Transcription
By the age of 34 years old, I was able to make my first 100 million pounds in revenue across my businesses and investments. And the main questions that I get asked is, am I making that money from selling courses or is it mostly from property? What's the breakdown? Another question I get asked is, how much did I have to get started? And how much did my parents give me or did anybody give me as a loan to get started? And the third question I get is, how can I do the same thing, too?
Well, I'm going to be answering all of those questions in this video as I break down how I've made my money, where my investments are, what the breakdown is, but also as I give you the blueprint that you can follow to do the same thing, too.
Now, you might see online people like Gary Economics that says things like this. "Success is like 85-90% who your dad is." Now, I'm sorry to say that, but that's the truth. I think the reality is for kids from poor backgrounds, it is almost impossible to realistically get even financial security, never mind wealth. And if I'd have chose to believe what the media and what a lot of people like Gary say, I would have never been able to become successful.
And no, unlike what some people assume when they see me wealthy and relatively young still. I wasn't given a handout. I wasn't given a penny from my parents or anybody. I started my businesses from the ground up. I also left school at 16 years old with no qualifications and had to pay my mom board money because I'm now a working man. I was doing side hustles. I had multiple jobs. I was cleaning snooker tables. I was still pushing paper rounds. I was selling things on market stands and I was also working for my dad as a children's entertainer making £25 per day.
Despite not having that much money, I noticed what all my friends would do and most people that are working class or even middle class is they spend their money and then they save or invest what's left. What I did was I would invest the very little that I did have into property. I bought a little tiny storage unit for £3,000 which I'd scrape together and also into my own education. I invested in myself. I invested in property and investments and then I'd spend what was left, which meant I lived like an absolute pauper for a good few years.
I also learned the power of good debt. And while everyone else was trying to not be in debt, I got into an awful lot of debt. Not at university, but investing in property. So, I bought my first house in 2009 as a teenager. And on my 20th birthday, I had nine properties. Now most of these properties were either highly leveraged, they were joint ventures or they were purchase lease option agreements which I had the option to buy down the line but I had control and I had contracts to buy them. So 20 years old had some assets. You could describe me as asset rich but I was also very poor and I was still living with my mom. I moved out when I was 20 years old. Being a full-time property investor with no savings when you're 20 years old is a very interesting place to be.
And what I then did was I would just wait. I would wait for the rents to come in. I would wait for the houses to go up in value. When the houses went up in value, I would then refinance and buy more properties. But the waiting game is not the game that somebody plays to make £100 million. You need to be an aggressive entrepreneur, but a patient property investor. So instead of just waiting for conveyancing, waiting for capital appreciation, I then started an actual business because property investing is pretty passive. But I realized if I wanted to be rich, I needed an active trading business.
And this is when I set up my first proper company which was called Buow Rent High Limited. This was a deal sourcing company. And I documented this so you can go back on my YouTube channel and find videos from over a decade ago where you can see me as a young man in my early 20s aggressively finding investments, but rather than buying them or raising the finance, I would package them up and sell them to an investor and charge a finder's fee at the time just around £3,000. In business, you don't get paid for your time. You get paid for your value. And when you know how to find and negotiate really lucrative property investments, it's a very valuable skill. And I was getting paid handsomely for that. And this is not just something special about me. Loads of people do deal sourcing and deal packaging. One of my students, Kane Harris, who's 17 years old, made over £10,000 profit last month from doing the exact same thing that I did. And right now, he's in Dubai and he's treated his whole family and his grandparents on a nice trip out to Dubai. He's making a lot of money.
But here's the thing with me, and this is what I think made me very wealthy. If I showed you how to make £3,000 in a day, a lot of ordinary people would go, "Oh, that's great. I can work 2 days a month and make six grand and then take the rest of the month off." That's what a lot of people do. Kane right now is in Dubai. I didn't do that. What I did was I worked every single day, 30 days a month using the skill. Didn't take holidays. And by the age of 25, I'd made my first million clean cash. I remember having 1.19 million in the bank at 25 years old and that came from deal sourcing. Meanwhile, my properties were going up in value. And the only thing I was using my money for was I was dumping it in to buy more properties cuz as a deal sourcer, when you're sourcing deals for other people, the very best deals that you find, I can't sell this. It's too good. Those are the ones you buy yourself.
At age 25, I retired. Me and my wife settled down. We moved into the middle of nowhere in a barn conversion and we had kids. And I thought I was going to stop working. We had enough passive income coming in from our properties. We had a small team of full-time staff. However, I got a bit bored and I realized that being at home with the kids and changing nappies and taking long walks around the countryside and having nothing to do was actually really boring. And that was when I decided to go from millionaire to multi-millionaire. Not because I needed the money, just because I just enjoyed the game.
