into the clouds. It's not about
• 0:15
  the money, it's how you make the money. It's a
• 0:17
  big component of luck and God's grace as well.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I guess it's just, it's all relative, isn't it?
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: All right, bro. So we know you fly private a lot.
• 0:35
  Are you flying first or business today?
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Private?
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: What's the plan? No, we're not flying private to America, bro.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We did do that once on the BBJ. Yeah.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: That was very unnecessary. I guess that was also a
• 0:52
  bit of a celebratory flight. We were squaring off on
• 0:55
  a big investment out there, but no. We're slumming it
• 0:58
  in first class.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: And for the viewers watching, I mean, you live in
• 1:01
  a very nice villa on the Palm. Got all these
• 1:04
  nice cars. I mean, flying first and private a lot.
• 1:07
  Spending a lot of money, no? Everything's relative, you know?
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: My rule is, or I guess my rule was 70-30 split.
• 1:15
  I think you should, well, it's actually funny. It works
• 1:17
  in this weird curve. Like when you first start out,
• 1:19
  you're going to probably, it's going to be 70, 30
• 1:21
  years and you spend 70% of your income and you
• 1:23
  save 30% of your income. And then it gets to
• 1:24
  a point where we're actually saving and more importantly, investing
• 1:27
  70% of your income and spending only 30% of it.
• 1:30
  And then you get to a point where hopefully you
• 1:33
  get to a point where you're, you have so much
• 1:34
  cashflow coming in where you're once again, then go back
• 1:37
  to like, I'm at a point right now where I
• 1:38
  actually just can't spend 30% of my income because it
• 1:41
  just It would generally just be... Yeah, it's wasteful, I guess. So, yeah,
• 1:45
  I spent about... This year, maybe 10% of my earned income. Obviously,
• 1:48
  there's your portfolio income. And then there's your earned income.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: This year, probably... No, maybe 15%.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So, it's all relative.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: But I also, like.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I just think everything is meeting in the middle.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Like, I hate these people.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: They're just so frugal.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: And they're like.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I need to penny pinch and save. And they also think, like,
• 2:03
  they're bad people for spending money. I'm like, what's the point?
• 2:06
  You don't just want to be rich. You want to
• 2:08
  experience a rich life. And whatever that means to you. So,
• 2:10
  for me, personally... I feel very fiscally responsible spending 15%
• 2:16
  of my earned income. Obviously, this year, our investments have
• 2:19
  done very, very well. We're about to go visit two
• 2:21
  of them in New York. And yeah, I don't know.
• 2:24
  I guess it's like I'm not tone deaf to the
• 2:26
  fact that, of course, I live a very privileged life
• 2:29
  at this point. But as I said, I guess it's
• 2:31
  just all relative. You know, in another person's world, like
• 2:34
  you're flying private to New York. Like, why would you
• 2:37
  fly a commercial? In another person's world, like, it's crazy,
• 2:39
  you know?
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I guess it's just, it's all relative, isn't it? Well,
• 2:47
  I think as you get further along in your career,
• 2:50
  ownership means more and more to you. And I came
• 2:53
  from being in this industry to, I guess it's kind
• 2:56
  of the same thing like being a Formula One race
• 2:57
  driver compared to being... the owner of a Formula One
• 3:00
  race team compared to owning a stake in Formula One
• 3:03
  itself or the rights, the television rights to Formula One itself.
• 3:06
  Like I kind of went from being a player to
• 3:08
  then owning a team to now, in a sense, owning.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: A part of the division.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: So, you know, WAP is the fastest growing fintech platform
• 3:16
  for digital products for our industry. And that's not, I guess...
• 3:19
  kind of call it how it is when people make
• 3:21
  $ 1 on our platform. Obviously, I get a very, very
• 3:23
  small percentage of that. So I guess it's a good
• 3:24
  thing that people make over $ 150 million a month on
• 3:26
  our platform right now as it is. And yeah, I
• 3:28
  guess it was a very, very large check. It was
• 3:30
  a big bet, but it was also a calculated bet.
• 3:32
  I mean, what better industry to invest in than the
• 3:34
  one that you've been participating in, in one way, shape,
• 3:36
  form or fashion in the last 10 years. So I
• 3:38
  think a lot of people, when they first get started
• 3:40
  with their career, they think so far into the clouds.
