Building a Lasting Business Empire through Smart Choices

To thrive in entrepreneurship, focus on one business, resist lifestyle inflation, surround with high achievers, and gamify investing early on.

### Financial Success: 4 Key Lessons to Make and Keep Millions
* 💡 "The Tipping Point" in your entrepreneurial journey is when you start making money and face the **highest temptation and potential for disaster**.
* 💼 Stick to one business and dedicate **complete focus, time, and effort** to productize and automate it before starting another.
* 💸 Money burning a hole in your pocket can lead to **long-term financial burdens and risks**, so balance spending with **saving and investing**.
* 🏆 Stop congratulating yourself too early, avoid comparing yourself to "normal people, and instead benchmark your success against those you aspire to compete with.
* 💰 "The sooner you can make your money work for you and not the other way around, the **better off you'll be**."
* 🏰 "To stand a chance of elevating yourself to the next level in business, you have to think in terms of **Empires**."
* 🎯 "Invest early and gamify it by setting goals and challenges for yourself to see it as its own **reward beyond the returns**."

all right, so let's talk about mistakes because in full admission, my career has been littered with them. I've started the wrong businesses, I've hired the wrong people, I've pursued weird little passion projects, and gotten distracted at the wrong times. And for anyone who's been following for long enough, you've probably seen a lot of this unfold. I'm not perfect, I'm a human, and I'm always just learning as I go. But the biggest mistakes I've made personally, and really the ones that I see continuously crippling others, are the ones that come at a very specific spot of your entrepreneurial journey. I call it the Tipping Point, the moment when you just start making money and you find the tiniest bit of success. Because this is really when temptation is the highest and the potential for disaster as well. It's at this point that your ego is at its most inflated and your wallet feels its heaviest. I've seen way too many guys make it right to the Tipping Point but fail to ever pass this threshold and

then most people end up worse off than when they first started. So, if you want to chance at true longevity and the opportunity to make millions, I want you to watch this video to find out the four lessons that you need to know. The first one is quite simple: stick to one business. If you want to find someone who doesn't know what they're doing with their lives, go to Soho House. It's pretty much the unofficial home of people who suffer from shiny object syndrome. You know, the type of guy who always just has something new starting, and he's just catching up with other people for mysterious meetings. The sort of guy who always says, big big things coming. Now, every year there's new Temptation with hype Industries influencers blockchain Ai, and every year there's a whole host of people who think that their startup is going to make them multi-millionaires. Then there's the weird fetish that a lot of people have when they're starting out, which is to be seen as some sort of business magnet at the helm of five

different companies dominating every single sector. When the reality is that starting any business requires complete and total dedication. And if you've found any success in your life, you probably understand this. The only way to do anything right is to do it well. Pick one business and be as selective and narrow in that as possible. You really want to invest as much time as possible into productizing and automating your business. Set into place the most aggressively robust systems so that way you can either walk away from it for a profit or effectively do so and leave it in the background just generating cash for you. And it is only when you can literally leave your business running without a single input from you that you can even begin to think of starting another one. So to stand a chance of elevating yourself to the next level in business, you have to think in terms of Empires. These aren't started by Emperors, they evolve out of Kingdoms. Kings move horizontally, take other kingdoms, and then Ascend to Emperor status. You do not

want to be the Knight trying to rule an Empire. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you've been looking to start an online business and Kickstart your online high-income career, I want you to check out Digital Launchpad. It is the Netflix for making money online. I bring in the best educators in the world to teach the thing that they are most proficient at. So no matter what kind of personality you have or what sort of lifestyle you have, you can find an online business model that will succeed and win for you in the exact same way as all of the success stories that I've just been putting on screen. And all of this for only $37 a month. If you're not happy, you can cancel at any time. We literally have new programs released every single month this year inside of there, as well as amazing community, daily coaching calls, and much, much more. So if starting a high-income online business sounds interesting to you, check out Digital Launchpad in the first link in the description. Now moving on to our second point of discussion, there is nothing

