How I Built My Small Business

ALWAYS FREE: Jason Graystone on Financial Independence, Investing, and Trading

• Season 2 • Episode 27

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Today’s guest is Jason Graystone, a professional investor, trader, entrepreneur, and founder of the Tiers of Freedom program. He’s the author of Always Free, shares generous education on financial freedom, wealth building, investing, trading, and creating passive income YouTube, and creates financial empowerment content on his own podcast.

I’ve been self-taught in forex trading for a while now, reading books, doing my own research, and watching videos, including some of Jason’s. So I’m especially excited for you to hear his insights today.

Jason has been featured in Forbes, speaks at live events, writes a weekly newsletter, and has made it his life’s mission to help people achieve true financial independence and live their most inspired lives.

The information in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice. Please consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to how I Built my Small Business. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, freshly back from a much-needed three-week summer reset. Today's guest is Jason Greystone, a professional investor, trader, entrepreneur and founder of the Tears of Freedom program. He's the author of Always Free shares generous trading education on YouTube and creates financial empowerment content on his own podcast. I've been self-taught in Forex trading for a while now, reading books, doing my own research and watching videos, including some of Jason's, so I'm especially excited for you to hear his insights today. Jason has been featured in Forbes, speaks at live events, writes a weekly newsletter and has made it his life's mission to help people achieve true financial independence and live their most inspired lives.

Speaker 1:

The information in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice. Please consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Before we dive in, please follow the show on your favorite podcast platform. I created this show to help listeners like you learn from the stories, experiences and wisdom of my guests. By following the show, you'll help us reach more people and make a bigger impact. Let's get started. So take us back to, like your early 20s, and tell us what you were doing before you discovered entrepreneurship and also trading.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I guess, whether it's investing, whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's trading or what have you, it's all really this kind of drive that I had to provide security in my life because subconsciouslyly I was seeking out security, because when I was a kid I grew up on a council estate with my mum and you know we had the kind of bailiffs knocking on the door for the electricity and you know all those kind of horrid memories of no stability, no security. And I guess one of the biggest turning points that kind of shifted me into all of this was I was younger than 20, I was actually 13 and um, there was two things that happened that I took into my 20s and that was one. Every Friday everyone on our estate used to moan about like money and you know my boss is this and you know money's evil type thing, and I was a little kid sort of earwigging, you know, being nosy, and what I found fascinating is they'd moan about money and then this guy called roy he used to come down and take everyone's money to do a syndicate lottery and then for the next 10 minutes they would all like their faces would light up about how amazing their life would be if they won the money. And I remember thinking this is so weird because, like they've just said, it's you know, do you like money or don't you like money? And I was. I found it confusing.

Speaker 2:

But what happened, coincidentally, that year is I really wanted this BMX bike for my, for my 14th birthday. You know, I'd leave hints all around my, my house for my mom and my stepdad, and and my mom basically said, look, I know you really want the bike, but we can't afford the bike, but we'll give you half if you can somehow raise the other half or go and do a little part-time job or something. And you know, I was looking at paper rounds and I thought I'll wash cars and um, we had this green on our estate and I washed. You know, I spent all day washing this car and um, I got five pound plus two pound tip, so seven pounds. And that night my friend was in my room and I was telling him about like I'm gonna have this bike in in no time, you know. And uh, he offered to help, um, and I didn't really want to pay him or anything. But my stepdad came in my room and said I'm going to the shop, do you need need anything and for some reason, I gave him everything I'd earned on that first day to get another bucket and another sponge. And the next day, me and my friend washed four cars and within four weeks, I had four friends washing cars.

Speaker 2:

And I wasn't washing cars, I was just knocking on the doors, doing the sales, collecting the money, and although I was getting less money for myself, I had to pay those guys. I was still getting what I wanted. You know, eventually I was going to get enough for the bike, but I I wasn't doing the stuff that I didn't enjoy and I actually had this really great appreciation for, for money and and it was like these people must not be using money the right way, they must not be investing. You know, delegation. They're not focused on things they enjoy, which is why they resent the money, and it was like I discovered fire.

Speaker 2:

I just remember thinking this is amazing. You know this, this is what I want to take into my work life and that's what I did. So when I went into my 20s. It was very much freedom of time. You know, how can I outsource, how can I delegate, how can I systemize, how can I automate, how can I get rid of all the uninspiring stuff and just focus on doing the stuff that I would do even if I wasn't being paid, essentially, and I really made a conscious effort to do that in my in my job and in my in my work.

Speaker 1:

You figured that out really young. This is probably irrelevant, but I I am just curious. Did people drop their cars off and then where did they go while they were waiting for you to clean their cars?

