Vincent Chan, a financial influencer and internet personality, uses his YouTube platform to help followers increase their financial literacy and build wealth. Chan achieved the impressive feat of becoming financially free in his late 20s, but he admits he could have done so even earlier.
In a recent video, Chan shared the lessons he wishes he’d known earlier that helped him achieve financial success.
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Here are his seven secrets to achieving millionaire status so you can make 2025 your most lucrative year yet.
Find Your Golden Circle
Becoming a millionaire rarely happens by accident. For most self-made millionaires, the journey requires deliberate intent. For Chan, it started with the “golden circle” method: defining what, how and why you want to achieve your goal.
“Knowing what and how to achieve financial freedom … is important, but that only comes secondary after you have an answer to why you want it,” Chan said. “Your ‘why’ creates a thread between your core values and why you want to be rich.”
Growing up with immigrant parents working minimum wage jobs, Chan learned early lessons in frugality with penny-pinching and coupon clipping. His “why” is to give back to his parents and family, who selflessly gave every dollar they had to give to Chan and his siblings.
“You need to find your golden circle so you have something deeper to hold you accountable and to motivate you to keep pushing on and on even when you feel like quitting,” Chan said.
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Know That We Are All Replaceable
After graduating from university, Chan began working on Wall Street, following a traditional path to a high-paying career. However, within six months, he had an experience that reshaped his perspective on earning money.
At the office, he chatted every day with a friendly, older colleague who he described as a model employee. Thinking of him as the employee everyone wanted to hire, he was shocked when one day the man stopped showing up at work — and nothing changed.
“We are all cogs in the machine,” Chan said. He emphasized that everyone is replaceable — regardless of where you work or how good you are.
“If you want to achieve financial freedom, you need to stop being a cog in a machine and instead build your own machine,” he said.
According to Forbes, a lot of millionaires are entrepreneurs. But what machine — or business — do you start?
Find the Right Business Idea
Determining what business you want to start isn’t easy — even Chan struggled with it. To guide his decision, he used the “Hedgehog Concept,” a three-circle Venn diagram.
The first circle represents what you enjoy doing. While you don’t have to be passionate about it, you should enjoy the activity. “For me, I really enjoy gamifying personal finances,” Chan said. “I saw it like a type of video game.”
The second circle represents what you’re good at. You don’t need to be a world-renowned expert, just more knowledgeable than the average person. “I studied economics and I worked on Wall Street, so I knew a bit more about finances than the average person,” Chan said.
The third circle identifies something people want. For Chan, he knew there was a huge problem with financial literacy in the U.S.
The sweet spot in the model is where all three circles overlap. That’s where you should focus your business efforts. “The problem with most people … is that they only focus on one or two of these circles when deciding what side hustle to start,” Chan said.
Using this method, Chan started creating educational and financial content on YouTube, which eventually grew into a successful media business.
Build the Right Skills
To build wealth, Chan approached making money like mastering a new habit. He intentionally and consistently sought out knowledge, immersing himself in the perspective of self-made millionaires.
Chan explained he would read books, like “The Lean Startup,” before he went to sleep and would listen to podcasts during his commutes and workouts. Without access to wealthy mentors, Chan found the next best thing by surrounding himself with the media that provided the knowledge he needed on his venture to adopting the mindset of the wealthy.
“Traditional schools teach really important concepts and ideas that you do need in life,” Chan said. “But they’re also missing a lot of things you need to actually build wealth — how to manage your money, how to invest, how to run a business.”
Take Action
Many people dream of becoming their own boss, starting a business and becoming multimillionaires, all with fantastic business ideas. However, according to Chan, the reality is that 95% of them won’t take any action.
The most common mistake holding you back from becoming a millionaire is not getting started.
“Regardless of what business or side hustle you decide to start … everything ultimately starts with an idea, like a seed in the ground,” Chan said. “But if you don’t take action — if you don’t water it, if you don’t care for it or put in the work — then the seed will always just remain a seed.”
However, Chan warned that taking too much action at once can be like running in place. “Giving just 2% effort to 50 different side hustles … is pretty much the same thing as not taking any action at all,” Chan said.
Chan’s advice: Instead of taking action on dozens of ideas, commit fully to one business venture. Dive deep, learn as much as you can and focus your efforts on achieving financial freedom in one area.
Invest Your Time and Money
One of the hardest lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs to realize is that they have to invest in themselves to see returns.
“Something many people don’t realize is that there is always a trade-off with any decision you make, a fee that you have to pay in order to get something in return,” Chan said. “In this case, that fee is either time or money, and most people don’t want to spend either resources to build their wealth or to quit their jobs.”
Chan recommended asking yourself a key question. “Is the pain of not being wealthy, the pain of feeling like a cog in a machine, the pain of being an employee, greater than the pain of trading your time or your money to escape it?” Chan asked.
And for some, it might not be. But if your gut is telling you to escape and to achieve financial freedom, Chan said that feeling doesn’t go away.
Play the Long Game
Building your own business or side hustle can be frustrating when you don’t see results right away. According to FreshBooks, it takes an average of two to three years before a small business will see profits.
Chan explained that during his first six or seven months on YouTube, he wasn’t really seeing results, even though he was putting in a lot of work. However, he eventually began to see the payoff and his business grew — because of consistent steps he took every day.
He recommended blocking just 10, 20 or 30 minutes on your calendar each day to work on your business. While it might seem insignificant, these small actions can make all the difference. Consistent effort creates motivation and habits that will eventually lead to your goal.
“If you want to achieve financial freedom, you need to be patient and play the long game,” Chan said. “You’re not going to get the results overnight .. It’s the small, consistent efforts that you put in every day that will give you the big payoff in the future.”
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Learn These 7 Lessons If You Want To Become a Millionaire, According to Vincent Chan
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