Unknown Speaker 0:01
Money matters. I wish that I've been taught when I was at school I'm an investor, a business owner and a money educator.

Unknown Speaker 0:09
Understand it better. Compound

Unknown Speaker 0:12
international budget investment to recover from debt. No one explained to me, put your money to work, to work. Death is about normalising the conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:21
Hey everybody. It's Sarah Poynton with Money Mechanics podcast, and today I'm so excited because we're being joined by Mark Wright, who's a friend of mine. He's been a mentor on our business retreat that we run in Ibiza every year. And Mark is

Unknown Speaker 0:35
probably most renowned, maybe not most renowned, but very renowned for his success winning BBC apprentice in 2014

Unknown Speaker 0:44
he went on to build the most successful apprentice business. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm the the most successful apprentice business with Lord sugar, and it's digital marketing agency called climb online. And since then, Mark has became a feature Forbes 30. Under 30. He's only 35 now, that's right, isn't it? Correct? Yeah, only 35

Unknown Speaker 1:07
and in 2022 he exited climb online for a seven figure sum, and was the first apprentice winner to actually sell his business to a third party off the back of that process. And we're joined by Mark today, who's gonna be talking to us all about all about his money. And, well, not his money, but his money, the feelings he's got around his money. Mark, let's start with what is your earliest memory of money?

Unknown Speaker 1:33
I I can't think of any one specific moment. I mean, one or two stick out in my memory, but it was not having any. It was, first of all, as a child, listening to my mum and dad when we go to a restaurant, it was all about what we couldn't, couldn't have on the menu, what was too expensive. And then when I was a kid, I was just thinking, I just want to have whatever I want off here. I don't understand why we have to think about, like, how much it costs if I want that, I just want to get it so straight away. As a kid, I was thinking, when I get older, I'm just going to be able to go to restaurants and get what I want, because I just want to take that debate away. And I remember when I first started working, when I was 1819, years old, like in a proper job, and I realised, holy shit, it's going to be hard to make proper money working in a job. In fact, it was like hard to survive working in a proper job. And I remember I went for a coffee in Brisbane, in Australia, and my bank card got declined for a latte. And I was like, this is pretty tough. This is pretty tough going. And that really, it made me want to have a lot of money. Simple, just simply, I hate the feeling of not being able to buy a coffee, not being able to go to dinner and get what I want. So my earliest memory was, I don't have any I need to make some. I think, you know the as an entrepreneur, I understand that completely, like we didn't not have any, like we didn't not have enough, but we certainly didn't have a lifestyle where we could have what we wanted like at any time. And I think that certainly drives me as an entrepreneur, and I imagine is one of the driving factors of why you've become so successful over time. Anyway. So would you say that you had to kind of unlearn any beliefs around money that you got from growing up?

Unknown Speaker 3:32
Pretty much everything, I think, to understand money, it's a language. It's the same as going and learning Spanish, or the same as learning to code, learning money is,

Unknown Speaker 3:46
I think, the most important thing I've ever learned, and it's what separates my financial success to everyone else that I meet that says, Well, how do you have those cars, or how do you go on those holidays, or all of that stuff? And it's because of one, the way I think about money, and how I understand how money works, and if everyone knew what I knew, it would be bad. It would just be a, you know, a disaster for society. And you know, we wouldn't, it wouldn't be running as smoothly as it does run. So I'm thankful that I went and did the hard work to learn it, and anyone can, but we don't want everyone to, and thankfully, most people are too lazy to

Unknown Speaker 4:24
so yeah, I think

Unknown Speaker 4:28
my parents gave me a great founding in terms of being respectful, being disciplined, having a good work ethic and not letting people down. And then I went off and did a lot of self learning around investing money, you know, business, all of that sort of stuff, and those things combined have made me a bloody fortune when you say you went off and self learn about money investing. Where did you go?

Unknown Speaker 5:00
First. So, like, if you go back to when you knew nothing, what was the starting point for you? Did you read books? Did you go to YouTube channels? Did you just start investing and figure it out? Like, what did you do first? Yeah, it was very basic, you know, I would go on YouTube when it first came out. That's showing how old I am, and I would just type in how to get rich, you know. And there was all these, like, sales videos and investing videos. And then I started going to seminars where I quickly learned that some were a lot better than than others, and most were just trying to take money out of my pocket, not put money in it. But through going to those things, I started to meet like minded people. The biggest thing is, is if you go to the pub, or you go out for coffee with the girls, or the blokes, you go to the gym with,

Unknown Speaker 5:47
they're not listening to this stuff. The mistake I made early on was thinking everyone wanted to be successful and everyone wants to have lots of money. Everyone wants to win the lottery, not everyone wants to understand money.