Speaker 2:

no, on our, on our estate, it was like blocks of flats, uh, lots of blocks of flats, and in the middle there was these triangular greens and that's where everyone parked their cars. So on each block there was, there was six blocks, so there was six greens with probably you know, 20, 25 cars on each one. So I'd just go around all the blocks and we'd do each one and then, by the time we'd done them all, we start again. So it was, it was amazing, oh my gosh that is actually really quite amazing.

Speaker 1:

Where did you learn this? So what was your education and where do you think that you learned these ideas? I mean, were they just deep within? You think that you learned these ideas? I mean, were they just deep within you or had you observed somebody else doing this?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I just I think that they say that when you're you know, before you're seven years old, you're whatever you perceive to be missing most in your life. You know the voids you shift to your highest value. You know you prioritize most in your life. So for me that was a lack of security. It was no stability, no father figure. Um, I didn't know whether it was coming or going. You know, we was in, I was in darkness because our electricity ran out, all these kind of things and, um, I think subconsciously, I just seeked out security and and in doing that I figured out that money provides security and I just naturally became this guy who was always optimizing for income and security.

Speaker 2:

And I remember the car wash. You know, some of the things that I used to say were like, you know, because I made my stepdad buy a squeegee, you know the thing that you get, like the water off of the windows, the little rubber thing. And you, yeah, and we had one of those and I'd never seen a car wash with one of those and I was, I used to use that as a selling tactic. I'd be like we've got this and other car wash washers don't have this. And you know, I don't know where that came from. I can only assume that it was just a drive to receive money. That's all I can imagine it was.

Speaker 1:

Well, we share that drive for wanting to create security and seeing that money as a tool for doing that. The way that we got there was vastly different, but you obviously didn't wash cars forever. You obviously didn't wash cars forever. So what did you do as you became an adult and started to get more of a full time job? Like, what was your experience there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I always, funnily enough, I always wanted to be a fireman and I kept applying for the fire brigade, which was very hard to get into at the time, and year after year, you know, I would get rejected at the interview stage. And in the meantime, what I was doing is I was training to be an electrician because I had my stepdad worked for electrical company and I did an apprenticeship and I thought it's a good to have a trade, because with the fire brigade you have four days on, four days off. And I thought, well, I at least I can make some money on the four days off, right, and then I can go and do the fire brigade. And by the time I got accepted into the fire brigade I was earning more money as an electrical engineer than I would have been in the fire brigade, and I was about 19, 20 at the time. But I thought, great, you know, I don't want to be electrician all my life. I don't want to be electrical engineer all my life, life, I don't want to be an electrical engineer all my life. So I had a decision to make. I was like, ok, well, I'm not going to pursue the fire brigade, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to build my own income. I'm going to become financially free. I'm going to do whatever it takes to work my way up and earn as much money as possible to become financially free.

Speaker 2:

So very quickly I started telling my boss at the time that I wasn't going to be on the tools. You know I wanted to. I wanted all the training. I wanted, you know, I would self educate. And very quickly I became the manager of that company and everyone my dad, my stepdad, everyone they were working under me to the point where it was just really limiting because the directors of that company were old, they didn't really have any motivation to grow it and I was kind of limited and capped.

Speaker 2:

And then, when I was 22, um, we found out it was going to have my first son. So I was really young and uh, and I guess that was the rocket up my backside for, for right, I have to actually do something. Now, you know, I have to actually really take this seriously. And that's when I became, you know, obsessed with growing income, really really optimizing for growth, investing my money, increasing my investments, increasing my savings, increasing my like my speculative endeavors as well, so I could kind of scale my portfolio quickly and it just really spiraled from there. It was a journey of investments. It was like I've tried everything. You know.

Speaker 2:

I went down a rabbit hole of how I can replace my income through the returns on my investments, because as soon as I found out I was going to have a kid, I felt like a failure. It was like I do not want what I had for my son, so I felt like I'd failed. I was like I'm not ready for this. So yeah, really really did put a rocket up me and yeah, just went for it. I actually quit the job. I quit the job that Christmas and I said it was back against the wall. I just said, look, I'm not coming back. I'd worked for them for like six years and I was like I'm not coming back, I'm starting on my own, and it was like let's go. I don't recommend that anyone does that.

Speaker 1:

Did you have any passive income at that point? To make that step a little bit more secure?

Speaker 2:

that point to make that step a little bit more secure. Not that I wanted to take, no, I was. I wanted to build up the portfolio so that at one point I could then just live off of the passive income or the leveraged income. But I had nothing that I could take as income at that point.

Speaker 1:

Okay, but you were trading.

