S1E8: Millionaire at 27: What's it like to suddenly become rich?

0:02Damo, what are you doing? well while we're waiting for our next podcast episode i'm sat here reading this magazine that's on the table about wallpaper very very quaint very old school you know what i never realized how much i missed those little rip-off sniffy perfume things that are in the middle but yeah i think um magazines are making a comeback mate in a world where everything feels digital and i'm just dying to put down a screen all of the time i quite enjoy sitting down with a magazine and having a read of it it's almost like you know buying a vinyl record yeah feels more real more tangible the music's more authentic it's richer yeah that's right which kind of leads us into today's sponsor one of the best finance publications in the uk is money week they're in print and online so you can get that nice magazine feeling in your hands money week sift and summarize the biggest stories in finance and then add their own journalism on top it means no more endless scrolling if you want to give money week a try you can get six issues in print and on the app absolutely free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money.

1:01After your trial, you'll save an extra five pound on a quarterly subscription exclusive to Making Money listeners. That's moneyweek.com forward slash money. And there's a link in the description for you. By the Friday, I had taken out 400 grand in cash.

1:22And I just looked at the 400 grand. See it in physical cash. And then the next week I then went and I took another 400 grand in cash. And then next week I then took 200 grand. And I just said, okay, this is a million pounds in cash. I did that with tenors. Look at me. But I did that because I was like, I was like, all right, like, Timo, this is real. Like you made that, you did that. Like, this is it. So we're here to learn how to build wealth. And from time to time, we're going to be speaking with people whose lives have just been transformed by money. Some people who've made lots of money and some people who've lost a lot of money.

2:01Today's guest is entrepreneur Timothy Armu, or Timo, who was raised on a council estate and at the age of 27 sold his business for millions. A lot of people dream about being rich, but what's it really like? So today we're joined by Timo, self-made millionaire. Started a... do you not like that title? No, that's fine. It's true. He started a business at 17, sold that for, well, 16 was it? And sold it at 17 for over a hundred thousand pounds. And then sold another business in your twenties for eight figures. Also on the cover of Forbes 30 under 30, I saw recently as well. My start question is T, how does that make you feel?

2:41I've got a counter question. How does it make you feel that you're the only guy here who can't grow a beard? He's always coming at me about my hair, this guy. That's a good one. Yeah, thanks for that. So we both feel pretty infurious out here anyway. Let's just start because I've listened to a lot of you speaking and I love your honesty and transparency around money and your relationship and how that's changed over time. And we're going to get into that. Headline question, do you think you're good with money? Do I think I'm good with money? I think if I had to give myself a rating out of 10, I'd say I'm a 7.5.

