← Rich Dad Radio Show: In-Your-Face Advice on Investing, Personal Finance, & Starting a Business
Rich Dad Radio Show: In-Your-Face Advice on Investing, Personal Finance, & Starting a Business
From $0 to Starting Over: How I Rebuilt My Life After Losing Everything
00:10:42
In this episode, I take you back to one of the lowest points in my life—negative $17,000 in my bank account, struggling to make ends meet, and desperately needing a way out. I share how I turned that rock-bottom moment into a thriving online business...
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- [00:00]
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You know, sometimes you just need to slow down and enjoy the good things. And they don't get much better than the all new 2025 Nissan Murano. I mean, it's literally designed to help you relax and re energize. Between the 64 color options of the Murano's ambient mood lighting and the Bose premium sound system playing your favorite music, it's like your own personal Oasis drive the all new 2025 Nissan Murano. Today, ambient lighting and Bose are optional features.
- [00:29]
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At bp, we've reset our strategy with a focused downstream, a growing upstream and disciplined investment in the transition. See how we'll grow shareholder value@bp.com reset.
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15 years ago, I had negative money in the bank. A fourth kid on the way, and no idea how I was going to turn things around. I was staring at my bank account balance and I was realizing that my career wasn't going to save me. I felt good. Completely stuck. That moment forced me to do something that most people never do. I mapped out exactly how much money I was going to need to live the life of my dreams. And then I built a business to help me achieve it. This is the moment that changed everything for me. And it can change everything for you too. Welcome out to the Rich Dad Radio show, the good news and bad news about entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tyler Jorgensen. I appreciate you tuning into this episode of the show. I'm a new host here on the Rich Dad Radio network and I'm really excited to start talking to you more about entrepreneurship and business. So I want to tell you a little bit more about that time 15 years ago. Sitting there, I believe the number was negative $17,000 I had in the bank account. This happened because of a series of chargebacks and things that had happened in a previous business. And not knowing that I should keep my personal bank and my business bank separate. And so, you know, the, the business has, was going through its own challenges. I was trying to navigate that with former partners and do some other things, but the bank wasn't as patient. And they said, we're not going to wait. We're just going to take all the money out of your personal account and wipe everything down. So now I'm, I'm sitting at negative money. I've got a little bit of money left on, like on PayPal from selling some things on ebay. And I use that to buy half of a tank of gas to be able to go to the ultrasound appointment to find out I was gonna have a boy. Our youngest was gonna be A boy. And was a pretty crazy moment because at that realized, I realized I've got nothing left. I've actually gotta make just enough money to be able to close the bank account so that I can start, I can stop that bleeding, stop that business issue and move forward. And I remember there were a lot of sleepless nights at this time. I sat up one night and I realized I needed to build a business that was different than the last business. I needed to build something that served what I wanted to create, which was a life of freedom, a life of being able to be present for my kids. A life of being able to do the things that I wanted instead of what was, you know, have my life dictated by somebody else. And so I sat down and I, with a Google spreadsheet and I mapped out exactly what I needed. What everything first I mapped out everything I wanted. What did I wanted to do? What did I want to be? What did I want to have? Right? What were the things that I really wanted to do, be and have in this life in a short time frame, in the next three months, six months, year? I think sometimes we set goals way too far out or way too short. And so I tried to find a good middle ground. I said, okay, I got to get out of debt. I've got to, you know, close that bank account. I got to make enough money to pay the bills. But I also want to learn to sail. I want to buy a Volkswagen bus. I want to. And I had some other goals. I should find the spreadsheet. If I could find it, I'll put it here. But. And so I set these goals for myself and then I broke it down. Okay, which of these things are one time expenses and which of these things are ongoing expenses? Like the mortgage isn't going to stop. But you know, buying a Volkswagen bus was a one time thing. So I'm like, okay, what are all these different expenses? What is it going to cost to have the life that I want? And then I put it on a timeline. I said, okay, if this is what I want six months from now, and then I can break up what that one time cost is over six months. And I put all my other expenses, break those down into monthly expenses, and then I broke them all the way down into monthly expenses. And the crazy thing was, all of a sudden it was a lot less money when I could just see how much I needed to make per day to live the life of my dreams. And I think sometimes we get so caught up in trying to become a millionaire, trying to become ultra wealthy that we forget that it can be small amounts of money daily that can massively change our lives. I once asked on Facebook, what's the smallest amount of money that will drastically change your life? And for the mo, like the vast majority of people that answered, it was an amount that that many business people might think was small. The average was well under $5,000. And I'm not saying this would be a nice benefit. I said, drastically change your life. Ironically, the last time I asked is I asked this every two or three years. And the last time I asked, the number had gotten bigger. I don't know if that's because the people in my life had changed or, you know, things are also more expensive. So in order for me to really figure out, how am I