How I Became an Overnight Millionaire - $0 to $3 Million

so I became a millionaire at the age of 29 and this is my story I think a lot of people see whatever success I have today and they think that it just sort of magically happened well I wish that was the case but that's just not true I have failed so many times in my life so I was born in 1992 in Los Angeles my mom was a statistician and my dad was a software engineer both of them came to the US from China in their 20s they attended grad school in the states and they eventually went on to work their really great nine-to-five job now super young we moved to the Bay Area to Palo Alto to be exact and that's basically where I grew up my entire life now my family was always extremely Frugal we were always talking about where our money went they really stressed the importance of financial education and that really impacted the way that I view finances because I look up to my parents a lot so at the age of eight years old that's when I started selling lemonade my sister and I along with two other friends we basically set up a lemonade stand outside of their house and we just sell lemonade to neighbors or people driving by when I was 11 years old that's when I started selling candy in school and I remember one day I was at Costco with my dad and I saw the candy bars selling there they came out to about 33 cents each when you bought both packages and so I thought hey I can buy this I can sell it to my friends and that's basically what started to do I became known as the candy guy in middle school and I even hired my first bodyguard shout out to You Darrell if you're watching this at age 14 that's when I started buying and selling things for profit I would find cheap things on slick deals I'd sell it on eBay or Craigslist so this was my own version of Retail Arbitrage that same year that is when I picked up my first camera I started doing a lot of photo and video shoots for people and I became one of my side sources of income when I was 18 years old that's when I went off to college and that's when I took my biggest break from entrepreneurship the only thing I would really do was I do a lot of photo shoots for school groups so I basically became the UCLA photographer beyond that I also tried making my own Fitness YouTube channel and that didn't really work out so yeah most of those four years I focused really hard on school and I focused on doing extracurriculars that would help me get into med school when I was 21 so during my senior year of college I did a ton of grad shoots for people at UCLA as well as other neighboring schools and that really became my main source of income immediately after graduating I remember thinking I need to live in La by myself and I need to figure out a way to make money so from age 22 to 25 that's when I did a ton of different side hustles I was tutoring a bunch of students I was doing commercial acting and modeling I was doing photo and video gigs I was doing a lot of graduation shoots and yeah just remember at the time thinking all my friends they graduated they got really cushy jobs and I just remember feeling sort of like a loser because I was just trying to get by I didn't have that stable income and I always felt super out of place during this time at the age of 23 I tried to get my EMT license and while I was successful getting my license I was unsuccessful actually getting employment as an EMT and after that I was like I just don't want to do this this is not what I'm passionate about plus I was making way too much money doing grad shoots to consider working for 11 an hour so I basically gave up on that at age 24 that's when I started building two of my businesses I got into Amazon FBA I started selling my first product and that actually did extremely well and at the same time I was also starting up my athleisure company called charge Athletics and so yeah I scrapped up a lot of money that I had saved up doing a lot of shoots and tutoring and yeah I really built that brand from the ground up doing pretty much everything in the business that taught me so much but ultimately I failed in that business I lost at least twenty thousand dollars but I still don't regret it that was one of the coolest things I've ever done age 24 that was a big year for me because at the same time I was trying to start up a marketing agency with a couple friends that ultimately failed as well and then the same year on June 10th 2016. I'll remember to stay forever but that is the day I finally got fully rejected by all the medical schools that I was applying to I remember reading this email from the UCSD school of medicine I just remember thinking my parents are gonna be super pissed I'm not gonna go to med school I'm not going to try again and yeah from that moment on I knew that I had to make it as an entrepreneur at the beginning of a new year I always reflect on my finances and make sure I'm set up with the right accounts to save and have my money grow and you are probably too near New finances right and that's where wealthfront comes in not that I've been using for years that currently pays 3.8 apy on all of your cash zero strings attached that's right lots of Investments they're not doing so hot right now but if you stash your cash away and you write accounts in 2023 like the wealthfront cash account you're earning a 3.8 return which is amazing for example if you were to put thirty thousand dollars into a normal savings account with a 0.3 apy you make a measly 90 per year in interest if you were to put the same money in wealthfront's cash account you make about 160 a year that's a difference of over a thousand dollars for doing absolutely nothing and there are no account fees it's empty I've seen in shared up to two