Broke To 10 Million in my 20's | Samuel Leeds Life Story

Hey, was someone named Samuel eat? And ten years ago today, exactly 10 years ago, I was living in a rough part of the states with my mom. I was driving around old bangers; they were always letting me down, costing me money. I was driving, I remember, a Ford purple Ka in Walsall.

And now, fast forward ten years, I'm living in one of the most expensive parts of the UK. I drive a Range Rover. I'm worth over ten million pounds. I own a castle. And I don't say that to try and impress you or anything, but people always ask me, "How did you do it? What did you do?" Because I went from broke to being worth over ten million pounds in my 20s. And I'm nothing special, believe me. I didn't do well in school, and my mom was a mobile hairdresser, my dad a gardener. And I'm gonna share with you in this video exactly how I did it, so stay tuned.

So when I was at school, I never really felt that understood. I never felt like people believed in me and thought I was gonna do well. Generally speaking, my parents split when I was seven years old. It's quite a bad separation. My dad was a gardener, my mom was a mobile hairdresser. And when I was at school, I'll give you an example. There was a desk, a big desk at school, and it was like, kind of a special-needs desk. So there was a guy that was a few years older than me who was on the desk, gets quite bad special needs. And when he left the school, they put me on the desk. Now, even to this day, I don't know exactly why they put me on the desk. I don't know if it was because maybe they thought I had special needs, or maybe because I was just had a real short attention span. I was, I was flicking glue and getting into trouble. They wanted to keep an eye on me. But I just felt like people just generally didn't really get me. I didn't think I was gonna go and do well in school and be able to get a good job. So I just thought, you know what, I'm gonna have to just rely on something different. Maybe my hands. Maybe I'll be a builder or something instead.

Now, my dad, he was a gardener. Maybe I could have done that. He changed his career. I was around about 12, 13 years old at the time. And instead of being a gardener, he decided he wanted to become a magician. So I was like, "That's cool, my dad wants to be a magician." And he invited me to go along to work with him for the day. And what he was doing was really interesting because he hired a little market stand place in a market. And as people were walking past, he was showing the magic tricks. And the ones that were going, "That's amazing, how did you do that?" He was selling them the magic trick. And I thought, "Okay." And I could see them giving him cash. Now, at the time, I'd never made like money. So the fact that I could see them giving him cash for these tricks, I thought, "What, I can do that?" So my dad taught me how to do this. And what I used to do is I used to buy the magic tricks off of my dad. He used to make a small profit, I'm sure. And then I used to go to school and I used to sell the magic tricks to my schoolmates and make a little profit. That was like my first ever business. And the teachers didn't like it. The teachers didn't understand it. The teachers thought I was selling drugs. They used to call my mom into them, into the school meetings and say, "I think your boy's selling drugs." And she'd be like, "No, he's selling magic tricks."

Whenever almost like that's kind of weird. At the same time, I had paper rounds, like crazy as usual paper rounds. I used to wash cars. And I just wanted to make money. I think the reason I wanted to make money was because I knew that I was gonna fail in school. And I knew that I wasn't gonna be able to walk into a high-paid job. And I knew I didn't want to rely on anybody. I didn't want to say to my mom, "Hey, could I have some money for a car or for this?" So I thought, "I need to do something."

My stepdad, my mom's new husband, I didn't really warm to him that much to begin with. When they first got married, they got married quick. And he was an accountant. So very, very different. Nothing like my dad, nothing like my mom. Very different finance figures. And I didn't warm to him that much. But I could see that he knew a bit more about money than my school teachers knew about money because he'd been an accountant. And I think it was him who gave me the idea. He said, "Plasterers make a lot of money." I'm sure it was him. And I thought, "Plasterers?" And I thought, "I could probably do that. Probably be a plasterer." And for my work experience, instead of going and working in a bank or whatever, I went and became a plasterer. I went on a crash course. It was called a crash course. He's got a plastering crash course. This course, I stood a few days long. And I learned how to be a plasterer. Now, I had to pay for this. And I paid out of my paper money and my magic trick money. But in these short few days, they taught you how to plaster a house. Now, I remember doing this course and thinking, "Oh my goodness, plasterers make like a hundred, one hundred and fifty pounds plus per day. This is gonna be awesome."

So I tried to get in with people that might be able to help me. I did some free jobs. I started. Now, 15 years old, I started advertising as a plasterer. And my dad wasn't loving this idea too much because he was saying, "No, no, no, you're gonna come and work for me as a magician." And he's doing quite well now with his magic. He's doing magic shows, he's working in restaurants. And he's saying, "You're gonna do this when you leave school." Okay, that's fine, that's fine. I'll do that when I leave school. But now I'm on the side, I set up this little plastering business. I lived in Walsall and I set up a plastering business called Pelle Sore Plastering. Now, the problem was, I got this job and I'm thinking, "I can't really do this." They offered to pay me 500 pounds to plaster a room. And I thought, "I don't know if I can do this on my own." So I said, "Okay." I accepted the job. And I'm 15 years old. And I'm plastering this room. And the lady who's the client keeps coming in and checking on every few hours. And I'm thinking, "I'm doing this all wrong. This isn't work." And this isn't. And now she wants me to plaster the ceiling. And I don't know how to plaster a ceiling. They didn't teach me that on the crash course.