Speaker 2:

No, actually I wasn't. I was investing, I was in the stock market, I was in some futures, I was doing some real estate investment, trust index funds, etfs, all these kinds of things and it was when I started the business and I was growing my income. So basically I was I built the business just to abuse it, just to pour as much money into my portfolio as possible, right, to pay myself as much as I could so that I could grow the returns and it became so stressful because I built a business and I was abusing the business, right. So, you know, we needed a new manager. But I couldn't quite afford a new manager, right, because I'm paying myself all the money, right. So with that came all this stress and um.

Speaker 2:

That's when I looked at higher speculative stuff. So I looked at online poker, I looked at options trading and I looked at financial market, like Forex trading, and after blowing around £40,000 learning to trade in the Forex market, I actually came good. It took me about 18 months to start becoming consistently profitable and then about another 18 months to find my feet. It was about three and a bit years and from that point, that's when I completely, you know, didn't need to work. So when I was about 29, that was when I was in a position where I'd completely covered my living costs by my investment returns and my trading returns.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. That is pretty early. You and I both reached financial freedom quite early. That is pretty early. You and I both reached financial freedom quite early, but you got there like 10 years before I did. So how did you learn how to trade?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So luckily I say luckily, you know, I took a couple of kind of scammy type courses. Luckily there was a guy that lived near us who had some of the. He basically came and bought some of the fish from us. We had a fish pond and he happened to be an institutional trader and he worked for a big bank in London.

Speaker 2:

And he said look, I can't tell you what to do, because retail traders can't trade the same as institutional traders, because you know, they move the market and we ride the ride, the waves that they create. It's not, we don't have this, it's not the same. So he said, look, I can't tell you how to do this, but I do. I can tell you that there are certain moves that take place at certain times of day, at certain times of week, and they're very common, and you need to go away and build some objective sets of rules around these moves that take place so that you can capitalize on them. So he explained it as best he could.

Speaker 2:

I was a complete nerd, anyway, and I was obsessed with data and tracking and building spreadsheets and I just fell in love with this process of testing these patterns that were happening in the market, and that's where it all started from. You know hours and hours, you know hundreds of hours, just testing historical data in the market and then having the confidence that this happens on average over time. And if I just trade this set of like board game instructions, I call it, I should get the same results. And that's what I did, and it took me. Took me a bloody long time, but it paid off.

Speaker 1:

Can you give us any clues as to what he said? As far as certain times of day and certain moves, like what was it that struck out most to you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So he basically said like it's the pound dollar and the euro dollar and there is a like a fear driven sell off about two to three times a week and it happens between the London session and the New York session. So it was in that crossover period between, about you know, 11am and 1pm UK time and he said those markets dip three times a week to three times a week. Your job is to go and build rules so you can capture those dips. And that was it.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing.

Speaker 2:

It sounds so simple.

Speaker 1:

What actually is, and I had mentioned to you in that email, like I've been trading currency now for just a couple of years and I focus only on the New Zealand dollar US dollar pair because I'm personally invested in that, with my husband being a Kiwi, and it is actually like very, I think it's. It's not that hard.

Speaker 2:

I know, if it's that easy, why doesn't everyone do it Right? It's the same goes for, you know, warren Buffett style of investing who's a who's a billionaire. I think trading the concept of trading is very, very simple. What makes it so difficult is you're the only person to blame for losing money and you have to look in the mirror and take full responsibility for every piece of discipline that goes into your approach to trading the markets, your approach to trading the markets. I've learned more about myself learning to trade than I've learned on any other self development program that I've ever done.

Speaker 2:

So I think for me, the important key to successful trading is just having a plan. You know, understanding historical data, doing some testing, having confidence in numbers. And when you've got that, you know you're not kept up at night. You've got reassurance in numbers. You know the ultimate thing is you have to be consistent. You have to just be consistent, and that's the same in any discipline. And when you're not consistent, you get random results, and the market is random, you know. So it's your job to really nail down consistent strategies, otherwise you're no. So it's your job to really nail down consistent strategies, otherwise you you're no different to the people go in the casino and are just having a good time playing the roulette table and the, the one arm bandits and all that, right. But you look over at the poker table, at the tournament table, it's the same players on the on the semifinal every night, right? So it's it's how you approach it that puts you in either a gambler's category or a professional category.

Speaker 1:

And to you what is an example of a consistent strategy, Like, how do you keep your emotions out of this and how do you set your your trades? Like, how do you set it so that you are confident with what you're doing?

Speaker 2:

Okay. So first of all, confidence comes from me, as I say, from from testing. So, if I was, consistency is the main, the main key. So, first of all, confidence comes from me, as I say, from testing. So, if I was, consistency is the main key. So let's just say that every morning at 8am, your strategy was to buy the US dollar right, the euro dollar, and at 9am you close it off right, and it doesn't matter if it's gone up, gone down. That's just your strategy. That's a very consistent strategy. And if you did that all year, there's going to be three outcomes You're either going to end up with more money in your bank, less money in your bank, or break even right.

