Excuse me sir, is this your lamborghini?
Yeah, and what do you do for living out here in dubai to be able to afford a lamborghini?
I run a blockchain company.
You run a blockchain company?
I sure do.
What was the most amount of money you made in a single year?
12 million dollars many, many millions of dollars.
Could you give me a raise over 50?
Over 50 bill last year was 100 million.
You made 100 million dollars last year.
Is that for yourself or the business?
That's for myself?
Are you serious?
How old were you when you became a millionaire?
I'm not a millionaire no No, I own a billion dollar company.
You own a billion dollar company?
Yeah.
What type of business?
I run a bunch of tech companies.
What is your network?
300 million.
300 million dollars?
Yeah.
How can somebody become a billionaire in 2025?
I think...
Guys, I'm back in one of the wealthiest cities in the entire world.
I'm in Dubai and today I'm going to be going all over the wealthiest areas in Dubai to find and ask billionaires and the most successful business owners in the entire city how they created their wealth and the blueprints to building multi-million dollar and multi-billion dollar businesses in today's world.
So with that being said, let's get this video on the way.
Excuse me, sir.
Is this your Lamborghini?
Yeah.
And what do you do for living out here in Dubai to be able to afford a Lamborghini?
Money business.
You're in the money business?
Are you in finance?
Yeah, we're in finance.
Yeah?
Are you a business owner?
Yeah.
How long have you been an entrepreneur?
It's been about eight years now.
Eight years.
Eight years now, but what's this for?
I go all over the world interviewing the most successful business owners for the younger generation.
Could I get one quick minute with you for the channel real quick?
Yeah, for sure.
Is that okay?
Over these eight years, what was the most amount of money that you made in a single year?
Last year we did about $12 million turnover.
$12 million.
Do you come from a lot of money?
No, I don't.
I don't.
I don't come from a lot of money.
We were actually, eight years ago, we couldn't pay rent and our rent was $1,300, right?
And I vote to myself that I'm never coming to that point again.
So you were broke.
I was broke.
I was bro.
We had to sell our wedding jewelry to pay rent, bro.
So it was a hard time.
Yeah, it was a very hard time.
So what was that turning point to financial freedom?
I think the biggest point was me.
I never finished school, so i was always the black sheep of the family, right.
So i think it was in me, like this fire to prove people wrong, that without having a degree, you can still do a lot of things that you ever wanted.
And now if you look at a lot of, like you know, multi-millionaires in the world, most of them they never graduated, They just hustled and they made it.
As an eight-figure entrepreneur, what was the best financial advice that you ever received?
Always have full control over the money.
If you don't have full control over the money, you don't have anything.
I know a lot of guys who start a business.
They have no control over the money and they get screwed up later on by their operators or whatever.
So obviously I have full control over the money, know where it's going, know where it's coming from, and you're gonna be wildly successful at that.
Are you a good salesman?
I'm a great salesman.
Give me a masterclass on sales right here.
Give me your best sales advice right here to somebody that sucks at sales and business.
Okay, so I used to do door-to-door sales, right?
And we used to get rejections all the time.
So our whole hint was that we have to knock on 100 doors and every rejection we get is a lesson for the yes we're gonna have.
Every time someone says no, they're saying no because now you got to learn from that no and see okay, where you can get a yes at the next time.
What does it take to get a yes, though?
How can somebody get the yes faster?
Are you in Dubai?
Yes.
You're in Dubai.
Awesome.
Do you like the weather here in Dubai?
You like the vibe here in Dubai?
I love the vibe.
Would you like to own a property here in Dubai one day?
I think so.
You think so, right?
So you get the yes, yes, yes.
And if there's a thing, you can easily turn that I think so, maybe to a yes.
So you've got to ask a lot of questions.
You've got to ask a lot of yes questions, not a lot of no questions.
The more you say yes yes, yes.
There's a high probability at the fourth or fifth time when I do the ask, you're going to say yes.
Ambitious tale, pros ask.
Exactly, that's it.
That's it.
So what separates middle class from wealthy people in today's world?
So let me tell you this.
When we couldn't pay rent, our rent was $1,300.
We had no Netflix subscription.
We had no Spotify.
We had no subscriptions at all, right?
Because we knew that, okay, money's tight.
We're starting a business.
We got to make it somehow.
We had no subscription.
What nine to five does is they'll get the money.
They'll buy this.
They'll buy that.