So what I did was, I put in a little advert saying I was looking for plasterers to come and work for me. 15 years old. And I start getting contacted from people that have been made redundant or different people. Don't know how to plaster. I said, "They said, 'Oh yeah, how much you looking to pay?'" I was like, "70 pounds a day." They said, "That sounds great. I can get started." I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, now it's quite a lot of money to pay 70 pounds a day. I've not got a lot of money right now." But I have been paid this 500 pounds. What I said was, I said a little bit naughty. I said, "Come for an interview." This guy called Tom. I said, "Come for an interview. I want to see what your plastering skills is like." So Tom came for his interview. Kind of feel bad saying this, but for his interview, I said, "I want to watch you plaster this ceiling." Hey. So Tom's plastering the ceiling. I'm mixing the plaster. Off. I'm mixing it up even wrong. I'm putting too much water in. Then it's too thick. And Tom, I can tell Tom's thinking, "Who is this person?" I tell you who I am. I'm a 15-year-old kid. That this is my first job. I didn't say that. But Tom plasters the ceiling. I look at it. Looks great. The client seems, oh, just about happy. I said to Tom, "Tom, you got the job." So I gave Tom a few more jobs after that. And and then I started advertising for plastering jobs. People would give me the work and say, "I'll give you 500 quid. I'll give you 400 quid." I just pushed it to give it to Tom or give it to someone else. Pay their 70 pound a day. Oh, take them two or three days. I'll make a couple hundred quid. Boom. That's my little business that I'm doing. Now, 15 years old. And my dad's saying to me, "You know, I can't wait for you to work on the business, son." My brother's two years older than me. He's working on the business. Leaves school at 16. Did manage to get okay grades. I got like, I was like a BC student. So I did work hard at school, despite being on the special needs desk.

And now my dad, I'm working for him now. Around about the same sort of time, Tim, my stepdad, who's good with numbers, he, because he's good with numbers, realized that his house that he owns, that has no mortgage, it makes sense for him to refinance and invest in property. So I've seen Tim buying some houses. He's bought a few. And I'm thinking, "Hmm, buying and selling a magic trick, you might make a few pounds. Plastering, great, you can make a few hundred pounds. But if you can buy and sell a house, you could make like tens of thousands of pounds. This might be a better way for me to get more money." So I speak to Tim. I'm picking his brain, asking him, "What house did you buy? How much did you pay for it? How does it work?" And he's explained to me what a mortgage is. I never heard of a mortgage. And I'm thinking, "The things of Tim, great guy, okay." And he's telling me what he can, but he's not the best explainer in the world. So he's an accountant. You give me the facts, but I'm not getting it. So I said to Tim, "I said, where did you learn about property?" And he said, "Well, actually, I've done a few property training courses." Okay. I said, "How can I get on those training courses?" And Tim said, "I'll introduce you to a guy called Simon who runs from training courses." I'm like, "Brilliant."

So I go down to this event. It's actually a networking event. And Simon is there. He was a property trainer. And I remember I turn up and I'm so out of place. I'm so nervous because I've gone from being school, well, I'm not great academically, to being just about okay with my hands. But now I'm in a business networking event. So I've got this little soup and I feel completely out of place. I remember when the networking was going on and I just, it was so awkward for me. But I was there. And I hear about property. And I thought, "Oh my goodness, this is the way forward." So I signed up to some courses. And I started doing property training courses. I'm now 16 years old. I'm starting to read books. I'm reading Jim Rohn like crazy, who's a fantastic mentor of mine. Never met him. He passed away sadly, just before I started reading his material. Rich Dad Poor Dad. And I've introduced this whole new world of business. I knew about being employed and being self-employed. I didn't know about being a business owner. I didn't know about being a property investor or an investor. So my whole world is starting to just move. All these ideas are opening up.

Meanwhile, I'm working for my dad on his business. And I feel a bit torn. I've got the, my dad's family business, never gonna make me rich. Do you enjoy it? A lot of fun. And in this whole world of investments and property and business, which I'm thinking, "I don't know if this is possible, but I just nerve got something in me that could make this work." So right now, I'm thinking there's opportunity. Now, I've not got the knowledge. I've not got the money to start investing into stuff. A little bit of paper and money. But there's opportunities. There's more to making money into business and investments. And I'm excited. Right now, I've left school. School was a drag. I'm excited.

And also, I remember going away. My church invited me to go and do some work in Palom Blanca, Spain, in a drug rehab center. I went along, did some work there. I ended up becoming very passionate about my faith. And I gave my life to Jesus when I was 16 years old. And that was another thing for me. I really wanted to not only make money, but I wanted to support some of the charities that I'd seen. I spent time out in Africa, Zambia, again, shortly after that. And I'm so excited about life. I'm so desperate to be the best version of myself I can, to give, to help, to grow, to be unforced rate. I'm like, at the time, I felt like a loose cannon with all these opportunities. But I just felt like I needed someone to hold my hand and guide me through it. Jim Rohn said, "Don't wish it was easier, wish you were better." And don't wish for less problems, but wish for more skills. And I just thought, "I need more skills. I got to get good. I've got to get equipped." And I started going on all these different training courses that I could find. I was going on free courses. I was going to unpaid courses. Also reading so many books. And I just knew that I needed to dedicate 100% towards my business, my life, doing what all I needed to do. And I knew that I needed to quit working for my dad.

Now, this was a really horrible decision I had to make because my dad had spent so much time invested in me. And I didn't want to let him down. And I stayed up until 2:00 AM stressing about how I was gonna tell this to my dad. I thought about it for hours and hours. But I knew it was the right decision. And I remember telling my dad, "Look, I want to focus full-time on the property styling stuff." And my dad, I can't say he was happy. He was very, very upset with me. He told me that I'd let him down and I was a disappointment. And it was really, really tough. But at least it meant that I'm now free to just focus absolutely solely on myself, my education, my business education, and my property business. And I did a lot. I did some stuff with Business Link. I got an NVQ level two in business. And it was crazy. I liked studying and learning, even academic studies, but actually loving it. Because at school, I hated it. But now I'm like, "Oh, did she?" So interested in finance and business and making money and investment. I was loving it.

