Hi guys it's mark so the other day me and my son were both talking about how we started our businesses from scratch. When we were teenagers - and i thought it might be - a topic that you guys would be interested in too so i put out a poll on instagram asking you if you'd like to know the exact steps we took in order to start our businesses with no money And over 5 000 of you guys said yes now very much like me, my son turned his passion into his business and now gets paid to travel all over the world and do what he loves and he also doesn't have to answer to any bosses. And that's always a great thing in my opinion, i thought it was really important. He started with no financial help from me and start from zero, just like i did, because if you just handed the money, you're never going to value it so much, but the thing i did give him was my advice, and this is the same advice.

I'm going to be sharing with you guys today, so without any further ado, let me introduce you to my son curtis right guys. First, i'm on the channel anything you'd like to say: um smash that thumbs up button for the youtube algorithm in this video. We're going to unpack your four years on running your own business and we're going to break it up into the six stages and create a roadmap so that anyone else can follow. The steps you've taken, make sure to wait till the end.

As we will be revealing your net worth so, the first stage of any entrepreneur is the really big one you get to the age of 18 or whichever age it happens to be, and you have to choose, are you going to go to university or not? So what did you choose? It's very true. Most of my friends went to uni as you know, but i always had this passion inside of me from seeing you and my grandad. I knew what i wanted to do. I knew i wanted to start a business.

I just had to figure out what it was. What you've got to remember with universities and colleges is, of course, they are actually businesses themselves and what they're trying to do is get as many youngsters to go to universities, because they need your revenue to be able to operate and dad wasn't paying. For me, i wasn't paying for it right so you're 18 yep, you're, fresh out of school and you're in that really awkward stage, the cash builder stage. So how did you go about getting your money together to get started? Well, i knew i had to do something to get some money because i like we say it's all about starting a business with no money, but you do need to get some money behind you so yeah.

I looked at different things i could do. I always did certain side hustles um. I used to pick up the leaves in the garden and dollar a bag. Yes, that's what that used to be.

There were a lot of bags. I'll tell you, i think half of them were half full to be honest, but he ate the money. I tell you what he made me push the leaves down in the bag to actually it was very stingy with his one dollar. I have to say so anyway.

Yeah, i i looked for other side hustles and i found a side hustle as an extra a film extra, so i started doing all these different uh jobs. I was actually in fantastic beasts, which is a harry potter, style, film, yeah you're in quite a lot of films, yeah, and i got that was my favorite one. I got a one. I was a dark wizard i'll tell you.

It was a very good job because i got some money behind me, but i also had hours and hours and hours of doing nothing. And what did you do in that time? I thought about my business and the plans i wanted to do and all of that stuff you always borrowing my books as well. Weren't, you yeah. I, like your business books and dad's, got a huge shelf of different books, so i was reading as much as i could and i thought i'm going to take.

My passion like dad did and start a business in videography, and this is what i do now. So all of this video stuff that we're doing is with my cameras, so the main thing when you're building your cash up is to keep your expenses as low as possible. So how did you manage that? Well, i lived at home with you. Oh all right did you sponge office at all? Well, i paid a little bit of rent yeah.

No, it's only better than going out and getting my own place so yeah. You can save a lot of money by doing that. I think, but also you were in that uh filmmaking environment, so the the tips that you can pick up from that are amazing. So this is where a side hustle has definitely progressed to a main living and a very, very good business.

I think so. You had a little bit of money, but you had no customers and you had no business now. This is the stage we call the investment stage, so how did you invest your money and your time into your business? Well, i like to do something called free to feed and basically i went out and did a ton of free videos. Um literally anything i could do.

I did club videos nightclubs. I did weddings, i did food videos, i did parties loads of different things. I think i helped you a few of those than that you did a few events. You had me your cameraman on a few events, but the point of that was to invest my time to make these connections, because at that moment i had loads of time.

I had a backup fund, i had a bit of money, but i didn't have any clients, so i needed those connections. So the message here is to invest in your business and your most valuable resource. When you start your time and how you work, that time is the best way of getting all your contacts and also doing your free to feed work and that helps build your network and, of course, a network is your net worth. You can also, while you're doing the free work you're doing market research as well, and you can hand out your cards and tell them who you are and what you can do so test all the different industries that you can and the thing i would add to That is, you definitely see who would pay the most, what industries pay the most as well? That is always a good one to find out so you're doing all this free work and you're building up all of these connections.

