I became a cash millionaire at 27 years old but if I had to start from zero at 18 and go from broke to millionaire before 30 these are the exact choices I would make at every point in my journey and if at any point during this article you think I can’t do this you might not be cut out to be a millionaire and that’s totally fine but if you’re part of the select few that are willing to do the work then this article is for you.
The First Choice I Would Make Is College or No College
Here’s the thing the pros you get to learn how to learn i can’t tell you how many people finish high school and they didn’t learn the skill of learning college is going to teach you that cuz it gives you creative freedom over the courses you get to pick it also gets you access to incredible mentors you know when I think of like the professors and the other teachers I’ve met at the college or university level because they’re going to be getting called by other CEOs of companies saying “Who are your top students?” and recommending the people in those classes and the truth is if you go to college you will come out with a higher pay if you get the degree you get paid accordingly if you stay in that lane.
Not going to college I mean first off you get to start the thing you actually want to do see college is in many ways a reason to delay just doing if you don’t go you get to start right away one of the big ones is the cost of college if you look at the cost of college it’s gone up five six seven times guess what has not gone up accordingly your pay and then finally how does AI change college what if nobody needs it because AI is your co-pilot it has perfect information and PhD level knowledge to help you do anything you want is college really even needed that could very much be true in the next 12 months 24 months so if I was 18 again my opinion don’t go to college i just don’t think taking on debt and becoming a doctor a lawyer an engineer is the fastest way to a million anymore.
Getting a Job or Starting a Business
So now that I’ve decided to skip college and save myself four years of sitting in a class it’s time for the next choice getting a job or starting a business so pros of getting a job first off jobs come with built-in mentors you’re going to be around other people that are doing the thing that I’m assuming you’re going to start in the future if you want to start your own business so you get to fasttrack your learning by getting paid to learn the other one is structured skill building if you go work at the right place you’re going to be put in maybe into marketing and then they’re going to move you into sales and then you could go into operations in four years you might come out of there as a freaking weapon the other one is that it’s low risk you’re not putting your own money and time into something and hoping it works out you’re going to be learning the skills and somebody else is going to be paying you to do it so it’s a heck of a lot lower risk than starting your own thing.
On the other side we have starting your business first off unlimited income you could literally get as rich as you possibly can get based on your skill level and the opportunity in the market it’s up to you that is not true in a salaried position that you get when you do your own thing then you have unlimited upside maybe relationships or do really cool projects or travel the world doing what you love to do and the last is faster decision cycles i can’t tell you how soul sucking working for somebody else can feel if you’re in the wrong place when you’re doing your own thing guess what you decide what you want to work on it’s incredible that may not come if you’re working for somebody else because you’re going to be stuck in their vehicle instead of building your own so if I was 18 again in this world I’m doing my own thing why because the world has never been ready for people to decide to do their own thing then right now all the tools that didn’t exist all the opportunities the people the customers are all available for you to talk to there’s no lack of places to go learn if anything you’re going to be overwhelmed but that’s the beauty.
Co-founder or Go Solo
So now that you decided to do your thing the next choice I would make is co-founder or go solo both are awesome having a co-founder the first thing is it has built-in accountability see when you’re doing everything yourself it is easy to decide to go down a path that to any other person if they’re actually watching you would stop you from going down that path having a co-founder can fill in the gaps around skill sets that you don’t naturally have that they bring to the table and could be world class at the other thing is having somebody else that also believes in your crazy idea sets you up in case you want to raise money because an investor is going to go “Okay if you convince one other person that what you’re doing could work then that’s a good sign.”
But then you could also go solo there’s a lot of reasons why you’d want to do this first off it’s a lot faster you don’t have to build consensus when making decisions the other thing is you get to keep the whole business if I bring on a co-founder I might have to give up 50% of my business even more if they’ve got more skills and more capital that they’re bring to the table and that might create more risk in my business the other one the truth is it costs less you might have to pay yourself a little bit to get started and if you bring another person that also needs to take a salary and you saved up some money all of a sudden those savings start to dwindle really quick.
If I was starting over today the decision I would make is neither cuz the truth is is I think you should look at a third option which is finding somebody could be a partner it doesn’t mean a co-founder language aside a partner means that they’re involved in the business they might have a little bit of equity but you’re still driving things forward i’ve been doing this for 28 years and I’ll tell you everybody is in until it starts to hurt and then we’ll see who actually shows up so I like to use the word partner so there’s two benefits to this strategy first off you don’t give up one of the most expensive things which is equity meaning the ownership in the business if somebody buys your business for $10 million and somebody else owns 50% and they’re no longer part of the business trust me when you write that check for $5 million to that person it’s going to eat you up inside so to fix that and this is the second part you need to use vesting and what that means essentially saying like I’m willing to give you 10% of this business as a partner but I’m only going to give you pieces of it over time most lawyers know how to set this up and it’s absolutely normal the reason why this works the best is you get the benefit of having a co-founder aka partner that helps you to grow to be accountable to to pull you up when you’re feeling down and you’re still driving the business and have the most ownership in the company.
