Do This Every Time You Get Paid (Paycheck Routine)

Do you actually know what you're doing with your paycheck? Because if you're like most people, you don't have a clue how to make more money off of it. So you just follow the generic advice: save 10%, invest in index funds, hope for the best. But here's what nobody tells you: the rich don't just have more money, they have a completely different playbook for every floor they reach. Now you will too. Stage 0: The Lobby. Here we learn the language before you step inside. So before you even get in that elevator, there's a lobby that most people get. And never learning what's in the lobby is the reason you'll never make it past the ground floor. Even if you earn more money, you don't need to just understand money. You need to understand how to make more of it, because understanding money is like speaking a new language. And I'm not talking about sounding smart or talking about Chamonix or something like that at dinner parties. I'm talking about actually understanding how money moves and grows. This is your entry requirement. You can't board the wealth elevator without it. So I don't know if you guys know this, but I have worked at Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, State Street, First Trust, some of the biggest finance companies in the world. So I'm kind of uniquely situated to teach you guys exactly what to do next. I think one of the reasons that I made millions even when I was an employee was because I understood finance and money. So one of my first mentors when I was working at a company called Vanguard, one of the biggest investors in the world, I got a great piece of advice, which was poor people try to flex to look rich. Rich people try to flex so poor people never even know. And what they told me to do with my cash was actually Pretty straightforward, but I had never heard about it before because I was poor prior. And they said, step 1, when you get your paycheck, I want you to take as much of it as you humanly can. And I want you to put it in the market at the lowest cost index funds you can find. And I want you to have a portfolio that is largely stocks early on in your career. I want you to put money into the stock market before you ever pay yourself. And I want you to do it on what's called autopay. So I want you to do compounding where every single dollar you invest grows and grows over time until that tiny little snowflake turns into an avalanche. That is how you make a ton of money. And so I did that. I went to Vanguard.com because that's where I worked at the time. I plugged in my paycheck, I connected it to the app, and I went ahead and I accumulated money. And I did that in 2008, which was a pretty damn good year to start investing in the stock market. And then when the world got crazy, I got my second incredible piece of advice, which was every time the market panics, buy more. On average, over time, if you do that, you make more money. So I have done that every single time the market panics in both Bitcoin, stocks since 2008. Now, the question for you, your litmus test right now to see if you understand the language of money might be this. Do you know the difference between debit and credit cards and why you should never be using debit cards? If you don't know the answer yet, you're not ready for the elevator, and that's okay. Here's the deal. Good credit in this country is the underpinning of wealth, meaning super important. Debit cards, they don't help with that. Credit cards, hey, they offer rewards, purchase protection, fraud protection. And they allow you to use the bank's money with, you know, little 30-day loans, basically. But this is critical. They also build up your credit, which is a way that you get access to other people's money over time. So my rule of thumb is you never, ever, ever use debit cards. You always use credit cards, but you pay them off every 30 days. Credit cards are bad if you don't pay off your payment every single month. If you allow these big interest rates to stockpile, then the bank is a happy camper and you're going to be broke. But this is your lobby homework. I want you to spend the next 30 days doing two things. I want you to get credit cards and track them. I want you to understand the difference between good and bad credit. I want you to set up an account to either Vanguard, BlackRock, Fidelity, Wealthfront, Charles Schwab, and connect your bank account and your paycheck to putting some money in the stock market. And then I want you to, every time you go through that process and you don't understand a word, I want you to Google it. Or just put it into AI because then you'll learn what compound interest actually means. And I mean really understand it. You'll understand how a 401(k) works versus a Roth IRA. I recommend starting right there. That's it. Because the real secret, the best way to learn business is just doing business. The best way to learn investing is to invest. The next thing I want you to do, I want you to track every dollar that comes in and out for one month. I mean every single dollar. By the way, this is miserable and I'm really sorry, but it'll help you. You're not allowed to use an app. I want you to set up a simple spreadsheet, like old school Excel, make it real. And once you've done that, I want you to put in everything you spend money on manually for 30 days. If you can't handle that, do