If you don’t understand these money laws, you’ll never be rich
In this motivational personal‑finance video, entrepreneur Nick Kugelman (CEO of Spheric) shares the five "laws" he says are essential for building real wealth, arguing that conventional money rules are insufficient. He begins by emphasizing that wealth is a ratio of income to life‑costs, not a raw number, and stresses the need for a large gap between earnings and expenses. Law 2 introduces the "buyback loop"—audit your calendar, transfer low‑value tasks to others (including AI), and fill the reclaimed time with higher‑return activities, thereby buying back time to grow the wealth gap. Law 3 focuses on owning "money machines"—assets that generate income independent of your presence, especially equity in businesses or real‑estate, and provides a practical T‑chart exercise to shift income from time‑bound to equity‑bound sources. Law 4 advises leveraging your personal "unfair advantage"—the unique knowledge and experience you possess—to invest only in domains you deeply understand, avoiding blind bets. Finally, Law 5 stresses giving back, framing money as a flow that expands when you contribute time, money, or influence to others, and encourages an abundance mindset. Throughout, Kugelman offers concrete steps, personal anecdotes, and calls to action (e.g., DM for a workbook, watch the next video).
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You can follow all the money rules and still end up broke. You can save more, you can invest more, you can work more. But in today's world, that just doesn't cut it anymore. I went from being a broke 22-year-old to being a $100 million CEO. And what I've learned is money isn't about rules, but it's actually about laws. Rules can be broken. Laws can't. So in this video, I'm going to give you 5 laws of building real wealth, starting with law number 1: Wealth is not a number. It's a ratio. Wealth isn't about what you own. It's what your life costs. I know a lot of people that got really fancy shit. They got the boats and the cars and the planes and the pools and all the cool stuff, but their life costs them a lot. Someone making $80,000 a year spending $50K feels way wealthier than someone who's making $300K, but they're spending $290K. Some people may not want to hear this because they want to front load their lives. They want to YOLO. You only live once. So I'm gonna lease the BMW and buy all the furniture and get the coolest pad. I know this doesn't sound fun and I know it might sound dumb to some people, but I wanna make it crystal fucking clear. You need a bigger gap between what you make and what you spend. If it's not there, you can't outwork the gap. I got this from my incredible dad and he used to say this all the time. It's not what you make, it's what you keep. The first law is just the beginning. But how do we tighten up the wealth ratio? Law number 2, stop buying shit. Now I want you to spend money on cool things. I have amazing stuff in my life, but you gotta be intentional about it and you need to understand what you're paying for. See, most people spend money on dumb shit to make themselves feel good. The worst part is often people buy stuff to impress people they don't even like. They upgrade their lifestyle that they can't afford. They buy jewelry, they buy cars, they pay for these cool pads. And look, there's nothing wrong with the stuff, but you need to buy leverage first so you can create real wealth. I don't want you to kind of have some money. I want you to have a lot of money. The wealthiest people you know default to spending money on leverage first over things because the most valuable thing you can buy, the ultimate flex, is your time. Broke people buy stuff. Rich people buy time. And the reason why is you never pay for things with money. You pay for them with the time it took to make the money. And I get it. When you start making money, you want to start buying things. When I was 26, I started making $200,000, $300,000 a year and I'm driving a 12-year-old car. People thought I was being cheap and instead of buying more stuff and I could have, I knew that a better decision investing in my team, my business, my time, that decision made me 10 times more money later than buying the new car then. Like, I'm not saying forever. I'm just saying in the short time, reinvest in getting leverage to make more money, increase the gap, then you can buy the cool stuff. So 3 things you need to do in order to complete what I call the buyback loop to buy back massive amounts of your time. First thing is we have to audit. Just look at your calendar the last 2 weeks. Highlight the things that give you energy in green, the things that suck your energy in red. 2, transfer the stuff that's red that you don't want to do to anybody else. So these are the cheap tasks. These are the repetitive tasks. These are the simple stuff like meal prep, cleaning, process your inbox, car wash, stuff that you don't have to do that you can pay very little money to somebody else to help you. That's creating leverage. The more time you got back, the more time you can enjoy life. Better yet, go do things that are going to make you more money to increase the gap. And my pro tip is record yourself doing the task using any kind of screen recording software like Zoom. And then give that recording to the person that's gonna do it for you so that they can learn how you