Always free 💸 Buy time, not things | Jason Graystone

if you're stopping yourself from doing something, ask yourself why. And if, if the answer is, well, everyone does it that way, or most people do it that way, or people will think I'm stupid if I do it this way, ask yourself, have they got the life that you want? Are they living the life that you want? Have they hit the goals that you want? Because I reckon anyone asking themself that question because they're afraid to do something that they want to do, everyone they're looking up to and listening to, they, they want a completely different life. From those people. Because every successful person I've ever met encourages success, encourages you to be who you want to be, encourages you to live a life on your terms. I've never met a successful person say no, you know, you have to fit in with, with how we do it. It just doesn't exist at that level. The chances are the reason you're not doing what you want to do is because the people you're trying to fit in with are the ones that are stopping you. But if you look at all of those people, none of them have the life that you want.

This week's Millennial Master is Jason Greystone, investor, trader, and author of Always Free. Jason built wealth young, but not the way most people imagine. He quit a safe career when his first child was born to turn lessons from trading losses into a digital empire. That's how Jason used every step to buy more of the only asset that matters: time. In this episode, we talk about why financial freedom starts with mental freedom, how to bounce back after losing big early, and the real playbook behind digital assets that make money. Millennial Masters is brought to you by Jolt, fast, reliable web hosting built for founders. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling an app, Jolt gives your project a rock-solid home starting from just £3.95 a month. You'll get 99.99% uptime, support in under 30 seconds, and flexible payment options including Bitcoin and Amex. So you can rack up those points while you build. Get your first 3 months free at jolt.co.uk. Smart hosting for people building what's next.

Jason, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

I'm very well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on.

I'm excited to have you on because we're gonna have quite a few topics to touch on. But I want to start with your childhood, because you've said growing up on a council estate in the UK, you had bailiffs at the door, and you had like a lifelong obsession with security. So I'm wondering how those early experiences shaped the way you approach risk as an entrepreneur, but also as an investor.

Yeah, so I don't kind of bang on about, you know, the council estate. I love my upbringing. And I really do. I'm grateful for everything that happened in my childhood. I had an amazing childhood. You know, I, I, my fondest memories are being a kid as many of us. And what I do, what I do believe is that whatever we felt was missing most as a child, we kind of value most now. And for me, as you say, my earliest memories were kind of just a lack of security, lack of stability. My dad had left before I was born, you know, and, um, you know, we didn't have any money, bailiffs knocking on the door, all that kind of stuff. Um, and I guess I just felt like we didn't have stability in our, in our home. We, I didn't have that security or peace of mind that I longed for as a kid, I suppose. Um, I would look at other, other kids and they would have it and, uh, and I felt that I didn't have it. There was a couple of things that happened in my childhood that kind of shaped or shifted the way that I looked at how money could provide security and freedom. And that was when I was about 13, we used to sit, you know, every Friday everyone would kind of congregate at the foot of the block of our flats and they'd have like a mother's meeting talking about, moaning about the week. I used to just earwig, you know, I was a nosy little teenager and I remember just the attitude around money. My boss is this, you know, rich people, why can't I have my, yeah, it was kind of a really negative view towards money. And I wouldn't have picked up on that had it not been for this guy called Roy used to come down at half past 7 and take everyone's money and go and do a syndicate lottery. And then for the next 10 minutes, everyone would just be talking about how amazing their life would be if they won the money. And I just, It was— I remember thinking, that is weird, you know, that how can it be good and bad? You know, do they like money or don't they like money? And I just remember thinking that was weird. And then coincidentally, that same year, you know, it was around that time when I wanted this BMX for my birthday. And I said to my parents, I want this BMX. And they were like, well, we can't afford the BMX, but if you can raise half the money, we'll pay the other half towards the bike and you can go and pick it up on your birthday in October. And, um, I just shook on that and, uh, and I started washing cars and I washed this car on day 1 and I got £7 and I took it up to my bedroom and, you know, my friend offered to help the next day and my stepdad came in my room and I gave him everything I earned that day to go and get another bucket and sponge, which was kind of a, a mad thing to do really, cuz I thought, oh, you know, I'm, I really want this bike. I'd just been given £7. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna get the bike in no time. I'll just, I'll just keep the money. But I gave him the money, he got me a bucket and sponge, and the next day my friend helped and we did 4 cars. And then within 4 weeks I had 4 friends washing cars, and I wasn't washing cars, I was just knocking on the doors and, you know, booking them in for the next one and collecting the money and paying my, my friends. And it was like, it was like this moment where I, I thought Wow, you know, this is— if you use money like this, you can still get what you want, but you can do more of the things that you love and you can, you know, get the thing that you want, you know. And it was kind of this realization that if you use money the right way, it can be a very, very positive tool for providing you with, one, doing things that you enjoy more, but two, more security, and three, you just get the things that you want. You might have to wait a little bit longer, but if you delegate and you sacrifice the short term, you can still get what you want. So I remember thinking people on the estate must be miserable around money because they, they're not using it properly, you know, because this is fantastic. So it was kind of those memories that shifted the way that I appreciated money and what the, what the tool could bring if you use it correctly. It wasn't so much I wanted loads of nice things or loads of riches or loads and loads of money, but it, I saw it as a, as a means to provide me with time and freedom, even back then. I didn't, I didn't pen it down as that back then, but reflecting on it, that was definitely how I saw it and, and how it made me make different decisions in life, for sure.

