- This is 16-year-old me waving goodbye to school forever.
Allow me to explain.
Throughout my time at school,
I never really felt like I fitted in.
When I was curious about something,
I was told to keep quiet,
put my head down and get on with my work.
But I found this impossible
as I'm naturally very hyperactive
which led to me always being in trouble.
So when one of my teachers sat me down
and said, "Let's be honest, Mark,
you're not going anywhere, so here are your options.
You either continue to study, but it'll be a waste
of everyone's time, or you can leave and try and get a job."
It was one of the best days of my life as I was only focused
on one thing leaving, so I waved goodbye
to the school with no qualifications or money under my belt
and when I became a millionaire in my early-20s,
I was happy that I proved my teachers wrong.
But even though I succeeded, I had very little direction
and had to work out a lot of things by myself.
That's why I'm making this video
because I wish I had something
like this when I was starting out.
If you follow all the steps I'm about to share,
I don't see how you won't be miles ahead of everyone else.
Actually, I pretty much guarantee you will be
if you follow all of these steps.
Step one is to create an investment budget.
A lot of people put this as one of the last steps
but that's the main reason most people don't make it.
They treat investing
as an afterthought rather than a priority.
I believe there are three types
of people in the world, wasters, warriors and winners,
otherwise known as the Three Ws, wasters go
through life spending everything they own.
They say things like "Money doesn't make you happy."
However, at the same time, they're spending all
of theirs trying to improve their lives.
Warriors hoard their money
like a squirrel saving its acorns for winter.
They say things like "Money doesn't grow on trees."
The sad thing is, even though these people
have a lot of money
they often deprive themselves of the little pleasures
in life in order to save a few extra dollars.
They're so focused on using budgets
to keep their expenses down
that they miss the far bigger picture.
Winners are the complete opposite of both of these people.
They understand that money can make them happy
and that it does grow on trees if they invest correctly,
they earn money not to spend it
but to invest or while not depriving themselves
of the things that they enjoy.
To become a winner you need to change
the way you think about money.
Instead of seeing it as a tool to get the things you want,
start viewing it as a tool to get more money.
The only other way to make money is by trading your time
and personally, I'd rather use my money
than trade my literal years on this earth.
Here's something to consider, if you worked for a whole year
and saved up $10,000 but you spent it all
on upgrades for your car,
you'd have to save that money all over again,
costing you another year.
However, if you invested it correctly, you could use
that 10,000 to make a $100,000.
Then you could purchase the upgrades you want
with some of the profits
and still have an extra $90,000 that you can reinvest.
That brings me on to step two,
which is to increase your value.
Let me tell you the story of Cooper and Dwane.
They both lived in California
and decided to take up surfing as a new hobby.
Cooper searched for the biggest waves every day.
He didn't bother with the smaller ones.
Some days if he couldn't find any waves big enough,
he just went home.
On the other hand, Dwane went out every day
and rode as many waves as he could, whether big or small,
he simply enjoyed the process
of surfing and improving his skills.
One day, Cooper and Dwane were out at sea when a huge wave
started to build on the horizon, Cooper thought
to himself this was exactly what he had been waiting for,
a wave that was finally big enough for him.
On the other hand, Dwane was just excited to put his skills
to the test and thought of it like any other wave.
They both began paddling.
Dwane Expertly popped up onto his feet
and rode inside the barrel of the wave.
He looked back expecting to see Cooper behind him
but he wasn't there.
Cooper had fallen off almost as soon
as the wave had arrived.
All he could do was watch
as Dwane rode it all the way to the shore.
In Cooper's mind, Dwane had just got lucky.
But the truth was Dwane had put in all the practice
and learned something from every wave he'd ever caught.
This is how most people approach getting rich.
They spend too long searching for the one thing
that will make them a ton of money,
all while ignoring the day-to-day things
they can be doing to increase their value.
Huge waves do come every now and again.
I've benefited from the.com bubble in the late-90s,
the Housing Bubble in the 2000s and the recent crypto boom.
However, I wouldn't have been able to take advantage
of them if I hadn't increased my value
by investing back into myself.
When you start thinking this way,
you stop seeing every online course or YouTube video
as the one thing that will make you rich
and instead just a little wave to conquer
and add to your skillset.
So where should you focus your time?
Well, if you notice there's a clear gap in the market
for a certain skill such as a plumber, it really
is a nightmare finding a good plumber nowadays.
But anyway, that aside,
if you decide to go down this path
it might make sense to spend a thousand dollars
to get a qualification and then start making upwards
of $5,000 a month.
Over the course of a year,
that would be a 60X return on your investment.
If you can't think of anything to do, don't waste
time waiting for waves.
Instead, you can spend time mastering universal skills
like public speaking, negotiating, and content creation.
These skills will all come in handy no matter
what path you decide to follow in the future
as they're all transferrable and can be used
in multiple areas.
I'm not saying all education is good.