Unknown Speaker 6:00
That's a really different thing to understand. When I first started the seminars, going to seminars, and all of that stuff was I didn't learn so much from the seminars, I've got to be completely honest. But I started hanging around and knocking about the right people who had a similar mindset to me, and they were saying, You should listen to this book, you should go to this event. And through that, I met the guy that got me onto the apprentice. And you know, your environment dictates a lot of the success. Who's in that environment and what that environment is. And that was the first thing I started watching and listening to different stuff. Every time I took the tube when I moved to London, I was listening to a Brian Tracy book. On the weekends, when I was working, I'd go to a seminar, and then, you know, the rest they say is history, but the first thing I did was change my environment, and it changed my whole life. I think that's such an important detail. You know, they say, Don't you that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and if you spend the most time with people who've got no ambition to be successful, have money and they're quite happy, and that's okay, like, if people are satisfied and fulfilled where they are, then fine, happy, happy days for them. But if you want to be different to that, surrounding yourself with people that have no ambition to change isn't going to serve you, right? It's that you don't

Unknown Speaker 7:21
want to be the most successful. In any person in any room. You want to be probably the least successful in a room so that you can learn from everybody else. So okay, let me ask you a question. Then tell me about a time where you've been the least successful person in a room and how it made you feel okay, a very short interruption of the episode. So I want you to get back to listening. I just wanted to remind you that the Money Mechanics weekly newsletter is completely free, and we'll send this out to you every week. All you've got to do is find the link in the show notes and get signed up when we send this out to you, this weekly newsletter is going to include things that will help you to become a better money mechanic. It could be things like what's happening in the markets, things like budgets, how that's going to impact you. And I'm also going to share a lot of insight into what I'm doing in my own portfolio and in the portfolios of the guests we've got on the podcast, to really just help you understand what you could do differently to make your money work as best as it can for you, make sure you go and find that link and get signed up in well, I know how I felt inspired is, is the word that comes straight. I was in a room once with me, Alan Sugar, Grant, Cardone, and, you know, I was the least successful in there by quite some many billions at that point in time. And I've never been more jacked up in my whole life, because the level of conversation was unbelievable. The conversation was different,

Unknown Speaker 8:43
and it just made me want to work harder, do more, take bigger risks. And again, the people that I was surrounded with were talking about deals in the hundreds of millions, and it made me realise, well, I'm doing deals in the hundreds of 1000s. I'm nowhere like sometimes, because, you know, I had a bit of success early on, going on the TV and all of this stuff, and I got so much smoke blown up my behind that I started to believe the hype at different points as well. And sometimes it's very humbling to realise, no matter what size fish you are, there is another fish that's way bigger, and they don't even know who you are, and they're not even interested in your deals. And that's what having those people around me did for me, and that's why I just moved towns. I just moved cities. And when I moved countries as well, when I got back to Australia, I mean, no one knows who I am here, my parents seem to have forgotten who I am and I am. The first thing I did is I said, Right, where's all the rich people live? What? What suburb does? What? What is the Mayfair of the town I live in? That's where my house is. Where's all the Where's all the successful people work? Oh, they work in that building. I want an office in there. And straight away, the guy in the office next to me, he's on.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
He may just sold his company for 900 million, and blah, blah, and I'm getting invited to events. So I now know it's not taken me as long to get in the right environment, because I know how to shortcut it. Now I know where to look for the people that, you know, sound and look and, you know, do things like I do it. Okay. Cool. So has there ever been a time in talk a little bit about, like, the psychology of money and having it, spending it, investing it? Has there ever been a time where you've earned money in a way that made you feel like sick, so like it was scary, terrifying, like, but you it worked, but actually it was risky. Like, is there any ever a time that you've done that or felt like it was risky? I know you're quite a businessman, so probably not. You've probably take taken quite educated risks. I imagine I've put it all on the line many, many, many, many times, and

Unknown Speaker 10:56
I've never been scared of I think that's the thing I try and remind myself of most now, because I find myself I go to do a deal now buy a building or buy a company or whatever, and now I have kids and a wife and all of this stuff. I think, Whoa, when it was just mark the backpacker, you know, if he went back to a hostel. It didn't matter, you know, I'm one pint and a pie away from being happy again.

