In the beginning was the Word. Choose the right ones and you’ll be surprised how far they can take you in the direction you want to head in. The right internal dialog will lead you. I am doing my best to try and give insight into mine. Feel free to point out where I am shortsighted and offer guidance. I will listen to the extent that I am entertained or you provide insight/value, but I reserve the right to be confused and stupid, as I frequently feel this way.
tired of living day to day like everything’s alright, waiting on your moment? follow me and let’s make one right now. check out my list of musical jams!
So basically. I decided that for better or worse I don’t really care. (EDIT: I do care. Which is why I’m telling you. See my reasoning behind my transparency next to the image of my balance sheet.) I want people to know, because I want other people to see what I am doing and get inspired because frankly you can do it too. My story is crazy and pretty brief but here’s the summary. (Actually i think your story is crazier than mine, why do you do what you do? Why aren’t you doing what I’m doing? Heck, if you’re doing it better than me, show me how you’re doing it! I’m a quick learner and make big things happen fast.)
2009 – Negative net worth
2010 – made my first million
2011 – lost everything, carried a debt balance of 6 figures and little equity. chinese fraud really got the best of me.
2012 – by the end of this year i had bounced back to breakeven more or less. net worth $0.
2013 – apparently I’m up over $400K?
2014 – In the next month my goal is to borrow over $500K and in the next 12 months the goal is to borrow over $1,000,000 and to enact my strategy called reverse scale trading to make several million dollars. heck. I will even share my strategy. click the blue link to the right to see it. version 1:Glen Reverse Scale
here’s a chart of something from interactive brokers:Bradford 022013 to 012014
version 2:Glen-Reverse-Scale
version 3:Glen-Reverse-Scalev2
version 4: reg T margin call — considering moving to portfolio marginGlen-Reverse-ScalevregT
Alright, why am I going full transparency? I’m going to wing this. Let me tell you. If you look at wealthy people they tend to operate in an unnecessary amount of secrecy as if secrets are the source of their wealth. That’s bullshit. Let me tell you what’s up. I’m telling you because I am going to benefit from the people who reach out to me that understand what I’m talking about. I’m into surrounding myself with fortunate people who capitalize on what they see. Here I am, giving away what appears to me as my formula to make billions of dollars and I can’t have all of those dollars and as such I might as well share some. That said, I do believe in my ability to become a billionaire. It’s just a matter of time and patience and we’ll see how strongly I feel about becoming on at various points, but right now I don’t really care, it’s not like $1B is going to be that different of a lifestyle from $10M for me.
Rich people that don’t understand wealth are afraid of it. Don’t believe me? Great. Watch these movies by Jamie Johnson.
Born Rich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xhuSxyHWRw
The one Percent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmlX3fLQrEc
So, you’ll see that once the people who have created the wealth pass on the wealth, more or less people live in the fear of it… they don’t know what it takes to make that kind of money and as such it becomes a fear to talk about.
How do you get rich? You take from others basically. Do the math. Walmart makes like $6000 off of every one of its employees and provides them jobs. IF you work a job, it is because you are making someone else money. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are raised and educated to think that taking and taking advantage has a negative connotation.
Now, when you take a nap, how do you feel? Just saying. Taking can be extremely rewarding. So can borrowing. Borrowing is good when you actually intend to pay it back and are borrowing to produce. If you are borrowing to consume, then you lack the financial understanding of the implications most of the time. Education is consumption, but it may allow you to earn more later on and if you make the assumption that you’re going to work your whole life, then perhaps education is a good investment? I don’t know, not going to rain on that parade. I love student loans. As you can see I have roughly $32K of them. I will be paying the minimus for as long as possible.
The richest people i know borrow against everything, their lamborghini collection, their homes, etc. The trick is to maximize the amount of capital that you can put to work productively and to minimize your run rate expenses that eat away at your time/soul.
So, I figure that a lot of people are going to be able to benefit, myself included, by me going out on a limb here and just disclosing everything, fearlessly. Frankly, I believe that in order to provide guidance, you need full disclosure regarding what you are and what you have and what you are involved in. I live by transparency and I know what it is like to deal with crooks and have taken losses in doing so — time/friends/business partners/30 lbs/health/self respect/etc.
