A millennial entrepreneur has achieved significant wealth through her success as a fitness influencer, and now she’s generating substantial income and covering her rent through an unexpected avenue: a gas station.
Australian fitness entrepreneur Kayla Itsines has established a thriving fitness business over the past decade, attracting millions of users to her content.
The influencer first found success with her 12-week “Bikini Body Guide” (BBG) fitness program. This business model, which she co-founded, propelled her to millionaire status at the young age of 22. The serial entrepreneur later rebranded this venture into a personal training platform, which cultivated an online community of 50 million members. Just six years later, Itsines sold Sweat to the fitness platform iFIT for an impressive $400 million.
Many might anticipate entrepreneurs who have earned millions to retire early and live solely off the profits from their sale. However, Itsines is not one to become complacent; instead of relaxing, the founder is focused on ensuring her success is sustainable. She invested in a variety of promising ventures, and one unconventional investment has proven so successful that even she is surprised.
“The first thing I ever bought with money that I was so excited about was a petrol station,” Itsines shared during an interview. “And I was like, ‘Wow. Out of all the millions of dollars, it’s so cool to see rent coming in from a gas station.'”
For those aspiring to achieve similar financial success, Itsines’ advice is fortunately much simpler than selling a $400 million company in your 20s. Rather than concentrating all their resources on a single major investment, individuals should spread their wealth across different industries and businesses, Itsines recommended.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Itsines continued. She advised that everyone should be “diversifying your wealth, because one day the internet might shut off and it will be gone.”
reached out to Sweat for comment.
Investing advice from CEOs: Put down the Birkin bag, and invest in stocks
Itsines had the right idea by following her intuition to build a diverse asset portfolio early on; other investment moguls, from prominent value investors to the “Oracle of Omaha,” have echoed the same strategy. 95-year-old Buffett began accumulating his substantial net worth as a young, ambitious entrepreneur and now presides over a $143 billion fortune.
“Start young,” Buffett stated at an annual shareholder meeting in 1999. “We started building this little snowball on top of a very long hill… We started at a very early age in rolling the snowball down, and of course… the nature of compound interest is that it behaves like a snowball.”
CEO of [Company Name] also believes that aspiring investors should enhance their understanding of financial strategy through practical experience. Investing in stocks for the first time can be intimidating, but the executive suggests there are various ways for even the most risk-averse professionals to get involved.
“Learn by doing—with small amounts of money, or even on platforms where you don’t actually have to use real money,” Friedman said at the [Event Name] Global Forum in 2024. “As you get more engaged and more educated, you can start to take more risks…and then get more confidence.”
Other finance legends are cautioning budding investors against purchases that will deplete their funds. Peter Tuchman, an iconic NYSE trader and the “Wall Street’s Most Famous Face,” has observed which investments endure after four decades of career experience navigating market downturns. He advises that purchasing a rare watch or an exclusive Hermès Birkin bag will not yield a significant return in the long run; instead, people should invest their money in the companies that produce these items.
“One of the most important things is to invest in stocks and not stuff,” Tuchman said in a video posted by The School of Hard Knocks last year. “Pretty much most things we buy go down in value the minute you buy it.”