They'll get a subscription, they'll get cards debt whatever, right.
But my mindset was no okay, you know what i have to save save save, invest and once we reach a certain threshold, then we can get something to reward ourselves.
Up until now bro, i have no youtube premium, nothing.
I'd rather sit and watch ads to save money.
You know that's how you get rich by saving money.
Your last message to somebody trying to become a multi-millionaire in 2025 man, if you have an idea, execute on that idea.
Whatever idea.
That is no matter what people tell you.
That's a idea, you got to execute on it.
Because here's the thing when you're going to have a business idea and you're going to tell someone about it who has no business concept, they will always tell you it's risky, this can happen, that can happen blah blah, blah.
But when you bring that idea to someone who actually has a business, they will tell you bro, go for that business, start that shit right now.
Because here's the thing if you're a fit guy, you're going to tell people to stay fit, right.
If you're into business, you're going to tell everyone to start a business.
That's what it is like.
It depends on who you get your advice from, not from who's able to give you advice.
You got amazing advice, my friend.
Yeah, thank you so much for your time and i appreciate your name again, James.
James Roger.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
So I'm at a valley outside of one of the wealthiest hotels in all of Dubai.
My guy gets out of the Lamborghini years and he's holding like $2 million worth of germs on him.
Guys.
That's like half a million dollars in American cash.
But I want to put this in perspective because, like he said, a couple years ago he could barely pay his rent.
It was a thousand dollars and now he's making over 10 million dollars a year.
So it just goes to show what can happen.
If you sacrifice for a few years and get in the right industry, the right money making vehicle, just like him and you yourself can build a multi-million dollar business.
Great interview out here in Dubai.
We got to keep this video rolling and go get this next one.
Come on, excuse me sir sir, question for you how old were you when you became a millionaire?
I'm not a millionaire no No, I own a billion dollar company.
You own a billion dollar company?
Yeah.
What type of business?
A blockchain.
How long have you been a business owner?
17 years now.
I started when I was 16, now I'm 34, so 17, 18 years actually.
Yeah?
And I go all over the world interviewing billionaires and the most successful people.
Could I get one quick minute with you real quick for the channel?
Sure.
How long did it take you to build a billion dollar company?
It started in April of 2021.
And in the first 11 months, we raised a little more than $100 million.
And the valuation was $1.5 billion.
So it took us actually roughly 11 months to be precise to become $1 billion.
Less than a year?
Yeah, less than a year.
That's crazy.
So do you think somebody can get rich quick in today's world?
I think it's very easy if you, A, focus on being at the right place and at the right time.
And with the right place, I don't only mean location.
I also mean the industry to choose it.
So if I were to choose an industry in the 1990s, late 1990s, I would choose the internet.
If I were to choose in 2010s, I would choose the social media.
And if you were to ask me, which industry would I choose now?
Either I would choose AI, or I would choose blockchain or Web3.
You come from a lot of money.
No, I was broke.
So basically, you know, I came from a very humble family.
Starbucks coffee at one point in time, when I was 18, was luxury for me, you know, because I was born in Delhi.
It was luxury.
So I didn't have any money.
But I think that's my biggest advantage because when you come from nothing, you can only go up.
You cannot go down.
The sky's the limit.
The sky's the limit.
I think it's actually good to be broke when you're starting up, you know, because you realize the importance of money.
Even when you make a lot of money, you don't spend that much money because you know the importance of money.
What's the lesson about money that banks don't want people to know?
They want you to invest in fixed deposit, but you shouldn't.
Why?
Because that makes banks more money.
Banks make money on your money.
That's how banks get richer.
And that's how the rich keep getting richer, poor keep getting poorer.
And that's why I like blockchain, and that's why I like crypto.
Because when you invest, it's your own money turning into double triple, four times and you're multiplying your own money.
You know, if i'm sending you money today in crypto, the transaction cost is about a dollar.
Even if i send you 10 million dollars, i spend a dollar.
We send 10 million dollars in banking spend a lot of money.
Yeah, you brought up how the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
How can somebody escape that cycle of poverty?
That's why i'm saying get into web 3, because web 3 is the way to go.
If you get into it, you're escaping the cycle, because that's the only place where poor people are turning into middle class middle class, turning into upper middle class, upper middle class, turning into rich people and getting wealthy and wealthy.
So this cycle, I've seen it in the last seven years.
I know my friends who were broke until 2020.
