How I Accidentally Made $17M when I was 28 Using “Leverage”

Summary

• I started with $1,036 at age 27 and two years later, I had over $17 million due to stumbling into one of the four ways fortunes are made.
• Money is a medium for transferring wealth, but it's not valuable in itself; wealth, on the other hand, comprises assets that earn money while you sleep.
• Shifting from doing the right things to owning the right things is essential for wealth building, like doctors who own practices instead of just practicing medicine.
• Historically, fortunes were made through labor as the primary form of leverage—though it's one of the hardest to manage due to its complexity when dealing with numerous employees.
• Capital, specifically using other people's money for investment, is a second traditional way to build wealth, which can offer infinite returns if managed wisely.
• Today, there are two additional permissionless forms of leverage: code and media. Code allows for a nearly cost-free expansion of product use, and media offers high margins by continually leveraging audience attention.
• I shifted my business model from a service-based venture to a media business, which significantly increased my margins and allowed me to turn income into wealth.
• Google and Facebook exemplify companies that leverage both code and media, demonstrating that employing multiple leverage forms can amplify returns.
• Creating content like blogs, YouTube videos, or podcasts can also build fortunes through media, with zero incremental cost upon distribution.
• In the present, it's easier to create wealth with fewer permissions required; if you're highly skilled in coding or capturing attention, you can build something valuable without external consent.
• I encourage looking into the four types of leverage for your business to potentially build a substantial fortune, as I've experienced the benefits firsthand.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest looking at your skills first. Are you good at coding or creating content that grabs attention? If yes, focus on code and media. These are two powerful ways to create wealth without asking anyone for permission.

Here's what you need to do:

• If you can write code, build a piece of software that solves a problem. Remember, adding more users won’t cost you extra, so try to make something that lots of people will want.
• If coding isn't your thing, focus on media. Start a blog, a YouTube channel, or a podcast. Share your knowledge or create entertaining content. It costs nothing to distribute this to more people once you've made it.

Now, for those of you who are not into code or media, there's still a path. Look at what assets you can build or acquire that make money while you sleep. Think about turning what you do into owning something. Like a doctor owning a practice, not just practicing medicine.

If you’re already running a business, ask yourself:

• Can it operate without trading your time for money?
• What can you license or create that has high margins and low incremental costs?

Finally, always keep an eye on leveraging other people's money and labor smartly. But remember, these need permission and can be harder to manage.

Do these things, and it’s possible to turn income into wealth. Just like I moved from a service-based business to a media business and saw my margins go through the roof, look for the model that fits you best and can scale without increasing costs. This approach helped me grow my wealth, and it could help you too.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"Poor people do the wrong things, rich people do the right things, wealthy people own the right things"

– Alex Hormozi

"Wealth is about assets that earn while you sleep"

– Alex Hormozi

"Labor is the hardest type of leverage to employ"

– Alex Hormozi

"If you are the best coder in the world, you can build something that no one else can build"

– Alex Hormozi

"Now is the best time to be alive out of any time"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

