I became a millionaire at 26. Here's 13 lessons for anyone in their 20s.

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Vanessa Lau
Here are 13 lessons I would share with anyone in their 20s. I just turned 30 last week and wanted to...
Video Transcript:
for most people they won't learn this lesson until they actually get everything that they want until they get the promotion and they realize that career is not for them until they get that dream guy or dream girl and they realize that this is not the relationship that they want to be in until they buy that big ass house and they realize how empty they are if you are in your 20s this is my advice to you number one build up your assets in a very specific order I became a millionaire when I was 26 I'm
30 now I just turned 30 this week my net worth is in the multiple million and technically I am financially free there's two reasons for this number one I started a business that ended up grossing over 10 million Canadian dollars in its lifetime but more importantly number two I learned about the different types of assets that exist in life and I was able to prioritize them in the right order a mistake that a lot of young people make is they are in such a rush to build up their financial Capital they think that just by
investing and just by saving money in their 20s is going to be enough to be rich the truth is is unless you are a trust fund baby and you already come from money if you are someone who comes from lower income class family or middle-income class family like I did you need to be playing a whole different game and that game is understanding the different types of leverages that you have and building those up first before you build up your financial Capital the first type of capital that you should be building up is your intellectual
Capital this means with all the money that you're making and the time that you have you should be investing in yourself and in your learning skill yourself deep in your knowledge for example when I was 16 I think I paid $12 to read my first personal development book it was called How to Win Friends and Influence People it completely changed my life it changed the way that I navigated relationships and it brought me a lot of opportunities even just learning how to communicate nowadays there's even better books out there and way more resources but what
you want to be doing is if you don't have the money right now you should be reading books you should be listening to podcasts to YouTube videos to expand your the knowledge and learn as many skills as possible learn more about the world once you start making some money you want to try to invest that into courses or mentors that can FASTT track your learning fast track your skill development the goal of building up your intellectual capital is for you to be perceived as someone who is valuable to the marketplace because once you have a
sense of value then you're going to be able to build up the second type of capital which is your Social Capital it's very hard to build up a really strong and Rich Network without having a sense of intellectual capital and so in the process of you building up your intellectual Capital you want to find as many ways as possible to help people with your intellect to help people with the skills that you've acquired for me in my career I helped a lot of people through mentoring others through offering my services and my resources to others
through eventually digitizing my int ual capital I started a YouTube channel and through my videos I just taught people everything that I was learning and from there when you build your intellectual Capital eventually people will notice you you want to build yourself up to be a person that people can clearly see you were working on yourself and you are becoming a better person and So eventually I built up my social capital which is building my brand on YouTube now you don't have to be a YouTuber to do this if you are working a 9 to-5
and you're in a job right now even you just helping your co-workers going above and beyond will get you noticed by upper management who will then connect you to whoever you want to build a strong Network and the reason why you want to do this is because the stronger Network that you have the stronger and richer Social Capital that you have opportunities will come way faster and way easier for you once you've built up your Social Capital the next type of capital that's going to be really easy for you to build is your human capital
now this is very specific to those of you who want to build a business who have a specific specific project that you want to go deep on but human capital is being able to recruit others into your cause so that you can scale up your time and so in my case when I built up my YouTube channel and I built up a brand for myself through helping so many people it was a lot easier for me to find Talent there were people that wanted to work for me rather than me reaching out to other people
now of course you don't need all of that if you already have money it'll be easy to hire out and Outsource your time but if you don't have money having a strong Social Capital will help you get human capital a lot faster and a lot cheaper once you've built up your intellectual your social and your human capital you'll naturally be at a place where you have more financial Capital than other people in your age range and this is where you can make life-changing money whereas if you don't have any of those other capitals and let's
say you only have 10,000 20,000 in your bank account yes you can save it but it's going to take a while for you to make life-changing money and so instead instead if you actually invested that in yourself and you built up the other capitals first you're actually fast-tracking your ability to potentially make your first 100,000 and then your next 100,000 and then eventually you may even get to a place where you're making half a million or a million and that's life-changing money because you now have a way bigger principle to play with and now with
that money you can invest in real estate you can invest in the market and it's going to have a way bigger impact on your wealth strategy than if you tried to nickel and dime in your 20s second piece of advice and that is work hard for everything that you've ever wanted acquire all the things make all the money do it sooner rather than later because the sooner that you can get everything that you've wanted the sooner you will realize that none of that actually matters to you there's a quote that I heard from nval rava
