5 Lessons I Learned From $0 to $6,000,000

Hey, this is James Felton and a common question that I get is, hey, where did you get your money to start investing? Okay, so I'm going to tell a little bit about my story. Some people don't know this before I got into YouTube and crypto and this world. I actually ran a software business that I ended up selling in 2020 for seven figures. So what I wanted to call this video, the title of this video is five lessons that I learned from turning zero dollars into six million dollars. Okay, that's the title, but I want to take you all the way back to my childhood. Just talk a little bit about what I've learned in my short 35 years of life. So as a kid, I grew up in a kind of middle-class family. We had six kids. So I think we actually my dad made a decent amount of money. But since we had so many kids, it kind of felt like we were poor and the first thing I really remember thinking about money was we were at Chuck E. Cheese. It's the arcade place. If you aren't familiar and I remember we would ration out the tokens. So we had six kids. My dad would buy 60 tokens and give us 10 apiece and then we would ration those like we would say, okay, I can play 10 games. This is back when games were a token apiece instead of now, they're like four tokens apiece another story for another day, but I would be looking around. Okay, which 10 games do I want to play during this and I remember thinking this is probably a kindergarten or first grade. I remember thinking if I could have unlimited Chuck E. Cheese tokens, that's what would make me happy in life. That's the secret to happiness is unlimited Chuck E. Cheese tokens. So remember even from a really young age. Hey, I want to get rich and make a lot of money at the time it was so I could get a lot of Chuck E. Cheese tokens over time. It developed into other wants and desires, but I remember from a very young age. That was a really driving force from for me and I remember growing up. I grew up in a you know, typically Evangelical Church here in the States growing up. I remember a lot of people telling me hey money doesn't make you happy. I remember Chapel. I went to a Christian school for high school. I homeschooled went to high school to Christian school and I remember the same thing Chapel speakers would come in and they would say money doesn't make you happy. But one thing I noticed about all these people who kept telling me is they weren't very rich. And so what I thought as a high schooler junior higher is I thought you're just saying that because you didn't make enough money. You're using it as a coping mechanism. You couldn't make money. So now you're coping. Oh money doesn't actually make you happy. So I believe that I thought hey, I'm going to go make a lot of money and I'm going to prove these people wrong. So as a young kid, I was huge nerd. Okay, I loved computers more than about anything as a second grade. I remember my parents taking me on a camping trip and I brought along Pearl in a nutshell and PHP for dummies and my parents were like, hey, why are you are you bringing these types of books to camping trip? That's the type of kid that I was I ended up going to school for computer engineering and I absolutely hated school. I drove me just crazy that I did all the work. They told me what to do and then I had to pay them. I thought this is so stupid. I like jobs way better. So I got a call from a company my senior year of college. So I've actually already had put in three full years is beginning of my senior year. I was married and already had a daughter and they called me and said hey, how much would we have to pay you for you to drop out of school and come work for us and I was rejoicing because I hated school even though I was only a year from being done. I thought there's no way that I want to keep doing this. I think this was 2009. I did I dropped out of school went to work for this company was making really good money out of college literally out of college and a lot of people told me during that time in my life that hey, you're going to regret not getting your degree. What's important in life is finish school get your degree. That's what I was told even after I got this good job. And even after I started my own business, I still had people telling me you're going to regret not getting that degree and who knows I might be I've been proven wrong on a lot of things over 13 years later. I don't regret that decision at all. And that's actually the first lesson that I want to get across to people is you do not need formal education to make money. It's not necessary. I understand. There's some fields like obviously you can't go be a doctor without formal education and that's good. Okay, I don't think you should get your medical degree from YouTube, but don't think that your goals that it's education that's holding you back from most of those at least formal education. We have the internet we have access to the complete library of the knowledge of the history of the world at our fingertips and we spend most of our time playing Candy Crush or whatever it is that people play these days. That's lesson. Number one is you don't need formal education to make money. So I ended up working for several different computer companies and you play the game or this company offers you money. So then you go over there. Then this other company offers you more money. I didn't have a lot of loyalty or anything like that was kind of just wanted to take care of my family and wanted to be rich and I did I wanted to buy the things that you buy in America and this was interesting because at the same time I was also a part-time pastor. So I was teaching the college group at