The 5 Different Ways I've Made $1 Million

A few years ago, I was speaking at an event where entrepreneurs were presenting their business ideas and I was serving as one of the judges and one of the speakers at the event. And the person who was hosting the event introduced me before I came in front of the rest of the group and, and he said something interesting that I had never heard before. The person said, the next person that you're about to meet, meaning me, has made a million dollars in three different ways. Now, I hadn't said that, I hadn't told this person that. But then when I went back and revisited our conversations, I indeed had mentioned three different ways that I had made a million dollars. And he just happened to catch that and use it in his introduction of me to the rest of the group. But then as I started to think about it, there's actually five ways that I have made a million dollars. And in this video I'm going to tell you exactly what those are and how I did them. And at the end of this video, you're going to have five different ways that you can see making a million dollars as possible. There's a lot more than five, but these are the five that I've personally used to make a million dollars. And I'll share all of them with you in this video.

The first way that I made a million dollars was selling physical products and specifically I was selling physical stuff on Amazon.com using Amazon FBA. So in 2013, I started my first Amazon based business and I had about $600. I took that 600 bucks. I bought 100 units of a product that cost $6. So he took that listed on Amazon, sold it for a profit, took that profit, reinvested it into more product, reinvested that into more product and we ended up building a business that I have now taught the model to thousands of entrepreneurs, which is you pick four products, you get them selling 25 sales a day at an average price point of $30. That's 100 sales a day at $30. And that's a million dollars in top line revenue for a business. In my case, that business grew to doing between 8 and $10 million a year in sales, pushing off a few million dollars a year in profit. And that was one of the ways that I made a million dollars. Now I've built other physical products businesses too. But in 2013 was the first time that I had a business that was pacing a million dollars and that was my very first million dollar business. So that is way number one that I've made a million dollars.

The second way that I have made a million dollars is as an affiliate marketer. I've been doing affiliate marketing since 2006. It's how I paid for college. And it's also how I made my first $100,000 a year on the Internet was doing affiliate affiliate marketing. And if you're not familiar, affiliate marketing is just selling other people's stuff and getting a commission for it. Now I've done affiliate marketing in several different ways. When I was starting in my journey, I would build small webpages, get them to rank in Google for keywords, and then I would sell products on those pages that were getting free traffic. And surprisingly that still works today. And when I'm discussing with somebody the possibility of what business they should start, that's often the recommendation that I give them is to do exactly that. Be an affiliate marketer, build small web pages that get free traffic from Google and then be an affiliate on those pages. This still works today. But my preferred way of doing this strategy is by selling via email marketing to customers who have bought something from you in the past or who are on your list reading your newsletter. So I love to build lists from my other businesses and then sell additional products to those customers. As an affiliate, that's really where a lot of revenue and profit gets generated. Because if you can take a sale in your business and then sell other products to them, the profits can add up really quickly. So I've made several million dollars as an affiliate marketer. And that's way number two.

The third way that I have made a million dollars is by selling businesses. So I've had a few businesses that have matured to the point where I have decided to sell the assets to somebody else. And I made a lot of money doing that. So at one point, more than half of my wealth had come from one sale. One sale is the sale of a business. So I built a business to $3 million a year in profit. We then sold that at a five times EBITDA. So five times the profit. And so that's, you know, 15 million dollar valuation. And when you build a business to that level, there are lots and lots of people who want to buy that cash flow stream because they want to grow it and they want to bring in other resources. They're going to help that grow. And one of the things that I learned throughout that process was that there are people at the top, the people who control things, who are waiting ready for entrepreneurs like you to build something that is exciting enough for them to buy. And it was the first Time that I really saw that they're waiting for you. Like they are hoping that you start a business that's exciting enough and profitable enough for them to buy. They need you. They're, they're hoping that there's good ideas for them to invest in. And it was this big mind opening experience of realizing that there's all kinds of money out there, there are all kinds of opportunities out there. And the real thing that is in scarcity is good entrepreneurs with good ideas who are willing to put in the work to build something that they can sell to somebody who wants to pay them many millions of dollars to. So by selling businesses, that's the third way that I've made a million dollars.

The fourth way that I have made a million dollars is by investing into other businesses. So I take the money that I make in my primary businesses and I invest that into other places that are going to generate wealth and passive income. So that is in the stock market, that is in private deal flow when I get invited to buy into a business that's starting. But my favorite way to invest is in people that come from my pipeline, if you will, people who follow my work and start businesses and they start to get some traction and then they need an advisor and an investor. So I have an investment fund where I invest in businesses that come from my line of work and I sometimes serve as an advisor and we bring in the capital to help that business grow. Between all of my investments, both on the small side, I've invested in businesses that were, you know, doing a few hundred thousand dollars in sales to the big deals, where I've invested in companies that were, you know, worth many millions of dollars. And I was a smaller investor between all of those, I've made million as an investor. So again, my preferred way to do it is when I get to actively be a part of a business and help it grow. Because if I buy 20% of a company that's doing a million dollars and I help it grow to 10 million, you know, my 20% is worth a lot more. Whereas if I were to buy Netflix stock, there's nothing that I can do to impact the, the growth and the wealth of that investment. So I do both of them. But the way that I have made the most money is by investing in businesses that I can have a helping hand in growing and that grows my wealth and increases that business's success as well.

And number five, this is going to come full circle. The fifth way that I've made a million dollars is by selling my own Courses and trainings. So over the years, I have built a kind of a skill set of expertise as a business owner and an entrepreneur that's helpful to other business owners and other entrepreneurs. So I've sold courses on selling on Amazon, I've sold courses on building businesses that you can sell. I've sold courses on investing. And so the things that I have learned along the way of making my, my other millions. That sounds weird and scammy to say, but the way that I've made my millions, I then taught those lessons along, along the journey. And the way that this kind of comes full circle, you'll see, is that all five of these ways relate to one another. I got good at a skill set which allowed me to build a customer base that I've sold more things to. And by doing that, it helped me build a company that was profitable enough to sell, and that gave me the money to be able to invest in other businesses. And that gave me a skill set to be able to help other entrepreneurs start businesses and invest the profits. And all of those things have fed one another. And the, the thing that I want you to take from that is realizing that you can make money a bunch of different ways, but once you do it one way, it opens up doors for lots of other ways as well. You don't need to be an expert at every little idea or strategy that everybody is teaching. You just need to go in and make some mistakes and get good enough at something for it to open up the next door. You know, I wasn't a good affiliate marketer at the same time that I was a good physical product seller. And I definitely knew nothing about selling companies. Had I known what I know now about selling companies, I would have made way more in my previous exits, in my previous business sales. But I didn't. I made a lot of mistakes and I learned from those mistakes. And so you get some success, a little bit of momentum, and it opens up the next door. I didn't know how to make a million dollars five different ways. It wasn't until I actually sat down and realized that I had done it that I thought about it for the first time. And so I want you to see that you don't have to learn all these different ways. You don't even need to know one way. You need to have enough of the path revealed to you for you to open up the next door. And then the next door and the next door. If you need help with that, that's what we do at capitalism.com and we have free resources for you over at capitalism.com start that will help you start your first business. And if you just want to join a community of entrepreneurs who are doing this stuff, hit the subscribe button. And we'd love to help you here on the channel. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next video.