My Response To MeetKevin | The Full Story

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So I need to make a video about this because there's a lot you need to hear.

A little over three years ago, this guy reached out to me over email and said we had a lot in common. He told me that he had been watching me since I had about 7,000 subscribers. He was also in real estate; he was also a real estate agent, and he wanted to see if we could link up and film some real estate content together.

So I gave him a call to talk it over; we seemed to hit it off, but just due to a busy schedule, we never got around to filming any videos. Well, Kevin didn't let that deter him from including me on his channel, so without my knowledge, he just made a video about me on his own. But what made that video stand out was that he was filming in a playground and behind bushes and even on the side of a freeway. That was enough to get my attention.

So after some back and forth, we met up, we filmed a video together, and ever since then, we've been close friends. We filmed about two dozen videos together at this point, including a recent podcast on my new channel, The Iced Coffee Hour. Today, he's crossed paths into my scene, and that would be Millennial Money.

This is a series from CNBC Make It that follows the lives of millennials and then reports back on their spending and savings habits. But this one is very unique because Kevin has the highest income ever reported on Millennial Money by a lot. When it comes to Kevin's spending, I really have no idea what his overhead is like; I just know he spends way more money than I do.

And Kevin, no hard feelings here, but I'm putting our friendship aside so I could give completely honest criticism and commentary throughout the video. So for everyone watching, if you wouldn't mind just smashing a like button for the YouTube algorithm, that way YouTube is going to recommend this video to other people who could then watch me confronting my friends.

And with that said, thank you so much because we got this title right here: Living on Dollar Signs: 6 Million a Year in Ventura, California. Wait for it—Millennial Millionaire.

"My name is Kevin, I'm 28, and I make just over 5.75 million dollars per year."

"My name is Lauren, I am 30 years old, and I make 250,000 dollars per year. Together we make over 6 million per year, and we live in Ventura, California. Welcome to, wait for it—Millennial Money!"

By the way, all of this was filmed a few months ago, so this was the day after he shaved his beard and well before he shaved his head and then grew up the beard, and now suddenly he's Walter White.

A typical day for me starts at about 5 a.m. Then I go down to my garage office set where I have a walking treadmill, and I'll catch up on whatever projects we need to work on for our real estate investments, and I'll plan out the days of videos.

I'm actually kind of envious that Kevin starts his day so early; he's naturally the type of person who functions on very little sleep. Like, he could go to bed at midnight and then wake up at five o'clock in the morning and be perfectly fine.

Now, myself, on the other hand, I need a solid seven to eight hours of sleep every single night, no exceptions. But lately, I've been starting around six o'clock in the morning, and I gotta say, those early mornings are so nice. It's incredible how much more you get done just by waking up a few hours earlier. He certainly understands that.

After that, by about 2 p.m., I like to go on a run with Lauren so I get a little bit of fresh air outside since I'm mostly stuck in the office from five to two. After the run, I'll catch up on emails a bit again; I'll look at properties and projects that are going on, existing renovations, and the goal is to have this dropped-dead deadline by 5 p.m. of just hanging out with the kids.

Now, what I find astonishing here is that Kevin is able to produce all of this content entirely on his own. He doesn't have an assistant; he doesn't have an editor; he has no one helping him with content. He's doing everything himself. He's uploading two to five times every single day, and he's able to do all of that while finishing up by 5 p.m.

Now, keep in mind, it's still a 12-hour day if he's starting at 5 o'clock in the morning, but he is able to do more work in 12 hours than most people would be able to do in 24. I still don't know how he's able to do it, and most people I talk to on YouTube are just as astonished as I am. So whatever he's doing, it's working.

"When I was 18 months old, I moved from Germany with my family to Florida. They barely knew how to speak English, and what's crazy about that is I came from this household that ended up divorcing when I was six years old, constantly having no money."

See, first of all, it goes to show you that you don't need to start off with having money or coming from rich parents to do well. I had a similar upbringing; money was very tight, my parents divorced when I was five, and, if anything, it gave me a reason to say, I'm gonna save, I'm gonna work hard, and I'm gonna find a way to make it work.