3:20yeah i think i'm good at making money i don't think i'm that good at like growing money um i think the last 12 months have actually shown me that like those are two different skills like making it and then growing it and um i've had to go through a bit of a mindset shift basically from like okay like you need to learn the new skill of growing it because i still have some kind of conservative thoughts around money that's really interesting because a lot of our guests here have said that um investing or making money isn't just for like rich people that they have a lot of clients who are really wealthy and they don't know how to make more money yeah how to invest their money they can make the money at the beginning but then it's like how do you grow it how do you manage it once you have it yeah yeah i think it's one of those things though where like the how do i explain like the time scales are different right so the idea that all right you know put x amount into an index fund and you know it will grow whatever eight percent per year blah blah blah and then you go yeah but i could also just take that money and through my own skills i could just make more money and that wouldn't be eight percent a year that could be like a hundred percent a year and so that kind of like different time skills where you go from my input leads to a certain output to actually there's this vehicle that I can't really control and it will give me less kind of overall returns without me controlling it I think that's where like the mental fuzziness comes I've spoken to like so many of my friends who basically you know they've done well they've sold their companies and they're like cool I'll put in whatever like 500 grand into this index fund and you know i'd get another 50 grand and then they go yeah oh i could just deploy this into a new business and that turn turns into like five million and so that kind of like mental fuzziness comes from just the change in time scales and i've realized that from so many of my friends and including myself that's why we lean towards the making of the money because we're so used to like our input equals some output that we can have some influence over versus actually you know like let's put into this and you know see what happens i relate to that so much and i've had to shift the other way in a sense because i come from a background of like i was a full-time employee my whole life i would just put my money into index funds then i started a business and now i'm like hold on the return on my business is 300 a year i need to invest into that and having that confidence almost yeah one thing that i love about your story i think people focus on that eight figure exit what i like about you the best is at like the age of 16 you started a business yeah i'm fascinated about the decisions you made as a teenager because as a teenager i was obsessed with making money i looked around me i'm from a poor background like you and i wanted to make money but i never had that confidence in myself to to do it whereas you did what in your life made you think at that point i can take that step i can take that action um good question so i think it came down to two things one was naivety and the other which a lot of people don't talk about but i'm gonna say it is i think i had a bit of a superiority complex so it's a great answer naivety because you know at 16 17 you don't know what you don't know so you just assume like things will be easy because they look easy right it's like well of course if i do this and this and this and then that'd be it superiority complex because i think that especially at that age i kind of had this not so much a chip on my shoulder but i had this self-image of myself that like i was smarter than most people i could learn faster than most people i mean part of it came from the fact that I was pretty good academically so it kind of introduced me to this sense of like I can be better I am better and so when I had that sense of a superiority complex it was like well you know other people can't do a business at this age I'm going to be that different person other people can't do this I'm going to be that different person so it was a healthy dose of well I don't know what could go wrong right because I haven't experienced that and also nothing could actually go wrong because I'm just better than most people right and it's interesting most people most of the entrepreneurs that I speak to they wouldn't say it because it sounds very egotistical but it's not meant to be like an egotistical thing it's more kind of this self-belief that you have in yourself that like it doesn't matter if someone else has not done it I can do it.

8:18And so that's what I mean by naivety and also a bit of a superiority complex. That's a youth thing as well, isn't it? Like my son thinks he's bulletproof, right? And as we get older, we learn how fragile we are and we become cautious. And I think starting young allows you to have that like naivety. One thing about listening to your journey at 17, it was clear to me that you were kind of stumbling through this business. No idea what was going on. But that was like, that was so inspirational because I, it's like with investing, right? I talk about investing in a lot. Just start and figure it out and get going and like improve your life that way and give yourself more of their options.

8:56And with your business, it was like, they just said, oh, do you want to sell it? And you were like, oh. Yeah, sure, sounds good. Yeah, most of the people, man, like most of the people who you see who have done something significant started off not knowing what the heck they were doing. And then after the fact, it seemed as if everything was laid out, but that's only after the fact, right? I'm actually currently listening to an audio book of LeBron James. And turns out the guy was playing like college football. Like he played American football. Yeah, that's crazy. And at no point until further down the line did he then go, oh, I want to be a basketball player, right?

9:35And you go, well, surely someone like him knew from the time he was five years old, he knew this was what it was going to be. But he also just like stumbled and stumbled and stumbled. and that kind of story that kind of narrative is something that you see from like pretty much most people and i think that was definitely my case that was definitely my story yeah i think success in business in life maybe just comes to who jumps the most hurdles and yeah it doesn't stop jumping and yeah this attitude of i will conquer these things and i think your story your background armed you with that your dad your like your where you were born and stuff can you just expand on that a little bit and like how do you did your upbringing kind of shape that attitude into you yeah i mean so i i was born here but then i grew up in ghana lived in ghana for 10 years and then i came here in year six um and i think even just that like you know earlier i spoke about this whole idea of having a superiority complex i think the thing and if you have listeners who have experienced kind of having education in africa you tend to have learned the stuff like two years earlier so the stuff we're learning in year six here i had learned like two years so the education is almost a further ahead yeah yeah it's like it's like way further ahead um again it kind of goes back to the thing that we spoke about before the podcast which is that education and some people would be so would be so much further in life if they just had a different location right so in ghana the stuff you learn was way way earlier and so i'd come in year six they'd be asking certain questions and i just know the answers to those questions just because i I'd learned it before.

