Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dandan Zhu: Becoming a Millionaire Before 30 | E6
Episode Date: September 11, 2018What would you sacrifice to reach your financial goals? Would you limit the luxuries in your life, take on more risks or switch careers? In this episode, Hala interviews Dandan Zhu, a self-made milli...onaire and entrepreneur, on how she gained financial freedom before hitting 30. Listen to the show to hear Dandan's tips on saving habits, real estate investments, career choices and more. Young and Profiting podcast is brought to you by audible. Get your FREE audiobook here: www.audibletrial.com/YAP Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: http://bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on IG @youngandprofiting and Twitter @YAP_Podcast Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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You are listening to YAP,
Young and Propiting podcast,
a place where you can listen, learn, and grow.
I'm Holla Taha and this episode is centered on getting rich quick.
And I'm not referringaha and this episode is centered on getting rich quick, and I'm not referring
to schemes or scams. In fact, in the studio today, we're joined by Don Don Zoo, a self-made millionaire
who retired at the young age of 28. She'll be sharing her personal experience and recommendations
on gaining financial independence in a short amount of time. Hey Don Don, thanks for being on the show.
Thank you so much, Halas. I'm so glad to be here.
And before we get started,
I want to just introduce you to Tim,
who is one of our producers at YAH.
Hey, Tim. How's it going?
Hey, Dandan.
So, Talis, Dandan, how did you manage to become
a self-made millionaire before you hit 30?
What's your story?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I was the daughter of Chinese immigrants
who came to this country with nothing in the mid 90s.
And I grew up in a really nice area in Massachusetts.
So I think self-made is always a really interesting term.
Of course, no one is ever self-made,
but in the sense that yes, I came from nothing,
that is absolutely the case.
So my family, we were the babysitters
for a very rich family.
That set me up very nicely in terms of a cultural standpoint.
I was able to understand how rich people behaved
and how they became rich, and so was my family.
So very early on in our family life,
we were able to emulate the behaviors of rich people
because we were living in their home and their third floor,
and we were watching their children,
and I was going to school with the children of rich people
So I grew up my whole life looking at wealth seeing it all around me knowing that
Why not me why not me? It's a big priority for me and it was always a target for me from a very young age
So as I grew up into adulthood got a finance degree hated it
Interested a ton of different opportunities.
I also had my own side hustles as people call them today.
I was selling eBay products, teaching Chinese,
just anything I could do to make money.
And this was when like internet e-commerce,
everything was a bit infant and eBay was running the game.
So I became an eBay power seller,
was doing all these things to basically try to get money.
And when I became an actual adult,
I was thinking what kind of job
can actually make me money?
Like a lot of it.
Because I don't have money, right?
My family does not give me money.
I have to support myself.
So the only thing I cared about as a professional,
is just money.
So I figured, let me get into sales.
Sales is going to make me a lot of money.
That's the only job that gives you an opportunity
to make more money than normal,
because I did not want to be normal.
I fell into the career of head hunting and recruitment.
So it's a sales job where you work with companies
that you prospect, that you bring to the table
from a sales perspective, clients.
Usually these clients are hiring managers
who are double my age.
That was 23 when I started in head hunting.
Got into head hunting, made six figures,
pretty much year two, year one I made almost 90,000.
And that was great.
It really, what we call this is, it's my first pot of gold.
So I earned active income from my job,
which was recruiting and staffing.
And I plowed it into real estate.
So when I was 25 about my first condo in New York in Brooklyn,
and that was right when everything was just about starting to boom.
I sold it in 2016 and are parlated into three more properties.
So I got into the whole real estate game in terms of an investment perspective.
In the meantime, I'm making money actively through stock trading as well as my recruitment job.
Eventually, I got to a point where I didn't have to work anymore because I had
garnered enough appreciation and assets that I really had pretty much a million in assets.
And now I started my own business. So at age 29, 30, I started the recruiting business for
my own industry. That's DG Recruit. So that business right now is generating revenues monthly in the six-figure range because that's how recruitment works.
Recruitment is a very, very lucrative sales business. That's very low cost to set up if you know
what you're doing. So that's kind of how I got to where I am today. Long story short, it was
recruitment and real estate. That's a very interesting story. In my opinion, financial health really stems
from three main pillars, earning, saving, and investing.
