How to Build Wealth on a Low Income - Machiavelli 10 Brutal Strategies

If you're broke right now, it's not because you're lazy or because you're not smart enough. It's because the game was designed for you to lose and nobody ever handed you the real playbook. The Federal Reserve's own data shows the bottom 50% of Americans own just 2.5% of the wealth in the entire country, which means half the people in the richest nation on Earth are fighting over crumbs. But 500 years ago, a ruthless Italian named Machiavelli wrote down the cold, brutal strategies that the powerful were using to win and keep winning. And today I'm handing you you 10 of them, because the day you stop playing fair with a system that was never fair to you is the day everything starts to change. Let me tell you about a man named Ronald Read. He grew up dirt poor on a farm in Vermont, so poor that he hitchhiked and walked miles just to get to school. He came home from the war and spent about 25 years pumping gas at a gas station, and then he worked as a janitor at JCPenney, sweeping floors for another 17 years. He never made much money in his life. He wore the same old flannel coat held together with safety pins and drove a beat-up secondhand car. So when Ronald Read died in 2014, at 92 years old, the people in this small town got the shock of their lives. This quiet janitor had left behind an estate worth almost $8 million. He gave $4.8 million to his local hospital and $1.2 million to the library. How does a gas station attendant and a janitor die richer than most doctors? He spent less than he earned. He bought shares of boring, solid companies, and then he did the hardest thing of all. He waited for decades. He let his money quietly multiply while everyone around them spent theirs on stuff that fell apart. He wasn't lucky. He wasn't a genius. He was patient. He was disciplined. And that combination beats a giant paycheck every single time. Now, you might be thinking, okay, that's great for Ronald, but I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I can barely cover my rent. So how am I supposed to build wealth from nothing left over at the end of the month? Here's what's important to understand. Building wealth on a low income was never about how much you make. It's about strategy. And strategy is the one weapon that doesn't cost you a single dollar. A high income with no strategy goes away. You've watched broke celebrities and bankrupt lottery winners prove that 100 times over. But a low income with brutal discipline strategy compounds into actual real freedom. The amount you start with matters far less than the rules that you're playing by. And most people never learn the rules because the people who profit from you being broke don't want you to. So let me give you the 10 moves Machiavelli would hand you if he were sitting here with you today. And fair warning, they're going to feel uncomfortable because comfort is the exact thing that's been keeping people broke. If you've been here before, drop a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time. Believe. Number 1, bet on your skill, never on your luck. So Machiavelli split the whole world into two forces. There's fortuna, which is luck, the random chaos that you don't control. And he said it rules maybe half of your life. And then there's virtù, the— your skill, your foresight, your decisive action. And that's the half that you do control. Broke people spend their whole lives praying to Fortuna. They wait for the lottery ticket, the inheritance, the lucky break that's going to save them. The strategist does the opposite. You pour everything into virtue and take command of what actually is in your hands. And the very first thing in your hands is information. So start tracking every single dollar that comes in and every single dollar that goes out starting today. Most people who are broke generally have no idea where their money disappears to. And you cannot command an army that you cannot even see. So when you log every every transaction for 30 days, you'll find the leaks, the subscriptions you forgot about, the little daily spends that quietly are bleeding you dry. Plugging those leaks is the easiest money that you'll ever make, and it costs you nothing but a little bit of honesty. All progress begins with telling the truth, and that includes telling the truth about your money. And foresight is the part of virtue too. The strategist doesn't just react to the month, he plays the long game. He sees the moves 3 years out and acts on it today while everyone else is only thinking about Friday night. You don't control whether you got dealt a bad hand, but you absolutely do control how you play it. Number 2, see the game exactly as it is. Machiavelli's most powerful rule was to deal with the world as it actually is, not as you wish it were. So here is a cold reality. The financial system is not on your side. It is engineered to keep you spending and borrowing because your debt is somebody else's income. Buy Now Pay Later, 0% financing, credit card minimum payments. These things are all designed to look harmless while they quietly drain you for years. So you fight back with what I call Rich Math. Never ever judge a purchase by its monthly payment. Judge it by its full, total, real cost. The system trains you to ask, well, what's the monthly payment? Because that little number, it hides the damage. The wealthy ask, what does this actually cost me in total? And what could that same money become if I invested it instead? And then you hunt down your high-interest debt and you destroy it like your future depends on it. Every dollar you pay in interest is a soldier that is fighting for the other side. Take those soldiers back. Number 3: Build walls of discipline, not willpower. So a brutal truth about human beings that Machiavelli understood 500 years ago is that people are weak under pressure. Your willpower will absolutely collapse the moment when something gets hard, and life always gets hard. That's why he never trusted good intentions. He trusted strong walls. So stop relying on motivation to save money, because motivation is the most unreliable thing that you can do on your own. Build the wall instead. The very moment that money hits your account, automate a transfer that pulls a set amount into a separate savings account before you can even think about it. Then make that account painful to reach. No debit card attached to it. Delete the app off your phone. The goal is to make saving completely automatic and make spending that money a genuine hassle. You pay yourself first before a single bill, before a night out. When the structure does the work, your weak moments can't sabotage you more. Number 4: Move in complete silence. Machiavelli knew that the moment that you reveal your strength, you paint a target on your own back. The same thing is true with money. The second the people around you, they sense that you've got some, they all want a piece of it. Family starts asking for loans, friends expect you to grab every check, and worst of all, you feel this pressure to prove it with a new car or flashy wardrobe. So you do the opposite of what your ego wants. You build your wealth in total silence. You