11:27And then that created this sense of like me being smarter. Yeah. Me being smarter when maybe at that time it was just, I had just learned the stuff earlier. And so that then added a bit more of that self-belief. So, you know, I'd grown up in Ghana 10 years, came here in year six and I lived with my dad, right? and I lived with my dad like fourth floor council estate in Oaken Road and there was this sense of you know everything is fine everything is chill um going to school I went to a school called like City of London at well is it still called Academy I guess it is now City of London Academy um and you know was just a school in southwark and then i just was going for sixth form and for sixth form i then went to a private boarding school called christ hospital the only reason i was able to get in was because my grades were good and so i got a scholarship to christ hospital like everyone there was just just so many geniuses name dropped a kid who like oh yeah luke stevens yeah luke stevens um never forget can't forget luke stevens because i do remember when i first encountered luke and thinking i thought people like you were fake right like you are so intelligent dude was like 16 and doing uh double further maths and getting 100 in it i was like okay this is the level right and um realizing that i was like okay i can't win the intelligence game my maybe there's a different game i can win which is the business game because all you guys are optimizing to get into oxbridge but i'm optimizing for like wealth right and so i then really like focus on that business game so i think those are just like different points of my upbringing um which changed the way that i thought about wealth and money and probably the third one was like kind of i didn't realize how to experience so growing up until probably about 16 i didn't realize i was poor if you know what i mean right because like i grew up oakland road council estate like everyone around me like was poor yeah so i didn't realize i was poor all right um and then going to boarding school i've been like oh like i'm poor all right and and there are levels to wealth that were completely different to what i thought it was right like there are levels which are not you're either poor or you're richard branson is actually there are a bunch of different tiers in that which which you can aspire to and kind of combined with that um i then like stumbled across this blog which has gone defunct now and i was actually looking to buy the blog um but the founder just didn't reply but it's a blog called um retire 21 i bet he's got it that he missed that email um like and i remember just reading stories of people of young people who had built companies uh before there were 30 you know there were articles about a guy called pete cashmore who was a founder of um mashable um all of these and i just thought man like this is so crazy to me and so kind of those three instances i think coming from ghana and like having this sense of oh okay i i can learn things faster which again could have just been a consequence of the fact that i just learned them earlier um going to christ hospital and going right okay this is a completely different academic level like I thought I was smart you guys are geniuses I'm going to play a completely different game and then also just being then going oh okay right there are levels to wealth that I didn't know about I think those three really changed my perspective how did you like it's around 16 how did you stay motivated because I know 16 me and Dan we both wanted to make a bit of money I was I had businesses which weren't quite as successful as yours but I I mean, I started when I was a teenager, you know, coming from Nigeria on holiday, coming back, bringing back loads of cigarettes, selling them to all my classmates for like 10 times the price.

15:56And then I had a few other small companies, but like most 16 year olds, I was more interested in like basketball, girls, partying. How did you stay just focused on just work and like just focusing on business and starting a company? And when it was successful, hadn't you just go, I've made it now, I'm going to go party and like celebrate. How are you not dead? How are you not dead? Exactly. Most teenagers making a lot of money, they're going to blow it and have a good time. By the way, the cigarettes hustle is crazy. That's the first time I've heard it. Really? That's the first time I've heard it.