So I figured we could touch on each one of these points,
starting with earning, since really,
before you can do anything with your money,
you've got to acquire it first.
Let's start with the first one.
So most of our listeners are working professionals.
How do you recommend going about increasing the amount of income we're bringing in as is?
That's a tough question to answer.
Reason is everybody does such despair jobs, right?
So it depends on what professional you're talking about.
You're talking about your regular office worker, nine to five,
or that's just never going to make you rich.
So I created my coaching business on a global one I quit corporate.
And one of the things we talk about is the four S's. So four S's you can Google this four S's matrix.
What it says is that there are two types of jobs that make you flexible income. And that's
either self employment or that is some sort of business like business entrepreneurial venture
or it's sales. Every other type of job it's ca sales. Every other type of job, it's capped.
Every other type of job is financially capped.
So if you're making $50,000 as an admin assistant,
I don't care how hard you work,
you're not gonna really make it rich.
This advice for you, if you wanna somewhat accelerate that,
as little as you can, because you're never gonna make
two, three hundred.
That's almost impossible. If that were to happen, it would can because you're never going to make two, three hundred. That's almost impossible.
If that were to happen, it would be because you did something else.
Like, if you stay in a low paying vertical, there's just not so much you can make because
there's a ceiling.
There always is.
So like if you're an admin assistant, you want to be rich, the answer is to stop doing
admin and do something else or build a side business that eventually takes off because
certain careers will just simply not make you
the money you want.
So I think it comes down to what you do for a living,
you have to seriously consider,
is this actually gonna take me where I wanna go?
And if not, then you better change.
And that's the hard part.
The hard part is what are you gonna do to change
your earning style?
Because here's the thing, if you do nine to five
admin assistant or whatever, X,
I'm just saying admin assistant because I know that's
that's a very ceiling ceiling job.
And obviously that could be any job.
A lot of jobs cap out at around 150 to 100, like HR.
If you're HR person, you're probably gonna make like 60,
50, that may be 80, 90.
The goal is, if you wanna accelerate, yes,
move jobs every two, three years.
But guess what, that's very manual.
And that's gonna take a long time.
So it just depends on your horizon, your time horizon,
as well, because if the more you wanna do something faster,
the bigger risks you'll need to take
and the harder you'll have to work.
So it's just up to how much money do you wanna make
in this living?
How much money do you wanna make by X, year? You have to work. So it's just up to how much money do you want to make in this living? How much money do you want to make by X year? You have to decide that because it's all about
sacrifice. Life is all about sacrifice. It's just what am I doing with the time I have
today for the future I want tomorrow? If your future you want tomorrow is I want to have
$20,000 by the end of this year. You don't have to do anything too crazy. You can save
a little here, you know, make a little side money there,
because it's not a big number.
But if you want to have a hundred grand in your pocket
by the end of this year,
then you have to do something drastically different.
So again, it just comes down to you, your timeline,
your goals, and what you're willing to do to get that money.
So when it comes to entrepreneurial ventures or side hustles, what's your advice
for getting a business off the ground and still being able to earn the mean time?
I don't really believe in side hustles as an adult because I find that it's too risky
and this is the reason why. Side hustles take a lot of time out of your day to day. So you're trying to manage a career.
I've never seen side hustles to be
how a lot of entrepreneurs get Uber successful.
Again, it comes down to how big your dream is, right?
If you want to start an e-commerce business
and you take your time and you side hustle,
outside of work, it's just going to take you longer
because you're only doing it
part-time. So side hustles are very dangerous. The reality is a lot of people will
not have the strength, the control, the discipline to work a side hustle as
hard as they work their main hustle. So my advice is why don't you align your
main hustle with your side hustle. Make your side hustle, your main hustle.
You actually probably have a better chance.
I think anybody who wants to get rich
and has the time to do a side hustle
needs to question themselves.
I'm not a big fan of side hustles.
I think that side hustles are not really a risky move.
It's like the safe way.
I'm just not very safe because I don't see safe routes
ever generating any real results.
It's very unlikely that your side hustle is patentable
and is something of a high value.
Chances are your side hustle is what a lot of people
are doing at the very same time with the same ideas.