Kant and it goes we have two lives the second life begins when we realize that we only have one even though I made multiple millions in my 20s I checked off all the boxes I acquired all of the things it wasn't until I did all of that where I had this Epiphany that none of that stuff actually mattered to me and it allowed me to live a more meaningful life or start living a more meaningful life I am so grateful that I learned that in my 20s and I'm so grateful that I built up all
those capitals that I mentioned because it got me to a place where I became very successful on paper and it got me to a place place where I realized what truly mattered to me it wasn't the house it wasn't the Chanel bags it wasn't the Porsche it wasn't the multiple millions of dollars and to get to that realization requires a lot of privilege and the sooner that you can become a person of privilege the sooner that you can create peace in your life and you can actually live the life that you want thanks to me
hustling and grinding and accumulating all of that in my 20s now I feel so grateful because I'm entering my 30s and I can make YouTube videos as a hobby I don't have to make videos in order to make money technically I do it because I love it I can spend more time with my family and my friends while I'm still young and while they're still young and that requires a lot of privilege and so if you want to be a privileged person sooner then you may want to just work hard to get what you want
and learn that life lesson sooner for yourself and this is a very controversial op opinion I already know there's going to be people saying no you should be peaceful right now and you should be mindful right now and you should live your life meaningfully right now and I hope that you can do that but I believe for most people they won't learn this lesson until they actually get everything that they want until they get the promotion and they realize that career is not for them until they get that dream guy or dream girl and they
realize that this is not the relationship that they want to be in until they buy that big ass house and they realize how empty they are until they have all the money in the bank and they realize that what they actually want is to spend more time with their mom and dad the sooner that you can know this the better next everything is a projection this video is a projection I am projecting onto you I am projecting my beliefs I'm projecting what I feel is important I'm projecting my life experience onto you but what I
believe is true for me does not have to be true for you and I wish that I knew this lesson sooner in my 20s than I did I had to become someone who post my life on the internet to learn this the hard way because I am someone who gets multiple projections thrown at her every single day and before I used to take things very personally I used to question myself a lot because of other people's opinions I used to question if I was a good person I used to question my skills I used to
question my experience I used to question who I was because I couldn't discern other people's Fe feedback I couldn't discern and I couldn't understand that what other people were throwing at me was their life experience was their knowledge was their point of view was their trauma was their experience but it didn't have to be mine if someone doesn't like you it doesn't have to mean anything about you if someone has a limitation it doesn't have to be your limitation if someone has criticism you can choose to take it on if you feel like it's actually
going to help you or you can just let it go lovingly you don't have to take everything on as truth the sooner that you can understand what projections are and where they come from the more mental peace that you will create for yourself stop idolizing when I was in my 20s I had a lot of fan girl energy if you were older than me I would fan girl if you were more successful than me I would fan girl if I was given a once- in a-lifetime opportunity I would fan girl I would even fan girl
over material possessions and I learned that you can be excited for something and you can have respect for something without lowering your status without devaluing yourself and without giving away your power and when I was in my 20s which was not too long ago I used to give my power away to a lot of people and I used to put a lot of things on a pedestal I used to put people on a pedestal opportunities on a pedestal material items on a pedestal I would slave for them I would lower my value for for them
I would do things that I'm not proud of for them and I learned that the moment that you just stop idolizing things is also the moment that you create a lot more Peace and Freedom for yourself you can doubt your work but you shouldn't doubt yourself I think it's completely normal to question the quality of your work whether that's you submitting an assignment whether that's you delivering a project to your boss or your client or the business that you're trying to build I think Without You criticizing your work you wouldn't have room for improvement but
even if you are questioning your work you shouldn't question yourself ever you shouldn't question the value that you bring to the table you shouldn't question the value of who you are as a human being outside of your business outside of your work you shouldn't question the potential that you have in this life a mistake I often made was I made my work mean something about me as a human being and this often led me to a dangerous path of self-sabotage it would lead me to depressive moments unnecessary anxiety and I think it's important for you
to be able to separate your selfworth from the work that you're producing especially if you're an entrepreneur or especially if you're an online personality and you're trying to be an influencer and you're doing all those things that are so tied to you personally you need to find a way to really separate that because you are robbing yourself of so much peace and happiness if you tie your selfworth to your work next I want you to do things while you're still excited about them I think that there is a beautiful naite in your 20s because you
are experiencing life as an adult for the first time it's your first decade of being an adult and an analogy that I learned from a friend of mine is if you sit on something for too long it's like leaving fresh food out for too long and it becomes stale and when it becomes stale you no longer want it and so you toss it away and the reason why we often let things sit for too long whether it's our desires whether it's ideas that we have is because we tend to overthink we doubt we think of
all the things that could possibly go wrong or all the reasons why we shouldn't do something and because of that a lot of lifechanging ideas a lot of lifechanging decisions go to waste because we've ruminated for way too long and the timing has passed and so what I would hope for you and what I would hope for myself even as I enter my 30s is when you are most excited about something whether it's an idea that you have whether it's a decision that you're thinking of making just do it just do it because it could