Unknown Speaker 11:26
Now I've got a bit more to think about, but then I remember the person I am and the things that I've done have made me successful. So if I start messing with the formula now, I won't get the same result. So I sort of switch that area of my brain off and continue to push through, because the risk taking has to making money is taking risks simple. It is that that that is because if it wasn't, everyone would have money. Everyone just been walking around with ample amounts of money. So you have to have a level of

Unknown Speaker 12:01
risk in everything you do to make more than the average person. So I've just got the ability to go fuck that scares me, and then turn that part of my brain up and do it anyway. So I remember once you said to me when we were in Ibiza, if you if the worst case scenario is that you go broke, you might as well go broke over 100 million, than 100,000 because the end result is still the same. And that those words like ring in my head all the time, and I'm thinking about risk, what is the worst case scenario? I come back to that which was wise words that you said to me, and you know, it does help me to reframe, okay, what really is the worst case scenario we and, you know, I've got houses with no mortgage on I just move into one of them, I'll be all right, like life will be okay. But even when I had no money and I had no property, you know, the the worst case scenario is that, well, I have no money, but I'm still alive, I still got the information that I need, you know. And how do you think? Why do you think so many people allow the worst case scenario to stop them from doing things. What is it you think that that creates okay? So the first thing is

Unknown Speaker 13:13
a famous saying in banking is, if you loan a million pound from the bank, the bank own you. If you own 100 million from the bank, you own the bank, because the bigger risk you take, the lender can then not afford for you not to succeed, because foreclosing on small loans is easy. They do it every day. The smaller the loan, the easier it is, and the less you mean to the financial institution, the bigger risks you take, the more they need you to succeed, and that's why you hear it all the time. People that go and build these massive towers, they go broke, but the bank sees them through all the way to the end, because the bank haven't got anyone else lining up to take that debt. So it's bigger risks often work better that and they don't fail. But coming back to your other question is, why people can't switch that area of their brain off? Is it comes back to our first point, friends, family and fools that you surround yourself with,

Unknown Speaker 14:15
have love you. I have no doubt. Well, it's questionable. I know your family probably loves you, and they don't want to see you fail. So when you say, I'm going to go do this, if your mom is a school teacher and worked in the same environment for 35 years and got her pension, and you know, plays bingo on Thursday, that's going to sound really scary to her, and that's going to sound like her little son or a little girl is going to go and lose their money and be back at home. So everyone starts warning you off it, and that feeds what is already your mind going be careful. Be careful. Be careful. So that's why changing your environment is so important. That's why changing your financial education is so important. And.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
End. Don't talk to those people about it, just if you feel like it's a good decision. And you would have heard me say many times, it's just as easy to get out of a deal that it is to get into it. And you will think about 50 reasons why you shouldn't do a deal, but I think out of all the properties I've ever bought, only one hasn't made money, and you just sell it. It's not very hard. But the other 20 I've done have made a profit. But on all of them, I've thought of reasons not to do it. And it's, you know, the smarter the people are. They spreadsheet it to death, and they think, Well, you know, on the fourth Wednesday of the month, if the sun comes up to this and you know it's thing, I might have the only untenanted flat in all of you know, the UK or Australia or wherever. And those things never come come true.

Unknown Speaker 15:53
Okay? So has there ever been a period in your life where you felt ashamed around the money topic, either having having it or not having it, where that where money's really made you feel like not enough. Never, never. I mean, I you're going to struggle to find guests for this podcast, by the way, because I love talking about money, it gets my tail wagging like nothing else. And I'm so comfortable talking about my money, your money, everyone else's, and the subject in general. And that comfortability is why I have lots of it. And you go and ask someone, oh, how much is your salary? Oh, gosh, you can't ask someone that. Why not? Who invented that rule? Where did that come from?

Unknown Speaker 16:45
You can't tell people how much money you've got, why? Because you've got and got any that's why you don't want to tell anyone. So it first of all, getting comfortable with money is really important, because most people are too scared to ask their boss for a raise. They're too scared to start a business because they might not make money. They're too scared to charge more to their customers because they might lose the customer. Whatever it is, people are scared around the conversation of money. And I got over that really bloody quickly, because I understood that was part of getting a lot of it. I think the fear around money is, in my opinion, because we are not taught about it. We're not taught to talk about it. From very obviously, you grew up in Australia, I grew up here, but I'm sure it's fairly similar, like, we have no financial education as kids. Even now we don't have, I mean, I'm 42 now, but I never was taught about what money is, how it works, what's an interest rate, what's the difference between a repayment mortgage and, you know, interest only mortgage. We just don't talk about it. And because we don't talk about it, it's got this,

Unknown Speaker 17:56
like very it's become a very taboo topic. It's why I wrote the book, it's why we're doing this podcast, because if we could talk about it more, when we talk about it, more, the world will be more aware when we are all more aware of it. We can be more comfortable, and we can ask for more of it. We can invite more of it into our lives. It becomes very normalised, but so many people are embarrassed around money, and I find that fascinating. It's because the education system is set up to churn workers out, not entrepreneurs. We don't want people making millions of pounds per year. We want them making 60,000 pounds a year. That keeps the wheel turning over, and every now and then you'll get a mark or a Sarah pop out of that wheel and say, 60,000 doesn't quite work for me, I might do. You know, 600,000 a year, that sounds a little bit better. So it and it's once you start asking those questions, and you pick up books like yours and start listening to the right podcast and getting the right thing, you realise it's actually not that hard. You just didn't, haven't had the you've had the programming and information for 60 once you have the programming for 600,000 you're like, Oh, well, what's 6 million look like, and it's just a different level all the way up. And you realise that it just becomes a question of the level of risk you want to take, and your appetite for how much then becomes enough to live the lifestyle that makes you satisfied. So let's talk about