it for a week because then you'll start to see where you spend money. Then you can use an app, you know, something like Minted, Intuit. There's lots of these apps now to track it. But over time, it's why they made us write out our name. It's why they make you write out math problems. It's not because you can't use a calculator. It's because you let the calculator think for yourself. Okay, now you've got your lobby pass. How do you get to the next level of the game? On floor 1, which is $0 to $50K, this is the ground floor. So welcome. You're making somewhere between minimum wage and $50,000 a year. Maybe it's your first gig. Maybe you're working 2 part-time gigs. Most people, they spend their entire financial lives on this floor, and sadly, they wonder why nothing changes. And here's what the wealth elevator will tell you to do on this floor. You're going to press floor 1 button 1 by knowing your survival number and protecting it. What does that mean? I want you to understand exactly what it costs you to stay alive each month, not what you'd like to spend, which you actually need to. So this is rent, food, and I mean groceries, not DoorDash, transportation, health insurance, utilities. I want you to write that number down. Okay, so you have two options. One, you can track everything and you can play it safe and not spend all of it. Second option, you obsess on doubling whatever you're making right now. In the beginning, you guys, I actually wasn't a penny pincher. I did this 30-day routine, but then I was like, I don't want to live like this. So I said, all right, I'm willing to do more miserable things in order to not live like this. And there's two ways to get out of not having a lot of money. You can either, one, save everything, go full-on FIRE movement and spend no money on anything whatsoever. That doesn't sound very fun to me, but some people like it because then they get to retirement way faster. Option two, go full-on unhinged mode. Which meant I went straight into sales. I obsessed. I did long hours because what I want you to get to is 3 to 6 months of your survival number in a separate savings account, because 56% of Americans can't afford an expense of $1,000. So life is going to throw you a curveball. I know that for sure. It's not an if, it's a when. So we got to have cash for you to make sure you don't end up in bad debt. A good framework that a lot of people use in finance It's called the 50/30/20 rule. 50% of your income goes to needs— rent, food, utilities, transportation. 30% goes to wants— dining in, entertainment, fun. 20% goes straight to savings and paying down rent. I like this strategy, but I want to accelerate it. I want you to go ham for 3 to 6 months as opposed to live 50/30/20 for 10 years. I want you to go ham on trying to grow as much wealth as possible because you make way more money instead of trying to do this for years. I know this is like simple improvement, but sometimes when you go to the middle, it's just messy. And if you go to one of the extremes, get out of it faster. This will give you a clear structure on where your money should be going. And if you can't hit those numbers yet, try harder. It's the thing nobody else is going to tell you. Now, I think some people are always stressed about money because they never think that they can go to button 2 on floor 1, which is investing in the highest returning asset class of all time. You. Okay, this is where like traditional finance advice gets totally backwards in my opinion. Everyone tells you to start investing in the stock market immediately, like max out your 401(k), put all your money in there. I want you to put some of it But I made my first million working for other people, and I learned if you only have a little bit of cash, the best returning asset class of all time is spelled Y-O-U. Put the money into you. Now, what does that mean practically? I'll just tell you what I did. I was making $37,000 a year when I started, and I had about an extra $2K, and I didn't put it into stocks. I actually used it to get a high-income skill. In my case, what was that? I became licensed as a 763-2466. I basically asked my employer if I could get these other financial licenses. So that I could make more money, because if I did that, they had to pay me more in the company. And I said, I'll sponsor myself to do it. In sales, you know, there's sales certifications. For instance, there's like a HubSpot one that's free, takes a few days. It's recognized around the country. So for me, I'm going to do something that I think has a completely outlier effect. That's why I teach people how to buy businesses. It costs $10,000, but you can learn how to buy a business and do deals, or at least how to read P&Ls and know everything you need to about finance and small business. In 12 months. Let's say you're into coding. You could go to Google's IT Support Professional certification. I think it's $300 on Coursera. This opens up an industry where entry-level salaries start at $55K. And by the way, let's say that you can't get a job there because AI is crazy right now. You're still going to show that you're a serious person and be able to vibe code better than anybody else. So let's do the math here. If that $2,000 investment helps you land a job making $55K instead of the $37K that I used to make, you just gave yourself almost a $20,000 annual raise. That's a 10x return