So, I'm now 25. I've got lots of time to think, lots of time to plan. And this is what I worked out. Number one, you need two types of income. You need fast pound, active income, aggressive business, and you need slow pound, passive investments, properties. You need two. I also worked out that in business, it's not just about what you know, it's also about who you know. And the more people you know means the more deals you can do. It's not just about who you know, it's ultimately about who knows you. And because of that reason, I started a network group across the UK, which was called Training Kings. Now on a personal perspective as well, this was a Christian business network cuz I also felt that a lot of Christians were judged in the churches for being entrepreneurs. So it was a Christian business network and this took off. It was very cheap to join. It didn't make any profit. I had 14 branches across the UK. I didn't make any money from the networking events, but I did build a large network. I became the go-to guy. I became the guy that people would come to when they wanted to talk about investments, when they wanted to talk about property or business. And as a result, my deal sourcing business went from strength to strength to strength. And that was the year that I published my first book, Buy Low, Rent High, when I was around 26 years old. And this was basically about how to buy properties low, rent them out high. But at the end of the book, there was a call to action. And it said, "If you want me to help you, I've got a company called Buy Low, Rent, High Limited, where we can package and sell you deals." This book went on to sell 25,000 copies in the first year of being published. And this made me a lot of money. My training kings Christian business network almost became a bit too niche because that was around being a Christian in business. But now after writing this book, everybody wanted to come and see me and talk to me about business. So that was when I started a new network which was called the property investors circle which was just about property.
Whilst I was making a lot of money, I was never one of these people that would drive Lamborghinis and try and show off how rich I was. I was building a brand. I was building a business. Not from looking rich and showing off on Instagram, but from actually solving people's problems. from helping people, from providing value, because I learned that money follows value.
Around 27 years old, that was when I did one of the smartest things that I've ever done, which was teamed up with my brother Russell. Now, Russell's got a very different mind to me. I'm big picture, make it happen, loud. He's a bit more quiet, but he's a real analytical numbers guy. So, when we joined forces and teamed up together, and he invested to be part of my business, which made me a bit of money, too. We then started investing heavily into land and getting planning permission to flip the land, also property developments. We bought a castle. We invested into land where we built houses from scratch and made a lot of money from then selling the new builds. And we started an education company called Samuel Leeds Education. My education business turned into more of a mentorship and we launched the Samuel Leeds Academy which has absolutely taken off. And I think the reason it's taken off so big and been so successful is because a lot of people will do one or two deals and then they'll create a course. Whereas what we've done is we'd actually lived and breathed property and made millions of pounds for over a decade and then started education which meant that our education was supreme and it was more authentic.
Here's the real secret. The Samuel Leeds Academy whilst it does generate millions of pounds every single year in revenue, the profit is actually not very big. And the reason for that is because when you enroll onto the academy, whilst there's a membership fee that people pay to enroll, there's a lot of costs. We pay for millionaire mentors. We give solicitors, chartered accountants, and we have to pay these people and then the academy members can access them whenever they want, but it's not free for us. Also, we put on dinners, events, we put on currently at the time of speaking, there's 47 networking events that we put on and pay for every single month. And also, there's all the software development that goes into it. So, the revenue is there, but the profit is small. However, that doesn't matter. And here's the biggest kicker to this. Off the back of the academy, there's many other businesses that I run and that I own that are very successful, but would probably be nothing if it wasn't for the fact that I have a large community. Let me explain.
My deal sourcing company today is called Deal Connect. Now, Deal Connect does seven figures a year. However, all of the deals that are sold on Deal Connect are sold from academy members. So, they bring the deals, I sell them, and we split the profit. This is smart business. It makes me money, but it also makes my academy members money, which in turn makes the academy members really happy, and then they rave about the products and services that I provide. For example, we've got one guy called Toy, who previously was part of another mastermind, another property education company, and he said it was all right. And then he enrolled onto the Samuel Leeds Academy, and after joining, within his first month, he sold six deals around £3 to £5,000 each. You can do the math. Now, he did that through Deal Connect. So, I made money, but also he made money. Everyone's a winner.
Also, most of my property deals that I buy now are found by Academy members. My own property investing business has blown up since the academy. Why? Because most of the best deals that I buy now are brought to me from academy members. So, they'll bring me the deal and they'll say, "I've got this deal. I can't buy it cuz I haven't got any money." And if it's really good, I'll go, "I'll buy it. I'll pay them a finder's fee." I mean, I bought three hotels from academy members over the last couple of years. Those hotels are bringing in over £1 million a year profit between those three hotels. I would never have found them if it wasn't for my network within the academy.
