The Wealth Dragon Way: The Why, the When and the How to Become Infinitely Wealthy

Preface

We're going to discuss why to become wealthy extensively in this book, so we'd like to start by asking you this question: Why did you pick up this book? We're guessing it's because you'd like to have more money in your life. We can definitely show you how to achieve this, but why do you want more money in your life? We're assuming it's so you don't have to worry about whether you'll always be able to afford to pay the bills. Why do you want to be free of money worries? Presumably so that you're able to spend more time and energy on the things and people you value. So, when do you want to start living like this? That's a question only you can answer.

We started Wealth Dragons in 2009, hoping we could educate people about wealth creation and help them realize their full potential. Our specific expertise lies in different areas of the property business, but over the years we have explored other avenues of passive income generation and asset building as we have continued along the path of our own education. We pass on anything and everything new that we learn, that we believe will enrich the lives of others, in our seminars and educational programmes. We, like you, are constantly learning and growing. Since we started the company we have given countless seminars and have taught wealth creation programmes that are constantly evolving, all over the world.

One of our key ambitions has always been to reach as wide an audience as possible, and this is what inspired us to write a book. Our aim in this book is to give you, the reader, an overview of our philosophies about wealth creation, share with you our own personal stories, and inspire you to further your own wealth education.

Over the years we've received a great deal of positive feedback from our clients students and business associates. We hope this book will also remind them of why they chose us and why they stuck with us.

While we have written the book together, with a joint voice for the most part, we obviously have our individual stories and thoughts to share. This will be clearly indicated in the text.

If this is your first introduction to Wealth Dragons, we hope it inspires you and gives you plenty to think about. Of course, it goes without saying that we would love to hear from you, and we invite you to come and meet us at a seminar sometime in the future. You'll find all the relevant contact details at the back of the book.

We can't wait to meet you when you're ready to become a wealth dragon!

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to so many people who have helped make and shape this book. First, we are very grateful to the John Wiley & Sons team, including Kimberly Monroe-Hill, Jeremy Chia, Gladys Ganaden, and especially Nick Wallwork and Nazneen Halim, who championed the book from the start. To our families and friends, we extend our deepest gratitude for all their ongoing love and support. We wouldn't be where we are today without the hard work and support of our entire Wealth Dragons team, including our administration and sales teams, and our speakers, who all help make our business so successful and the daily grind so enjoyable. They are all a part of this journey, as they are the ones who really start the process of changing people's lives. We would also like to thank Miranda Leslau for all her expertise. But the people to whom we owe the greatest debt are those who have inspired so much of the material in this book . . . our students. They help us learn while we teach. This book is a testament to them. Many of them started out believing they didn't have choices in life. To anyone who has been told they can't achieve something, we have written this book to tell you that you can.

About the Authors

John Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Wealth Dragons. John started investing in property in his early twenties. By the time he was 27, John had achieved his goal of becoming a self-made millionaire. His experiences inspired him to share his knowledge with others and he was soon teaching seminars in property investment throughout the United Kingdom. He subsequently gained an international reputation as a motivational speaker and has shared stages with former US President Bill Clinton, Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, Jack Welch (ex-CEO of GE) and Randa Zuckerberg (co-founder of Facebook). John also trains people to become world-class public speakers. He has helped several of his students build highly successful businesses and achieve international acclaim. John's success came despite a humble start in life. He was born to Chinese parents who ran a takeaway restaurant in the north of England. All of John's achievements came as the result of endless hard work and unwavering tenacity. John is dedicated to showing others how they have the opportunity to do the same and is continually inspired by watching his students achieve the kind of success they thought they could only ever dream of.

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Vincent Wong is the COO and co-founder of Wealth Dragons. Vince is one of the most dynamic and well-respected property entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom and internationally. As well as building his own multimillion-pound property portfolio, Vince has helped countless people source and structure property deals through his property companies. At the height of the financial crisis, Vince pioneered groundbreaking financing strategies and was successful in getting lease options legalized for residential property sales in the United Kingdom, Malaysia and the Netherlands (and is currently working with regulators on campaigns in Poland and Singapore). Vince personally mentors a number of property investors and business owners. He is an internationally recognized public speaker and expert in the property industry and he is regularly invited to speak to audiences of more than 1,000 at the prestigious Property Outlook Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (the biggest property conference in Asia). Vince is a graduate of the University of London's School of Pharmacy and holds an MBA from Cass Business School.

Introduction: The Story of Wealth Dragons

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.

—Robert Frost

John: My rather ordinary, humble start in life took place in a small Lancashire town in the north of England, not far from the Yorkshire Dales. I was born in Burnley General Hospital in 1981 and grew up in Colne, a fairly remote and typically northern English town, where my parents owned and ran the local Chinese takeaway. They were both originally from Hong Kong and moved to the UK in the 1970s. They married shortly after meeting and started what was to become a family business. Many Chinese people born in Hong Kong moved to the UK in those days, taking advantage of the time during which Hong Kong was a British territory, which gave them the right to British nationality. The influx was responsible for a surge in Chinese takeaways. The British seemed to love the new, exotic, tasty (and relatively cheap) fast food, and many families built up successful small businesses as a result.