In fact, it was also found that statistically 88% of all millionaires out there are self-made. So really, where you're starting off with doesn't matter as much as where you're going to be, going from where you are today.

Coming from that to meeting you, and both of us basically being at zero, having around six to eight thousand dollars each—by the way, these pictures of him and Lauren are amazing. Lauren looks exactly the same, and Kevin looks different—using the mentorships that are all around us and taking that and then just making our own reality happen has been really empowering.

And if anything, I can look back and say, wow, it kind of makes me want to share that story and say anybody can do this. If we were able to do it, but yeah, I totally agree with them that if you have the willpower, the dedication, the consistency, and the belief, you will find a way just to make it happen.

I know it sounds kind of hocus-pocusy to mention this, but when it comes to building wealth from the very beginning, a lot of it starts off with the right mindset. I've met a lot of people like this, and they all have the core belief that they could do it. With Kevin, I've seen it firsthand; he sees someone else doing something, he sees that it's possible, and then he goes and does it for himself.

But then he tries to go and one-up that other person by now having 22 rental properties in Southern California. It's wild, but the management and running of this day-to-day in and of itself has to be a full-time job for his wife, Lauren, on top of taking care of two kids.

So hats off to them for finding the time during the day to get all of this done. This just goes to show you that if they have the time to do all of these things with two kids, you have the time to do whatever you want to do.

Now, that was a really good time to buy; I started submitting offers in 2011, and now looking back in hindsight, that was the very bottom of the market. So then buying their first deal back then at $300,000 with only three and a half percent down has to be one of their best investments yet.

"We're about to close on our 20th property in Southern California, which will be a three-plex, three-unit apartment building that we're turning into a six-unit apartment building, which Lauren is really excited about managing."

"Oh, he said that so sarcastically; that went over everyone's heads. There's no way Lauren's excited about managing another three units."

Regarding our finances, I deal with most of the bills. We do keep a spend tracker between us, so anytime one of us goes to a store and spends money on something, we just use like an Apple Numbers spreadsheet that links between us.

All right, so here's my favorite part through the entire series, and that would be how much people spend. So first we got housing: $3,712, all in with the mortgage, property taxes, insurance, and HOA. Knowing Kevin, he's probably got a low three percent interest rate mortgage on it. A lot of that payment is probably going towards principal, and compared to how much money he's making, what he's spending on housing is pretty inexpensive.

But anyway, after that, we got insurance: $2,353 a month. That is a lot of money, and we get it; they have kids, they have a good health insurance policy, plus it includes dental, umbrella, and life insurance, which you could get in as little as five minutes along with your four free stocks by using the link down below in the description and depositing a hundred dollars on Weeble.

But still, $2,300 a month in insurance is, uh, that's a lot of money! But next, we got food: $2,100 a month, which includes grocery deliveries and an alcohol subscription. Now, I get it; they're a family of four, and they're probably paying a premium for high-quality food delivered to their door, so I'm not gonna bash it for anyone else; I would, but for them, realistically, their time is way more valuable than standing in line at a grocery store, especially with two kids.

So if they pay more for this, honestly, I think it's worth it. Then we got the kids' school: $1,357 a month. Why is being a kid so expensive? I feel like I'm either underestimating how much I cost as a kid or I was just really inexpensive at that age. For me, we had public school that had extended hours after work, so my parents could pick me up a little bit later.

I really enjoyed those frozen TV dinners while watching Nickelodeon, and that was it! But then we got entertainment: $1,200 per month; toys, video games, books, personal budget. I have a feeling this number is going to go up a lot once they can start traveling, but for now, it's a great way to save extra money.

Then we got here, loaned to Kevin's dad. I wish they put a little asterisk here to give me something to comment on at the bottom, like maybe he was buying first edition Pokémon cards! But yeah, they gave us nothing.

