Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dandan Zhu: Becoming a Millionaire Before 30 | Finance | E6

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

What 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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and grow. I'm Halitaha, 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, Don, thanks for being on the show. Thank you so much, Hala. I'm so glad to be here. Before we get started, I want to just introduce you to Tim, who is one of our producers at YAP. Hey, Tim. How's it going? Hey, Don Don. So tell us, Don Don. 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, course, no one is ever self-made, but in the sense that, yes, I came from nothing, that is absolutely the
Starting point is 00:01:03 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, interned at a ton of different opportunities.
Starting point is 00:01:50 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. I 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.
Starting point is 00:02:27 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. I was 23 when I started in head hunting. Got into head hunting, made six figures pretty much year two. Year one, I made like almost 90,000.
Starting point is 00:02:57 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, I bought 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 I parlayed it into three more properties. So I got into the whole real estate game.
Starting point is 00:03:25 in terms of an investment perspective. In the meantime, I'm making money actively through stock trading as well as my recruitment job. Eventually, it 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.
Starting point is 00:03:49 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
Starting point is 00:04:31 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 fiver. That's just never going to make you rich. So I created my coaching business on a global when I quit corporate. And one of the things we talk about is the four S's. So a four S is, 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 capped. Every other type of job is financially capped. So if you're making $50,000 as an admin
Starting point is 00:05:17 assistant. I don't care how hard you work. You're not going to really make it rich. This advice for you, if you want to somewhat accelerate that as little as you 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.
Starting point is 00:05:57 You have to seriously consider, is this actually going to take me where I want to go? And if not, then you better change. And that's the hard part. The hard part is what are you going to do to change your earning style? Because here's the thing. If you do 9 to 5 admin assistant or whatever, X, I'm just saying admon. in assistance because I know that's a very ceiling, ceiling job. I mean, obviously, that could be any job. A lot of jobs cap out at around 150, 200. Like HR. If you're an HR person, you're probably going to make
Starting point is 00:06:26 like 60, 50, that may be 80, 90. The goal is if you want to accelerate, yes, move jobs every two, three years. But guess what? That's very manual. And that's going to take a long time. So it just depends on your horizon, your time horizon as well. Because if the more you want to 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 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,
Starting point is 00:07:07 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 in the meantime? 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.
Starting point is 00:07:47 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, is a lot of people will not have the strength, the control, the discipline to work a side hustle as hard as they work,
Starting point is 00:08:22 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
Starting point is 00:09:04 like mom and pops. So the goal is if you're happy, just getting 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 and dice it. What about people who, you know, want to stay in their current job, they enjoy what they're doing,
Starting point is 00:09:37 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
Starting point is 00:09:52 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 going to hurt you long term if that's your game.
Starting point is 00:10:05 You're not doing it to just push your current employer to give you more. If you want to 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. And that's the only way you're going to get up into the ranks. Or you schmooze 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 you're in a good spot at your career. And this is the piece that people mostly forget about.
Starting point is 00:10:42 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. 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 deal 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.
Starting point is 00:11:19 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. Okay, 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 head hunting 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 10.000. taxes. And here's the really confusing thing with saving. 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.
Starting point is 00:12:14 So you're really only earning anywhere from 60 to 65 percent 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 percent. So my rule of thumb is think about it in halves. If I earn a dollar in my 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
Starting point is 00:12:51 you're at the sort of six-figure range. So that's very misleading. People think, ah, 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
Starting point is 00:13:15 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 guarantor and blahbidi, blahbidi. That's just not how you're going to make money.
Starting point is 00:13:36 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.
Starting point is 00:13:55 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 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,
Starting point is 00:14:38 I'm not going to use taxis. Just a point blank rule. I don't care what happens. I'm going to 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 anymore. In 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 checkbook. 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 like 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.
Starting point is 00:15:23 That was never good at budgeting, groceries and cooking, because that wastes a lot of time too, right? In 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.
Starting point is 00:15:45 That's what I do. I don't go because I just don't 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.
Starting point is 00:15:57 But for casual, like 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 space salary. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day.
