You’ll never become a millionaire unless you understand this concept. Right, this is where you are right now, and this is where you want to be. Now you see this space in the middle. I call this the performance gap. The difference between someone who becomes a millionaire and someone who’s just getting by lies in their obsession with closing this gap.

The Performance Gap: Understanding the Path to Wealth

Most people’s paths look something like this, up and down all over the place, and they never reach their end goal. A person who becomes a millionaire in their 50s will have a path a bit more like this, eventually getting to their goal. Now my path was a little bit different. Now I managed to go from point A to point B pretty quickly. To be honest, I think the only reason I managed to bridge this gap was because I didn’t have any other options. I wasn’t particularly talented or smart. I didn’t have any qualifications to lean on. And after getting bullied by my first boss, I quit the usual nine-to-five grind. So I made a promise to myself to become wealthy as fast as possible. I did everything in my power to bridge the performance gap, and I became a millionaire in my 20s.

The Value of Solving Big Problems

If you only remember one thing from this video, then let it be this. The amount of money you make is always directly proportional to the amount of perceived value you give. To put it simply, the bigger the problems you’re able to solve, the more money you’ll make, and the faster you’ll bridge the performance gap.

Finding Your Value Zone

So the first thing I want you to do is draw out a Venn diagram like this. In this section, I want you to write down the things you like to do. So if I was doing this, I’ll put down rating cars, flying planes, traveling, and playing golf. I’m sure you have a lot of others you can add, so just go crazy with it. In this next one, write down the things you’re good at. Off the top of my head, I’d say having conversations, building and designing models, leading teams, and carpentry. And finally, write down the things that people will pay you a lot for. Let’s put down consulting, building structures, and designing complex mechanics.

The trap that most people fall into is only considering one of these factors when they’re deciding what they want to do with their life. I mean, imagine choosing a job just because you love it, but you’ll start making minimum wage, and before you know it, you’re hating what you once loved. Talk about a passion killer. Or picture this, you are good at something, so you make it your job, but you’re working your fingers to the bone and still not making enough money.

You’re stuck in your comfort zone, not really going anywhere. And then there’s this scenario where you pick a job just because it pays well, which sounds good, right? Well, not if you are miserable every single day. That’s why the only solution to becoming rich and happy is to find something that’s in all sections. I call this the value zone.

I managed to find this early on by combining my passion for model helicopters with my skill for building models and advice people would pay for. This led me to opening multiple model shops and designing my own brand of models that I sold across the globe. The problem with the way most people look at business is they want to find the side hustle or the method first and then try to fit themselves around it rather than nailing down their value zone and then finding the correct side hustle to start for them. So now you know how to find your value zone. It’s time to pick the right vehicle to drive you in a straight line to your destination.

Choosing Your Financial Vehicle

Let me ask you a question. Would you rather have a million dollars in assets or earn a million dollars per year? Think about that for a second. Of course, you want both, right? Well, to do this, you’re gonna need two different vehicles, one for making money and the other one for investing money.

Let’s start with making money. This should be your active vehicle. Think of it like a motorbike. You can choose between a product-based business like I started, a content business like making YouTube videos, and my all-time favorite, a service-based business. So why is a service-based business my favorite when I produce products and also make YouTube videos? Might seem a bit strange, right? One word, timing. And I’m not talking about time in the market, but instead, your career timing. Your initial side hustle should have the potential to rake in about 100K a year. But remember, the venture that catapults you to 1 million or even 10 million a year is not gonna be the same. When you are starting, resources are usually pretty tight. So it’s smarter to launch a service-based business as it has minimal setup costs. Even better if you could do it from a laptop in your spare time. So take a look at your diagram again and brainstorm a service you can offer within your value zone.

Investing: Your Passive Vehicle

Now for investing money, this should be your passive vehicle. Think of it like the sidecar on your motorbike. You know, like the one in Harry Potter. Loads of people treat investing like it’s just another side hustle, chasing it with that same get-rich-quick mindset. But here’s the real deal. Investing isn’t about overnight riches. It’s a tool to grow your wealth, and if you do it right, you can just set it and forget it.

After you’ve made your free account, all you have to do is select pies. These pies represent different slices of stock. For instance, if you have a pie with 25% Tesla, 25% Meta, and say 50% Google, and you invest $100, it will be divided amongst those stocks. This means $25 would go into both Tesla and Meta, and $50 would go into Google. You can choose to make these investments at a frequency that suits you, daily, weekly, or monthly.

Let’s set one up together so you can follow this video step by step. You have the option to use pre-made pies, and there’s lots of options in here such as this one that focuses on companies that pay dividends and this one here that invests in AI companies. Although this looks simple, please always do your own research into stocks you want to invest in rather than just trust in the pie creators. This pre-made option is great to give you some ideas, but I encourage you to make your own. So let’s go back to select Build a Custom Pie. Now you can select whatever stocks you want to include in your pie. So if you’re just a beginner, then simply click the S&P 500 Index fund. This allows you to invest in around 500 of the largest public companies in the USA with just one click.