So, I am not afraid of money. And I am not afraid of showing and telling people how and why I am making money. I am not afraid of people judging me for being rich. Being rich is awesome. You should read the richest man in babylon. Being rich affords you options. It may save your life if you can afford a surgery or who knows what in the even that things go poorly.
Besides, if you ever aren’t rich, you can always go and get a job. And even those of you that say that you can’t, I am telling you that it is my predisposition to say that perhaps you can’t. If you believe you can and that you’re worth it, that is the first step to getting a job. Read the richest man in babylon in the context of slavery being a job. You have to sell yourself like a worker if you want to do something respectable.
right now i’m pretty much 100% allocated into yellow media warrants and have been for the last year or so. note that they are at like $8. I presently am not carrying a debt balance at any of my brokerages but that will change as I try to take on a million dollars worth of debt.
so, companies borrow their employees time.
you borrow money to buy a home
you borrow time all the time, usually to buy groceries, to do anything. you borrow from others and pay them back with your time. why don’t you learn to pay them back with other people’s time? that’s how you make millions. and making billions is learning how to capitalize on it all.
One of my good friends went from zero to $20,000,000 in the last 5 years and is going to be worth over $100M probably within 2-3 years.
it all starts with the right perception, and maybe you think i’m crazy and maybe you secretly hate me right now, but the truth makes you feel a certain way when you hear it and i am doing my best to speak it and i know that from my past experience i have been wrong and that conviction is no substitute for logic, but this is me, doing my best, to try and spread the word about how to make your own as I am making mine, if that is what you choose to be interested in, it’s time to do. I do.
EDIT 3: So. last year, since I claim to have made $400K from scratch and you probably think that is either decent, a huge amount, or who knows… I’ve worked with people that make that, but I also grew up in the midwest indiana and there I made a salary of $50,000 in 2011-2012. I actually have a budget here that i’ll share. My salary was $50,000 but in reality my throughput was $42.98 a day… or around $16,000 a year is what i was actually working with once you subtract out rent and that stuff. ha, here’s my budget. note that my revenue figure is my after tax paycheck.. see you don’t actually make $50,000, you really end up making like in my case 1303*52/2 or $33878 and then you back out rent and other fixed expenses to get your FCF… i run my life like a business.
And then on October 31, 2012 i moved to DC. and here is my budget for that. They gave me a raise to $75,000, but DC taxes are higher, etc.. and rent went from like $500/month to $1300/month. also the price of everything in DC is higher than indianapolis. even still I was now operating with free cash flow of $22900 which was higher than indianapolis. And this was more or less my condition in 2013. So how exactly did i make $400K that I got to keep from $22,900 of free cash flow and a net worth of $0? Borrowing. See below for my DC budget.
So let’s see. At the end of 2012 I had around $100,000 of debt and $90,000 of assets, mostly invested in yellow media warrants. Above $2, i could actually and i actually did borrow against the warrants at interactive brokers. unfortunately IB pulled margin on them and i was forced to liquidate $50,000 at $2.50 i think.. you know, when the tide goes out. At the time they were around $1.70 or whatever and now they are at like $8.50. you can do the math. that’s how i made money last year, because i can assure you that the $20K that i was able to keep from my job wasn’t the source of my income/power/whatever.
Sure, at the time I Was considered crazy. Buying into a freshly bankrupted phone book company, and not even just buying stock, buying the right to purchase the stock like 400% higher than where it was currently trading. i was apparently one of the few people that saw value here… and frankly the whole thing has played out to my worst case scenario so far.. totally killing me. anyway.
I don’t know how to get more transparent. Now you know my salaries. You know my financial position coming into the year. You know what I owned. You know how I made my money. You know how I intend to turn what I have into millions in 2014. I’ve invited you to join me. Look at the feast in front of us. It looks so tasty. I’m not going to help you eat your food — you’ve got to feed yourself, but the banquet that life has offered up for us is incredible. And don’t worry if you’re a silly head and you miss out on this one because I am going to continue to take advantage of reverse scale trading and you can reserve the right to get involved later as I become more proven, but I will think less of you, that’s just me… I take advantage of what’s in front of me and have done my best to reprogram my mind to acting instead of not when i ought to.
Yes. I am crazy.