did it so they can do it right the first time. And in today's world, you can even transfer it to this beautiful thing called AI. The third step is you have to fill. You have to take the hours that you bought back and reinvest them into things that are gonna make you more money to grow that gap. So I always look at sales activity, strategy, relationships, growth, skills that I gotta acquire, hiring and managing people. The more people that you can easily hire and manage, the bigger your business will be, the more money you'll make, the bigger the gap gets. It's a super important step because if you don't fill your time back with things that make you more money, all this is a waste. So instead of buying a Lambo, go buy some time that makes you more money to easily pay for the Lambo. I wrote a whole book on this concept called Buying Back Your Time, and I even built an entire workbook to take you through the process step by step. So if you're a busy entrepreneur and you're fighting to buy back some time, just go find me on Instagram and DM me the word YouTube workbook and I'll send it over. So now you've stopped buying dumb shit. This next law will teach you how to fucking print money. Law number 3: Own money machines. You need to own the machine that makes you money. You have to get in the river of the money. Some people are scared to jump in the river. If you don't get in the river, how are you supposed to make some money? Money machines are essentially assets that make money when you're not around. The wealthiest people in the world own Assets, not liabilities. All the cool shit you want to flex with, those are liabilities. The things that have made me a lot of money, it was assets that I own. All the wealthiest people don't make money by the work they're doing today. They're making money by the work they did in the past that they bought assets with that pay them today. Think about the real estate folks. They buy a building, the building property goes up, they make the cash flow, it pays the mortgage over time, 30 years. They have an asset that makes them a lot of money every month. Simple question: will you make money if you stop working? Most entrepreneurs, the answer is no. I know people that have been in business for 32 years and still have not figured out the laws. So if you're here, you're my person. You're the person that wants to learn this. The biggest form of having a lot of assets is owning equity shares in companies, in entities, because that's the only way you're going to get really rich is to own equity. Equity pays you whether you show up or not. Most people, it's the equity in their own business, but that business is tied to them. Having equity in other businesses, buying into the stock market, that's an example of it. So right off the bat, if you have a business that nobody else would ever buy, then the equity in your business isn't worth a lot. When I started my company Spheric at 24, I had the vision somehow someday maybe I could sell it. So I built the company in a way that I could sell it. I didn't take a salary because I was deferring what I knew I could get in the future. Why would I take money out of the business that I could use it to grow knowing the value of the business would be more in the future when I exited. So when I sold the company, the amount of money I made from that equity was way bigger than the salary I could have took combined. That's the power of equity. Equity is kind of cool for a lot of reasons. Equity compounds. Equity is valuable to others. In some ways it's liquid. No billionaire has $1 billion in cash in a bank account. Their equity value is worth billions of dollars, and then they can borrow against that equity and not pay taxes and use insurance to cover that loan so that they can live a life off of the equity that just keeps compounding. Now, this is not financial advice, and that is an advanced move. Let's just start by creating equity. Here's what I want you to do. Draw a T-chart. Essentially, on one side I want you to put time, on the other side you put equity. Now list everything that you do to make money. Could be a salary, it could be your business, it could be you lent somebody money. You got to put it in one of those categories. Is it dependent on time? Because if you stop working, the money stops. Or is it equity? Does it pay you whether you show up or not? Does the money keep coming regardless? The goal is to have a lot more things on the equity side. And what you do is you take the income from the time side, you try to increase how much you make with your time and then invest it over on the equity side. That could be real estate, that could be investing on their business, that could be putting in the market, that could be lending your money through other people. Some people think they have assets, but those assets are tied to their time. No time, no asset. It's like your primary home. I know people say to put it on the personal net worth sheet as an asset. It's not an asset because you need to live in a home. Are you paying yourself rent, paying for the property tax? You're paying for all the maintenance, you're paying the mortgage, you're paying whatever you're doing. So this is where a lot of people get this wrong. I think an asset is something that makes me money while I sleep and I bought into it and I've got equity. Businesses might start off as time-bound, but if you do it