#236 - How I Made My first Million (And How You Can Too)

No one gives a shit about your seven-figure revenue. It's all about profit margin and net worth. 13% of the Australian population are considered millionaires, meaning they've got a net worth over a million dollars. But I would say almost all of them did it through property. And how they did it was they, I could have bought real estate, but I didn't know where I was going to live. I didn't want a mortgage to be anchored to. I felt like it was going to corner me and

hold me down. One day, I sat down and thought, I want to become a millionaire. What do I have to do? How long is it going to take me? I'm Lloyd James Ross, seven-figure investor and entrepreneur, and I've helped thousands of business owners and professionals turn financial stress into success. If you're stuck in old money habits, overwhelmed by investing, or unsure where to start, this is for you. I'll give you the mindset and strategies to take control, grow your wealth, and achieve

financial freedom. It's time to make your money work for you. How I made my first million. That's the episode. It's going to be fun to tell a little bit of this story. And throughout the story, I'm going to impart pieces of lessons for you so you can also make your first million. Now, when I talk about making my first million, I don't mean my first million

dollars of revenue coming in from my job or my business. I mean my first million dollar net worth where my assets minus my liabilities equal to a million dollars. And I didn't do it alone. Success as a team sport. So I don't like those terms like self-made millionaire. If you're using your phone, Steve Jobs invented that, Steve Jobs helped you. So I did this with my wife, Alicia, who was on one of our episodes recently you saw, and this is how I did it. In fact, I wrote this book, this one

you see here. showing the exact process by which I did make that first million. So people often say when they see a book that gets promoted and people buy, they think that their money making is from the book about how to make the money and it's not. I actually wrote that book after we became millionaires. And so this is where it started. I was in a job. I was in Abu Dhabi working there. I was 22, 23. It was August 2008 when I took that job. I didn't have much to my name, maybe 10 grand,

I think I had at that point. And this story is to how I started there and became a millionaire by the age of 36. So I guess it was about 7, 6, 13 years it took me to go from $10,000 net worth to a million dollar net worth. And I didn't know how I was going to do it. I just knew that I wanted to do it. It was a fun goal. And back then, before inflation, that was quite

a bit of money. But now it's not. What's interesting about my story that's different to others to give you a bit of a unique look at it is that I did it without property and I think in Australia that is a very unusual thing because most people are millionaires in fact I think the stats are about 13% of the Australian population are considered millionaires meaning they've got a net worth over a million dollars but I would say almost all of them did it through property. And how

they did it was they bought a property many years ago and did nothing. And that's how the property grew up as well. They didn't do nothing. They didn't sell it, which is good. But the growth in the property from the immigration and the lack of land supply created that million dollar net worth, right? So

I did it differently. I didn't do it with property. Back when I started, firstly, I knew that I had to underspend my income. Without a doubt, that's the only way you can build wealth. I don't know anyone that spent more than their income end built wealth. This is not possible because there's a delta. There has to be some money left over for you to then buy assets or invest in a business or whatever it might be. So that's what I started to

do first. Rented a cheap car. rented out my rooms, room shared, didn't go on lavish holidays, didn't buy lavish clothes, and I just underspent my income to save money. I saved about $40,000 to $50,000. I repatriated back to Australia, got into business with my dad in property. I was selling houses, so I was making more money. But it was still a job for me. It was six days a week. And of course, I continued to underspend

my income. And what I decided to do was that extra bit of money I was saving, it allowed me to go into that new career without borrowing any money. It allowed me to buy happiness, so to speak. I talk about it in that book, Money Buys Happiness. And I decided I need to put the money away. So I could have bought real estate. But I didn't know where I was going to live. I didn't want a mortgage to be anchored to. I felt like it was going to corner me

and hold me down, having all that debt. And I don't like stress in my life. I don't like worry. So I'm like, well, that's just going to create more of that. So I'm going to avoid that. What should I do? And I picked up this book by Warren Buffett. Well, it's actually by Alice Schroeder called The Snowball. And it's about Warren Buffett's life. Fun fact, I'm going to see Warren Buffett this week. I'm flying out Thursday to go and see Warren Buffett.

