i made my first million in 2020 at 26 years old three years after launching my business
and today i want to share that story with you guys and highlight some of the biggest
takeaways that i've gotten from that experience of earning that first million and hopefully
pave some of the foundations for your future success so for those of you that don't know
me my name is jordan platten i own affluent.co which is a multi-platform digital marketing agency
based here in the uk and we're responsible for generating millions of new revenue for companies
all over the globe every single month now the agency profits seven figures in a yearly basis and
across our portfolio we bring in multiple seven figures a year so i think it makes sense to start
from the beginning and then work ourselves through in chronological order because i had a very
modest upbringing i was certainly not from a rich family but not a poor one either i had everything
that i needed but not everything that i wanted and my family taught me from a very young age that
if you want something you have to go out there and work for it yourself and get it yourself and
so from very young i wanted to earn my own money and at any opportunity i would try and do that i
remember in school i used to collect pokemon cards like many youngsters did my generation
and i was very creative i like drawing so i would literally get go home and i would draw pokemon
cards on an a4 piece of paper and i'd go into school next day and i would sell them to people
and sometimes i'll do commissions which would be like can you draw me this card and i'd go up in a
drawing it'd be like a pound per drawing that's what i did just lots of creative things and i
would sell those things for those negligible amounts of money in school i wasn't the
the sweet selling guy but they taught me from very young to aspire to have your own money and to
desire for your own financial security and not have to depend on anyone else for that i didn't
really have pocket money and i was always envious of my friends that did but it made me want to work
hard for having it myself and so when i actually could get a job i got a job straight away i worked
doing a paper round and where you deliver papers in your local area i lived in a small
rural village and i would literally work for about two hours every morning i had to wake up at 5am
and i'd deliver papers for 15 pounds a week which was absolutely nothing but i loved it at the time
none of my friends were working and it was of the first jobs people had and then that
transpired into like this string of jobs in pubs in restaurants in the hospitality
industry i was a pot wash i made sandwiches i worked on friars in a pub i then moved into
retail and i worked in a couple of clothing stores i worked for jd sports got sacked from that job
actually i had 13 jobs before the age of 21 years old three of which i got sacked from
you could say i was and i am probably still a bit of an employees nightmare because i always
struggled with authority and in school i was the kid that when you were in parent's evening
teachers would say if jordan just paid more attention if jordan just gave it his all if jordan
just worked a little bit harder and he has so much potential and he could do so much better but i
never did right i didn't want to be sad and taught about a subject i fundamentally didn't care about
something that didn't excite me be told this is black and white and have my creativity constricted
i always move towards creative subjects like drama like arts like technology i wanted something that
enabled my brain to be used to what i believed was full potential and i was a very introverted
kid i was not an allowed person in school at all i kind of kept myself to myself and i always
wanted to be extroverted in creativity and in art and so on and so i had to remember having a
conversation with my dad when i said to him dad i really want to be successful i really want to
have a lot of money and he said to me jordan i know you're creative i think you should study
architecture and university because architects get paid an awful lot of money and at this time
like throughout my whole life i was convinced that you have to go to school you have to go
to university have to get a good degree if you want to be successful work up the career ladder
and that's the mentality that i was brainwashed into thinking was correct and i can't blame anyone
around me for that because everybody else was brainwashed by that same societal thinking that we
need to put in the work now go to university work up a career ladder and then we'll be successful
later on in life and looking back now that's just simply flawed and that's not how it has to be but
i went to university studied architecture within my first six months i realized that it was gonna
have to take me six years to be fully qualified and even then i might just be lucky at earning
30 000 pounds a year which i was not okay with so i lost love with the subject very quickly and
i was going out a lot partying and i was very social in uni again because of this desire to
be an extrovert i was still quite introverted at this time so i'd forced myself into uncomfortable
positions go out a lot and i then got a job as a pr guy and so i would sell nightclub tickets on
the street and wrote people into clubs and after about a year of doing that i found i was actually
quite good at it and i built a relationship with the guys who owned the club and i got a club owner
to give me a shot at actually running my own evening and actually hiring my own pr people
and instead of me doing the pr i would actually run the event and i would take all the money off
the door and the bar would take all of the money off the club and i ended up getting three more
contracts for that i was doing four nights a week in the local city whilst at university but it was
a very toxic environment for those of you that have ever been in that nightclub scene you'll
know that you've got this bottle culture where people spend all of their money every single
week on one bottle of grey goose and it makes them feel like they're really important and everybody
else treats them like they're super rich and like they're just a special person and it builds this
ego and this pretense and this materialism which i think is incredibly unhealthy in a young adult
and for me i was consumed by this world and i was so sucked into this vortex of image and i
actually ended up getting kicked out of university because i stopped attending my lectures because i
was up late so night out late so many times a week working on this business two months after
being kicked out of university that business felt and everything stopped going working and it was
january and everybody was a new year spirit and no one had any money and it just didn't work out and
i was still trying to be this person i just been kicked out of university so i'd even more had a
point to prove to everybody that i wasn't somebody you know i was successful and i ended up getting