And all of you guys are too scared to go for it 100%,
which is why there's like mom and pops.
So the goal is if you're happy just getting some side income
and you're doing it for fun, go for it.
Do your thing. But if you're really trying to some side income, you're doing it for fun, go for it.
Do your thing.
But if you're really trying to make a business and be like rich, then again, it just calls
for another level of commitment and expertise that puts you at a competitive advantage against
other people who are most likely doing the same exact hustle you are doing.
To succeed, there's always a level of commitment that cannot be dodged
no matter how you slice it, I said. What about people who want to stay in their current
job, they enjoy what they're doing, but they want to negotiate a higher salary. What's
your advice on that? Well, there's always two ways. The one is negotiate directly with
your employer or number two, get other offers. So that's really it. Negotiate with your
direct boss or look externally
and bring forth your options.
Obviously without an intent to force a counteroffer
that is not ethical, certainly that's just not right.
And it doesn't make sense for you.
That's gonna hurt you long term if that's your game.
You're not doing it to just push your current employer
to give you more.
If you wanna push your current employer to give you more, the only way to do it is to
bring it up to them and make it a sticking point and make a stink about it.
That's the only way you're going to get up into the ranks.
Or you shmews and you politically advance.
That's just playing the corporate game.
The second one is obviously go external, get a few offers, pick the one that gives you
the best money, come out super strong.
And the trick there is negotiate from a point of power.
If you're unhappy with your pay,
if you know you're being underpaid,
do it while you're in a good spot at your career.
And this is the piece that people mostly forget about.
When they're having a good time on their job,
people are enjoying life.
They're not really thinking ahead,
they're not really worried.
That's exactly how you miss out on opportunities.
Complacency is the breeding of normality. They're not really thinking ahead, they're not really worried. That's exactly how you miss out on opportunities.
Complacency is the breedering of normality.
You're just not going to get anywhere if that's your mindset.
If you want to make more money, then you have to do it from a position of comfort.
You have to be in a good situation to negotiate for the best steal because you will have the
best cars in your pocket, bargaining chips.
So that would be my advice there is to do it before you need to do it.
If you are starting to feel a little unhappy,
address the issue ASAP.
Don't wait until it snowballs into a real problem
because that emotions get involved.
And then you're going to be willing to take less salary
or you're not going to negotiate as hard as you would
if you were almost like 100% happy.
OK, so moving on to saving.
What's your take on that? Like what are the best practices to save
money in your 20s and does it change when you hit 30 and beyond? Yeah, saving is really cool. I
think it's something that I did very well because when I moved to the city and I started my headhunting
job, what's normal in our industry is that the base salaries are quite low. This was 2011. I was 23.
My base was 35 grand. After taxes, that's
not a lot of money. So what I did was I had a simple Excel sheet where I wrote down
kind of what that net monthly looks like. So 35 minus taxes. And here's the really confusing
thing with saving. And my first tip for saving is think about money like this. Every dollar
that you earn is actually not a full dollar in your
pocket because of taxes. So you're really only earning anywhere from 60 to 65% of what you're
pulling in. Most of us have five-figure incomes. You know, out of college, that's just kind of
how it is. So you're going to get about 60 to 65%. So my rule of thumb is think about it in
halves. If I earn a dollar in my pocket,
that actually is $2 that I had to manually earn that
from the man, right, from my job.
I need to earn $2 to actually be able to have $1.
So that should sober you up a little bit.
So the people who have six figure jobs,
the people who think they make a lot of money,
in reality, you don't, because everything that you earn
is taxed at basically 50% when you're at the sort
of six figure range.
So that's very misleading.
People think, oh, I'm making this much, I can do X.
Really, you're making a lot less.
Then when you're spending, you're spending basically
that whole dollar.
That should, again, just remind people
that it's probably not a good idea
to overload on things like rental costs.
So what I first did was I calculated exactly how much I was willing to do for rent and
no more and no less.
So, I was like 800 bucks, that's my cap.
So, I looked for places that had cheap rent.
Rent is the biggest cost expense that if you're up to it, you can really skim here.
A lot of people that I meet who can't save, they fail because the first thing they want
to do is live in Manhattan and they want to rent and they get a guarantee or a blob of the blob of the, and that's just
not how you're going to make money.