more dangerous to an entrepreneur than money burning a hole in his pocket. Now before I share my advice on this point, let me say that I get it. At a certain point when you work hard and consistency pays off, you're going to be more than tempted to reward yourself and start to elevate your lifestyle. You're going to start looking at slightly bigger apartments and slightly nicer areas. You're going to want to eat out more often, to fly business class, and finance a Mercedes. And by the time you've made it far enough in your journey to warrant this, listen, it's human nature. You want to flex. You want to show off to all the friends who were pissed at you when you weren't drinking with them at the pub, and instead working on your online business. And you want to reassure your family that everything is working out just fine for you. So again, I want to say that I get it. But let me explain the three problems the lifestyle creep presents. The first is obvious. You've just landed yourself with a long list of

liabilities and financial burdens. And listen, I've heard a bunch of advice from people. Oh, elevate your lifestyle, blah blah blah, this, that, it'll force you to make more money. That's a good philosophy until it's not. And listen, I can tell you for a fact that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. And I know that you plan on making more money every single year, and you're confident that that will happen. And you know what, maybe it might. I can tell you it's happened for me in the 8 years that I've been an entrepreneur. But it is difficult, it is tough, and at a certain point, it can't keep going up. So just understand, the lifestyle creep can come back to bite you in the ass. Any financial advantage that you have accrued in the past 12 months will all be lost in as little time as it takes a watch dealer to hand you a credit card machine. But those liabilities and risks can and will come back to haunt you. We seem to have pretty

short-term memories when it comes to these things, but listen, I was there a couple years ago when crypto started to falter. It amazed me just how many people weren't just wiped out; they were in a worse position than they were to begin with, having lived an unsustainably lavish lifestyle and failed to invest or retain any of their profits. So I know I sound like a bit of a grandpa here, and you know money's not meant to be real and go spend all your money on a superar and all this [ __ ]. Listen, if you want to play that game, up to you. I'm just telling you what I did and what all of my like true multi-billion dollar friends did. And listen, they just kept building their cash reserves. They kept investing 'cause I can tell you right now, you know what's one thing that's nicer than superar? And by the way, this is coming from someone that has spent $3 million on cars in the last year. I like my cars. I've even gifted quite a few.

cars to loved ones, but you know what's nicer than cars? Peace of mind. You know what's nicer than a car? Knowing that your loved ones don't have mortgages, and that you have investments and a property portfolio, and that you know what? If, God forbid, something happens to you and you're unable to work, you're good, you're fine. So listen, I'm not saying be frugal, 'cause I think that's a very unattractive trait, and I think you also want to be in a growth mindset, but you look at anything in life, the person who is too offensive, they're usually the ones that get wiped out in this game of life. You need to know how to play offense and defense. Now, the next point of discussion is that you've congratulated yourself. Now, I know this might sound melodramatic or excessive, but this pat on the back mentality is a surefire way to kill your drive and your desire. Listen, you guys know I'm not too into the like motivational, raw raw, self-helpy-ness.

harming your cash flow, and at the beginning of your journey, this should be the altar that you die on. Pretty much everything you have should stay in the business or be invested back into it. Cash flow saves mediocre businesses and helps great ones thrive. You know, it's an ongoing joke in Silicon Valley that the official Tech bro car isn't a Tesla; it's a secondhand Toyota Corolla, a car that is almost painfully boring but is reliable and under the radar, and which you've let someone else take the depreciation hit on. Now, personally, I think it's a bigger flex to not even have a car at all. You know, earlier in my life when I was still in my teenage years, I was able to walk into dealerships and buy cash for supercars that people dreamed of. Really, get this through your head. I profited tens of millions of dollars before I ever bought my first car. The only thing more satisfying to me than buying a car was denying myself that pleasure and putting the money to

better use now in all friends probably going back. I would have gotten a car sooner. It's just I lived in London. There was no purpose for me to have a car. There was no reason to have a car. And you know, even to this day, my car in London is very under the radar. I don't want to have a flashy car in London. It draws way too much attention to yourself, and it's just headaches that you don't need to deal with in a city like that. Now, the one thing I will say though, is there is a time and place for spending money, and it's on anything that helps you or your business thrive, and more importantly, anything that can be expensed. Listen, if a nicer apartment with a gym within the building gives you back 40 minutes every day, well then splurge on it. If a new monitor is genuinely going to boost your productivity and make you excited to sit at your desk, buy it. This isn't just going to fulfill your need to spend.