16:2510 packs of cigarettes in Nigeria were like five pounds. And then obviously here, it's like 12 pounds a pack. This is not investment advice, by the way. I don't think you can really do that anymore. I don't think you get it. It's different times. This is not financial advice. Or business plan. Yeah, that's funny. How do I get motivated? Man, do you know what? so this is this is kind of framework and i think i heard it from tony robbins or something like that where he said like you're either pushed away from something or you're pulled towards something and i think at that age um i was like just pushed away from the circumstances i was in like it was like every day because i lived on like the like fourth floor of a council estate and like no lift right so every time i'd go up i just keep telling myself like i don't belong here i'm better than this i don't belong here i'm better than this and i think again combined with that kind of feeling of superiority definitely added to that um and then to answer the question about like why am i not dead yet um so i think look like when i saw the prior company i think it was such it felt to me like i had discovered magic and i think that i've said that before uh that it felt to me you know i'd started something and then 11 months afterwards someone offered me 110 grand and i was a 17 year old who like didn't really understand money and i thought jesus christ i have like figured out a hack that's actually how i felt it was facebook pages yeah yeah facebook pages and i thought wow i figured out a hack and then i think after i sold entrepreneur express when i came to realize oh the value because um for listeners what entrepreneur express was was like an online business publication but the thing that i did well was i was able to grow it by creating really big viral Facebook pages and I will distribute content from those from my blog and I will post it into the Facebook pages and that will drive hundreds of thousands of people to the website and it was just after I sold it to this company called Horizon Media I was then like oh I thought they were buying the blog but actually they were buying the Facebook pages because that's where the audience was.

18:58That's where the distribution was. And so when I kind of internalized that, I think that was a big factor as to why I then didn't kind of feel content because I felt like, oh man, if I knew that was a thing of value, yeah, like it was there. And sure, it's great to have this money, but there's a lot more to do here, right? So I think that kind of shifted the way that i thought about it combined with that and also combined with like the idea that i thought this was magic um that i could think about something i could put in effort i could put in the inputs and then the output would just be more money than i thought was possible i saw like this is the game i'm gonna just dedicate my life to and um to be honest that was kind of part of the part of the drive behind fanbites was also always like okay this is a fun game let's put in the inputs the team the investors the idea the market and let's see what outputs can come from it we talked about dying i mean you know people people spend money in different ways but i think one thing that's worth pointing out is you did run through the money quite quickly You might not have spent it on debauchery, but you threw some up the wall.

20:20Yeah, the first bit of cash I made, I didn't feel like I was worthy of the cash. And I think mentally, so, you know, I gave some to like family and stuff, but really I like squandered most of it. So I spent about 40 grand or so of that 110 grand. I spent it on spread betting. um my kind of guy i like your style just like high risk lose it all yeah a little bit risk averse i'm not high risk all the way what is this i'm 28 now so it was 11 years ago like if i'd known about crypto i'd probably have just like but then again maybe i just you know spend all on Bitcoin and then who knows, right? Yeah, you'd be doing pretty, yeah.

21:08So yeah, so I squandered that, spent on a bunch of things that I thought could make money, but - Did you invest in any of it? I mean, you say spend on things that could make money. Did you - No, no. No, like at that time I was so convinced that it was like a skill I was beginning to hone. That's another question. When people make Apple, they make like a big company, what makes you think you can do it again? So you did your first company, you raised, you sold it. What made you think, okay, I can do this again. I can do this thing. And I found a cheat code. Like most people - You didn't feel like you got lucky.

21:44You felt like validated in your skill. Wow, this is my big shot. I made it. I'm done now. I don't want to risk it again. Let me just invest this money. But you're like, I'll spend the money and I'll do it again. What gave you that confidence? Well, so I think spending the money or rather squandering the money, right? Didn't actually come from, I could do this again. It came from just like me wanting to make money fast. Yeah. So like spending 40 grand in spread betting because you see people doing well in spread betting is not like sensible, right? It's just, it's just, oh, let me see how fast I can double this, right?