Like, if you want to save the biggest cost, that's easiest to cut down is rent.
So figure out how you're going to do that.
You could choose Airbnb, you can get roommates, you can live in a cheaper area, but certainly
getting your own place spending four figures on rent is just not the way.
Again, it's just, what are you willing to sacrifice?
So for me, I've sacrificed my privacy.
Right? I've sacrificed my privacy for the last seven years.
I'm a 30-year-old.
And in New York, I live in an apartment, a two-bedroom,
with three people.
I rent out the two rooms, and I live in the living room.
That's what I'm willing to do to ensure that my cost
is basically as low as it could possibly be.
Because I'm an entrepreneur, I don't want high overhead.
And I'm willing to do that, I'm very happy to do that.
And then, you know, certainly, you can have other properties that are earning you income.
And you can do this on the rental basis as well.
Everything else, you know, food, that's your own choice.
You determine, again, where you are in your life.
If you're starting to earn more money in the beginning, when I was like 35 grand base,
I did not use taxis.
Back in the day, we didn't even have Uber.
So I was just like straight up,
not gonna use taxis, just a point blank rule.
I don't care what happens,
I'm gonna walk or take the train.
And I never broke that rule,
and I don't really drink.
If I do go drink, I'll buy one round of drinks
for everyone I'm with, and that'll be that, and I won't do drink. If I do go drink, I'll buy one round of drinks
for everyone I'm with and that'll be that
and I won't do anymore.
And young people's lives, the biggest cost is going out.
Going out, partying, drinking, eating out,
this is the biggest way to burn through your check bug.
So you have to be very careful how you select
your socializing time.
That's the easiest way to spend money, like water.
And then on daily basis, I only ate cheap foods.
So I was eating subway pretty much three or four times a week.
I would memorize all the spots that had half off
after a certain hour.
That was never good at budgeting,
groceries, and cooking,
because that was a lot of time too.
And the meantime, the real trick again
is income accumulation, is growing income faster.
But yeah, in terms of saving, those are all the hacks that I personally employed, just
setting up very disciplined approaches to each scenario, having a contingency plan.
What if my friend invites me to a fancy restaurant?
What do I do?
The answer is, I don't go.
That's what I do.
I don't go.
Because I don't still want to spend it.
I can see them somewhere else.
We can go get coffee. We can go do something else.
If it's like some special plan where it's like somebody's my best friend's birthday,
absolutely.
I will shell out.
But for casual, meaningless social interactions, I'm not going to invest that much money because
I got to focus on my success.
That was my mentality when I was making pretty much crap's base salary.
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Yeah, I think that's a pretty good advice, but how about those of us who are making like
over a hundred grand a year, what's your advice on, you know, having a well balanced
life where we take advantage of our luxuries and the fact that we've
made it to a certain point, but also our savings so that we can accumulate wealth. Like, is there any balance
that you can speak about? I mean, it's up to each individual. Again, it's just how big is your dream for yourself?
How long do you want to work in the workforce? That's the question you really have to answer for yourself today.
And a lot of times people don't even think about the stuff. They just the question you really have to answer for yourself today. And a lot
of times people don't even think about the stuff. They just live day to day. Yearly, they
don't do any goal setting. Monthly, they don't really care. They don't really have a financial
target. It's just like, oh, I made a paycheck. I have money to spend. Yeah, I'm going to buy
stuff. I'm going to travel. I'm going to do this. I can afford it. So six figures is not
a lot of money. If you're making in the 100s, in any metropolitan city,
that's not a lot of money, even for a single person.
Because people in our demographic
in this millennial age that are college educated,
we have too much socialization.
It's just too much.
Like nobody really invests in self-development.
Most people I know don't do it at all.
Everyone around me, whether you're making 50 or 100 100 or 150 or 200, the general trend is that people are outspending
in general, like social media. They are social peer pressure. There's a lot of reason.
So it comes out to you isolating yourself for perhaps a day or two and just sitting there
and going, what the hell am I doing right now? How many more years do I want to live this
life? Because I only worked in the workforce for five years before I retired because I lived my life and I had a certain mentality.
So the goal is when do you want to retire? Do you want to retire when you were 45? In my 20s,
I just worked my butt off in terms of income generation saving and doing some crazy investing.