My parents, and their extended family members, worked long hours to keep the business up and running, and making a profit. It was a hard life and I hardly saw them while I was growing up. Colne has grown since the time I lived there, but during my childhood there were only a handful of shops and one primary school, where I was teased mercilessly for being the only Chinese boy in the school. I remember my nickname was Bruce Lee. This might have been a compliment within a big group of Chinese kids who worshipped the martial arts hero, but the way in which the local English kids used it when they directed it at me was definitely derogatory. They would do karate moves in front of me and laugh. I once got flying-kicked in the back so hard that it knocked me off my feet. When I took off my jacket I found there was the imprint of a shoe on it. I don't remember having any real friends at school and I don't think I went to more than two or three birthday parties throughout my entire school years. Even when I became a teenager and the kids in my area started going out to parties and local clubs, I missed out because my parents wouldn't allow me to go. Anytime I wasn't at school I was expected to work in the takeaway.

I started working in the takeaway—doing odd jobs, cleaning and carrying things around—at around the age of seven or eight years old. I got a little pocket money for the mundane jobs I did. Everyone worked in the family business, and I knew it was expected that my brother and I would take it over some day.

But I had other plans.

I had watched my parents work night and day in a business that gave them a modest living and prevented them from spending quality time with their children. They worked seven days a week, so my brother and I were mostly raised by our aunts and uncles. I always knew I wanted a different life. Not only did I want to give my future children more options (including the option to spend time with their father), but I also wanted to help my parents get more time to enjoy life without working every waking minute. I wanted to free them from the chains that bound them to their arduous existence.

By the time I started college I was working three different jobs. I was making money in every way I could, in every spare minute I could find. Along with working in the takeaway most evenings, I got a weekend job in a shoe shop. I also signed up for part-time telesales work, which was brutal. It involved cold-calling people listed in the Yellow Pages to sell them web sites. I got rejection after rejection; it was soul-destroying. But in hindsight it was invaluable experience as it instilled a high tolerance for rejection in me, which served me well later in life! My inspiration was my determination to break free from the future that had been laid out for me—a future identical to the life my parents led. I respected them, but I didn't want to live like them. I wanted to reach for more; I believed I could achieve more.

Those were some tough years. I had absolutely no life and no friends; at times I resented it, but I knew I had to keep going. I became obsessed with working, believing I could work my way to success. But I was frustrated by how much time it took to make a modest amount of money. Was I even doing anything different from my parents, in giving up all my time to make money? That feeling probably planted the first seed of my determination to find a way to buy back my time, to make significant money without it taking up all of my time. That growing feeling—the deep desire for the freedom to do what I wanted with my time, whilst still earning an income—helped motivate me in the years to come.

I did well enough at school to get into university; I got a place at the University of Hull to study computer animation. With what my parents had put aside for my higher education, and with the money I'd saved from all my jobs, I was able to study full-time without having to work to supplement my allowance. Being away from home and out of the grind of working in the takeaway for the first time in my life, I also had my first taste of a real social life. It was great. I made some good friends and found a little self-confidence. But money was still tight and I couldn't wait to graduate and move down south where I believed I could command a better salary than my peers.

My first job was close to London, in Guildford. My starting salary was £21,000, while most of my friends were in jobs that paid them around £15,000; I definitely felt their jealousy. However, I soon discovered that their jealousy was largely unfounded, because the reality of earning £21,000 was not as rosy as I thought it would be. By the time I'd paid my rent and all my living costs in the expensive London commuter belt, I had less money than I did when I was doing menial work in Yorkshire!

I lasted about a year in that first job and then jumped around doing some freelance contracts for a while before landing my next big job at an animation company called Criterion. I started on a salary of £26,000 and was convinced that this increase was going to change my life. But with more money coming in I was soon spending more on going out and enjoying myself, and it wasn't long before I found I had even less money left at the end of the month than before!

My next job was my dream job.

My best friend at university had been Darren Rodriguez. We had both been obsessed with working as hard as we could. We used to get up at 5 A.M. to wait outside the main building until the caretaker let us in. We were the first to get in and always the last to leave. We regularly told anyone who would listen that it was our ambition to get jobs at Framestore, the computer animation company that was fast on its way to working on Oscar-winning films such as the Harry Potter films and Avatar. All our fellow students thought we were being overly ambitious. Jobs at Framestore were highly coveted and competition was fierce, so no one believed we would get in there. Their negativity made us even more determined. We never gave up, and only a few years after we graduated, Darren landed his job there. I secured my position soon after leaving Criterion.

