Let me give you some background first, so you can see where my drive to change everything came from.
Before I ever thought about money, I was a representative rugby league player. At thirteen I was told I’d need surgery on my spine. I’m 37 now and I’ve never had it — but in the end, the injuries twisted my spine up and I couldn’t play the game anymore.
So I did whatever I could to numb the pain. Drugs. Alcohol. All of it.
Before long I was a long way from the bright lights of the footy field, and deep in a world where my aggression, my lack of self-respect and my violence got rewarded by all the wrong people.
It got so bad that one night I came close to ending it for good. Then my son came rushing into my thoughts. Kicking a soccer ball.
I stopped, and I asked myself what the hell I was doing.
If any of this is close to home, please talk to someone today. Lifeline is there 24/7 on 13 11 14, and Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
The Rebuild
From that moment on I rebuilt. Strength in my body. Wisdom in my mind. Clarity in my soul. None of it came easy.
I rejected the blueprint I’d been handed — conform, numb out, stay in your lane — and went the other way. Truth. Brotherhood. Wholeness.
Martial arts became the backbone of it. Today I’m a third-degree black belt in karate, and I’m undefeated in the world’s last travelling boxing tent.
And from there, my story became like so many others: get to work, work hard, behave yourself, and everything will be alright.
The Part I Hadn’t Fixed
Here’s the thing nobody tells you. Even after all that, I still didn’t have the freedom. I didn’t have the choice. I didn’t have the independence I actually wanted.
Stressed about the next job. Lying awake thinking that if one thing went wrong, I was absolutely stuffed. Looking like I had it together on the outside. Nowhere near it on the inside.
I’d fixed my body. I’d fixed my head. I hadn’t fixed my money.
That’s when I hit my point of enough’s enough.
If you can feel that right now, I want you to know it’s OK. Strange as it sounds, it’s worth celebrating — because it’s the point where your freedom can actually start. Most of us need a lot of discomfort before we’ll change anything. When you finally hit it, use it.
The Decision
Nobody was coming to fix it. If anything was going to change, it was on me.
I took a long, hard look at my results, and I didn’t like them. I knew there was a lot more in me than my bank account was showing.
So I made a decision: I was done being short on money, short on time and short on freedom. I was going to become a black belt in money.
And I went about it the only way I knew how — the way I’d gone about karate.
Black Belt In My Mind First
In martial arts, you see the technique before you throw it. And long before anyone ties a black belt around your waist, you start carrying yourself like one.
So I did the same with money. I decided who I was going to be first — and I took on that identity before my bank account had caught up.
That decision was the most important step of the whole journey. Until you stop fearing the consequences of moving forward — what people will say, the obstacles, the setbacks — there’s no forward movement. There’s only wanting. And wanting on its own changes nothing.
I also changed what discomfort meant to me. On the mat, discomfort means you’re growing. So every time money pushed me out of my comfort zone, I treated it the same way: a sign I was on the right track, not a reason to go back.
White Belt Again
Then I did what a white belt does. I took the black belt off, put the white belt back on, and got myself in rooms with black belts in money — people who had the money, the time and the life.
I’ve spent over $300,000 of my own money learning from the best mentors I could find. The best of them were the ones I could sit with and ask question after question.
Then the penny dropped. I started seeing the patterns — in my own money, and in everyone else’s. The social engineering behind “reward” spending. The loop: earn, spend, borrow. The thing that keeps good, hard-working people on the treadmill for life.
I also learnt to ask one question about every dollar: will this leave anything behind once it’s spent? Most spending doesn’t. Some things always hold value. That’s a big part of why I’ve been investing in crypto and precious metals since 2020.
Where It’s Taken Me
I practised every piece of it, over and over. Since then I’ve closed millions of dollars in sales and made multiple six figures in completely different industries.
Am I a grandmaster in money? No. There’s always another degree. But my life looks nothing like it did — and people started asking me, “How did you do it?”
For the past decade I’ve been answering that question.
Now It’s Your Turn. If You’re Up For It, I’ll See You In The Room.
Mitch LingardMoney Mentor at Black Belt Results. Former representative rugby league player, martial artist and dad — now putting other people in the room with black belts in wealth. Get In Touch or Book A Call.