Yes. I’m a weirdo.
Yes. I’m insane, except not really. I looked at that definition and just can’t get behind it anymore. But yeah, I’m insane!
I’m a creepy creepster.
Whatever you decide to call me, at least be somewhat serious about it, ha, because that would make my day better. I prefer undiluted honesty, because it stings the nostrils and they say that 60% of the time it works all the time.
I came in like a wrecking ball.
and the craziest thing i’ve done this past week is throw up $3900 and even more of that if you include not just myself into dex media call options because I’m afraid of not being involved in the event that they put out two very solid quarterly reports in the next 4 months. For me, I am about minimizing my life regrets and making decisions based on opportunity cost and I’m completely invested into yellow media, but what if YPG trades at an EV/EBITDA of 5.0x by june and DXM’s debt trades up to par? Well holy crap batman, then I should certainly want to own the stock at $15. Those call options are so mispriced — because that is a real possibility if you ask me.
i think of protection as also opportunity cost. what if i want to be involved and i’m not?? it’s not about just not losing, it’s about not missing out on huge opportunity when you see it. i could be wrong and the market is absolutely certain that i am. thanks mr. market!
I love me. I love me enough for the both of us. That’s why you trust me. I know you’ve been through more than most of us. So what are you, what are you, what are you so afraid of?
I want to talk about anger and fear. The only person I get angry at is myself… because why on earth was i so dumb to expect… lol.. and in terms of fear, i am totally afraid of… being afraid of anything… some people i know conquer fears by pushing their limits by doing stuff like pooping in public and laying down in the middle of clubs, or who knows… the point is that there are no real rules and you should try to live as mentally unconstrained as possible. the more right you can be about your perception of consequences the more successful you will be in terms of achieving whatever you set out to achieve..
and we’ll never be royals. i dont get angry at others, or at least i try not to.. i mean sometimes i catch myself getting caught up in a situation and being angry.. like with certain people that have stolen from me and people i represent … boy do i want to name them publically but what is the point of doing that. they have to live with their shame and i dont ever want to live that way.
some dudes have really hot girlfriends and they fight for them and are hyper aggressive. i am no such dude. i figure that i’m not in a battle. why are we battling again? Can I just walk away? I think my mom is calling. Yeah, actually my mother asked me to come pick her up so that we could go pay a visit to my cousins, they just had a new daughter, so i have to be running, I’m sorry, please don’t be mad, I’m not very smart. That’s generally the dialog of walking away. Sometimes you have to run. I’m pretty quick. and by that I mean to jumping to the conclusion that I want to not be involved.
The problem that I have is that my eyes tell the truth. Sometimes my eyes burn with rage when I’m angry — but since I’ve realized that I’ve been able to dial it back and if you have this problem try closing your eyes. you may look stupid doing it, but it’s better than revealing your intentions. i’m actually not opposed to fighting, i just dont want to do it under any circumstances and if i can avoid it that is best for me, fighting is just not something that i’ve ever liked because of risk… i always would regret that sort of risk and would prefer to not subject myself to it, you know what i mean?
if you can’t hear what i’m trying to say, ha. bulls on parade. life is great, i wish you the best, i hope that these words have value to more than just the value that they create inside my own head where they spawn. I guess that’s about it.
We are just two people, each in prisons of our own minds. The more you can unlock various doors and go exploring, the bigger your prison is.
Change the rules that control you and you change that which you can control.
in fact, i’m not certain that $400K is all that much… you see, the measure of a person financially speaking is their income… so by making $400K the way I did, that’s not necessarily an income given the nature of investments.. i mean, i could throw that into real estate or a 10% paying BDC and now have income of $40,000 a year or whatever, but net worth isn’t really much of anything if you ask me. what matters is the cash flow that is controlled… you see, the value of the cash flow that i control for any given amount of money is much greater than the cash flow that most people think is even reasonable to control for any given amount of money. you should read 100 to 1 in the stock market and it will blow up your brain. you see, a CEO that makes $400K/year is doing a great job comparitvely speaking because he can burn that money and he still has that as a source of relatively predicatble income because even if he gets fired or whatever he still can likely go be a CEO somewhere else or sit on a board of directors or who knows… money and income simply affords more opportunity to work harder for more money for other people if that is the rat race you choose … I prefer the stadium view. Everyone is out there competing amongst each other and I prefer to go to an empty stadium by myself and score easy touchdowns all day. Without anyone to block me, it’s pretty easy to win.