going to pay dividends in your business. In my opinion, when you're first getting started in your first few years, you want to live like a peasant in your personal life and like a CEO in your professional one. And what I mean by that is, me as I was coming up before I bought supercars, I had personal assistants, I had full-time chefs, I had full-time personal trainers that would travel the world with me. I wanted to become a literal superum and make sure that my success wasn't just once, it was something that I was able to replicate every single year. So, all that to say that anything in your life that gives you or makes you feel like you have superhuman powers, whether that's a super expensive gym membership, whether that's getting a meal delivery service that's, you know, a little bit more on the expensive side, whether that's even having a chef come over to your house multiple times a week, whatever is in your price range if you're just getting started out and you're just

starting to make some money online. That could literally even be just having a cleaner come over to your house once a week and at least just help clean out the house. But hopefully you get the point that you want to deploy your capital in the correct way when you're first starting out. Now the next thing you should know before you embark on this journey of making millions is that you need to stop comparing yourself to normal people. Time to be very brutal here, listen to me carefully. You've not accomplished anything yet. You're at the very bottom of the pile and honestly most of your achievements are down to nothing but luck. And if that sounds harsh, I'm sorry, you need that wakeup call. And trust me, I know it's not a pleasant one to receive. When I was first starting out, I'd done nothing more complex than apply some basic principles and get a bit lucky. But damn, I felt like the [__] when I first started out. You hang out with old friends from school who hadn't even finished their exams yet.

you know, I felt like the man every single time I picked up the tab at the club or paid for a group meal. So as I went further in my journey, there was literally nothing more humbling than when I really started to hang out with top-tier entrepreneurs, guys who were light years ahead of me, who'd worked harder, were smarter, and had life lessons beyond my wildest dreams. And that was my true moment of reckoning. The funny thing is, though, that humbling was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. A long time ago, I stopped comparing myself to normal people, and you need to do the same. You need to start benchmarking your success and milestones against the people in life that you want to compete with. If you want to make as much money as a doctor, cool, no one's stopping you from doing that. But if you're looking to build a real business empire, you need to reassess your standards of success. In psychology, this is called a reference group - you compare yourself to.

others in a group and adopt their values. It's what advertisers rely on too. I mean, you don't have to binge-watch Mad Men to know the principle of keeping up with the Joneses. You're targeted based on your demographic to get you to spend the most amount of money you can afford, so that way you can impress your neighbors. The only way to escape this trap is to elevate your reference group. Don't take cheap satisfaction in having the nicest apartment in your terrible friendship group. Quite frankly, take it as a sign that you need to surround yourself and compare yourself to higher-level people. I'm not saying drop your day one, by the way, cherish those friendships. Not all of your friends need to be savages, and not all of your friends need to be multimillionaires; otherwise, you'll be broke. Most of my friends and most of the people I spend most of my time with, I am wealthier than, but they have areas of their life where they totally surpass me and where I can learn things from them.

it's just from a financial perspective. I don't compare myself to them. I compare myself to the people who are much further ahead of me. As I said, just for the record, I constantly apply this mindset to myself. The second I feel myself getting even slightly bigheaded, I make a point to elevate my social circle, and I genuinely enjoy the chance to be schooled by someone much smarter than me. You know, I really enjoy my quick 30-minute catch-up with some of my older friends. You know, the guys who are in their 40s and 50s that have 10, 20, 30, 50 times as much money as I have, and the little life lessons and things that I learned from them. I enjoy that far more than all the extravagant lifestyle, yacht parties, blah blah, all the stuff. All that crap is fun, but just surrounding yourself, just being in the presence of someone who's so much further ahead than you, it's a liberating experience. It just gives you so much context. Now the next

thing you should know is that you need to invest early and gamify theen out of it. Make it a fun game for yourself. Each year can you buy one property, or how quickly can you get your Investment Portfolio to 250k. Now it's time to take everything you've learned from this video aggressive. Focus on the need to save and not spend money unnecessarily, and benchmarking yourself against Real entrepreneurs, and then apply it to the final lesson. It's a cliche, but the sooner you can make your money work for you and not the other way around, the better off you'll be. And the only way to achieve this is through investing, and the only way to invest is to gamify the hell out of it. Let me explain. First, you need to decide a vehicle for your investment. When you're first starting out, this can be something as simple as an index fund or a Government Bond, but my recommendation to you is don't get tempted by anything that's popular or promises quick returns. I can promise you