in year 1. No stock market investment is touching that. So the highest performing asset class that you could ever have is you. Unlimited upside, and it compounds over time, and nobody can take you from it. You can't get fired from yourself. The stock market can crash, your company can go under, but your skills, those are yours, baby. Now, this one's really important. Floor 1, button 3: eliminate toxic debt. If you've got credit card balances at 19% interest, payday loans, like, any debt that's basically above 10% interest rate, get this out of here. This is your number one, numero uno, above anything else. Debt will bleed you dry every single month and prevent you from building any real wealth. So two proven ways to do this. Method one, the avalanche. This is my way. You focus on the highest interest rates first. You make minimum payments on everything else, and you throw every single dollar you make at the highest rate debt until it's gone. Then you move on to the next one. Why do I like this one? Because math says this is the best approach. You pay the less interest overall, you get out of debt faster on paper. Plus, it's hard to imagine doing something for 10 years as opposed to 1. Method number 2, the snowball. This is from my friend Dave Ramsey. You ignore interest rates entirely and focus on your smallest balance first. Knock it out completely, then roll that payment into the next smallest, the next smallest. Math doesn't love this move, but there's some psychology that says debt payoff is like a psychological game. And not just a numbers game. So if you eliminate a balance entirely, it gives you a win, like a real win, real momentum and proof that you can do this. And sometimes that dopamine hit of like closing out an account is exactly what keeps you on track. If you've tried and failed to pay off debt before and need some early wins to stay in the game, by the way, go snowball. The best debt payoff method is the one you'll actually stick to. And I get it. Neither of these is sexy and like nobody gets that stoked about paying off debt nobody can see anyway. But I also know multiple people who have let this saddle them for life. I had one employee who last time I chatted with her, she has $275,000 in student debt from her undergrad. You can't build wealth on quicksand like that. Okay, floor 1, survival number. Invest in yourself. Kill the debt. 3 buttons. Press all 3 before you go to the next level of the game. Now we're at floor 2, which is $50K to $100K. This is the grind floor. You're now making somewhere between $50K to $100K and you're climbing. You know, you might have hit this through freelancing, a business, a company. Here's the thing about this floor, though. Charlie Munger summed it up best. It is a bitch. Your first $100K is the hardest $100K you'll ever make, but it's also the most important because everything compounds from there. Think about it like pushing a boulder uphill. That first $100K is when you're pushing the hardest. And after that, the boulder, it starts like kind of starting to roll by itself. You're not like this where once you have wealth, you're just like, phew, but you're kind of plateauing where it's not uphill the whole time. So at this level, your earned salary is going to be where you get most of your wealth. First $100K likely comes from earned wages with a corporation or company. This is what happened for me. My personal income got to about $1 million a year before I ever left. So my early income breakdown, though, was like $37K. And then I think I jumped to like mid-five figures and then I jumped to high five figures and then I went to $100K, $250K, $500K, $750K, $1 million plus pretty quick because you can do that in finance. My early breakdown of my wealth was like 20% salary and then 30% either what's called carry, which is money you make on investment deals you make or investment income. Then I took a bunch of risk because I like money-making risk when I can bet on myself on bonuses. So I said like, I'll rather if I have more upside, I'm more motivated. So if I do X, Y, and Z, can I, can I get some extra bonuses? And then 10 to 15% on commission. But it all started with that base salary. Floor 2, button 1, capture every dollar of free money from your employer. Like, I don't know why more people don't do this. If your company offers a 401(k) match, free money, baby. If they match 3% and you're making $80K, that's $2,400 per year. They're just handing it to you. Take it. Always. This is 100% instant return. And I don't know what you're going to do with your money. I don't really care. But you take free money almost always. Like we'll put you on the retirement express. So if you contribute 10 to 15% of your pretax income to your 401(k), if you make $80K and contribute $8,000, you're only paying taxes on $72K. So that's kind of cool. You're making money and lowering your tax bill. When you're ready to retire, get off the career ladder, then you can have the ownership express, which is you only contribute up to your company match, max it out, and then save the remaining 12% in a taxable brokerage account. This gives you a ton of what's called liquid capital. and you can actually use it before age 59.5 to buy a business, invest in real estate, or make a down payment on a house. For instance, I've used my retirement savings to buy houses before. I've used it to buy businesses before. And