Bootstrap or Raise Money
Now that we’ve established that this next step could make or break your business bootstrap or raise money bootstrap which means you start the business through sweat equity you’re doing the grind you’re borrowing resources you’re trying to sell to customers you got no money the other one is you raise money from somebody else which means they get a piece of your business and some profit in the future.
My first successful company that I ended up building and selling completely bootstrapped i own 100% of the company after I bought out my partners the other two companies I raise venture capital for both of them so I have experience in both sides of the equation.
The Pros of Raising Money
First off fast scale you literally can get the money execute buy the stuff find the customers hire the team it is very fast you get a built-in investor network think about it having somebody give you money well now they’re incentivized to see you win so if you need an introduction to somebody that you otherwise wouldn’t get to know that they know they’ll make that introduction the doors open faster and the last one is validation if you can sell investors to part with their hard-earned dollars to invest in your company it’s a good sign you can sell customers.
The Pros of Bootstrapping
First off you keep the ownership when you go exit your company for $10 million you get all $10 million and the most expensive equity is the early equity you might have to give to an investor you also have no vision drift meaning that you have nobody else’s agenda or ideas steering the ship you get to make the decision with your vision in mind and the only one that gets to decide that you also get to grow it at your own pace i mean if you have investors they’ve got a window where they want to see a return and if you’re building for them then you got to push and you might not want to do that i mean at the end of the day when they say lifestyle business you can still become a multi-millionaire creating a lifestyle business that’s incredible for your lifestyle.
My Choice: Customer Financing
So if I was starting over today the choice I would make is technically neither i would do a thing called customer financing essentially I would pre-sell to customers and have them invest without giving up equity to pre-buy or service so that I could get their capital to start the business if you want to start a lawn care company go get 25 customers to prepay you for the season then go buy the lawnmower show up and start cutting their lawn see how that works this is my version of bootstrapping that works even better because you get customer validation or validation from the market and you get the capital you need to grow faster so this way again you get the best of both worlds.
Niche Down or Go Broad
So now that you got your plan for ownership it’s time for the next step which is making the choice of niching down or going broad people often say the riches are in the niches but are they really so when I started my first company that finally made me money I had to niche down from just building software for everybody to only Fortune 500 companies we’re talking Proctor and Gamble Dole Foods Johnson and Johnson these big companies because that’s what I knew really best and it turns out they were willing to pay the money I needed to invest in my team.
Going Broad
There are a lot of pros to keeping it broad so first off is that it’s easier to find them i mean you can literally like sell to a small business and run into about a dozen of them in a day at the mall and lastly it’s just easier to start when the market is broad you don’t have to have so much experience in the specific niche you don’t have to spend so much money on like a specific solution for a customer type you can essentially just get started and find the customers easier.
Going Niche
Now that we’ve addressed the pros of staying broad now we got to talk about why there’s a benefit of going niche first off cheaper acquisition when you’re creating ads and you’re being super specific you’re essentially spending less money because the ad platform doesn’t have to try to find the customer you can literally tell it that I only want to sell to this type of person and it’s only going to show the ad to those people it also comes with higher close rates if you think about when you’re having a conversation about fitness if I specialize in helping menopausal women with specific fitness goals that’s a lot more interesting than just saying “I’m a personal trainer and I help everybody.” So the women are going to buy quicker because I specialize in their specific pain the last one is the word of mouth flywheel because you’re so specialized people that buy from you and you get them results a lot quicker they’re going to tell everybody it’s like the win that you get them infects the whole market and everybody starts referring to you because you only do that thing and you’re not broad for everybody.
With all of that in mind if I had to make a choice today between going broad or staying super niche I would niche down as soon as possible.
Get a Coach or Do It Yourself
When I started I went at it alone and I struggled i had two failed companies before I ever made my first dollar and the truth was is I eventually had to hire a coach this guy named Bob who taught me how to do it and it was crazy cuz I was paying them 1,500 bucks a month and it completely changed my business but I’ve also started businesses and I didn’t have a coach and that had a completely different outcome.
Doing It Yourself
If you do it yourself first thing simple you save the money i mean when you start cash is tight and every dollar that goes out is a dollar you don’t have the other pro is that you get to build the business through your vision not tainted through somebody else that might have done it 5 years ago cuz the world’s completely changed.