I joined a network marketing company. I joined. I became a distributor for Utility Warehouse. And their business plan and the personal development that I got from that, I just got to give a shout out to Utility Warehouse. I still use. I'm still a customer of Utility Warehouse. But just the training that I got from Frank, from those guys, and the contacts that I got. Everybody, despite me being now like 16, 17 years old, everybody took me seriously. Even at the property networking events, people would take me seriously. There's no hierarchy anymore. It's just a case of, "Well, what value can you bring?"

So, 17 years old, I'm now getting into property. I am managing people's properties for free. I'm saying to people at all these property networking events that I'm meeting, "I'll find you tenants. I'll manage your properties, and I won't charge you any money." Now, they're like, "What's the catch?" I said, "The catch is, I've got time. I've got courage. I'm excited. I want to help you out, but I just want to learn about property." So people would say, "Okay, well, you can find it. I've got a room empty here. If you can fill that room." "No problem." So I would create a little advert on spare room.co.uk, take pictures of the room, put the room up, get a tenant. Boom. I think I can start charging for this. So I start charging 100 pound of time, 150 pound of time. Charge the tenants a little admin fee, 90 pound admin fee. My stepdad Tim, I said to him, "I'll do. I'll do your. I'll rent out all your properties for free." He didn't have loads, but he had a few. And he had a couple of HMOs in Wolverhampton. So I'm managing his properties. I'm charging the tenants 90 pound. For me, that's not my style. A bit of extra income. And I'm getting in with landlords. I'm getting experience with tenants. So I was really grateful for that. I knew I was never going to get rich renting out people's properties for free. I knew I wasn't going to get rich even charging admin fees.

I worked on a building site for six weeks. And I was plastering. I knew I wasn't gonna get rich. It's my plastering business, which now, to be honest, kind of almost winding down because I, I knew only gonna get me rich. I've got the experience and indeed from it. What I needed was I needed experience. I needed knowledge. I needed to be meeting the right kinds of people. But the strategy that I really wanted to do, which is what everyone was doing at the time when I was 17 years old, people were buying houses and then they were buying them really cheap and then refinancing them. I'm putting all the money back out. Now, I knew I couldn't get in any finance. I couldn't get a mortgage. But I was thinking, "As soon as I turn 18, I'm gonna do this strategy." A mortgage broker said to me, "Sammy, when you won't be out through this at 18?" I said, "I said, because you've got to be 21 to get a buy-to-let mortgage." It was like stabbed in the chest, pull the rug from from underneath me.

So the strategy was that you find a house, let's say you find a house for a hundred thousand pounds. You negotiate to buy eighty thousand pounds for cash. You buy eighty thousand pounds for cash. But that cash is not your cash. That's a bridging loan. That's that's a loan. So you buy it for cash on a bridging loan. But then the same day you buy it, you get a mortgage on it up to its true value of a hundred thousand pounds. They'll give you an 80,000 pound buy-to-let mortgage. You use that 80,000 pounds to pay off the bridging loan. You'll be left with a free house. You've not put any money in. You've got to pay the mortgage, but you put tenants in that pay the mortgage. So you've got a house and you've got an income. That was the strategy. I'm, "What, this is amazing. How can I get one of these?" You've got to be 21. So I thought, "I'm not waiting." I'm 21. So I kindly asked my stepdad Tim, I said, "Tim, if I can find a house and if I can work with you and do whatever you want, I'll clean your shoes. I'll rent your houses out. Will you kindly let me put my first property in your name? Will you hold it in trust or be a mortgage host or whatever we need to do? But will you just hold it? You don't have to put any money down, but just so that I can get on the ladder."

Now, Tim was really happy to do that. He was proud of me. He was excited to see me win. So again, massive shout out to Tim. You know what, no one's self-made. And people, no one gave me any money. Tim didn't give me any money. My dad didn't give me any money. In fact, he used to sell magic tricks to me. My mom didn't give me any money. No one gave me money. People, my mentors, didn't give me any money. They charged me. My paper. I wanted to go on their courses. But what they did all give me was they gave me opportunities. They gave me belief. They believed in me. And my first property was on the Maryvale Road. I still own it today. I bought it for 100,000 pounds. It was worth 120. And I refinanced it the same day I bought it. Pulled all the money out. And this was done in Tim's name. To be honest, I didn't get how the finance worked, if it worked at all on that first property. I didn't understand it all. Is I'd negotiated to buy it cheap. And all these finance people, my mentors, were saying, "Yeah, you can do that." Like I was that ignorant. It was a case of, for me, it was a case of just saying, "If you do that on a light switch, the light goes on." Okay, I'll do that. I didn't understand how it worked. I didn't get investments. But I just knew the steps. And I was trusting in the process and throwing myself all in.

Now, just after my first deal, everything changed because this was when the recession came, big time. The property prices now going down. All the banks and lenders, mortgage express, if they went bust. And suddenly it was a case of everyone was screaming, "Oh my gosh, the days of property investing over." But my mentors and wealthy people told me to keep going. Warren Buffett says, "When people are scared, you should be greedy." Now, little did I know at this time, during this recession, when everyone was saying to me, "Get out, get out, get out," that was the time I needed to begin in more than ever. Because most people make money during recessions. I needed right now to go in hard and to buy as many houses as I possibly could with all these strategies that I'd learned on these training courses.

So, 17 years old, I bought one house, put it in my stepdad's name. Great. 18 years old, I went crazy. I was networking. I was going on training. I was viewing ridiculous amount of houses. I just drive to an Arab and we drive into Blackpool. And just, "I'm gonna spend a few days in Blackpool now." And it was hard. I was going into estate agents and they were like, "What'd you use?" So cheeky. You know, it was really, really hard. My mom respects because my mom used to come with me. She supported me. She helped me. And only sleep my brother who'd gone down the path of magic, working for my dad. He kind of teamed up with my dad. My dad had a business partner called Craig. Craig Petty. Later on, my dad actually went to Brazil and left the business. So my brother and Craig joined up and became business partners. And Russell was doing kind of well with with the business on the magic side. So respect to him on that side. And respect to my dad. Me, I'm now almost thinking, "I've got to make this work." My mom's believing in me. My mom's got to make this work.