our church. So I kind of had a lot of Christians. This happens to where you have your two lives, right? Like I'm living one life saying money doesn't matter Jesus is everything and then on the other hand in my heart. I want to be rich and I'm doing everything I can to make as much money as I can as a young man. Sometimes we cover it up by I'm providing for my family, but you don't need to provide your family with a Tesla, right? That's not necessary. So through this time as a college pastor, we actually ran into a problem with our students where we needed to let people know where we were going to eat after like night church and we were having a really hard time. How do you get this message out to everyone? And so I had this idea as a computer engineer that I would build some software that sends out mass text messages. And so I built this for my church and then I had probably 80 other churches reach out to me saying, hey, we need this for our church as well. And eventually I decided, hey, this should be a business. So I started my business called mobile text alerts and it was doing very well. And that leads me to my second lesson that I've learned in my journey from 0 to 6 million dollars was solving problems is what creates value. That's how you make money is you solve other people's problems and sometimes the best problems that you can solve are ones that you yourself have on marketing. We talk about you have your target customer, you know, you avatar that you build of customers. If you are the target customer, you can answer all the questions about the software perfectly, you know exactly how people want to use it. You know exactly what problems they have what issues they're going to run into. I found that very true in my business for about the next seven or eight years. I grew that business. We ended up with 12 employees and over 20,000 customers. We got out of just churches and steak and shake got in touch Chick-fil-a, Yamaha. We had all these big companies reaching out to us for text alerts. One thing I say is that's my contribution to the world is all the spam text messages you get. I helped make that possible. So you're welcome. I do what I can but over this time money was pouring in I this was my dream. I bought my dream car bought my Tesla Model S. I built my dream house. But what I found was that having more money didn't feel any better. I felt empty a little bit. There was something lacking in my heart and I thought oh building my dream house is what's going to fulfill what's going on in my heart. I kind of aimed my whole life at building my dream house. That was the goal of my life and then I hit it when I was 30 years old and it was kind of a crisis point. It did feel really good. I remember sitting in my living room when we first built our house and I remember looking around and saying wow, I've done it. It felt good. There was a sense of satisfaction there and it lasted all of about two weeks. Then all of a sudden you start thinking. Oh, wow. Now I need more. What else is there? This is gone. Now. It's been two weeks two weeks in this new house. I need something else. So then you start looking into oh, could I buy a boat? Could I buy a vacation home? What else could I buy to maybe something else is the key to being filled. It's unfortunate as a college pastor that I didn't realize Ecclesiastes talks about this. Solomon and if you guys don't know this story from your Sunday school days, but Solomon was a king of Israel and God asked him. Hey, you can have any one wish that you want and a lot of people would ask for wealth or whatever. He says he wants wisdom and God's like that's a really good request gives him wisdom and he writes Ecclesiastes and one of the things he writes is that pursuing riches is like chasing the wind and I definitely found that true in my heart. It's like you're after it but then as soon as you get it, there's not really anything there. So that's lesson three that I've learned in this journey from zero up to 6 million is money does not make you happy. No amount of money will make you happy. That's not really what your heart is after. No matter how much you think it is that is not what your heart is after and I know some of you especially if you're young some of the older people are going to say amen. That's definitely true. Some of the younger especially young men really want to be rich and some of you might say hey, you're full of it. That's not true, but I'm telling you that's a lesson. I've learned money does not make you happy. And again, I wish I could have just learned that as a pastor just reading the Bible, but a lot of times Christians have a habit of saying one thing and living another way and that's where I was at contentment is a choice so I can tell you with confidence if you're not content with what you have now, you won't be content if you make more and again, I'm not against trying to make more money. Obviously, that's what my channel is kind of based around but well, we'll talk more about this. I can tell you money won't make you more happy or content than you are now. In fact, if anything it will make you more stressed having more money. Have you ever heard the saying more money more problems? Okay, that's not a just made up saying I was made up by people who have more money and they realize wow, my life is way more complex now that I have money than before. So I started to learn some of these lessons and my business was stressing me out to the point that in 2020. I had an offer for my business a seven-figure offer to buy my business and I finally said, you know what I would like to get that stress out of my life. I'll go ahead and take that offer. So now this is 2020 and now I