2021 bull run, they became millionaires.
2025 bull run, they'll become billionaires, you know?
And 2025 is gonna be the biggest bull run crypto will ever see.
So you like crypto more than real estate?
I love crypto because it's liquid.
Real estate's not liquid.
If you own a property for, say, $15 million to find a buyer, it'll take you a lot of time.
If you own $15 million in crypto, one minute, you have your money out.
That was money right there, bro.
That was excellent.
That was an incredible interview.
He built a billion dollar company in 11 months.
But one of the biggest reasons why he was able to scale so quickly was because he raised over a hundred million dollars from investors.
But I want to go even deeper, because the only way he was able to raise that kind of money in that amount of time was how effective and efficient his communication was when reaching out to investors.
And that reminded me how much of a game changer Grammarly has been for myself and my business.
And Grammarly isn't just a spelling or grammar tool.
It's an AI writing partner that works seamlessly with your everyday apps to help you write better and faster.
For example, when I'm reaching out to the biggest companies in the world and the biggest entrepreneurs to do interviews, Grammarly helps me craft the most professional and perfect messages to send to these people and help me close these interviews.
Rambly is so good because it ensures my tone matches the exact person I'm reaching out to, whether I'm trying to be formal or even just building rapport.
Plus, it saves me so much time by speeding up my edits and cutting down on rewrites with just a few clicks.
And the best part, all the features I'm talking about are completely free.
You can sign up and download Grammarly for free using my link grammarlycom.
Slash hard knocks or go down to the link in the description of this video or in the pinned comment.
So if you want to take your communication to the next level whether you're running a business or just starting out Grammarly has you covered.
But with that being said, let's get this next interview.
Excuse me, sir.
Sir, have you ever been broke before?
Many times.
Yeah?
And what line of business did you end up in?
I'm in tech in D.C.
Venture capital?
Venture capital.
Are you a business owner?
I run a bunch of tech companies, yeah.
Yeah?
How long have you been an entrepreneur?
17 years.
17 years?
And over these 17 years, across all these companies, what was the most amount of money that you made in a single year?
Many, many millions of dollars.
Could you give me a range?
Over 50.
Over 50, Bill?
And I go all over the world interviewing the most successful entrepreneurs.
Can I get one quick minute with you for the channel real quick?
Sure.
So who's the richest person that you've ever met?
I've met several billionaires.
One of them lives permanently in Monaco at the Four Seasons Hotel.
He's from India and he runs a bunch of things in the tech space as well and a bunch of other non-tech related stuff in real estate.
So what have you learned from networking with billionaires?
Don't talk about work.
What do you mean?
Don't talk about work.
You want to talk to billionaires?
Get to know them personally.
Because you know why?
Everybody has no idea how to talk to billionaires.
But at the end of the day, they're just people too.
So make friends.
Be a non-transactional person.
I want to talk to you.
I want to get to know you.
I want to get to know you.
And I want to understand who you are as a person first.
Then we can be friends.
Then maybe we can do business together.
That's it.
Start humanizing the relationships first.
And then, once you create a human to human relationship with the wealthiest people, they'll take you everywhere.
People go into conversations with a desire to achieve an outcome.
And that often gets in the way of you getting to know people.
But the reality is, the best businesses that have ever been built have come out of a conversation that had nothing to do with business.
It had something to do with.
Hey, we have a shared desire of being at this conference, or being at this event, or being at this party.
And then now we have a shared common affinity towards something.
Okay, you look like a cool person.
I'm a cool person.
I think we align on values.
Let's go and build together.
What does that mean?
Who cares?
The worst ideas executed well are going to outperform the best ideas executed poorly.
Do you know the guy that invented the Snuggie?
Do you know what I'm talking about?
The blanket with the sleeves?
$100 million in sales.
It's a blanket with sleeves.
Terrible idea executed well will always trump a great idea executed poorly.
Full stop.
Were you a good salesman, it's the best.
No, i never started off that way, but you have to develop those rooms.
I'm a computer science grad.
I've been programming my entire life, so my life has actually been behind a computer screen.
But here's the other really important tip life is too damn short to be shy, way too damn short to be shy, and so most programmers, the geeks in us, they're all people that are traditionally pretty introverted, that like to be behind closed doors or behind screens.
That's not good enough.
You want to make it and you want to make it big.
Run your mouth.
I love that.
Learn how to run your mouth.
A closed mouth does not get fed.