During the whole year of being 18, how many houses did I get? How many deals did I do? None. I didn't do a single deal. And the reason was, just because it was tough. It was the recession. It was what was happening. Property prices were falling really low. Although I was trying to get properties, I didn't have any money. I didn't have any experience. I didn't have any credit. There's only so many houses that Tim would put in his name before me. Like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. But what I did have was I had persistence. And I did have people that were believing in me.

When I was 19 years old, I secured a cracking, cracking deal. Didn't have the money for it. And I remember thinking, "Where am I gonna get the money from?" The property was on the market at 85,000. I'd agreed to buy it for 65,000. Needed the money. Didn't have the money. I was networking. I was asking all these investors for it. Guess where the money ended up coming from? I borrowed the deposit from my grandma. My dad's mom. She gave me fifteen thousand pounds. I put that down as the deposit. And I gave her ten percent interest every single year. She was happy with that 10% interest. She again, she, I'm not self-made. But my grandma didn't give me that money. My grandmother loaned me that money. My grandma loved that loan agreement so much that five years later, when I tried to pay her back, she said, "Actually, can you extend it another year? If that, can I give you some more money? I've got another 15 grand." Because she was using the interest to go on annual cruises. And her savings weren't dwindling. So she was pleased. And she, in her mind, I was doing her a favor, using my investment knowledge to invest her money. But in my mind, I'm like, "I've got investment knowledge, but I haven't got any money myself." So she's doing me a favor. That's called win-win. That's business.

So that was my, that was my second deal. I then learned about lease option agreements, which is when you buy a house now, pay for it later. I started offering. I started off from people 100% market value. I'd say to people, "I'll buy your house, but I'll give you what you want, but I'll pay you on my terms, which is in seven years." And because the market was really sketchy and property prices had crashed, people were scared. So people would say, "Alright, that's fine, as long as you take on the mortgage and take responsibility of the property." So I started using creative strategies that I've learned from training to build up my property portfolio. It was a strange feeling getting money from people like tenants paying me money. I felt like, "How are they even taking me seriously as a landlord when I'm a teenager on like 19?" And I think the thing is, they don't care how old you are. The marketplace doesn't discriminate. They just care if your house is good. So I'm, I'm providing good houses, good accommodation. My first house that I bought, by the way, I rented that out on a room-by-room basis. I remember filling it up and just thinking, "Oh my gosh." My little family that I had in my house in Blocks, which that I borrowed money from my grandma. My tenants are really happy paying me money. With my lease option agreement, the sellers are happy. I'm putting tenants and I'm making money. And I just thought, "This is crazy."

And I wanted to make sure was well at this point because I'm from a working-class background and stuff. I thought, "You know what, when I become rich, I'm gonna help a lot of people." That's really what I wanted to do. I spent a month when I was actually 18 in Zambia. And I remember meeting a young boy, five years old. He just walked 12 kilometers with water on his head. He came back. And I said, "12 kilometers?" And the guy does, "Worth two days' walk, 12 kilometers to get water." I said, "Why?" And they said, "Because there's no water in the village." So they have to go the nearest clean water is 12 kilometers away. And then we just thinking, even though I didn't feel like I was wealthy growing up, I felt like I was quite poor, working-class family and stuff. It's all relative. And I'm just thinking, "When I get rich, I'm gonna help a lot of people." And even as a teenager, like, even though I didn't have that much money, my mom and my stepdad Tim, we didn't have a lot of money. But we actually worked. We're working with a lot of street kids in a really rough part of Walsall. We lived in Walsall, a place called Lemoore. And there's a lot of kids in there, really deprived, just literally on our doorstep. And we used to do a lot of work for them alongside the church. We'd hire out. We used to hire out a big conference center and just play, play sports with them, take them on trips. And actually, we ended up, we decided that we wanted to live amongst the gypsies. We wanted to live amongst these folks that were not quite as privileged as people that were from 10 minutes down the road. So we moved. We moved to Eagle Works Drive in Lemoore, really rough estate.

And I remember having quite a severe car accident when I was 20 years old. So I'm building a property business. It's going well. At the time, I was even working as an estate agent. I worked as an estate agent just for three, just to get some experience, to get some contacts. On working stage. And I've got my houses. I'm full-time in property. And I'm having a really severe car accident where my legs were absolutely battered. I had the car window smashed in my face. My car was crushed like a coke can. And I'm gonna be just thinking, "Yes, I want to make money. Yes, I want to be rich. Yes, I want to build my property portfolio. But jeez, life is so temperamental." And I took three years out from the air from from 20, 21 and 22 years old. For those three years, I signed up for Bible College. I went to Bible College for 3 years, 3 days a week. I was travelling to Birmingham. BBL XB BLI Bible College. New College. Dr. Reverend Robert Pickles. He was a fantastic man. And he accepted me into the college. And I studied there three days a week. And then on top of the three days study, actually at the college, I then had to do placement. So I was working in old people's home and going off on mission trips, going to Africa. During that time, I climbed Kilimanjaro and raised some money for Compassion Charity. And those three years was really where I found myself. I found my purpose. I matured in my faith. And I was only able to do college and to pay for college because of the income from my property portfolio. Now, at the time, I wouldn't have really even gone man saying I'm financially free. But actually, my rental income covered my lifestyle. So technically, those years of 20, 21, 22, I was financially free. Thank God for those properties.

