How I Became A Millionaire In My 20's (my story)

``` # **How Passive Income Made Me a Millionaire in My 20s** Hi! Today, I'm going to share how passive income allowed me to go from a normal teen working a nine-to-five job to becoming a millionaire in my 20s. I'm going to share strategies that actually worked for me, as well as many mistakes, so you can hopefully do even better. This is the story of how I went from a small English town to the rolling hills of San Francisco and the bustling city of Shanghai, China, including all the challenges I faced along the way. Who knows, by reading this, it may open up a new pathway for you that you might want to walk down. You'll also find out why a simple desk can mean so much to me. Let's dive into the wild ride that is my life! # **Early Days: Hustling from a Young Age** Let's go back to when I was 16 years old. I was tall, skinny, and had ginger hair, and I was broke. But I knew I wanted to make my mark on the world, and there was no way I could do that sitting in lessons learning about things I wasn't interested in. So I went out to seek my fortune. During my teen years, I was always looking to make money. When I was a teen, my main side hustle was selling candy and cans of soda to all the other kids in the playground. On the weekend, I would also go fishing and catch hundreds of mackerel, which I sold around the neighborhood. I remember knocking on every single door possible. I was offering a great deal: 10 fish for one dollar. But unfortunately, no one wanted 10 fish, so I was forced to go back to the drawing board and restructure my business with a new strategy. I decided from now on I'll be selling five fish for one dollar, and I was shocked by the results; everyone wanted some. Looking back now, these years were so important, as I was practicing some of the most important life skills out there: sales and confidence. Without these skills, I don't think I'd have been able to achieve success in later life. So if you just take one thing from this article, then it should be to start honing your sales skills and being confident. # **The Nine-to-Five Trap** When I left school, I had several paths that I could follow. I decided I wanted a nine-to-five job. I needed to learn a skill that set me up for life. Going to work at 9 a.m. and finishing at 5 p.m. was the life that school had been drilling into me for years, so I really threw myself into it and actually lined up five different jobs because I was so keen to be successful. I had the choice between being a builder, an electrician, a refrigeration engineer, a shop assistant, or a carpenter's apprentice. It was a tough decision, but in the end, I decided on becoming a carpenter. The pay wasn't great, but I was learning a skill, and I could see the potential for moving up in the company, and I really thought that this was my ticket to success. I really threw myself into my carpentry apprenticeship, and I learned everything I could. I even won leadership awards, and I really felt like I was moving forward with my life. I finished my apprenticeship with honors from the college and thought, "Here we go, all the big jobs are coming my way!" But unfortunately, my manager seemed to take a dislike to me. Maybe he started to feel a little bit threatened by my success and therefore decided to give me all the bad jobs for months on end. He assigned me to making wooden trash cans in the back room. This gave me no ability to show off my skills that I'd learnt and prevented me from working my way up the company to a higher-paid job. I hadn't really studied all this time to make wooden trash cans. Nowadays, it's the sort of repetitive job a robot would do. What was even worse is when I looked around the workshop, I saw many other people doing lots more interesting jobs. So I asked to speak to the manager. I said I needed more of a challenge; I couldn't keep making these bins. And you know what he said to me? He said, "You're making these bins today, you'll be making these bins tomorrow. We've got a five-year contract; you're gonna be making a lot of these bins." That's when I realized I was completely powerless working a nine-to-five job at the mercy of whoever was in charge. The pay was only just enough to cover my bills, which meant I couldn't just quit, but I was also unable to save any money. I was essentially trapped. # **Side Hustles to the Rescue** So I got a Saturday job working in a radio control model shop. I also started a side hustle flipping cars, which basically consisted of finding underpriced cars, fixing them up, and then selling them for a profit. The cars I was buying would cost me two to three hundred dollars, and I was usually flipping them for five to six hundred dollars. As well as doing all of this, I was also teaching people to fly radio-controlled helicopters on a Sunday. There was a huge demand at the time, and all Sunday I would be booked out, as long as the weather was good. Having these multiple side hustles allowed me to finally build out some kind of emergency fund. This is so important; it gives you the freedom to take advantage of any opportunities that come your way without having to worry about paying your bills. There is a huge opportunity cost that comes from living paycheck to paycheck, as you're so focused on next month's wage that you end up going through life with your eyes half-closed and passing up on many opportunities without even knowing it. # **Discovering Passive Income** One day at work, the boss asked if anyone wanted to help install a beautiful staircase at a customer's house. I jumped at the chance. It was one of the most impressive houses that I'd ever seen. It had everything: marble floors, chandeliers, a private swimming pool, and a garage full of beautiful sports cars. It was my dream house. I started daydreaming and adding up how many years it would take me to earn enough money to buy a place like this, and I got gradually more and more demoralized, as even with all my side hustles, I realized I still would never have enough money. It was so close but just so far at the same time, and I felt there was really nothing more I could do to achieve it. I was absolutely exhausted physically and mentally. I was working every hour of