But after that, you had your first taste of business in a way, but from what I know, you were a qualified electrical engineer by 22. But also quit within a year of finding out you were going to be a dad. So most people, especially in the background you mentioned, would cling to the steady job. So why did you walk away?

Yeah, so I kept, you know, talking about this idea of becoming financially independent and doing my own thing, taking control of my finances and all the rest of it and being a master of my own financial destiny. And then we found out I was going to have a baby. And it just kind of put a rocket up my backside a bit. You know, it was like, well, now I have to, you know, I have to, because, because as soon as I found out we were going to have a baby, I just felt like a failure because all that came rushing back to me was my childhood and how I wasn't in the position that I should be in to give him what I didn't have. And I probably never would have felt like I was in the right position looking back, but I felt terrible. I just felt, oh, you know, I've gotta do something drastic now. So, so it was kind of one of those back against the wall scenarios where I thought, you know, we'd just moved into a bigger house because we'd just had a baby. It was just after Christmas, you know, we're just getting over all of the kind of Christmas, you know, debts and forking out for things. And financially, December, January isn't the best time. And I thought, well, you know, when would be the worst time to quit my job? And it was then. And I said, well, you know, if I quit now and I rang up over the Christmas holidays, I left a voice note on the office phone and I said, look, I'm going to be doing something else when I come back. You know, I just want you to know that thanks for working with me. You know, I'm going to be leaving. And I thought when I went back that they'd give me like a month's notice or something. I'd have to work a month's notice. They gave me 6 days. They just said, yeah, go, you know, 6 days, you're gone. And, and that really just made me—

that tightened it even further in terms of how quick you had to turn things around.

For sure. Yeah. 6 days. So I had to go out and earn my own money and make the business, you know, I had to basically make things work. And, and that's where, that's where it started.

So what did you do next?

So what I did next, so I was already, you know, from 20, I passed as an electrician when I was 19. I did further education in the electrical engineering. I was investing, I was saving. And then by 22, 23, when my son was born, I thought, I've got to, you know, I've got to control my income. So that's when I started my own business. So I started, I started bringing in my own money so I could control my income. And then I basically dumped as much of that income into investment and all of my investment portfolio, basically buying as many assets, income-producing assets as I could. And then it got really stressful to the point where, because when you abuse a company like that, you sort of, you need to pay for a manager, but you can't afford a manager, you know, and then you kind of, the staff start to get wind that you're only in it to get out of it. And then the leadership goes, and then there's kind of just, they're not bothered. And then it's like, it's real nightmare. It's like a sinking ship, but you've just gotta weather the storm until you can jump off safely. And, uh, and that's when it became stressful. And that's when I started looking at higher speculation, like, um, online poker. I looked at that for a while. Then I looked at options trading and then I blew about £40,000 just in financial markets, just, just learning lessons, placing trades willy-nilly and all that kind of stuff. And then after about 18 months, I learned a lot of lessons and I became pretty good at it. And then about 18 months after that, I'd replaced my income from the entire portfolio, you know, my investments, my stock picking and my swing trading abilities. And I didn't need to work anymore. And it was at that point that I just, yeah, that was it. Just stayed at home every day.

Let's unpick that one a little bit then. Because I know you've managed property portfolios, trading education, built digital communities, invested in startups, and all of that was like in your late 20s. What were the lessons you had in terms of deciding which opportunities get a yes from you when money wasn't necessarily the driver anymore, you wanted to create a bigger portfolio?

Yeah. So assets, just so the way that I look at assets are income producing. So I don't look at assets as property. So property is a headache to me. And yes, I have invested in property and that was one project and that was when I was way older. You know, that was when I was like coming up to my 40th. So in my younger years, I wouldn't touch property. And the way that I look at assets is something that produces income. That is very lean and very leveraged and very mobile and very passive and something that you can put very little money into and get a great return. A lot of the time, you know, that requires you to have some kind of skill because if you think about property, for instance, which most people understand, in order to get the best return from properties, you need to understand where to source them, where to sell them, how to do them up efficiently and cheaply, and how to use the, you know, the regulations. And you have to have a skill around getting a good return on something. I look at things like, so I want most of my capital in a passive investment, so something that doesn't require my time or my space. And then I want to put another bulk of money into things that are, that I know a bit more about, but are still kind of don't take me more than an hour a month, say. And then the bits that take me the most time are the things that I'm most skilled in. So things like trading or creating business assets, you know, now content, you know, as an investor, someone who's made money for a living through making good investment decisions all my life, pretty much, I've now invested heavily into YouTube. So YouTube is a phenomenal asset because you can create a video that might take you an hour and that video can generate literally tens of millions of dollars over a very short period of time. In fact, that happened to us. So YouTube now and digital assets like that are becoming, they're outperforming any other investment endeavor that I've done. So we're now heavily invested into content and content creation and digital assets.

So at what point was that switch then when you realized that the digital content rather than trading and everything else you've done before is the next place to be? How do you spot the next opportunities?