right, you can get over to equity-bound where you actually— the value of that asset, if other people want to buy shares in it is worth a lot more than what you could make from a cash point of view. Okay, so you understand how real money is made when you own assets, but there's something you already have that can make you more money than anything else. Law number 4: your unfair advantage. Every person has this ability to do something that other people admire. You have specific knowledge, you have different experience in different markets, you have work experience, you have life experience. You have leverage in the way you look at the world. See, what I think is the best thing for you to figure out is what is your unfair advantage? What are the things that you've invested in that you understand more than other people? It sounds crazy, but once you figure out what makes you, you, and what does the world want and value, and you figure out how to put yourself into that place and monetize it to create opportunities to not only get paid, but to get equity. And have that equity be worth a lot of money, that's how you create wealth. And my rule is I only like to invest in things I understand. My unfair advantage are things that I have deep, deep experience in because that's where I can see opportunity. I can see where other people's luck, they bring me that luck. I go, is this any good? Most people lose their money when they start investing in things they have no fucking idea about. Their cousin comes to them with a restaurant idea. They're like, I got money. I want to invest in your restaurant. Another guy comes to them with a software idea and they're like, I got money. I don't know anything about software. Let me do some software stuff. And look, I'm speaking from experience. Almost 20 years ago, a guy named Bryce came to me and he's like, hey, I know the banks. The banks are selling homes in Detroit. I can get them locked and loaded, sealed and deals for $10 grand and we can buy 100 at a time. I'm like, a $10,000 home? How much do you think it'll be worth in a few years? He says, hey man, once we get it rented and we get it managed and it's all done. The market's going to come back up. 3, 4 years, we probably sell them for like $80,000 to $100,000 apiece. Take my money, man. Sounds great. I'll take 10. I'm Canadian. I've never done real estate. I have no idea what I'm doing. Let me skip to the end. 2 years later, my brother, who went in on the deal with me, decides to go visit these homes. The day he landed, that afternoon, he called me, said, bro, we got to get out of this as fast as possible. They're boarded up. They're about to burn down. We're responsible for them. We own these things. I don't even know how the heck they got to this place. Get out of this deal. So we found somebody that would take them, but we lost all of our money. The good news is we got out of the liability of owning them in the first place and we moved on. And I've continued to come back to that lesson. Stick to your lane, stick to your lane, stick to your unfair advantage. You have one. You know what it is. Double down on it. You will always make more money doing the thing you know how to do more than anybody else. It's why Warren Buffett says, hey, if you love Dairy Queen, buy Dairy Queen stock. If you love Coca-Cola, buy Coca-Cola stock. You know, I tell my kids all the time, you want to invest in the market, what are the products you use every day? Lego? Go buy some stock. Because at least now you are interested and you know about the product. You're reading the news, you're telling your friends about it. So many people literally spend all their money buying products that they don't own the company. Look at my car collection. You don't think I own stock in the companies that build the cars? Why wouldn't I? That's the first place you buy equity, not the shit liability. I've invested in 70+ tech companies, AI companies. I'm currently working on a billion-dollar portfolio of AI software, and all I've done my whole life for 30 years is software, software, software, software. I have an unfair advantage in that space. I stick to my lane. It's what I do better than everything else. So here's two things I always ask myself before I invest in anything to get equity. One, is the investment something I have specific knowledge in? Is it something I've felt the pain in? Is it something that I'm interested in? Is it something that I know about? And it's just like the real estate investment. Like, I didn't understand how it would go. I just trusted it. And I mean, trusting without knowing is not a great way to invest. Even in software, if you came to me with like some deep medical software that I have no idea about, I just wouldn't do it. I don't chase like, oh, you can make a bazillion dollars. It's like, I get it. Let somebody else make that. There's no lack of opportunities in this world. I got to be better at saying no to the things I don't understand and saying yes to the things that I know cold. Number 2, can I explain the investment in 1 to 2 sentences? Because usually I have to explain it to my beautiful wife in 1 to 2 sentences. She needs to understand it. If I try to explain to her quantum mechanics because it took me 3 years to finally understand qubits, she would probably be like, I don't get it. How can it be in the same place twice? How is it possible that this is a computing