But as is so often the case when you realize your dream, after an initial honeymoon period we became bored and frustrated. We started to hate our purported dream jobs just like we'd ended up dissatisfied with all our other jobs. We were frustrated with the hours, the politics, and (again) that feeling that we never had enough money, despite the fact that we were both earning considerably more than most of our friends.

I started at Framestore on a salary of a whopping £36,000. This time I was sure I was fast on my way to living the high life. But, just as before, I soon discovered my pay cheque got eaten up pretty quickly. My travelling costs went up as I was now commuting from Guildford, where I still lived, into central London, plus I spent a proportionally higher amount on other expenses. I got a new car with a short-term loan, a laptop, some nice clothes, and suddenly I was back to square one…struggling (relatively speaking) to make ends meet. I couldn't believe I was burning through all my money. I worked out my monthly budget and discovered that, after deducting bills, I had £27 in disposable income that I could spend each day. One lunch in a nice restaurant in the city, or a round of drinks for a few friends (who perceived me as being much wealthier than them), would wipe that out in an hour.

Darren was equally frustrated. We used to meet in the canteen every lunchtime and during all our coffee breaks to plot our escape from the rat race. We were strategizing together, in order to figure out how we could literally buy back our time. We were two guys in our midtwenties who were already heavily disillusioned with life. Something was wrong with that picture!

One day, close to my birthday, Darren presented me with an early birthday present. It was a book. I will never forget the look of excitement on his face. He told me that this was it; this was how we were going to break free. He knew I was dyslexic, that it was a real struggle for me to read anything, but he begged me to read the book cover to cover, and as soon as I could. The book was Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

I opened the book on the tube on the way home and didn't put it down for two days. I was gripped. It was my first introduction to the concept of passive income, and I became obsessed with it. Darren and I could not stop talking about how we were going to achieve our new goals of creating a passive income source that would allow us to keep building our wealth indefinitely. I could hardly believe that so much financial security and freedom was available to me and I became 100 percent focused on working out how I could make it happen.

During the months that followed, all Darren and I did was research the topic. We attended countless seminars and trawled the Internet looking for new strategies for building passive income. Of course the one that consistently stood out was earning a rental income from a property portfolio, so we concentrated our efforts on learning everything we could about property investment.

Suddenly my three-hour-round-trip commute became valuable learning time for me. I added a costly (at the time) 3G plan to my mobile phone package so that I could use a dongle on my laptop—smartphones still being fairly cost-prohibitive for the average person in those days—and carry on researching online during my commute. I would even walk through the West End to work rather than taking the tube, carrying my laptop and reading as I walked so that I could stay online.

And then the day came when I had a big choice presented to me. It was a crossroads of sort and would determine the direction of the next period of my life.

I had been listening to every motivational tape I could get my hands on. I was listening to Anthony Robbins on repeat, and I'd just discovered Dolf de Roos—the New Zealand property millionaire and best-selling author. I had been listening to an audiobook by de Roos on the day I received a call from a rival animation company that was trying to poach me away from Framestore. They were prepared to offer me a starting salary of £60,000. That same day I heard Dolf de Roos describe a moment in his life when he came to a crossroads. He was offered a job paying $30,000 on the same day that he made a $30,000 profit on a property. He asked himself why he should invest a year's worth of his time to earn $30,000 when he'd just made $30,000 in one day. He turned the job offer down and became a full-time property investor. His experience and decision inspired me; I called the other animation company, turned down the £60,000 job offer, and my fate was sealed. I now knew what I had committed myself to focusing on.

I will never forget that day, that moment, when I was listening to the Dolf de Roos audiobook and made that life-changing decision. I'd been listening to it in a café during a lunch break and on the way back to the office I ran into Darren. I told him that I'd come to a major decision; that I'd decided I was going to quit my job. He didn't believe me, so to prove it, as soon as I was back at my desk, I wrote an e-mail and sent it to the whole office. I said it was my last day at Framestore and anyone who felt like going for drinks after work should join me at the local pub so we could say our good-byes. My boss was at my desk in minutes, asking if it was a joke. I told him I was serious.

Because of the confidential nature of the projects we were working on at the time, Framestore had to give me a month's garden leave (which means you remain on the company payroll through your official notice period but are barred from coming into the office or working for another employer; you effectively have to sit at home!). Sending that e-mail did feel a little mad, but I knew it would force me into action, that there would be no going back, that I would have to go through with my plan. It was amazing how much freedom I felt immediately; it was like a weight lifting off me. I knew I'd done the right thing and I never looked back.

I remember waking up the day after I quit with a feeling of total euphoria. Suddenly I had what I wanted: I had my time back. The whole day stretched out in front of me; I could spend all that time continuing my research. I also knew that if I played my cards right, the rest of my life could be like this: being able to choose how I spent my time each day. No one owned my time anymore. It felt fantastic. I dedicated every waking moment to going to seminars and doing research on passive income generation. Of course I kept the fact I'd quit my job quiet from my friends and family for a while!

I knew I had to get started in property investment as soon as