It just happens. I mean, I, I, yeah, I still trade every day. Like I'm gonna trade probably till I die. It's, that's the thing I love. And, uh, I still invest every day. And the beauty with YouTube, for instance, is you just talk about what you love. So you talk about what you do, you share what you do, and you get a great following from doing that. And then people want to learn more, and then you can teach them everything on that platform, and then they love it. And then what happens is you start to build up a big following on those platforms, and off the back of those platforms, they— the platforms pay you for a start, but then you can sell coaching services, programs, educational products through the backend of those products, of those platforms. And if you've got a nice efficient asset as a business, you know, a lean funnel that doesn't require loads of your time and loads of your exaust, you know, exhaust your energy, you know, amazing. And that's what we did. We did a funnel where we launched a video in 2023 and it got 8 million views. Generated $10 million, $12 million in revenue in 10 months. And just no, I mean, it cost, it cost £1,000 to make, you know, and a week of my time. So it's just fun.

So was that the full course you put on YouTube or the full trading course that you put for free on YouTube, which then led to indirect sales through all your other channels?

Yeah. Basically what I've learned about content is the more people more time people spend with you, the more they want to pay you. And even if you're teaching them the same thing again, so give away everything for free. And then one, that lowers the barrier to entry because people, any sales conversation, I don't have any sales staff. I don't have any team. I don't have to place any ads. You know, I've never placed an ad. So it's like a 96% profit margin because of all that. And the thing that people go wrong is they employ a sales team. To try and convince people into buying stuff. But if you just give everything away for free, the, the trust that they build for you lowers the barrier for them. They don't need a sales conversation. They just want to work with you and they sell themself. So all you've gotta do is give everything away for free. And then they're not just gonna go and do that because they need implementation. So they want to get closer to you. They wanna work with you. You know, the information's all over ChatGPT. They can go and find out anything better than I can teach them, better than anyone can teach them. But it's not that. It's about them having trust in you to help them implement because they've seen you do it and they believe that you are the only person that can help them do it. So why hold anything back? You know, just teach everything and you'll, and give everything away for free and you'll make more money than you could ever dream of.

And one of the key ways of Building then your personal brand was through creating educational and training content on social media. What's your learning and how has that changed in the last 5 years where you said YouTube is now your biggest channel and driver compared to other social media like Instagram, Facebook, and even TikTok?

Yeah, I'm My content's always been the same since I started it. I started doing content 9 years ago and I've been saying the same thing for those entire 9 years. Don't, you know, I don't, I don't want to, it sounds silly, but I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm just giving away information. And as a result of doing that, I've been asked if people can pay me to do more. So we've created educational products out the back of that to serve more people in terms of like where we. Where I've learned what the focus is and all the rest of it. I haven't, you know, we just, we just do the same thing over and over again. We haven't really changed the strategy. You can go back and watch a 10-year-old video from me and I'll be saying exactly the same thing as I'm saying today. The biggest takeaway for me in observing all of it is the more you give away for free, the more people want to work with you and pay you to teach them it again and handhold them it. For it again. And the best way to build trust is to say the same thing over and over and over and over again. I think what I see a lot of people doing is they're trying to change their message or say something profound or, you know, get out of their lane a little bit, or they say, oh, I can't say that again. I said that last week. Well, I've been saying the same thing every week for years, 10 years. So I think there's a lot of power in repeating yourself. And I think entrepreneurs are scared to do that.

Speaking of lessons for entrepreneurs, you've spoken about losing 40K in your early trading years. So for founders tuning in, what's the real lesson in losing big early and how do you stop it from killing your confidence?

So something I've always practiced, you know, perhaps loss, losing is the wrong word. I don't really believe that we ever lose anything. I just think everything just changes form. It's either a lesson. You know, or it's a donation to the market, or, you know, you pay for something and get the product or get the result, or you get education and you get lessons. And I've practiced throughout my entire life seeing the lessons in anything that I perceive to be a negative. And I've found that doing that has really helped me become a great investor, be a very kind of poised trader, which you need to be just to have neutrality around my emotions towards things and not see, not be too kind of in fantasy land and not be too in depressed land, you know, but just see the thing for what it is. I think if everyone could do that, people would be less disappointed. They'd beat themselves up less. They would stop comparing themselves to other people just by accepting that there's not really a wrong and right way. It is not a good and a bad, it's just lessons and things that happen and how you perceive them. There's a, there's something going on right now where there's a particular, you know, content creator or influencer online and they've been known as this relationship coach, you know, and they spout about how, how relationships should and shouldn't be. Recently, they've now been found out to be a bit of a scam and they've, they're a bit of a side chick and they've got their own problems in their relationship and, and everyone's like, ah, You know, attacking them and you think they've just got all the traits like everyone else, you know, every, everyone's got everything. And if you look up to people, you'll miss the whole entire them. And then they say the great fall from height. Well, that's because you've had them up on a pedestal in the first place. There is no wrong or right relationship. We are basing what's wrong and right around a set of rules that were put together when we get married. There is no wrong or right. So. So I guess what I'm trying to say is whatever happens to you, you are only deciding to label it as a negative in the moment. But in actual fact, 20 years down the line, if I said, was that thing a bad thing that happened to you back then? You'll probably say no, it was actually a really good thing. You know, if I hadn't split up with them, I wouldn't have had this life and met this person and had these kids or traveled the world or whatever. But it took you 20 years to figure out that that really bad thing was actually a really good thing. So they're just things. So whenever I lose money or donate money in the market, I see it as a necessary lesson to then become a slightly bit better next time.

Now you talk about building wealth and building freedom, but you said you reject the Lambos, the Rolex culture. For you, wealth is about control. So how does that play out practically in how you design your day, your calendar, and your decisions, speaking with the experience you have now and advising, say, somebody starting out in their 20s or even early 30s?

