TJ.
What's up?
This place is incredible, man.
Thank you, man.
I appreciate that.
What was the most amount of money that you made in a single year?
$90 million, $100 million.
Growing up, did you think creating all this was possible?
I mean, you got every car anybody can imagine.
You got the Ferrari out here, the Lamborghini, the McLaren tucked in there.
I never had a broke mindset, even when I was on government tees, even when we had food stamps, even all of that stuff.
And then I built my business and I've gone bankrupt.
But it's been a long, long, long time since I've been broke and I ain't never going back.
You ain't never going back.
I ain't never going back.
If you lost everything tomorrow, could you make it all back?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
What business would you get into right now?
I started buying businesses.
I mean, that's what I would do, because most people want to build a business from scratch, but you don't have to do that today.
You go get the playbook.
You go get the playbook.
It's already done.
Do you believe in God?
Absolutely.
I believe in God.
Yeah, for sure.
I could tell you a story about that, but yeah, absolutely.
A story.
So has being in LA helped you as an entrepreneur?
Absolutely.
Come here.
This is amazing.
I got to get a video of this.
This is not real.
That house right there, Kanye just moved into.
In the white one right there?
Yeah.
Did you go to college?
Yeah.
Did college help you become a millionaire?
No.
You made more than 99.9% of business professors ever will.
What's a lesson about business you'd give to somebody that they will not learn at business school?
Guys, i'm out in the hidden hills in beverly hills out in los angeles and i'm about to interview a hundred million dollar entrepreneur who built and sold a tech company at his 50 million dollar mansion out here.
You guys, this is about to be a master class on all things business to figure out how now he owns 10 companies doing over 100 million dollars a year and really figuring out the secrets to success and building wealth and how you can become financially free headed into 2025.
So let's go meet up with him and go see what he has to say TJ.
What's up?
What's going on, my friend?
Good to see you.
Thank you for having us out here.
For sure.
This place is incredible, man.
Thank you, man.
I appreciate that.
Man, how long has Beverly Hills been home for?
Beverly Hills, about four years.
And you built an empire.
Yeah, man.
How long have you been a business owner for?
Man, most of my life.
Most of my life.
Yeah, for sure.
Growing up, did you think creating all this was possible?
I mean, you got every car anybody can imagine.
You got the Ferrari out here, the Lamborghini, the McLaren tucked in there.
Well, I've always loved cars, man.
So I always, you know, thought that I would have cars that I wanted.
So I didn't know that it would be these, but yeah.
What was your main business?
Tech, tech services.
I built a tech services business, sold it, and then I built a construction business, sold it and I have a supplement business today.
I build businesses, man.
I hope other people do the same thing.
How many businesses would you say you own right now?
About just under 10, but yeah, just about that.
We came all the way out here from Austin and we got to get the game from you, man.
We got to figure out like how people can become wealthy going into 2025.
Okay.
Going into the new year, they want to take over and dominate like you did in multiple industries.
Could we get some game for you real quick?
For sure.
Let's get right into it.
Throughout your career across all your companies in one year.
In terms of revenue, what was the most amount of money that you made in a single year?
Across my companies in revenue?
Oh, wow.
$90,000.
$90 million, $100 million.
Actually, how about for yourself?
$25 million.
Yeah?
Yeah.
That's incredible.
Do you come from a lot of money?
Absolutely not, man.
No?
Absolutely not.
So you didn't have rich parents?
No, not at all.
My mom was 14 years old when she got pregnant with me.
I grew up in the South, food stamps and government cheese and all that sort of stuff.
So what was the turning point to financial freedom?
How did you know you wanted to get really serious about building a 100 million company and just becoming an extremely successful entrepreneur?
You know, I think when I was a kid man, I always wanted to be successful, because I didn't want to live in the stuff that I was living in.
I didn't like it.
I was motivated to get out of it.
So I didn't know that I wanted to build a hundred million dollar company per se.
But what I did know is I wanted to be successful.
I didn't know what that looked like.
And you continue to define that as you grow.
But I wanted to be successful early on.
So I always worked, always tried to figure a way out to be helpful and had a mindset that was like oh, how do I get out of this place and never have to come back to it?
Now, as an eight, nine figure entrepreneur, what was the best financial advice that you ever received?
I don't know that I got a lot of financial advice.
I got business advice.
But in terms of finance advice, the advice that I would give your followers is to learn to make money in their sleep.
Right.
No matter what.
I don't care if you're getting paid.
Like don't trade dollars for hours, because no matter how much you charge per hour, you're going to be limited.
So you have to figure out how to make passive income and build relationships systems invest, do different things, that you're making more money while you sleep than you can in any job.
So let's say somebody is trading their time for money.
They're in that nine to five.
They want to make that lead to becoming financially free.
They want to start making passive income.
What's that first step somebody should take?
Real estate is a good one.
You have to have a lot of capital to start making money or...