No, it does not.
No, it does not.
And it keeps the air inside.
You got to open up.
We were just talking as well.
Like, even when I come to events like these, it's nice to see the content and stuff.
But at the end of the day, what I want to do is what we're doing.
I want to stand in line and meet people.
I want to go and grab a table, put a bunch of coffees down, invite people and let's have a conversation.
Tony Hsieh, who's the former CEO of Zappos, one of the people that I respect the most.
Rest in peace.
He coined this term.
Collision hours.
And so he developed Container City in Vegas where you can go in and just meet people and collide with them, because that's what he wanted to do and create.
If we can get enough people with the right mindset to just take a moment to talk to each other over a coffee, over a drink, over a shared initiative, that's where the magic happens.
That's how creation actually happens, by creating these collision hours.
So create them.
Don't wait for them to happen.
You've got to create these collision hours for yourself.
Now you said you did over 50 million in a year.
How did you scale from seven to eight figures?
Like a lot of entrepreneurs that got that great idea.
They start that business.
They struggle to scale and grow it.
What took you from making seven to eight figures at your businesses?
You got to build the companies in such a way that they're built for scale.
This is why we build tech.
Tech has infinite scale.
When you're building software, you don't need to produce a physical good.
You're producing a digital good.
Selling digital goods is so much easier than selling physical goods.
It then becomes all about investing in your go-to-market strategy.
How do you get the right types of people like you guys?
How do you get millions of followers on your channel?
Same thing with tech.
Find the product, find the solution that you're trying to solve for, create your go-to-market strategy, find the people online that are going to want to buy your product, and then scale it infinitely, because then the world is your entire market.
That's a masterclass right there.
What is the best sector of tech to get into in today's world?
So we were just talking about this.
So you've got to think about the problem that needs to be solved in five years from now and invest in it from right now.
Close your eyes.
Imagine the world in the next five years.
What is it going to look like?
Are we going to be having robots walking amongst us?
Is it going to be flying cars?
Is it going to be that the doors are going to talk to you in a certain way?
If that's the world that you imagine in five years from now, build that technology today.
That's the way that you're going to be able to scale.
Don't follow trends.
The trends are already built.
It's too late for you.
Otherwise, you're going to just be a copycat.
You want to really make a big impact.
Invest in deep tech, invest in the stuff that's going to happen in five years from now, and start building it today.
So what do you think that is?
What do you think that sector of tech is going to be?
Yeah, so that's going to be everything around the future of AI and automation.
So think about the world where you're going to start working a lot less, because now robots and AI are going to dominate the way that we engage in our day-to-day settings.
What does that industry look like?
What is the periphery?
What does the thing that's going to power the robots?
How are we going to keep investing in things like more and more optimized batteries?
How are we going to invest in making sure that the machines are actually producing the results in an accurate format for you?
How are we going to provide more synthetic data to train the machines on the next evolution of things?
What does the future of social media look like for people that are producing content using AI avatars?
And so on and so forth.
Really just imagine the future state.
There's a great way of thinking about it as well.
Look at all the sci-fi movies.
What are people have already thought about that you can now start inventing today?
What's the most profitable businesses that you're investing in today's world?
Mortgage tech.
Mortgage tech.
I know it sounds boring, but boring businesses are really, really great businesses to invest in.
Mortgage technology is really at least with what's going on in the economic craziness that's happening in North America right now, that's probably our most profitable one right now.
We've got a couple of investments in the AI space right now that are both going to get acquired.
And so they were purposely built to be acquired.
In your iPhone, the company that built the Face ID.
They were specifically built for purpose of being acquired.
So we like that type of stuff.
You got amazing advice, my friend.
Thanks, man.
Thank you so much for your time.
You guys, we just interviewed a venture capital and a tech mogul out here in Dubai.
And he just gave you guys a million dollars worth of game in that last interview.
I can't count the amount of gems he just gave you guys.
That was a business masterclass from a VC mogul.
Crazy interview out here in Dubai.
We got to go get this next one and keep this video rolling.
Come on, let's go.
Excuse me, sir.
Sir.
Is this your Rolls Royce?
Sure is.
And what do you do for living out here in Dubai to be able to afford a Rolls Royce?
I run a blockchain company.
You run a blockchain company?
I sure do.
How long have you been a business owner?
Since I was a kid, but this company for five years.
Over these five years, what was the most amount of money you made in a single year?