like, how it works would be something like this. So let's say you're making that $80K. You contribute $2,400 to get the full match from your employee. Then you max out your Roth at $7,000. Then save $9,600 per year. That's about $800 a month in a brokerage account. So what happens in 3 to 4 years? As long as the stock market has average growth, you'll have about $30,000 to $40,000 in accessible capital to deploy. Let me tell you why that's cool. If you have $30,000 to $40,000, that typically means you could buy something like a business for 10% of the purchase price. So if you're going to buy a business for $300,000, you need $30,000. So now you have just 10x in many ways how much you could invest. This is also all about maximizing tax benefits because who wants to give more to Uncle Sam? This gives you opportunity to invest in higher return deals, choose your destination and get on one of the trains. Crazy part to me, and no shame on them, but most financial advisors, they'll only tell you path 1 because they make money on it. But the Wealth Elevator shows you both options because different destinations require different routes. Now let's talk about floor 2, button 2: open a Roth IRA and max it out. After you hit your 401(k) match, you open that IRA and contribute up to the annual limit. And the Roth is magic, and I mean literal financial magic. Because you pay taxes now, but all of your gains grow tax-free forever. So when you're 60 and you pull out $500K, the IRS gets nothing. This is like a long-term freedom account. And so you can set up automatic monthly transfers and forget about it. The younger you are when you start this, the more insane the returns if they compound over time. So if you're in your 20s and watching this, this is called a Monte Carlo simulation. You can see right here is exactly how much money you would make if you started here and ended here. In fact, if you want the link to this, click below and I'll hook you up. Floor 2, button 3. Start your set it and forget it index fund portfolio. I always go for low-cost, low-management index funds. So Vanguard is one of the first companies I ever worked at, and they'll help you do it based on your age and risk. So you can literally click 2 buttons and go, here's a 60/40 portfolio because I'm in my mid-30s. Here's an 80/20 if younger. One click and you get a ton of stuff. I don't like trying to pick stocks. I think day trading is for hustlers and influencers on TikTok telling you to buy crypto or GameStop or Pokémon or meme stocks or whatever is just a ludicrous way to transfer money from you to them. So just set up automatic investments into a total market index fund. You'll have a 60/40 portfolio. That means 60% stocks, 40% bonds. And if somebody's a little younger, you can take more risk because you should take more risk when you're young. And all of this, like, you got to keep this idea of psychology on top of it. So you don't want to do 80/20 if you're going to freak out checking your index funds every day and sell all of it. But I think that instead of you changing your risk tolerance because you're not principled, you should just try to become more principled. Other thing to ponder here is like, if you don't invest, you'll have zero growth beyond what you save. So the difference between retiring with nothing to show for it and retiring with a ton of money is one decision. In fact, there's like this guy, for instance, who was a janitor his whole life. And then when he died, they found out he had millions. Like, I don't want that to be you. Go enjoy your shit. But the only way a janitor can do that is through the investment markets. 4-2 button 4, invest in things that cash flow to you, not just the stock market while you are employed. I never did startup side hustles early on while I was employed, but I did invest in other people's deals. I did invest in other people's businesses. I did buy rental properties simultaneously. And so I don't like the idea of a side hustle, actually. Like, that's dumb. You don't want to hustle and you don't want it to be side deal. You want cash-flowing businesses that you actually own. So invest in businesses or deals. Keep your job, use your salary to fund them. This is how private equity people get rich. They don't have to quit their job to invest in companies. That's totally different. You have to quit your job if you're going to go start another job, obviously. I think side hustles are actually meant to make you feel like you're going to get rich, but to keep you poor. They're stupid. They don't make you money. Most side hustles will actually never do anything but lose you money. Keep moving forward on investing in deals until the deals actually match the cost of living that you have your cash flow. And then if you want to leave your business or your job, you can, but do it with a way that actually makes sense, which is investment income. Floor 3, $100K to $250K, the pivot floor. All right, you've crossed 6 figures. You're now in the top 20% of American earners. But here's where most people make a critical mistake with the wealth elevator. They step out on this floor. They don't press any new buttons. They keep doing what got them here, working hard, saving, maxing out 401(k), and then And they end up stuck on this elevator because right around this time is like you're getting a family, you're getting married, you got a