of my gyms and put all of my money into a new venture and lost all of it and so i had a thousand and thirty six dollars when i was 27 years old two years later i had over 17 million dollars in my bank account it was because i accidentally stumbled into one of the four ways that fortunes are made all right it's one of the key things that we have to understand and we're trying to break down today is one the difference between money and wealth two the four types of leverage that exist and then within those types of leverage permission and permissionless leverage and how you can harness those things in your business so that you can make them into things that can build fortunes so the first thing is understanding what is money right money is simply the way that we transfer wealth from one person to another all right that's all it is it just functions as a medium of transfer it's actually not in it of itself valuable it's valuable in so far as it allows us to acquire assets which gets us to the second column which is wealth this is what you want and that's why there's a difference between rich people and wealthy people wealth is about assets that earn while you sleep meaning that you don't have to trade any time to have these assets make you money and so one of the things that i think i got from taylor walsh was um poor people do the wrong things rich people do the right things wealthy people own the right things and so as you're transitioning through life you have to think about am i am i someone who's doing the right thing or am i somebody trying to own the right things and so uh for example lawyers doctors accountants they can never really make crazy money they can't they cannot get wealthy super wealthy unless they transition from being a practitioner or they're training time for dollars into owning an entire practice of lots of doctors working for them which means they then they have created an asset which then generates wealth while they sleep right it generates money while they sleep which is what makes it into wealth all right and so if you look over the last hundreds of years we're talking 500 000 plus years fortunes have been made in four ways in the beginning so this is then the first way was through labor all right and the reason labor is the first way of gaining leverage is because there was no other way of getting it that's why the kings and queens had hundreds and hundreds of servants that's how the pyramids were built right that's how rockefeller was able to build his oil across the united states right was through labor right and so because of that he didn't have to trade his own time for dollars he was able to buy other people's time right now labor is the hardest type of leverage to employ it'll impress your parents but it won't actually it's one of the hardest things to employ anybody who knows who has 50 100 500 plus employees understands that it's one of the hardest things to employ but it is one of the things one of the four ways of gaining leverage and one of the key tenets of these first two is that these are permission based leverage you need other people's permission you need to you need to appease others in order to use this type of leverage the second type of leverage which is also still permission based is capital all right that's money specifically other people's money and so just an example of what capital is is let's say i want to buy something um that doubles in value uh over five years all right and let's say i get somebody to give me a hundred percent of the money to buy this thing right and so after five years i have to repay the person back but that thing doubled in value right so let's say it was a hundred dollars when i bought it from someone else's money and then it's 200 after five years well i have to pay back the hundred dollars plus some interest but then everything else i get to keep and so that is a type of capital where if you think about how much my returns were they were basically infinite because i didn't put any money down right and that is why capital has been the second main way that fortunes were built this is where the the newer billionaires newer they're still old now billionaires were created this is the buffets this is the monger this is the carl icons of the world who made their wealth through financing and using other people's money as leverage both of these things you have to ask for permission people have to give you the money they have to you have to take that money under terms under which you're going to give it back right now the new way of creating wealth there are two of them and they are permission permissionless all right so here you don't need any permission in order to use these things and that is what the new fortunes are being made of the first is through code all right so this is all the big software companies that you see the tech giants that exist they use code for permissionless leverage because with code it costs zero dollars to have an additional person consume or get utility from what the code does right and so if you have a piece of software that's a crm adding a hundred users or adding a thousand users costs you no additional amount for that one more user all right and so that is why code is one of the things that's created fortunes in the present day now if you're like well alex i don't know how to write code well then let me tell you the fourth way which is the one that i accidentally stumbled in when i switched my business from a service-based business which was just selling other people's time to a media business which was number four which is media now if you think about the tycoons that exist out there zuckerberg he's media he sells eyeballs he sells impressions google sells impressions they sell media right bloomberg he used old school media so he was the news he was radio all that kind of stuff all of that was in his network and the beautiful thing about that is that when you have media you have a captured amount of eyeballs you can continually sell those eyeballs and as they grow you just continue to sell them and it costs no incremental amount and so the gross margin in this are basically 100 percent there's no added cost and so you've heard me talk about having good margins in a business these are the ways that you get the exceptional world class margins which is what builds fortunes right and so for me when i transitioned my company from doing a done-for-you service where i used to fly out as a sales team and fill up locations of brick and mortar facilities to licensing media i was able to sell at zero incremental cost because of that my margins went through the roof and that was what enabled me to acquire money which i was then able to transfer into wealth all right now if you're thinking right now like well there's some places like you know is google code or media the answer is yes it's both and so if you can employ multiple types of leverage then you juice the returns even more and so that's why all the super wealth that is being created a lot of times it's using two or three of these types of things they're taking other people's money to get other people's labor to write the code that then they sell as media once they acquire all of the eyeballs and that's the winner takes all games that are existing right now but right now if you're like well i don't know how to write code well that's okay i don't either and so that's where we take things like this youtube channel this is why joe joe rogan can sell his podcast for 100 million dollars you can sell ad space because he owns media and so right now this is where you can create blogs for no money you can create youtube videos for no money you can anything you can make you can make podcasts for no money all of these things you can do as media to distribute at zero incremental cost and that is how fortunes are built and over time as you can see it gets i want to say easier to build fortunes which is why now is the best time to be alive out of any time can you imagine a time where you there weren't just fun you couldn't just raise capital you couldn't just have accredited investors that you could call up these things didn't exist it was just the time of labor it was the time of pyramids right but as time has progressed the ways to build fortunes have increased and the level of permission that's required has decreased right if you are the best coder in the world you can build something that no one else can build if you are the absolute best at providing value at capturing attention then you can do this and you can create your fortune with no one's permission and that's the beauty of being alive today and so if you're looking about your own business and you're thinking about how how can i make my business more valuable try and tap into one of these four types of leverage because if you do that i can guarantee you will make more money and you'll have a chance at building one of these super fortunes and i was very fortunate to have stumbled into this fourth one and now i look for it deliberately so hope you found that valuable are as valuable as as it was for me when i started thinking about this stuff and i'll see in the next video