Starting point is 00:16:22 We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate, even though I'm so picky because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast by boosting your post to the top relevant candidates. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored ones, according to Indeed data worldwide. I'm so glad I found Indeed when I did because hiring is so much easy. now. In fact, in the minute we've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed, according to Indeed
Starting point is 00:16:55 data worldwide. Plus, there's no subscriptions or long-term contracts. You literally just pay for your results. You pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Young and profiteers. I know there's so many people tuning in right now that end their workday wondering why certain tasks take forever, why they're procrastinating certain things, why they don't
Starting point is 00:17:36 feel confident in their work, why they feel drained and frustrated and unfulfilled. But here's the thing you need to know. It's not a character flaw that you're feeling this way. It's actually your natural wiring. And here's the thing. When it comes to burnout, It's really about the type of work that you're doing. Some work gives you energy and some work simply drains you. So it's key to understand your six types of working genius. The working genius assessment or the six types of working genius framework was created by Patrick Lensione and he's a business influencer and author. And the working genius framework helps you identify what you're actually built for and the work that you're not. Now let me tell you a story.
Starting point is 00:18:15 before I uncovered my working genius, which is galvanizing and invention. So I like to rally people and I like to invent new things. I used to be really shameful and had a lot of guilt around the fact that I didn't like enablement, which is one of my working frustrations. So I actually don't like to support people one-on-one. I don't like it when people slow me down. I don't like handholding. I like to move fast, invent, rally people, inspire.
Starting point is 00:18:38 But what I do need to do is ensure that somebody else can fill the enablement role, which I do have, K on my team. So working genius helps you uncover these genius gaps, helps you work better with your team, helps you reduce friction, helps you collaborate better, understand why people are the way that they are. It's helped me restructure my team, put people in the spots that they're going to really excel. And it's also helped me in hiring. Working genius is absolutely amazing. I'm obsessed with this model.
Starting point is 00:19:04 So if you guys want to take the working genius assessment and get 20% off, you can use code profiting. Go to working genius.com. Again, that's working genius.com. Stop guessing. Start working in your genius. What's up, Yap, gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touchpoints every single cold customer has with your brand.
Starting point is 00:19:26 Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your dot-com initially. But here's a problem. Too many companies treat their website like a formality instead of the gross tool that it should be. At Yap Media, we are guilty of this. I am really due for an upgrade from my website, and I'm planning on doing that with
Starting point is 00:19:44 framework this year. because small changes can take days with my other platform and simple updates require tickets. And suddenly, we're just leaving so much opportunity on the table. And that's why so many teams, including mine, are turning to framework. It's built for teams who refuse to let their website slow them down. Your designers and marketers get full ownership with real-time collaboration, everything you need for SEO and analytics with integrated A-B testing. I love that.
Starting point is 00:20:10 I love testing and making sure that we've got the best performing assets on the page. You make a change, hit publish, and it's live in seconds. Whether you're launching a new site, testing landing pages, or migrating your full.com, Framer makes going from idea to live site fast and simple. Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off a Framer pro annual plan. That's 30% off in 2026.
Starting point is 00:20:39 Again, that's Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off, Framer.com slash profiting. rules and restrictions apply. 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 this stuff. They just live
Starting point is 00:21:21 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. Yay, 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.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Like nobody really invests in self-development. Most people I know don't do it at all. Everyone around me, like whether you're making 50 or 100 or 150 or 200, the general trend is that people are outspending in general, like social media, there's social peer pressure. There's a lot of reasons. So it comes down to you isolating. yourself for perhaps a day or two and just sitting there and going, what the hell am I doing right now?
Starting point is 00:22:15 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 like 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, it was a good stock market.
Starting point is 00:22:45 Either way, there's money to be made in stocks in 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 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, X, Y, Z. They're down for that.
Starting point is 00:23:06 But they're not down to spend $1,000 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 have also been worth it to also put it into a tool that could potentially actually earn you money? So you can spend two 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 ever, it takes risks there too. Because if I'm willing to just have that money go to zero,
Starting point is 00:23:42 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. That's where I've generated a lot of my wealth. What are your favorite picks right now?
Starting point is 00:24:22 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 nine to fiveer because it's easy to read on. You can study it in the market at that time was great. Now I think we're headed into an uncertain period. Stocks is not my forte. Real estate is my forte. So nowadays, if I save up money, I just need $30, $40,000 to like get another purchase and then I can start doing like cash out refies. So real estate is my interest now. And moving forward, it's going to be international real estate. So you mentioned once you have $30, $40,000, 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,
Starting point is 00:25:04 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 in 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 in 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 it's 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
Starting point is 00:25:47 in terms of outpocket 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. Like that's not the reason why you should be. 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'd be significantly reducing a rental
Starting point is 00:26:29 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 a major metropolitan cities, that's impossible. It's like hard to do. The mortgage value is so much significantly higher than the potential rent role. 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. So 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
Starting point is 00:27:16 the A-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, 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 going to keep going. There's only so much people can do from an appreciation perspective. So I buy condos in those locations because maltis are too expensive. Then I got into maltis. I've gone to maltis in what I call C-tier city.