house. It's called cost of living adjustment. And so they look around and they think, I made it, and they forgot that they're spending more. So that first $100K, you can do all of that working for somebody else, working really hard. You can get to $1 million working for somebody else. But if you want to get to $10 million, you better start investing. And floor 3 is where the wealth elevator changes the direction. This isn't just adding strategies. It's changing the game. So button 1 on floor 3. This is where we accelerate what we invest. So we know we talked about your retirement accounts. Now I want you sort of maxing out your brokerage. How much can you invest in the stock market? How much can you invest in deals that you do on AngelList? How much can you invest in real estate transactions? This is where you start increasing your investment income. Consistency beats cleverness every time. Look at what happens when you invest in the S&P over a consistent amount of time and you don't panic sell. Button 2, I want you to start aggressively acquiring equity and ownership. This is the button that changes everything. So when you start out, you earn with just your time and brain, but eventually you make some money and you get to invest that in something. Now, I know a lot of people say here, Codie, that sounds great, but what do I actually do? Well, let's say you're making $150K and you got $50K in savings beyond your cushion. The wealth elevator gives you two doors to choose from. Door 1: Negotiate equity at your job. If you're a high performer, stop asking for raises. Your job isn't as secure as you think. Negotiate some ownership. Ask for stock options. Ask for a chance to invest in a company alongside your boss. Ask for access to portfolio companies, restricted stocks, profit sharing. So a $10K raise is nice, but if you invest that $10K instead and you get 0.5% equity in a company that does 10x, Well, that's $500K. So same work, different outcomes. If you don't have ownership, you're probably never going to be free financially. I tell this to all my employees. I'm like, when we do deals, you guys should invest in them. You guys should take some money even though you don't make a ton of it, because that is how you get free. The primary driver of household wealth in America is business equity and ownership. I just want that to sink in for a second. This is where real wealth is built. Door 2: Become a minority investor in businesses. Here's one of my favorite strategies on this floor: turn every expense into an income stream. I was spending too much on window cleaning, so I bought part of the window cleaning company. I did the same thing with the painting company. Now those companies, they pay me. So look at your monthly expenses. Where are you spending $200, $500, $1,000 a month? Can you buy a 10 to 20% stake in that business instead of just being a customer? You're not running it, just collecting a share of the profits. Your gym membership? Maybe invest in the gym. Your favorite coffee shop? Maybe become a minority partner. I cannot stress how underrated this strategy is. As a minority investor, you get a backstage pass to how a real business operates without having to operate it. So you're not managing the staff and dealing with, I don't know, customers at 11 at night, but you are getting monthly or quarterly investor updates showing you how the business is doing. You're sitting in on maybe an occasional owner call. You're watching real business decisions get made. You're learning how a profitable business actually runs, and you get paid for that. So most people pay tens of thousands of dollars for an MBA to learn business theory. You're learning it from inside a real cash-flowing business while collecting a share of the profits. So that's a financial investment, but it's also a business education. And when you're ready to move up to full ownership on floor 4, you'll do it with years of real operator knowledge already banked. So you don't have to guess. So that's floor 3. You build liquid wealth outside retirement accounts and you're converting your cash into equity. You're not just working for money anymore. Your money is now also an employee of yours. Now, floor 4, $250K to $500K. This is the acceleration floor. You're now making a quarter to half a million dollars. You're in the top 5% of all earners. But here's the trap that swallows almost everyone who makes it to floor 4. Lifestyle inflation. We talked about this a little bit, but especially at this level, most people start buying the bigger house, the luxury cars, the private schools, the country clubs, and they end up with the same stress as someone making $75K. Just nicer stuff. I don't know, a better zip code. And this has happened to all of us. I mean, I kind of am embarrassed saying about this for me, but I remember one point we had not one country club membership but two, more cars than we had spots in the driveway, multiple houses in multiple locations. You kind of look over at the people years on in their career and they're still a slave to their salary just because they kept upping their spend. Like, I was one of those people. So please, for the love of all that's holy, don't do that. The wealth elevator doesn't care about your zip code, so don't obsess on trying to make people you don't even know think you're cool. Now, what to press on floor 4? Floor 4, button 1. You're