Speaker 2:

And the most important thing is it's consistent. So you can look at it and go, okay, well, it's not profitable, so why isn't it profitable? Or it is profitable, profitable, or it is profitable Great. How can I make it more profitable? If it's break even, that's fantastic. You know, if you can trade something that consistently and be break even after a year, to me that is a phenomenal result, because you're way ahead of what most traders can do. Most traders lose money. So consistency is key.

Speaker 2:

And then you want to refine that strategy so that it suits your personality and your lifestyle. So your personality being, you might like to be right more than you're wrong, which means you're going to need to have a strike rate higher than 50%, meaning that you're right more than you're wrong. Some people that I know. I've got a friend called Siam who's a trader. He does a lot of crypto trading and he's happy to be wrong more than he's right because he's got a massive reward to risk profile, you know, and every time he's he wins. It's like a 10 to one or a nine to one, so he can afford to be wrong like seven times out of 10, and still make money. And he's comfortable with that, whereas I'm not. I'm not comfortable with that, so I wouldn't be able to trade that way.

Speaker 2:

So it's finding that kind of sweet spot with your personality and then trading something that suits your lifestyle. So consistency is the key. So it's no good trading like the hourly time frame if one of the setups is going to play out when you're in a meeting or doing the school run or taking the bins out or whatever right it's it's. You need to build something that you can consistently trade and it suits your personality. So when you're building a trade plan, you have to build something that you can consistently trade and it suits your personality. So when you're building a trade plan, you have to build it around you and your lifestyle, because there's thousands of ways you can make money in the Forex market. It's just patterns. It's just patterns that happen frequently and your job is to you know, build strategies around those patterns to capitalize on those moves. And that's really how simple trading is.

Speaker 1:

Well, so you've been trading now for what like 20 years or so.

Speaker 2:

About 18 years.

Speaker 1:

If you were to look back at where you were at the beginning and then you look at how you're trading today, like what is the biggest difference you see between what you were like as a beginner trader and now?

Speaker 2:

I'm just a clock in, clock out type type of guy. I see the wins and the losses just as things that take place. I'm not emotionally connected to wins or losses, it's just clock in, clock out, go through the motions and over time I produce a profit. So I'm much more longer term. I've got longer time horizons in my mind with my trading. These days it's much more well after six months am I profitable? After 12 months am I profitable? Whereas back in the day I would be really pissed off if I had a bad week you know, a negative week or you know and I have a much shorter time horizon. Now I'm like, over time, am I profitable? That's all I really care about.

Speaker 1:

And I think I saw in one of your videos that you only take about 12 trades a month.

Speaker 2:

About 12. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. What's your thinking behind that so?

Speaker 2:

when I first learned to trade, you know, back in the day I was actively seeking more activity. So I wanted more trades because I thought that more trades equals more money. But actual fact, there's no time for money correlation in trading whatsoever, because you can, depending on how you build your money management strategy and how you manage your risk. You can earn the same amount of money trading for 10 minutes a day as you can eight hours a day. It doesn't mean you're going to earn more money. So as I grew my account and earned more and more money, I reallocated and redistributed my portfolio so that most of the money was in more passive investments and my trading is the minority of my portfolio, which I do to just kind of accelerate growth, but not to the degree where it's so volatile. You know it's not affecting my overall net worth. There's no volatility there. So I'm just at a period in my life now where I just want to trade less. I want to trade the higher timeframes. I trade the daily timeframe Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I trade the four hour to the 60 at the lowest for a couple of hours every morning and that's it.

Speaker 2:

I just want to do less. And everything I create, every asset that I build, whether that's a skill or I buy an asset or I build a business. I want to do less, so I want to make the most money with the less time, exactly like I did on the car wash Right. So it's like how can I optimize this for maximum time and maximum money? Uh, but I'm happy to, I'm happy to sacrifice a bit of money for more time, because that's really all I'm doing any of it for. So, as my account grew, I'm fortunate now where I can take a couple of trades, and it'll be, you know, 6,000, 12,000 pounds, and I might get 15,000, 16,000 pounds a month, or 20,000 pounds a month just on my trading, for three or four trades or 12 trades. So I just don't need to trade that much. That's. That's really the long answer.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, and that actually gets to more of just a personal question I'm curious about because I think about it for myself constantly which is just you know what, to you, is the exact life that you want to live? I mean, you obviously have the money that you need so you can live whatever the life is that you want to live. So what is that life?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this life I'm living now. I always say like if I lived every day for the rest of my days, like today, I'd be very, very happy. I don't have any goals, I don't have any aspirations, I don't have anything. I just I believe that the goal is to have no goals, like the goal is just to live a life that you're happy to wake up and live and then, just as a byproduct of that, you achieve certain things, you hit certain milestones. You will just naturally grow in life, but it's not striving and hustling for something. I'm not at that stage anymore. I don't need to do that anymore.