So that's cool. For the first time in Omaha. Anyway, I read this book and he was investing in shares. And it really gave me this, like the penny dropped for me that I understood that straight away. I was like, I get this concept. This makes sense for me. Buying pieces of undervalued businesses. Ha ha. This is better than buying a house. So I took some of that extra cash I was saving from my job initially and then into the property game where

I was marketing and selling property, running a small business with my dad. And I would always, if I did a settlement or did a deal and got paid, I would get paid about $10,000 or $12,000 back then each time I did a real estate settlement. And I'd take half of it and pay myself and I'd take half and buy shares. And I did that. Deal in, deal out, deal in, deal out, deal in, deal out, deal in, deal out. Every time I got paid, pay myself some, bought

shares, pay myself some, bought shares, pay myself some, bought shares. And like I just played that game for quite a while, I still underspent my income. So whilst my wife Alicia and I could go on holidays, she was working full-time as a paralegal, I was working six days a week, we didn't go and buy Range Rovers, we didn't, we still live in the same apartment. that we did 12 years ago. We still haven't left it. And there's a real secret there with wealth creation, which

is pretty much the sameness of sameness of same. So the way that I invest my money now is the same as what I did 15 years ago. The same place we live in is the same we did 12 years ago. The same, the same. You would see me in these episodes, I'm wearing the same t-shirts. The same cut, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same, the same. There's a lot of magic with wealth building, which is the same. Once you figure out what works, why

change it? And that's what happens to people a lot. They'll change direction so much, they just don't get any traction. And you see this in how many times they shift where they live, what car they drive, what clothes they're buying, what type of investments they're buying. They do it over multiple businesses. Oh, there's another shiny business, I'll go there. And they get no traction. So what happened to me when I was in the property industry and buying these shares, I started

to see my portfolio grow. And my portfolio was probably at about $300,000 by then in 2014, maybe $250,000. It wasn't massive because remember, I didn't buy a house. So I had the equity that would have gone into a house and I was paying about $550 a week rent. But I was also splitting it between my wife and her sister who was living with us at the time. So my rent was like $200 a week. When you think about it,

that's crazy low, right? So I've always tried to keep my costs low It's just the most effective way to almost guarantee you're gonna get ahead It's easier to manage the cost than it is to increase your income in my opinion You have more control over that and so 250,000 roughly in the portfolio working six days a week in property and I remember one day I sat down and thought Just quickly, if you're ready to take control of your finances but

feel stuck on where to start, I have a solution. My book, Money Buys Happiness, simplifies investing and wealth building with practical steps to help you achieve financial peace. Get your copy via the link in the show notes and let's get your money working for you. Now back to the episode. I want to become a millionaire. Now

I want to do it. What do I have to do? How long is it going to take me? And I remember sitting in the office at 7 o'clock at night. I pulled up an Excel spreadsheet, and I put in $250,000, whatever the portfolio was. I'm saving $25,000 a year, buying stocks. I have no debt. This is my income. I think it's probably going to stay very similar. Hopefully, it goes up if I can do more deals. And I realized it was going to take me

15 years to become a millionaire. And at the time, I was probably about 30, 31. I was like, oh. Oh my God, I want to be a millionaire at 45, 46. Like what am I going to do? And I realized I can't cut them anymore. Like I still want to have a reasonable life, but I was like, well, I need to increase my income. So how was I going to do that? And then my sister introduced me to a business model called network marketing,

accidentally fell into it. And I tried the products, got in shape, actually went on to win a bodybuilding competition using the products, which is really life-changing for me. And then I helped other people get the products and use them. And so my wife and I with my sister built this network marketing business on the side with the objective to increase my income by $25,000 a year, which is, by the way, only 500 bucks a week. It's

not like heaps. So what if we could keep doing my real estate deals six days a week, and then make an extra $500 a week network marketing, and take the extra money and invest it into shares. And by doing that, I was doubling my saving rate and doubling my investing rate, which means I was going to cut the time in half. So I was going to be a millionaire in seven and a half years instead of 15 years. It was simple math. So I was like, this is going to be the strategy. This is my strategy. This is

it. So we got after it. I stayed working. I didn't jump out of my job. I would do appointments in the office and go downstairs and get on the phone and do network marketing. Go back upstairs, do an appointment, do marketing. It's just boom, boom, boom. On weekends, we'd drive and fly to Sydney to learn more about network marketing. We would do things on the weekend. In the evenings, I'd pick Alicia up from work, go home, sit in the car, do

the work, do the work, do the work. And we did that for four years from when we started in 2014, 2018. And in that time frame, we reinvested a lot back into building that business. But what we developed is about $180,000 a year of extra money on the side while we're in our jobs. And I realized at that point, we were able to add about another half a million dollars to the portfolio, maybe $400,000. And by the time I left my job in the property business in 2018, the

portfolio was at about $650,000. And as I left that in 2018, by the time 2020 rolled around, the portfolio had lifted from $650,000 to $700,000 up to a million dollars. So I'd left my job We went full-time in our network marketing business in 2018. The portfolio was at about $650,000, was paying us passive income from dividends, which