Another way I make money, Samuel Leeds Finance. So Samuel Leeds Finance is a bridging company where I loan money out to my academy members. Now I charge about 1% per month interest, which is decent for me, but they get money that they would not otherwise get. So, they're able to buy properties using Samuel Leeds Finance Bridge, push the value up, refinance, pay me back with interest, but then they're left with a free house. So, they're really happy. They'll be raving about me and the academy and the community, but I got paid. And Samuel's Finance is actually the business that I think will make me a billionaire because it's so scalable. And I think the reason it'll make me a billionaire is because it's a very good business. I mean, there's a lot of companies like Together Finance which effectively do the same thing. I know the owners and they've become billionaires from these lending businesses. I'm doing the same thing. However, I'm really well known in the community and I've got a gap in the market because what I do with Samuel's Finance is generally we'll loan to people that otherwise wouldn't get the finance. Let me explain.
Nathan Lamb who joined the academy. He was a lorry driver. He didn't have any money. He found a little property for £85,000 in Derby, which was a really good property. It only needed a small refurb. But he couldn't get the money. He went to all the different bridging companies. No one would lend to him because he didn't have the experience. But how's he going to get the experience if no one's going to give him the money? That's where Samuel Leeds Finance steps in. And he was able to make about £40,000 profit on that deal. I got paid, he got paid, he's now got experience, and he's now gone on to do many other deals. He's now he went from a lorry driver. He's now making over £10,000 a month in property. So again, he's a raving fan and I'm getting paid.
Now, here's the interesting thing. In the UK, we have a very negative perception on wealthy people. If someone's rich, people assume they must be a bad person. They must be exploiting people. They must be a scammer. I've had all the worst names under the sun, believe me. However, what I believe is to become wealthy, to become rich, you need to be valuable. If you're scamming people, you might make a little bit of money for a few months, but then you're going to end up going to prison or ruining your reputation and everyone's going to avoid you like the plague. It's not sustainable. I've been able to make £100 million because of my value that I'm providing and my reputation that I have in the community. And this goes the same into property. If you add value to a property, it makes money. I've made millions of pounds from literally finding a worthless piece of land that's probably only worth £100 grand. Agreeing to buy it with an option. So, I'll get the option to buy it for 150 grand. They're happy cuz it's £50,000 more than it's worth. But I then get planning permission and once it's got planning permission, it's worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. And then I can then build or usually what I do is I'll then assign the option to a self-builder and cash in. That's making money from adding value.
I've also got investments in many other businesses. I've got overseas companies. I've got overseas properties. There was a company that came to me called Deal Sourcer, which was an AI company. And they said, "We've got this product where we're using AI to scrape the internet to find the best property deals. Would you like to invest in the company? It's going to be worth millions of pounds." And I said, "I'm not going to invest money, but I will invest." They said, "What do you mean?" I said, "I'll help you promote it." Today, it is worth millions of pounds. In fact, it was valued last year at £5 million. Now, it would be worth probably considerably more. How much did I put into the company? Nothing. What did I do? I marketed it. I used the academy. I used my YouTube channels. I used my brand to promote the company. It's now made me millions, but I didn't put any money in.
So, the way to get wealthy is to have fast pound, to have slow pound, active passive, to have a brand, to be in a community, to add value, but also use leverage. I use leverage all the time. I'll leverage my brand. I'll also leverage my money when I loan it out. I'll leverage my money by buying lots of houses and when they go up in value, rather than trying to pay down the debt, I don't want to pay down the debt. I want to push the value up and then take a loan against the equity and get into more debt, but then use that loan tax-free to buy more assets because money is shrinking, but assets are growing. So if you can use other people's money and the bank's money to buy assets and the money shrinks but the asset grows that is how you create big wealth.
Now I do have many other investments overseas. I have properties across Africa. I'm now investing in the Middle East in Dubai. Continuing to invest in England. I love the UK. I've got investments in companies. But the thing I love investing in more than ever is I love investing in people. I love being able to instead of counting my net worth and counting my money, count the amount of lives that I've impacted.
So, to celebrate hitting a hundred million pounds before turning 35 years old, I decided, you know what? I want to impact even more people. So, I'm going to be running a free training session. Now, this isn't going to be a big sales pitch. This isn't going to be me just talking about me and how great I am. This is going to be me giving a blueprint of how today in this market, in this economy, the best thing to do is to get started in property. How to get started from scratch in today's market, not back in 2009 when I started in today's market. I'm also going to be explaining how potentially if you want to work with me, if you want to join the community, how that happens, what that looks like. So, it's going to just be value-packed and hopefully it will leave you into a richer, better person and a raving fan of what I do. Cuz if I can leave a bit of impact in your life and your journey, then that is the most important thing. So, if you want to join me on that upcoming free online training session, it's virtual, you can do it on the computer, then just click the link below in the description. I'm going to be running it a few times over the next few weeks. So, choose your date, join me there, and I can't wait to get to know you.