have a big chunk of money, but really nothing to do pay and I you know, we dream of retirement. I don't know if young men we dream of retirement and we think wow, I'm going to watch so many movies. I'm going to play so many video games. I'm going to travel the world. I retired at age 32. I remember the first day I did. I watched some Netflix and I was like, wow, this is kind of nice up until about maybe noon. I woke up at my normal time 7 or 6 or whatever about noon. I was bored. I was like, oh my goodness. What have I done? I have nothing to do. What is my life going to be about now? So I started investing like I got to find something to do. I got into the stock market. I got into real estate. I got into Venture Capital. I got into angel investing really just trying out all the different asset classes and just seeing what do I like? What do I not like but eventually I found my way into crypto and what I loved about crypto was the absolutely crazy returns. I started in strong black believe it or not in the bull market and I was making just boatloads of money six seven hundred dollars a day just off strong my strong notes and I love the returns. I loved how easy it was to get in and I love that it was open to everyone. So again, I came from the Venture Capital world or the real estate world where a lot of the best deals are reserved for accredited investors, which means you have a net worth of over a million or qualified purchasers, which means you have a net worth of over 5 million investable assets. I would have in Venture Capital. I would have these 20% APR highly collateralized loans like pretty safe 20% returns like these are amazing, but they're only open to people that are rich already. It drove me crazy. I hated it. I wanted to get my friends and family into this stuff, but they couldn't so when I found crypto and I saw hey, anyone can get into crypto. It's amazing and once I got into crypto, it's been hard for me to look back into the other asset classes because it's just such a crazy interesting fun space with potentially high returns. We've seen the bear market is the bear market has kind of dampened down my enthusiasm a little bit, but still a great place, but I had to figure out. Okay. What am I going to do with my money? I'd found that just buying things didn't make you happier again. I bought the last purchase. I made where I was like it was I bought a hot tub, which this is like the epitome of the American dream, right? Build your own house. You buy a hot tub, but the hot tub and had it maintenance. It would break down. We would rarely use it once you get used to it. And I realized man. I don't want to just keep buying more things. I feel the more I buy the less freedom I have. I'm stuck to this stuff. So what do you do with all this money that you're making and that's when I found the power of giving and this was another lesson that I wish I could have just read the Bible and learn this if I just believe the Bible, but I was stubborn. I had to experience it for myself, but I had always tried to be generous growing up. So I always had given to charities and things like that, but this was the first time in my life where God had moved me to give radically what a lot of Christians do what I used to do was you'd budget all your expenses. You take your income. You kind of budget everything. Make sure it all worked out and then okay, there's a little bit leftover. I'll give my 10 tithing is what we call it in Christianity. But when you look at the Bible, is that how it says to give Jesus was in the temple watching people give money in the temple and he noticed all these wealthy people coming in and they would put in their money into the temple, but then there was a widow who came in and she gave just two pennies was all that she put in there and a lot of people would look at that and say, okay. Wow, she didn't really help. She didn't help very much. She just gave two pennies, but Jesus says that widow gave more than all the others. They all gave out of their excess, but she gave everything she had to live on. So instead of relying on her money, she said, you know what? I'll give my money to the Lord and let him take care of me. And I've really tried to live by that since the Lord taught me that just a couple years ago. In fact, I keep this. It's two actual mites from that time. That's what they call the coins the widow's mites, but I try to keep these on my desk just to remind me. Hey, don't just give when it's convenient. Don't just give you know when it makes fiscal sense, but we are to give radically. I were to rely on the Lord to take care of us. So I started down this journey where if somebody needed something I wouldn't first check my finances to see. Hey, can I afford that? I would just hey, here you go. If somebody needed a place to stay, I wouldn't do some. Okay. Is this wise to let them stay with it? I would just say, hey, you need a place to stay. Come stay with us. You need something. I'm going to give it to you and the Lord really blessed this like money just kept coming in and then I would just find places to use it. We were able to build a well for an orphanage in Pakistan. We were able to help out of orphanage in Cameroon James 127 says pure and undefiled religion is this to give to widows and orphans in their distress. And so I've always been had my eyes open for widows and orphans. Who can I help? And what I found through this is that the words of Jesus are true. Acts 20 verse 35 Jesus says it makes you happier to give than to receive and again that might sound cliche and for a lot of people they acknowledge. Yeah, that's true. It makes you happier to give them to receive but a lot of people don't believe