I'm very uber risky. So at any given time,
I'd only keep a little bit of cash on hand.
Everything else I put into stocks.
Right, and obviously that was a good stock market.
Either way, there's money to be made in stocks
and good or bad days.
There's just always up fluctuations.
You can make money any day.
You can lose money any day.
If it was me today, I'd probably put a little bit,
just a little bit in crypto.
But basically, you just pick your poison.
A lot of young people, they're down to spend
thousands on X, Burning Man, traveling to Bali, XYZ. They're down for that. But they're not down,
spend a thousand dollars on crypto. For some reason, that's risky. I'm like, okay, so you went to Bali
for a week and spent two grand. And you didn't think that that two grand could've also been worth it
to also put it into a tool that could potentially actually earn you money.
So you can spend too grand on your leisure and leisure is worth it and it's not risky.
But somehow investing is risky.
So to me, I never could wrap my head around that concept.
If I'm going to go out and travel and eat and spend money, I'd better spend money and learn on investing as well.
However, it takes some risks there too.
Because if I'm willing to just have that money go to zero, I'm also willing to have that
money potentially go up.
When you spend money on leisure, you know exactly what's going to happen to it.
You're going to get zero from it except a fleeting moment of happiness, right?
But in reality, if you invest it, you can learn a lot more through the journey of that
dollar and how it moves.
So it's just about experimentation
and picking your poison. Obviously, real estate was always my goal. Chinese people, immigrants,
we love real estate. So I'm like, let me get into that game. So every weekend, I would study and
read, go to the library, again, sacrifice. You mentioned that you like to invest in stocks.
I personally love to invest in stocks. It's where I've generated a lot of my wealth. What are your favorite picks right now?
What do you recommend? So right now, I don't do any stocks. Right now, I use my money on my real estate.
I did use it a lot when I was in my like 20s as a 9 to 5 because it's easy to read on.
You can like study in the market at that time. great. Now I think we're headed into uncertain period.
Stocks is not my forte.
Real estate is my forte.
So nowadays, if I save up money, I just need 30, 40 grand to like get another purchase
and then I can start doing like cash out refives.
So real estate is my interest now.
And movie for it, it's going to be international real estate.
So you mentioned once you have 30, 40 grand, what kind of loans are you taking out?
Are you suggesting that traditionally they say, you know, put 20% down? Are you saying that,
you know, you could get away with 5% can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So all of my
loans have been done traditionally. So 30 year fixed, 20% down. And basically every time I earned
a certain amount of money that I had down payment, I would go out and buy a house.
And the meantime, I would identify markets that I'm comfortable with, that I feel could
be good real estate markets.
So the easiest way to start real estate as many people do is buy in their neighborhood.
So I bought in Brooklyn to start.
And I was lucky enough that that was 2013.
Today is obviously a different story.
And when I bought, I thought to myself for sure, I did not buy to save on rental costs,
because remember, my rental cost is low.
Like, my rental cost is actually lower
than if I were to own a house and pay mortgage
in terms of out pocket expense.
And I think one of the questions you sent me earlier was,
oh, should you buy for primary residence?
My answer is absolutely hell no.
Real estate is not to shirk rental cost.
That's not the reason why you should be going into real estate.
It is an investment.
You have to look at it from a third party perspective.
Not a, oh, I'm going to live in there.
That makes it not an investment.
That makes it a personal decision.
And personal decisions are not good investment philosophies.
It's just not a good way to get invested.
So first of all, I'd say before you get into real estate, understand that if you're going
to think about living in it, then unless your rental cost is so much higher and you be
significantly reducing your rental cost, that makes sense.
You're trying to reduce your cost living to like zero, right?
So like if you buy a house and you rent out the rooms and the rental value of those rooms,
now cover your mortgage, then yes, that is a smart investment. That most likely is actually just
about right. But in major amounts of cities, that's impossible. It's like hard to do. The mortgage
value is so much significantly higher than the potential rent roll. So the first thing to do is to
understand how it works. Valuation. Valuation is all about looking at the average price of rentals minus the potential mortgage
cost of a like kind property.
That's the first step is looking at markets and determining where you're going to invest.
My other strategy is to buy in B tier cities within the A tier city.