Speaker 2:

And I think it's really important to know when you are content, because I spent a lot of time in Dubai, you know, in 2023, I went to Dubai. I was on a yacht with a few billionaires and I was sitting there and they were just, they were just moaning and, you know, bitching about all their staff in their businesses and we got, we got to get to this next level of growth. And some guy was like 50 million, that's what we've got to get to. And I was like, why 50 million? And he was like, well, it's just like the next level, like it's the next round number and I thought you're going to have to sacrifice so much to hit that. And it just turns out that you just want to hit it for like to prove some X wrong or some old boss wrong or something, and it's like someone else's mental thoughts are controlling your life and that is slavery Like you are a slave to whatever that goal is. That is not truly what you want.

Speaker 2:

And I felt like the most successful person there. I just felt like I was. I was enjoying the scenery and enjoying the moment. I was very present and, um, when is enough enough? You know, a lot of people constantly sacrifice today's happiness for tomorrow's profit and tomorrow never seems to come. And, uh, you know, if you don't have an ideal life in your mind where you will be content, how are you gonna sit there on the day that you achieve that and and be grateful for it? You'll just keep hustling, keep going, hamster wheel, hamster wheel and, before you know it, your life's gone.

Speaker 1:

It's like you think, oh, if I just had a million, and then you get the million. Oh, if I just had five million, you get the. You know, it's like that's it. When does it stop? But I feel like America is extra hard with this because it feels like if you're not climbing, then I don't know you're doing a disservice to yourself or something, or to society. There's some sort of cultural expectation here that, like you're always going to be climbing financially and I don't know it's a hard one to turn off.

Speaker 2:

I always think, like when you were seven years old, you know what was you doing? Probably like having an ice cream, playing with your friends, playing football, playing on the bike or skateboard or whatever, and you had all the freedom in the world. Like you was doing things that were truly inspiring to you. But then when your mum and dad called you in and like you gotta come in for dinner now, you gotta go get showered for bed and go to bed, it was like, oh, you know, when I'm an adult, no one's going to tell me what to do, I'm gonna have all the freedom in the world, right. And then when you watch adults become adults, they become less and less free and they move further and further away from who they were at seven.

Speaker 2:

And there was a time when I was in the us and I went to florida and we went, went to Disney and we rocked up to the ticket uh, the ticket thing and there was this old guy working there, you know, loving his job. He was about 70 years old and he stamped our ticket and he said go and be a kid again. And and I remember thinking that is all anyone wants. Everyone just wants to have the freedom that they had as a kid, at that innocence, that that blank canvas.

Speaker 2:

You know the, the, the free from the mental freedom to do what you want when you want, and and to me, that is the state that you want to get to. That's the state that you want to get to, and know when you're there, and don't chase things that are important to everyone else and don't look up to people on Instagram and don't look. You know, have a set of goals that are truly yours and and be congruent to who you are and build a life that suits your values. And don't try and please and appease everyone else because we just don't have time. We've got 8090 years total. So, yeah, that's how. That's how I look at it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I feel like this is more than just finances though I mean money is a piece of it because it affords you the time to be able to explore more of that inner deep work. But I see the title of your book Always Free like to always be free in your day to day life. I mean that changes right. Like if you were to ask me today how I feel and then ask me again in three months and then six months. Like I might feel free today but then in three months time I'm being influenced by these external sort of validations that like I don't want to care about but I am caring about in that moment absolutely, absolutely so to me.

Speaker 2:

Always free, you're very right, you know, financial freedom is just is one piece of the puzzle. But always free to me is about being free in mind, movement and money. So being able to have that mental freedom is the most important. That's, that's knowing who you are, not carrying any kind of memory baggage from the past that's going to hinder you or stop you from seeing opportunity or going after what you truly want in life. Knowing who you are, knowing your purpose in life and just being content with who you are, without having to live in someone else's expectation or some social idealisms. Mental freedom is the key. If you're not mentally free, you'll never be free, you'll never have any feeling of freedom, and I'll give you, I'll just prove that point. I know people that were born into wealth. You know they've. They've born, they got all the money to do whatever they want, wherever they want. So they've got the financial freedom and they've got the mobility freedom, but they have no idea who they are and that is depressing to them. You know they live a life of depression and they seek drugs and escapisms to really perk them up because they have no purpose, no drive, they feel empty. So the mental freedoms the most important in my opinion. And then, once you know who you are and you're not kind of swayed by anyone, you can then build a vocation, build an income as an extension of your values, right? So doing what you want to do wherever you want to do it, and monetizing that so it doesn't feel like a job. And the beauty of the world we live in today is you can monetize anything. I don't think anyone can argue against that anymore.