Getting a Coach
On the other side getting a coach is like a mentor and mentors bring the map having somebody that you could pay to give you access to the map to show you exactly how to build your business is incredibly fast the other benefit is you have somebody else to give you feedback and the cool part is they’ve been there before so you get to avoid giving up equity or raising money from investors so you get all the benefits without losing control it also comes with accountability you know when you spend money to get advice trust me you will pay attention when we pay we pay attention and often times I say transformation for ourselves happens at the transaction so again if I was starting over from scratch and I had to make that choice today I would 100% get a mentor i personally have an unlimited budget for my health and education i mean think about it for yourself if you’ve gotten good at something maybe it took you 10 years to learn an instrument knowing what you know now if I took everything away from you how much faster could you have gotten there that’s the benefit of having a mentor in your life is they’ll save you literally decades of time.
Scale or Exit
So these choices will help you get to your first million but we don’t want to stop there how do you multiply it the final choice you need to make is do you scale or exit exit the business make a bunch of cash or keep scaling it to generate more profit i get the call all the time people going like “Man I’m burnt out and I think I want to sell.” Or others going like “Man I’m getting calls from people want to buy my business should I keep building or should I exit now?”
I don’t know when I was 28 I was getting those emails those calls hey Dave we want to buy your business hey Dave we want to buy your business but you got to understand I just built this thing struggled for 2 3 years finally was getting some momentum and I didn’t have anybody to turn to who had gone through this trying to wrestle with the pros and cons of selling or keep building so because of that I had to think like what are the pros to each decision selling gives you cash in the bank essentially it reduces the risk of being in the market it gives you liquidity and you can take that money and invest it and if you do it right you may never have to work another day for the rest of your life the other benefit is getting that capital creates an opportunity for you to reinvest and have ammo to do bigger deals i mean now you can transition from being an operator and just stressing under the build of the business to investing in other people and creating diversity in your investment so you don’t have all of your personal net worth tied up into one company.
On the other hand you have the option of keeping the business which the truth is check this out if you actually ask yourself how much money per month you would need to live this wildly awesome life it’s not that much for most people it’s like a $100,000 a month which I know sounds wild but if you think about that potential of building the business to that level then you have the beautiful home a couple really cool cars the ability to travel the world and that monthly cash flow becomes consistent the bigger the business gets there’s a lot of benefits to keeping the business first off you don’t have to worry about what are you going to go and do with all that money trust me most people that exit their business they can’t find a safe reliable thing to invest in that was as predictable as their previous business they just exited having that company just creates consistency in your life so it makes it less stressful you also get more upside because you take that money you reinvest it in your existing business which you know really well and it keeps growing so you have more upside later i mean somebody might give you 10 million today but they might give you 50 million in 3 years and that path is a lot more predictable than selling today.
So if I was starting over today my choice would be to sell specifically when growth plateaus or passions fades i mean when I think about selling my companies when I felt that either hey I didn’t love to sell to this customer anymore it kind of grew into something that I didn’t enjoy or the opportunities to keep learning and growing was not found in my current business so the passion faded for the thing I was doing and then exiting made a lot of sense the key here is to call it before it’s too late if you look to sell once you’re like absolutely burnt out and tired the buyer is going to have the advantage you want to get that decision made before you get to that place think about like a UFC fighter them deciding to retire is always best to do it at the height not after they got completely knocked out on the last fight but there’s an asterisk if you really enjoy your business then maybe you keep building and here’s why if you’re buying my business you’re essentially buying years of perfect execution so if you’re only buying one year of perfect execution in regards to what you’re going to pay me for it then I’m probably just going to keep building like when I look at my life today I’ve got Martell Media and Martell Ventures and both of them have actually been built up so I could exit them today i think it’s just a great way to build a company but I wouldn’t because if I sold them the first thing I would do the day after the transaction completed was to do it over again because my life that I’m living is literally the life that I wanted to design that is the thing that you want to get right so that you don’t struggle with these decisions.
The Final Lesson
So those are the choices I would make if I wanted to go from broke to millionaire starting at 18 years old and that’s essentially the advice I gave my friend Josh he was 18 struggling in life parents want to go to university he’s like I just want to start and I said bro if you know it’s on your heart to start a business in the future you don’t have to go to university to start just make a commitment to yourself bet on yourself go all in on you it won’t be easy you won’t have your parents support you will have a lot of people misunderstand you you got to be willing to go long periods of time being misunderstood before you win but guess what will happen the day you win your parents will tell all their friends “Oh my god my son is so successful.” But there’s going to be a period where you’re going to have to go through it and make these decisions but trust me on the other side it’ll all be worth it now if you want to learn how to build a business that runs itself click here and I’ll see you on the other.