Yeah, most people think that they want money, but they actually just want to be free. Freedom to me is being able to be who you want to be, do what you want to do and go where you want to go with whoever you want to go with. And then really just the financial element is just having enough money in the bank to buy enough time so that you can stop if you need to. Because if you think about it, if you're doing what you want, where you want, with whoever you want, That's the ideal situation. And at that point, you're not really going to be excited about retirement or anything like that. You're actually just not thinking about retirement. You're just thinking about, I want to do this for the rest of my life. So the key, the goal is to get in that position first. I think the problem is not many people know who they are or what they want. And that is what I call mental freedom, where you are chasing a life that is important to other people. Other people's social pressures, social idealisms, things that are not important to you but might be important to someone else. Advice that you've taken from other people that might not be aligned to who you want to be. And they say we make like 35,000 decisions a day. Imagine the compound effect of resentment if just some of those decisions that you make are based on what other people tell you to do that aren't really what you want, you run the risk of getting down the line and having a midlife crisis because you end up thinking, how the hell? I wanted to end up here and I'm here. Like, what happened? How did I end up here? And the reason being is because you've followed poor advice. You've chased things that are important to other people or to impress someone, please and appease mum and dad. You're not following a path that you designed because you don't know what you want in the first place. You haven't actually sat down and taken the time to figure out who you are and what you want in this life. So no matter where you go from here, how you manage your money, what job you go into, your ability to earn money will all be dictated by where you're going. And if you're going somewhere that isn't aligned to you and you're going aligned to someone else, then you're basically driving a train where you don't know where the destination is and it's going to be a wreck. Basically, mental freedom is the key, understanding who you are and what you want in life. That's, that's the first step.

Are there any key questions that somebody should ask themselves to discover who they are and what they want to do?

For sure. One of the things that you can do, you know, a bit more of a modern answer, I guess, but if you pick up your phone and you go into the camera roll and you just scroll through all the years of photos that you've taken, there'll probably be a common theme there of things that you was inspired to take a photo of. You know, if I look at my wife's phone, it'll be nature and animals and spiders and insects and dogs, and she loves birds, right? She loves nature and she loves animals. And it's very clear if you scroll through her phone, you'll very quickly realize that she is here to be an animal person, right? To work with animals. That's her calling. But there'll be the same for you and there'll be the same for everyone. There'll be certain images, whether it's football or the mountains or Whatever music, there'll be a common theme. And if you combine that with like questions like, you know, if I rang your friend and asked them what they would ring you for, what would they say? Like, what, who are you the go-to person for? What would you do if you didn't need money? You know, on Monday morning, what would be the first thing you did? What, what do you, what energizes you? What do you bring up in conversation most? What do you spend your disposable income on? All of those types of questions combined with the whole photo thing, you'll start to see a pattern emerge and that pattern will be closely linked to what you are here to do. And the, and the, the great thing is today, the world we live in, anything is monetizable. You know, you can, you can make your vocation an extension, a true extension of who you are and be paid for that.

Does that really apply to anybody or you have to have a certain set of soft skills rather than training skills in order to achieve that?

I think it just, the only thing that holds people back is mental freedom. So if you know who you are and you, you are really clear about what you love talking about, the next step is to talk about it and share it. And if, if you've got, you know, if your setbacks around talking on in front of people or sharing people and you've got a low self-worth, it's because you've been living in the shadows of someone else all this time. So that's where you need to start letting go, stop looking up to people and start letting go of memory baggage, you know, things that beliefs that you've dragged through your life that you, that are incorrect. And that's, that's, yeah, I talk about all this in the, in my book as well and how you can dissolve all those things. But that's probably a whole podcast on itself. But the fact is the reason you don't feel worth, you don't have confidence in yourself or you have low self-belief is because you've been following a path that you should follow your whole life. And what I see particularly is a very common pattern that I see personally. I can't speak for the whole world or everyone listening to this, but I've seen a personal pattern of people in their upper to late thirties, early forties, so about 37 to 43 in accounting, lawyers, doctors, definitely particularly doctors. Surgeons, people like that, aesthetic surgeons. They all went into a job because their parents wanted them to do it. And then at this age, they're now trying to reverse engineer their life to get back to doing what they always wished they'd done in the first place. So it's taken them 20 years to get to a point where they go, yeah, I don't want this. I want to go back and do what I should have done originally. So it's really important to figure that out pretty quickly and then, you know, stop stop trying to please and appease. You're never going to have freedom living a life because you did what someone else wanted you to do. That's, that's crazy.

That's a good segue into your book then, Jason, because the typical advice for at least our generation is go to uni, get a job, and you'll be fine. But like you said, a lot of people find themselves in their mid to late 30s or early 40s thinking, I'm not happy with this. This hasn't brought me what I was hoping it would. And your book there, which we can see in front there, Always Free, tackles that. How do you start reverse engineering your life to unpack something you've trained for years and then practice for a decade, even two, to then reverse engineer your life to be able to do what you always wanted to do but couldn't because you were trapped in a profession.