let your money be present but completely invisible. Drive the modest car for a few more years. Keep the quiet apartment. Wear the regular clothes. Let your bank account grow while your lifestyle barely changes. The broke person spends to look rich. The strategist looks ordinary on purpose and gets rich for real. Think about Ronald Read again. The whole town thought he was just a poor old janitor right up until the day he died. And that invisibility, that was a superpower because nobody ever came asking for a handout and nobody ever pressured him to keep up. Every dollar you don't spend impressing strangers is a dollar that stands guard growing your army. Let them underestimate you. The quiet ones are the ones who win. Number 5: Seize assets. Don't rent out your hours. The 99% trade their time for money, and that's exactly why 99% of people don't get rich. There are only 24 hours in a day. Everybody has the same 24 hours. So when you sell your hours, your income has a hard ceiling no matter how hard you're working. Machiavelli respected those who seized territory and held it. And in the money game, your territory is assets, the things you own that make money whether you show up or not. So shares of solid companies like Ronald Read bought, a small piece of real estate down the road, a digital product you build once and sell 1,000 times. This is where the pay yourself first money goes, not into savings account to rot, but into ownership. So stop thinking like a worker who rents out your hours and start thinking like an owner who buys things that pay you. Every dollar you put into an asset is another soldier you send out to work. 24 hours a day. And unlike you, that soldier never sleeps and never quits. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in the description below to go grab it, and I'll see you there. Number 6: Be ruthless about your generosity. This one might sting, but you might need it. Machiavelli warned that generosity given carelessly will bankrupt the giver and breed entitlement in everyone around them. So when you're building wealth or on the low income, you simply can't be the personal bank account for your entire circle. Giving money out of guilt drains your reserves and also trains people to depend on you instead of building things for themselves. So you give with strategy, not with guilt. Give when it actually builds something, when it lifts someone towards standing up on their own, not when you're being pressured into doing it. Protect your capital the way that the general guards a treasury that funds the entire war. Because the thing that people don't say is staying broke broke so that you can rescue everybody else doesn't actually help anybody. Get strong first. A wealthy you can help 100 people for the rest of your life. A broke you can't even help yourself, and it definitely can't help them. So it's, uh, put your own oxygen mask on first before trying to save the whole plane. Number 7: Build the machine, then master one thing first. So the wise don't chase money around all day. They build a machine that commands money to come to them. Ronald Read built a quiet machine out of dividend stocks that paid him whether he was awake or asleep. So the becomes to build an automated income that doesn't depend on your sweat. But listen to this carefully, because a lot of people get this wrong. So don't try to build 5 machines at once when you're starting out. The path to wealth is almost never multiple streams of income. It's not. Look at people's stories. It's not. It's becoming absolutely killer at one single thing. The people who chase 5 side hustles all the same time usually do 5 of them really badly and burn out with nothing to show for themselves. So pick one skill. One asset, one stream, and you master it until it actually pays you. Then and only then you can take that money and start building the next machine. Like the expression goes, one blade sharpened to a razor's edge beats 10 dull blades every single time. Number 8: Pay for speed. Here's a strategy that feels completely backwards when money is tight, but it's actually how achievers win. Achievers pay for speed. So when you're broke, your instinct is to figure everything out for yourself for free. But figuring out alone can cost you years and a mountain of actually expensive mistakes. The single smartest investment a low-income person can ever make on their own is into skills and knowledge, is into yourself, because your ability to earn is the one asset that no stock market crash can wipe you out and no thief can ever steal from you. A $30 book or an online course that teaches you a skill which raises your income for the rest of your life is the highest return you can make on Earth. It's not even close. Look at it this way. If you spend 3 years struggling alone to learn something an expert could have taught you in 3 months, That lost time isn't free. It's the most expensive thing that you'll ever buy. And you paid for it with time out of your life. So before you try to invest in anything else, invest in your own earning power first. Sharpen the one tool that produces all the others, which is you. Number 9: Speak like someone who selects, not someone who begs. Machiavelli understood that power is established by how you carry yourself. So show weakness and dependency and the world will exploit you every time. So watch how you speak about money. Broke people speak like applicants, hoping, asking, begging for a shot. Wealthy people speak like they select, like they're the prize, choosing who gets access to them. You have to retrain your own thinking and language. When you sit down to negotiate a salary, a rate, a price, a deal, you communicate from a place of authority and calm value, even if you don't have a ton of money in your bank account. So stop saying, I was hoping for, and start saying, well, my rate is— stop apologizing for your prices. Learn to say a number and then go completely silent and let it sit there. Because the person who speaks first in negotiation usually loses. People will always pay more to someone who carries themselves like they're worth more. And remember, raising your income is the single fastest accelerant on this entire list, and it very often starts with nothing more than how you talk about your own worth. Number 10: Strike now while everyone else is hesitating. Machiavelli said fortune favors the bold and that wealth grows in the exact spot where hesitation dies. The number one reason people stay broke for their whole life isn't a lack of money. It's waiting, waiting for more money to start, waiting for more time to start, waiting for the perfect moment that is never, ever coming. So let me be as clear as I can on this. Don't wait for permission. Don't wait to feel ready because ready is fake. You start with whatever you have in your hands right now. Invest $20 this week. Open the account today. Track your first dollar tonight. Here's how it works. You get rich slowly and then you get rich suddenly because the slow part only ever begins the moment you decide to start. The best time, they say, right, to plant the seed was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. How about right now? The story they'll tell about you. The fact that you're starting with less isn't the thing that disqualifies you. It's actually the thing that's going to make your story pretty remarkable. Ronald Read proved that a quiet janitor can outbuild a millionaire. And if a man with a safety pin that holds his coat together can do it, so can you. You have the ability, so now you have the responsibility to actually use it. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. Now let's learn how to make money from billionaires. The fastest way to make money has absolutely nothing to do with finding the perfect business idea. In life, you get handed these things, and it's not perfect. You know, even today, people want to be handed be perfect. Imagine you said the first thing that you write has to be in Hollywood, the first song that you write has to be at the top of the Billboard charts. That's the problem, that we have these overamplified views. Perfectionism doesn't advance anything, ironically. After studying billionaires for over 1,000 hours, I found that your ability to create wealth is entirely based on how quickly you can make decisions. Always better to make a decision and be wrong than be afraid to make a decision. So not making a decision is, is like a guaranteed wrong answer. If you take a long time to make a bad decision, you're going to take a long time to unwind it. Most decisions should be made by single individuals, but they need— and, and, and done quickly, in the full understanding that you can always change your mind. If you keep waiting for the right moment to start, you will spend the rest of your life watching other people live out your dreams while you stay exactly where you are. Strategy is not words. Strategy is action. When are you going to do it? When are you going to do it? You've got to create a sense of urgency. I'm going to do it right now. I learned from so much doing. It's why a lot of good things happen for me, because I realized just the doing is actually more efficient than the thinking about it. Richard Branson was in his 20s and stuck in an airport because his flight to the Virgin Islands was canceled. Most people just sat there complaining and waiting for the airline to fix the problem. Branson didn't wait. He immediately called a charter company, booked a private plane, and wrote Virgin Airlines $39 on a whiteboard. He walked around the terminal, filled the plane with his fellow stranded passengers, and made his money back. That fast, fearless decision launched a billion-dollar airline empire. Now, you might be telling yourself that moving fast means being reckless and making stupid mistakes that will ruin you. But that's completely wrong. Billionaires do not make reckless choices. They just refuse to let fear paralyze them. They take fast, calculated action because they know that speed is the ultimate advantage. I'm going to show you exactly how to make lightning-fast decisions that actually build wealth without risking your entire life. Master the art of extreme concentration. Most people believe that to protect their money, they need to spread it out across many different investments. You are taught that diversification is the the only safe way to build wealth. But Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, completely disagrees. He says that diversification is just a protection against ignorance. If you know exactly what you are doing, spreading your focus only slows down your success. Billionaires do not build massive wealth by putting a little bit of effort into 20 different projects. They pick one thing and they concentrate all their energy, time, and money into mastering it. When you focus intensely on a single industry, you build deep expertise. You start to see opportunities that average people completely miss. You gain a massive competitive advantage because you understand the market better than anyone else. So if you're struggling to make money right now, look at your daily schedule. You are probably trying to run 3 different businesses, learn 5 different skills, and manage a dozen social media accounts. You're spreading yourself too thin. You need to earn your right to concentrate. Pick the one area where you have the most passion and potential. Cut out every single distraction and direct all of your power into making that one thing incredibly successful. Program your brain for problem solving. You cannot make billion-dollar decisions if your brain is constantly overwhelmed by stress. Most people wake up, you look at your phones and immediately start panicking about the day. You live in a reactive state, letting other people dictate your focus. The ultra-wealthy protect their mental energy like it's actually their most valuable asset. They use special routines to force their brains into a state of deep and creative thought. Tom Bilyeu, friend of the channel, co-founded Quest Nutrition and turned it into a billion-dollar brand. He did not do this by working himself to death without taking a break. He created a strict morning routine to train his mind. Every single morning, he exercises to build discipline, and then he immediately meditates. He uses meditation to calm his mind and enter what's called an alpha brainwave state. This is the state where your brain is at its most relaxed and most creative. But he doesn't just sit there. Once he reaches that calm state, he practices something that he calls thinkitating. He stops quieting his mind and points his focus directly at his biggest business problems. Because his brain is relaxed, he can see the unique solutions that he would never find while being mega stressed out. You need to build a space in your day to slow down. Stop running from task to task. Give yourself time to think deeply, and that will unlock answers that will completely change your business. Leverage the cash conversion cycle. When the economy crashes, average people panic and close their doors. They blame the market for their failure. But billionaires see chaos as the ultimate opportunity to grow. They don't rely on outside investors to come and save them. They restructure their business to generate their own cash flow so they can survive any storm that comes. During the dot-com crash in 2001, Amazon lost 90% of its value. Most internet companies went completely bankrupt. Jeff Bezos did not give up. He focused his entire company on one single metric: the cash conversion cycle. He figured out how to get paid by his customers upfront, and then he waited 28 days to pay his suppliers for the products. This meant Amazon had a negative 24-day cash conversion cycle. By getting the money before he had to pay his bills, his business funded its own massive growth. He turned a terrible financial crisis into an actual engine that made him the richest man in the world. You need to look at how money flows through your business. Find ways to collect cash faster and pay expenses later. When you control your cash flow, you end up controlling your destiny. Apply the Russian doll hiring principle. You'll never build a massive empire entirely by yourself. At some point, you have to bring other people onto your team. The biggest mistake you can make is hiring people who are less talented than you just so