How I Achieved High Income In My 20s | How to Make More Money

[Music] So in this video, I wanted to share some things that I've learned about money over the past eight years or so. I'm not saying that I'm some genius who's got money all figured out or anything, but over the past eight years I've made some decisions and I've been in some situations that a lot of people aren't in or don't make. That have given me some interesting insights and have taught me a fair few lessons about money that, hopefully, I can share with you guys.

So very briefly, for me, it wasn't that long ago where I was living out of home and I was working at a gym. From fortnight to fortnight, I literally did not save any money. I had, and I was trying, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't save not even a dollar. My expenses perfectly matched my income. Then, it wasn't very long ago either, only a year ago, where I was just working as a physiotherapist, working for someone else as an employee, making about, you know, 70,000 a year.

Now, more recently, I have just started up and I just run my own businesses and now I generate anyway kind of between 15 and 30,000 a month. So I don't say that to brag; I just say that to show that I've kind of been on both ends of the spectrum. Along this journey, one of the biggest things that I've learned about money and about income is that it is really crucially beneficial if you have multiple sources of income, right?

Obviously, that is because, well, number one, if you've got multiple sources of income and you unfortunately happen to say lose your job, then you've still got a fallback. You've got something that is still bringing at least some money into your bank account. But the other reason why multiple sources of income are really handy is because it gives you more opportunities to experience growth in your income, right?

So you're not just relying on taking your job from zero to hero. You might do a job here, you might start a little side business here, and you might have a hobby that maybe turns into a business later on over here. That means that you've got three different avenues that you could potentially get growth in your income, as opposed to just going to your job and just relying that next year you get that promotion. A couple of years after, you get that next promotion. You keep climbing the ladder eventually to a point where, 30 years from now, you are raking it in with the fantastic job.

For me personally, it didn't take me long working as a physio to realize that, you know, most physio salaries usually don't push much higher than a hundred thousand dollars, ever, unless you're on some crazy commission structure or unless you own your own business. So at that point, I was like, "Well, hang on, I actually have my physio career, I also do gym instructing, and I have that YouTube channel."

So instead of just relying on the one income source, I've actually got three different areas where I could potentially grow my income. So that's really the first key lesson that I learned about money.

The second lesson that I've learned is that it's actually much more important, particularly as a young person, if you want to achieve a higher level of income, it's much more important to focus on making more money as opposed to saving more money. I get it; saving money is still important and it can help you get towards your financial goals sooner.

However, in the grand scheme of things, there's a fundamental reason why it's so much more important to make more money or try and get more money as opposed to just trying to save more money. Yes, they say a dollar saved is a dollar earned, and that kind of gives you the impression that actually saving money is equally as good as making money. But as I was talking about, there is a fundamental flaw with just saving money, and that is that there is a ceiling; there is a ceiling to how much money you can save.

Because you can't save more than a hundred percent of what you make. However, if you are out there making sixty thousand dollars a year – although this may be doable or this may be unrealistic – there is the potential of you raising your income to say a hundred and twenty thousand or a hundred and eighty thousand or three hundred thousand.

The point here is that even though some of those numbers seem unrealistic, you can lift your income in theory to infinity; there's no ceiling on how high your income can go. However, there definitely is a ceiling on how much money you can save. So if you're a young person and you're looking at achieving high income, I would definitely encourage you to focus your efforts on trying to make more money. Definitely make that the priority over trying to save more money.

So that's the second big lesson that I've learned about money over the past eight years or so.

Then the third key lesson, arguably the most important lesson that I've learned, is that it can really pay off to start a business, particularly starting a business while you're younger. I don't really talk about this too much, but back before I left, when I was about to leave my full-time physio job, I was actually really, really nervous to make that call and actually just go out and be my own boss and start and run my own businesses. Because obviously, you're leaving that steady income that I've had for three years. You know, I know I'm going to keep showing up to work and keep getting paid.

It's really, really hard to leave that. However, one thing that now in hindsight that I've seen is that I actually should have made that call much, much earlier. The thing about business is that at the end of the day, the amount of time and effort that you put into it directly correlates with how much money you get out of it.

I think that's a really important thing to remember. So if you are a bit of a go-getter, you know, you like to work hard, then you can actually do very well for yourself by running your own business. It's kind of funny that when we think about jobs and salaries, you know, typically we'll say, "Oh yeah, if you can get like an 80 to 100 thousand salary each year then you're doing really well."

And while that's very true, you know, that's a substantial amount of money to make for yourself each year; we take that from the perspective of that's a great amount of money to make each year while you're also working for someone else who's actually getting richer as well. But when you work for yourself, you quickly realize that actually 80 to 100 thousand, if you are not trying to make someone else rich, that someone else is you.

