Syed Balkhi: How He Went From $0 To +$100M Before Age 30

My First Million

Hubspot

Investing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2023

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 486: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk with Syed Balkhi (https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi) about moving from Pakistan with no money to building a 9-figure WordPress empire before he turned 30. Learn why he turned down a $70M offer, why he bought a gas station as a baby shower gift, the difference between recurring revenue vs. re-occurring revenue, and much more. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (7:00) Starts first business at 13 (12:00) Starts WPBeginner at 16 (17:00) Syed’s 1st million at 21 (22:05) Buying gas stations (28:20) Recurring revenue vs. Re-occurring revenue (31:00) Heads I win, tails I don't lose (much) (34:20) Mismanaged gems (44:00) Business Idea #1: Content Agency (46:00) Going from creator/operator to capital allocator (51:30) Straight cash, homie (55:30) Idea #2: AI Wrappers (57:00) Idea #3: Freedom of Information Act Arbitrage (1:00:50) Net worth breakdown (1:03:15) Learning how to spend money (1:06:40) Thoughts on buy vs. build (1:09:00) Closing thoughts — Links: • Syed’s Company Site - https://awesomemotive.com/ • Syed’s Net Worth Article - https://syedbalkhi.com/what-is-syed-balkhi-net-worth/ • Clay - https://clay.com • Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. — Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yes, in the early days, I saved everything. I mean, I did not my buy a bed until I got married, dude.
0:06.0	Just to put in perspective.
0:07.3	People were dating me.
0:09.7	No, there was no bed. I do.
0:24.6	What up, dude? This is a long time in the making episode here. I think we've been talking about you
0:29.4	for like two years. I think you told us you were like, hey, guys, don't put me on blast like this.
0:35.2	We were like, you got to come on the show. You're like, no, you're just going to ask me how
0:38.4	much money's in my pocket right now. And I don't know if I want to do that. But somehow,
0:43.3	some way, we convinced you to come on. Said bulky. You're here. First, why did you just change your mind?
0:48.9	How did you decide to come on?
0:50.1	You know, talking with Sam or Twitter DM. And that's how it happened.
0:54.3	Well, what I told you, a lot of people think that Sean and I are like really aggressive about questions.
1:01.0	But what they don't realize is like, we'll ask an aggressive question. But if you say,
1:05.1	I don't want to talk about that. We just go, all right, cool. We'll move on. We're not like
1:09.5	big in that hard. So hopefully that changed your opinion.
1:13.5	That did. That did.
1:14.6	So you're kind of an amazing guy. So let me just set the table here for people. Let me just give you
1:19.2	a little, let me just tease everybody with the appetizer. So I think you are one, you've done
1:25.6	something that I don't even know five other people on earth who have done what you've done,
1:29.7	which is that you've basically bootstrapped a unicorn. You've bootstrapped a billion dollar company.
1:38.6	You've done it. You're only 32 years old. So you did this by 32.
1:43.1	You also didn't like invent the next big thing. It's not like you did this because you're
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