that's true in their heart if they have the choice between hey, it could you receive a million dollars or give a million dollars nine out of ten people would sad rather receive the million dollars so that I can go use it. However, I want but that's my lesson number four in my journey from zero dollars to six million dollars is it will make you happier to give to other people than to make money for yourself. God's always blessed that for me. He's always taking care of me month after month. You might look at my monthly numbers and think wow, he probably never stressed out about finances, but actually I am a lot just different expenses and different people. I'm trying to take care of in different ways. It's something that I'm working and praying through. I don't trust God completely the way that I should sometimes that anxiety pops up of hey, am I going to make it this month? Look at the look at these numbers. They're way down the crypto markets way down the stock markets way down. Am I going to make it but the Lord has never let me down yet and I'm confident that he'll be faithful going forward. There's been temptation through the bear market to cut back on giving and hey make make sure I'm okay. Make sure I have a stockpile waiting for me, but I've kind of just stayed at it. I've kind of just stayed at it and trusted the Lord to provide him again. He's been faithful every time the Lord will be faithful with as much as you trust him with is what I found. There's a part of me that wishes I could just get another 10 million dollars or something like that and it would just completely take away all financial stress for the rest of my life, but I know that's not the reality of how it would work, but I know that God's teaching me to rely on him and that's what I want to do with my channel. I want to help people who don't like their job get out of their job and replace it with passive income. I want people to have more financial freedom so that they have money that they can go help people with but what I really want it's not really a secret. You might call it a secret mission. But what I really want is I want to help young men in particular young men in particular have these huge desires to get rich and I want to help young men work through that. I want that to help them deal with love of money and get their focus on what's actually important. Jesus has a parable. This is from Luke chapter 12 if you want to go read it, but it's about a wealthy man who makes a lot of money. He fills up a barn that was wealth in those days. Obviously now it's not that but we'll say he bought a bunch of cars then he's like, well, what do I do with my money now? And he said I'll build bigger Barnes. So he did that and then he says in Luke 12, he says soul. I've laid up goods for many years. Now, I'll take my ease and rest and God tells him you fool. Don't you know that today your soul is required of you and I don't want anyone in my audience to end up that way if you spend all this time and effort and energy building these this huge a massive amount of wealth and then you die and it was all for nothing that would I feel like that would be a waste that be a waste of you watching my channel and it'd be a waste of what you're doing with your life and see I insert here the comments when we watch your channel. We don't have to worry about getting rid. Yeah, so funny, but that is really what I want for my viewers. So I'm going to call that my last lesson. We talked about my fifth and final lesson. We talked about long-term investing, right? We always tell we try to teach our kids kids are very short-minded like they're they want instant gratification and as we get older we mature where we think don't just look 10 seconds ahead start looking a year ahead start looking 10 years ahead, but what really wise investing is think about how what you're doing today is going to affect 10,000 years. You're going to be dead a lot longer than you're going to be alive. So I just want people to be thinking about how is what you're doing now going to affect Eternity. So that's my fifth and final lesson. If you want to invest don't only invest for the short-term don't only invest for the 10-year don't only invest for the 20-year invest for the 10,000 year. That's my fifth and final lesson. So to recap number one, you don't need formal education to make money number two solving other people's problems is what generates money number three money by itself will never make you happy number four. It will make you happier to give your money to other people than to make the money and the fifth and final lesson if you really want to invest for Eternity invest for 10,000 years. That's the wisest move that you can make so I hope this is helpful for you again. I know this isn't going to resonate with everyone but if you appreciate this, please hit like and comment down below if you disagree, you know, maybe you're an atheist and you think I'm full of it. Let me know an atheist perspective on what I said here today. I'd love to hear you know, if you're a Muslim, you're not coming at it from Jesus is God you're coming at it from a different religion. Let me know kind of your thoughts on this and how you think through this how you treat this. I love to just get dialogue and kind of see how other people think through this but I appreciate you guys. I'm always going to do my best to do what I think is helpful for you. I try to not do things that benefit me and don't benefit you and I'm not perfect and still learning and working through things and making mistakes and trying to pick myself back up after those. But yeah, I appreciate you guys very much and hope everybody has a great rest of the day. Thank you.