• 3:43
  Like they're thinking about ownership and thinking about big enterprise
• 3:47
  plays and like they have like all of these massive
• 3:49
  grand visions and i just don't think that's the way
• 3:52
  to go like first you start off as you start
• 3:54
  here just exactly like i did you start here and
• 3:56
  then eventually you work your way up and then you
• 3:58
  know one day you're 10 years into an industry and
• 4:01
  you're looking at here i don't even know how many
• 4:06
  square feet this office is You know, you're looking at
• 4:08
  your office and you're a co-owner in a multi-billion dollar company.
• 4:11
  I'll be honest, I still think we're very much in
• 4:13
  our infancy. As much as we've grown, obviously not going
• 4:15
  to disclose the exact numbers, but since I invested, we've
• 4:18
  grown 6x in the last year and four months, or
• 4:22
  at least at the valuation I invested at. So yeah,
• 4:24
  it's been a wild ride. As you get further and
• 4:27
  further on in your career, like to be honest, you
• 4:29
  don't care about all the flashy this, that stuff. You
• 4:32
  just want ownership. And I think that's why you work
• 4:35
  hard to be able to own stakes in the businesses
• 4:38
  that you do. Obviously, with ownership comes definitely a level
• 4:41
  of control and level of influence. And I think in
• 4:43
  a sense, that's almost more powerful than money. So it's
• 4:46
  almost the same as like buying a house to then
• 4:48
  going to developing buildings to then owning the steel that
• 4:54
  people use to develop their buildings. It's like the closer
• 4:56
  you can get to the root of what people use
• 4:58
  from an infrastructure perspective and the more stake and ownership
• 5:01
  you can have in that, that's always, I mean, that's
• 5:03
  always the dream. So I'm always just looking for infrastructure
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  plays like for our industry, for digital products. WAP is
• 5:09
  the biggest business. It's a multi-billion dollar company, which It's
• 5:13
  tiny in all honesty compared to where it could be
• 5:16
  and should be very soon. And I will also say,
• 5:18
  because I think it's important, it's a big component of
• 5:21
  luck and God's grace as well. Like I was right place,
• 5:24
  right time to be in the right industry, to have
• 5:26
  the knowledge and expertise I have in this industry, to
• 5:28
  have the influence I have in this industry. Obviously, having
• 5:32
  done very, very well for myself in life to be
• 5:34
  able to have the cash in the stockpile to deploy
• 5:38
  when opportunities like this arise because you know an opportunity
• 5:40
  like this could have arose to have a very strategic
• 5:44
  and favorable without getting into specifics investment and have an
• 5:49
  opportunity to reopen a previously closed round because that's not
• 5:52
  common to be able to have that opportunity you also
• 5:54
  need to be prepared for when the opportunity presents itself
• 5:57
  so you know i do want to say there's a
• 5:58
  definitely a big component of luck and timing that plays
• 6:03
  into it. So, you know, I can't remotely take anywhere
• 6:07
  near 100% credit. Sometimes you're fortunate. Like I said, I'm
• 6:10
  fortunate with this one. Right place, right time.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: So it's doing something that makes you more money or
• 6:18
  it's the right decision?
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Well, I think first things first you need to clarify
• 6:21
  is like more money in short term or long term?
• 6:24
  Because like, for example, like we have people that work
• 6:26
  for us at WAP that have already made multi-millions. I mean,
• 6:29
  some people even like eight figures. and they took a,
• 6:33
  I don't want to say a pay cut, but they
• 6:35
  probably could have made a lot more money in the
• 6:36
  short term if they had just kept doing what they
• 6:38
  were doing. But they know that what we're doing here
• 6:40
  is a rocket ship that's just only going up. And
• 6:42
  the other big thing is, I feel like once you've met, like,
• 6:45
  most of your, like, basic needs, and I will say, like,
• 6:47
  I'm no person to judge, basic needs for some people
• 6:50
  mean different things. Like, you know, it's funny, I was
• 6:51
  speaking to an associate of mine, and she was saying, like,
• 6:53
  we were kind of having this conversation, and I was
• 6:54
  talking about, like, how much people think they need more
• 6:57
  money than they do to survive off of. And just
• 6:59
  as I was about to say a number, she was like, yeah, like,
• 7:01
  You only need like 18 million a year. And I
• 7:03
  was like, what do you spend 18 million a year on?