Unknown Speaker 19:24
your experience of money in terms of mistakes around money. So have you ever made a massive mistake about money, and what did it teach you? I've made a lot of mistakes around money in firstly, my biggest is in hiring the wrong employees in my company, the amount of people that I hired, trained, tooled up and fired, I must have spent hundreds of 1000s, if not millions, of pounds on So hiring slow and firing fast became a very important lesson to me,

Unknown Speaker 19:58
money as I.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Got wealthier and wealthier, I made the fundamental mistake of leaving too much money in my bank account. I didn't realise about inflation and interest rates. And again, coming back to that educational piece that you talked about, initially, having any money in my bank account was great. Then I started to make millions of pounds, and I just was like, Oh, great, I've got millions of pounds, but I didn't realise that I need to have it out working in investments like property or stocks and shares or high interest funds, because if that money isn't growing more than inflation, I'm actually losing money. So having a team of people to help me do that is now part of my my strategy. So at each level of creating wealth, I've made mistakes, whether it's getting the wrong insurance, hiring the wrong people, not investing, or investing in the wrong stuff, but that has then taught me a lesson about who I need and what I need in my system to not make that mistake again. So nothing's been critical

Unknown Speaker 21:03
at this point. And I look at everything in my life, even if I make a loss, like a course. Well, I've just bought a course in how not to invest in that,

Unknown Speaker 21:13
and it was a fucking expensive bastard. But anyway, we learn and we go on throughout the process. So nothing critical. What about you? That's interesting question. Yeah, I think

Unknown Speaker 21:26
very similar. So the things that I feel like I've wasted money on have been the things that have probably taught me the most. So in my very early investment days, so I had property, and I was just starting to invest in funds and foreign exchange and stuff like that, and I handed my money to a fund manager who was trading Forex, and I because I was introduced by a friend, and that friend had been getting, they've been getting 30% a month, so I knew it was high risk. Like that was not a debate. Like, I knew that the money was at risk, but he got drunk one night and pressed the wrong button and blew the whole lot. Yeah, so. And genuinely, like, I thought to myself, Okay, it was 30% a month, and actually I was getting 30% for six months. So I got all my money out anyway, which is fine, but I lost a big chunk of money because I allowed someone else to be in control of my money without really doing the due diligence that I should have done and but I didn't know to do it before that, because I just haven't been through it yet. So going through that then taught me that, ah, I need to ask more questions. What's their risk management strategy? Like, how are they making sure that they're not going to blow an account because of a stupid mistake? And now, obviously, won't ever do that again. But yeah, that was, that's probably my most expensive mistake, and it's a brilliant lesson. And

Unknown Speaker 22:44
I always think before I invest what will happen if I lose this money and I make peace with that before I invest it, and I know that, and my wife and I have had the discussion, if I lost everything tomorrow, what would we do? And we have a strategy in place called sort of Ground Zero, and we're happy with ground zero. Well, she tells me she's happy with ground zero. We'll find out about that when we're not in first class anymore, but

Unknown Speaker 23:13
she's we're signed up to that. So that allows me to go to work every day and make the leaps and the risks that I do. And I feel like if I didn't do that, I wouldn't be me. And I think we all understand I need to be me, for me to be satisfied and happy. And it's not even about the money anymore. It's about, you know, me being fulfilled in what I'm doing. Do you think it was ever just about the money, or do you think it was always a little bit about Mark fulfilling his energy. I think initially it was all about money. I think the first sort of 10 to 20% of the journey was focused on I have no money. I need to get some

