How I Went From Dead Broke to Millionaire in 2.5 Years

You know, I left college. I have to be honest with everybody, and I left college after the first year because, you know, after a whole year of college, I wasn't even rich yet. Like, what the heck's going on? What a waste of time this is. And, you know, I was out there to try and become a millionaire. My parents came to North America with nothing. They worked their buns off. And I got ingrained when I was young that if you don't have money, you die. It's survival. It's not about, oh, you know, you can buy a boat and a plane and have three vacation homes. My parents didn't know from any of that. We were, you know, lower middle class. I would say we weren't starving. My parents were wonderful parents, but they worked, you know, 14 hours a day, six, seven days a week, and both of them. And then. So I learned early that money was really, really important. You know, it didn't run my life, but I just knew that that was something I had to have. So I left college after the first year and I went out right away to, you know, start, first of all getting a job, and that didn't work out, and then started a business that didn't quite work out. You know, after 10 years, I ended up going through 10 different businesses, none of which worked, and 14 different jobs, which, you know, they didn't work for me because, you know, I recognized after 14 times that I was unemployable. You know, I'm not a person that has an easy time working for other people. You know, I need to take. Take it on myself because, you know, I always found, like, what is this guy talking about? Or what's he doing? Or why is he doing it this way? Or I could do better. But of course, when I went into my own business several times and I kept on saying I could do better, I wasn't doing better. So, you know, it seems really odd now to be able to say to people that I was, like, really dead broke, like, destitute. Like, literally, there were many, many, many, many, way too many nights that I had to choose between putting $5 of gas or petrol in my car or eating dinner that night. And there way too many times there was no dinner. And, I mean, it sounds so strange right now, but I think that for me, one of the. That's why I say it hurts my heart. It hurts my heart when I see people. I recognize people who are trying and they're not making it and they just can't put it together. It's kind of like, here's the building. You know, it should be here and here and here and here. And it goes up and it doesn't do that. It's kind of here and then this falls. And they're just not sure why. They're getting information from a thousand places. Most of that information in my experience is like, what. Where are you getting that? And the thing is, though, is you've got to kind of have a system for what actually works that. That can be put together, not a bunch. So another way to put it, it's like a puzzle, right? Most puzzles, if you look at the COVID of the puzzle, it is a picture that is already put together, right? And all the pieces are then taken apart in the jigsaw puzzle mixed up. And now you get the. But in the end, it actually turns into that puzzle. That vision actually happens. It's supposed to happen. And the pieces of the puzzle work together to make it happen. But when most people are out there, have a completed picture, so they have all these pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but they're pieces that go into 28 different pictures. And it's like, no wonder this doesn't work. You know, it never worked in the first place. It doesn't work together. And so, you know, for me, that's why it's it. That's why I'm in this business now. That's why I'm in the training business, is because, you know, once I actually did make it, I guess we'll talk about that. But, you know, after 10 businesses that didn't work, I finally had a conversation, let's say with a friend of my father's. He was a. My dad would have poker, poker night on Mondays, and these five guys would come over every Monday. And they were all from Europe and the old country. But one of these guys was really, really, really rich. He owned half the city. He was a building developer and he had apartment buildings and shopping mall wealthy. And everybody knew who he was. And he was a take no prisoners guy. He was no, like, he was like straight up, this is the way you do it. So I remember I was. Had had to. I was almost 30 years old. I had to move back with my parents and lived in their basement, you know, you know, the lower level of their. Of their home, which was the basement. And. And I lived there. And I came up one day to get. Get something from the fridge and I passed him in the hall, said, harv, your. Your dad says you're a bum. I said that? Yeah, that's Great. A lot of encouragement there, dad. You know, my dad thought I was a bum. He said, you're a bum. You know, you, you, you know, you can't make any money. What's the matter with you? Like, so he's. I said to him, yeah, well, you know, I'm doing my best. And he said. He said, so what's your problem? Why aren't you doing well? I said, I don't know. He goes, that's your problem? I said, what do you mean, that's my problem? He says, you don't know? He says, what do you want to do? What do you do want to do well, and how do you want to make it in what arena? And I said, in business, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to have my own business. I want to do well. He says. He says, so what do you know about business? I said, well, I thought. He says, well, you don't, because obviously that's your result. He says, you know, if you were going to be the best piano player in the world, what would you do? I said, I guess, you know, I study with the best piano players. And he goes, exactly same with an athlete of any sort, tennis player. He said, so if you want to be a rich. A rich person in business, have you ever thought of studying rich business people? And at the time, I was like, nah, you know, I'll just make it on my own. I mean, I'll figure it out and, you know, I'll go to a few seminars and read a few books, and I'll figure it out eventually, right? But it wasn't happening. So because I was. I wasn't. I had been between businesses and was between jobs. I took the next, believe it or not, six months, and all I did was study rich business people. And I went through. Through books and magazines and newspaper articles and went to the library and. And in the end, I put together these. This set of principles, actually, with seven principles, and I added an eighth one after seven principles they all seem to have in common. And I put them together, and the next business I opened, I started with a $2,000 credit card loan. I had no money, and I became a millionaire within two and a half years using the system and went, okay, this puzzle pieces, they go together and they actually form wealth. That's cool, right? So all these people that used to know me when I was, you know, broke, which for over a decade would say, you know, like, look at your car, look at your house. Like, how did that happen? And I'd go, well, for 10 years. And really I used to think and act and do business and. And do my money like this. And that didn't work. And so I changed all of that around and I started doing this and that worked. And I started telling them the difference between this, that didn't work and this, that did work. And they were all enthralled because they were all doing this that didn't work. Like me Lear from the same people going to the same seminars, reading the same books, you know, trying it out themselves. It didn't work. And everything I was talking about was kind of new to them, especially when they were all put together in a one one through seven step method, right? And it has to be followed in order. And so they asked me, why don't. Well, why don't you teach this stuff? Nobody else is teaching it. And now I was the kind of person that I was afraid, and I was afraid in class to raise my hand because, like, what if she calls me and I have to open my mouth? And the teacher would come by, said, who's got the answer, too? And I throw my pencil on the ground, you know, like. Like, look for it. So I'd be under the desk when she's looking around for a bit. I hated thinking about speaking in public. And teaching would be the last thing that I would ever envision for myself. The last thing. But everyone kept asking me, and I wasn't teaching. I was just saying, all right, this is what I did. This is how it worked. And people started asking, so I just kept doing. So ended up taking. I was a big learner, but I didn't like learning in schools, right? That wasn't my thing. And I ended up having a hobby. A really. A really strange hobby, believe it or not, is I was into super learning, this methodology of learning faster and remembering more. And I don't know why. I read this book called super Learning. And then I started taking these courses on super learning, on what's called accelerated learning technologies with some of the best people in the world. The best people in the world, the people who taught Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki. So I put together as a hobby this business course in this accelerated super learning methodology. Put it out there, and I guess the rest is history. It actually works. It works in the real world. It works for real people, and it's very easy to understand. And it's a method that's entertaining. You learn faster, you learn more. And that's the beginning of the whole career. So, you know, there's things that actually work. Sam.