myself in thousands 1 000 pounds worth of dan i got i think it was like 6 or 7k at its peak
which for me was just so suffocating and because i was living in this pretentious world i didn't have
the heart to tell the people around me i couldn't even speak to my own mother about it because i was
that embarrassed and i was still pretending to be successful to her and so i got really depressed
for a couple of months and i knew that i had to get myself out of that situation but i didn't know
how and so i thought to myself okay what's the quickest way for me to make money because at this
time i was still very financially driven i thought money was the secret to all happiness and so i
thought okay fine i'm gonna go into sales now that terrified me because yes i was confident enough to
pr people on the street but they're drunk people there's one thing doing that there's another
thing actually selling to business people and professional people on a daily basis but i managed
to get myself a sales job i blacked my way in and it was in a cold calling center making a hundred
cold calls a day and i remember my first day after training walking to the end of the office with my
script in my hand and i would tremble in fear i was so scared to speak on the phones but i knew
that the only way i'd be able to get myself out of the situation i was in is if i just got good at
sales if i forced myself against this wall in this uncomfortable position and i was able to sell and
yes for weeks i was terrible and i was learning and i was not good but i remembered something
that i've been taught in drama in school and it's that the principles of how you learn a script and
how you memorize a script and how important it is to memorize your script as quickly as possible
because then you can put your own tonality on it then you can put your own spin on it and then
you can relax and use your body language and i noted that everybody in the office was stuck just
reading off their script even people have been there for years so one evening i went home and i
just with repetition through reading the script in my mind sentence my sentence i learned the script
off my heart and then within three months of being in the company i was in the top three performers
internationally i was bringing in the most sales on my third month with that company i think i
made 6 000 pounds in commission it was like 8 000 including salary which was more money than i had
ever seen in one singular paycheck it was insane and i think it was it was close to company record
of what had been paid in commissions that month and i remember staying in the office late just so
i could be smashing the phones and selling and so i then had money i was earning more money than my
friends i was earning i think it worked out around 40 000 a year in that first sales job at my peak
and then i jumped into another sales job because i wanted to move up the career ladder
now i was earning 50 000 pounds which is a really really respectable amount of money to be making
at 22 years old but i wasn't fulfilled because all of a sudden i felt like i had the money but
i didn't have the freedom i didn't have time to enjoy this money i was still going on one holiday
a year because that's all i was allowed to do and that made me miserable and that made me think you
know what there's so much more to life than this than to be stuck in an office just trying to
blindly chase money for the rest of your life and i remember sitting in the office and on my
third sales job and looking around me one day and seeing all of these people who were like
twist the age of me just kind of all looking quite glum and miserable doing the same thing every
single day and i said to myself jordan you are not going to allow yourself to be in that position you
are not going to become this person and that day i started looking at alternatives i started looking
at way out i started looking for a business that i could start working for myself and i got lost
in the maze that is online entrepreneurship and online business truly is amazed i found amazon fba
i've looked at drop shipping i looked at trading and forex but nothing really resonated with me and
my skill set i wanted something that was sales based so i could use my existing skill set that
i had learned and i stumbled across social media marketing or at the time it was called smma and
this is simply the act of me approaching someone else a business owner and offering them a service
and that would help them to increase their revenue on a monthly basis in return in theory that
business owner would pay me thousands of pounds on a monthly basis and to me i mean it seemed too
good to be true when i first heard about it but i committed to it because i knew again in my life i
was backed into a corner like i was when i was in debt and i wanted to get myself out of it and so
i watched youtube videos i read books i bought courses i started waking up at 5 00 a.m every
morning again back taking it back from when i used to do a paper round and i would study social media
marketing religiously now within two weeks of studying social media marketing i managed to sign
up my first ever client and it was a restaurant in my local city i actually went face to face
into this restaurant i told them i'd like to have a meeting with them it really didn't go well but i
somehow managed to get it through just getting my teeth i then managed to sign up a furniture store
and a bathroom showroom and also a jewelry company and within a month i'd quit my job
it was actually i'm pretty sure it was about two and a half weeks after committing to starting the
agency i quit my job and i replaced my outgoings and what was important to me is that i wanted to
just replace my outgoings and then quit i didn't want to replace my entire lifestyle and i would
recommend all of you guys doing the same by the way if you're starting an online business or any
business for that matter do not quit your job until you replace your outgoings you want to
have that security there and to be honest the rest is history i started my agency i was working for
myself i was motivated by what i had learned in sales and in my career that if you don't stick
to your targets you're going to fail and so for me as an agency owner when i was reaching out to
companies in my local area when i was calling up businesses every single day i always had my old
boss craig on the back of my mind saying jordan if you don't stick to your targets today you're gonna
get the sack and i was gifted to be able to have that resilience and that consistency ingrained
within me from those sales jobs that i'd worked in previously and that made it a lot easier for
me within three months of launching the agency i was making my ten thousand pounds a month which
is more money than i'd ever earned in my life on a monthly basis that felt absolutely incredible and
i just remember being completely invigorated and my drive was through the roof working for myself i