When I was at Bible College, I had to write and study a lot. And and it was a Bible College where you're studying theology and faith and ethics. I thought, "Well, I want to do my dissertation on biblical economics. I want to study money, but from a position of what does the Bible say about money? And is it ethical?" So I studied this. And I put this into a book, by the way, called "Do the Possible, Watch God Do the Impossible." And when I left Bible College, that writing that book, it gave me a real release from. I almost felt torn beforehand, in the same way that I had been torn between working for my dad, the ethics of working for my dad, and the excitement wanting to be a businessman, to be a successful property investor. To have chosen to be an investor. Had the same moral dilemma again when I was at Bible College. If do I want to just be full-time doing charity work and, you know, a pauper, but helping people, like maybe a Mother Teresa type person? Or do I want to just be really successful in business? And it was this pulling. Do I want to be a good Christian boy and live a humble life? Or do I want to be wildly successful in property? And there was something that wanted to be both. And when I was at Bible College, I realized that I actually could have both. I could be wildly successful in business while also helping people. I realized that as long as when you make money, you make it ethically and you hold it with open hands and a generous heart, that actually making money is helping people. Having homes and accommodation which are affordable is helping people.

And the book went absolutely crazy on Amazon. It became a best-selling book on Amazon, sold thousands of copies across the world. And people were contacting me to say, "Can you teach your standing or can you teach us about money? Can you talk to us more about biblical economics?" So I set up a little network called Training Kings. And Training Kings was a Christian business network, but everybody was welcome from all different walks of life and different faiths or no faiths. And this went nationwide. We had 13 different training centers. So we'd meet regularly all across the country in England. Training Kings, Training Kings presents to you a Christian business. I met Training Kings. I look forward to seeing you. Financial freedom is dead simple. Financial freedom. There's a formula for. And this is it. It's when your passive income is equal to or greater than. Remember at school, when your passive income is equal to or greater than your living expenses. As we have just had Training Kings conference here in Zambia. And it was fantastic. Do what you love. Do what you know. And at the same time, is doing that because that kind of cost me a lot of money because putting on all these breakfasts and dinners and networking events, someone had to pay for this. And even though I was charging a small amount to cover people's breakfasts, just the organization and the hotel costs, I had to pay for myself. Now, I was financially free. So I didn't mind doing that. And I felt like I'm man on an absolute mission.

And I remember I was at a wedding. It was an African wedding in the UK. My pastor from Ghana was marrying a Zimbabwean lady. And I was at the front of the church singing really loudly at the front, like I always do. And I remember glancing back and just spotting a really beautiful lady right at the back of the church. And I remember just thinking, "She just lit the whole room up." You know, big beautiful eyes, big smile. I just thought, "I gotta speak to that lady. I gotta find out her name." And at the end of the service, I remember shooting to go and find this lady. And she'd gone. And I couldn't see her. And there was an after-party that I wasn't actually invited to. And I thought, "Maybe she'll be there." So I go to this after-party. And I think, "No one's gonna notice." And I remember getting to this little community center, opening the door. And literally, I was the only white dude in the room. Okay. So. And I move over the door. And you see, okay, everyone's definitely gonna spot me. And the groom kind of looks at me like, "What are you doing here?" And his face went from confusion to, "Oh, well, go get yourself some food." And I was feeling really awkward. I was standing at the buffet. But there was that amazing beautiful lady. I thought, "I just need to speak to her. I need to go and find a name." And it sounds quite creepy. It wasn't creepy, okay? But the thing is, she's tucked away. She's sitting there, looks like with a family. And all the chairs and tables are really crammed. And I'm thinking, "If I go up to her and have to literally squeeze past loads of people and say, 'Hey,' and she's just like, 'Hi,' what am I thinking? The same. I'm gonna then just walk back past everyone but like an idiot." So I'm a bit nervous. But I thought, "You know what, maybe this could be a red diamond moment." Meaning a moment of decision that could potentially shape the whole rest of your life. No, it sounds extreme. But it had that feeling. So push past everybody. Everyone moves the chest. I made a little bit of commotion. Got to the table. I said, "Hey." And she looks. And everyone on the table looks at me like, "Who on earth is this dude?" I don't know what I was thinking. This is where magic saved my life. My dad's a magician. I know magic tricks. I know how to do things with coins and little. And I pretended that I was the magician. I literally just said, "I'm the magician." It made sense. I'm this white dude in a suit. And and they were all great. And I thought, "Oh my goodness." So I did a couple of little tricks. And then I told them, "I'm not really a magician. I'm a friend of the groom." Sat next to this lady. And we got chatting for ages. I said, "Where you from?" She said, "I'm born and bred in Zimbabwe, Harare. But I now live in Leeds." I'm like, "My surname's Leeds." Like, that is craziness. I said, "If everyone in the area, maybe I could take you over some dinner?" And she was like, "Sure." I said, "You know what? I'm pretty sure in the area next week anyway." So we end up chatting for like two hours. And took her out the following week or a couple weeks later. And I ended up falling madly in love. And I thought, "I want to ask Amanda if she's interested in marrying me." Because she's a great person. And I thought, "I need to tell her about my finances. I need to tell her that I've got, you know, a million-pound property portfolio and I'm making pretty good money through property." And just tell her everything. And I felt comfortable to tell her. But the way I told her was interesting. Because instead of saying, "I've got a load of money and I'm making lots of cash flow," I said to her, "Amanda, I have not been totally upfront about my finances." She said, "What's that?" I said, "I'm actually a million pounds in debt." Now, of course, this is actually true because I did have a million pounds worth of debt, which was mortgage debt. And I also had a lot of equity. And I was making a good amount of passive income. And I thought, "Wonder how she'll respond to that?" And I remember she said, she said, "Oh, she's okay." She said, "Maybe I'll see if I can get some overtime." She was working as a surveyor, quantity surveyor. And I remember just my heart mounted. And I said to her, "Listen, I actually am a million pounds in debt. But I've also got quite a lot of equity." And I told her the full story of how I was financially free. Don't have to work again. Neither will she. And she, do even she won't even that excites. She just went, "Oh, that's good, isn't it?" I was like, "Yes, it's very good. And I'm very fortunate and lucky and blessed to say that Amanda, this lady, ended up accepting to marry me. And we got married the following year, which is just absolutely crazy."