Unknown Speaker 23:54
then it was everyone thinks I'm a dumb shit. I need to prove to them that I'm worth something. Then after that, it was now I've got tonnes of money, and everyone thinks I'm the bollocks. But am I happy? So it is creating that fulfilment and happiness and health piece. So I sound like a full goddamn hippie. Now, it's interesting, because Emma and I am Mark knows my business partner as well. We have conversations about this often, where and again, I don't mind sharing this on the podcast. There's been periods in the last five years where I've had more money than I know what to do with, but I felt like a bag of shit, like I'm not sleeping right, I'm not eating right, I'm not training, I'm not even moving my body. Some days, because I get up, I open my laptop at six and I sit there until 11 o'clock at night and I shut it again, and you have this real debate. It's internal debate. Of is, I've got enough money. I really love this concept of Ground Zero, by the way, because I kind of have that, but we've never labelled it that. You know, if we got rid of everything, if we sold everything.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
In right now today, and we went off in a caravan motor home with our dog. What you know, would we be happier? And the answer is, No, I don't think I'd be happier, because I love the hustle of it. I love the striving of business and all that sort of stuff. But when you've got one extreme, which is you've got no time for yourself, because all you're doing is earning money. It's also not very fun either. So you've got to have that, like balanced space for yourself in and amongst that, definitely. And I think periods of grinding are very important in the process, and particularly at the start of the process, to deserve the wealth and understand, you know, the reason why everyone who wins the lottery loses the money is they don't understand how money works, and they haven't had to earn the money. And I'm a big believer that in the learning journey and the earning journey, you understand how to by the process we've been through, make a bit, lose more. Make some more. Lose some. It teaches you how to hold on to it and then multiply, and that's really bloody important. But, you know, I got to a point with my health where, very similar to yourself, I worked so hard for so long, I lost sight of the goal, what I was trying to achieve, and I was just stacking on weight like you couldn't imagine I was drinking way too much booze. I was living a lifestyle that was, you know, not fantastic at all. And I started having these, like, fainting episodes where I just faint at work from, like, I don't know, stress or whatever. And I was like, I'm gonna die at 30 and one of Lord sugar's aides pulled me aside and he said, you're going to be the richest man in the graveyard. And it's really resonated with me, because I felt terrible, like I literally was just I was running on empty. And now I've put things in place where, yeah, I work pretty hard, but I have non negotiables in my week and in my life that I don't change for anyone to make me feel fulfilled, to make me be healthy and to make me be happy, and I'm happiest now I've ever been in my life. Can I ask what those non negotiables are? I'll give you one that just happened actually. So it's seven o'clock here at night in Australia, and I'm still in the office. And on nights where I do podcasts or board meetings with UK or other countries, one of my things is I have dinner with my son every night, so he's three. He finished daycare and came into the office with subway at six o'clock, and we had dinner together so I can then work tonight, so having dinner with my family every night is one that is non negotiable, you know, going to the gym and now I don't work weekends, and those things have been little things I've put in over time To create longevity and be able to do things consistently, yeah? Because if we don't have us, then there's no point, right? It's point of money if I'm dead. I mean,

Unknown Speaker 28:11
put my corpse in my Maserati.

Unknown Speaker 28:17
Don't bury a Maserati. That would be a real shame.

Unknown Speaker 28:21
You've got to stop buying those.

Unknown Speaker 28:25
If you could rewrite one cultural belief or rule that you think the masses follow about money, what would it be if you could just rewrite something people always love to tell me that money is an important and this will come up a lot on your

Unknown Speaker 28:42
doesn't buy happiness, and it isn't important. Well,

Unknown Speaker 28:47
I think it does buy a level of happiness, and it is really important.

Unknown Speaker 28:52
I hurt my back really badly last year, and I went to like, the version of the NHS of Australia, and I said, I've messed my back up and I need surgery. They said, oh gosh, come back in two years and we'll, we'll get that done for you. I said, I'll give you 30 grand cash. They said, come in Tuesday. And it was like, Well, hang on a minute, that that really changed, and the agony I was in, you know, imagine if you didn't have the 30 grand and you had to wait two years. I had to wait two days. So money creates freedom. It does buy a level of happiness and satisfaction, and it creates options for you. Now, what makes you fulfilled is completely different. That's friends, family, love, holidays, music, all of that stuff, which is fucking important too. So it's having a balance of all of those things, but having no money is miserable, and trying to tell someone there's more to life than money, and all of that stuff is probably because you don't have any and you're taking that frustration out on somebody who does. And you know, I'm going through different.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
Things in my life, I'm trying a bit more health and a bit more this, and because every day I'm looking to improve who, who mark right is, and be 1% better than that I was yesterday. Did I eat better today? Did I move more? Did I make some money? Did I improve my business? Was I a better dad? Some days I fail at all of that. Some days I get some of it right. Some days I get other areas really right and other areas really wrong, and that's part of being a human being. But that all this talk now of if this is a simulation, and what's the point in this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all this, I don't know anything about that. All I know is I'm here today, and I'm trying to be the best version of myself that I can and better than I was yesterday. And if I do that, I don't care if this is a computer game or whatever, I'm pretty happy about my position in it. Yeah, we say often, like, do the best you can with what you've got in the moment. And you know, the best I can with what I've got five years ago was a different version of the best I can now, and it will be different five years from now. And I think, you know, money doesn't

Unknown Speaker 31:07
solely buy happiness, but like you said, it totally greases the wheels. It absolutely does grease the wheels. And you know, things like the NHS is an example, waiting a year, two years for healthcare, is just not what it should be, when actually, we've all paid into this. Well, most people are paying into the system, and that's for another discussion, another day, the debate on tax and stuff. But you know,

