Born in Queens and raised in New York City, 25 year old Daniel Pottinger is an entrepreneurial powerhouse who used his platform to create a blueprint for becoming a business owner. Daniel’s innovative ideas have manifested into Money Heist Academy: a lifestyle brand that makes earning multiple streams of income simple. With accessible resources and a two step process created by top industry leaders and successful professionals, Daniel’s Academy turns any individual with a passion for business into an entrepreneur with income from several avenues. Today, Daniel is here with us to share his journey navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, an insight into his extraordinary business, and his advice for anyone looking to diversify their wealth.
Daniel, let’s start at the beginning of your journey. What first inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
This has been a journey over the last 12 years. My first inspiration was my trip to China. I actually went to Beijing, and I was able to see how business production was run from a factory standpoint. I realized that most of our products are shipped internationally and there is so much money in that. That sparked my interest to have a global idyosynchric mindset of how the world actually works, especially at a younger age. That’s what propelled me to start looking into understanding different businesses and the systems used to make things work. That’s my focus; asking the question: ‘what is the problem?’ and as an entrepreneur, looking for ways to help solve those problems.
What a great demonstration of entrepreneurial spirit! Tell us, Daniel, what is the concept of the business that you’ve started?
My business is essentially a lifestyle I’ve created called Money Heist Academy. The whole concept of Money Heist Academy is to provide a utopian community of entrepreneurs, hustlers and up-and-coming underdogs to be a part of a network that helps produce multiple streams of income, whether it’s in trading, owning vending machines, investing in real estate, doing Airbnb or Turo; really any stream of income that’s out there, we find a way to adapt it into our educational platform and regurgitate it in a digital method, making it accessible for people all across the world. We have people in Germany, Australia, France, Italy, the United States, Mexico, Central America, South Africa and Nigeria, so it’s really a global operation.
Sounds like Money Heist Academy is making big waves across the globe. How will joining your academy help aspiring entrepreneurs to become successful?
That’s a beautiful question. So the main focus of Money Heist Academy is to provide people with resources. See, that’s the thing, resources are very hard to find, but with my prior business experience and with the network I’ve been able to establish, I was able to bring together individuals with different entrepreneurial backgrounds and streams of income, whether it was someone who is making six figures on the way to seven figures in Airbnb or Turo or vending machines or wholesale real estate, or a trader who has a multiple six-figure investment portfolio in crypto. Bringing these individuals together and utilizing our collective knowledge and experience is how I was able to create a two step process which is the foundation of the Academy.
The first step of the process is a course that will give you an understanding of how to make money, which is the educational part. After you learn and go through the courses, the next step – and this is what really makes us solidified in the game – is the finisher. What I mean by the finisher is, once you’ve learned and grasped all the information, now we’re going to show you how to apply it. So, for example you learned about Airbnb or Turo or trading in the financial markets, now we’re going to show you how to apply that knowledge to actually make money and produce multiple streams of income for yourself. That’s really how we’ve been able to help people because not only can they learn from us, but they can also take what they learned and apply it in real life. The cool thing is, because of our diverse community, we’re able to partner up people to work on different quote unquote startup projects, whether it’s a bunch of people coming together and starting in Airbnb, after you’ve learned the process of how that works. Now you can go get your own Airbnb or invest in multiple Airbnb’s. So really helping people to make that transition from learning to actually getting into a startup for themselves has been the game changer across our community.
That is an amazing business model broken down into a simple but effective process, Daniel. Let’s talk about goals. What are some of your goals that you want to achieve personally and for your business?
My goal personally is to be a multiple six-figure trader and have multiple six-figure businesses from Airbnb and Turo, and I want to get to that seven figure monthly income. I want to have three or four seven figure businesses. I’m very close on the journey to becoming a seven figure trader so that’s something that I’m really trying to accomplish within the next four months. In the last six months, everything I told myself I was going to be able to do, I was able to do. I own three properties, I’ve been traveling more, I have three or four cars with Turo; all the business ideas I have are starting to expand and take off rapidly. So I’m really confident that these ideas are hitting seven figures and also impacting over 3000 more lives.