At the time, I wasn't really working on the property business. I was working on Training Kings. I was working on the charity. I was going back and forth to Africa all the time. I visited nine different countries in Africa, some of them several times. Selfishly, I was getting really addicted to all the projects I was doing in Africa. Now, I say selfishly because wherever you go out to help people, and I've been out to many, as I say, many different countries in Africa and gone to some of the really rural parts and helped work in orphanages and schools and bring water and food, clothing. Yes, you're helping the people. Yes, you're impacting the villagers and and and giving necessities or whatever it might be. But you're also helping yourself. Because whenever I've been out to make an impact, I've always been impacted more myself. I've gone out to be a blessing, but I've ended up being more blessed myself. So I wanted to take out a small team from the UK to one of my trips in Africa. Of course, Amanda, my wife, was going to be coming. But I got a little small team. One of the people that came, I invited my school teacher, who was one of the very few school teachers that actually believed in me as a kid. Her name was Mrs. Highsmith. And I remember saying to her, "Mrs. Highsmith, I'd like to invite you to come out to Africa to help with some of the projects we've got going on." And she was up for it. She's an amazing lady. So here's a little small team together. And we went out to Solwezi in Zambia, which is a quite a rural town in Zambia. And we went about 40 minutes from Solwezi to this very, very small village. And this was the village where I met that small boy who hadn't in his village had any drinking water. And we provided a borehole in the village. And not only was it impacting the people, but it was impacting me. And now my team. And I just thought, "This is just incredible. I want to do this more. I want to make more money. I want to buy more houses. I just want to scale big. I want to grow."

And I thought, "How can I make money fast through property?" Because the thing is, if property is, even though it's a great way to make money, you've got to save money first and then you buy the property. Or even if you do it strategically, the lease option agreement, getting rents of people, it's not fast cash. It just, it just increases your monthly income. But how can I get some faster cash? How can I? Because I want, I want to grow the charity side of things, the projects. I want to get the charity registered. Because at this point, it was not registered. I wanted to register it so that people could then donate money into it properly, so that it's all done properly. But I realized that that was going to take not just money to register a charity, but a lot of time and resources. Because registering a charity is not like just registering a business. It can take a lot of time. And I really wanted to just grow. So I thought, "I know what I'll do." These people from the crash course and from Training Kings and all these investors and all these times I'm doing these talks and I'm getting more known. They wanna do property. What I'll do is I will offer to take them out in my car for a day, show them around some really good property investments that are for sale. And if they like them and if they buy them, they can pay me a fee. Because I'd work just an estate agent where you just sell houses. But when you work as an estate agent, that is seller gives you the money. But what my strategy is really good at is finding good brilliant investments. So I thought, "If I can find brilliant investments, I can sell them to investors and charge a fee."

Hi, I'm Samuel Lanes. We're here in Wolverhampton. We've got the city centre just about five minutes away. Bentley Bridge. Look around the house. And all our tubers. Then we're out here with a couple of new up-and-coming property investors. We've got five properties that all the market to look at today. And hopefully by the end of the day, when I found a four-bedroom HMO for less than 100 grand that is in good condition. So it's good, a good day. I even do it. Excited text alert. Today we're going to be going out with two investors. So I started doing deal sourcing. I set up a little company called Buy Low Rent High Limited, packaging deals and selling them to investors. And this company became so successful. I started selling so many property deals. It was just like I couldn't even cope. I had more investors wanting deals than I could physically find deals. I've sold over 200 deals. And it just blew up. And I used all of that money to not only build my own portfolio even bigger, but also to help with the charity work that I was doing in Africa. Also to fund Training Kings. And it was 25 years old when I actually became a cash millionaire. 25 years old. It became a millionaire. And at this point, life just felt really, really good. Because I've gone from being a broke teenager that doesn't know anything about property and going to these networking events and hoping people will take me seriously. Having the same network meetings saying, "Samuel, can you come and be the speaker with Training Kings?" That side of things was going crazy. So I've now got full-time staff that I'm paying. Training Kings is not making any money. And I'm teaching people about business and about finance and about how to do it with ethics as a Christian. And people are literally through Training Kings, they're setting up charities and they're setting up enterprises and social enterprises and doing works. And it was absolutely amazing what was happening. But people would always say to me, "Teach us about property." You know, "Teaches about property." And I didn't really want Training Kings, the Christian Business Network, to be Training Kings aka property. So I started doing, alongside my Training Kings, I started doing some small events called Property Investors Crash Courses. And these were just one-day crash courses, a bit like my plastering crash course.

That I did as a teenager. I said, "Look, I've done quite well in property. I'll teach you everything in property, and I'll run it as a one-day course, separate to Training Kings. And if anyone's interested, this is it." And that became really popular. People would pay 250 pounds to attend the one-day course. And that, to be honest, didn't really make me much money, but it just covered costs of hotels and food and different things like that. And it was good.

I wasn't particularly a fantastic host. Sometimes, I remember one time there were, we booked a hotel room, and I got to the event, and I got there about an hour early, and the door was locked. And it was probably because I hadn't hired an expensive hotel room. And I was thinking, "Oh my goodness." And people started arriving, and I was saying, "Hi," and they're like, "What time are we gonna go in?" And the door was locked. And I'm frankly phoning beyond the same, "Come on, you need to let me in." It was really stressful. There were some really interesting, stressful times.

