How to multiply your money

You probably want financial freedom.

The kind where you can take care of your family, say no to what doesn’t matter, and yes to what does.

Most people think the best path is to just earn more.

But that’s not enough. Earning money is limited by your time.

Real freedom is built by breaking that time constraint — through investing in money and compounding it.

Because when your money makes money, and that money makes even more money, eventually you escape the time trap.

Once you had a large enough pot, your money compounds at a faster rate than you can earn it!

Over the last 15 years, I’ve invested millions of my own money and had some wins, many losses, and most importantly, picked up a few lessons.

Here are the three I wish I knew when I was just starting out.

Thinking in Pad Thais

I was 19, studying at a university in Sydney.

I didn’t have a job or much money, but I had a $1,000 brokerage account and an itch to figure out how investing worked.

Between classes, I’d sneak into the IT labs to use the computers and trade resource stocks.

Not because I had any insight into mining — I didn’t even know the difference between coal and copper — but because they were volatile. They had big swings each day and that was exciting.

I'd put $500 or $1,000 on the line (a lot of money to me at the time), especially when my benchmark was $10 Pad Thai at the local Thai restaurant.

One time, something I invested in dropped 20% and I quickly lost $200 and remember thinking, that’s like 20 Pad Thai gone!

But it made me start asking questions.

Why did the stock drop? What triggered the move?

That’s when I learned about things like company announcements, quarterly reports, and how markets process new information.

Every trade, win or loss, was a lesson. It wasn’t from reading. It was from doing.

It’s only when your own money’s on the line that you really start paying attention.

The Shift: From Gambling to Investing

Eventually I told a mentor, “Hey, I’m making money investing in the stock market.”

He smiled and said, “That’s not investing. That’s speculating. Like going to the casino.”

He handed me a copy of The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.

The Intelligent Investor book by Benjamin Graham on wooden table - Andy Crebar

That book — and everything it led me to, including Buffett and Munger — changed how I thought about investing. It moved me from chasing short-term wins to building long-term wealth.

Since then, I’ve applied that mindset across public markets, startups, and real estate.

But the foundation is the same.

Here are the three core lessons that stuck with me — and that I wish I’d learned earlier.

1. Understand How You’re Actually Making Money

At the start, I didn’t know what any of the businesses I was investing in actually did.

I was just picking three-letter stock tickers (i.e. MKR, RWE, TWJ), hoping things would go up.

But investing is buying a piece of a real business.

There are many ways to value a business, but the simplest one is on multiples.

Put simply, the value of a business moves based on two things:

How much money it makes
What people are willing to pay for those earnings (the “multiple”)

Say a business earns $10 a share, and investors pay 10x. That’s a $100 valuation for the business.

If earnings grow to $12, and the multiple stays the same, it’s now worth $120. That’s a 20% return.

But if sentiment changes — due to competition, regulation, or whatever — and the multiple drops to 5x, now it's worth $60.

Earnings have gone up, but you're down 40%.

Knowing how these two engines relate (the earnings of the company and the multiple) is the most important foundational thing to understand.

Magic happens when you find something that’s both growing its earnings and attracting a higher multiple. That’s how big returns happen.

But you can’t find that if you don’t understand what the business actually does.

Which leads my to the second lesson.

2. Know Your Circle of Competence

Once you understand how investing works, the next step is figuring out where to invest.

You don’t need to understand everything. But you do need to understand what you buy.

That’s where the idea of a “circle of competence” comes in. It’s what Buffett and Munger talk about a lot.

You don’t need a huge circle — just know where the edges are.

Diagram showing circle of competence vs perceived knowledge - Andy Crebar

Back then, my circle was non-existent.

Now, I focus on tech, software, and online businesses because I’ve spent years working in and around them.

If someone pitches me an oil and gas deal, I don’t even bother. It’s outside my circle.

This idea has saved me from a lot of bad decisions.

3. Be Patient

The last piece is patience. And it shows up in two places.

First, patience in finding investments.

You don’t need to look at everything. Just have a few filters — like, do I understand the business? Is it growing? Is it profitable?

You still need to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, but simple rules narrow the field a lot.

Second, patience in holding.

Even when you buy the right business, it takes time for compounding to work.

There’s a temptation to sell too soon or panic during a dip. But the best returns come from staying in the game. Time is what turns good businesses into great investments.

They say money isn’t made in timing the market — it’s made in time in the market.