If you've been in a profession for many, many years, the chances are you're very good at it and you're an expert at it. The quickest thing you can do to leverage out of that is to teach the teachers. Whatever it is that you're doing at the moment, take a level up and start teaching people one step down. So if you've built a you know, recruitment consultancy, or you've built an accountancy firm, or you've built a barrister firm, a partner's firm, or you, you know, maybe you've got a little surgeon. I've got plenty of clients that are, that run surgeries in Harley Street. The quickest way to quickly leverage out of that is to talk about how to build your own practice. And then immediately you go from being a practitioner to an educator. Who then steps out of the functional role and earns money from education, which education won't cost you anything to create because you know it and you're just sharing the information and the how-tos. That also gives you a lot of fulfillment because you won't be necessarily getting too much fulfillment serving one customer at a time, but you will be getting a lot of fulfillment from helping thousands potentially of clients. Breakthrough and set up something that they've always wanted to do. So that's how you can do it aligned with what you're already doing. But if you're, if you don't want to do that and you want to do something completely separate, obviously that comes with time challenges because you've got to keep the thing going whilst you build the next thing. But exercises to know who you are, what your purpose is, like I just shared, you know, figure out what that is. Ask yourself, write a big list of all the things that are closely correlated to what you want to do. And then next to that, write whether or not you would love to teach it to other people, whether or not you'd love to serve other people with that. So for me, I'm a, you know, I'm a guitarist. I've played guitar. I do music. Would I want to teach guitar? No, I probably wouldn't want to teach guitar. I became financially free and I invest and I trade. Would I want to teach people about that? Yeah. I love teaching about investments and I love teaching about wealth and freedom. It really fulfills me. So I could teach people that, right? So then you start figuring out, okay, well, I need to share some information. I need to share what my beliefs are, what my thoughts are on that particular topic. And you'll just start to build an audience. You'll be providing value to people who are 5 years behind you or 10 years behind you. And soon as you start getting that, you can then start tailoring outcome-focused results for people and, um, and charging them for it. And that's, That's—

let's, let's talk about then achieving financial freedom because a lot of people feel trapped in a rat race, especially when you're in a salary role. And from what I read, you reached financial freedom or what you described as financial freedom at the age of 29. Am I correct? So how did it look for you then? What did you feel you had and you didn't need anymore in order to feel financially free? How can people realize that that's the point when you can be financially free? Is there a sum that you need to have in the bank in order to feel financially free, or how many months or how many years of monthly outgoings do you need for that?

Yeah. So there's two phases to financial freedom. The first phase is being free of relying on anyone for your income. So covering your lifestyle costs regardless of another person, a place, so a geographical location, a boss, you know, a parent. And as soon as you're in that position, it's very binary. And there's gonna be listeners listening to this that can say yes or no to that question. That's a very binary thing. Yes, I can cover my living costs regardless of someone to rely on, a, a boss, a parent, a partner, a geographical location. Yes or no? That's phase 1. Phase 2 is maintaining that income to cover those lifestyle costs regardless of you. So that is where you only get that from assets. Okay? So in other words, you need income-producing assets that match your living costs regardless of the market, you as a person, your ability, your energy in your body, or your existence. You can literally die and still generate that income, and that is 100% financial freedom. And there is a formula for that because I wouldn't say there's a sum that you have to have in the bank cuz it's gonna be different for everyone based on their lifestyle costs. But the formula would be add up all of your liquid assets and divide them by your living expenses minus your investment income. And that'll give you a figure that will tell you the amount of time you can buy into the future. And ideally you just want to be making that as long as possible. But as I said earlier in this, in this episode, you, if you can figure out if you are doing what you want and earning money that doesn't feel like a job in the first place, that's the, that's the key. Get there. Because if you can get there, then you don't, you know, the, the financial freedom element isn't as important. That's just if you need to stop or you become ill or you have an injury or you have to take care of a loved one, you can, you can have time off. But it's not this escape that you get to. Because if you chase that and just that, you'll get there and figure out you actually just want to work more. You know, you're not going to want to stop work. That's such a fantasy. And the only reason you're thinking that right now is because you hate the situation you're in. So you couldn't imagine wanting to not work, you know, wanting to work, sorry. But that, trust me, you know, if you just won the lottery, you'd be pretty unfulfilled. There's only so much sipping cocktails on a beach you can do before you lose that fulfillment. You want fulfillment. So that's it, man. That's that. So when I was, you know, 29, I was in a position where I'd matched my income through, and it wasn't a lot, you know, I wasn't multimillionaire at that point. I didn't have, I had average outgoings, you know, and the freedom of time was way more important than buying another Lamborghini or another flipping Rolex, you know, so that's why I don't, I tend not to promote those things. The magic is when you do get in that position, it's almost impossible not to earn more money. What I found was you give off a bit more of a positive energy. You start seeing opportunities that you might have missed before. You become, you know, you meet some interesting people or you tell your story and that opens up an opportunity or you can teach what you've learned and that's interesting. So it's a weird thing, you know, the, the moment— there's a great saying, if you value your time more than you value your money, you end up with plenty of both. And that is so true for sure.

Speaking about how things changed you, Jason, you previously mentioned that you've noticed people treat you as strange for not drinking. And I'm wondering, what does pushing against some social norm teach people about standing firm as entrepreneurs? For their ideas and what they want to do when everyone else can follow the herd?