every day. While installing the staircase, I would often look out the window and see the owner relaxing in the garden or going off to play golf, and I really couldn't understand how this guy managed to have the life that he wanted and go and have fun whenever he wished. So I had to ask him a few questions, and he told me all about how running his business gave him the ability to make money while he slept. This is when I first discovered passive income. I'd never thought this was really possible for me. School had only ever taught me one way of making money, and that was working a normal job. This concept of making passive income was so alien to me, but it really got the wheels turning in my mind. If this was a normal guy and he was able to do all this, then I was pretty sure that I could do it too. I started thinking back to my school years and selling those fish; that was my first real experience of running a small business, and I'd loved every second of it, from sourcing to selling the product. I couldn't believe that I'd been suppressing this for years and trying to conform to what society wanted me to do. Nowadays, passive income has become a bit of a buzzword on the internet, and I don't completely agree with the term, as it can sound a little misleading. Kickstarting passive income is certainly not an easy thing to do, but the idea is that you can do something once, like setting up a business or investing some money, and then earn from it even when you're not working. Of course, this requires some maintenance, but in my opinion, it's a better way to make money than working a nine-to-five job if you want to be successful when you're younger, as your time is limited and therefore your income is capped. # **The Plan and the Betrayal** So now I knew that passive income was the answer. I devised a plan of escape. To have the best chance of success, I knew it was important to create a business in an industry that I was both familiar with and also passionate about. And I was lucky; I had the perfect idea. The shop I was working in on Saturdays was a radio control model store. Over the years that I'd been working there, I spotted lots of things they could be doing differently and all the mistakes that they were making. I researched and found the perfect location for a store. I even came up with the perfect name, which was inspired by an old TV show I used to watch when I was younger: Model World. I could really see the potential with this shop and how it would eventually operate without me even having to be there, essentially creating passive income. It finally gave me some hope and direction while I was working my normal job, as I knew that it was now only a temporary situation. Unfortunately, not a lot of people believed in me. I came from a working-class background, and I had little to no qualifications, so no one thought I'd be able to break into the market, except for one of my friends, who I told my entire plan to. I couldn't wait to quit my job and get started, so I could prove everyone wrong. I just needed to get enough money together first. Within a few months, Model World shop was up and running, but it was nothing to do with me. My friend had stolen my idea and done it himself. I felt so betrayed and frustrated that I trusted him with all my plans. I even started thinking to myself that maybe being an entrepreneur wasn't actually right for me. I was stuck in my nine-to-five job, being ordered around by my manager, with every bit of hope shattered. The worst part was watching my friend living my dream. I felt like a sprinter chained up in the starting blocks, unable to release all that energy. It was one of the worst feelings in my life. The whole future I built in my head started to come crashing down. Looking back, this was a great life lesson for me, although I didn't see it like that at the time. If you have a great idea, then it's best to operate in the shadows. Maybe tell parts of your plans to different people, but don't give the whole game away like I did. # **Bouncing Back and Seizing Opportunity** After this huge setback, I decided to pick myself up and keep working. I grinded as hard as I could and bought my first apartment to build up my credit score. I thought I was working hard before, but this was really the next level. I worked every hour under the sun, as I wasn't going to let my financial situation leave me open to have my dreams taken away from me again. This just shows the path to passive income is by no means easy; there can be a lot of setbacks along the way, but if you stay focused, opportunities will present themselves as if by magic. One day, I heard some great news: that my friend wanted to sell Model World. I'd visited a few times and noticed that he wasn't giving it the attention it needed. It had huge potential, but his passions were not in the business. I knew I needed to buy the shop and get my dreams back on track. This was the opportunity that I'd been preparing myself for, and I wasn't going to let it slip from my fingers again. I had a little bit of money behind me, but it still wasn't going to be enough—nowhere near enough. But I'd built up a good credit score, so I thought I'd leverage the money I had and see if I can get a bank loan. He'd taken my great idea, he'd taken my name, but the one thing he couldn't take from me was my passion, and I knew that was a secret ingredient to making this business a great passive income-generating machine. # **The Bank Loan Rollercoaster** So I created the best business plan I could and got a meeting with the bank. I'd banked there since I was a kid, and I had a good credit score, so I was hoping that everything would go smoothly. Within 10 minutes, I'd been denied the loan. It was the worst interview of my life. I felt like I'd been kicked out of the bank. It was unreal. My head was down. I was walking back to my car, and I really didn't know what to do. It was like being back at that house again, so close yet so far. I had to pick myself up, and as luck would have it, the next building I stumbled on was another bank. I hustled my way in, and I got a meeting right there and then with the manager. He actually said it was a very interesting idea and not only gave me the loan but