million dollars through their partner Banks and you can access transfer your money at any time welfare is an important part of my wealth building formula and I encourage you guys to check them out too stop letting your money waste away in your current accounts paying low interest rates and make sure you're maximizing what you could be earning on your savings in this new year the link is in the description sign up and again there's literally a win-win for anyone watching this so now back to the video so the next year at age 25 that's when I got my real estate and mortgage licenses now definitely learned quite a bit from doing that my finances started doing better in that same year that's when I bought my first condo with my sister that was a complete Fixer-Upper and I basically spent a couple months fully renovating that place one of the toughest projects I've ever done in my life but of course I learned so much about renovating houses I also was starting up my first personal finance blog called the finance habit and after working on that for about one year I sort of gave up on it because it just wasn't seeing traction and then the next year when I was 26 years old that's when I started posting personal finance content on social media mostly on YouTube as well as Instagram I was so obsessed with personal finance I just started doing it and didn't really think too much about it at age 27 that is when I got my broker's license that same year when I was 27 I actually had a breakthrough I went to Southeast Asia on a two-week trip and during that trip I did a lot of reflecting I thought about my life and what I really wanted from it and I decided when I get back home I'm going to go hard at self-improvements and building routines that can help me become a better entrepreneur so I remember the day I got back from that trip I started doing a morning routine I started reading a lot of books following the right people on social media and that for me was a complete Game Changer in late 2019 and early 2020 that's when I started posting a lot on Tick Tock and that's sort of when social media started to click for me in April of 2020 when I was 28 years old that's when I started posting one to two YouTube videos per day this was at the height of the pandemic so I was pretty much just stuck at home and so for me I had a camera I'd always wanted to become a YouTuber and I just sort of you know put my foot down and told myself I'm gonna start doing this right now and I'm gonna make it work I made videos on the right topics I was really consistent and luckily my channel started to grow in July of 2020 that's when I did my first brand deal and I remember thinking it's so crazy that this brand literally just paid me a few thousand dollars to talk about them in a video that was also my first five figure content month so yeah from there I sort of just built up a Content based business from home I want to emphasize that this was super out of my comfort zone I've always grown up super super shy I never thought I could really be successful on camera but I just followed my passions I didn't think too logically about it otherwise I probably would not have gotten started and I dedicated myself a hundred percent to learning social media to learning YouTube monetization all this stuff and building a company based on content at age 28 that's also when I launched my first course so this was called six figure YouTube Academy and this is my first foray into the paid digital product space I had my first six figure month in April of 2021. I think we made just over a hundred one thousand dollars in revenue and yeah if we look at the breakdown it was 24 affiliate marketing 46 at sponsorships 25 AdSense and then about five percent in core sales from there just kept going up and then in January of 2022 that's when I had my first two hundred thousand dollar plus month I believe we made about two hundred forty one thousand dollars and yeah for me that was just absolutely crazy and at the time I remember thinking okay I think I've stumbled upon something really good I just need to keep doing what I'm doing while expanding while looking for new opportunities and always increasingly quality production of my content that same month in January 2022 I launched personal brand masterclass which was my Flagship course at that time looking back that was actually a pretty big fail but whatever yeah I failed a lot of times later that year when I was 29 years old I launched startup wise which is one of my other YouTube channels as well as one-on-one coaching with students and so then by age 30 I had built up a team of over eight people I had multiple YouTube channels that I was working on I was building out my products I was always looking for new Affiliates to work with other ways to expand my business and that's also when I launched workout with Charlie which is my most expensive coaching program where people can basically hang out with me for half a day workout eat and Mastermind so then that brings us today I'm now age 30 and I have a net worth of around three million dollars oh by the way if you guys want to see my income breakdowns I'm actually super transparent with that on my Instagram and every single month I post how much money I make from content as well as where that money is coming from yeah you guys I don't want you guys to be impressed with the numbers I really don't want to seem like I'm showing off rather my goal this video is to show you guys it is possible for people like me and people like you to build extraordinary businesses that can change their life I failed so many times but I'm super proud of all the attempts I made all the opportunities that I chased after and how I believed in myself without over analyzing and you