$40M CEO: If I Wanted to Become a Millionaire in 2026, I’d Do This

It took me three failed businesses and six years to make my first million. But if I lost everything tomorrow, I'd use the same six-step framework that took me from broke and inexperienced to over $40 million in revenue. This is the exact roadmap I use to grow my eight-figure-a-year business today. And the best part is you don't need money or experience to use it. Step one is the most important if you don't wanna waste your time like I did. When I first got started in business, I spent six years jumping from this business model The first business I created was an analytics app. Although it was nice to have, it didn't really solve a problem that somebody would pay for it. That's how you gauge if this is an actual problem in the world that people want. Come push the shove, is someone gonna give you their credit card? And if they don't, that is the telltale sign that you are choosing the wrong opportunity. The second business I started when I was in college was a tech platform. And this one had a bigger problem. It was actually a Craigslist for colleges. And this was before Facebook Marketplace was even a thing. And so I was like, okay, what if there was a dedicated app to this? The third business I started was a clothing brand. And this was back when Supreme and all of these streetwear companies were really starting to come up. I was kind of in that whole area of hype. So I chose the right opportunity because the market and demand were growing. But the issue here was once the hype started to die down, me and my co-founder realized we weren't that passionate about this market. The fourth business, that was one where I generated over $40 million in revenue. And the reason why was I didn't realize all of these little mistakes from my other businesses ended up building the framework that I have today in terms of how I launch new businesses successfully. There are four key criteria you need to make sure before you start any new business. And I call it the plan framework. P stands for problem. Are you solving a key problem that someone is willing to take out their credit card and pay you? Does this solve a real need? My failed businesses basically didn't do this. And the fourth one that did, the reason why I was able to solve a real problem was because I was solving a problem for myself. I was looking for good trading education and I spot so many different programs and there weren't actually any good ones. And that was when I realized, okay, I'm the one willing to pay for this and there's still nothing out there in the market that I'm looking for. And I know other people feel the same way. So if I can just create the same product that I understand this pain point so well, I know someone's gonna take out their credit card and pay for it. The second part, L stands for landscape. Are you in a growing opportunity? Is this something that's new? It's gonna be around for the next five, 10 years and it's growing. For example, I wouldn't start a newspaper business today. Most people read their news online nowadays and it's safe to say that that's a declining industry. The third is A, alignment. Can you do this for the next five to 10 years and not get bored? That was why I shut down that third business. One year into it, me and my co-founder were like, I don't even know if we can do this for another couple of years. It was so fun the first six, nine months of the business and then it became a drag because we weren't actually passionate about it. We were passionate about the idea of starting something new but when that honeymoon phase in your startup goes away, you're gonna know if you're actually passionate. And if you're not and you don't truly care about solving this problem, then you need to find a new opportunity. And the fourth N stands for natural advantages. Do you have any special skillsets in this specific niche that allow you to be successful? This isn't an end-all be-all requirement but I can tell you this from looking at tons of other entrepreneurs and even myself, if you have it, this is like the icing on the cake. It's a cherry on top because it's just gonna make your likelihood of succeeding that much more. For me, because I was a trader, because I had trading experience, I knew exactly what I was looking for and I knew what the market needed. Now, the next step is something I wish someone told me years ago because it would have saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of pain. When you start a business or even if you have an existing business right now, you want to do what I call a competitor landscape report. And basically, you wanna look at your top three to five competitors in this space and see what they're all doing. What are they all charging from their pricing? What does their brand look and feel like? Who's their target demographic? Because when you do an in-depth analysis of this, this is where you can see the holes in the market. But you don't know that until you do a detailed report. And so when I did this and I put together a top three competitors, there are charging between $2,000 to $3,000. I also was looking at how they frame their product. Their product framing was extremely corporate. Their brand was extremely corporate. One program had like a 3,000 video library. And so by looking at all of these things, I was like, okay, clearly there's a need in this market. And I know this myself because I'm the target demographic. And when I look at these things, I'm like, this doesn't attract me as a buyer. I wanted to charge a different pricing. If everybody was in this $2,000 to $3,000 price point, I knew if I charge five to $6,000, I could be the premium product in this space. I'm gonna give you four easy ways that you can differentiate your business so that you can separate from your competition. The first is your brand and design. If everybody in your market has a specific style