How Michael Saylor Used Debt to Build a $60B Empire (and how you can too)

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Look at Michael Saylor.

[00:00:02]And he had this company MicroStrategy or MicroStrategy at the time at the time and he couldn't grow the revenue.

[00:00:07]And so for like a decade he tried and he tried to acquire companies and start new business lines and he couldn't get the company past about a two or three billion-dollar valuation. So he said, "You know what? Instead of trying to grow revenue, let me try and focus on growing the assets." And he used credit and equity.

[00:00:22]And within five years he took a company that couldn't grow from about two billion to 60 billion.

[00:00:28]You know? And so we have equity and credit available to us. We just have to learn how to use those.

[00:00:35]Um tell us about your journey. So I think you got started about five or six years ago in in 2020.

[00:00:41]Um you had like your first credit card.

[00:00:43]I think you started at about $5,000 and then, you know, built that up to like what? Over a half a million dollars pretty quickly. Tell us about sort of like how that journey worked.

[00:00:52]>> Yeah, so I kind of mentioned what happened briefly the seven years before that on how I was able to fund different businesses without this great credit product. And took me many different business ventures to get here, many mistakes to get to the point where I learned about the 0% interest business cards.

[00:01:06]Um my first approval was $5,000 and I applied for the wrong card. And then what in a very short period of time and I got this information from business relationship managers who are the the bridge between consumers like us and the underwriters. So I started to understand the inside information, the things that the underwriters were looking for. That was much more than just what is the business actually making. It was more than a business plan, more than tax returns, et cetera. And I realized it it became very easy to custom customize a personal credit report in a way that the underwriters want to see it. We are kind of it tricking the bank in a way to make you look more trustworthy um than you are. Actually, that's not the exact way I would say that. We're just optimizing to exactly what they want. Just like when you save money on taxes, you're just catering to exactly what the IRS wants to see. So, if you play the game and do exactly what they want to see, then things become very easy. Um so, in just 14 months I was approved for over half a million dollars in in business funding on a brand new business, and then I put a lot of that credit into several different drop shipping stores.

[00:02:13]Very quickly those drop shipping stores made um oh well over a million dollars in revenue. And so, what I saw there after the after looking at that for 7 years of my journey, I was able to fund this brand new business without my own money, without tax returns, without giving away equity, without a business loan, without paying interest, and it put a lot of profit in my pocket. All I needed was good strong personal credit and building some strategic bank relationships. So, that's just solved all of my business financing issues over the last 7 years. And I have like the best case study ever. So, at that point I started to teach other people on how to do what I just did. Get access to capital, inject it into their business, etc. And so, I've I've coached well over 3,000 entrepreneurs over the last 5 years through my program called credit stacking, and it's just done amazing things for people. Like getting access to capital, putting it into the business so they can either, you know, increase their their real estate portfolio, do more fix and flips, uh scale their e-commerce business by getting more inventory, scale their their business by investing in ads or specific key hires. And so, that's the main thing I've done professionally over the last 5 years is just coach people on exactly how to get access to the best type of capital for American entrepreneurs.

[00:03:29]>> Do you just help them get the capital, or do you help them try to understand what may or may not be good uses of capital?

[00:03:37]>> More so, I help them get the capital. In general, I can guide them on, you know, if that's a good idea or bad idea, but in terms of like the business consulting on how to exactly deploy the capital, that's not my that's not my place in in the working relationships that I have with people. What would be bad way bad ways to use the capital or >> A bad way to use the capital would be to use it in something that's not going to make a return in 1 to 2 years. Because these are 0% cards for 7 to 18 months and so if the return's going to come back in 3 years, well, you only have 0% for the first 12 7 7 to 18 months.

[00:04:14]>> Yeah.

[00:04:15]>> So you want to time it you know quite well and into growth aspects of the business.

[00:04:21]Like I think using the capital to join like a mentorship program could be very beneficial, but it's not necessarily like directly into growth aspects of the business. It's a little bit more risky. It could be very good where you can get relationships, you can get help on doing specific things, but I like, you know, growth aspects.

[00:04:41]>> Yeah. I would also think like probably like not a startup.

[00:04:45]>> The if it's a startup, it's riskier.

[00:04:47]>> Yeah. Cuz it's not proven.

[00:04:49]>> If someone is doing their first fix and flip, it's a bit riskier than someone who's already done three and now the the model is a little bit proven and now they're just putting gasoline on the fire.

[00:04:59]>> Right. Yeah. So like some of the things that you mentioned I think about like, you know, if if I can buy additional inventory, I could make more money. So I already have a product that's selling.

[00:05:10]I've already got my systems, my distribution set up. I already already understand my cost per acquisition, my lifetime value of the customer. And so I know if I put more money into this machine, I'll get more money out of the machine for example, right? Um in a in a way like that. Or as you said, I'm doing fix and flips and hey, I could make even more on this bigger one, but I'm going to need a little bit of money yeah and I know that I can get them done in a short period of time. So I could do that.

[00:05:32]>> Yeah. Or even using Sorry to cut you off. Or even using the capital to raise money to get enough money for a down payment on purchasing a business. Like I had one one of the students of mine named William raised $300,000.

[00:05:45]150 of it was on these 0% cards and then he purchased it a seven figure assisted living facility and then after a year he was able to refinance and then also use some of the cash flow to pay off some of the cards. So, that was a really good example on how he used it to purchase a cash flowing business.

[00:06:01]>> Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean you buy a cash flowing business based off of a multiple of that cash flow. So, typically service based businesses are at a three or four times multiple. That would mean on a million dollar business it should be putting off about $300,000 of it of of net income, right? At the end of the year. So, if I could get a loan, I'm literally buying that $300,000 a year of cash flow.

[00:06:21]>> Mhm.

[00:06:22]>> Right? And as long as the loan the cost of the loan is less than that net income that I'm getting then it makes sense.

[00:06:27]It's there's a positive carry on that, right?

[00:06:29]>> Yeah.

[00:06:29]>> But yeah, so so if you're buying an existing business that's like an assisted living center that's proven, there's already people there, you already can see that the numbers, the profit, etc. It's a little bit safer versus if I said, "Hey, I'm going to go start this business that I don't know anything about. I don't know if I can make it work or not." Um that'd be a probably pretty bad way. I would also probably agree you said like a mentorship.

[00:06:51]>> [sighs] >> I'm not a big fan of of school school loans very similar, right? I'm going to spend all this money for school loans. I don't know if I can get a job and pay that back at some point.

[00:07:00]Mentorship a little bit like that education cuz to your point there's no like one-to-one mechanism where I get that money back from that. Now, both you and I join mastermind groups all the time because in our proven businesses one good idea could could make me the money in that business.