• 7:05
  And she's like, oh, my jet fuel is five million
• 7:06
  a year. And like that's like that's her truth is
• 7:09
  like a multibillionaire. My truth is another number that, you know,
• 7:13
  some people might find big for some people. They're like, oh,
• 7:14
  I need 30 or 50 K or 100 K a
• 7:16
  year to live off of. So my point is that
• 7:18
  once you hit that number, you start looking, you start
• 7:20
  looking at different things. And I think like one of
• 7:22
  the big things is not what are you doing? It's
• 7:25
  who are you doing it with? Because I feel like
• 7:27
  if you do it with the right people and you
• 7:29
  show up to work every single day, like right now
• 7:31
  it's nine o'clock, 847 on a Tuesday. There's still so
• 7:35
  many people here. You know, most people can check out.
• 7:37
  I was in the office on a Sunday. There was
• 7:38
  like 15, 20 people here. No one needs to show
• 7:40
  up here on a Sunday, but people love the people
• 7:43
  that they work with so much. So yeah, I guess
• 7:45
  all that to say, I think once you get to
• 7:46
  a certain position in life, it's not about the money.
• 7:48
  It's how you make the money. And it's also not
• 7:50
  about like how you make the money. It's also about
• 7:52
  like who you make the money with, if that makes sense.
• 7:54
  And sometimes I'm a very pragmatic person. I think also
• 7:57
  you need to be like wise and you need to
• 7:59
  be smart and you need to like, honestly, like go
• 8:01
  get your bag. But once you've done that, I feel
• 8:03
  like you kind of have earned the privilege to go, okay,
• 8:06
  what do I really want to do? And maybe short-term
• 8:08
  it doesn't make you as much money, but long-term it
• 8:10
  actually can make you far more money. Number one, number two,
• 8:13
  just considering like genuinely, like, do you love the people
• 8:15
  that you work with? Because I'll be honest, there's been
• 8:18
  multiple times and like, It's funny because you hear it
• 8:20
  and you're like, oh, no, like I'm different. You know,
• 8:23
  I'm different because you hear these things of people saying
• 8:26
  I've heard from multiple people as I was coming up
• 8:28
  in my career. Oh, the benchmark, you always keep pushing
• 8:31
  the benchmark for. And I was like, no, this is
• 8:33
  a big number. Once I hit this number, like I'll retire.
• 8:36
  Like in my mind, I was going to retire for
• 8:38
  a few years and kind of take a few years off.
• 8:39
  And I hit that very, very big number in 2021.
• 8:41
  And then I hit. Another very, very big number, multiple
• 8:46
  times since then. And each time I was like, oh,
• 8:48
  you know, maybe this, like I'll kind of take time
• 8:50
  off and take a few years off. I think genuinely,
• 8:52
  if I didn't enjoy the people that I worked with,
• 8:54
  whether it's, you know, my own companies were on the
• 8:56
  sole shareholder, whether it's businesses like WAP, or you saw
• 8:58
  another one of our companies, Lyra, where I'm a co-owner
• 9:00
  with a large stake in the business. So I don't
• 9:02
  rub shoulders every single day with my team at these companies,
• 9:04
  but still very involved. And it's just genuinely without these people, like,
• 9:07
  I don't know, man, I just think I retire at
• 9:09
  this point. So I think that kind of goes to
• 9:10
  show it. It's not always about making the most amount
• 9:12
  of money. I think sometimes for your soul, it's important
• 9:15
  to love what you do. And by the way, love
• 9:17
  what you do to me also doesn't mean like every
• 9:18
  single day is like roses and sunshine and bubba all
• 9:21
  the stuff today there was a very difficult c-suite conversation
• 9:24
  we had to have in this room like a three-hour
• 9:26
  conversation about some things directionally where we might be missing
• 9:30
  the mark or we could show up better some key
• 9:32
  hires some yeah it was just like today was like
• 9:34
  one of those heavy conversations so when i say that
• 9:36
  you know do what you love i don't mean that
• 9:39
  like an airy fairy oh if it feels difficult or
• 9:42
  if it feels hard or if it feels like is
• 9:44
  a part of the work you don't like well then
• 9:45
  oh you're not meant to do it's like no like
• 9:46
  honestly i'm 80% of whatever you do will always kind
• 9:49
  of suck, and that 20% will make the 80% worth
• 9:51
  it 10 times over. So yeah, I would say it's
• 9:54
  not always about making the most amount of money, but
• 9:56
  that is a privilege that you get to a certain point.
• 9:58
  And I don't mean like... you need to become a
• 10:00
  multi-multi-millionaire to get there. I feel like once you kind
• 10:03
  of get to like 100k a year, pretty steady, you
• 10:07
  kind of get to a point where it's like, okay,
• 10:08
  what do I really actually want to do in life?