or brand or design, you wanna zig when everybody zags. The second way is how do you position your marketing angle? Think about how you can differentiate what your new angle is in terms of talking to your customer. And it's not just the positioning of your marketing. Even if you did the same thing as somebody else, but you chose a completely brand new marketing angle, you're still going to win. It's gonna feel like you have no competitors. So let's say, for example, all of your competitors, they have to do organic. They have to make YouTube videos in order to sell the product. But if you know how to sell your product on paid advertising, guess what? You're gonna feel like a one-of-one business in that area. It could be different marketing channels. Let's say all of your competitors are marketing on YouTube and you go market on TikTok. You're gonna feel like you have no competitors because you're marketing in a way that other people are not doing. The third way is product focus. Think about Google and Yahoo. Yahoo used to be the largest search engine. But here's the thing. Yahoo had a search engine at the top and they had all of their news articles right below it. So they didn't focus on one thing or the other. They had search, they had news. And Google was like, why don't we just focus on the search engine part? Why don't we just bet on this one specific product feature? And look at Google now and look at Yahoo today. Huge difference. And the fourth way is pricing dynamics. You wanna look at what your competitors are charging and where the opportunity is in the market. If everybody's charging a very cheap price, think about how you can charge a premium price and what you need to do on the product side to be able to do that. Same with your branding, same with your marketing. And vice versa. In order to build a successful business, you have to understand where the opportunities are in the market. When you get this right, the price objections disappear because you come off as the category of one. Step three is lead generation. Most people don't know how to bring clients consistently. So they're always gonna be stressed out thinking about when the next client's gonna come in. In the early days, most likely, your lead generation is gonna be manual. Testing out where your clients even hang out, where you're gonna find them, how you're even gonna get in front of them. It's very, very manual because you're still figuring out the code. For me, at first, I was literally joining local trading groups in San Jose, California, going and giving a free session on the strategy I was using and then obviously pitching them at the end. And to be honest, that barely worked. But the next thing I tried was I started running local Facebook ads in San Jose, California. Once I got my foot off the ground, I kinda knew a little bit what I was doing. I basically started running ads in San Jose locally to a free trading seminar I was having on Saturdays and Sundays where I would go, I would talk about what program we have, what we have to offer, why we're different. So after that, what can I do next for lead generation once I hit this plateau? And that was when I realized I could run Facebook ads across the whole US, not just in San Jose. But in order for me to do that, I needed to build an online education platform now, not just an in-person trading class. And I just spent three to six months building out this whole online education trading platform and I used the same skillset I learned from running Facebook ads locally, except now I targeted all of the US. But you see how it takes time to iterate and find and improve your lead generation every little time so that you get to a point where it's consistent and predictable. So when you're first getting started, you have to just pick one way of advertising and stick with it so that you can get good enough to figure out what's next. And there's four different ways you can advertise and get leads. It's warm outbound, cold outbound, organic content, or paid advertising. This is where you're paying the platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok to get in front of people on their platform. And the thing with lead generation is you have to understand your unit economics. How much does it cost for you to acquire a customer? This is probably one of the most important metrics in your business. So for me, when I ran local Facebook ads, I knew how much it costed to get somebody to come to a free seminar and I knew how much it costed to get somebody to buy our program. Same exact thing now. Now we run paid advertising across Facebook, YouTube, you name it. I know exactly how much it costs us as a business for every customer we get. But without mastering sales, you're gonna waste all your leads and that's why sales is the next step. I think I did the first thousand sales calls in my business, but that was one of the most valuable experiences in my business career because I made a ton of mistakes. I lost many deals in that process. But going through that trial and error helped in many ways. It helped with refining the branding and messaging and opportunity and knowing how to brand it from a premium site. I spoke to potential customers all the time. So because of that, I knew what needed to improve on the product, what people were looking for. You have to talk to your customers a lot in the early days and sales is the best vehicle to do that. And in fact, when my business first launched, it was only a $1,500 product and I still smoked the people, right? So it's not a hard and fast rule that, oh, it needs to be above 3,000 for me to talk because my first few classes, the program itself was only 1,500 and I raised 2,500 and I still was doing the calls myself. I realized you have to get the prospect to buy into three levels of trust before they take out their credit card and pay you. The first is, do they trust you as a person? If they're talking to a