How Much I Earn as a Property Trainer | Training Company Backstory
Samuel Leeds here. Ever wondered why I run a training company and how much, if anything, do I make from being a property trainer? Well, you're in luck. I will be answering these questions today with a backstory that will hopefully provide insight into “the man behind the YouTube videos.”
I officially entered the property market in 2008 then bought my first house in 2009.
But before I started dealing in property, I used to work in my father's company. He started a children's entertainment agency, which was essentially the family business. So when I left, he was disappointed, to say the least, “and he actually fell out with me.”
I was 19 then, and to kickstart my real estate career, I borrowed some money from my grandma. I then applied the same strategies that I teach today, including lease option agreements, joint ventures, HMOs, and BRRRs, to build my property portfolio. Around this period, I also became a Christian and joined a church in Warsaw. And with my father and I not being on the best of terms, my pastor became a sort of father figure to me.
Now aged 20, I already owned several properties and was in a good place financially. However, my pastor began having “quiet conversations with me about making lots of money.” And even as he preached, he'd quote certain scriptures from the Bible while looking at me. These include:
- It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24).
- You cannot serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24).
As a result, I began to develop a guilt complex. No, not because I had become a greedy person that just wanted to make more and more money—far from it. I was a faithful giver and always paid my tithe. I gave 10% of my earnings to the church, donated to charities and people in need, sponsoring kids through compassion, you name it.
So feeling misunderstood by my spiritual father, struggling with a guilt complex, and having experienced a bad car accident, I strongly felt I needed to take a step back. Life was too short. So with a substantial amount of savings, rents coming in, and an impressive portfolio, I decided to spend a few years discovering myself and learning business ethics.
Now, seeing as I was and still am a Christian who was an active member of the church, I chose to go to Bible College. I attended the Birmingham Bible Institute for three years, where I studied theology and wrote a dissertation on biblical economics. And by the time I completed my studies, I had come to the conclusion that money is neither good nor bad. It's how you spend it that matters.
I realized that while you can't serve God and money, you can serve God through money. Moreover, becoming rich doesn't turn you into a jerk. If anything, being wealthy exposes your true self. So if you have a giving heart and love to help, “having money will mean that you can do that even more.” Consequently, when I finished Bible college at the age of 22, I decided the clergy life wasn't for me. I was going to be a businessman, not a pastor!
Amanda, who's my wife, joins me in telling the rest of my backstory. We are at the hospital for our newborn's 5-day checkup, and she’s just come from her appointment. Interestingly, Amanda and I met around the time I finished Bible college and had just launched Training Kings. “Training Kings was a Christian business network,” Amanda explains.
“So at the time (2014), because he'd just finished Bible college and he was doing Training Kings, I just assumed that he was going down … the church route, and you were going to be a pastor,” she reveals. You see, Amanda knew very little about my property dealings earlier on in our relationship. She only came to know how big my property portfolio was later on.
Anyway, having learned biblical economics and now knowing money was just a tool, “I became released from the guilt of earning money.” I started to look at money as a certificate of thanks and an honourable thing. For this reason, I decided to go all out in my property business, packaging and selling deals, which is how I became a millionaire.
But even more important, I wanted to help business-minded people like myself in the church. I experienced being misunderstood first hand just for wanting to make money due to the notion that one cannot be rich and good. So I founded Training Kings to serve as a platform for Christian business people to connect and help them realize it was okay to make money.
Most rich people are vague when asked how they make or made their money, but I preferred transparency. Training Kings, for the record, was a not-for-profit. We only charged £10 at the door to cover food and hotel expenses. But as it grew, the company started to cost me money. I would spend £4,000 out-of-pocket each month, which I paid using the profits I earned from my property business.
Keep in mind that we were also using the money we were making in property to help other people. For instance, in one of several mission trips, we provided boreholes for some villages in Zambia that didn't have clean water. Training Kings continued to grow, “so we set up 14 branches across the UK … costing me more and more money to run it.”
Now, towards the end of 2016, I came to the realization that many people only came to Training Kings to learn how to make money from property. They had no interest in the Christian aspect of the program or learning about guilt complex. However, I didn't want “Training Kings Christian business network to become Training Kings, a.k.a., property teaching. So in 2016, I set up a different company, Samuel Leeds Limited, to serve as a property training company.
The training company only came to be because there was a great demand for property training from many people. Samuel Leeds Limited blew up, and the results people got from the training offered were just astounding. People became financially free, and it was amazing to witness. Soon the word spread, and people even started flying in from overseas to meet me.
So why am I a property trainer? To help people become successful. Do I make money from it? No, I don't. My training companies have lost me money more years than they've made me money. “If the training company loses money, I foot the bill. If it makes money, I take nothing from it.” Training is a passion project for me, “and the day I'll stop training is the day I stop getting the same satisfaction from my student's succeeding.”
But at the moment, I still have people I’ve trained coming in every week on Winners on a Wednesday, sharing their stories. And it's not just about the money. Upon becoming financially free, my students are then able to fulfil their missions. For instance, several charities and social enterprises exist today due to kind-hearted people obtaining financial freedom due to my training.
So that’s how the training company came about to be. We currently offer extensive online training, a bit of in-person training, and lots of free resources on YouTube. And a big thanks to Amanda, who supports my mission tremendously. When I was considering quitting property raining when we got married and started a family, she encouraged me to go back to selling deals and training people.
“You're in your element when you're helping people.”
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