finally knew that i was living my purpose and i was doing the right thing and i just continued to
build that business scale i documented my journey on this youtube channel you can literally go back
and watch i think i only have like four clients in the first video i put up on this youtube channel i
documented that whole journey i actually started teaching people how to replicate the agency's
success as well launched a secondary business and within three years i made my first million
and that was a monumental milestone for me because i remember as a kid i would think to myself if i
could ever make a million i'd be so happy and my life purpose would be fulfilled i never believed
that i would make a million as quickly as i did and i think i'd always convinced myself
that you have to invent the next uber you have to invent the next airbnb you have to have a unicorn
business in order to make millions of pounds or millions of dollars but that is not true in any
way shape or form you can replicate a business that has already been out there for tens of years
a marketing agency is a business model there's so many marketing agencies out there it's been
around for tens and tens of years since the birth of the internet before the internet right and you
could still start one and be successful and that was just mind-blowing to me but i'd be lying if i
said that making a million was as fulfilling as i wanted it to be and lived up to the dreams that i
had around it because it wasn't to be honest i think making that first million was glamorized
in my mind and glamorized by the media and everybody else so much that when i made it it was
actually quite disappointing because i realized that money wasn't my purpose that money wasn't
the route to all happiness and i've actually realized that before the million i realized that
when i made my first 20k a month or 10k a month but it was instilled even more when i reached
that financial milestone and for me at that moment i really had to take a lot of time to understand
what i really wanted out of my life and what i was truly working towards and what my real why was
because being financially secure isn't really that difficult and i'll be careful what i say because
we're all in different situations i do not believe that becoming financially secure is a difficult
thing to achieve if you are determined enough to be consistent and resilient through sticking to
one thing for long enough i really do not believe that it is and when you once you reap financial
security you need something else to drive you forward you need a greater purpose you need
something that's bigger than you are and bigger than money and for me that is lifelong freedom
that is creating a life for the other people around me that they couldn't have created for
themselves and it is also through starting a life of philanthropy and what i work towards now is
starting a philanthropy company and i want to got a whole greater purpose i've actually got a video
on youtube a link in the description where i talk about my future goals but it was really important
for me to understand that money was no longer the root to my happiness and my driver for success
and that actually has enabled me to scale my business quicker than i've ever scaled from
year three to year four and a half we've pretty much doubled where we were previously probably
more than that and i wouldn't have been able to do that if finances were still my motivator my
motivator shifted onto helping other people and to focusing on the product and the end result for our
customers and our clients and in doing that we've scaled up exponentially so i suppose that's pretty
much it that's the story if you drop a comment down below guys obviously this is a casual video
today because i'm currently driving to see my business partner joe and every quarter we have
a meeting where we go through the strategy of the business we go for a breakdown of okay where are
we at what are our goals do we need to realign and that's the meeting that i'm going through to
right now and it just felt fitting to record this video because today is a day where i'm going to be
revisiting my goals and revisiting that so i just want to finish this by saying like one last thing
and that is for any of you guys that have watched this and you're like okay cool this is this has
been motivating this makes it feel more realistic to me my biggest advice and one of the biggest
things that i've learned throughout life from this journey of making that first million in 2020
is number one money does not buy happiness and if money alone is your first your driver then you're
not going to be happy in your life okay there are people who work in mcdonald's that will be happier
than you are because they're not motivated by money so you can't have your motivators money
number two it is that resilience is probably the single most important trait in business
resilience and ad resilience is purely the act of being able to be told no relentlessly again
and again and again and you are going to stick to your guns and you're going to say no i'm going to
do this and i'm going to be successful because i had pushed back so many times throughout my
life i had failed business up to fail business the nightclub event business i even started a clothing
brand when i was in college failed right but it's having that resilience to pick yourself back up
and always continue no matter what because you know in your heart that you are destined to be
successful that you are destined to be as somebody if then resilience is consistency as well so many
people think they want to make a million some many people think they want to start a business
but they jump they bunny hop from business model to business model and they never actually
are successful because they're just testing out the water in so many different things they're
never consistent enough at one thing over a period of time to actually then be successful
and get the fruits of them so pick one thing one model and stick to it for enough time
for you to be successful that's all you need is resilience consistency and for mo money not to be
your number one motivator sure enjoy the fruit i'm sitting in a supercar i've got a million dollar
house money's great i like materialism and i don't think you should ever be ashamed of that but it's
not what's gonna make you feel happy in here it's very external now finally something actionable for
you guys i created a video very recently on the best online businesses to start during a
recession which i think is very relevant right now i want you to watch that video and make a judgment
as to what would be the best step to you what business you gravitate to the most
what works for you and your personality type and your skill set watch that videos link in
description after this one stick to something commit to it be resilient consistent and send me
a message when you make that person see you guys i'll chat to you in a bit have a good one cheers