But anyway, then they got the household cost here: $1,121, which nothing really stands out too much on that. But then they got $400 a month on clothes, and I had no idea how they spend $400 a month on clothes. This is the only thing so far that I find somewhat surprising because I believe Kevin just wears the same rotation of suits every single day, and Lauren's not going out because she's at home with the kids all day.

So where's the $400 a month going, unless it's for the children? But even then, $400 a month on clothing for your children when they're not leaving the house is a lot of money. So far, I think that's my only complaint. And then after that, we got subscriptions, and when it comes to this, it's pretty much like you just said, "Hey, sign me up for everything!"

Oh, and then finally, we got gas: $20 a month. In fact, if they want to cut down on this even further, just use the Segway instead—easy done!

But no, seriously, at this point, I feel like budgeting and saving become somewhat irrelevant considering how much money he's making at this level. It's really more about maximizing your time and income, even if it means you're paying a bit of a premium. Buying back your time for convenience is money very well spent.

This couple prefers investing over keeping money in savings. Again, at this level of income with their spending, even if their account was at zero dollars today, by the next day they will have earned enough to pay the entire month's worth of expenses in 24 hours.

Oh, and then we got this one; this is good. They got $7.4 million in investments split across four brokerages. I really wish CNBC included a breakdown of his investments on here. I know Kevin did this on his channel, but he's got a serious amount of money in Tesla.

And I'll be honest with you; I can't tell if Kevin is crazy lucky or a genius, or maybe a bit of all three. But Kevin kept consistently investing in Tesla over the last few years, even when it crossed over a thousand dollars a share for the first time, and all of us thought he was just being reckless.

But hey, you know what? He's made a significant amount of money in the process, and a huge portion of this is all thanks to the almighty Elon Musk.

[Music] I remember this: Kevin even made a video about how he was able to use this loss to offset income in future years. It's an expensive lesson, though, but even Grant Cardone was telling him this is not a business you want to be in.

"Let me just tell you, man, you know, I want to be able to tell you. I want to be able to tell everybody, man, great idea. Yeah, I don't love the business that you want to go into, Kevin."

I bet you never realized this until now, but take a look back at what Grant Cardone was telling you back in 2018 when you were making $500,000 a year.

"I tell you what I'd like better; I'd rather see you do this. I'd rather see you turn your $500,000 career into a $5 million business."

And Kevin, you were able to turn that $500,000 career into a $5 million career, but you didn't do it in the way that you initially thought, which was building out a real estate team. Instead, you did it on YouTube.

"It was definitely an adjustment that we all had to work as a family to try and figure out the balance because Kevin's nature is very much take on as much as you can possibly take on and work, work, work."

Yeah, see, I totally get that. First of all, I have no idea how Kevin gets all the energy to do everything that he does. But also, when you're building up a channel like that, that relentless energy is required. You need to have that level of laser focus and attention if you want to get ahead and grow on the platform.

Just think about it! So I would say it's a very worthy sacrifice. He had the opportunity, he went for it, he didn't take it for granted, he gave it everything he had, and guess what? It worked out.

"The most I've ever made in a single month in real estate— that would be real estate commissions and investing in real estate—would be around $150,000 in just one month. But the most I've ever made in a month from YouTube has been a million and seventy thousand dollars."

I don't even know how to say that right. That goes to show you; YouTube can be a very serious business and career. I know there's always going to be people out there who hate on the situation and say, but he makes all of his money from YouTube. He makes more money talking about real estate than he does from real estate.

But the truth is, YouTube allows you to scale in such a massive way so quickly, in a way that you can't really do on your own. That's why I have followed a very similar path, and I gotta say, I love making YouTube videos and having a voice, and being able to discuss topics I enjoy talking about and that people enjoy hearing about.

Like telling you guys to smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Over the last 18 months now, our revenue has gone from just being real estate commissions to, well, breaking even or losing money on the construction business.

All right, wow. I'm pretty speechless here; I need to avoid swearing because that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw these numbers. It's amazing how much money he's making working from his garage and home studio.