But the property investors crash course really began to get popular, and people would spread the word, and people would do deals as a result of coming to the crash course and start doing property for themselves. And that was really satisfying. I really enjoyed doing that, and people wanted to learn from me, and I would do the crash course. But I had this thing where, even though I would charge for the crash course, it's 250 pounds, I didn't want to sell at the crash course. Because when I, when I was 17, 18, I did a lot of training courses. Every time I'd go to a training course, same thing, they do a special offer and they'd sell it to me in a blog. And I'd buy because I'd be really emotional, I'd want to become financially free, annoyed by it. But then when I went on the advanced train, and they did the same thing again, and they just say, "If you really want to know, you have to do this." And then I'd buy again. And if you're it, and I ended up spending tens of thousands of pounds when I was really, really struggling financially. And some of the training was really good, and it got me to around today. But some of the training was not too good. And I had this complex around selling, especially a training program. I didn't want to do it.

Now I'm 25 years old, I'm a millionaire, I'm running crash courses, I'm charging 250 pounds, and that's it. And these students would say, "Can you do some more training? Can you mentor me? Can you do some advanced stuff?" And I'd always say, "Nope, that's it. One day crash course, done." And I remember one of my mentors said to me, he said, "What, why do you not offer any advanced training?" He said, "Students?" I said, "No, I'm not allowed to do that because I don't want to sell it. I wanted to teach everything at the crash course." He said, "Okay. He said, "Does some of your students come to the crash course and then go and pay for advanced training elsewhere? Do they join other people's masterminds, other people's academies, other people's?" And I said, "I thought about it. I thought, they actually do." Because a lot of people would message me and they say, "Samuel, thank you for getting me started in property. I've now done mentoring or advanced training with this person, but you were the one that got me started." And I was thinking, "Now, yeah, they do. It's okay." He said, "Could you teach it better than those people?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Would you be able to do it for the same price or cheaper?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, you know what, Samuel, in trying to be kind and not salesy and all that, he said, you're actually robbing people and you're disserving people."

I was in Thailand at the time when my mentor said this to me. And I just thought, "This is crazy." This was December 2016. I'm in Thailand. I've got a crash course the next month. Pop. And I'm just about to start promoting at 250 pounds. And I thought, "You know what? Here's what I'm gonna do. He's right. I am disserving people. People are coming to my crash course, they're not gonna learn everything in one day." Here's what I'll do. I'll do the crash course for two days. I'll make it free. I'll get lots of people to come. It's free. But then I'll say, "If you want to do advanced training or mentoring," and I'll offer a service where they can do advanced training. And I did that. And I had 126 people, January 2017, in the room. It was two days. It was free. And then I offered, I said, "If you want to do more training," and I made an offer. And you know what? It felt quite good because I knew that these people needed it and wanted it. And if I didn't offer it, they would go and do it with someone else elsewhere and pay more and get less of an experience. And I had 22 people, 22 people registered for a program that I created called the Deal Finding Extravaganza. That was a three-day advanced training program.

I can invest in property, afford to get into it, get a return, big funds. The biggest thing today was conferred Tiffany's members searching to market their actual market, revive new corner pages. And those people, most of them went on to do deals and become successful and now credit me as part of their journey. I just thought, "This is great." I got addicted to that feeling. And I was thinking, "I really want to scale. I really want to grow." And then my wife, Amanda, got pregnant. And we moved into a little barn conversion out in the country. There, Featherstone, in Wolverhampton. And I thought, "You know what? Can I really be bothered to do all this training? Can I really be bothered to do the YouTube videos and to do crash courses?" And especially when the crazy thing is, when you do a crash course and you teach people for free, and you do YouTube videos, yep, there was always, there would always be people that would come or that would comment on YouTube and say, like, "Oh, you're just trying to exploit people. Though you're not the real deal, or you're a fraud, you're a scammer, you're a heavy salesperson, and you're this." And to be honest, it kind of used to get to me a little bit. I think, "Ah, just because I'm allowed kind of personality and the way I am might seem a bit like salesy or a bit kind of American." Or I just thought, "I don't want to be branded with that brush because that's not my heart. That's not what I started my training business as Training Kings, which was non-for-profit, just because I want to help people. I didn't want to be one of those rich people but they hid away and I'm trying to help people and I'm giving people content and for information and people are just hating on me because of it." And of course, it was only the odd person would hate. I always say, for everyone hate, you've helped 100. But I thought, "Do I really want to do this? Do I really want to put my head above the parapet for someone to come and try and chop it off all over and over again? Or shall I just retire on a millionaire? I've got a nice property portfolio that's giving me a good income where I never have to work again. Shows retire now. I've got a beautiful wife who's praying." So I told Amanda, "I don't think I'm gonna carry on with the training business. I'm gonna calm down on the deal selling side of things and maybe just package himself one or two deals a month. I'm just gonna do a few charity shows with my dad or whoever, working for my brother for fun. Don't want any money. I just want to live life fun, free, easy, retirement type life." 25 millionaire, 26 now. And Mandy said, "I'll support you in that. That's fine."

So we had Ruby, Ruby Joy Leeds, was born in October 2017. And I kind of retired at that point. And four months after retiring, Anna said to me, she said, "Are you okay?" I said, "Yeah, I'm fine." She said, "You've not been yourself the last few months. Like, what's going on?" And I realized that I wasn't meant. I wasn't meant for retirement. I was getting itchy feet. I had so much pent-up energy. I just done a cage fight, a charity cage fight, because I wanted to let some steam off. And honey just said, "I don't even want you around the house right now. Like, you're just hopping around." Like she said, "You need to go and sell some deals. You need to go make some money. You need to start traveling. You need to, you need to start doing crash courses again and getting on stage." I said, "You think so?" She said, "Yeah." So I said, "Okay."