cloud? Like, I get it. So I don't do it. If the answer is no to either of those questions, then I just don't invest. Quick recap. So you're spending less than you make, you're buying back your time, you're building some equity, and you're using your unfair advantage to stick with what you know. Fuck yeah. Now this last law most people forget about, but is by far the most important. Law number 5. Give back. Money is a flow. It's not like a storage place. I used to do this. I used to save all my points at a coffee shop. I used to hoard them. My travel points. Oh my God, I had bazillion points. I spent more money trying to optimize my points than I could have made 10 times more actually just focusing that time on my business. I'm speaking from experience because what happened to me is I realized that if all I do is I hoard and I pull in and I put in the bank account and I like protect it, that it doesn't grow. The more it comes in and you redeploy, it comes in and you invest, it comes in and you give to other people, you start sending the elevator back down, you start helping other people, your team through growing businesses and equity, but your community by some of the contributions you make. That's when my whole life changed. The moment I stopped making it about myself and I started making it about other people, that's when my life expanded 10x. Because nobody has ever shown up day after day to help other people and ever felt poor. Making a lot of money, having a lot of stuff is cool, but you know what's even cooler? Giving it away, helping other people. When I gave Sam his dream car, that's fucking cool. When I gave away the book "Thinking Grow Rich" to over 10,000 kids in my local community, that made me feel wealthy. The more you give, the more you get. It's the law of the universe. It's how it's always been. And I see so many people focus on making money that they forget that it is a flow. It is a river. It comes in, it goes out. And I know you want like guaranteed returns on your advice. You know, these tactics that make you lots of money. You're going to have to have some faith. And it's why most faith has some component of tithing, which is giving. And it's not just your money. Tithing is actually Time. If you don't have money, give your time. If you have money, give both. Give your influence, give your strategies, give your assets, help other people. It's why Renee and I are so big on contributing to our local community through our foundation. It's our favorite day of the year, the giving day where we go around and we bless people, we surprise them. And for us, we focus on at-risk youth. My biggest mission in the world, my driving purpose in life is to help young people not feel broken. That is where I get give a lot. And it turns out when you do that, you get a lot. Here's how you start this today. First thing, pick a charity. Find the one that helps the people that solves the problem that you most felt pain around. The person who aligns themselves with helping other people avoid or get through challenging times in their life from whatever they felt, that is why you're called to that charity. And I know you might be compelled by other people's stories, but if you don't resonate with those stories, it's a different level of connection. So I would truly ask yourself to be honest, and you don't have to tell anybody what you've gone through, but there might be something that was really painful that, you know, there's organizations that help people that were like you. And by showing up and giving, that is alignment. And then you also have to give before you're ready. Don't wait till you got a lot of money. If you don't give when you have a little, you won't give when you got a lot. Number 3, let go of scarcity. The first time you give money away, and it's uncomfortable and it's awkward and you're like, should I tell people I did it? Should I allow them to talk about the fact that I just donated to this? Do I do it anonymously? That is your scarcity mindset kicking in. The one that says, well, I could give them money, but they'll go buy drugs. Scarcity mindset. Your job is not to judge. I dare you to just give from a place of pure contribution back to this beautiful world we live in. Like, I know the first time you give, you might be thinking to yourself, but I could use this in my life. Or like, I don't really have a lot. That's your scarcity showing up. Have that abundance mindset. If you can flip that from scarcity, I don't have a lot, to abundance, I can create more and give more, it'll change your whole relationship with wealth. Now, most people are going to watch this and they're going to be like, yeah, that's so good. But then they're going to do nothing. That's not you. The ones that win actually take action. Any action right now. The rules are meant to be broken, but the law is we take action. Leave a comment below and let me know. Out of everything I shared, what's the thing you're going to double down on? What's the thing you needed to hear today? What's the thing that meant the most? Leave a comment and remember, DM me the word YouTube workbook if you want my internal playbook for how to audit my time to buy it back to get more leverage. Now, if you like this video, you'll love the next video where I talk about why dumb people might be making more money than you and how to fix that. So click here and I'll see you on the other side.