is what allowed us to get out of our jobs as well. It wasn't just the side hustle, it was a combination of that for me to pay my rent and everything, and then also the side hustle of $180,000 a year. Alicia left her job, so we're basically financially independent. And the portfolio then grew as COVID hit. And I remember picking up my phone one day before I wrote this book. I was like, I really want to write a book about how we did this. Because if you think about it, we became financially

free out of the rat race in our 30s. Completely

free, which is unbelievable, really, when you think about it. And back then, especially. And I had a million dollar portfolio. I was like, well, this is interesting. Didn't own any property. I'd like to be able to get it to a million bucks before I write this book. And I remember before we launched this book down in Corumban, I looked at my phone, pulled up my portfolio, and it was like $998,000. It was just sitting there. I was watching it, I was watching it, and watching it. I was like,

oh my God, I want it to be a million bucks, I want it to be a million bucks. And I scrolled the phone down, hit the record button, And I recorded, and I'm sure if I pull up the recording now on my phone and go back far enough, I could find it. And I recorded it as it clicked over to a million bucks. And I remember sending the video to my little sister and saying, look at this, it's a million dollars. And at that time, it's like, you kind of, you have this fantasy of

what happens when you become a millionaire. You're like, oh, my life's gonna change and it's gonna be amazing. And then the marching band never came in. And I was like, oh, we're millionaires, that's it. No debt, million dollar net worth, free. And then I wrote that book about it, about how other people could do the same thing. And I've been helping people ever since to do the same thing, following the same system, the same strategy as what we've done. And it's in that book. And

then beyond that, we do other things. now multi-millionaires. But what's interesting is the strategy really changes. Underspend your income, find ways to add extra money with a side hustle or business, invest the proceeds consistently into the same sort of asset class that you understand and be patient and it will grow over time. Those three steps of underspend your income, find ways to make extra money

and invest in assets that you understand are the three components and steps that I talk about in this book, and they're repeated in this book. There's two extra steps in here for mindset and mentorship, which speeds things up. But the concepts remain the same. And that's where this sameness comes into wealth building that people really underestimate, that gets them in a lot of trouble because they get bored. And one of the things you got to do when you're trying

to build wealth is keep the mundane exciting. And so what's great about this is that little network marketing business we built and started in 2014 is now still in great condition and growth and it pulls in so much money still every week for us. And we're still the number one leaders in action for the company in the country. People don't really realize that either. Last month, number one in the country. And this is a side hustle for us. And we've been able to take that extra cash, put it

in shares, of course, but we've got to be on other businesses. We've built a financial education business. We've authored three books. We've got this podcast. We just bought a laundromat business, which produces passive income for us. We just started a little partnership events business. Now we have four businesses. Books, podcast, education and investments. And so all that stuff kind of compounds over time, but it started with that decision to make the

first million. But you see when I did it, there was an actual measurable like, shit, I need to increase my income here. Okay, now we need to invest it. Now we need to not do anything else. And I think it's in the not doing anything else and sticking to your knitting and focused on what's working and repeating it. That's where the magic lies. That's the story of how we became millionaires initially. It's a real life story. It's in our

books. And if you haven't heard it, I'm sure if you go back on the podcast at the very first episode I did, I perhaps speak about these three stages and money grows on trees, which is where I got the name of the podcast show from. Because what I discovered was if you know how to invest money, it produces dividends, which is like pulling the prevailing $100 off the money tree you

plant in the backyard. I'm so excited to share this with you because this is a real measurable path to wealth that doesn't require you to buy property. And it's doable because I've done it. And that's why you can see a lot of my ads and so forth on Instagram. They talk about anti-property. Not that I don't believe in it, it's just... I wanted to do a different way, and you're welcome to as well. So I hope you've enjoyed the episode and

you've taken some lessons from that story. It's a real story. There's ups and downs. It's not smooth. But if you really wanted to go out and become a millionaire, the first step you've got to do is decide. And that will make all the difference. Once you decide, if your why is strong enough, the how will look after itself. So if you've enjoyed this, share the episode. Hit the Subscribe button. Leave me a question or

a comment below if you're watching on YouTube. And I'll talk to you in the next episode of the Money Grows on Trees podcast. Thanks for listening to Money Grows on Trees. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribe to us on YouTube so you never miss an episode. And if you're serious about building wealth, make sure to check out the links in the show notes and follow me on all social media platforms at LloydJamesRoss for