What Making $30M Taught Me About God, Money, and True Freedom

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. In today's video I'm going to be sharing what 15 years as an entrepreneur has really taught me about life, money and freedom. So I've spent 15 years chasing money, but here's what it actually taught me about freedom and true wealth. So I'm going to be sharing today some reflective lessons on why financial success alone doesn't necessarily deliver lasting freedom and fulfillment because I've really walked that path. So since I've started all my companies over 10 years ago, I've generated over $30 million within those businesses and very high profit margins. So I've managed to build a net worth of eight figures. And I've learned a lot over that journey. I realized over that journey just chasing the status play and more money without this deep emotional spirituality and sovereignty. And those lessons have taught me that without deep emotional sovereignty and true meaningful purpose and most importantly my relationship with God. I used to go to church many years ago and I stopped doing that when I was like around 13, 14. And we've always been very spiritual with a God, but not necessarily back to my Christian beliefs. And it was only very recently that I started to really feel that missing void. So I felt this missing void for the probably the last two or three years and I realized that was my relationship with God and my practicing of going to church and reading the Bible. So that was one of the key things. But back on my mindset shifts on money. So really in the early years of my business I honestly believe that money was freedom itself. So I was mistaken the resource of money for true sovereignty. And Naval Ravikant, one of the mentors I love to follow. If you haven't read his books, I really recommend to do he says that money doesn't solve all problems, but it solves all your money problems. And that is definitely true. So without money I wouldn't be able to support my family, build a great team and structure and do the things that I wanted to do in life and travel around the world and pick where I would choose to live. I'm actually here back in my home headquarters here in Newcastle in one of my businesses, my recruitment agency that I first started 11 years ago now. So that's bringing back a lot of memories. It's actually quite an interesting discovery coming back because when you've grown so much and you've built a different life out in Dubai and Marbell London and these places, coming back to where it all started is it's quite a different energy, let's say that. So it's quite different coming back. But there's a lot of nostalgia here and I was looking back through all of the books that I had here and even looking back through some of the notes of when I was trying to make my first 20, 30,000 pounds a month in the agency, then 100k a month and wow. The journey that I've been on over those years has been very interesting and that's why I wanted to share just some wisdom with you. This is just shooting from the hip. I don't really have much of a script or something to get clicks on YouTube. It's just giving you more advice from an eight figure entrepreneur. So that was like. So the early years was just all about money and I was very focused on that. And that mid journey realization came when I achieved all my financial goals. So I hit all of the money goals that I wanted, the things I wanted in life. So I wanted to get Rolls Royce, I had the Rolls Royce Wraith. I wanted a Lamborghini, I had a Lamborghini. I wanted a penthouse apartment overlooking the beach. I had that in Dubai, dream home. I've just ticked that box back in the UK now, which I'm going to share for a new video of moving back to the UK in the countryside in a manor house, which I'm excited to share with you, maybe on another video. But I really felt this emptiness after the initial excitement wore off of all of these things, all the fancy watches for example, all of these type of items. It kept, kept that weight as if I was carrying in a lot of weight. And I started selling off a lot of those assets that I just wasn't using anymore. I had three, four different cars for example. I had four cars, two of them supercars, two other cars didn't need them. Like eight watches didn't need them. And you seem to think that when you chase more money and financial goals you need to buy more things. And that's not the case. Obviously you want to buy experiences, but you want to create generational wealth as well. And the realization was wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. So money is a transfer time and wealth, as Naval says. And I started to realize this was around about probably 18 months to two years ago to start really investing my wealth in stocks, different assets and different asset classes, not necessarily physical things. And that was where true wealth can be measured through compounding. So a lot of you might have already seen that. Obviously if you start off with a million or 10 million, then it can easily compound to 100, 200, 300 million over your lifetime if it compounds between 8 to 9%. So I realized I don't want all of that money by the end of my legacy because there's a very good book, Die with Zero. So one of my friends just recommended this book and it talks about like when you're in your healthy state, that is when you can do all of the activities you want to do, whether it's going on a ski trip or you want to go to these places in the world that you would like to see before you die. You want to be doing that early and enjoying the wealth early. So it's I don't want to leave my future kids hundreds of millions of pounds because that's not going to set them up for success. So it's how much is enough is these things that go through my head. So I spend a lot of time on different forums. A lot of my friends are very wealthy as well and seeing what the magic number was. So my initial number was 10. Once you get that, then it's 20 or 30 will be good. And 20, 30 really set for life. But then once you're at 30, you might want 100 because you want to still keep playing the game. So these are the things that I was, I was just stuck in that cycle of playing the game and it was like, now I've done that, I want to go to 30 and then I want to go to 50 and 100. But the missing pieces is it's just not about this Instagram lifestyle where you're traveling around the world. Yes, I get to fly on private jets and enjoy those experiences and live in different places around the world. But it was all like these pleasure seeking experiences of instant gratification or it was even just coming back to the UK and in Malbell, when I was in there the few weeks ago of actually going to a supermarket again myself instead of Dubai, getting everything delivered to your door. It was actually refreshing to live life as a real human. As it was like actually going to do shopping and carrying the bags yourself. And all of these things that you get when you were starting off and you're doing 95 and you're doing all of these things, once you acquire more wealth, you, you get accustomed to a certain type of lifestyle. So it brought me back down to real reality of like how people live. And then it start, I started to research more about, in the Bible, about Solomon. So King Solomon, he talks about whoever loves money never has enough and whoever loves wealth never is