No, I mean, real estate, you don't have to have a lot of capital.
There's a lot of first-time homeowner programs.
I think the biggest thing that one would do today if I was, because you know, what I did is different than what I would do today.
What would you do today?
Today, what I would do is I would buy businesses.
That is the thing that I would do, because right now there are so many businesses that are ripe for selling.
There are so many people that want to get out of their business.
Their kids don't want to go into that business.
They don't have maybe succession plans.
They don't have a way to get out of that business, but they need the cash and they need to stop, because they've gotten divorced, they're sick, they're tired, whatever it is.
I would use the government 7A program to get financing to buy businesses.
Is that SBA?
SBA 7A program, yeah.
What type of business would you buy in today's world?
You can buy laundromats.
The focus is getting stuff that cash flows.
So laundromat, pool companies.
I like the vending machine business.
I like laundromats.
I like things like that because it's not necessarily labor intensive or you have to have a lot of know-how to do that.
And they're recession proof.
They're recession proof, man.
They're going to always be there.
So buying businesses is what I would be doing today.
Like the private equity model?
Well, it's not so much private equity, right?
It's leveraged buyouts.
So what you're doing is you're finding businesses that cash flow at a certain number.
Let's say that business cash flows at $20,000 a month, right?
And you can get a loan.
You can service a loan for $7,000 a month or $10,000 a month.
You're up $10,000, right?
So what you want to do is to figure out a way to creatively pay the person that wants to leave the business and buy businesses.
I mean, that'd be the thing that I do.
Have you ever been broke before?
Yeah, I've been broke before.
I started out broke in terms of no money, not broke mindset, right?
That's a whole different thing.
I never had a broke mindset, even when I was on government tees, even when we had food stamps, even all of that stuff.
We had no money, but I personally was never broke because I was always thinking way beyond where I was right.
And then I built my business and I've gone bankrupt.
But it's been a long, long, long time since I've been broke and I ain't never going back.
He never going back.
He never going back.
I love that.
I love that.
So if you lost everything tomorrow, could you make it all back?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
What business would you get into right now?
I started buying businesses.
If I lost everything tomorrow, I would start buying businesses.
Why?
Because you're buying it based on the other business's credit, right?
There's all types of creative financing to do.
There's SBA loans, the 7A SBA loans that I talked about.
So yeah, I would go do that.
That would be the fastest.
I mean, that's what i would do, because most people want to build a business from scratch.
But you don't have to do that today.
You go get the playbook.
You go get the playbook, it's already done.
The business is already done.
You can see that it's working.
Where do you go to find these businesses?
Some people like hear that they say okay, just buy a business, but like, where can you find people like, like where do you go to buy a business?
Yeah, I think there's a number of portals.
There's a biz by sell, I think it is.
But there's a portal that you can just go in and put in the industry, the location and that kind of thing.
And it brings up all the businesses, and people are trying to buy businesses or trying to sell their businesses.
There's business brokers.
And then you can also start to just cold call businesses, because there's people that would sell their business if they got the call, but they haven't gotten a call.
Big transfer of wealth is about to happen.
It's what you're saying.
People are looking to step out of their business.
Yeah.
It's called the, I think it's called the gray tsunami.
That's what it's called.
Yeah.
It's called the gray tsunami.
And the gray tsunami is there's a lot of boomers that have businesses that they have to get out of.
There's a surplus of businesses and not enough people that's going out and buying businesses.
But wouldn't they want to give that to their family to take over?
There are a lot of family members man, that you know.
Kids don't want to go do their dad's business.
You know, they want to do their own thing.
We're in a different time.
You guys, this video with TJ has been incredible so far and we're about to get right back to it.
But I have a very quick, very special announcement to make for you guys.
So a couple months ago, I launched and built one of the biggest and greatest entrepreneur communities in the entire world.
And you can join this community today for free.
And inside of this community, I bring in the biggest business owners in the world, even billionaires.
All the people that you see me interview you on live calls to directly mentor you, where you can ask them any question about business starting and scaling a business, how to sell, how to market, how to find a winning product and scale that in whatever industry that it is in.
I want you guys to stop for a second and think about something.
Are you in the exact same place now that you were a year ago or even the year before?
Maybe you're hesitating to start that first business, or you don't know how to scale that company that you started.
You don't know how to get out of that nine to five.
Understand this, nothing changes if nothing changes.
If you're still taking advice from the same people who are not even in the places that you want to be, you need to stop and get around people that have done it before.
And that's why I'm giving you guys the opportunity today to join my community for free, to come learn from the most successful and the wealthiest business owners in the world.
Because the only way to go from point A to point B in life, in business, in your career and finances is through mentorship.
It's getting the lessons, the blueprint, the playbook from the people that have been there and done it before, regardless of what industry you're in.
So if you want to join and come learn from the billionaires and the multi-millionaires that i interview how to build wealth and start becoming financially free, go to the link down in the description of this video to join the school of mentors.