Speaker 2:

When COVID hit, you know, a lot of people were locked inside their houses, but there's a report that says people felt freer. And they felt freer because they were mobile. Basically, a switch had gone off in their head that proved to them that they could do their job from home or they could do their job from anywhere, because if you can do it from home, you can do it from anywhere. And people felt freer because they could structure their day how they want. No one was looking over their neck. They could prioritize the things that were important to them.

Speaker 2:

They were being paid passive income through means of a furlough check or a bounce back loan or a, you know, stimulus check or whatever it was, and they felt like they were more free and then, when they were asked whether they would like to go back to the office or work from home continued after COVID, but accept a lower pay packet 56% of people said they would accept a lower pay packet. So that says to me that the majority marginally the majority of people would be happy to accept less money for more freedom, and that kind of just proves the importance of mobility freedom. So mental freedom, mobility freedom are the two important ones, and then financial freedom is achieved just from assets. You buy or build assets and they pay you regardless of time and space.

Speaker 1:

How would you describe then like who are you Like? What is your purpose? What do you do every day?

Speaker 2:

So that's a great question. I love to spend time with my family. I love to read and educate myself. I love to share. I love to educate people. I love to read and educate myself. I love to share. I love to educate people. I love to play music. I'm a musician. I love to go to the gym and be healthy. I love to spend time with my wife and do walking, and we go to the mountains and and that's really it. You know that that's it, but I've built my life now so that I do that every day. You know, I essentially read, educate myself, I share that stuff online or on YouTube or wherever, or through my book, and then I spend the rest of my life just with my family doing the things you know, like my hobbies or music.

Speaker 2:

The question is you know, how do you figure out who you are? And A great exercise you can do is actually if you just go into your phone and look at your camera, roll and scroll through the years of things that you chose to take photos of, and there'll be a common theme. Okay, so imagine when you take a photo. That is your inspiration, that's your choice, you have pulled the camera out because you've been excited to take a photo of something. So when you think about that actual act, that is your true inspiration there, right there. And when you scroll through all the years, you'll see that there'll be a common theme. It'll either be like animals, or the mountains, or your children, or whatever music, right, fitness and there'll be a common theme there. And when you combine that with questions like you know, if I was to ring your friend and ask them what are you the go-to person for? You know what would they ring you for? Because you're most reliable in this particular thing. They would come up with an answer, and you probably know what that answer is. What do you spend most of your disposable income on? What would you do on Monday morning if you didn't need money? What would be the first thing you did on Monday morning? And when you combine all of the answers to these things and the mobile phone going through your camera roll, you'll see a pattern, and that pattern will be closely correlated to who you truly are as a person, as a seven-year-old, right as that kid that just has got no financial worries. It's something that you just are naturally inspired to do. Just has got no financial worries. It's something that you just are naturally inspired to do, and whether you've excelled at it or had massive achievement in it, it's because you're the go-to person for that, because you've achieved it.

Speaker 2:

And when you achieve something like that, it's usually because you've had the drive and determination to achieve it, to talk about it to that degree. So for my wife it's animals. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that she is the go-to person for animals. You know she'll take a worm out of the road to put it in the hedge to save it getting run over. You know there's no doubt that she is like meant to be on this earth to do something with animals and to cut through animals. So great exercise. You know, if you really want to get in touch with who you are, just ask yourself those questions and go for your camera, roll and you'll see. You'll see, and then you can monetize that. You can monetize anything.

Speaker 1:

That is so it's so interesting and it's a lot of the work that I feel like people our age I think you and I are literally the same age, right, so I wonder if there's a part of that. That is also this sort of chapter of our lives where, you know, the 20s was a bit of the hustle and the grind and the 30s was a little bit more of the digging the roots in, and then the 40s is maybe more of the reflection on, like who you are on the inside.

Speaker 2:

Definitely, definitely, definitely gratitude in my 40s.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so we know that financial independence is really a part of the puzzle. What is your view on financial independence for the everyday person?

Speaker 2:

I mean, the approach is pretty simple. It's like if you want to lose weight, you just burn more calories than you consume and, with financial independence, you basically spend less than you earn and then you invest the surplus into assets and you will become financially independent just doing that right. So it's a very simple concept. Like we explained with with trading. It's very simple.

Speaker 2:

The reason a lot of people don't do it is because they want to get rich quick, and the reason they want to get rich quick most people is because they are chasing escapism. They're not happy and content doing what they're doing right now, and that's where you've gone wrong. It's like you took advice and strategies from people that weren't truly aligned to who you are as a person, and now you thought you'd end up here. But you're here and you're not on that path anymore. So every decision you've made in your life, for whatever reason, you saw more benefits than drawbacks to ending up where you are right now. Your job is to get back to where you should be, and the way you do that is to figure out who you really are and start to unpack what we've just spoken about. You know how to do that.