Yeah. Something I've always had is a strong mind as a kid. Resilience was built from a child. You know, I used to, I love my own company. I used to lock myself in my room and play on my own all day. You know, I was really happy like that. I was very content in my own company. Didn't rely on people. And that was kind of a, it was a force of nature, right? I was forced to do that. It was like I had no other option. I just had to make it work for me and and get on with it. But I'm glad that happened. And yeah, I know I said this earlier, but I'm really glad that happened because what it's, what it's allowed me to do is I don't worry about fitting in. I don't worry about if I want to wear something outlandish, I'll wear it. And I don't care what people think. If I want to, I just do everything my way. And, and I think if more people did that and less people cared about what other people think, it's really liberating. You start to step into just empowerment. It's just, you know, and the more you do that and the more you practice that, the more you believe that actually you can do whatever you want. And I think that's a really important thing to practice if you can. When I gave up drinking in '21, I never really bothered about drinking, but I gave up drinking and I, yeah, you notice people say, oh, you know, don't you drink? Or what they'd start doing is getting defensive. The first thing they'll say to you is, oh, I don't drink much anymore. You know, I'm like, I don't care. I don't care what you, you drink, you know, and it's like they're trying to justify their own actions because actually no one really wants to drink alcohol, you know? So it is one of those things.

Was there a particular trigger point when you decided, I need to, I want to stop drinking?

Do you know what? It, it, it wasn't affecting me at all. My wife came to a point where she decided she was having a bit too much. She didn't want to do it anymore. And she said, I'm gonna give up. And I said, I'll do it as well then. And that was it. And it's not a big thing to me. You know, it really isn't a big thing to me. I, I never really cared about it anyway. But, um, if I want to do something, I'll do it. And practicing doing what you say you're going to do is probably one of the best things that you could practice because it will really make you step into this person that shows up, gets results, does what they say they're going to do. People trust you more and, um, and you just feel, you know, good about it. So yeah, that, I don't know what else to say about that. Just be yourself. Just don't care what other people think.

That's possibly much harder for people to do than said.

I get that.

If you are comfortable with yourself and with your own company, like you said you are, and I am myself, then yeah, that comes natural. But is there a framework that people can work on to start becoming comfortable with themselves?

Yeah. So like one of the things that I say quite often is obviously you don't want to look up to people, but ask yourself, like, if you're, if you're stopping yourself from doing something, ask yourself why. And if the answer is, well, everyone does it that way, or most people do it that way, or people will think I'm stupid if I do it this way, ask yourself, have they got the life that you want? You know, are they living the life that you want? Have they hit the goals that you want? Because I reckon anyone asking themself that question because they're afraid to do something that they want to do, everyone they're looking up to and listening to, they couldn't care less about having, like, they want a completely different life from those people. Um, because every successful person I've ever met encourages success, encourages you to be who you want to be, encourages you to live a life on your terms. I've never met a successful person saying, no, you know, you have to fit in with, with how we do it. It just doesn't exist at that level. So the chances are the reason you are not doing what you want to do is because the people you are trying to fit in with are the ones that are stopping you. But if you look at all of those people, none of them have the life that you want. And sometimes that can be enough of a switch to go, Do you know what? Yeah, sod this. When I was 22, I moved away from my hometown. I moved 26 miles up the road to a place called Leatherhead where we were very lonely. We just had a baby. And the reason I'd done that is to break out of getting into those habits of going out in the pubs and the clubs and every weekend and all that kind of stuff. Because I knew that I would not get the thing done if I didn't get out of that environment. So get, change your environment. You know, get around other people who are encouraging you or will share, pull you up a rung or help you, you know, lend a hand on how to get to the next point. And, you know, anyone can do that. Successful people love sharing about success, how they did it, how they're, what's working for them.

And I'm guessing that's why the general advice is if you want to overcome your condition and move up, you need to change your environment that you live in. And get out of your comfort zone because getting out of your comfort zone is possibly the next step after moving from your environment.

The irony is your comfort zone has been created by something you didn't want anyway. So your comfort zone is like, if you, let's just say you really love animals, right? You could talk about animals all day. That is your comfort zone, right? But the reason you now feel uncomfortable and you've gotta get out of your comfort zone to talk about animals is because you've been surrounded by people Clouding what you should be doing. They've created this wall around your comfort and now your comfort can't get out of this wall. So your comfort zone is actually where you want to be, but you want to break out of this barrier that's been created by everyone else. Once you get past that, you are really comfortable. I'm so comfortable talking about all this stuff to you. So comfortable. Like I wake up every day talking about this. How comfortable is that? Very comfortable. But the idea in my head, maybe, you know, maybe someone else is— wants to share what they talk, you know, what they, what they love. They're thinking, oh, I feel embarrassed to talk about that. I feel embarrassed to talk to a camera or go on social media or whatever. Why? Because once you don't care about those people that have created that wall in the first place and you get past that, you can't be more comfortable talking about something that you love, something you enjoy, and getting loads of people telling you that they got loads of value from it. I mean, how's that? That is the pinnacle of comfort, in my opinion.

Jason, because you're so big on YouTube and social media, you get lots of praise, but I know from my experience in media of almost 20 years, you will always get haters and people trying to put you down, which can be uncomfortable. So how do you develop that thick skin and overcome the negativity that can be so easily found online versus in real life when people don't give you that sort of feedback?