Anyway, yes, you’re right, in my case I’m going to take that $400K and use it as a base to make millions this year, but that is contingent on me not spending it more or less… and frankly i eat on around a dollar or two a day, this is the habit i’ve had for years now. in fact at my last job i didn’t really go out to eat lunch because i would just eat out of the communal kitchen cabinets.. shame and respect? ha i have very little… i mean, that’s just me. if i was paid more then i’d consider eating well but i’m trying to get off the ground here with my multi million dollar operation and every $1 i save is worth $20+ in a year or two — or so i reasoned. now ramit over at i will teach you to be rich has a better and more healthy philosophy. he just is about improving your salary/income.. but i started out with the other side… say you already have an income how do you magnify it. and my ability to generate income and wealth sucks as you get started out but is going to be crazy once i get the snowball rolling down the hill.. i already spend every year more than i make, on income producing assets, but i’m going to have difficulty spending so much money.. i mean this year is the first year that i’m going to attempt to spend over a million dollars of borrowed money —- haha. it’s all about what you spend your time and money on and doing that enables or inhibits you. cut to the bone on expenses, save a little, and start putting what you’ve saved to work for you — and you can make a million in 5 years if you are bold and determined… in fact it should take less than that if you have the right mental attitude and a few good mentors.
plus, in the process of getting rich, rich people will see your skill and tenacity and ask you to oversee stuff for them because you are perhaps better than they are or perhaps better than the other people they have running their shit.
here is a crazy article: http://swooptheworld.com/10-observations-from-banging-100-girls/
can’t say that i disagree or agree, just that the topic is one of solemnity, much like the topic of net worth going public. i’m just going to say that it is my observation that the person who wrote the article wrote it from experience and if you are interested in such experiences then perhaps you should take note and act accordingly. http://i.imgur.com/Yw40bEO.jpg
so, i have now gone as far as to introduce an unspeakable topic, my bad. ha.
that is from boldanddetermined.com — check it out.
anyway, long story short, if you want something, you are best served learning from someone who has gotten it… and i’m not really about what you want, that is for you to decide… but the hardest part about getting what you want is being honest with yourself and determining what that is… and frankly mostly everyone admits that having an additional couple million dollars would afford them the opportunity to do something else with their life that they would generally see as more desirable — but who knows. what i can promise you is transparency into my thoughts… or at least a genuine attempt to not lie to you, because to lie to you would be to lie to myself more or less, well, then there is this other concept about lying to others on purpose that is covered on ramit’s blog. http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/persuasion-surprise-sometimes-i-give-the-wrong-advice-on-purpose/
everything in context. perspective is reality. and i might as well close with my favorite quote, and that isn’t “uncertainty will certainly work for me” which is something i said in march of 2009 and mostly got ignored — people like value that is quickly demonstrated in front of them — aka hot girls and cold hard cash… and i didn’t have either and still dont like the feeling of cold hard cash, it hurts my face.
chin up my man, you’ve got a lot of life left to live and the spirit to go forward
oh and regards to borrowing, i’d like to continue that, you know, even cash you have in the bank or anything you think you “own” is still borrowed.
the way i see it, money — even that which you think belongs to you — all it is is just other people’s time. you can use it to have their time and in exchange you give them money.. so it’s not like it’s yours anyway, it is just a surplus of their time that you have borrowed in advance with the intent to use it later or die with a surplus, whatever good that does for you will be for your will to decide but as far as i’m concerned money has no marginal value to you when you’re dead, but it may to your legacy? i don’t know, it’s not really a problem i’ve considered except when i got a kidney stone and wrote my will and testament. this was spring of 2010
lastly, what has my dad said about this? “i would watch how much you disclose on the internet….no one needs to see that… but that is up to you”
and that is offset by a hot girl, “I admire your transparency”
boom, dad loses, hot girl wins.
i want to talk about what you own. did you know that when you put money in the bank they loan it out to people like me to buy stuff? ha, now you do. so technically if you own cash in the bank i am borrowing money from you to buy yellow media. thanks!