22:21Because I thought that because I'd done well in business, that therefore translates to every other way of making money, which was so stupid. I do think that the thing that made me then think, well, I can do this again is I do think that I had, especially when it came to the whole social media game, I felt like I was in the game quite early. and so because of that i thought well we haven't maximized opportunity yet and so that was a big reason why i then thought do you know what like there is more uh juice to squeeze yeah exactly so that was that was my mindset it's almost a better uh a good thing that they they didn't rip you off but they didn't really convey the value and you probably felt a bit short-changed that made you go again whereas if you'd got true value you might have been like right i'm done and then blown it all and maybe not gone at it again.

23:22You spoke about levels and there's points in your life. I'm poor. There was a point in your life where you saw a mate get picked up in a helicopter. You were like, oh my God, there's another level. Jonathan, yeah. Yeah. Now you have millions. Yeah. Where do you feel that you're at in terms of levels?

23:41Good question.

23:45So I think I've actually been on a bit of a rollercoaster, right? And this is something I spoke to a friend who sold his company recently. Actually, about like two years ago. So about a year before mine. And he said something super interesting. He said that after the first three months, when the money kind of drops, you kind of feel like you feel like it's not real. And then you go into a feeling of just feeling so just invisible. Like, oh my God, like I am the guy. I can do no wrong. Everything just comes to me. and then you go into a feeling of a bit of fear that you'll lose it that you lose it and i think that i went into that fear mode pretty early i think i got into that feeling of oh i don't want to spend this i don't want to do this so much so that i actively had to kind of journal to myself and tell myself that actually I was capable of getting it again.

25:06In fact, I remember once when I felt kind of really fearful. I used to journal to myself, oh, like, if it all goes, at least I can get a good job as like a chief marketing officer. It's crazy, isn't it? Which is so outlandish. which is like you have like millions and millions, like more money than you need in your entire life. And then you go, well, at least, you know, someone could hire me. I do that all the time about my YouTube channel. If my YouTube channel release itself, well, I could be a consultant or I could get a job again. It's not going anywhere. Yeah, it's, and I think it comes from having, from like growing up without much, then you just feel that.

25:48But when you see someone like Mike Tyson or like all these celebrities, they make millions and millions. Half a billion. And then they have a big, do you have a big entourage? You have tigers and stuff. You have tigers. And then somehow they go bankrupt and you're like, every normal person is like, if they gave me a million, I could stretch that for the rest of my life. So how do you lose like hundreds of millions or 50 million? So how, where does the fear come from? Wouldn't you be like, even if I go crazy this year and I spend five mil, I've still got like 50 mil. I still, like worst case scenario, put a mil in under your garden and then you're like, okay, if everything goes wrong, I still got a million.

26:21So where does the fear come from that? What's your like biggest expense? Like how can you blow all your money? Where does that fear come from? I think my biggest fear at that time, not anymore now, but I think my biggest fear came from the fact that it still didn't feel real. So I have a spreadsheet and I would like track my net worth. like just goes dunk like one more yeah and i track my net worth like every week for for a while for like six months after the acquisition i like track and i would be so kind of annoyed if you know by that time i'd put money in stocks indexes you know i i done a bunch of different things and i'd be so annoyed if like it went down by like five grand a week i'm like oh my god i'm like like my whole weekend is rude right and it's like dude you have like millions of dollars what is wrong with you right and i think it's because the numbers didn't actually feel real like they just look like numbers on a spreadsheet and at some point you would um yeah you'd feel some way so actually this isn't something that I've ever shared before um I went to my bank and like because I had to internalize this I went to my bank and basically like for a week I just keep going and keep going there to the point where by the Friday I had taken out 400 grand in cash and I just looked at the 400 grand see it in physical cash and then the next week I then went and I took another 400 grand in cash.