I'll give you the big answer to that is authenticity and congruency. Because when you are who you say you are and you're doing things that are genuine, and if you had a camera on you 24/7 and that was being streamed out to the world, that you would be happy for that to be streamed out into the world. In other words, your thoughts, words, actions behind closed doors are the same as what they would be outside doors and on camera. Then what happens is you're so happy in your own skin that hurtful comments aren't there. So if, you know, if everyone's telling you you're great all the time, yes, you can get a bit complacent. Actually, if someone says something and it hurts you, that is a mechanism inside of you to say, why did that hurt? You know, and the chances are the reason it hurt is because it's true. And it's true because you don't love it about yourself. You haven't told something and you, and you haven't, if you called my 17-year-old kid fat, he wouldn't care because he's not, he's skinny. And if he, if he had put on a bit of weight. And he was unhappy with the weight that he'd put on and someone said, you're getting fat, that would hurt. But it's not, it's there to serve him because he now knows that deep inside he doesn't love it about himself. So he is got a choice. He either loves it about himself and says, actually, yeah, I'm, I'm all right. Well, like this, or he loses the weight again to get, you know, to get into a position where he is confident and happy. And now he can go out and go, and guess what? They disappear. They dissolve, they're gone, they're gone. The haters are gone. So I'm a big fan of hater comments. And the reason I am is because I look at them to keep me in check of being congruent and authentic, because usually it's because I've stepped out of my lane or I've said something I didn't really have the facts on. Someone says, ah, that's bullshit. You know? And you're like, oh God. Yeah, it actually probably was. You know, I should have, I should have fact-checked that. And you'll kind of want to delete it and do all that. Be as congruent as you can and be authentic and be real. And make sure that everything you say is what you truly believe, and there will not be any haters. They will go because you won't care. No one can come on here and say, you don't know what you're talking about, about money. Well, you know, you can't tell me that, you know, that will not hurt me, that comment. So there, that's my answer. Congruency. Be congruent and you'll get rid of all the imposter syndrome. You won't be trying to say something that you don't really know about. Just be real, be real to yourself.

Now, Jason, you've been, you have built wealth, freedom, influence. Is there a part of your life where you still don't feel free in?

I have to say, man, I, I, I wake up every day and choose, you know, I've got a very empty calendar. I don't, I choose what I do every day. That's great.

Yeah.

That's real freedom.

Yeah. I, I'd spend every day like making it up as I go along, basically. What should I do today? I spend time with my kids, my my sons and, um, I really don't feel like there's, I don't have any goals. I don't have any aspirations. I don't have anything. I just want to live every day like today. So I think that is a point that if you can get to that point, that is true freedom. There's always challenges and there's, you know, now I'm raising two sons who they don't have a perception of lack of security as kids. So now what they perceive to be missing most as kids is struggle. So now they're potentially gonna start creating struggle for themselves because that's what they felt was missing as their childhood. And now they're gonna try and navigate and they don't want dad's help and they don't want dad's hand-me-downs and they don't want this and they don't want that. And then juggling that whole piece of trying to give them what you never had, but also not making them wet behind the ears, that's a whole juggling piece. So my mental freedom is being challenged by figuring out the best way forward with that. But we're doing great. But yeah, I don't—

So you offered the security and the stability that you didn't have as a child, but now it formed a whole new different challenge that they have to overcome.

Well, yeah, now they're going to want lack of security. They're going to want some struggle. They're going to want some, you know, something to get their teeth into. I've met people who are born into wealth and they've got all the money to do whatever they want, go wherever they want, do whatever they want, and yet they turn to drugs because they don't know who they are. They've got no mental freedom whatsoever, no purpose, no drive, unanchored, just floating around. And that is dangerous. You know, that's not freedom. At the same time, I've met people who are really great at earning money every single month. They're churning in these entrepreneurs, but they've got no money, so they have to earn that every single month. So that's not freedom.

Freedom.

And then I've seen people who are so spiritually aware of who they are, really happy in their job, love what they do, but they don't earn a lot of money. They're not free because they become a bit resentful that they can't have the experiential freedom that they, they long for, or some experiences that they want. So they're not free. So the three freedoms in my mind are mental, movement, and money. So being free in your mind, building a vocation that doesn't feel like a job, and you're being paid to do what is an extension of you. And then the financial freedom is how you manage your income to underpin that so that you can stop if you need to. And that's what I'm trying to work with my kids on now. Yeah. And obviously you got the challenge that your kids don't want their dad to be the teacher. So a great tip for social media, you know, what I'll do is I'll have conversations with my kids and then I will go on stories and I'll say, oh, I was talking to someone the other day and they said this and that and that. And then I'll I'll put my point across and then all my son's friends will be liking it and going, oh, your dad's, your dad knows what he's talking about. So I'm indirectly teaching my kids through social media without, you know, being their teacher, which is, which is another great use of social media.

And have you encouraged your sons to follow your path for trading, entrepreneurship, multiple ventures, or are you letting them find their own way?

I'm guiding them to find their own way in what they like most, what they're naturally intrinsically driven by most. I've always told them they should never ever look up to me ever, you know, never follow in my footsteps. Don't look up to me at all. And I think that's very, very important. Probably the most important thing I could teach any, any parent is to don't let their kids think that they've gotta look up to you and, and You know, that's, that's wrong. Soon as they start to follow in your footsteps, they're living a life that isn't theirs.

Up until you reach this point in your life, Jason, where you have the financial freedom, the open calendar, doing everything you wanted to do or want to do, what's the sacrifices you've made on this journey that most people never see or you don't speak about too often?