this there is someone much more experienced than you, with way more money and influence, who is waiting to take yours off of you. Pick something easy that needs very minimal input from your side. Next, pick an investment schedule every month, challenge yourself to exceed this set ambitious goals, and make them the surrogate for any extravagant purchases that you would have made. Set yourself a challenge in 2 years: can you build a $250,000 property portfolio? Make investing your new and only personality trade. Take advantage of some of the tax-free schemes in your country, and every time you make an unexpected amount of money, put it away. Challenge yourself to see what you can go without, invest it, and if you adopt this mindset, you're going to start to see investment as its own reward beyond the returns. I mean ask any gambler, and they're going to tell you that the thrill isn't in winning or losing, it's the anticipation, and apply that same twisted mentality to your portfolio. So, ladies and gentlemen, that last final point, by the way, is probably

my biggest regret. I only started investing in late 2020, right before I was about to turn 21 years old. And if there's one thing I wish I could go back and have done, done it started investing when I really started making money at the age of 18. And I also want you guys to bear in mind, I'm not saying don't spend money. It's I'm very open and honest about the fact that there's a percentage of my income I force myself to spend, 'cause I'm like, listen, I'm only going to be young once. But the actions that I took when I was 18, 19, 20, 21, I lived an incredible life, but I also lived very much below my means. And those few years honestly set me up for the rest of my life. So these were four lessons that I just kind of felt obligated to tell you, because it's all fine and well making millions of dollars, but most of the time people are just going to piss it.

all away, but if you apply these four lessons, I know for a fact that when you make your millions, not only are you going to keep it, but you're going to grow it, and you're going to turn it into a real empire, and with that, as always, I'm watching from afar, and I'm rooting for you.

4 Things You Should Know Before Making $$ Millions

My name is Iman Gadzhi. I started this channel in 2015: before I’d found any success - so scroll back to see me trying to be a personal trainer, the harsh realities of dropping out of high school, building one of the leading online advertising agencies, all the way through to me making $30m by the age of 23: I don’t hide anything.


Iman Gadzhi

Entrepreneurship is a learning process filled with mistakes and failures.

The "Tipping Point" of initial success can be a critical moment of temptation and potential disaster for entrepreneurs.

It is crucial to stick to one business, dedicate time to its growth, and establish robust systems before considering starting another one.

Digital Launchpad offers a variety of online business models and education for those looking to succeed in the entrepreneurial world.

The Pitfalls of Lifestyle Creep for Entrepreneurs

Lifestyle creep can lead to a heavy financial burden and liabilities, potentially putting entrepreneurs at risk.

The assumption that increasing income will always cover the elevated lifestyle is risky, as financial success is not guaranteed in the volatile world of entrepreneurship.

Instead of extravagant spending, building cash reserves and making wise investments is crucial for long-term financial stability.

Prioritizing Financial Security and Smart Investments

It's more important to prioritize financial security and investments over buying luxury items like cars.

Cash flow is crucial for the success of a business and should be reinvested into it.

Having a flashy car may not be necessary, especially in a city like London, where it can attract unwanted attention.

Instead, it's essential to spend money on things that contribute to personal and business growth, and that can be expensed for the business.

Capital Deployment and Mindset Shift for Early Entrepreneurs

It's important for new entrepreneurs to invest their capital wisely, prioritizing things that make them feel empowered.

It's crucial to stop comparing oneself to others and instead benchmark success against those who are where you want to be.

Shifting the mindset to compete with a higher reference group is essential for building a successful business empire.

The Importance of Elevating Your Reference Group

It's common for people to be influenced by and compare themselves to their social circle, which advertisers use to their advantage.

The key to escaping this trap is to surround yourself with people who are more successful, rather than seeking validation from those in a lower financial position.

The focus should be on learning from those who are more accomplished and using their success as motivation, while also approaching investment as a gamified strategy to make money work for you.

Start investing early and consistently, aiming to build a $250,000 property portfolio in 2 years.

Take advantage of tax-free investment schemes and prioritize saving and investing over extravagant spending.

By adopting a mindset of delayed gratification and focusing on investment as a reward in itself, it's possible to build and grow wealth for the long term.