I can't wait to see you on the inside.
With that being said, let's get back to the video.
Do you believe in god?
Absolutely believe in god.
Yeah, for sure, i could tell you a story about that, but yeah, absolutely the story.
So as a kid i was broke, didn't have a wonderful sort of environment, so i was always like going god, show me yourself, show me who you are, show me your face right, show me in the magic johnson poster.
You know, do something right.
And then i went to work the next day.
I remember going to sleep, crying and wondering if god is real.
Or was he santa claus?
And i'm working, doing my thing, and this guy comes up and says to me god loves you, he's real and he wanted me to tell you that.
And from that moment on I was 15 years old.
I've always believed in God, you know so.
And faith has been pretty important for you.
Faith is important.
I mean, faith is critical.
Faith is critical, obviously from a spiritual standpoint, but from a business standpoint and from a life standpoint.
If you don't believe, it like when you believe something truly, truly believe something it's going to drive your actions.
It's going to drive the way you think and what you do in the relationships that you build.
So faith is really important.
So God gives us a practical foundation for faith.
He said, believe.
I mean, that's what the whole New Testament is about.
Did you go to college?
Yeah.
Did college help you become a millionaire?
No.
It didn't hurt me.
I mean, what college did for me is help me get a skill set.
It helped me become a computer programmer and get a job as a computer programmer.
So let me ask you this, because you made more than 99.9% of business professors ever will.
What's a lesson about business you'd give to somebody that they will not learn in business school marketing?
What they don't teach in school is that everybody needs you.
They just don't know who you are.
So your job is identify who those people are.
Get to the highest mountaintop that you can and tell them who you are.
Let the people know who you are.
That is the key to growing in business, and in school we learn about business, but marketing is that the key to making it all come together.
You have the magic sauce, but if people don't know who you are, then it doesn't matter.
Now we came all the way out here from Austin.
Can we check out the spot real quick?
Yeah, man.
See the place?
Is that cool?
Yeah, for sure.
Awesome, man.
Is that cool?
Has being in L.A. helped you as an entrepreneur?
Absolutely.
Come here.
I'll show you.
Yeah.
This is amazing.
This is amazing.
I got to get a video of this.
This is not real.
If you come over here.
So this house, Mark Wahlberg's house.
He still lives there?
No, he sold it about seven, eight months ago.
That house right up there, trees are kind of covering it a bit.
The driveway goes all the way down there.
The tennis court is associated with that.
And then on the bottom of that, he has a car museum.
That's Samsung, samsung.
Yeah, that house.
Right there, kanye just moved into in.
The white one right there.
Yeah, that house, the gray one.
Yeah, that's aston kutcher's house.
Oh, my goodness, the farmhouse.
Denzel washington, eddie murphy, are you serious?
Yeah, they're all about here.
Yeah yeah, this is all beverly park.
So when you say, has it helped me?
One thing that happens is that you can't unsee stuff.
So, like when i was in dc, i love cars and i would have a few cars and i would have people going man, be careful, don't do that, don't do that.
You can't do these things.
And you're when they have a 20-car garage and a 50-car car collection or a 100-car car collection.
So you find your tribe and you see that things are possible.
And once you see that it's possible, you can't unsee it.
So has it helped me as an entrepreneur?
Absolutely.
Because it just expands your vision and helps your creativity.
And you find out ways to do things that you wouldn't even think was possible back home.
What's the number one thing that separates middle class from wealthy people in today's world?
No limits.
I mean wealthy people don't have a limitation and they know there's no limit in terms of what they can achieve and how much money they can make, and all they have to do is solve problems, create solutions to make more money, and so they live in that world and it's a whole different realm, where it's not about jobs and how much you can make on this job or stepping up a particular ladder around some stuff.
That's sort of predetermined and well structured.
Wealthy people don't need structure.
TJ, this was absolutely amazing.
Yeah, man.
I gotta say, thank you so much for having us out here.
Well, thanks for trespassing.
Good to see you, man.
Well, I got to ask you, though.
So this summer, I started a private community called the School of Mentors.
It's grown to be one of the biggest entrepreneur communities in the world.
Every single week, I host live calls with the millionaires and the billionaires that I interview, such as the former CEO of 7-Eleven, Stephen Klubeck, who sold his company for $2 billion to Hilton.
I'd love to have you on a live call.
Can we make that happen?
I'd love it, man.
Could you be a mentor on a live call?
Absolutely.
That'd be amazing, my friend.
Everybody.
If you guys want to join the community, go to the link down in the description of this video to join the School of Mentors to get mentored directly from the millionaires and the billionaires I interview every single week.
TJ, where can everybody find you guys?
TJ Millionaire Mentor on Instagram, on YouTube.
And everybody go tap in with TJ right now, like and subscribe and we'll see everybody in here on the next video.
