Transcription
I spent £250,000 having Grant Cardone mentor me for three hours one-on-one. I spent £50,000 having a one-on-one session with Robert Kiasaki. I spent £10,000 sitting down in a small group session with Gary Vaynerchuk. I spent £5,000 sitting down, there was five of us around a table for an hour and a half with Lord Sugar. I have had Dan Pena in this room mentoring.
And in this video, I thought I would share the main key lessons that I've learned from these well-known business gurus so that you don't have to spend the hundreds of thousands of pounds that I did, cuz I'll teach you for free.
The first thing I learned was that attention follows money. This is about branding, putting yourself out there and not caring what people think. I am on Tik Tok, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, constantly sharing what I'm doing, showing my portfolio, talking to my clients, my students, my investors. And guess what? As a result of that, some people don't like me. Some people find me annoying. Some people talk bad about me. And it doesn't matter because whilst it might not be pleasant when you've got people talking bad about you, ultimately the upside is that lots of people know me. And contacts equals contracts, as Grant Cardone says, which means that the more people know me, the more business I can do. People bring me property deals. I can finance property deals. The property business and any business is primarily a people business. Without people, we can't make money. Money flows through you. So, the power of branding and how to articulate myself and put myself out there and and also having confidence to do that, but knowing how to do it effectively has been a massive, massive lesson from all of these people that I've been naming because they all do that. They all understand the power of personal branding and business branding. So, that's the first lesson.
The second lesson is knowing how to deal with the online criticisms, knowing how to deal with the the negativity. This was something Grant Cardone really helped me with around about 2019, 2020, where I was facing a lot of criticism in the media and it was really annoying because the stuff that they were saying about me, it wasn't true and I was really riled and I'm like, "HOW HAVE THEY PRINTED THIS? THIS is outrageous." And I was really angry about it and I felt like it was unjust and I didn't have a right to properly reply because they would just put a tiny, you know, one sentence in after four pages of stuff that's not really true or it's half-truths, innuendos. And the way I was talked about in the media and also on social media as well, you know, it used to really um make me feel quite annoyed, upset, some think, "Why am I even doing this? Why am I?" Whereas Grant Cardone massively helped me with that and he he saw me see it differently and at some point I'm sure I'm going to release the conversations that I had with Grant, with his permission of course, and and and in part where he just massively changed and you can see the aha moment where the penny drops and he talks about, "Put the facts on the table otherwise people make stuff up." So you can't really ignore the criticism. What you need to do is you need to lean into it and let it fuel you. And if you've been following me for a while, you probably know that I do do this. I have debates. I'll lean into it. If the media write an article, I'll talk about it and I'll go through it line by line. I'll make content out of it. And that's that's really the best way to deal with it. And if it's not true, understand that they they crucified Jesus. You know, if you're doing something, if you're building something and it's and it's good, you're going to get that criticism. You're going to get that persecution. you're going to get that hate. Um, in fact, if they're not talking about you and not hating on you, then you're probably not doing something right because every great person has haters. I'm not saying I'm a great person, but it just means that my perception on it now is very, very different. And that's thanks to not just Grant Cardone, but some of the mentors that I've had.
Another big thing that I learned, I'm going to credit Robert Kiyosaki on this massively, is the power of leverage. The power of using other people's money. See, when you think, "Oh, I haven't really got enough money." Robert Kiyosaki talked about this in Rich Dad Poor Dad. And I read this when I was like 16, 17, where he says, "Never say, 'I can't afford it.' Instead, say, 'How can I afford it?'" But actually meeting Robert Kiyosaki and spending time with him, it really clicks and makes sense because Robert Kiyosaki is the master at understanding money. He has studied money. The guy knows, he knows all about debt, the banking system, how money was created, gold, silver, he has studied it. And spending time with him and learning that debt is money. Learning that money isn't real. Robert Kiyosaki showed me that money is fake. They're printing money. Why would you save something and work for something that is being printed? Now, I read some of this in his books and I kind of got it. But listening to him and asking him questions and having him just be like, "What are you talking about, man?" Like, after I met Robert Kiyosaki in 2018, I saw my business and my wealth just explode when I understood what money really is and how money isn't what we think it is. In fact, I've gone on to write a whole book myself called The Future of Money. And I'm going to have to credit the legend Robert Kiyosaki. The book is my own and it's my own studies, but he got me down the path. He got me down the rabbit hole and helped me get really, really rich. So that was a brilliant £50,000 investment. And of course, it was a tax write-off as well because that's another thing I learned from Robert Kiyosaki and also some of the Rich Dad mentors, which is about how to avoid paying taxes completely legally and how the government don't want you to pay taxes. I didn't realize this until Robert said it in 2018 to me. He said, "Samuel, the government don't want you to pay taxes." I'm like, "What do you mean?" He says, "Look, they've created these incentives for you not to pay." And it it made sense. So, completely life-changing.