We got $290,000 a month from Teachable, which means those are his courses that he's selling. He's got a real estate investing one; he's got a real estate agent one; he's got a YouTube one. I think he also has a personal finance one. I had no idea he was pulling in those kinds of numbers from Teachable.

Then of course, we got YouTube: $237,778 a month. That's about right; he's getting about 20 million views a month talking about stimulus, personal finance, and money-related topics, so he's got really good ad rates. Plus, he's posting like 500 times a day, so ad rates are about what I would expect.

Then of course, we got affiliates: $162,863 a month. Weeble, Deal Machine, which I have a feeling is probably life insurance, and then we got M1 Finance. But anyway, after that, we got Lauren's real estate salary: $20,883. And Kevin's real estate salary and commissions are $10,000.

Now, I don't know why, but when it comes to this, I feel like there's just got to be more because in this month of September he's probably made like $500,000 alone in profit in Tesla stock, wondering why they wouldn't include, let's say, his rental property income or mortgage equity in this because I have a feeling this number is probably higher than we're seeing right now.

"I don't always follow all the rules that I'm supposed to and sometimes that's not so good. There were a couple instances that came up, one particularly where there was a real estate syndicator named Grant Cardone."

Oh man, Kevin can't go more than a few minutes without talking about Grant Cardone. But yeah, I mean, I enjoyed watching all of those old videos that Kevin used to make before Coffeezilla. Kevin was really the one out there exposing everybody in the business niche, and he really did a lot of these iDubbbz-style hit pieces on these creators who he disagreed with. Some of that I feel like is just kind of in Kevin's nature, and he really likes to push the boundaries of what's possible and just ride the line of what's acceptable.

And yeah, even though he won, he still had to spend a hundred thousand dollars that was not necessary. But I guess now it makes for a good story! Since then, Kevin's really turned his content around and found a niche on YouTube that he's just really good at, which is news.

And I hope he sees this because for three years now I've been telling him to just focus on news content because he's really good at that. That's all he should do!

"I've learned it's really a good idea to have media insurance or insurances for whatever it is that your business is."

Now I agree with all of that; I have a similar insurance policy to him. But I believe the best insurance policy in the world is just be careful what you say and don't be stupid. But if you're careful and you respect others and you don't show up unannounced, I'm sure everything will be okay.

I do think with Kevin it's in his nature to always work, and he kind of gets like a high from making money. And so I respect that; that's something he will always want to do, and I think he always will do it. That's why Kevin and I are such good friends because we both enjoy working, investing, making money, and we love doing what we do.

I think it's really important to network like this as much as you can because being able to shoot ideas like this back and forth between each other is really powerful.

"We are at a dollar amount now that it makes sense to maybe take a step back a bit, and in the meantime, I guess I'll just keep playing Monopoly."

Now I love the ending, but I don't know; I feel like this isn't quite the point to step back. Maybe it's just me, but when I see Kevin spending the entire year to get to the point where he is today, now that he's built up this amazing foundation, it's the right points just to continue the momentum.

So if I were Kevin, I would say continue on at full speed but just figure out what's next. I think the news is perfect, but if there could be a complementary side business alongside this that maybe takes a little bit less of your time and that's easy to operate, that I think would be the winning combo.

But overall, I love the video; I'm super happy for Kevin to be a part of this, and I'm fully expecting him to react to me reacting to him because that is what Millennial Money is all about. It's all about the infinite monetization loop of reacting to other people reacting to you reacting to them and smashing the like button for the YouTube algorithm if you have not done that already.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. As always, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram; I post there pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it, feel free to add me there.

As for my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, I post there every single day. I'm not posting here, so if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. And lastly, like I mentioned, if you now want four free stocks, it's incredible. This is free money, guys! Free money down below in the description: deposit $100 on Weeble, you get four free stocks—it's probably worth at least 20 bucks.

So enjoy those stocks; let me know which ones you get. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!