know forcing myself to do the logical thing while I am doing really well I don't think money is the most important thing that I've gotten from the last couple of years I've built so many great friendships I've learned so many things about myself and how I function I become a better person in terms of how I treat other people as well as how I carry myself and yeah all the stuff was a byproduct of chasing my dreams and getting out of my comfort zone so that really leads me to the next section of this video which is going to be talking about some of the big lessons that I've learned that I really want to share with you guys the first is you need to make your own luck so I know a lot of people they think no luck is going to come to me but unfortunately that is just not true you need to actually go out there and find the opportunities and make your own love if you look at your priorities and then look at all the little actionable steps you can take to help you get there and then actually do those things every single day I guarantee you you're gonna be super super lucky luck is a big part of My Success today and all the businesses that I've created but I really do think that I can credit myself for building a lot of that luck next is be optimistic and don't be pessimistic so when you're optimistic and you think things are possible what your brain is going to do is it's going to look for Solutions on how to do that so if you think making a hundred thousand dollars in one month is possible you're gonna be looking for Solutions on how you can actually do that on the other hand if you don't think that's possible all your brand is going to do is look for reasons to validate that thinking so it becomes super unproductive you're not really looking for Solutions rather you are looking for reasons why next is you want to be extremely extremely actionable if you read one single self-improvement book you're gonna have all the ideas and Concepts needed to become successful the next really important thing is that you need to get out of your comfort zone and do things that you don't want to do that's why ice bath that's why I wake up early in the morning and do a morning routine that's why I work out really hard that's why I'm constantly pushing the limits of my business and doing things that quite frankly I don't want to do every single thing that I've done in my life that's worked out really well has been due to the fact that I went out of my comfort zone and finally the next thing is you want to always be intellectually curious always be curious about how things work always be in the State of Mind of hey I want to learn new things and yeah just make your brain soak up as much information as you can when you're intellectually curious like this it's going to make you see opportunity make this a priority in your life and I guarantee you you're going to have an advantage over 99 of people so I want to end this video with saying a few things and the first is that I never really had a goal of becoming a millionaire by a certain age it just started to happen and when I look back on my journey it makes sense why it happened at a relatively young age starting young I was always trying to figure out ways to make money I was always trying different things getting out of my comfort zone and seeking different opportunities so I hope that by telling my story I can inspire you guys to chase your passions live a financially successful life and yeah if you look at a graph of my growth this should really be what you expect to see if you pursue entrepreneurship now am I happier I'd say that I'm pretty much just as happy as I was a few years ago five years ago whatever as long as you're doing the things you want to do without any type of schedule imposed on you and you have enough money to pay your bills without worrying I think that is basically when your happiness is going to be at a peak and so yeah that is my story of how I became an overnight millionaire by the age of 29. I'm just a normal guy who chased my dream dreams and if you're in a boat where you're being forced to go into a certain career path that you don't really care about just know that if you do things like I did there is a way out of it and you can really design your own life don't chase the money chase the schedule Chase doing things that you want to do put out a lot of value into the world and if you do all that stuff the money and the happiness that's going to come anyways I hope you guys got some value out of this video I hope all you guys can make a similar video to this sometime in the future yeah just know that I really believe in you and I think you can do whatever you put your mind to anyways if you guys want to get some free stocks I'll leave some links down below and also if you guys want to join my exclusive Mastermind group full of entrepreneurs we'll put a link down to that below as well anyways I really really appreciate your time and if you guys enjoyed the video make sure to share with a friend and also like And subscribe for more content just like this I make a ton of videos about personal finance entrepreneurship and investing and my whole goal is to help you become financially successful and fulfilled in your life again thank you for your time I'll see you in the next video peace foreign [Music]

Channel: Charlie Chang

Views: 332,654

Keywords: how i became a millionaire, how to become a millionaire, millionaire step by step, make money online, how to make money online, how to become successful, how to make money, how to make a million dollars, charlie chang, success story, entrepreneurship, income, youtuber, how to build a business, net worth, how to be rich

Id: 3KMMtE8LPqQ

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023