going to diversify into alternative assets. You should only move on to this stage if you're a real pro. This generation got a little crazy because they were the first to gamify, I don't know, stock market investing. But let's talk about alternatives. Real estate syndications, commodities, private equity funds, private credit. All of these mean you can't get your money out as fast. They're less liquid. They have higher risk, potentially higher reward. So if you have $100,000 sitting in your brokerage and you're financially stable, you might put $20K into a real estate deal that pays 12% or a private debt fund or farmland. The rule, I don't usually like to put more than 20 to 30% of my money into these private locked up illiquid investments. You really only can do this when you have enough cash in your other savings accounts, and you know what you're buying. If you can't explain how the investment makes you money in 3 sentences or less, you don't understand it well enough to invest. I will also say this isn't the floor to FOMO into deals because your buddy's buddy's cousin said it's a sure thing. I've never ever once regretted not doing a deal that a friend sent to me. Now, button 2 on floor 4: aggressively buy back your time. So at this income level, your time is worth $150 to $200 per hour. So if you're spending 5 hours a week on tasks someone else could do for $25, you're actually losing money, which is a wild way to think about it. And it took me a long time to get there. So let me say it again. You are losing money. So you need to hire a cleaner, a meal prep service, a virtual assistant, someone to mow your lawn so you can use your time to find deals, leverage others' experience, and make more money. I want to get specific here because this is where most operators get it wrong. They know they should be delegating, but they waste 2 weeks trying to find someone good. So let me tell you what I actually did for this video. That thumbnail that made you click on this video in the first place, that wasn't my team spending weeks on it. I went to Fiverr Pro and I hired a specialist to produce it. Most people, that's an afterthought, but it's actually a super specialized skill. Color psychology, contrast, facial skews, typography, all engineered to stop mid-scroll. Getting it wrong doesn't just look bad, it kills your reach. In other words, the reason you're watching this video right now is because I trusted a specialist. Instead of doing it myself. And there are vetted specialists in all fields. So like designers, developers, financial analysts, operators who do this at a high level for real businesses. We posted the project, then we had qualified people respond the same day. We picked one and we got to work. That's the whole point. Serious operator doesn't ask, can I do this? They ask, should I be the one doing this? And almost always the answer is no. So if you want to try Fiverr Pro yourself, click the link in the description. Use my code to save on your first project. Use it on something real, like your brand asset, a funnel build, a financial model, whatever your highest level project is right now. Because the flywheel I'm about to describe only spins if you actually free up the time to make it spin. This reclaimed time then becomes your next acceleration flywheel. You make money, you buy time, use that time to make more money, you buy more time. The flywheel spins faster and faster. I have all of these. We have a chef that makes my meals each week. We have a cleaning lady that handles my house. We have a property manager that handles the houses when we're not around. I have a virtual assistant. I have an in-person assistant. I have a dog groomer. I have somebody that takes care of our dogs when we go out of town. I have somebody who comes and cleans my car. This isn't like a flex to be like, Codie's super rich. It's not that. It's because I really want to optimize for making the most money I humanly can and making a really big impact. And those things help me make more money. Now, don't do them. If you're not going to spend your time actually accelerating it, then you're just wasting money. Now, button 3, execute your transition to full-time ownership. Remember that framework from floor 2, the one about keeping your job until cash flow matches your survival number? Keep moving forward on investing in deals until the deals actually match the cost of living that you have your cash flow. And then if you want to leave your business or your job, you can, but do it with a way that actually makes cents, which is investment income. The elevator has been waiting for this moment. If your investments are now making $15K a month consistently and your survival number is $10K, the doors are open. So maybe this is the time for you to bet on you. Maybe this is the time for you to scale your business. I know this is scary. I know every part of you is screaming, but what if it fails? But here's the same thing. You really can't spell rich without risk. You didn't actually quit prematurely. You didn't take on debt. You used your salary to fund the business until it could stand on its own. So often you're not making a risky bet. You're making a calculated move, and there's a big difference between the two. So Floor 4: Alternatives, time, ownership, transition. You're no longer playing it safe. You're playing it smart. Floor 5, which is $500K and