• 10:10
  And who, more importantly, do I want to be on
• 10:12
  this journey with? The number one thing that you need
• 10:17
  to focus on, in my opinion... is cash flow. And
• 10:21
  that's really what I'm immensely grateful that I optimized for
• 10:24
  at the beginning of my career is cash flow, no
• 10:27
  crazy top line numbers, no crazy empire plays, like just
• 10:31
  get to a certain position in terms of your cash flow,
• 10:34
  then get to a certain position in terms of your
• 10:35
  investment portfolio. And then later down the line, you can
• 10:37
  focus on these big empire plays and whatnot, because we're
• 10:40
  on the way to Miami now, but we literally just
• 10:41
  visited two of my offices. I guess I won't go
• 10:43
  into specifics, but like Whopper right now is a $ 4
• 10:45
  billion company and I'm a co-owner in the business. There
• 10:48
  is another example. We raised in a $ 40 million valuation
• 10:51
  in May. And then Q1 of next year, we should
• 10:54
  do our Series A at about $ 150 million valuation. And
• 10:57
  even in that business, minus the two co-founders, I'm the
• 10:59
  largest shareholder. So from that, you can kind of decipher...
• 11:02
  how much money I have in these businesses and how
• 11:04
  much just two of those businesses alone add to my
• 11:06
  net worth. But you need to understand that does not
• 11:08
  pay for this transportation. Like having the privilege of anywhere
• 11:11
  I am in the world, always being able to fly
• 11:13
  in comfort, my equity and my stake in these businesses
• 11:16
  doesn't do anything for me. My free cash flow does, okay?
• 11:19
  I can't pay for this flight with my stake in
• 11:21
  these businesses. Now listen, as time goes on, you start
• 11:23
  to build relationships with banks. You can pull some equity
• 11:26
  out of businesses. You can pull equity out of even
• 11:28
  the stakes that you have in businesses. Like there's different
• 11:30
  financial games that you can play, but I really think
• 11:32
  that people have this idea that even a lot of
• 11:34
  the owners of these multi-billion dollar companies, like they're killing it,
• 11:37
  they're living large. Like a lot of times it's genuinely
• 11:39
  not like that. If you're on this kind of lifestyle,
• 11:41
  you need a cashflow or you need to have successfully
• 11:44
  exited some of your positions in these businesses or sold
• 11:47
  your business, exited your business. And once again, even when
• 11:49
  it comes to selling it and exiting a business, like
• 11:51
  there's so many stipulations that people don't understand. They see, oh,
• 11:54
  XYZ person sold their company for $ 300 million. It's like, yeah, okay,
• 11:58
  but show me the term sheet and then you'll actually
• 12:00
  know what they walked away with. So I've said it before,
• 12:03
  I'll say it again. Like cashflow is not only what
• 12:05
  makes you live a rich life, it's what makes you
• 12:07
  feel rich. Like I speak to so many of my
• 12:09
  friends and it's a big pattern with people that exit
• 12:11
  their business. Even though they have a lot of money,
• 12:14
  they have a lot of money, but now they don't
• 12:15
  have the tap of cashflow coming in. And because they
• 12:18
  don't have the tap of cashflow coming in, they actually
• 12:20
  feel poor again, even though they've got so much money
• 12:22
  in the bank. Because it's just psychologically when money isn't
• 12:25
  coming in, even though you have this bed. And of course,
• 12:27
  you can deploy that capital and invest that capital. Just
• 12:29
  because you're deploying and investing that capital, you're not seeing
• 12:31
  that return straight away.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: So it's just I really do.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Implore anyone at the beginning stages of their journey, just
• 12:36
  cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. Disregard the revenue numbers.
• 12:40
  Disregard the big top line. Like, as an example, Lira, like,
• 12:43
  we're not profitable. Like, of course we're not profitable. That's
• 12:45
  the name of the game. Like, we are burning money
• 12:47
  to get more market share. So even though a paper,
• 12:49
  just my stake in that business alone, I'm very, very
• 12:51
  rich just because of that business. That doesn't mean that
• 12:53
  I then get to experience a rich life.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Because of it.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Until the day the business sells or if the business sells,
• 12:58
  the stuff is always, there's no guarantees of life. And
• 13:00
  that's why, as I said, I don't like to focus
• 13:02
  on net worth per se. I like liquid net worth.
• 13:05
  That's a different story. And I really just do... Wish
• 13:09
  that all of you guys focus on smaller numbers, but
• 13:12
  consistent numbers, growing numbers, and just keep growing your cash flows,
• 13:15
  parking money, putting it to the side. So that way
• 13:17
  later you can have your big empire place.