Speaker 1:

So financial freedom is spend less than you earn, invest the rest into um and you'll get there. So if you were I mean this might be a little bit hard for you to imagine or envision, but let's just say that you're back to square one and you're living check to check today what would you do?

Speaker 2:

Um, that's a great question. So you know, we're the only people that believe in money humans. So there's only one way to get money and that is to get another human being to give it to you. That's it. That's the only way we get money. And there's two ways to get money from another human being apart from robbing them. There's two ways you either serve them and you provide value to them and they give you the money as fair exchange, or you beat them at a skill, like in a competitive environment, like trading, like boxing, golf, poker, right, where you've agreed to participate and there's going to be a winner and a loser, and they give you the money.

Speaker 2:

It's much easier to do the service thing. You know, it's really a lot easier to serve someone, see a problem, see something that someone's struggling with, and figure out a package, a solution to help them get from A to B, and then go and serve them with it. And with the platforms we've got today, it is phenomenal. You've got your own TV channel, your own radio station, your own like newspaper and you can go and build an audience and serve that audience globally with very little friction, for very little money, and it's just a phenomenal time to be alive in terms of how you can serve people. So that's what I would do.

Speaker 2:

I would go and figure out what I've achieved, what I've overcome I've played a guitar, I can swim, I can drive, I've got a successful marriage, you know all of my achievements and accolades and then I would figure out what I would be inspired to actually help other people with. And that won't be driving, because I hate driving. I probably won't have the patience to teach people guitar. You know, I I like business, so I could teach people business, I could teach people how to get in shape, and then I would just go and find people that have got those problems and I would and I would work on serving them. And then, when I get paid, I would put 10% into investments every single time and then I would increase that by 10% every three months and I would that would be the driver to go and serve more and more people.

Speaker 1:

I think people just have to choose to do that with their time beyond work, because a lot of people say they don't want to do that hustle lifestyle.

Speaker 2:

I tell you what if you struggle with starting something on the side, do a time study. Do a 168-hour time study across the week. Half of that you'll be asleep, but every hour just set an alarm on your phone, write down what you was doing for that last hour and after that week you will have a slap in the face bit of data that tells you how you spent your time. A week, right, and now you can probably three hours scrolling TikTok or something that will show up on there and then you will start to prioritize. Okay, you know I need to delegate that, I need to get rid of that, I need to stop doing that, and that's and you'll find these blocks of time that you can start working on something that you're actually inspired by and you'll start to get energized by it. You know you'll start to come alive when you're building something that's really important to you.

Speaker 1:

Yep, the truth hurts for anybody that's listening in. You know, I think we all waste a little bit too much time on our phones, yeah, so can you give us a little bit of a peek into your multiple income streams now? So there's obviously you trade, you've got your business, which I think is like an education system, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we've got. You know, over the years I started off doing everything for free and over the years there was a kind of demand to serve many people that I didn't want to serve, one to one or so I had to create products and services to help them. And and the reason I went into that in the first place is because there was a period of time where I was just at home trading, and it was. There was about an 18 month period where I was just on my own at home. Everyone was, you know, my kids were at school, wife was out with family or whatever, friends were all at work and I just felt like I didn't have any meaning. You know, I felt like I was lacking fulfillment. So I started sharing what I'd learned and I found that really fulfilling.

Speaker 2:

And we built these educational programs. There's finance programs, there's investing programs and trading programs and my youtube channel. You know there's a massive free resource there. We've got about half a million subscribers on there and it's just phenomenal, right. So YouTube is an income stream. The educational programs is an income stream. Then we've got, like all of my index funds, my stock portfolio. I'm an angel investor, so I invest in tech startups, which I've got three or four of right now Royalties, partnerships, consultancy, you name it. So it's diverse, it's sustainable and, yes, the magic is when you do become in a position where you are free to do what you want and the energy that goes into anything that you create is I don't need money. It's almost impossible to not earn more money. It really is.

Speaker 2:

I'll give an example. There was a video that I put out on YouTube. It was two and a half hours long and the energy that went into that video was how can I create something where no one will have any questions? You know, no one will ever need me, ever again. And that was the question that I asked myself when I created this video. We put the video out two and a half hours long. At the end of it, I say something like look, you don't need me anymore. I get that.