Manhattan is the A tier city. A B tier city. So Manhattan is the A tier city.
A B tier city close to Manhattan is Jersey city.
Now Jersey city already experienced a lot of growth.
However, at the outskirts of the last stop
in journal square, the last stop on the path train.
Now there, there are still some opportunities today
that if you were to get into it, you'd be all right.
You'd be much more better off buying there
than you will be buying in the A city, ironically,
because this gravy train is not gonna keep going.
There's only so much people can do
from an appreciation perspective.
So I buy condos in those locations
because Maltese are too expensive.
Then I got into Maltese.
I got into Maltese in what I call C tier cities,
like real C or D tier cities, real real crap cities that nobody wants to live in,
nobody wants to be there. There's a very local population. You're not gonna get like the yuppies that come in to work there.
So there's like sea and de-tier cities that there's a lot of potential and these are more in the middle of the country.
Slash like certain pockets of each coast in the less populace areas.
And that's where you can afford to get multi-s and single homes.
Yeah, this is all really great advice, very practical.
I thought it was really interesting how you mentioned that not a lot of millennials were investing in themselves.
Where are some ways that you invest in yourself?
And what do you recommend for millennials to get started?
Yeah, I think investing yourself again comes down to like your goals.
Like what do you want to invest in yourself in for what purpose?
A lot of people have bad habits, really bad habits accumulated from years
and years like myself.
I have a overeating habit.
So a thing that I have to really work on is a like health wise, it's a holistic
thing. It's not just like, oh, just the money thing.
So like, hey, if you have problems with health, you have to start addressing your lifestyle
and you're living.
If you're an alcoholic, like a lot of people in our generation, I think are or drug users.
Yeah, think about why you're doing that stuff.
These are life choices, habits that you have to determine.
What's the actual value of me doing those activities?
That's the first step is self-reflection.
It's like, okay, what am I doing on a daily basis that is making me question my development? Am I this person that works, then goes and grabs drinks, then
goes and gets dinner, repeat, and then on Sunday, Saturday, am I doing brunch, then I'm
hanging out at the beach. If you're doing all those things, you have no time to invest
in yourself because you did not budget any time to invest in yourself. The majority of
people are short term people. They only look at today
tomorrow next month and this year. They're not thinking by the time I'm X years old, I need to have
done Y. And even if they do, it's not a sincere thought. It's a general thought. It's not really like
that detail. They're not really going to commit to it. So the first thing is you got to A,
realize what are the things you lack in your life and B, you got to start setting some serious like that detail, they're not really gonna commit to it. So the first thing is you gotta A, realize
what are the things you lack in your life and B,
you gotta start setting some serious goals for yourself.
It's very hard to drive yourself to a question mark.
Question marks are very hard to aspire to.
There's no vision in a question mark.
It's gotta be like a real thing
that you inherently truly want for yourself,
because that's the only thing that's gonna
then connect to point A which is self reflect and go
Which aspects of my life am I going to now forsake?
Is that television watching is that shopping?
Retail addiction is that drinking on a three to four times a week basis?
Is that smoking weed? I don't know how many successful people smoke weed
I think a lot of people do but that's just not me. I have never smoking weed. I don't plan to. It's just not part of my lifestyle.
These are things that, again, you have to look at on a macro level. Like, what do most successful
people do? Are most successful people hang out with their friends and smoking weed and eating out
and drinking every day and partying on the weekends? Probably not. most likely not. I read. I'm an avid reader.
The majority of what I read is like business-related,
wealth-related.
So Rich, I poured out was one of the first books I read.
Seven habits of highly effective people.
These are like the cornerstones of success,
how to make friends and influence people,
think and grow Rich.
These are things that I've read since my early 20s.
And I would just sit there and read.
I like I told you, on weekends, I just study real estate.
So it's spending the time, making the time,
making a part already to read.
I've read autobiographies of Hillary Clinton
and Warren Buffett.
These are biographies that I really enjoyed reading
because they gave me inspiration in some way.
Yeah, bam.
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Right.
So, reading about other great people, studying these things, making friends with really
great people, very successful people.
That's the easiest way to get successful.
And that is another tip that I think a lot of young people today don't want to do is
you have to cut out the dead weight in your life.