satisfied with their income. And that really resonated with me. Because it's just to end the cycle of chasing more and more success and more wealth. So pursuing money for its own sake is endless. And it, it's unsatisfying because it doesn't have this deeper purpose. So I'm at a stage now in my life where I love business and obviously I love the team that I've got with my companies, but it's more about a longer term purpose that is also my higher purpose is with God. So keeping everything aligned is being very important. And one of the biggest risks that I would say happened with that wasn't financial. It was actually losing myself in external validation. So trying to get success, but then get the validation from others. Well done, James. You've been really successful or looking successful, whether it's on social media or people that you meet. And I learned that true risk is failing to live authentically with yourself. So a lot of the times when I was spending time living in Dubai, I wasn't really living my authentic life because everything was fancy dinners, fancy beach clubs, driving my supercars, wearing the watches, always all of this type of cycle that was like there was just something that just made me a bit numb. And I knew that was because I wasn't living authentically. So I was leaving. It was leaving me successful externally, but really bankrupt internally. Now I'm thankful for my journey I've had spiritually for many years, so I've always meditated and followed the path of spirituality. So that kept me whole inside. But I knew that when I was living away from my roots for the last four years that I was becoming the person that I didn't really want to be. So yes, I was creating the future versions of myself. But the missing piece was bringing my faith with me as well. And I really felt that transition over the last few months now I've been back in my faith. That has really helped me realign my inner self and external self. And that's also like the identity shift. So instead of seeking validation from business achievement, because I've already achieved everything that I wanted to, I wanted to make sure it's aligned with my genuine values. Because when your identity is really tied to your business success and a lot of you watching this, it will be because you're in these emotional highs and lows. When you're doing big deals or you have a great month, they make a lot of your biggest profit month of the, of the year. And you enjoy that. Yes. As an entrepreneur through your journey, you have to be, you will always be tied to your business success in Some stage, because it's a big part of your life as an entrepreneur. Like you can't switch off. You, you're always thinking Saturday, Sundays on an evening. I'm still doing that now. I'm writing my second book now which, which should be on soon. These little things just come up and they're always in that cycle. But what I found was like detaching my self worth from my net worth was really important because I always attached once I was worth a million, I'm a millionaire. Once I was worth 3 to 5 million, I'm a multimillionaire. Then once I was worth 10 million, I'm a decimalian. And the status game keeps going up and up. But it's making sure you have your true emotional sovereignty and it's detached from what in your financial bank account needs to be in your emotional bank account as well. And then that brings me on to like why money just isn't enough. So once you've achieved all of your financial goals, you, you end up being asked deeper questions. And that's definitely from God as well. And it's what do I genuinely value beyond this comfort and luxury? Because I could retire for the rest of my life, live on a big drawdown of dividends from my investments and never have to work again. I definitely wouldn't want to do that. I know I won't ever really retire. But what is it I genuinely want to do as my true purpose? Because I was rereading what Naval was talking about is a desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. So I realize continued desires creates endless dissatisfaction. So I realized continuous desires create this endless dissatisfaction with yourself. And that's the contentment is found in peace, meaningful work and genuine relationships. So I've managed to make some really good relationships that I hold dearly. I've met some great friends that will be friends for life, hopefully. But also it's always been about peace for me, making sure that the work that I'm doing isn't just for financial success. It's actually got a true purpose as well. And that brought me on to Solomon's wisdom on true wealth, which for those of you that don't know Solomon, so in the Bible he is like the wealthiest king. So he achieved everything. And he asked for one thing from Jesus, which was he didn't ask for financial success, he asked for wisdom. So you got the wisdom to then learn how to build a financial success. And he talks about that everything is meaningless, chasing after the wind. So True fulfillment. So true fulfillment is found in wisdom, it's found in purpose and a spiritual foundation, not just this earthy success of tangible things on your wrist or what you're driving or everything like that. It's making sure you have this good strong spiritual foundation as well. So the lessons I learned from creating that true freedom was external success doesn't equal internal peace. So you have to have the freedom is choosing your constraints wisely so you have your boundaries around work and try and learn to switch off when you can your life outside of business and relationships. So you need to protect your peace and joy at all times. So financial freedom means little if your mind like remains imprisoned in this endless striving for more and more. You've got to learn to quieten that part of the mind, get connected with the soul. So the main takeaway from this is the wealth definitely amplifies who you are, but it doesn't solve this emotional and these existing problems internally. So you need to pursue meaningful work, authentic relationships first. Money is a tool to get to where you want to get to, but it's always not the destination. So true freedom is found in mastering yourself, your emotions and really aligning your actions with deeper values. So that's it for my video today. I hope you enjoyed it. Apologies I haven't uploaded for I think a month or so. Like I said, I mean I do these freestyle and I'm not one of those gurus on there that is just going to script down videos and just read from teleprompters and just talk about things they don't believe in and passionate about. Like this is always going to be off the cuff, my authentic self. So yes, I'm back in my office here in in Newcastle as you can see in the background. And then I'm going to be going back to London. Like I said, I'm going to keep you posted on another video about my move back to the UK to hopefully be one tiny little cog in and hopefully making Britain great again. That's going to be obviously a slogan a few people are using but I went against the grain. A lot of people are moving still out to Divine or the tax reed jurisdictions. I'm moving back which I'm going to save for another video and explain the reasonings behind that. And yeah, give me a thumbs up if you like the video, drop a comment and read all of the comments. So if you need any advice or what your thoughts are, let me know in the comments below.