Then you can actually push your income a hell of a lot higher. But I think a lot of young people don't even stop to think about this because society kind of grooms you towards a job, right? You grow up, you go to school, then you might go to college, then you go to university, and then after you finish uni, then you've got a degree.

That degree kind of permits you to get this specific job over here and then you work that job for 40-45 years, you retire, live a modest life, you've got 15 years, and then you're dead. Unfortunately, that really sucks. In the vast majority of people, that's basically the life story of almost everyone.

But trust me when you are young and you are financially flexible, so you don't have things tying you down, like mortgages to pay or, you know, kids to feed every night, then that is the time to strike. You know, you are in a very flexible position, and you're still young. So, a lot of the times, you've still got support that you can fall back onto.

So this is the time, and a lot of young people can do really well in business because they can throw everything they've got at their business. They don't have to worry about, you know, making sure that they're home by 5 PM to hang out with their kids and their family, and they don't have to worry about, you know, "I can't leave my 80,000 a year job because, you know, I've got that mortgage or that car payment that I have to make."

You've just got that freedom, and you can throw everything you've got at the business. A lot of times, yes, like I'm not naive; I know that a lot of businesses do fail, but on the same logic, a lot of businesses do succeed, right?

So you may as well, if you are someone that wants to strive for those high levels of income while you're still quite young, absolutely, the number one recommendation I could say is to try and start your own business where you're working for yourself. Any work that you do, you know, do then that is going towards making you richer because you can really, if you throw everything you got at it, you can be, you can really surprise yourself by how far you can get in a short period of time.

Then the last thing that I've already kind of touched on, but I'll make its own point is, whatever you do with your income, you just got to make sure that what you do is scalable, right? So whatever you choose to do, whatever you choose to focus on, make sure that there are no ceilings. Make sure it can take you from here to here.

Okay? Whether that be your own business, obviously business is very scalable, but even thinking about the type of business you want to start up, you know, if you're selling thirty dollar widgets that cost twenty-nine dollars for your business to produce, then obviously that's not hugely scalable. You have to sell a hundred thousand widgets to make a hundred thousand dollars of profit.

Whereas you could be, I don't know, a computer programmer and you might develop some sort of software where, you know, you don't have to physically build anything, it keeps the costs low, and you can maybe sell that software for a couple of hundred dollars. It's not like you have to rebuild the software every time you make a sale; you can just repeatedly sell it. So that's obviously a much higher margin business that's much more scalable.

But you can even think about it if you are just an employee, right? You don't get stuck in some sort of job. If you want to achieve high income while you're still young, you don't get stuck in some sort of job where you know the ceiling is going to be like, you know, eighty thousand dollars. Whatever you do, you have to go into it understanding the scalability and knowing that, okay, well if I'm in this job, if I work for this company for say 10-15 years, then I can get from, you know, here to wherever I want to go up in the high income.

Whatever goal you set for yourself, is there some sort of progression plan within that business or that company structure that will help you get to where you want to go?

So overall, I think they're really the four biggest lessons that I have personally learned about money. Number one, you definitely have to have multiple sources of income so that you give yourself multiple chances to make it big with your income. Okay? It's definitely a much better strategy than just sticking with one source of income and just trying to grind as hard as you can on that. So give yourself multiple chances.

Second thing, obviously make sure you focus much more on making more money as opposed to just saving money, because obviously there is a ceiling with how much money you can save.

Then third thing, definitely try and end up working for yourself, so that any work that you put in, you're reaping the rewards. You're not just getting paid per hour while you're making someone else rich.

Then lastly, the fourth big thing I could say that I've learned is to make sure whatever you do, it's set up so that it's scalable. Take a step back, have a little think about how you make money, and think, is this truly scalable? Does this give me the opportunity to go big? And if it doesn't, if you can see that there's an obvious ceiling getting in the way then maybe rethink your strategy, rethink your approach, tweak your business model, whatever it might be.

But anyway, guys, they're just four key lessons that I suppose I have learned. Um, I'd love to hear from you guys as well. What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned about money? The biggest lessons that have helped you along the path towards financial freedom? Things that maybe, if you've gotten there, if you've achieved complete financial freedom, let us know. Leave me a comment down below. What do you think were some of the key things that you learned that helped you get to where you are today?

So anyway, guys, that's it for this video. Leave a like on the video if you did enjoy it; I super appreciate it. It always helps out the video a ton. If you want to learn more about my own investing strategy, you can check out my business, which is linked down in the description below. You can check out Profitful.

But apart from that, guys, thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you all in the next video. [Music] Um. [Music] You.