28:09And then next week I then took 200 grand and I just said, okay, this is a million pounds in cash. I did that with tennis. But I did that because I was like, I was like, all right, like Timo, this is real. Like you made that, you did that. Like this is it. Okay. Made it physical rather than numbers on the screen. Exactly. Because that transferring from I'm like, numbers on the screen, which constantly made me feel fearful of, okay, what if that number is zero? Yeah. And I just, oh my God, right? And now it's like, no, the number can't be zero. Cause like, this is physically what it is. One day I'll do that again.

28:51But it'd be 10 million. Well, well, I could have taken it. Humble brag. I love the humble flexes on the show. He's always flexing, but now you're just coming out. You've outflexed it so much. You can't flex anymore, David. You're talking about a sip. You got 10 million on the floor, mate. You're talking about a sip. And you know, that was a big shift, which then enabled me to like actually be fine. And we spoke about me going to Bali, right? Like that was a big shift for me to go, okay, it's fine for you to, you know, spend like 25 grand first class flights to Bali get the best hotels, get the best thing.

29:34Because actually, if you're looking at a million in cash, like actually 25 grand is just like this part of it. And I went, okay. How long did you go to Bali for? Two weeks. Yeah, I went for like a week and I didn't spend 25 grand. I partied like a rock star. So what did you do? Who did you buy? What did you do out in Bali? Even the first class flight is not going to back up to 25 grand. So how much? Emirates. It's pretty expensive, you know? Yeah, that's true. Emirates, first class flight for two. And then like the resorts, we stayed in the best resorts. I had a like full-time driver. Like the meals were great.

30:17The hotels were great. Like everything that we possibly could do is great. In fact, even in three weeks, I'm then doing my next big trip. I'm going to the Serengeti. That's like 30 grand, I think. So like, like getting used to the feeling of, okay, like spending money, but you know. Serengeti with like wild lions and things. Do you have life insurance? I don't have life insurance, but I should have life insurance. You probably should. So my world manager keeps telling me about life insurance and I keep saying, okay, I'll do it. Yeah. And, and, and all he needs are some, you know, you reminded me.

30:52I mean, my fees are 10%. so yeah that was a kind of transition basically from from from like being quite fearful to then being a bit more open with it which um a lot of people i found especially if they come from a similar background just they just go through that um then the other thing um i know i've been going on about this particular um question for a while but the other thing was like normalizing so if say i was on level eight level of wealth normalizing people who are level nine and ten so i sold my company for tens of millions i then forced myself to hang out people who saw the company for hundreds of millions and to them like spending 30 grand on a flight is like oh it's cool like we're thinking about taking our private jet to antigua and it just made me kind of go okay cool this is great this is amazing where you are is great but also if you believe you're the type of person who can build more money and build more wealth then like naturally it will follow that like this is the next step so normalize that rather than being fearful of that and so that was a big kind of mindset shift as well that i made how you you taught one of the things you did the strategy was get a million quid in cash how do you now manage this money you know like a lot of people listening to this are on their own personal finance journey they manage their finances i think it'd be really interesting to hear how someone with yeah cash in their house not anymore i'm saying yeah but like how do you manage it day to day um so i so i've created a bit of like a barbell strategy which is really um you know with the help of my uh financial advisors and stuff where you know you have your uh conservative then you have well i guess you have your low risk medium risk high risk um right so my low risk is like cash which is in money markets earning some percent i think mine's under like uh three percent or so um so that's um got a few couldn't it and then in the medium term i then have my indexes my uh any stuff i do around like commercial property stuff and then in the high risk is like investing um i angel investing i do a bunch of stuff where i would like i'll be the founding investor in a bunch of other companies so perhaps like that would be less of you know 10k 20k more like 100k 150k i own whatever 40 of the business the other guy runs the business so it's so it's so it's pretty much like a barbell strategy on one end cash index funds well yeah like yeah i guess like cash and index funds medium is like stocks blah blah and then the more high risk stuff is where i'm taking a bit more of a bet on myself and my judgment and my you know business sense with that high end that last section be kind of your entrepreneurial side exactly so instead of you being fully running the business and growing it gave me your input and yeah yeah no appetite to do it again like what would you rather invest no no no no i'm too young to be just an angel arrester um i will start another company in fact um fun fact very fun fact what's the day's date the 4th of may so exactly one year ago was when we sold the company.