That's a great question. Fortunately, I married someone who we are the complete complementary opposites of each other, and we are like the best support ever, you know, and I've been with my wife for 23 years, I think now, and we've been married for 17, 18 years. And outside of that, you know, outside of that, it's been challenging in because I'm going against what most people do. She's had to deal with external pressures of her family or extended family saying things like, are you sure he knows what he's doing? You know, are you sure he's like, 'cause I was taking big risks. I was taking a lot of risks. I was spending a lot of time doing things that other people couldn't really understand the payoff in. I get why people would be concerned over that. But it all boils down to having a belief in your ability to be who you say you are and do what you say you're gonna do. And the more you can do that, the more confidence people get in you. So back in the day, I would say to my wife, you know, I'm gonna do this, and she'd be like, you know, you sure? Worried? Crazy? You know, a bit worried. Now, if I tell her I'm gonna do some crazy thing, she'll just be like, oh yeah, because, because I've earned, I've earned that right to take bigger risks because I'm right more than I'm wrong. And when I'm right, I win more than I lose when I'm wrong. And that started small and now it can be big, but it's, it's, it's all a result of doing what I said I was going to do and following through. And then the more belief you get in your ability to do that. So you, you have to just follow through. If you don't follow through with things, you're basically telling yourself you can't do it. You know, you're, you're, you're failing yourself. It's like, oh, I said I was going to do that and I didn't do it. That now makes me think I probably can't do it or I won't do the next thing. It filters out into more and more overlap into your life. And then if you don't believe in yourself, no one around you is going to believe in yourself. So yeah, just believe.

Is that some sort of manifesting or is that more woo woo talk that some other influencers talk about online? How, what's your take on it? What's your hot take on it?

I think your language is important. Your internal language around how you talk about yourself, you know?

Mm-hmm.

I think your self-worth is directly correlated to your money, you know, your net worth. If you have a low self-worth, you'll have low income because you don't feel worthy of, if you do get money, keeping it, or if charging a lot of money in the first place, you just won't. I don't think, you know, I don't really— manifestations and things like that and affirmations, it's, that's all great, but it's really internal dialogue and how you stop yourself from saying something negative about yourself or stop yourself from saying, oh, that's a ripoff, you know, or language like that. You know, don't use language like that. Instead say, oh, that's awesome how they get to charge that much. You know, they must be a great brand, great business. Such a, such a small shift in how you say it, but it'll dictate how you act. How you talk dictates how you move. If your internal language is, I can never have that, or I couldn't do that, or that's, I'm fat, or I'm not cut out for it, then you will act like that. So just getting into the habit of having a positive internal dialogue with yourself every day, I think is really important.

And has there been any book, principle, or philosophy that has shaped your approach to money and freedom more than anything else in these years?

There's so many good books that I've read, but there's one that really stands out is The Values Factor by Dr. John Demartini. So if you haven't heard of Dr. John Demartini, he wrote the foreword for my book. He done me a real solid on that, but he is an absolute legend and he wrote a book called The Values Factor. And I think everyone should go and get a copy of that and you'll see what I mean. But that's def— that definitely shifted the way that I look at, I look at everything really and align it to my own purpose. And I know that when you become the best version of you, you have better relationships. Everyone around you is better. It's not this selfish thing. It's a very selfless thing. To go after what you want, because then you can be the best version of yourself to everyone else.

And finally, Jason, if you could talk to that 14-year-old running a car wash to buy a BMX, what's the one piece of advice you'd give him with the experience you have today?

It's a great question. I mean, I think about when I was 7 and, you know, what was you doing at 7? You was probably just playing football or on the bikes or getting an ice cream or something with your friends. And you really thought, you know, you did have all the freedom in the world back then. But when your parents used to like shout out the door and say, you know, come on, it's time for a shower. You gotta get ready for bed, for school. You used to think, ah, you know, when I'm an adult, I'll be free. You know, I'll never, no one will tell me what to do. The thing is when adults become adults, you watch them go further and further away from freedom and further and further away from who they were at 7, who truly knew themselves at 7. And when we went to Disneyland in 2002, I took my family there and we went up to the ticket kiosk to go through into the parks. And this old guy who worked there, he stamped our ticket and he said, go and be a kid again. And I remember looking around at everyone just running through those turnstiles so happy because they were going to go and be that 7-year-old kid. Again. So that's what everyone wants. They just want that freedom that they had at 7. So my advice to someone, a 14-year-old version of me would be figure out like how you can make a life doing what you want to do and being able to synthesize paradoxes that people throw at you on a daily basis. And take that piece of advice with a pinch of salt and that piece of advice with a pinch of salt, and then synthesize them both aligned to what you truly want in life. And if you can do that every time that you're taking advice, every time that you are faced with a challenge or faced with a decision or a direction, you'll end up much closer on track to building a life that you was meant to live than you will trying to reverse engineer it in your forties. So that would be my advice.

That's a really thoughtful place to wrap up our conversation today, Jason. Always stay 7 years old and open to any ideas, but take everything with a pinch of salt. Thank you so much for coming on Millennial Masters today and sharing your life lessons and your wisdom so far.

Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Thanks for tuning in all the way to the end of this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with someone you think would get value from it. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. For the best way to stay in the loop, head to millennialmasters.net. That's where you'll get all the latest features and new episodes straight to your inbox every week. Catch you next week!