It doesn't matter how smart you are.

If you're so smart, then why aren't you rich? You work hard, you save what you can, and you're still not getting ahead. All the while your feet are full of kids on social media with their diamond watches and Lamborghinis calling you a brokie 24. 7. The fact of the matter is that a lot of what you see is complete bullshit. And the secret doesn't exist here in Bali or Dubai or anywhere else, Sonny, for that matter, where all these creators hang out. In this video, I'm going to give you my no BS guide to how you really get ahead. It has nothing to do with your iq, believe it or not, beyond a certain threshold study by Swedish researchers that looked at that very relationship and what they found was that beyond about 50 to 60,000 Euros, raw intelligence counted for very little in terms of how much wealthier you became after that. Long term wealth comes from assets and not income. We're not as motivated as a society to take risks anymore. And this could be the reason why, regardless of your intelligence, you're not yet getting ahead. If you open up pretty much any app on your phone, you can get food delivered, you can open a dating app, shall we just say it? Have sex, you can get status posting your best life on social media. All of this is at our fingertips now. And that's disrupted the risk and reward signals, the risk incentive that biologically we've always had. And on top of this, there's no doubting that there's an element of self doubt when we embark on something new, imposter syndrome, once we get further ahead with it sometimes. And the third one, something that I personally have found challenging, whether it's making these videos or just in life in general, is perfectionism. None of them are related to intelligence. So there's a quote by Howard Marks, you must dare to be wrong in order to outperform the market. And that feeds in nicely. To cope. You're basically spinning your own narrative. To cope with the fact that there are people out there who are getting ahead, a solution does exist. So if I had to go from zero, which I doubt that many of you are there, you're probably somewhere through your investing journey to 1 million quid by retirement. These are the four steps that I would take. So step one would be to open a tax efficient account. I personally have had a sip. So that is a self invested private pension. In other words, a DIY pension, where you're not relying on your employer to invest the money for you through the company's pension provider, who will more often than not be carving out an even fatter fee, which hurts you even more regardless of the performance. So the key thing is you, you're not going to pay capital gains tax on the growth of your investments. When it comes to retirement age, you could potentially retire early and take a pension commencement lump sum PCLs as it's known, of 25% out of that pot, tax free. Thereafter you will pay income tax, but of course you'll be retired, so you won't be in one of the higher bands, presumably unless you draw that much from your pension. Step two would be to contribute half your age in percentage terms from your paycheck each month. So if you are 30 years old, you should look as a rule of thumb to contribute around 15% and put that into the market for the long run. If you're 40, that should increase to about 20%. In your 50s, 25%. It's of course not financial advice, it's a rule of thumb that's come from research from legal in General. And the third step, don't bother with ETFs. I know the message all over the bloody Internet from amateurs who have never managed money professionally is just stick to ETFs. Just as I've explained in another one of my videos, I think that's an incredibly complacent mentality. I would invest in a basket of around 15 to 20 high quality stocks. The reason why I think that is a good option is not only because I've done ridiculously well as a single stock investor and I'm now trying to help the world with it, but because unlike having a financial advisor, you're not pissing away a load of money in fund management fees and advisor fees. And unlike clinging to an etf, you actually have upside. Your upside is not capped. And whatever the market does, if you want some inspiration, you can actually message me on Instagram the word top stocks. And I'll send across with an automation my current watch list, which gives you a rundown of some of the companies that I'm currently invested in. So the fourth step, continue this process. Consistency is key. At 10 and a half percent historical return, which is the average cited by Harvard university starting at 30 per the typical avatar or profile of an investor. According to Legal in general, using that half age and percent rule, you should be a millionaire by 60. But don't forget inflation. That's not a real terms number 1 million of course won't buy you what it does today, 30 years from now, at 3%, it would actually take you another seven years before you became a millionaire in real terms. Now, if you want to retire early, you're ultimately going to have to save harder or pick better stocks. So you're probably asking, how the hell do I actually do this? Let me take you through an example here. This is a radar chart from the AI model that I've built, which captures all of my process that I use to analyze stocks in the same way that I developed throughout the course of my career, managing millions as a fund manager and later using it to scale my own personal portfolio to seven figures. So it scores things like profitability, growth, efficiency, all of these factors that are proven to work. I explain all of this inside of my program. You know where to find the details. Just message me on Instagram. Now, a fundamental edge, as I've just shown you here, is one of the three pillars. The other two are in your holding period because everybody has become so super short term focused. The third one is in portfolio concentration, and again, this is anti ETF wisdom, which practically buys everything in the index rather than focusing on only the best. Even if you began as a starting point in eliminating the worst 20% of companies, so 100 of them out of the 500 and 400 remained, you would logically be able to beat the market. So when you stack these, you tilt the odds of outperformance in your favour, in the same way that saving 2% per year in fees by not having an advisor and doing it yourself could add as much as 60% more to your final pot, returning 2% more, which clearly guys like Jim Simmons and Warren Buffet have certainly done, could add over a million pounds to your retirement pot. When you're old and grey. And who knows, if you're able to apply this early enough and take action now, then the chances are that you won't be old and grey by the time that you reach seven figures and ultimately have financial freedom. So intelligence and wealth are only correlated up to a certain point beyond about 50 or 60k. It has very little to do with your intelligence because it has very little to do with income and everything to do with your attitude to risk and your ability to invest in assets and own them for the long run. So whether you're going to start a business or invest in other businesses through the stock market, that is how you get ahead. That is how you build wealth. And you're not going to get anywhere by burying your head in the sand or being overly academic and philosophical about what is ultimately a pretty brutal world where you've got to get out and take risk in order to be rewarded. Now, if you're smart, then you'll want to watch this next video, and even if you're not, then you'll probably click the link below to message me on Instagram and get started straight away, which is what you need to do anyway.