When Grant Sabatier was 24 years old, he was unemployed and was having little luck finding work despite applying for dozens of jobs. However, by the time he was 30 years old, he had gained financial independence and was earning $500,000 per year.
Grant is well-known as the creator of Millennial Money, and he hosts a slew of finance-related podcasts. While his success story is astounding, some aspects of it can be duplicated by hardworking, aspirational investors. When Grant sat down to speak with Joe Fairless, he went into detail about his story.
Grant realized that he needed to take a different approach with his career path after he had been laid off twice before the age of 24. Given his circumstances at the time, he was forced to move back in with his parents to get re-established. This served as motivation for him to work 18-hour days, to work a range of side hustles, and to launch two different companies.
After spending two months sitting on his parents’ couch and getting no responses from his job applications, he decided to look into making money from Google Ad campaigns. He utilized Google AdWords University and obtained certification at no cost to him. This led to him landing a digital marketing job for $50,000 per year.
Around this time, he also had a deep philosophical shift about the nature of money. He began to look at money as a human construct that we put meaning into. By adjusting how he viewed money and the ability to make money, his attention turned to real estate investing. At that point, he was earning money from his new job. He wanted to continue living with his parents so that he could save and invest his money. When his parents asked him to move out, he found the cheapest apartment that he could find with the goal of saving as much as he could. In hindsight, Grant estimates that this important move enabled him to earn an additional $200,000 from his investments over the years.
After two years of renting his cheap apartment, he invested in a loft in Chicago. He specifically chose to shop for real estate in the dead of winter because few people do so in Chicago at that time. Because of this strategy, Grant Sabatier was able to get the property for a steal. Between that loft and a related parking spot, he had $88,000 in equity immediately from the purchases. This move actually led him to invest in parking spots in Chicago for a short period of time.
After purchasing the loft, he quickly got active as an Airbnb host. By renting his loft out and staying in a friend’s apartment nearby, he was able to offset the annual cost of his mortgage in about six months. When his girlfriend moved in with him, he was no longer able to take this approach with his current residence. This led him to purchase several other similar properties nearby and to turn them into Airbnb properties that produced regular monthly income for him.
While Grant Sabatier was investing in real estate for the purpose of short-term rentals, he was well on a path toward financial independence in other areas. By this time, he had left his $50,000-per-year digital marketing job and had started two digital marketing businesses. He had used that initial job as a hands-on training session. He learned the ropes in SEO, design, development, and other key aspects of digital marketing. This led him to be a true expert in the field by the time he left. He specifically targeted clients who had a smaller budget than his first employer’s clients had.
Immediately before he left his full-time job to be a full-time entrepreneur, he was earning $300,000 per year in salary and through his various side gigs. Over the course of the next few years, Grant focused specifically on accruing $1 million in the bank and gaining financial independence. While he recognizes the importance of doing so early in life and as soon as possible, he also understands that he burned through a portion of his life by working almost nonstop.
He accredits the large growth of his two businesses to two key factors. First, he realized that the key to earning more per sale was rooted in perceived value. By spending more time selling the key attributes of the product and incorporating stats into his messages, he was able to help his clients sell his higher prices to their bosses. Second, he mastered the art of pricing. He understood the value of what he was doing and the limited amount of time he had available, and he priced his services accordingly.
More than that, he leveraged the power of other people’s time. He saw those company owners earned the big bucks while their employees earned less per hour serving the same purpose. At that point, he stopped trading time for money. He had assembled a team of people who were each trading their time for money by working for him.
By taking these steps, he has achieved financial independence. This has led him to have time to write a book and to work on his podcasts. Grant is a strong believer in the power of communication and the importance of conveying value through communication.
In hindsight, Grant Sabatier believes that one of the best moves he made as a young adult was to live as cheaply as he could for several years. This led to him investing in real estate. It also gave him more time and money for investing in his businesses. Today, he enjoys a large annual income that is diversified across several different streams.