34:52Oh, really? Exactly. That. Your new wealth, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could have been new money. You could have been new money. I got no money, mate. It's okay. Yeah, exactly. Are you happier? Yes. You're happier? Yeah, yeah. But what I would say is as well that, give me money, I could spend it for a year. You know, like, I will find new things to buy. Yeah. But fast forward five years, do you feel, Would you be living the same way you are now? And do you still think you're going to be happier as a result of the money? So, you know, this whole kind of does money make you happy thing, right?

35:31I thought about it a lot. And I think, and I actually don't think it's kind of either or. Like, it's not does money make you happy? Because I don't think that it makes you happy if you're sad. But I think it makes you happier. so it's like on a spectrum right so i think if you are if you look at you know from zero to ten ten is like ultimate bliss if you are a four in happiness having more money will make you like generally it should make you a six right or if you're three it should make you a five now that doesn't necessarily mean you are happy it just means you are happier because you have less problems right and so that's kind of the way that i see it so i would say whilst running fanbyte i was always so i actually think a big shift a big shift actually that happened was you know fanbyte we started in 2017 and we sold it in 2022 right and it basically was i basically so we built software and services to help brands to run influencer campaigns specifically targeted at gen z in our third year we came up with a compensation plan which basically was our third year in 2020 in our third year we came up with a compensation plan which is basically like our base salary but then um we're able to then take a percentage of like net profits per quarter and that was really interesting because there were some months where we'd make a million a month and that would just increase our salaries like crazy because we have a base and a bonus and i think that feeling of actually just again through our efforts being able to just like scale our income kind of not really tied to just the length of time we'd been working i think that like got me used to having more money and or just like over time having more money which therefore meant by the time that the exit happened i was probably maybe i was probably maybe like a seven out of ten happy and then by the time it happened i'm now like a 8.5 yeah out of 10 rather than almost like okay throughout the whole company we had no money we're like and then i was a four and then i became an 8.5 no i think i was already happy you got to ramp up Yeah, right.

38:21But I do agree with some people where like, I do understand when some people go, you know, we were grinding, we didn't have no money. And then suddenly we got this big deal and then we're like suddenly like incredibly happy, right? That I think has worked, but that is not what I felt in my case. What's the scariest word in the English language to me? Tax. How's it make you feel? many. Stressed, sweaty palms, squeaky bum time. Don't like it. Mum's spaghetti. Mum's spaghetti. Yeah, exactly. You got one shot, one opportunity to not go to jail for avoiding tax. Yeah, I don't like tax. It's scary. Tax can be really stressful, which is why we're excited about our partnership with TaxApp.

39:04They started in Ireland and now they're in the UK and they make self assessments way less scary. What I like is how quick it is. You just enter your info, connect your bank, and it helps you do your expenses to reduce your tax bill. You suddenly know exactly what you owe, no waiting around for an accountant to reply, and you can file in as little as 15 minutes. Yeah, and it's built for all kinds of people. Company directors, freelancers, the self-employed, side hustlers, or even people who work full-time who need to do a self-assessment. For example, anyone who needs to claim back high-rate tax relief on their pension at work.

39:33The HMRC recognised, so they're safe to use. Plus, Tax App flags reliefs and benefits you might miss, so you're not leaving any money on the table. And they're really reasonable too, so from just£89 you can have your self-assessment sorted. If you've got to do one this year, check out tax app you can get 10 % off as well using the code in the link in the description the code is money10 so that's m-o-n-e-y-1-0 okay t talk to me about your attitudes towards risk i mean i like a bit of risk in my investments but i definitely would say since the podcast i've toned it down a little bit not quite as gung-ho and um like carefree as i was in risk so yeah shooting from the hip all the time weren't you yeah i i think personally that you should take risks, but it should always be in areas where you have a unique skill set, an edge, expertise, like your job, things like this.