And I spoke to my brother. I said to him, "Man, I'm thinking of getting back doing crash courses again. And thinking they're doing the, going back into property and actually growing my business rather than just getting lazy." And I said, "How you doing in business?" And he was doing really well on his business. He was running slightly unusual with Craig. They were really good entertainment. You'll see they had lots of staff. They were doing lots of, I'll know over 200 shows a month between, between amongst the whole company. I thought, "You know, I want to grow big. I want to scale on my business. I want to leave a legacy. I want to help people. I want to register my charity. But I can't really do this alone. I want a business partner." So I offered Russell a business partnership. I said, "Why don't you work with me? Leave the magic business. Come and work with me. We'll grow the property business. We'll scale it. We'll train as many people as we can in property. Oh, I'm gonna take YouTube more seriously. I'm gonna do et video every single day. And let's do this together." And with a little bit of persuasion, Russell agreed. And Russell took his business acumen, his big thinking, lots of staff, and lots of with my knowledge of property and my ability to make a lot of money in property. But we brought that together and we scaled the business.

And as soon as Russell started working with me, he was like, "We need to do bigger deals." I was like, "No, I don't think so. I like these little small HMOs." You guys know bigger deals. And Russell ended up working with me, and we bought the castle. We bought Ribsfoot House, which is an absolutely fabulous Grade II listed building with a gross development value now of 6.35 million pounds. So Russell's big think, I got a credit here because he found the castle. Remember Russell saying to me, "We need to get bigger mentors." And I'm like, "Yeah, but this mentor that I've had for like eight years is really good. What's the first farming keep that?" But it's so. I started just really going to new heights. Russell said, "We were only getting 200 people at the crash course. We need to get bigger venues." I'm like, "How big do you reckon we should get?" So we started. We booked out the Ibis Hotel in London. That holds 1,200 people. Thinking, "Surely we're not gonna fill this. We're not gonna fill this. I've only ever run events for like 250 people max." But as we did, as we got a bigger venue, and we just had faith and believed that we'd fill it, we did. And I mean, Russell was just like thinking, "Yeah, this is, this is that where it should be out." I'm thinking, "Surely this is a one-off event. That this won't happen again." Russell says, "Let's book the Ibis Hotel again next week." I'm like, "Come on, dude, that's ridiculous." We booked the Ibis again next week. We sold it out. A thousand people. This became the new normal.

So now it's at a stage where we're talking. I'm planning. Me and my wife are talking. We're celebrating. And it's like, "How can we continue to grow? Continue to help people? Continue to bring change? Continue to make profit?" Like, one of the next steps. We're doing bigger deals. We're doing bigger events. I'm now getting invited to go and speak at all these conferences. I haven't even got time. I'm winning awards. I'm like, "I don't even remember applying for that award." It's just that I'm getting calls from people that are celebrities, people that I used to watch as a kid on the TV. And now phoning me up personally to say, "Can I talk to you about property? Can we do deals together?" So it's right at this point now, I'm like 27, 28. I'm pinching myself. And me and Russell are talking. And one of our, one of our directors of the company said, "I think that we need to, as a company, I think that we need to move." I'm like, "What do you mean move?" "I think we need to move offices. I think we need to move locations." I look at Russell, and Russell looks at me. And what suppose we've already spoken and I agree. I'm like, "We can't move from Hilton Hall in Wolverhampton." And I'm like, "What do you think?" "Move more central to the city of Wolverhampton." And Russell said, "We're thinking that we should probably move to London." "London?" "You think we should move to LA?" I'm a Black Country boy. I'm born and bred in like, Wolverhampton. Up London, I can't imagine living there. So I said, "I'll tell you what, I'll go and look at some houses for rent and I'll go and look at some offices and get a vibe and see how I feel."

Now, at this point, I've got meetings in London back and forth all the time. So last year, we made a real bold move. And even though everything's really expensive and it's really different, we moved to London. And we spoke to Amanda's brother. This is really exciting. Who is a property chartered surveyor. And we said, "Hey, do you want to come in on the business?" So he's now come on the property side of the business. And he's moved. So we live just outside of London in Buckinghamshire. The family are close by. Me and Amanda have now a second child. So we've had Ruby Joy. We now got Luke, Luke Samuel Leeds. And last year, we made over two million pounds clean profit across the businesses. Turned over just shy of ten million pounds. But it's not about how much money you make. It's about what that money can do and how far you can help people. And we just had a charity, Samuel Leeds Foundation. Finally, we've got the commission number. Which for me is just absolutely incredible. We're in the process of working with the school. We're looking to build a school in Uganda. And there's just so much crazy, good, exciting stuff going on. Has it all been easy? No. Has it been challenging? Yes. My net worth is now over 10 million pounds. And like, I can't believe it, if I'm honest. I'm 29 years old. Did I intend to become a multi-millionaire? No, I didn't. I intended to become financially free in property to just give me more time. I intended just to make a decent living because I knew that I wouldn't be able to do it with school qualifications. And now I'm on a mission. All I want to do is a few things. I want to bring financial education into schools. I want people to realize that if they're not good in school, or if they don't like their job, or if they don't, that there's another way. And that's property. And for me, property has changed my life. And I want to publicly thank those that have stood with me. Thank those that have helped me, that have opened doors for me. No one's self-made. It's the people that have given opportunities. All I've done is taken those opportunities, believed I could do it, and I'm grateful. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful to my family. I'm grateful to my customers. I'm grateful to my staff. I'm also excited about the next few years. So I'll be doing an update, no doubt in another year or another few years' time. And who knows what's gonna have happened. But hey, thank you for watching this video. Thank you for being a subscriber of the YouTube channel because YouTube's kind of almost become my life now. I love documenting my journey. So just thank you, folks. And remember, if I can do it, so can you.