Speaker 2:

It's all about implementation and you still might want your hand holding. We've got this like 300 pound thing. It's a 30-day challenge. If you need that, you can be put in a group and it's really really cheap. And within three months, 1.6 million people would watch that video and 0.04% of the people bought that 30 day challenge, which was 5,550 people, which was about 1.6 million dollars, and I was like what the hell is happening? You know, I've just the more you give away, the more money you earn. It's it's absolutely crazy, and no doubt you know that's what happened with the book. I'm now going to get someone to spend six hours with me on a beach reading this book, or six hours in bed reading this book, right, and they will start to build a level of trust with me that they think only I can help them. You know they won't look at anyone else and you become the only person they want to work with, and that is it's a phenomenon, but that's how it works, and the more you give out, the more you receive, for sure.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's definitely something that I really admire about the work that I see you putting out there is, it feels, very authentic.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

It feels like you're doing it for the people who are watching or listening, and that intention is very clear.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. That means a lot for you to say that.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's true, it's, it's in. This is all you I mean. Sure, I'm complimenting what you're doing, but it's you're the one that's doing it. So, behind the scenes though, as a YouTuber like, what does it take to maintain your channel and to create your YouTube videos?

Speaker 2:

Well, we've built a very, very efficient workflow over the years and we've now built this studio. So this studio that you're seeing right now, which we've got a whole studio here now, where we have a workflow that requires very little editing. We've got a system where we can just create videos, put them out same day, no editing, and uh, yeah, we've spent years refining that. But now again it's like the car wash right. It's like how can we do this without it taking any time? And that's all we focused on. It's like, when you value your time more than money, you end up with plenty of both. We, we come up with ideas for videos and we do that on a weekly basis, and then we'll bullet point some ideas around that and then it's just go time. Yeah, I like to do stuff off the cuff. It's very much like press play let's go, record done, upload, job done, and it doesn't take much time at all, believe it or not.

Speaker 1:

That is amazing. I just have a couple more questions for you, and the first one is just favorite books.

Speaker 2:

One of the best books I've ever read is a book called the Values Factor by Dr John Demartini, and that is very much around knowing yourself, knowing who you are, living a life by your standards, your values, and Dr John Demartini actually wrote the foreword for my book. He's a phenomenal mentor of mine and I love him dearly, so I definitely recommend that book. And then, well, there's so many other great books I love Principles by Ray Dalio. I think Life Principles there by Ray Dalio is something that that's one of those books that you don't really read, you just revise, and you know I could spend a month just reflecting on principle one you know and really understanding that at a deep level I think will enable you to have a great life.

Speaker 1:

That's great. I'm definitely going to be ordering those as soon as we get off of here. A great life that's great. I'm definitely going to be ordering those as soon as we get off of here. And then, just as a last question, if you could go back and talk with your younger self, what life wisdom would you give yourself?

Speaker 2:

Stay seven years old, every day, until you die.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, jason, thanks so much for coming on and chatting. It's been so good to get to know you and to hear a little bit more behind, just like who you are and why you do what you do. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

It's been so good to get to know you and to hear a little bit more behind, just like who you are and why you do what you do. Thank you so much. It's been such a great conversation.

Speaker 1:

Today's key takeaways. Before we chase the next big thing, it's worth pausing to ask who am I really? Figure out who you really are. Look at the themes in your photos, what friends seek your advice on, how you spend extra money and what you'd do if you didn't have to work. That's probably a truer reflection of you than any job title. Often the things we felt were missing before we turned seven shape our deepest values today. Reconnect with the version of you that was inspired, limitless and certain you could do anything. Ask yourself what can you outsource, delegate, systemize or automate so that you can spend more time doing the things you'd happily do, even if nobody paid? You? Try tracking your time for one week, hour by hour, and you'll likely find both waste and opportunity hiding in plain sight.

Speaker 1:

Financial freedom starts with a simple principle Spend less than you earn and invest the rest. There's a whole world of beginner-friendly options like index funds, etfs and REITs, and more advanced paths like options or Forex trading, if you're ready to put in the learning time. Whatever you choose, the important key to successful trading is having a plan and being consistent and disciplined. How you approach investing either puts you into a gambling category or a professional one. If your current role caps your growth or income, recognize it and explore other opportunities. Keep learning, keep building skills and look for ways to replace your active income with returns from your investments over time. But know when enough is enough. Don't sacrifice every today for a tomorrow that never comes.

Speaker 1:

True freedom means having clarity of mind, movement and money, being content with who you are and free from other people's expectations of what success should look like. Value your time more than money, and you may end up with plenty of both. Keep learning and keep serving meaning. Hone your skills so that you can excel in your craft and help others along the way. Notice the problems around you, create solutions and offer them generously. The more value you share, the more comes back to you, and often in unexpected ways and through it all. Remember that financial freedom isn't about getting rich quick. It's about knowing yourself making smart choices with your time and resources. It's about knowing yourself making smart choices with your time and resources and building a life you're happy to wake up and live. That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day. That's really good.

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Anne McGinty

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