Phil Your Mind: 5 Steps to Financial Success

I’ve always gravitated towards the lunatics… the outsider, the misfit, the person that isn’t particularly popular with the straight and narrow types.  I’ve been that way my entire life and I made some great friendships with these people.  Maybe because they’re different or maybe more honest, interesting or generally more fun to be around?  My taste in most things is skewed towards being different.  This applies to movies, music, writers and now I have found, it applies to “finfluencers”.  Although this finfluencer wouldn’t describe himself as one, I can’t stop watching his videos and I love them for all the above reasons.  Let me introduce you to my favourite Finance YouTuber – Phil Miraldo from the “Phil Your Mind” channel. 

Who is Phil (why should you care?) 

At a time when I discovered the Phil Your Mind channel around 2020, it seemed like every ASX stock analyst had a YouTube channel.  They were coming out of the woodwork, all heavily scripted, edited and polished.  I watched these videos, and thought they were good as I was learning about the market.  All very theoretical, heavy on analysis about what stocks should do well and why.  The market was hot and everyone had an opinion but very rarely dropped money on what they were recommending as a good stock. 

Enter YouTube algorithm, and I watched a video on the “Phil Your Mind” channel.  I was blown away with Phil.  What makes Phil unique is there is no bullshit and it’s a breath of fresh air.  There is no editing, Phil gets “Big Kev” Excited at times, Drops the F-Bomb while excited and he demands that you “PAY ATTENTION!” when he’s making an important point.  When things go wrong, mistakes are left in and Phil keeps rolling.  He has a real spontaneity in his delivery, like live TV and anything can happen. This makes his videos exciting and often hilarious.  He has a passion and enthusiasm for the stock market that are unparalleled by any Australian YouTuber.   

The Biggest Differentiator

Phil makes trades and shares them.  He talks the talk and walks the walk.  Phil talks about his previous experience, his past jobs, working in the casino, and he has shared his journey, from his first property to his multi-million dollar property portfolio in Sydney.  He works 2-3 jobs, day and night, while trading, writing his own book, coaching others, running a Patreon and creating YouTube videos on the market.  He’s a busy man. His videos also cover macro-economics and the impact on the Australian market.  I don’t recall any other Australian YouTuber covering these forces that ultimately drive our market.  The channel was a huge thing for my financial education and I learned a lot from it.   

The 5 Steps to Success

I learned more from Phil Your Mind any other finance YouTuber.  I told friends and family about him, then they started watching all his videos too.  “Did you see Phil’s latest video…” was a common conversation I had almost daily.  Phil would drop nuggets of wisdom, and sometimes these would be delivered via a Motivational Rant.  One video in particular, which is no longer on YouTube (but I did record the audio), was a “Monday morning motivational Rant”.  Allow me to Phil Your Mind with what I call 5 Steps to financial success from the Big Man … Phil Miraldo. 

Invest Every Dollar like It’s Your Last Breath

Phil told a story about a successful business/financial Guru and his friend who wanted to be rich and successful too. Phil’s version was more engaging and drawn out, but I’ll give you the short version. The Guru told his friend he had to go out into the ocean at 4AM the following day to understand what it takes to be rich and successful.  The friend didn’t understand how this would help him, but he listened to the Guru and went out at 4AM in his swimsuit, going out deeper and deeper, questioning how this could help him. He did this until the water was over his head.  Then the Guru started to push his friends head down, drowning him, holding him underwater.  Eventually the Guru let’s him up and tells him how to be rich and successful. 

The lesson learnt was that being rich and successful is about surviving.  When underwater you want to breathe.  When you’re underwater and drowning, all you want to do is survive.  All you want to do is breathe.  You’re not thinking about your friends, Netflix, messages on your phone or beers on the weekend.  You’re not thinking about anything other than your next breath.  And Phil got to his main point.

The mindset of the entrepreneurs and the gurus, they invest every dollar like it’s a million dollars. They’re literally investing every dollar like it’s their last breath.  There are no distractions and that mindset is like breathing.  It is all that matters.  To be rich and successful, you need to invest every dollar like it’s your last breath. 

No Retreat, No Surrender!

The moral of the story was people give up before it gets too tough.  They see what has to be done to be successful but don’t want to pay the cost.  Looking for the easy answer, served on a platter and they realise that even with an answer, it still requires hard work.  They want to put in the least amount of effort required to achieve what they want.  Houses go up by 25% and they ask Phil, what do I do?  Phil’s advice is, “do what everybody else does, and that is you have to sacrifice”.  If you really want something, you need to do whatever is necessary.   

People don’t want to exchange their time for money.  The escapism of Netflix, Social Media and fun every day is more important than taking steps.  Or laying a brick a day.  The reality is it’s difficult, but it’s easier to give up, believing it is beyond them.  They retreat, back into their escapism as others in similar circumstances are putting in the time, working hard and getting where they need to go.   

