3 Tips to Becoming a Millionaire in Your 20s

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this new series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

CapForge Founder and Owner Matt Remuzzi reacts to business advice being shared on the internet. In this video, he reacts to advice on how to become a millionaire in your 20s. 

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video:

If I were starting over in my twenties and wanted to make $1 million in the next 1 to 2 years, here are the three things I would do immediately. Number one, I would buy an existing business with owner financing and I would implement modern marketing and automation tactics. And yes, this is doable with little to no money. Start by going to bizbuysell or loopnet.com. Number two, I would leverage any credit or borrowing opportunities I had and I would go all in on crypto research and trading. There’s huge opportunity in crypto right now, especially if you’re following new coin launches, pro tip, become an expert airdrop hunter. There’s just huge potential here. Number three, I would immerse myself in AI and become an expert in the field from there. I would launch and test AI-generated art digital products or educational-based AI talking head content. Once I got some traction, I would work endlessly to maximize my eyeballs and revenue and engage with associated influencers to help. 

Matt’s Reaction: 

So three tips to become a millionaire in a year or two in your 20s. I’m not sure about that. First of all, I think the goal of just trying to be a millionaire is probably not the best way to motivate yourself, because if you’re just driven by money, you’re probably not going to have the ability to sustain through the times that are hard to get through to the times where things are good. Well, let’s take at the tips one at a time here. 

So, first tip was buy an existing business, 100%. Buying an existing business can be a great way to accelerate your wealth-building if that’s the goal. He says, go to bizbuysell. Yes, there are tons of businesses listed there, as well as lots of other places you can find businesses listed for sale. Then he says, buy one with owner financing with little or no money down. Okay. That’s where he lost me. In having been involved in hundreds of transactions over the years, I know of exactly one where owner financing covered 90% of the cost. So owner financing is basically somebody wants to sell their business for a million dollars, but they’re willing to let you buy it for just 100,000. And the other 900,000, they’ll let you pay them over time out of the money that the business makes. This is exceedingly rare. If you had a business worth a million dollars, would you let somebody take it over for a small down payment or no down payment and just pay you later? Why would you? Why would you put your faith in that? Why would you give up the million dollars today that another buyer would be happy to pay you to give it to somebody who said, “Hey, I’m young and I want to be a millionaire, and I don’t have any money, but let me take over this valuable asset that you spent all these years building, and I’ll just pay you later?” It doesn’t happen. It’s very, very rare. Only in cases where you’ve maybe been an employee at a business, you’ve built up a personal relationship with the owner over years. He knows you, he trusts you, and he decides he doesn’t have maybe a family member to give it to, and he doesn’t need to cash out, and he’s probably going to stick around but not work full time. That’s the kind of situation, very rare, where somebody would say, “Look, I’ll let you buy this out for me over time by running the business. You run it. I’ll be around in the background. Maybe I’ll take some vacations. I’ll check in, see how you’re doing. But because I know you and trust you, I might be willing to enter in a relationship like that”. But you’re not going to find any good, valuable cash-flowing positive business on bizbuysell, where a random owner is going to say to a random person, yeah, sure, you can buy this with little or no down. I’ll trust you. Pay me later. So looking for that is just a huge huge waste of time. It’s a stupid tip. Now, if you don’t have money of your own, you may be able to pool together some money. Maybe you have a rich uncle or some friends that will support you for the down payment, and then you use an SBA loan to buy the rest of the business. That’s a possibility. But if you’re young and broke, buying an existing business for no cash down or little cash down is not anything I would waste my time on.

His second tip was crypto. Yes, some people have made money on crypto. A lot of people have lost money on crypto. Just ask Matt Damon how that worked out for him or Tom Brady or any of those other guys who were all promoting crypto just a year or two ago during the Super Bowl, and that just fell flat. Crypto is an asset that is stored on a computer somewhere. It has no tangible value. Right. Gold is just a lump of metal that people will pay you a lot of money for. But push came to shove and things went south. You can’t eat gold. You can’t really wear gold in any meaningful way. What do you do with it? It doesn’t have a whole lot of value. Well, crypto is like that, except even less worthless – or more – less tangible, more worthless. It’s just bits and bytes on a computer. So, yes, you could spend a lot of time getting involved in crypto, but I think unless you’re one of the insiders and ask Sam Bankman Friedman, or whatever his name is, how being an insider in crypto works out for you. I would not spend time or effort on that effort. I don’t think that’s going to lead to a lot of wealth, in my opinion. 

His last tip, I was with him on yes, learn AI. AI is obviously a hot topic. It’s a field with huge growth, and if you become somebody who knows how AI works and how it can be implemented in business to solve problems and do things that other people don’t understand yet or don’t have the time to learn, you absolutely could make money there. Being an AI consultant, AI product developer, or what have you, getting involved, becoming an expert in that industry because it’s so new, it won’t take you that long to learn more than most people and there is a huge amount of opportunity there and it’s a hot topic and people are always willing to invest in the next hot thing. I think some of his ideas as far as what to do with AI are off-base. Again, you want to create a solution that’s better than existing solutions that may leverage AI. So learning AI is good. How you actually execute on starting a business with AI is a little less clear from this video. But I would say skip the trying to buy a business with no money down or little money down. That’s not going to happen. Definitely skip the crypto. That is also a poor use of time in my opinion. If you do have an interest in learning AI, then that may be a worthwhile place to spend some time and then think about how you can use AI in a business. He mentioned art and talking head content and things like that. I would skip past that. Look for businesses that have problems that can be solved by AI that would be happy to pay for that solution and now you potentially have something good.