salesperson, it's just a human to human interaction. They could love your product and absolutely need it, but if they had a bad interaction with you, they're not gonna buy. The second is, do they trust your company as a brand? If your brand has bad reviews, even if you have an amazing product, guess what? They're not gonna buy from your brand and this is why when you see these big brands, when they go through certain phases where, I don't know, they do a weird marketing campaign, like it does tarnish their brand in the short term and people just stop buying, even though they want your product. They just stop buying in the short term until you fix your brand. And the third part is, do they trust your product? You can have an amazing brand, you could be an amazing salesperson, but if they look at your product and it's horrible reviews on Amazon or whatever it may be, they just won't buy it. You need those three levels of trust in order for someone to buy it and you can go in with the sales process and understand that, uncover any objections or concerns, you're gonna be able to sell anybody on repeat. Step five is the 80-20 in building million dollar businesses. It's nailing product market fit. And in the early days of your business as a founder, you only need to be doing two things, making your product known, aka sales and marketing, and the second thing is improving your product and talking to your customers. If you only do those two things and you narrow down business into a science, that's how you go from zero to seven figures a year, doing those two things. And this should take up 80% of your time as you scale this from zero to six to seven figures. Now, I say 80% because you're always gonna have random stuff that falls in, but that should really only take 20% of your time. And you'll know when you truly hit product market fit when you run surveys to your customer and you can tell based on their customer happiness score. You'll know if customers don't churn anymore and they retain inside of your product. And you'll also know when customers refer other people to your product. And if all three of these things happen, you know you truly hit product market fit. And you can only start taking time away from product and focusing more on sales and marketing once you get to a point where those three criteria are hit on product market fit. Because then after you do that, you build the detailed processes and SOPs on how to fulfill this product. Let's say you have a service business. And then that's when you can hire someone, train them, make sure they can deliver the product to the same level of quality you were. And then that's when you can start spending more time on bringing in more leads and sales to grow your business. Which brings me to step number six, hiring your first or more employees. Most entrepreneurs when they start have no idea how to hire outside talent. So what do we do? We hire friends and family or somebody in our network. The very first person I hired was actually my sister. And it took me a long time to convince her to quit her job. And eventually I was able to do it. And it was great. Although I threw her into roles looking back now in hindsight that I should have never thrown her in. And it was because I didn't understand how to truly hire and manage any sort of employees, whoever it may be. Everybody has a specific skill set. They can't just do everything that you do. And some people are better at some things than other. You wanna focus them on their strengths. But networking was a key part in hiring a lot of the people in the early days. First is hiring people who care. Second is you wanna hire people in the early days who are willing to get their hands dirty, who can wear multiple hats. Because there's no third defined role when your business is under 10 employees. You need people who are willing to be able to do anything and whatever is needed because there's gonna be a million fires and a million things to do. Third, and I wish I did this sooner, is you want to have trial periods when you hire someone. By working with someone for just 30 days, 45 days, you learn a lot and see if this person is actually the right person for your business. And so that's actually what I do a lot nowadays is I work and I sign people on just for a 30 or 45 day period. And by the end of that, I'm gonna be like, okay, I want this person on my team or you're gonna be like, wow, that person, thank God I don't have to hire them full time because they did not do a good job. And then finally, eventually as your business scales to six and seven figures a year and you have to hire your first executive or senior leader hire, that's when you actually have to hire a recruiting firm or recruiting agency to help you find the right person. And especially for these senior hires, if someone's actually really good, they're not looking for a role. And this is where having that network of other founders is very important because they can tell you where they're finding their best hires from. This is why hiring that recruiting agency is good because a recruiting agency is gonna be doing a lot of LinkedIn outbound, unless you could obviously do that yourself, but at this point in the business, you probably don't have time and it's more worth your time to just hire an outsourced recruiting agency. So whatever you do, do not settle. That's my best piece of advice when it comes to hiring the right talent, especially in the early days. Because if you think about it, the first five to 10 people you hire, this is going to be the foundation of your business. If you scale a business on shaky foundation, everything is gonna crumble as you scale. Now you know the six steps to building a seven figure plus a year business, but without the right mindset, none of this works. That's why I made a video on the mental frameworks I learned from trading that directly applied to business. You can go watch it here.