Unknown Speaker 31:37
things like healthcare you don't need, waiting two years for a back operation, just not going to just isn't going to work. And if your family member gets cancer, you don't want to be waiting a day too long to assist that person. And that's where money really is powerful, and why we should all understand a level of it is necessary to have a better life. And then I think it becomes, once, there's a certain level, and let's call it 150,000

Unknown Speaker 32:07
pounds a year, or whatever. Anything north of that the gain is just a Gucci handbag, or, you know, first class, the Maldives. It doesn't really change too much. Yeah. So do you think that there is a point? So is it 150

Unknown Speaker 32:22
a year? Is it a million? Like, is there a number where actually, life kind of switches into it's it's easy. I don't worry about money anymore. Or do you think that that changes as you get more money? Because I guess the more money you've got, the more expensive problems become, bigger businesses, more staff, all of those sorts of things. But do you think there is a, like, a target number that everybody should strive to have so that they don't have to worry about money so much? That's a really fascinating question. I guess it depends on where you live, your lifestyle, level, your expectations, and you know what, what your normal school fees and all this stuff costs. But where I stopped thinking about it is around 200,000 a year. That's where the rubber sort of hit the road. And I didn't need to log into my Barclays to see if I could buy it. And once I started earning over that level, I forgot about it completely, and it became about other stuff. So I think once you go north of 150,000

Unknown Speaker 33:24
pound per year and maybe a couple of 100,000 in savings, I think life financially certainly gets a lot easier. It 150

Unknown Speaker 33:35
a year, gross or net in the bank, I would say gross, you know, I would say grow so. You know, this is going to sound rude to a lot of people, but it's not that hard. It isn't that hard. If you specialise in any area of a business, that's what it pays. Any MD role, any head of or director role, will pay that level of salary. You know, that's without stock options, shares, whatever, and you will have a completely different life. But you have to have, you know, the stomach, to go and ask for it. Yeah. So let me ask you a question around, if I gave you 100,000 pounds a day, no strings attached, knowing what you know, you could spend it, invest it, do whatever you wanted with it. What would you do with it? Give it to myself,

Unknown Speaker 34:24
but I would, I would start at it today. I would start an AI agency where I would consult people on artificial intelligence. So I'd say, Hello, Mr. Business Owner, how are you do you believe AI is really important? Yes, I do. Do you know how to implement it in your business? No idea. I'll do it for you, and I would go around and do that over and over again with my until I had the same amount of money as I have now. And do you think that there is a

Unknown Speaker 34:54
industry sector or space that doesn't need AI or won't engage with AI?

Unknown Speaker 35:00
Yeah, I already know your answer to this question, but I'm asking you, what else to hear you say it definitely not. And if you think so, open your window wherever you're listening to this, and jump out

Unknown Speaker 35:13
because you're either

Unknown Speaker 35:15
you're either still using a typewriter and a horse and cart, or just naive or thick at this point, no one knows. I

Unknown Speaker 35:24
was having a conversation with a client this week, and I said, if, whether you like it or not, AI is going to impact your industry. And they are a Qs in the in property construction space, and they said, AI will never have the same 27 years experience as I've got. And I said, I'm telling you now, if you don't embrace AI, you won't lose your job to AI. You'll lose your job to someone who can use AI better than you can. And he was like, that's not a thing. And I was like, I believe that AI is going to impact all of us way more than we can even fathom right now. So what's your thoughts on that? What's your take?

Unknown Speaker 36:04
It scares the living daylights out of me.

Unknown Speaker 36:09
I go through days where I'm really excited and really encouraged by what I'm seeing, and I go through other days where the capability scares me to the point of thinking, what's the point even trying anymore? This is so much better. It's the first time I've thought anyone's as good at me.

Unknown Speaker 36:33
You know your man that said I've got 27 years. It's starting with 127

Unknown Speaker 36:38
years experience like is so much more advanced than what we are capable of. It's, it's, it's scary, but it's here. I cannot see a world where it's reversed. I don't It's like saying, let's not have light bulbs. We'll go back to Canvas. Yeah, it's not going to happen. It's here now. So our option is don't use it and let it steamroll our business and careers in the process, or embrace it and be the person who can use it and help other people use it and ride the ride the wave. So let me ask you this one of I was gonna ask you this anyway, but I think I probably know the answer. If you were somebody who had was Mark, sort of pre apprentice, no money, a backpack hostel when you were in that space, no money, no idea about really, how you were going to make it. You just knew you had the ambition and drive to want to do it if you were there again. But it was 2025