you can feel like the smartest person in the room. Billionaires leave their egos at the door. They intentionally hire people who are absolute geniuses in areas areas where they are weak. There's a concept among the ultra-wealthy called the Russian doll principle. If you hire people who are smaller than you, you become a company of dwarves. If you hire people who are bigger than you, you become a company of giants. Billionaires look for people who have a fire inside them. They want team members who are self-motivated and do not need to be micromanaged every single day. You have to stop trying to be the expert at everything. Identify the tasks that drain your energy and hire someone who loves doing them. Give them the freedom to make decisions and push your company forward. When you surround yourself with brilliant people, their success becomes your success. Your job is to set the vision, and their job is to figure out the fastest way to get there. Make the ultimate commitment. Every successful person reaches a breaking point. You will face a moment where everything goes completely wrong, your money runs out, and the whole world tells you that you should quit. This is the moment that separates the people who stay broke from the people who become billionaires. You have to decide if your vision is actually worth fighting for. In 2008, Elon Musk faced the worst year of his life. SpaceX had 3 rockets explode in a row, and Tesla was weeks away from completely running out of cash. He had spent all the money he made from PayPal. He had to choose between letting one company die to save the other or risking everything to save both. He decided he would rather die trying than give up on his mission. He split his remaining money, secured last-minute contracts, and saved both companies from complete failure. You have to find that level of commitment inside yourself. If you treat your business like it's a hobby, it will pay you like a hobby. You have to burn the boats and decide that failure here is simply not an option. When you fully commit, you stop making excuses and start finding a way to win. The pressure will force you to become the leader that you are always meant to be. The ultimate choice. The only thing standing between you and the wealth you want is your own hesitation. You have the power to make a decision today that changes your entire future. So stop waiting for the perfect time and start taking massive action right now. Go build the life you know you deserve. Now let's learn how to get rich from zero and beat the odds. It has never been easier to get rich from $0 than it is right now. I know that sounds bold, In fact, most people will tell you the opposite, that it's harder than ever, that without money you can't make money. But the truth is, the opportunity this year is unprecedented. We have more tools, more access, more knowledge at our fingertips than any generation before us. And if you refuse to take advantage of that, you'll stay stuck where you are. Do nothing and nothing changes. Worse, you'll look back years from now full of regret, wondering what could have been. And research shows we regret the things we don't do far more than the things that we try and fail. Let me prove it to you with a quick story. Colonel Harland Sanders was 65 years old, broke, living on a tiny $100 Social Security check. Instead of giving up, he decided to sell his fried chicken recipe to restaurants. He drove around America sleeping in his car, knocking on doors, and got rejected 1,009 times. Over 1,000 people told told him no. Can you imagine that? Most people would have quit after a dozen rejections, let alone hundreds. But not Colonel Sanders. He refused to give up. And finally, one restaurant said yes. His recipe caught on. Kentucky Fried Chicken was born. And by his late 70s, Colonel Sanders became a millionaire and a global icon, all because he kept going when anyone else would have quit. That is the power of relentless persistence. Now, Now you might be thinking, okay, great for Colonel Sanders, but what about you, Evan? How about me? Have you ever started from nothing? And absolutely. I wanna share a quick personal story. When I was 19, I was a co-founder of a startup that was failing. We were only making $300 a month and I felt worthless as a human. I was too embarrassed to tell my friends how bad it was, so I just pretended everything was fine while secretly drowning. The pressure built and at a family Thanksgiving dinner,. I hit my breaking point. I told my business partner that I quit. In my mind, I was done. I broke down, was crying at the table, uh, totally devastated. That night was one of the worst nights of my life. But the very next morning, as soon as I woke up, I felt the pit in my stomach that quitting didn't feel right. And I realized that I could live with failure, but I couldn't live with regret. And I remember telling myself, I can deal with the failure, but I can't deal with not knowing. So I decided to give it one more shot. And I thought, how can I save this business? And I turned to someone who'd already built something huge— Bill Gates. I didn't know him, but I studied how Bill Gates built Microsoft from zero. I learned that in Microsoft's early days, partnerships were the key to their first big growth. So I tried modeling that. I reached out to potential partners and eventually made a deal with a company in the UK to distribute our software. And that one partnership went from making me $300 a month to to $13,500. In an instant, I had proof that our business could work. I felt like a millionaire in my head at 19 years old, and we gained momentum and confidence. And a couple of years later, my startup was acquired. I went from near rock bottom to a win, all because I didn't give up and I found the model that worked. Now, you might still have doubts. Maybe you're thinking, okay, sure, Evan, you had a business and you had some knowledge. I'm just a person with $0, no advantages. Is getting rich really possible for me? Are, this year is a tough time. The economy, the competition, AI is taking over. Isn't it too late for me to start? I get it. The doubt is natural. But look at it from this perspective. Starting from $0 can actually be your greatest advantage. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. You can take risks. You can be creative. You can hustle in a way that people with big cushy jobs or big savings, they won't. And remember, nearly 80% of millionaires are self-made. They didn't inherit their wealth. They built it. They started with nothing and they built it from the ground up. And so if the majority of millionaires began with no money, then why not you? The American dream, or whichever country you're from, is alive for those who are hungry enough to chase it. So kill the doubt. You can do this. I'm going to show you exactly how. So if I woke up tomorrow with $0 in my bank account and had to start over this year, This is what I do to get rich step by step. Let's break it down. Here we go. Step number 1: Commit 100% and master your mindset. The very first thing I do is make an unbreakable decision that I am going to become wealthy. You have to commit 100%. No half measures. No, maybe it'll work out. You burn the boats. There is no plan B. Why? Because when you're all in, you find a way. Back when I was in university, I had a choice. Take a high-paying job or start a business. Everyone thought I was crazy to turn down the sure thing, but I knew in my gut I'd regret not betting on myself, or at least trying. I remember thinking, when I'm 40 and I'm an old man, I don't want to look back and wonder, what if? I'd rather fail chasing my dream than play it safe and live with the regret. And so that mindset is non-negotiable if you want to go from $0 to rich. And science backs this up. Studies show that people regret the actions they didn't take make far more than the ones that they did. So decide right now that you'd rather try and fail than not try at all. And part of this mindset shift is believing that it's possible for you. If you don't truly believe that it can happen, you've already lost. So feed your belief. I call my community here Believe Nation for a reason. Belief is the engine. Every great thing that will happen in your life is on the other side of you believing in yourself even a little bit more. So guard your mind from negativity and surround it with inspiration, with videos, with books, with people who've done it. If I were starting at zero today, I would flood my brain with success stories and positive influences daily. I make it impossible for the self-doubt to take root. You have to develop an unshakable conviction that you will win. The other part of mastering your mindset is setting a clear vision and aligning it with what you love to do. So don't just chase money, chase a dream or a business that actually excites you and serves others. Why? Because you'll never win doing work that you hate. Someone else will love it and they will beat you. That's a lesson I've had to live. At one point, years after my first business, I was running a successful website for entrepreneurs. It was making money. It was working on paper, but I didn't love it anymore. My passion has shifted to video and I knew it. So you know what I did? I shut the entire thing down overnight. A website with hundreds of thousands of pages of content. And I moved my whole team to focus on YouTube. People thought that I was nuts to abandon a sure thing., but I knew the real risk was sticking with something I didn't have my heart in anymore. As I like to say, doing something you don't like is the risky thing. The safe choice is to move to what you love. So if I'm starting from zero, I'm first getting my head and my heart in the right place. I commit to the journey. I believe that it's possible, and I focus on a vision that fires me up. With that foundation, you start to lay the groundwork to become unstoppable. Step number 2: Find your purpose and solve a real problem. So once my mindset is set, the next thing I do is figure out what I'm going to build or do to create wealth. This isn't about picking a random moneymaking scheme. It's about finding a mission that is meaningful and valuable to others. You get paid for solving problems. So one of my core beliefs is that your purpose comes from your pain. Look at the toughest challenges or pains that you've overcome in your life, and you'll often find a clue to how you can serve others. In my case, I struggled as a 19-year-old entrepreneur. I felt alone and scared, clueless, lost. That pain became my purpose. Today, everything I do is about helping 19-year-old Evans out there who are struggling. I know what that pain feels like, and I wake up every day driven to try to make it easier for others. You have something like that too. Maybe you grew up poor and learned how to budget and save. Maybe you battled a health issue, uh, maybe you learned how to get healthy as a result. Maybe You just know a lot about a field or have a skill that you can teach others. Take something you've been through and care deeply about and build around that. When your mission is personal, not just strategy, you'll have the passion to keep going and people will feel that authenticity. But passion alone isn't enough. It has to solve a real problem for people. Money flows to value. So if I'm starting from zero, I'm asking, what problem can I solve that people are willing to pay for? It could be a service, could be a product, content that addresses a need. Since I have no money, I'd lean towards businesses that require hustle, not capital. So for example, maybe you can offer consulting or freelance using a service that you have— marketing, coding, design, writing, anything. Or you can create content on the topic and monetize it with coaching or ad revenue. The key is to focus on helping others in a concrete way. So the more people you help, the more money you can make. That's that simple. That's entrepreneurship. When I started this YouTube channel, it wasn't to get rich. It was to solve a problem I knew existed. Entrepreneurs needed guidance and inspiration. I provided free value consistently, and eventually the money followed through ads, through our programs, through our coaching opportunities, speaking, book deals. If I had to start over, I'd identify one specific niche or problem to pour myself into. Don't try to do 20 things. You dilute your efforts. Focus. So maybe it's launching a simple service business at first to get cash flow and learning while keeping a bigger vision in mind. The idea is to start doing something that helps people, even on a small scale. So think big, but we're acting small to get momentum going. You can always pivot or expand later, but you need to get in the game now. So think about what group of people do you want to serve? Who do you want to be your hero to? For me, it was entrepreneurs. For you, it might be single parents or gamers or local businesses or people who want to get fit. Whatever you have a connection to, find that intersection of what you love, what you're good at or can learn, and what people need. That's your sweet spot. That's where you'll find purpose and profit. And once you have it, you are ready to execute. Step number 3: Model the masters. Learn from successful people. Here is a huge shortcut. Whatever goal you have, someone out there has already achieved it. If I'm at $0 and I want to get rich, I'm going to school on people who started from nothing and made it big. I did this with my first business. Intuitively or out of desperation, I looked at Bill Gates and Microsoft as my model. I literally asked, how did he go from zero to one? The answer I found was partnerships. Microsoft's big break came from partnering with IBM. But even before that, Bill Gates was making smaller partnership deals that took Microsoft from a tiny company to a few million in revenue. That insight changed my strategy. I stopped trying to do everything alone, and we'll talk about that later, and started making partnership calls. And as I shared, that led to our first major deal and saved my company. Model success. It leaves clues. This year, this is easier than ever. I would devour biographies, interviews, podcasts, YouTube videos, any content where successful entrepreneurs or investors are sharing how they did it. I'm looking for patterns and strategies. How did they make their first $10,000, their first $100,000? What did they do when they had no money and no credibility? So for example, many entrepreneurs started by offering their services for free or cheap to build a track record, then leverage that into bigger opportunities. Many built personal brands that then attracted an audience before launching their product. There's no one-size-fits-all, but you will start seeing common themes. So take notes. If you learn that a strategy worked for 5 different self-made millionaires, odds are it can work for you too. And don't just copy the outcome, copy the process. Copy the rise, not the result. Health. Don't get mesmerized by someone else's end success— their mansion, their millions. Study how they rose from the beginning. When I researched Bill Gates, I wasn't looking at how Microsoft dominates now. I was laser-focused on how he hustled deals when he was a no-name startup founder. That's the part that applies to me starting at zero. So if I wanted to build a huge YouTube channel now, I'd study how people in my space were making videos now, but also what were they doing when they had 100 subscribers, not when they have 10 million subscribers. If I want to start a clothing line with no money, I'd study someone like like Daymond John sewing hats in his garage in the early FUBU days. There are blueprints that are out there, so use them. And one more thing, you can turn your heroes into mentors if you can. Consuming their content is great, but if there's any way to get direct access or advice, go for it. That might mean joining a free online community that they run or engaging in their livestream Q&As or even offering to work for them for free just to learn. Be bold. The worst they can say is no. The best that can happen is you get a mentor who's already walked the path. Path. Even if you can't speak directly to them, you can immerse yourself in their mindset. So I attribute a lot of my success and confidence to the fact that I spent years surrounding myself virtually with great minds. I would watch videos, and still do, of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Oprah and whoever inspired me every morning. It feels like I'm hanging around them, and it builds my belief. My dad once asked me how I had the confidence to stand next to a multi-billion-dollar CEO in a It's because I had been living in the minds of great people through videos and books, and their mentality rubbed off on me. You become what you consume. So if I'm starting from zero, I'm consuming greatness and modeling every strategy I can find from people who turn nothing into something. Step number 4: Don't do it alone. Get support and ask for help. This one is critical. If I'm starting over, I'm not going to be a lone wolf. Trying to do everything by yourself is a recipe for burnout and failure, and I learned this the hard way. In the early days of my startup, I was working non-stop every single day from dark to dusk, and I was getting nowhere. Why? Because I was too proud and embarrassed to ask for help. I thought I had to put on a brave face and figure it all out on my own, and I didn't want my friends to know that I was struggling, so I suffered in silence. And that isolation nearly broke me. I eventually it for a day because I felt so alone and defeated. And I'll tell you right now, just don't do that. Don't make it harder by trying to be a hero all by yourself. If I'm at $0 from day one, I tap into every source of support that I can find. Find a community of like-minded people. That could be an online forum, a school group, a Discord community, a local meetup of entrepreneurs, anywhere you can talk to others on the same journey. Share your struggles and wins. Ask questions. You'll be amazed how many people actually want to help if you just ask. I'd also look for a mentor, a coach who's willing to guide me. It could even be a peer who's just a few steps ahead of you. Swallow your pride and ask. Don't do it alone because you'll probably fail. You'll quit along the way because it's too devastatingly lonely. And that's an honest truth. Humans are not meant to endure hardship alone. And building wealth from zero is definitely a challenge with ups and downs. So surround yourself with people who uplift you. Even if it's just one friend who checks in and believes in you, it makes all the difference. Also consider partnerships. If you lack certain skills or resources, partner with someone who complements you. My first business probably wouldn't have gone anywhere if I didn't have business partners. I had two co-founders who were technical and I was more on the business side, and that partnership was key. I couldn't code bio software and they didn't hustle the deals that I was doing. If you find the right person to team up with, you can 10x your progress. Just make sure you share the same values and the same vision. Don't partner just for the sake of partnering. Choose wisely, but don't be afraid to do it. And don't forget your friends and family. They might not understand your business, but they can provide emotional support. Tell the people close to you what you're trying to do and why it matters so much to you. I know it can be scary to admit you're struggling or say, hey, I need help, but it's so important. In my case, once I finally opened up about how hard things were, It removed a huge weight off my shoulders. I realized I wasn't going to be judged. In fact, people wanted to encourage me. If I could go back to my 19-year-old self, I'd shake him and say, "Tell your friends you're having a tough time. It's okay. There's no shame in being at the beginning. Everybody starts somewhere." So build your support system, find believers who will cheer you on, seek out advisors who have the knowledge that you lack, leverage other people's strength and their networks through partnerships. When you have a team, whether it's a formal team or just your informal circle, you will go farther and handle this setback so much better. We rise faster together. Step number 5: Take action. Start small and improve quickly. When you're starting from zero, speed of implementation is everything. You can't afford to sit around perfecting your plan for You need to do things and learn on the fly. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was overplanning. Early in my startup, I spent an entire summer writing a detailed business plan, refining every little detail and making it look perfect on paper. I was so caught up in planning, I wasn't actually doing the sales or iterating on the product. And guess what? We missed a huge opportunity because of that. A big company came looking to buy businesses like ours, but we hadn't made enough real progress and we lost that deal to a competitor who had been executing while I was just writing my business plan. And that competitor got bought for $40 million and we got nothing. That stung. I learned my lesson. Ideas are worth nothing without action. So I vowed to never let perfection slow me down again. So version 1 is better than version none. You don't need to have everything figured out just to start. You just need to start. So if I'm at $0, I'm launching quick and dirty. Have an idea for a product? Awesome. Create a minimum version of it. It this week and get it in front of people. Offering a service? Awesome. Start pitching clients today, even if you're not 100% ready. Make a basic free website or even just a social media page and put yourself out there. It might not be pretty. That's okay. You'll refine as you go. Action produces information. You'll learn more in one month of doing than in a year of thinking about it. My YouTube channel is a great example. My first videos, they were terrible. I was awkward on camera. I had really bad editing skills. I had tiny views. But by making videos, I learned how to make better videos. We've now done 10,000 videos, but I have to make the first 350 bad ones to start getting good. Imagine if I had waited until I knew what I was doing. I'd still be waiting right now. So don't be afraid to fail in small ways. Think of it as, uh, testing, not failing. Try different approaches and see what sticks. Most of your ideas will not work, and that's fine. As I remind myself, you've got to get out there and test your assumptions. Most of your plan is going to fail or go wrong anyway. And that's not pessimism. That's reality. The sooner you find out what does not work, the sooner you can double down on what does work. So treat it like an experiment. You launch, you learn, you adjust, you repeat. Each cycle you're getting closer and smarter to that jackpot. One more tip: prioritize actions that get you revenue or users quickly. When you have $0, you want to validate that someone will actually pay for what you do as soon as possible. Don't spend 6 months building something in a vacuum only to find out that nobody needs it. Do the simplest version and see if you can get one customer, one sale, or even just one user giving you feedback. That early validation not only teaches you, it also gives you a psychological boost. Hey, someone wants this. So example, uh, if I was starting a consulting business, I'd rather land one small paying client next week than spend weeks polishing a fancy website with no clients. If I'm creating a product, I might pre-sell it, offer it and see if people buy, then build it later rather than build the whole thing hoping people come. This way cash starts flowing sooner, which you can reinvest and you avoid wasting time. The bottom line is take action imperfectly. You're going to make mistakes. That is inevitable. But you can't steer a parked car. You've got to get moving to gain any momentum. Every successful entrepreneur has a trail of errors and failures behind them, but they learned and kept going. So will you. Launch now, improve later. Done is better than perfect. Step number 6: Build your brand and attract opportunities. Your personal brand and online presence are incredibly powerful and they're basically free to build. So if I have to get rich from $0, I am going to leverage the heck out of internet and social media to to create opportunities. And when I say build your brand, I don't mean you need a fancy logo or a perfect Instagram profile. I mean share your journey and provide value publicly so that people know who you are and what you stand for. This does a few things. So first, it builds trust and reputation. So if you consistently put out helpful, authentic content that's in your field, people will start to see you as an authority, or at least someone worth paying attention to. What that does is it leads to customers, it leads to partnerships, it leads to investors. Second, it creates a community of people around you, which is also incredibly valuable. Remember step 4 about not doing it alone? A loyal audience is a kind of support network and brain trust. Third, it attracts opportunities that you could never predict. So my YouTube channel, for example, has brought speaking gigs and book deals and consulting offers and friendships with people that I admired, all because I just started sharing content. So if I'm starting from zero, I'd start creating content content immediately, likely on the platform where my target audiences hangs out. So if I'm targeting professionals, maybe that's LinkedIn. If it's a younger or broad audience, maybe it's TikTok or YouTube. For me personally, I love YouTube because I am a visual learner and I believe video is the most powerful way to connect with people. So that's why I started a YouTube channel in the first place. I thought if I can make videos to help other entrepreneurs not struggle like I did it would be more impactful than writing blogs. And when you make content, focus on serving your audience, not just selling. Share lessons, document your journey, teach what you know, even interviews with other experts. Become a value machine. Now you might wonder, so how does this make me money directly? At first it doesn't, and that's okay. Think of building your brand as you're planting seeds, and over time those seeds grow into a farm, you know, it's a thing, an orchard that bears fruit for years. And the more people who know you in a positive light, the more people you can ultimately do business with. As one of my mentors told me, the more people know you, the more people you can serve. And the more people you serve, the more success you're going to have. It's a pretty simple equation. I had to get over my initial shyness about putting myself out there. I used to be afraid of being on camera or being the face of anything. I didn't want the spotlight. I'm an introvert. But I had a great agent who reframed it for me. He said sharing my story wasn't about ego, it was about service. Reaching more people meant helping more people, and that clicked for me. So remember, promoting yourself is really promoting the mission and value that you offer. If you're coming from a place of wanting to help, then you should be eager to be known because you can make a bigger impact and income if you are known. So practically, I would set a schedule for content just like I would for any work task. Maybe I commit to posting 2 YouTube videos or 3 TikToks a week, or writing a blog post every week, whatever form map plays to my strengths. Consistency is key, which we'll talk about in the next step. And don't worry about being perfect here either. Your content will improve as you do it. My first videos were awful, and we've talked about that, but by video 100, I was a lot better, and by video 1,000, I had a real community. Give yourself permission to be messy at the start. And one more thing: engage with your audience. When you're small, you have the advantage of being able to respond to every comment Talk to followers one-on-one, build real relationships. Those early community members can turn into your biggest advocates, your first paying clients, or just a source of great feedback and encouragement. I can't tell you how many times a random comment or message from a viewer gave me a breakthrough idea or just the motivation to keep going. And even now I consider my audience part of my team. You guys, I listen to your needs and questions and your comments. I still look at all of them and it helps guide what we do next. So build your brand. It doesn't have to cost money, just time and courage. Show the world who you are and what you stand for. Become the go-to person in your space, even if that space is tiny at first. And over time, this becomes a massive asset. Your brand will start to open doors for you while you sleep. Opportunities will start coming to you instead of you always chasing them. That's when momentum really kicks in. Step number 7: Be consistent. Hustle with patience and persistence. This might be the most important of all. Never give up. Consistency and persistence are the superpowers that turn small efforts into massive results. If I'm starting from zero, I know I'm not going to become a millionaire overnight. It's going to take time, probably years of showing up every single day, and I'm prepared for that. You have to be in love with the process, not just the end goal of being rich, because it's the daily grind, the repeated actions that actually create wealth. So first, some perspective. It took me 7 years of making videos on YouTube to get to 38,000 subscribers. 7 years! Most people would have quit way before that. And today the channel has over 4 million subscribers. But those first 40K, it was the hardest grind because the growth was so slow. Why didn't I quit? Because I wasn't focused on the numbers. I was focused on helping one person at a time. I always say, focus on who you're serving, not who you're not. If 50 people watched the video, I was grateful for those 50, and I gave them my all. I even imagined those 50 people in a room. That's a pretty decent crowd. It just kept me motivated because I knew if I could impact 50 people, I could grow it to 500, then 5,000, and so on. So I just reframed what others see as only a few as an opportunity to connect more deeply with a few. And over time, consistency plus patience equals exponential growth. Those small numbers multiply if you keep going. So whatever path you choose to be wealthy, be it a business, a YouTube channel, investing, anything, treat it like you're watering a tree. You don't see much happening at first, right? Maybe just a tiny little sprout. But if you get frustrated and you stop watering, the sprout dies. But if you keep at it day after day, eventually that tree will grow roots and then shoots, and then it's towering above you, right? There's a great parable about the Chinese bamboo. It spends 5 years underground with no visible growth, and then in a few weeks it shoots up to 90 feet. All that time it was building a root system. Your work is building the root system even when you can't see much of the surface. So don't quit before the miracle happens. That means you need persistence and adaptability. Persistence doesn't mean doing the same thing that's clearly not working over and over. It means not giving up on the goal but being willing to try try new tactics instead. If something isn't working, tweak it and stick with the overall mission. So in my case, I was persistent about making content to help entrepreneurs, but I constantly experimented with formats and titles and styles until things started to click. You keep the mission constant and the methods flexible. Also, and this is sometimes hard, celebrate small wins to keep yourself motivated. When you're starting from zero, $100 sales 100 views on a video, it's a win. Recognize that and use it as extra motivation. I used to literally dance around my room when I got a new client or when a video did better than the last one. So let yourself feel proud of progress, even if it's tiny. What it does is it keeps a positive mindset and it helps build your resilience. Too many people only celebrate the end goal and ignore the journey. But the journey is all we have for a long time. So you have to enjoy it. And let's be real, there will be days, there will be tough days, days when nothing is working. Days when you question why you're even doing this in the first place. And I've been there more times than I can count. And on those days, remember your why. Remember that bold commitment you made in the beginning, the vision that fired you up, the people that you want to help, the life that you want to create for yourself and your family. Remember that every setback is just temporary. It's part of your story. Sometimes when I would feel like quitting or giving up, I'd literally rewatch my favorite motivational videos or revisit the success stories that I mentioned earlier. Earlier just to reset my mindset. I call a friend who understands entrepreneurship and talk it out. Do whatever you need to do to keep yourself in the game. As long as you don't stop, you haven't failed. You're just not there yet. Consistency also applies to your habits and your routine. So getting rich from zero might require a lifestyle change. You may need to cut back on leisure and double down on work for a while. And I'm not a fan of 24/7 grind with no rest. You know, I believe in sleep and family time and taking care of health, but you will need to put a lot of hours and probably sacrifice some comfort. The good news is if you pick the mission that you actually enjoy, right back to step 1 and 2, the work can be fun and fulfilling, not drudgery that drains you. So I love what I do. So working a 16-hour day sometimes doesn't even feel like work. I've also structured my life to maintain balance. So I schedule a day for family, a day for being the CEO, a day for content. So I'm fully present in that area. And what it does is keeps me disciplined, right? That kind of discipline keeps me going long term without burning out. When you're consistent, you also learn how to be efficient and organized. You find ways to do more in less time because you have to if you're repeating tasks every day. So embrace the process of optimization. The difference between the person who gets rich from nothing and the one who doesn't is often just that one kept going when the other stopped. So be the one that keeps going. Remember Colonel Sanders getting rejected 1,009 times. What if he stopped at 1,008? Remember me making 350 videos that went nowhere? What if I stopped at 349? The world would have never seen what we had to offer, and I don't want that for you. So persist, keep showing up, hustle with faith and patience. If you do that, your success becomes inevitable. It's just a matter of when, not if. So there you have it. That's exactly what I do to go from $0 to rich this year. It starts in your head and your heart with total commitment and belief. It moves through finding a purposeful path, learning from the best, surrounding yourself with support, taking fast action, building your reputation, and never ever giving up. This isn't a get-rich scheme. It's a get-rich-for-sure plan if you work it and give it time. The fact that you're here showing up learning means you're already ahead of most people. You're hungry and you're willing to do the work, and I respect that so much. Your journey from $0 starts is now. And I promise you that if you stay consistent and you keep believing, you're going to amaze yourself with where you end up. If you feel like you're smart but not successful, this video is for you. Continue to believe and I'll see you there. Your intelligence is the reason you're not successful. Being smart might actually be holding you back. Every day I see brilliant people with sky-high IQs lose to others with half their talent. Why?