up, the penthouse. You're in the top 1% here. At this level, your paycheck is no longer coming from a salary entirely. It's from ownership, equity in businesses, stock options, real estate, dividends, capital gains. So you've changed the game. And if you want to make real money, you don't do it by messing around at the margins of financial investing. In? You do it by becoming the company that they invest in. That's when you buy the business outright. Now, buying businesses, building multiple income streams, becoming a full-time owner— that's exactly what we break down step by step at Main Street Millionaire Live. It's a virtual event where we show you how to find, buy, and run cash-flowing businesses and parts of them, even if you've never done it before. So if you're in tier 3 or 4 right now and you want to accelerate into tier 5, this is the fastest way to do it. Link in the description. Now, in the penthouse in particular, we know there's 3 rules. Penthouse Rule 1: Acquire and control entire businesses. You can actually use your accumulated wealth to buy profitable businesses outright, not a 20% stake, the whole thing. For me, I look for businesses like laundromats, car washes, HVAC companies, plumbing, and vending machine routes. I bought my first business, a laundromat, for $100K, full ownership. I've also bought businesses for as little as $3K or $8K, and I call this the profit triad. So you need a business with a high percentage likelihood of success based on prior industry history, with a high profit margin— they make lots of money— and less risk. You want to spend as little upfront for as high a return on investment as possible. ROI. And these aren't like sexy businesses. You're not going to impress anyone at parties, but they generate $10K, $20K, $50K a month in cash flow. And, you know, you control the business and then you can sell them for more money and get what's called multiple expansion if you want to. And so you've gone from an employee to an investor to an owner. That's the full ride. Penthouse Rule 2: Build multiple income streams. Never depend on one source. So at this level, you're not relying on any single source. You might have 17 income streams. I actually believe in two lines of thought. One, you want to have lots of investment options, but you want to put a majority of your eggs in one basket and watch that basket really closely. So your income might come from your main business. That might be like equity distributions, but then you have additional income streams that are like little rivers flowing to your ocean that are dividends from stock portfolio, rental income from real estate, consulting or advisory fees, YouTube ad revenue, royalties from a book you wrote. The goal is you build up a little bit resilience. If one stream dies, you've got some others. The economy crashes, you're okay. This is what true financial freedom looks like, at least to me. At rule number 3, you're going to start optimizing for wealth preservation and legacy. What happens when you start making money is everybody tries to take it from you, whether they do it maliciously or not. So you've got to start spending money on things that are really annoying and take some time, like estate planners, tax strategists, wealth advisors. You're setting up trusts. You're thinking about generational wealth. You're no longer just building wealth. You're protecting it. And at this stage, it's about making sure the money that you've made, you keep and it works for you. This is when you start thinking about impact. Like, what do you want your money to do in the world? Because in the penthouse, you've got a really big view. You're no longer at the bottom, sort of hand-to-hand combat, figuring out how to get a little bit of sunlight, you're at the top of your game. You're building assets that generate income without your time. You're not stuck in that trading time for dollars unless you want to be. And that is a really cool place to be. By the way, comment below and let me know which level you're at, and I want to see if I can help you. Tell me what level you're at and what things you need help with, and we'll go in the comments and answer a bunch of them for you. Okay, let's take the elevator ride one more time. Two people graduate at 22. Both get jobs making $50K. Person A, they don't know about the wealth elevator. They never watched this video. They take the stairs. Same pace, same strategy, same floor for 40 years. They retire at 65 and probably have maybe just enough to last through old age. Person B gets into the wealth elevator and they push the right buttons on every floor. So what happens to Person B? Well, they retire at 50 with $10 million in assets generating $500,000 a year. Like same starting point, completely different outcome. And the difference is person B pressed the right buttons. The math is really clear. If all you do is try to take the salary people give you, you will not get far. Here's your action step, and I want you to actually do this. Which floor are you on right now? I want you to try pressing one new button this week. If you're in the lobby, learn the language. If you're in floor 1, find your survival number. If you're on floor 4, hire somebody. If you're on floor 5, make an offer on a business. After all, money is a weapon, and either you're armed or somebody else is. So the elevator's open. Which floor are you going to?