Wealth Wednesday: Taylo Lusi Tells Us How He Went From $55K To $2M

Angela Yee (0:00)

What's up, it's Way Up With Angela Yee, and you know, it's Wealth Wednesday, so of course, Stacey Tisda is here with me.

Stacey Tisda (0:06)

Happy Wealth Wednesdays, everybody. We were just talking about wealth building with somebody you're about to meet, Tayo Lusi. He is incredible.

You're gonna hear his story, but he teaches IT. For those of you out here who have jobs or like I'm being left behind with technology, I don't have any skills, he tells you how to turn those skills into something usable in this AI world, and it doesn't stop there because then he tells you how to make that extra income into wealth. And you have an incredible story. You went from $55,000 a year in a help desk role to $500,000 a year and then started investing that. We'll get to that, but I know that-

Angela Yee (0:45)

And shout out to all the help desk people. They are, I need them in my life. You know we need that help desk.

Stacey Tisda (0:51)

She's very nice to them too.

Before we get into career money and everything, I want to take people where your story really began. And you had some struggles with depression. You're from a Nigerian family. They wanted to steer you into nursing, and you didn't want to be here anymore. And then something happened. And tell us about that whole transformation.

Tayo Lusi (1:14)

Yeah, so I'm at Frostbrook State University. That's where I'm with the college. And I remember I got into nursing school by God's grace.

And I remember the first day I wanted to give up. It was an accelerated program, and it was insane. The syllabus was like, I have a test in five days, and this is the first day. And so I remember that my mom was pushing me. She was like encouraging me. And the third day, I just said, you know, I can't do this. And so I ended up dropping out of nursing school. And I remember my mom and dad, they came to Frostbrook where I was, it was like two and a half hour drive, they picked me up. And on the way going back home, it was just so much shame, so much like, like I failed them. And I had, you know, a lot of big dreams. I wanted to give back to Nigeria, you know, build different facilities.

And I was like, I can't even figure this out. And then I'm letting my parents down. And so it was a lot of depression, a lot of shame, anxiety.

Sleeping felt so good, then like waking up and like living life. And I remember it was just, you know, I called it quits. I went to, you know, I waited, I specifically waited for everybody to leave the house. And I went in the garage and I wrote a note that said, sorry, mom. It just said, sorry, mom. And I put it on the passenger seat. And I turned on the car, garage door was closed, car in the garage. And before I passed out, I remember hearing a voice that said, it's not your time.

And it like spooked me, because that was the first time I ever felt God's presence and like God talking to me. And so I cut off the car, I went upstairs and I just started bawling crying. And so I was lost. Like I still didn't know like where to go. And, you know, this was, you know, around the time that I met my first mentor. And my dad was like, hey, you know, your uncle, you know, you should go to his house. Like he's kind of well off successful. You should go to his house for like, you know, encouraging, being around like good people. And, you know, I went to his house and he was just like, Tayo, I got you. He didn't give me a fish, but he was slowly teaching me how to fish for myself. And this was when the pivoting moment of my life happened because it was the first time that I saw hope when I was in this pit, you know. And that was something that I had to hold on to. Right. And so, yeah, the next semester, I went back to school. So I took a semester off. I went back to Frostburg. I did accounting.

You know, I changed my major to accounting. I did it for like two weeks. I changed my major to like information systems. And then somebody told me like IT was more so, more so on the business side. Computer science is more so coding, information system is like business and coding a little bit, but IT is more so business. And I've always been a business person. Like I used to sell candy at school, and you know, I did photography too as well. And so, you know, I did IT, and I was like, why didn't I know about this?