Now this is the stage that we call the payment stage. So how did you decide on your prices and also what your targets were going to be? I remember actually quite clearly sitting down with you. Do you remember this yeah? Of course we were in the sitting room, and you said what is your target to hit this year? What what do you want to hear - and i said something quite low - i can't remember, and how did i react? You know what i was pretty put down by the way i reacted. You know, that's not enough.

That is nowhere near enough. Well, i say you know shoot for the stars and at least you'll get a few of them. You've got to set your targets high, so at least you're going to get part way along that path. If you you know, if you exceed what you want to do great, but if you can get part way down, you'll always get further.

If you've got a higher target, so when was the first time that you actually charged the amount you wanted to charge, that's a bit of a funny story. Actually, as you know, i used to do youtube. I i got an email randomly into my email box and it said from i was like well there's no way this is actually from red bull, but it actually turned out. I did a few emails back and forth and it was and they're offering me to go around the world and help present their show.

The red bull, cliff, diving and they were paying me a decent amount of money to travel. It's the first time i actually felt valued in what i did and and noticed for my filmmaking and also my presenting it was brilliant and you got to visit some places that you would have never ever visited otherwise as well yeah and stand on the 27 meter. High diving board very high. It was a bit scary, but it was great fun.

So the main takeaway from this stage is valuing your skills or products and you've got to be pleased with the price you're charging for them and then, when you're happy with that, you can go for your target and that's why you have a target. So you can stretch to it and hit your target, so curtis's business is now up and running and he's getting some really cool opportunities to travel the world, but he also probably wants to earn some more money. This is the price increase stage. So how did you do it? I was on a trip in morocco filming some stuff and then i decided randomly as soon as i got back to the airport to take a trip to malta, because one of my friends who i just met.

Actually, i think a week before said come out and see me and malta, so i did exactly that. I went over and i stayed in our house and we sat down together and she said what you really need to do now. You're great you've done all of these things. She listed down all the different industries.

I've worked in so which ones pay you the most and which ones do you enjoy the most. It has so happened that i enjoyed the one that paid me the most, so we went scrap all the others. Perfect focus on that one and that's what i did so the message here is you don't have to be a jack of all trades. You know you want to be an expert in just one field and you can pivot your business even if you're narrowing down your potential market, because you don't have to appeal to everyone, usually, if you're trying to appeal to everyone, you just don't appeal to anyone.

Do you because you're spreading yourself too thin - and you don't know enough about each particular field, so being an expert is definitely the way to go so by this stage. Everything's, going really really well and you've got lots and lots of customers and you're charging more and more for your services, so the next stage is outsourcing. So how did you get on with that? So what i did was, i looked at all the areas that were taking me the most time to do, and i didn't enjoy it as much as the other things and i thought right. How can i outsource and hire someone to do these specific jobs? One of them was my accounts.

I hate doing accounts. I hate accounts. Editing was another area where i thought i would outsource, because i was spending so much time at the computer and i got paid more when i was out on the field doing my filming. So the key takeaway here is to find somebody to help you, particularly on those jobs.

You don't like so much and you can then really focus on what you're really good at, and you can then work in your zone of genius and what you'll find is. Sometimes. I was a bit worried about outsourcing because i thought i'm going to lose a bit of money. You know i'm going to have to pay someone else, but because you're spending so much time on the stuff, you're actually good at and you enjoy.

I found that i've made more money. Yeah, so definitely don't be afraid of giving up a little bit of money, so you can make a lot more money and now for the question, you've all been waiting for. What's your current net worth at age 22.. So if you really want to know um from starting from zero four years ago in my business now, i'm probably out adding all my equipment all my investments up about sixty 63 000, which isn't too bad.

It's very good and that's around about 113 000. More than if you were leaving university now because you'd be saddled, probably with debt, i don't know what the debts are nowadays for university in college. My friends are probably on about 52 000 of debt, so yeah, it's definitely the good route for me, because i know that i would just probably just done the same thing and of course a lot of people would argue that going to university or college you'll come Out and you'll be offered a much better job, but i know for sure that kurt has been offered a job for 65 000 a year, and you said i said no because i enjoy what i'm doing. But it's good to know that if i wanted to, i could get a job.

So i'm going to leave courageous links in the description below and if you have any questions put them in the comments and we'll get straight back to you. So i'm going to leave the next video right up here, so don't click on it just yet make sure to subscribe to the channel. If you want to grow your wealth ring that old bell and smash that, like button, alright i'll see you over there.