lead to so much adventure and at worst it could lead to a lot of lessons that you're going to learn in your life a lot of wisdom and so do things while you're still excited about them don't overthink it for too long because the timing will pass and you'll no longer be excited and it won't be that same experience as if you did it while you were still excited about it take risks in your 20s especially in your 20s you have so much more time to recover from your mistakes you have so much time to
make more money you have like decades and Decades of time the biggest risk that I ever took in my 20s was leaving my well-paying corporate job at 23 or 24 I became a coffee geda making minimum wage so that I had more time to start my YouTube channel and because of that one decision I was able to make a lot of money for myself in my 20s which was amazing and I was able to live my dream life on paper it could have absolutely gone to I could have started the YouTube channel it could have
flopped it could have taken me a lot of time to make back the money but I could have always found another job I could have always rebuilt my skills and so I'm so glad I made that decision in my 20s and the second biggest risk that I ever took in my life was recently but right before I turned 29 I burned down my business and so just take advantage of the risk tolerance that you have in your 20s and even in your 30s and stop feeling like you can't afford to make the wrong choice because
you can afford to make the wrong choice so do the damn thing and around with life and see what happens cuz it could lead to really amazing things and the worst thing that can happen is you make a mistake but luckily you are someone that doesn't have a family yet you're someone that doesn't have a lot on the line you can still be selfish you have a lot of time and you can easily rebuild go deep instead of wide and we're talking about skill sets here so if you are feeling lost you don't know who
you are yet you're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work for you then it's completely normal to go wide to dabble to explore different subjects to see what works and what doesn't work but once you've identified something that you like and that good at I want you to go deep on that thing and the reason why is because yes with some time some training and some Investments you can absolutely turn a b player into an a player but if you are already an a player in a specific topic subject or skill and
with some time some money some investment we can bring a players to being A++ plus players and it's the A++ plus players that become world class at what they do and they really stand out in life they really stand out in society and the best part of that is life becomes so much easier when you just double down on what feels easy and what you're passionate about and even if you don't think that thing that you're good at or the thing that you're interested in is going to make you money even if you believe that
it's not going to make you a dime if you're good at it and you really develop that skill the money will absolutely come because that is the one competitive advantage that you're going to have among anyone else who's trying to do the same thing thing in my case I knew from a young age in high school that I loved making videos I made videos even when I was in high school with my friends I would spend hours and stay up late just making these Dance videos and I learned that this was something that I really
loved doing that I was passionate about and at the time no one thought that making videos like that would make you money but because I'm good at it because I don't give up on it because I actually enjoy it I've been able to make multiple millions of dollars from it but if you don't even like YouTube or if you don't even like making videos and you're forcing yourself to do it because you think it's going to make you money like it made me money it's never going to work and so you want to go deep
on the things that you love you want to go deep on the things that you're good at because that is your competitive advantage that other people will not have and the money will come when you chase those things if you are someone who is feeling lost I want you to embrace being lost I created so much unnecessary fear and anxiety for myself when I was feeling lost in my career at 23 and also when I was feeling lost about my business at 28 but I learned that being lost is such a beautiful thing because it's
an uncomfortable stage in your life where your old self is gone and you haven't met your new self yet I think that's incredibly exciting and I wish that I knew that sooner so that I could reframe that for myself and rather than seeing being lost as being a shameful and negative thing that but I just fully embraced it as a process of Life as a process of meeting my new self and realized that it's not a crisis it's an Awakening it's an exploratory phase and I think the moment that you can reframe that in your
life the more peace you will give yourself and the more grace you will give yourself as well one thing that I wish I did sooner in my 20s is understanding the importance of politics I was raised Without Really knowing anything about politics my parents never talked about it I never really voted I never thought it was that important I didn't think it mattered and it wasn't until recently where I realized how important understanding your rights are and understanding politics are in general and oftentimes you won't realize how important politics plays in your life until it
actually affects you until the service that you relied on gets taken away until you work your ass off to make all that money and then the government takes it and you don't agree with where your money is going or the amount that was taken until your rights get violated and I wish I didn't have to turn 30 for it to actually affect me now to realize how important politics will play in my life or in anyone's life and so if you're in your 20s just start reading up on it don't let it affect your mental
health too much but have a b basic understanding because knowing your rights is so important and when you actually understand politics and how things are you'll also make better decisions on where you might want to live how you might want to set up your business how you might want to set yourself up financially it all links together and so I wish I learned more about politics a lot sooner I wish it was talked more about amongst my family sooner and I wish that it it was just something that I became more interested in when I