Unknown Speaker 37:38
what would you do in terms of your business, what would you choose to do, and how would you do it? I thought about this the other day, because I feel like I came through at a very weird time as as the online advertising thing, Google AdWords and Facebook and all this was coming out, and I saw where it was heading, and thought, I'm going to get on this train and see where it takes me. And that worked out pretty well. And I thought, if I was 19 today, what would I do and where I got to was I would ring up open or ring or email, I guess all these young folks do now, I would email open, AI and beg anyone who answered the phone or email for a internship or an opportunity, and I would go and work at open AI, or one of the equivalents, you know, top AI companies for a year to two years, and just understand from one of the top players what on Earth is going on here, and then go and start Mark AI online. And, you know, I would be the guy that was at open AI or Google or Microsoft and or with one of Elon's firms. And then, you know, set up my own thing that would be a really powerful story, and it would give me the knowledge to understand it better, but I think that's what I would do personally. And I love that, because I remember back when I was first starting, I worked for free, for loads of people to figure out my way, earn my stripes, build my relationships. You know, very similar, I'm sure, to you, like, just put myself in the rooms I needed to be in to understand what the fuck I needed to do. Correct? I speak to people now and they say to me, Well, I can't work for free. I can't I can't possibly do that. Or it's things like I did a video recently about how anyone could take AI and make money from flipping stuff from a car boot sale I went on a Sunday morning, and I chat GPT, who stands on the thing, and I picked the things chat GPT told me to buy, and then I flipped them on eBay and Vinted and I made money, right? All in a day. That's awesome. I put that. It was so cool. I put the video up, and I invested 20 pounds, and I doubled my money, so 40 pounds. But someone said to me, yeah, but if you put that into an hourly rate, you've wasted your time. And I was like, You're missing the point.

Unknown Speaker 40:00
Mean, it's not so everyone's so obsessed with hourly rate now, and I think minimum wage is 28 grand a year here now. Like,

Unknown Speaker 40:08
what would you say to the people who are not willing to go for an internship, work for free, do put themselves in the rooms and literally lose money and being in those rooms to go and learn? Like, what would your I mean again,

Unknown Speaker 40:23
enjoying and will enjoy a long life of mediocrity, because they'll never be the best at anything. The the first three jobs I got, I didn't even know how much the salary was after I got in there working, because my mindset was always I'm here in the first six months to learn as much as possible and show them that this business cannot survive without me. So by the end of six months, they're going to know I'm so good, they'll just give me a blank check. And that was always my goal is be so good you deserve any amount of money wherever you go. And I'm mentoring this young fellow at the moment, and I won't reveal his identity or his business, because he loves watching my stuff,

Unknown Speaker 41:09
maybe too much. And he came around and said, Oh, my business is failing. What should I do? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, What experience did have you ever worked in this industry before? No, I just thought it'd be good. Well, how in the hell do you know what you're doing? Like, who taught you this? You know you've got to have a bit of industry experience before you go into a business. Or, I said, go and volunteer at the biggest competitor here and tell them you work free. No chance. I would never do that. And I was like, Well, don't ring me up with this sob story, because this is what it takes to be the best. You got to learn from the best to start with. And I think what I get back when I say the same thing is, yeah, but at a practical level, Sarah, I've still got to pay my bills, and I when it was me or I got a bar job in the evenings and weekends to pay for the bills so that I could spend my week days learning. I'm assuming it's the same. That's the same as what you did, and you're working for free. You just get a second job to pay you money, right? And that's where I say that seven day a week grind needs to happen at some point. It is. You know, I worked as a bartender. I was the world's worst bartender, no doubt about it. But I was using the time in the day to work on who mark right was going to become. So there's got to be that level of level of pain at some point

Unknown Speaker 42:29
to create who you want to be. Okay. So do you think that there is

Unknown Speaker 42:36
one belief about wealth that the masses have that is backwards in comparison to what wealth actually is. Well, it's a scarcity mindset. It's thinking that money is finite and that you're only available to you know, however much is in this bottle is how much I can get in my life. And when you meet really wealthy people and really successful people, they understand that there is an infinite amount of money available, and you can have as much of it as you want. So it's just shifting that mindset of never saying I can't afford that, never saying how much is that? Always thinking doesn't matter how much it is I can afford it. You know how it's just a different mindset at every stage of the process thinking about money, and it's having an abundance attitude towards it. And I know that's a bit woo, woo. But every single financially free person I've met has an abundance mentality about money. I think that's it, the way that people with when I, when I again, when I hang out with people like you, friends of mine, who've got way more money than I've got, I am always humbled by the just the way you think about money, the way you talk about it, like it's just a very normal, easy, straightforward thing, like, what do I need to do to afford to have that thing? It's not that thing. It's not that I can't afford it. It's not that can't have it. It's not that I can't afford it yet. It's what do I need to change to be able to have that thing. And I think that approach to money certainly has helped me as I've grown my businesses and will continue to do so. And I think for a lot of people, if they can think differently about how they can get it, rather than how little they've got, then life becomes that a little bit easier, doesn't it? You know, Robert Kiyosaki, first book, says it best. You know, you don't say, I can't afford it. Ask, how can I afford it? And if you do that with everything, you start thinking of ways to make money. You know, that question opens the mind a statement closes it. That that sentence alone changed my life. When I read that when I was freaking 18, and I still get 36 I'm saying it now. So you know, it is a different mindset, and it sounds cheesy initially, you need to change the people you hang out with. You need to change the material that you read and listen.