Next, I'll talk about Lord Sugar. I met Lord Sugar when I was in my 20s. It was 2017 in November. We sat around a table of five, spent an hour and a half with him where he just grilled us on our business plan. And at the time, I had 96 houses. And I remember telling him with great pride in my 20s that I'd built this portfolio from scratch. And what he said was, he said, "You own 96 houses." I said, "Yeah." He went, "Why on earth would anybody want to do that?" And he looked around the room like, "Why would anyone want to do that?" And I'm like, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, that's just 96 headaches, 96 boilers. Are they residential?" I said, "Yeah." He went, "Oh." This blew my mind because I thought he was going to pat me on the back and say, "Wow, well done, son." He didn't. He ripped me apart because he said that my business plan wasn't sustainable. And do you know what? He was so right. I was such a busy fool. I had management companies, but managing the management companies was just as bad as managing the tenants. And my goal was to have a thousand houses. And what Lord Sugar taught me was that a big deal and a small deal take just as much effort. Rather than having a thousand houses or even 96 houses, you're better to build your portfolio this way as opposed to this way. In other words, hotels, commercial properties, land development. And it was Lord Sugar that really completely changed my business plan and got me started on hotel, the hotel business, commercial properties. When I understood capital allowances, commercial properties, how commercial properties are valued, like my profit has massively, I mean, a hundred times since I met Lord Sugar. I spent £4,800 to be specific to sit down with Lord Sugar. And although me and Lord Sugar have had some spats and some beef and some ding-dongs publicly since that meeting, I'll always honor and credit Lord Sugar for helping me change my business plan when I was still just a 27-year-old kid.
Let me talk about Gary Vaynerchuk. So, I spent maybe an hour or so with Gary Vaynerchuk and I think this must have been 2019, so about 6 years ago or so. The biggest thing I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk is his compassion. I genuinely believe that Gary Vaynerchuk really cares about who he's speaking with. I don't think it's a front. I think he actually cares about all of his fans, his followers, his students, his staff. He's a man of compassion. And for me, the way I now view my business, like all of my academy members and all of my clients, my investors, I don't see them as clients, investors, students. I genuinely see them as people that I just want to work with and want to help. And my whole philosophy in business went from chasing the money and wanting to make as much money as possible and grow the business and to build an empire. I want raving fans. You know, I want my tenants to be fans, my guests, my investors, my students, my clients, people that I loan money to. I don't just want to make this transactional. I want them to be like, "Wow, that was a good experience." And what I've realized is being a compassionate capitalist and caring about your people, your staff, your tenants actually results in having a much bigger, happier, more successful, thriving company. And I owe that to Gary Vaynerchuk.
Richard Branson's not mentored me, but I have met him on two occasions and we've had like a dinner where I've paid to attend a dinner, couple thousand pounds I think from memory. There's so many people I've paid to be in the room with to sit with just for a few minutes to shake their hands. Richard Branson, biggest lesson from him is that he just has fun. He has fun doing his business. He doesn't see it as work. He genuinely would do it for free and because he loves it and he's passionate about it and he cares about his people. That's why he prospers.
Dan Pena, let me talk about Dan Pena. Completely different character. Dan Pena is hard as nails. He is about as tough as they come. I learned so much from Dan Pena. I spent a lot of time with him and I'm not even gonna talk about it in this video. You know what? I don't want to do a disservice by just spending two minutes talking a quick what Dan Pena taught me. Dan Pena, I've created a manual, a PDF guide which goes through all the lessons that I learned from the $50 billion man that is Dan Pena. So, if you want to learn what I learned from spending time with Dan Pena, then it's completely free. Click the link below and you can get access immediately to the guide, the PDF download which would go through all the points that I learned from the $50 billion man Dan Pena. And I think this is going to be the best part. So download it completely for free and enjoy.