was younger your values will change over time in the course of your 20s and that is completely normal what you experience in your early 20s and what you want in your early 20s may change as you enter your late 20s and it can be a very confusing time period when you experience a values change especially if your external environment does not match the new values that you're coming into and I wish I knew this sooner so that I would feel less shame and less confusion and that I would make the right decisions a lot faster
than I did and I would have less anxiety and emotion wrapped around it and so for example when I was younger in my early 20s I really valued a lot of the things that I mentioned early in this video which was I Valu getting Chanel bags I Valu getting Birkin bags driving a nice car having a nice house making multiple millions of dollars and then once I achieved all those things my values started to shift and I got very confused and I got very disconnected and I got very unhappy and very depressed and very anxious
and it wasn't until I realized the reason why I was feeling all those things was because I was still doing the things that I no longer enjoy because I wanted to please my younger self was when I had that aha moment and my aha moment was burning down my multiple seven figure business now you may not have such a radical change like I did but you need to be brave enough to change your external environment to match the internal because the longer that you let that misalignment and you let that Gap happen the more confusion
and shame and the more disconnected you will feel and you will eventually burn out one way or the other when you when there is that disconnection between your values and your day-to-day actions and so I wish someone told me about that sooner so that I could make the proper decision sooner and I didn't sit in it for too long don't ditch your friends just because you're on your own personal development journey I think it's normal for some people in their 20s to pick up those personal development books to build up their intellectual Capital but as
a result you may start thinking that your friends aren't good enough or the people around you aren't good enough and you will start developing an ego and you will start thinking that you are above others but I learned that if you really want to grow instead of putting other people down and thinking less of them because they're not on the same Journey that you are or they're not running at the same Pace that you are you should Instead try your best to lift others up with you so that they can be at the level that
they can be at and so in instead of ditching your friends because they're not making as much money as you teach them how to make money instead of ditching your friend because they're not as fit as you share resources with them on how to get fit instead of ditching your friend because they are not getting the same opportunities as you and they're not moving up in their career open some doors for them now of course it's up to the other person to receive the invitation and a lot of people they don't want to grow they
don't want to be on the same time line as you and you have to respect that you have to respect that people will be on their own timelines and not force it but you also have to make it not mean anything about you or anything about them and I think that the best type of people or the ones that just accept people for who they are they hold them to a certain potential that they know that they can be but they don't rush the other person they they let them find their own way and I
think it was really sad when I was in my early 20s or mid 20s when I started going into this personal development Journey that I just wasn't a good friend to other people I didn't invest in my friendships as much as I could have because I developed an ego and I thought that building a business was more important than anything else and that I was more important than anything else but now realizing that friendships are really important and you should be someone that lifts other people up instead of putting them down or developing that type
of ego because your ego will bite you in the ass in the future and so yeah don't ditch your friends just because you are on your own personal development Journey let everyone fall into it on their own timeline get to know your family ask questions collect the stories my grandma passed away a couple months ago it was just a few weeks after I visited her in Hong Kong and I genuinely thought that I would visit her again and again but she passed away suddenly a few months after I left or not even a few weeks
after I left and my biggest regret was not asking her about her story how did she grow up how did did she meet my grandpa what did she value in her life what are her hopes and dreams for me uh what are the lessons that she's learned in her course of her life there was just so much wisdom that I could have taken and so much more understanding of my own family that I could have gotten and she passed away right before I turned 30 she passed away in January and I really do wish that
I asked her more questions and I think that when while you still can you should ask your parents questions you should ask your grandparents questions just anyone that you care about time is fleeting and you never know when life will end and that's a really sad thing to say but that's the matter of life right like tomorrow is not guaranteed and I really do wish that I spent my 20s asking more questions specifically to my own family and to the people that I loved and so if you're watching this video I encourage you to ask
the people that you care about more questions about their life and how they've come to be and your origin and understanding that because I think through that process you're going to learn a lot about yourself too especially if you're asking your family members and if you don't have family ask the people that you care about a professor that you're with your boss anyone that you love and so anyways I hope you like this video these are just the different lessons that I've learned throughout my 20s that I would share to someone who is in their
20s whether it's your early 20s mid 20s or late 20s uh I'm so excited to be 30 and to enter this new decade and um I also want to thank all of you who commented your wisdom in my birthday post I actually asked a lot of people that were older than me to give me their wisdom and I learned a lot and that's what inspired this video so thank you so much for watching I do something Fearless today and I'll see you in my next video bye guys and take care
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