On a business level, we have about nine different streams of successful income. Like I said from Airbnb, Turo, vending machines, cable franchising, YouTube monetization, NFT’s, crypto, forex, and binary options and stock options. So we have roughly nine or ten streams of income currently and I want to double that. I want to help create 20 streams of income affiliated with Money Heist Academy because people are making money in ways we couldn’t even understand. I also want to find other educators and other professionals who are doing their due diligence to be successful in their own niche and their own industry, and bring them together to Money Heist Academy, so we can continue to expand this global lifestyle program.
It’s truly inspiring how you’ve been able to achieve what you’ve put your mind to. Getting to this level of success must have been met with a fair share of challenges. What kind of adversities did you face growing up and growing your business?
Adversity is an everyday process, really an uphill battle. From a personal level, I grew up in New York City and NYC is really a competitive, melting pot. There’s so many things you want to do, but there’s always not enough time. The biggest thing I’ve realized is that failure is always going to happen. One of the difficulties I had when I was younger, especially after going to China and seeing what an entrepreneurial route could be, is funding. I’ve had a lot of ideas, I’ve done several other businesses, and the biggest roadblock was finding the capital and then finding the people that went with it. I think that’s always going to be a problem, no matter what level, especially if you want to become a millionaire or billionaire, there’s always going to be that challenge of how can I find more money and how can I find people who are just as serious about this as I am. In addition, there’s the educational aspect, figuring my way through entrepreneurship. My parents didn’t tell me or educate me about this. They told me to make sure you go to school, get good grades, get a job, you know? So that was a big challenge, now they understand, but coming up, it was like, ‘hey, we want you to focus on the books’. The thing about books is they don’t teach you how to actually maneuver in life. So between the lack of education on really running my own business and the lack of resources, really everything was just lacking when I started out but I have a hustler’s ambition. I’ve always found a way to make that next dollar so I can reinvest it. Every dollar that came in started to get reinvested, all the knowledge and the books started to pay off. The realistic part is that I just had to accept failure as part of my life as a young African American in New York City. In a city full of opportunity but lacking the resources – that’s really what my situation was. Once I accepted that and I realized I could change those barriers, everything went up from there.
On the business side of things, the biggest adversity has been age. When you try to talk to professionals to pitch them your ideas, the first thing they ask is how old are you? Being around 17 or 18, they don’t take you seriously because you’re young; they think you should finish school first or get some more experience under your belt. I realized that people judge you off your own life circumstances, but it’s crazy because with the right network you can overcome that. The thing is I didn’t have that network at the time. Now I wish I could go back in time and say, ‘hey, remember me? Let’s try it again’. Some of the people that turned me down in the past on other ventures are the ones first at my doorstep now. Maybe it’s the time switch, but also the reality that life can hit you no matter what; look what happened with COVID and how it changed the game. Any type of brick and mortar or mom and pop business almost crumbled and digital businesses flourished. Just being able to adapt is how I came out of everything on top. That’s how I’ve been able to grow not only my business, but expand my ideas of what I want to do.
Thank you for sharing your entrepreneurial journey and a background into Money Heist Academy, Daniel. In closing, please share the best advice you would offer to an aspiring entrepreneur who’s just starting out in their journey.
My first piece of advice is to embrace failure. This means understanding that every day, you’re the hero. The hero’s journey begins when you wake up, but failing or making mistakes is how you gain experience. Your growth comes from reflection on where you can improve and actually implementing those changes.
Second piece of advice is to understand that who you’re around determines what you know, what you’re able to do and the doors you’re able to open. Be very protective of the people you’re around, and of course, who you share your ideas and information with because it’s usually the people closest to you who are the ones that envy you the most. There’s a lot of hate out there, but it’s usually the ones who see you on a day to day basis that can end up being your worst nightmare. That sounds terrible, but that’s just the reality of the world we live in.
My last piece of advice is to develop a lion instinct. You can’t teach this because this is something you have to find within yourself. Find that hunger, find that drive. Figure out what’s going to hold you accountable, figure out your why. By changing your life, what does this do? Who does it impact in your life? Once you start to figure out why and know how important it is, even if it’s as simple as wanting to retire your mom, if your why is as strong as your goals, it will get done. So keep that in mind.
Those are the three things I would tell someone, it’s a little bit more brash, but it makes sense, especially with all the experience you’re going to gain from keeping these three things close to you.