promised to be one of my first customers. I have since asked him what made him take a chance on me, and he said he was always eager to help out the younger generation, and when he saw how passionate and hard-working I was, he just couldn't say no. This is a perfect example of where preparation and resilience meets opportunity. You never know when your next stroke of luck is around the corner, and for me, it quite literally was just around the corner. # **Model World: The Dream Realized** So without any hesitation, I closed the deal on Model World, the rights to the name, and all the products they had. It was finally mine! I knew the hard work was yet to come, but it was mine. The first day I opened the shop, I had a sleeping bag behind the counter because I knew if I didn't make enough money that day, I'd be sleeping there because I certainly didn't have enough gas to drive the car home. Luckily, the first day was a great success. All the selling and negotiation skills I'd learned when I was younger came in really useful. Without them, I wouldn't have been able to make my business profitable. After three years, we'd turned over a million dollars, and it was crazy! It was good fun times. After 10 years, we had three shops and a warehouse stuffed full of gear, but we wanted to be number one, so we had plans to push on even more. I was generating millions in passive income, and I felt like I'd finally made it, but I didn't realize just how open I was to losing everything. When it seems to be going amazingly well, you can start to get a little complacent, as it seems like nothing can stand in your way. This is really dangerous, as you stop innovating and take your eye off the ball. I was so heavily focused on one stream of income from my retail shop, so when internet shopping struck, I was completely taken by surprise. It was really sink or swim. Everyone I knew was getting wiped out of business, and I knew it was only a matter of time before that was going to happen to me if I didn't quickly adapt to the times. Luckily, I had a little longer than most, as I'd been investing in the stock market and real estate from a young age. If I didn't have these assets, then I would have probably gone bankrupt. # **Adapting to the Digital Age** While lots of people saw the internet as the problem, I also saw it as the solution. It gave me the ability to reach far more people than I ever could before, even while I was sleeping. So instead of focusing my efforts on building more shops, I decided to create a big central location, complete with warehouses, which could be used to serve customers all over the world instead of just in my local area. But I knew that if I wanted to protect myself from something like this happening in the future, then adapting wouldn't be enough. I needed to create more passive income streams so I wasn't just balancing my life on one. My passive income streams has always been B2C, meaning I sold from my business to my customers, but I had always had the idea of starting a business that sold to other businesses, which would create an entirely different income source. # **Taking Risks and Expanding Horizons** I happened to know someone who had a similar business out in America, so me and my girlfriend (she's now the wife) packed our bags and took a spontaneous trip to L.A. The trip was so unplanned that I even got my driving license, so when we landed at LAX airport, I had to go to the most dodgy car rental place in history. All I managed to rent was this old Dodge Dynasty town car, which was falling apart. Then, following the map, we drove that baby all the way up the coast road to San Francisco. That's where the guy I wanted to meet lived, in a small town. I didn't even have a hotel book, so we just winged it, and as the song goes, I thought you'll always find a room. However, it turned out to be a big convention week. There wasn't a room to be had. We ended up in the most dodgy motel I'd ever stayed in in my life. We didn't even risk getting undressed; we just slept on top of the bed in case we had to get out fast. It was just one of those things. He was very shocked to see us when we arrived, as he had no idea I was coming. I just rolled up, knocked on the door, and said I was just passing. He said, "That's one hell of a road trip!" He then helped me structure my new business, and in return, I agreed to stock some of his products. I knew that if I wanted to sell to other businesses, then I need to build out my own unique product range. My experience as a carpenter came in really handy when designing my products. Now, all that was left was getting them mass-produced, so I decided to travel to Shanghai in China to find a factory. Before I knew it, I'd been interviewed at the Chinese embassy in London, issued with a visa, and I sat on a plane with a few faxes printed out, and they said on the top of these faxes, "Hand this to the taxi driver when you get to the airport." I couldn't read the rest of it because it was all in Chinese characters. I could have quite literally ended up anywhere. The trip went really, really well, and I gained lots of new contacts with many invites to travel to Shenzhen to visit their factories. I still think that if you take the trouble to meet people for real, then you can grow a real bond in business where you help each other. You have to press the flesh to gain that loyalty. # **The Power of Taking Risks** That brings me to today. My businesses are thriving, and my passive income streams are stronger than ever. One of the most important things I've learned from my experience is that there is less risk in stepping out of your comfort zone and adapting than there is in not taking any risk at all. If you've been considering quitting your job, then know this: if you've got the right plan and the right motivation, you have as much chance of success as anyone else. You don't have to come from a rich family; you don't have to have lots of connections. The barriers to entering the business world have never been this low. All you need is a computer, some brains (that certainly helps), and an internet connection to make your first bit of startup money. Who knows, one day you could be sitting in the boss's seat behind the boss's desk. ```