You have to cut them out, whether it's family or friends, they gotta go.
If you try to make money, you try to get somewhere and you got someone pulling on you,
that person has got to go.
You gotta put them into what we call the cold palace.
You know, like in Chinese, you say put them into the cold palace
where you basically put someone on freeze.
That's what I do.
If someone does not align to my goals
and where I'm headed and don't support me
and get my way being dramatic and wanting this,
no, you're not doing this or be, you're not doing that.
I'm out.
I have a lot of friends, a lot of acquaintances,
are the huge network, but I do not party with people
because the requirements of socializing with people
who are on a hamster wheel, that does not fulfill my lifestyle.
And that's a decision I made at a very young age.
Very interesting.
If you could have millennials change one thing
after listening to this show, what would it be?
I think everything starts off with a vision, a dream.
And I think a lot of millennials in our day and age,
they're experiencing pain and suffering and frustration.
And I see the problem with my peers
and the problem with my colleagues
and people that have worked with in the past
is that there's so much pessimism, I'd say overall.
There's a lot of pessimism on what's possible
and what's capable, and it's because of the system,
it's because of student loans,
it's because, you know, romantically,
it's hard for me to date because I've got these student loans
and like my job doesn't pay a lot, blah, blah,
there's so many excuses being made.
So I think in general, for us specifically,
it's probably just to honestly start like believing
that you can do more, that you can be more than you think you can be, and really just
kind of like take a break from social media, take a break from all this distraction that's
not really going to take you anywhere.
I think every generation today is suffering from the over inundation of social media and
technology and how that's changing our lives in a way that's distracting and not productive.
So I think the biggest thing I wish that millennials would do is take a step back, read and adjust
and just be selfish but less selfish at the same time.
Being selfish about your time, being selfish about what you do on a day-to-day basis
to gardener's success, being selfish about giving yourself
the time you need to get your life in order.
But at the same time, being not selfish
and thinking about the impact that you can make
on a bigger scale.
That's what drives me is thinking that
me being selfish today on my time,
on what I need to do, to be the person I need to be,
to organize my life the way it needs to be organized.
I will become a person that can change and move mountains. I can change entire demographics. I can give
inspiration to people that normally I wouldn't be able to if I wasn't selfish in the beginning. I have
to be selfish to get to a level where I am today. The long story short is if you can start sacrificing
on a short-term basis,
I think you'll get a lot closer to success
and happiness through the long term.
Awesome, and where can listeners go
to find out more about everything that you do?
So I have a couple websites.
You can check out digirecruit.com.
That's my headhunting business.
That specifically helps young people,
professionals transition into a sales role in headhunting.
My business helps people get placed in those roles.
So that's the first step.
I have a whole team that you can speak to,
you can network with.
If this is a career you want to do,
that's DG Recruit,
the second website for generalcareeradvice.nglobal.com.
There's tons of articles on there,
Kora, like I think I have 100 plus,
10,000 followers, whatever, you can read lots of articles
that basically say what I said today
in more or less different ways
and in a little bit more detail
on certain topics that are probably a little more articulate
than me kind of rambling.
So Kora.com, you can find me on there, Don Don Zoo.
And then, yeah, you can also find me a LinkedIn.
So all of those platforms, you can follow me.
Daily Don Don Don is more general career advice
for the general public.
DG Recruit is specifically designed
to help salespeople and headhunters maximize
their headhunting potential.
Well, it was such a pleasure.
And I really think all this advice
on gaining financial independence
will be super helpful for our listeners
as they consider how to become young and profiting.
So thank you so much.
Awesome, thanks for having me, Hala.
Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast.
Please remember that YAP is for informational purposes only.
Today's show was just an example of how one millennial
got rich quick.
And we can't assume these tactics will work for everyone.
The goal is to get you inspired.
YAP should not be considered financial advice.
Conduct your own due diligence or consult a licensed financial advisor before making
your investment decisions.
Follow YAP on Instagram at Young & Profiting and Twitter at YAP underscore podcast and check
us out at Young & Profiting.com.
Kudos to our amazing team, Timothy Tan, Daniel McFatter, Bob Ahus, John Sparks, A.K. and
Kayla.
Subscribe to YAP on your favorite platform to always keep up with us.
This is Halataha, signing off.
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