People turn to Phil, looking for easy answers on what to do, and how to do it.  There is no instruction manual when life gets hard.  You just have to do it.  If you ask Phil, he’ll give you some reality and some tough love, “If it’s me, invest every dollar like it’s your last breath”. 

Take That First Step and Let Your Mind Go to Work

Where there is a will, there is a way.  Rather than escape into a streaming service, really think about how you can improve your situation.  As Phil continues, “if you let your mind go to sea, rather than believing you can’t afford it or you can’t do it, you should think how can I do it? How can I afford it?” 

Rephrase the Problem

When you say how can I afford it? Your mind goes to work, you start to think about it, you start to create a solution and unlock possibilities by asking questions like: 

• Can I save some money on the way I’m spending?  
• Should I ask my boss for a raise?  
• Are there any other opportunities available? 
• Can I put my rent up $20 on my investment property? 
• Should I start a part-time job? 
• Can I start in the gig-economy? 
• Can I drive an Uber for 10 hours a week? 
• Do I have anything to sell on ebay or gumtree? 
• Can I start a Twitch or YouTube Channel? 

If you let your mind go to sea, rather than believing you can’t afford it or you can’t do it, you should think how can I do it?

Phil Miraldo

You start to think about various possibilities out there that are in your grasp. The opportunities can be great. But equally, there are a lot of people who won’t take that first step.  They won’t lay that first brick.  They’ll go back to their comfortable couch, watch the latest episode of some TV Show to forget their troubles for another day.  Rich and successful people don’t wait for it to happen, they make it happen by taking that first step.  Then they continue taking successive steps to get where they need to go.    

Take Zero Days Off

Phil is always thinking about his next opportunity.  He famously works three jobs, runs a YouTube channel, Patreon and other side gigs.  He is a workhorse.  He’s not afraid to set the precedent.  In the previous 9 months, from January to September 2021 (when the video was filmed), Phil had taken zero day off. zero. no days off whatsoever.  This is insane but a great example of being driven by your passion, your goals in life and being serious about it.  Self-motivated guys like Phil highlight the amount of work possible that you probably aren’t doing or even thinking about.  This level of motivation is motivating in itself and something to aspire to.  Here it is, straight from the horses mouth:      

“Every single day I am watering and nurturing and planting the seeds… I do it every single day. Guys, like we always talked about the one thing that equalizes us all is time. It doesn’t matter if you’re Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk you know, whatever.   Guys one thing that equalize us all is there are 24 hours in a day. And just think every day that I don’t spend doing this is another day I’m further away from getting where I want to get to and so forth. So I just think about it like that.” 

Phil Miraldo

And everyday you’re not doing it, someone else is. Looking towards guys like Phil, it shows you that if you want it, you need to do it everyday or you may lose momentum and question, how much do you really want it?  

No Excuses – Just start something… Anything…

The reason I found this rant so inspiring, was I could relate to what Phil said about being young.  When you are young, there are more opportunities when we don’t have so many commitments.  When you have three kids (like I do) or a business and a mortgage and loans, the opportunity to go all in requires higher risk.  In theory, it’s easier to do nothing when you’re older.  Too many commitments, no spare money, no time or energy.  But no, Phil doesn’t agree.   

From where you start, your current destination is not your final destination

Phil Miraldo

You can bounce around, pivot, find new passions or focus on a specific niche.  You may not find what works right away, and it may take a few attempts.  If something doesn’t work, start something else.  This is great advice.  Most people, myself included, have tried many things in the past trying to find that final destination.  The main point is you keep learning, pick up new skills along the way to apply to the next thing.  Skills such as writing a blog, graphic design, web design, video editing, even mad excel skills are all valuable.     

As Phil said, “Maybe you’re lucky.  Maybe you do find it on the first hit.  But I’m saying if it’s not, there’s no sense in giving up.  You need to nurture it, water it.  Every minute you’re not in the rat race working, or you’re not with your family, you should be on your craft.  Every single day, work on your craft”. 

Keep working and you get closer to your final destination, your current destination is just a stop along the way.   

Summary

Is Phil the Tyler Durden of Aussie Finance, I say Yes.  Phil Your Mind is a fresh, original voice on YouTube and where the technical analysts and theoretical stock pickers have dried up in this Post-Covid bear market, Phil keeps going and shares his journey along the way.  When everyone is winning and the market is booming it’s easy to get excited, but when the market is in a downturn It’s interesting to see experienced investors like Phil continue to trade and I appreciate his take on the market, specifically on BNPL.   

What do you think of the 5 steps to financial success from Phil Your Mind, or let me know if you love his channel as much as I do?  I’d love to share the linked video but it was taken down.  Trust me, it was awesome.  PAY ATTENTION and Subscribe to his YouTube Channel for his amazing take on stocks, the market, entrepreneurship and life in general.  He’s a legend. 

And I’ll leave the final word to Phil…

I NEED TO SAY NO MORE!

Phil Miraldo

M. Moneyman