How to make your 1st Million

[Paul Gill]

How to make your 1st million dollar

I have learned so much from other successful investors and wanted to share the some of the things that have worked for me on my initial Goal of having a Million-dollar net worth to increasing the net worth annually by a million dollars.

Intro

Initially started with investing into single family real estate 18 years ago, using a BRRR strategy. Refinanced properties and reinvested into additional properties. Over the years built a sizeable portfolio over $ 20 Million for my family as well helped hundreds of clients invest into real estate. Never lost any money on clients deals or my own. Finally, got into multifamily side with closing of 39 units in Western Canada earlier in the year. Looking to aggressively increase multifamily portfolio in Canada and US to over 500 units over the next 3 years. In the US, looking to collaborate with deal syndicators as co GP.

80% of the financial success is having the right mindset and 20% is knowing & doing.

Here are the top 10 tips to make your 1st Million. These tips can also be used to achieve success in other areas of your life such as health, relationships, etc.

1  Positive Mental Attitude

The only thing in life you have control over is your mind. The beginning of all successes & failures happen in the mind 1st. No level of success can be achieved in any field without a positive mental attitude. There is always so much negativity coming every day to you from others & the environment whether you want it or not.

How do you develop strong positive attitude?

Listen/watch/ read motivational content every day for 10-20 min first thing in the morning, This is like a good workout for the mind. Over time your mind will get stronger and stronger, if you continue to feed motivating content on a regular basis.

2. Have written aggressive goals.

Without having a specific destination in mind, you cannot reach there. Similarly, if you don’t have written specific goals you will never achieve them. Do not have wimpy goals like I want to make a million dollars by the time I retire.

Have aggressive goals like you want to be a millionaire in 3, 5, or 7 years. Looking back at my own Journey, the only thing I would change is to have more aggressive goals.

Big Thanks to Grant Cardone for introducing & making the 10X concept very popular. According Grant, whatever you normal realistic goals are multiply them 10 times (10X ) then figure out, how you can achieve them.

3 Walk the Walk

Your daily activities & actions must match your goals, if you have aggressive goals, you need to have equally aggressive daily activities & actions to match your aggressive goals.

Goals are just wishy washy, talk the talk unless you back it up with aggressive hard work & be willing to walk the walk.

You need to work hard & smart, it is not uncommon for successful people to work 60-80, 100 hours a week to achieve their goals.

4 Develop Great habits

Habits are routine things you do daily basis without too much thought process. Purposely develop great habits such as waking up early, working out, continually to learn and focus on personal development, saving money and investing.

5 Make no Excuses

You alone are responsible for your success or failures, do not make any BS excuses. BS excuses like blaming the economy, your lack of education, you looks, your race, your parents, luck, etc.

These are all BS Excuses. For Your level of success or failure, there is only 1 person responsible for it, YOU.

6 Earn more income

Figure out who how you can earn more income with you set of skills & education, your goal should be min $ 100K a year income,

If you cannot earn $ 100K in your current field consider, different field such as sales, if you are willing to work hard in sales, you will earn $ 100K or more annually.

Starting a franchise business like our own Burrito Bandidos Restaurant business or Domino’s Pizza, etc, you will have the potential to earn a very good living. You can make more money by working more hours, increasing sales, controlling expenses and opening additional locations in a good franchise system. Successful franchises have a system of doing everything, you don’t have recreate the wheel just follow the system but you do need some starting capital.

7 Delayed Gratification

Now, if you earning more income, do not upgrade your lifestyle. Keep the same lifestyle and save the additional income. Do not waste money on material things. Saving 10% is for the average person that will not be a millionaire. You should aim to save 30- 50% of the income, you are earning. Especially if you are young, and you are staying with you parents, you have no major expenses. Understand the concept of delayed Gratification.

For example, you saved $ 100K, you can burn the money in a single day on big wedding or an expensive car or you can use to buy a house that will appreciate a lot in the future.

8 Invest in Real estate

Why real estate, 80% of self-made millionaires are made in real estate. It’s simple anyone can invest in it you don’t need any special skills, talent, or high IQ. If you are reading this on Bigger Pockets, you are already know the benefits of real estate investing.

Going back to $ 100K savings, if you buy nice luxury vehicle with $ 100K over the next 10 years, it will be worth around $ 20K.

If you invest the same $ 100K into stocks & Mutual funds at 10% annual return. You will grow it to around $ 270K over the same 10 years

If you invest the $ 100K in real estate and buy an average house around $ 900K, (where I live) it grows on average at 6%. You will have equity over $ 1 Million.

This is why real estate is one of the best investments you don’t have to quit your job, you do not need any special degree, or skills.

Now imagine, if were able to purchase 2-10 properties over the next 10 years, what would your financial situation look like.

Real estate is the Magic formula that helps you get massive compounding and consistent returns over the long term with the help of debt leverage.

9 Be prepared for problems.

Investing real estate has several challenges, problems, headaches such as your tenant not paying your rent for few months or trashing your place. You need to plan to deal with these issues before, they even come up & Develop a plan to handle them.

Working with General partner or syndication group like ours, can significantly reduce problems, you face as we handle all aspects of property management and you will gain valuable experience on property & investment management along the way.

10 Multiple streams of income

Your income from your job is only one stream of income, what you want to have are multiple streams of income.

Such as Your Income Your Business RE property 1 RE Property 2 Re property 3

In Toronto Canada average property is over a $ 1million and it is growing annually at over 10%, which means it is growing at $ 100K annually whereas the average employment income is around $ 40K only.

Consider each real estate property as one stream of income, with multiple streams of income, you can be saving a lot more money than what you are earning from your job or business.

These are the tips that worked for me and I hope they help you on your Million dollar journey.