This value projection is really awesome as well as it shows you just how much you could make based on historical averages. I mean, say we invested five pounds a day for 25 years. This says that you will have only invested 45,000 pounds, and your portfolio could be worth 1.04 million. And if we expand that to 40 years, you could have a portfolio worth 17.34 million. But hang on, Mark, isn’t investing risky? Of course, stocks can go up and down, and even the S&P 500 has seen good and bad days. However, no one has ever lost any money if they’ve held for more than 20 years. Even when the market dips, all past dips since 1950 have been made up for by market rises. In simple words, the S&P 500 shows that playing the long game and sticking with your investments can be really worth it. It’s personally made me millions without me having to do any work. That’s why I’m such a big fan.

Maximizing Your Resources

Since I’m planning to talk about the Trading 212 app anyway, I reached out to them to see if they’d be interested in sponsoring this portion of the video. They agreed and are offering a free stock worth up to 100 pounds to anyone that uses the code Tilbury when they create an account. Plus, you get more free stocks by inviting your friends. Both of you will get a free share as long as they fund their account.

Right, now you’ve nailed down your value zone, got your active money-generating vehicle, and set up your passive investment app, it’s time to think about the next section. One of the biggest lies gurus tell you is that you need seven different income streams to become successful and reach your end goal. This causes people to get so caught up juggling multiple income sources and their social lives that they end up slowing down and losing their focus completely. You have three main limited resources, money, time, and energy. If you want to do this with me, grab a piece of paper and three different colored pens.

Firstly, make a list of everything you do in your life. This should include everything. Now draw a graph like this and divide it into segments corresponding to the number of items on your list. For my example, that would be six segments, but for you, it could be more or less. First, use a color to shade in the proportion of money you spend on each segment every month. Then use a color to shade in the amount of time you spend on each activity monthly. Lastly, use yet another color to show the amount of energy each task requires. You should have something that looks a bit like this.

Here’s the key. Your resources will always be limited. While it might be possible to increase the amount of money you have, increasing your energy and especially your time just isn’t possible. When I do this activity with people, it’s amazing how much they spread their resources to all different areas of their life. Now, I do get work/life balance, but when you’re trying to build a business, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, that balance is gonna go out of the window for a short while.

When I was building my first business, I had no friends. Well, I had friends, but I wasn’t spending any time with them. I lived on hardly any money and spent every waking hour working on my business, slowly improving it, and getting closer to my goal. It’s a bit like a circus performer trying to balance 10 plates. You know, there’s always the risk of dropping some. When you try to do too much, you’ll eventually drop something. And if you keep going down that route, eventually, all the plates will fall, and you won’t achieve anything. My advice would be to choose the most important plate, keep that spinning, and once that one’s stable, move on to the next.

Obstacles vs. Excuses

By focusing on just one thing at a time, I was able to bridge the performance gap much faster than most people. Okay, so we’ve talked about value zones, vehicles, and how to allocate your resources, but there’s still one more thing to cover. I need to make sure that you aren’t confusing obstacles with excuses.

To bridge the performance gap, you will face obstacles, and you need to overcome them to reach your dreams. The only reason you won’t become successful is that you let these obstacles turn into excuses. Some people believe that I became wealthy because of a combination of luck and being good at what I do. This couldn’t be further from the truth. When I was young, I had so many obstacles in my way, including dyslexia, lack of qualifications, and being a victim of bullying. But I never once let these obstacles become excuses. There were many times when I thought about giving up, but I knew that deep down, if I gave up, I would have to return to a normal nine-to-five and live an average life. That thought was so terrifying to me that I pushed through.

So the next time you’re faced with an obstacle, rather than saying, “Oh, I can’t do this,” ask yourself this: if I could overcome this, what would I do? Think about it and brainstorm some ideas. There’s a famous quote that says, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Even if your first or tenth idea fails, keep trying. Persistence is key, and eventually, you will succeed.

The Compound Effect: Small Gains, Big Results

After you reach $100K, your net worth will really start to explode, and this is all thanks to something called the compound effect. But this effect doesn’t just apply to money. Most people stop learning after they leave school, which, to me, is just madness. Knowledge is also cumulative, which means the more you learn, the more each new piece of information adds to what you already know.

My advice would be to read everything you can and put it to use. The more you learn, the easier it will be to bridge the performance gap. Okay, so we started this by talking about the performance gap, and I want to wrap it up by returning to that point. If you aren’t willing to make the sacrifices needed to bridge this gap, you won’t achieve your dreams. It’s as simple as that. Instead of your dreams becoming a reality, your dreams will become the sacrifice. So go out there, find your value zone, pick your vehicles, and start bridging that gap. Your future self will thank you.