40:19One area that I wouldn't take any risks is compliance. Yeah, the risk changes you grow in business and you need to be on top of it, which is why we partner with Vanta. Vanta automates a lot of risk processes and helps you see your risks in a centralized platform so you know what really needs your attention. Besides risk, the main thing Vanta does is automate compliance with security protocols you need to scale, like GDPR, HIPAA ISO 27001 and SOC2 The beauty of Vanta is they make it easy to prove you're compliant with these standards saving you up to 90 % of the time it takes and on average half a million dollars If you know what these acronyms like SOC2 are you probably need Vanta You can book in a demo at vanta.com forward slash making money There's a link in the description How would you think that the money's changed your life then that makes you happier beyond material success like being able to buy holidays you find you're less stressed i find them oh man that's a good question i think that's

41:25i think the biggest thing for me so how it's made me happier obviously one is being able to like take care of family and stuff um i have that's the thing like most of the financial concerns of family had kind of been sorted like beforehand um but you know now you know i had a family member who is quite close to me say they had a bit of debt that was going on i said okay cool i'll take care of that so that was pretty that was pretty good um i would say that i feel a bit more I'd say that I feel a bit more stress, but I think the stress doesn't come directly from the money itself. I think the stress comes from the way that I made the money.

42:17So what I mean by that is like, because we made a money, I and my co-founders kind of like made a money from business. and because we were also quite young, there is this sense of, all right, like now let's go do it again. And the stress comes from now almost trying to like, trying to almost get into a business or start a business, which can beat the previous exit. Yeah, set the bar pretty high. So it's like, that's why it's in the bottle again. But actually, if you're honest with yourself, if you just started another business from nothing and sold it for a million quid, that's pretty good. Exactly.

42:56But would you feel as good? Yes. Would you be like, oh, I did it again? Or would you be like, I need to sell it for more than I saw the last one? So I think I would actually be like, that's the internal battle that I face. Because to then, if you started another business or if I started another company and that, you know, got sold for like a million, that would mean that basically like three businesses in a row I have built and sold. Like that is kind of like. Like that's a good hearing, right? That's a hundred percent hearing, right? But I'd still feel like, oh man. I took a step back. Yeah. Because it's not as big.

43:32But everyone else would be like, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, exactly. So internal discussion. So that's something which I think a lot of entrepreneurs, and again, they wouldn't say it because they'll be like, you know, it's all about the journey and all that shit, right? And it is all about journey, but also like we all have an internal scorecard that we use to gauge whether we are doing well or not, whether we are actually like falling behind our potential or not. And I think that is something I've had to internally wrestle with, which is it is fine for you to have your own scorecard, which is not a comparative scorecard.

44:11I've hang out with, three weeks ago, I hang out with someone who sold this company for 200 million. And I was like, oh my God, this is so amazing, et cetera. And he said, yeah, but insert next person here. So there's for a billion. It's like, really, bro? Really? You own 80 % of this business, which means you walk away with 160 million and you're stressed, you know? And I can imagine there is someone who maybe has sold their company for like 5 million, who's probably listened to this conversation and going, bro, if I sold my company for tens of millions like you, I would not be thinking about it.

44:50You know what I mean? So it's just this like perpetual bullshit hamster wheel. And I think that's interesting. Do you find most like yourself and other millionaires, do you find that when they make their money, they work harder or they work? Obviously you might take like three months off, go travel, go have fun. But do you find like now you're back to your routine? Do you work harder now or do you work harder on the way up? Are you more ambitious now or were you more ambitious then? I think, I actually think that, So actually, I don't think ambition is the same as working harder, right? So I think we tend to be more ambitious now, but we work less harder.