Last year was $100 million.
You made $100 million last year?
Is that for yourself or the business?
That's for myself.
Plus on top, the business made money as well.
Are you serious?
I'm serious.
I go all over the world interviewing the most successful business owners.
Could I get one quick minute with you for the channel real quick?
You're most welcome.
What is your net worth?
Maybe $300 million.
$300 million?
Yeah.
That's incredible.
As somebody who's worth a couple hundred million dollars.
What is the best financial advice that you ever received?
Look, first you have to make it, you go all in on your idea because you don't have money.
But when you have money, you have to be diversified.
That's very important to be balanced.
You cannot be too aggressive on one thing.
But when you're making it, your first hundred million, just go for it.
You have to be crazy, insane, never giving up.
If they all leave my office, if everyone wants to leave, I go there and work overnight, right?
You just don't give up.
You just keep going, going, going.
Even if you don't have the money, fake it till you make it, keep going.
You cannot give up.
When you go broke, the first time I went broke, I also worked in tech.
I didn't give up.
I learned a lot from it.
I was actually part of the dot-com bubble in year 2000.
It was tough, right?
We lost everything.
We had a lot of great ideas.
But then I thought I have all the knowledge.
I know how Google works.
I know how Google ranks.
And I built PokerNews.com, which was the number one site in the world for poker.
So you just do stuff that you learn from.
So if you lose money on certain things, you don't give up.
You take the knowledge that you got from that experience and you go and create other stuff.
So money will always come to you if you have what it takes.
What's the best investment somebody can make in 2025?
The best investment is just buy Sol.
What's Sol?
Solana blockchain.
Why?
Because it's the fastest, cheapest transactions, most scalable and the best team.
What about Bitcoin?
Bitcoin's the god of blockchain, right?
So it's different.
It's where you put most of your money in and then you put some in the other ones.
You cannot compare it.
Bitcoin is not working and doing transactions.
It's not having validators like Solana.
Solana doesn't take, we don't need miners.
It's all already in a different level.
You're talking about a different level of blockchain, 2.0, 3.0.
How many billionaires have you met?
I've met a lot of billionaires.
I don't count, but there's a lot.
In Dubai, there's a lot.
And I've met a lot in America, a lot of interesting people.
Where are you from?
I grew up in Australia, but I was born in Lithuania.
So what's the greatest lesson you've learned about entrepreneurship?
You cannot be complacent and you have to keep developing and you have to get the best people to work with you.
Henry Ford said, only with a team you can make it.
So you need a good team together with you.
One person is nothing.
It's not about me.
Having a lot of shareholders, happy shareholders, having a great team, tech team.
That's how we become successful.
People will take you places that money can't.
Exactly.
It's all about people.
It's all about talent.
And if you can get them to work with you and build a bigger thing, that's success.
Did you have wealthy parents?
I had no wealthy parents.
I was born in the Soviet Union.
We lost everything.
We had to come up from zero.
So you went from zero to 300Ms?
I went from zero to 300Ms, yeah.
That's incredible.
This is a lot of people's dream car.
A lot of people want to own a Rolls Royce someday.
Give them one last message about business, life, money that's not taught.
Trust yourself.
Just go for it yourself.
Do things you love.
And then if it becomes a business, you're going to be very happy.
And key is to invest.
Invest, invest.
Don't save, but invest.
Invest in yourself, in your health, your head and in the businesses you can invest in a stock market, in a blockchain, in a crypto.
Just invest all your life and you're gonna have the most interesting successful life ever.
Whatever you're doing and not everybody has to be a businessman you can be a great investor, whatever you can afford to, and you're going to be have the most interesting life, successful life, and there's going to be so much money to be made to enjoy it.
You guys.
This video was insane to make.
Dubai is crazy.
But I need you to like and subscribe for amazing content.
We've got coming every single week because I'm going all over the world to get the secrets from the most successful people in the world to building wealth and building the million dollar business of your dreams.
All you got to do is subscribe.
And if you're not a member yet of my private community, you can join today for free for seven days.
All you have to do is go down to the link in the description of this video to join the community, the School of Mentors, and I'll see you on the inside.
Watch your life change when you hop on your first call with a billionaire or a multi multi, multi-millionaire and be able to ask them a question about your career, your life or your business.
This type of stuff is not offered anywhere else.
So I can't wait to see you on the inside of the community.
And with that being said, I'll see you in the next video.