going to achieve this new timeline, how am I going to achieve this dream life and really leave the old life behind, I took that spreadsheet. I figured out much per day, and then I started looking at what type of businesses are going to align with this new life, what type of businesses are going to match the life of my dreams, right? And so I wanted a life that allowed me to be super, super present with my kids. I wanted a life that would allow me to travel and see the world. I wanted a business, a life full of experiences. And I didn't want it to be dictated, overly dictated by time and so for or by location or by external circumstances. And so for me, what that meant was I wanted to do something online. And so my previous businesses had been, I'd had a mortgage company, I'd had a restaurant, I'd even owned some retail. But they'd always required me to be the main driving force of success and the main driving force of new revenue or customer service, management, everything. So this time I said, no, I'm going to build a business online and I'm not going to exist the business. So I created a fake name. And this is something that I always, to this day, I don't know why I picked it. It was probably because I was up late and hungry. And I picked the name Tony Tigray. And so Tony, Tony the Tiger ran my business for years. And I remember at one point I gave him a promotion and some, you know, I had another fake person step in. But for years, Tony was the name and the face or, or at least the digital face of the company. We never made up a fake face. But he was the Persona that interacted with customers. He was the Persona that interacted on in ads and, and marketing. And, you know, there were People that were would wish Tony happy birthday and connect with him and hey, thanks for sending us that product. And he was a good guy, but, man, that guy followed rules. See, I'm a bit of a softy, you know, and if somebody asks for a refund or does something that is outside of what I would normally agree, I'm pretty likely to be flexible and break on that. But Tony, he has SOPs and he has processes that he has to follow, and he was really good at it. And so that false Persona allowed me to kind of hide behind the pain and the stress of my last business and the things I was fixing and build this new business completely free of that personal demand on my energy. So I was able to build in a way that allowed freedom from day one. And I was still in charge of everything. I had to build the website, built it overnight one night, and then rebuilt it again and rebuilt it again and rebuilt it again as I got better and as we got more customers and as we had better understanding of what was going to work in the marketplace, so rebuilt the website myself. And then I was still in charge of handling orders and managing the customer service. Right off the bat, I had a dropshipper. I had somebody that was local that was selling a similar product that I said, hey, can we put my label on that and you ship it out for me. So I didn't have to manage fulfillment, which was a big part of what I wanted. I didn't want that. I didn't want to be stuck in a warehouse or in a garage, you know, doing shipping labels and that sort of thing. I wanted to be able to do things that, that I could do anywhere in the world. But I. And so I would manage the ads, I would build the ad campaigns and get those things going. I did everything that was the digital part of the business for years before I hired my first employee because so much of what I had created allowed me to have that freedom to still travel and do the things that I wanted. And so as we continue on here in the Rich Dad Radio network, the next episode, I'm going to tell you a little bit about more about what I did. Some other crazy things that kind of happened in the business as it went from this little side hustle thing to just kind of pay a couple bills till we scaled it up into international selling, into retail and selling whole getting large wholesale orders and product development. But I'm super excited to be sharing more about entrepreneurship and business here. I'd love for two things. One, if you are new to Rich Dad Radio. Please subscribe so that you can catch next episodes. And two, if you've been here a while, please leave a comment letting me know things about business and entrepreneurship that you would love to listen to and learn from me. In addition to the episodes that I'm gonna be doing here on my own, I am gonna be bringing in experts and guests. We've had some amazing people on my on my other radio show and we can bring a ton of amazing experts in. So if there's anything that you want to learn or or if there's anything you really want to hear on the radio show, please let us know in the comments and we'll see what we can do to make your dreams a reality. So step one, I want you to think about what is the life that you really want to have. And if you're feeling bold, go map it out and break it down into what it would actually cost per day to achieve that lifestyle. I'm guessing it's less than you think. Thank you for tuning in to Rich Dad Radio. I'm your host, Tyler Jorgensen. But choosing a business wasn't necessarily the hardest part. I had no experience in E commerce and I had to figure it out fast. The craziest part, I used a domain that was on sale for $0.10 and a $100 AdWords credit that Google had sent me in my email. And that is all I invested to launch my business. Everything I made from that point on was reinvested from sales. I'm gonna break down all of that and what I learned and the mistakes I made in the first year of business in the next episode.
- [11:26]
A
You know, sometimes you just need to slow down and enjoy the good things and they don't get much better than the all new 2025 Nissan Murano. I mean, it's literally designed to help you relax and reenergize. Between the 64 color options of the Murano's ambient mood lighting and the Bose premium sound system playing your favorite music, it's like your own personal Oasis. Drive the all new 2025 Nissan Murano today, ambient lighting and Bose are optional features.
- [11:54]
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At bp, we've reset our strategy with a focused downstream, a growing upstream and discipline investment in the transition. See how we'll grow shareholder value@bp.com reset.