Starting point is 00:27:56 like real C or D tier cities, real crap cities that nobody wants to live in, nobody wants to be there. There's a very local population. You're not going to get like the yuppies that come in to work there. So there's like C and D 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 populous areas. And that's where you can afford to get multis 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.
Starting point is 00:28:31 What 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 an overeating habit. So a thing that I have to really work on is, A, like health-wise. It's the whole whole. thing. It's not just like, oh, just the money thing. So like, A, if you have problems with health, you have to start addressing your lifestyle and your 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
Starting point is 00:29:12 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 grab drinks and goes and gets dinner. Repeat. And then on Sunday and Saturday, am I doing brunch? Then I'm hanging out of 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 why. 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
Starting point is 00:29:58 you got to, A, realize what are the things you lack in your life? And B, you got to 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 got to be like a real thing that you inherently truly want for yourself because that's the only thing that's going to 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?
Starting point is 00:30:30 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.
Starting point is 00:30:46 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 poor dad 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. And like I told you, on weekends, I just study real estate. So it's just spending the
Starting point is 00:31:22 time, making the time, making a priority to read. I've read biographies of like Hillary Clinton and Warren Buffett. These are biographies that I really enjoyed reading because they gave me inspiration in some way. Hello, young improfitors. Running my own business has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, but I won't lie to you. In those early days of setting it up, I feel like I was jumping on a cliff with no parachute. I'm not really good at that kind of stuff. I'm really good at marketing, sales, growing a business, offers, but I had so many questions. and zero idea where to find the answers when it came to starting an official business. I wish I had known about Northwest Registered Agent back when I was starting Yap Media.
Starting point is 00:32:02 And if you're an entrepreneur, you need to know what Northwest Registered Agent is. They've been helping small business owners launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They literally make life easy for entrepreneurs. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ends and outs of running a business. And guys, it can get really complicated, but Northwest Registered Agent just makes it all easy and breaks it down for you. So when you want more for your business, more privacy, more guidance,
Starting point is 00:32:35 more free resources, Northwest Registered Agent is where you should go. Don't wait and protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yap free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash Yap free. What's up, young and profitors? I remember when I first started Yap, I used to dread missing important calls. I remember I lost a huge potential partnership because the follow-up thread got completely lost in my messy communication system. Well, this year, I'm focused on not missing any opportunities, and that starts with your business communications.
Starting point is 00:33:19 A missed call is money and growth out the door. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, and it works right from an app on your phone or computer. The way Quo works is magic for team alignment. Your whole team can handle calls and text from one shared number, and everyone sees the full conversation. It's like having access to a shared email inbox, but on a phone. And also, Quo's AI can even qualify leads or respond after hours, ensuring your business stays responsive, even when you finally logged off. It makes doing business so much easier. Make this a year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free,
Starting point is 00:33:59 plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash profiting. That's QUO.com slash profiting. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. 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 day 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 got to go if you try to make money you're trying to get somewhere and you got someone pulling on you that person has got to go you got to put them into what we call the cold palace you know like in chinese you say put them into the cold palace where you
Starting point is 00:34:45 like you basically you 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 and that, oh, you're not doing this or B, you're not doing that. I'm out. I have a lot of friends, I have a lot of acquaintances. I have a 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.
Starting point is 00:35:25 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.
Starting point is 00:35:49 it's because, you know, romantically, it's hard for me to date because, like, I've these student loans and, like, my job doesn't pay a lot, blah, 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
Starting point is 00:36:25 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 garner your 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,
Starting point is 00:37:05 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 dGrecruit.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.
Starting point is 00:37:49 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 DGRecruet. The second website for general career advice, donaglobal.com. There's tons of articles on there. Quora, like I think I have 100 plus 10,000 followers, whatever.
Starting point is 00:38:03 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 cora.com, you can find me on there at Dondon Zoo. And then, yeah, you can also find me on LinkedIn. So all of those platforms, you can follow me. Daily Dondon is more general career advice for the general public.
Starting point is 00:38:26 DG recruit is specifically designed to help salespeople and headhunters maximize their head hunting 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.
Starting point is 00:38:44 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
Starting point is 00:39:06 before making your investment decisions. Follow YAP on Instagram at Young and Profiting and Twitter at YAP underscore Pondi and check us out at young and profiting.com. Kudos to our amazing team, Timothy Tan, Daniel McFatter, Baba Hughes, John Sparks, A.K. and Kayla. Subscribe to the app on your favorite platform to always keep up with us. This is Halitaha, signing on.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.