I believe far too many people are going to university
for degrees that aren't even worth the paper
they're written on.
However, if you view every skill as an investment
and get some kind of return on it,
then it's worthwhile learning.
If it was me, I would repeat this step as many times
as possible until I've reached my maximum earning potential.
Step three, is to open investing accounts.
If you want to avoid being a warrior that once
you've increased your earning potential
you are gonna need somewhere to invest your money.
So it's time to open some accounts.
It's a good idea to allocate a portion
of your investment budget into the stock market.
This isn't likely to make you rich in the short-term
but if you begin early enough
then in later years it will start to compound.
It's just so much easier than it was back in my day.
As you can do it all from your phone,
there are various different apps.
I'll leave some of those links down below.
One of my favorites is Lightyear, and they're also
kindly sponsoring this section of the video.
Lightyear is looking to give every European low-cost
and convenient access to the world's stock markets
and they're great at what they do.
The platform has over 3,000 stocks and ETFs in the UK,
US, and across Europe,
including ones that track the S&P 500.
They've also just launched lots of well-known
UK names from Tesco to AstraZeneca and Barclays
to Burberry to name just a few.
There's something for everyone
in Lightyear and there's more.
On Lightyear, you can also earn interest
on your uninvested money,
in three currencies, the Euro, dollar and pound.
If you're watching this from the UK,
the Euro Zone or Hungary,
you can download and start using Lightyear today.
Use my code Tilbury to get started
and receive a $10 fractional share
after making your first investment.
But let me remind you,
investing always carries a risk and the value
of any investment can decrease as well as increase.
Step four is to build assets.
This is the real key to building mass wealth.
Let me tell you the story
of John and Alex as it perfectly explains this concept.
After John maxed out his earning potential
like we covered in step one, he just invested the rest
of his money into the stock market each month
in the hopes of becoming a millionaire one day.
Alex didn't have the same patience, although he maxed out
his earning potential and invested in stocks.
He also focused on building assets.
He started by identifying a gap
in the market and put his unique skills to use.
He created his own brand of craft beer
which he spent a lot of time perfecting.
He experimented with different flavors,
brewing techniques and branding strategies.
He even invested in creating a website
and social media accounts to promote his product.
John, on the other hand
was always skeptical of Alex's business,
thinking that it was far too much work with little return.
Instead, John just kept investing the same amount
into the stock market every month.
A couple of years went on and Alex's business began to grow.
He started getting orders from all over the country
and his craft beer became a household name.
John, however, still had many years left
before his stock market investments would start paying off.
If you think about it, investing in the stock market
is just buying a little piece
of an asset someone else has created.
However, if you can get in on the ground floor
by investing your time
and money into building your own business,
then you'll probably be able to generate far more money.
The moral of the story is to make sure you are doing both
at the same time.
Step five, use debt strategically.
A lot of people aren't gonna like this one
but being in debt isn't automatically a bad thing.
Let me explain, if you want to buy multiple properties
to rent out and generate passive income,
you might think you have to save up a massive amount
of money, but that's not necessarily the case.
Instead, you can use debt strategically
to buy a house that's in a bad condition.
This worst house, in the best street can be purchased
for a lower price, let's say $100,000.
Then you can spend $50,000 to fix it up
and make it worth $200,000.
After that, you can refinance it for 75% of its new value,
which is $150,000.
This way, you can use that $150,000 to buy another property
or renovate another worst house and repeat the process.
Think of it as a real life game of monopoly.
But in order to do something like this,
you'll need to have a good credit score.
So if I was starting from scratch,
I'd make sure to get a credit card as soon
as possible and pay it off in full at the end of each
and every month in order to build my credit score.
This is like a scorecard lenders use
to see how reliable you are.
I know it seems crazy
that you have to use debt to be seen as reliable
but that's just the way it is.
So instead of thinking that debt is always bad
try to understand how to use it to your advantage.
Step six, don't spend earned money.
When it comes to money,
there's a common misconception that the more money you make,
the more money you should spend.
However, this couldn't be further from the truth.
In fact, the key to having a consistently great life
is to spend only what your investment portfolio yields.
This is normally around eight to 10%.
I'm not saying to actually take the money out
of your investments just to spend that percentage
of your earnings, I know this can sound confusing,
so for example, if you have $1 million invested
then you'd be able to spend up to 10% of that value
which is $100,000 per year
from your earnings without having to worry too much.
Of course, this does rely on you making a lot
but once you've made it to step six,
this shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Think of it this way, every dollar you earn
is like a seed that you can plant
and watch grow into a money tree.
The more seed you plant, the bigger your portfolio becomes
and the more money it will yield.
And just like a tree, if you take care
of your portfolio and only take the fruit it yields,
it will continue to grow and provide for you in the future.
If you want to see what I learned
from reading over 40 books about money,
I'm gonna leave that video right up there.
But don't click on it just yet.
Make sure to subscribe if you want to grow your wealth.
Okay, I'll see you over there.