Unknown Speaker 45:00
And two, because you've been getting the wrong programming. Just like a computer, you put certain programming in, you'll get that operating system. We are exactly the same. Change the programming going in your ears and eyes and who the hell you knock about with and watch the results change. They say, if you hang out with a billionaire millions falls off them. And it's so true. So

Unknown Speaker 45:22
we're gonna wrap up. I could literally talk to you all day about this, but I appreciate you're a busy man, so we can't do that. So there's two things just to ask you. So at the end of all of our podcast episodes, we always ask the previous guest to leave us a question for our next guest. So the question that was asked, they didn't know that it was going to be you, by the way, they just gave us question in the second, I'm going to second I'm going to ask you for your question was, how much money is enough money to live a very comfortable life

Unknown Speaker 45:52
and feel fulfilled and happy? I believe the number is somewhere around two and a half million pounds,

Unknown Speaker 46:01
or 5 million Australian dollars, where you are a wealthy person, you're not filthy rich. You're not you know, financially in need, and you still have to do some level of thinking about money. I believe when that when your brain turns off and you retire fully, you expire because you stop thinking about moving yourself forward, and that's where hassle comes. So a level of wealth that makes you comfortable, great healthcare, great house, good school for the kids, but a level that makes you think, and I think that's somewhere, at the moment, around two and a half million pounds. Great question, great answer. Thank you very much. It's very strategic. I've thought that one through many times.

Unknown Speaker 46:46
So we will ask you the question. So give us a question that we can ask our next guest at the end of the podcast for their thoughts on any question you like, if you woke up this evening and an alien was stood at the foot of your bed, and they just got here to Earth,

Unknown Speaker 47:05
and they said, this money stuff. What is it?

Unknown Speaker 47:10
And how do I get it? What

Unknown Speaker 47:14
would you tell them to do?

Unknown Speaker 47:17
Great question. I will ask that question, and I'll send you their answer once we've got it, yeah, and I think when you start to make things simplified, you then simplify it yourself, and it makes it easier to go and do it amazing. Thank you so so much for your time. I really appreciate it My pleasure. It's so nice to see you, and thank you for all the work you do. Your books amazing, especially the four in it.

Unknown Speaker 47:43
And your retreats are even better. And I hope to see you soon. Amazing. Thank you so much, Mark. If people want to follow you online, or, you know, YouTube channel, Instagram, like, what's the best place for you to find you? Generally speaking, Instagram is really good. If you just look for Mark right on there. I'm not the Towery one. I'm the one under him on LinkedIn, Mark Right? You'll see me, handsome Australian guy Forbes, 30, under 30. And feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I write back to that one, and yeah, reach out to any of my companies as well. But I couldn't encourage people more to read your book and go to one of your retreats where they may just beat me. Thank you so much, Mark. I really appreciate it, and I will speak to you soon. Thank you. I'm off to bed now.

Unknown Speaker 48:31
Thank you so much for getting to the end of the podcast episode. I really hope that you enjoyed it. I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that the weekly Money Mechanics newsletter is available to you completely free. This is a newsletter that I'm going to send out every week to just give you some ideas around what's happening in the markets, what's happening at a global level, what's happening at a lot more local level, so that you can better understand what you can do with your money to make it work for you for the future. I'm also going to share in the newsletter what I'm doing in my own portfolio, just to give you some insights into what my ideas are, why I'm making the decisions that I'm making, in the hope that it will help you to make those decisions in your own portfolios as well. All you've got to do is find the link that's with this episode, hit the link and subscribe, and that newsletter will start to come out to you every single week. I'd also really love to take this opportunity to invite you to drop me a review. I love the opportunity of getting to share these podcast episodes with you. It really helps me to better understand how we can do the best job that we can here at Money Mechanics, if you tell us your feedback. So drop us a review. Tell us the sort of guests that you want. Talk to me and connect with me on Instagram, you know, talk to us on YouTube, wherever you are hanging out. Tell us how you're finding it, and we can make this the very best podcast it can be. Thank you again for being such a valued listener. I appreciate you all, and I'll speak to you soon. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai