How a DIY investor turned his gas station manager's salary into a $1 million net worth by age 30

• Jeremy Lefebvre netted nearly $200,000 by age 25 on a gas station manager's salary.
• He learned about investing and put every spare penny into the market. By 30, he was a millionaire.
• He now runs a marketing company, a YouTube channel, and sells an e-course, all of which net profits.
• Read more stories from Personal Finance Insider.

Jeremy Lefebvre, a DIY investor, built a stock portfolio worth nearly $200,000 by age 25 on a QuikTrip gas station manager's salary. But, he tells Insider, he had his sights set higher than that.

"I'm not one to write down goals," Lefebvre says. "But I always had this thought in the back of my head: How cool would it be to be a millionaire when I'm 30?" He didn't have any specific plans for how he was going to make this happen, he says, but the thought was always there.

But, he did know he loved stocks. He enjoyed researching companies, investing in businesses he believed were going to make it big, and managing his portfolio. "I remember I used to drive by this office while I was working at QuikTrip," he says. "I remember thinking, 'It'd be so nice to have an office in there and just go and invest in stocks all day. That was my dream."

While he never ended up renting that office, the rest of his goals have largely come to fruition. He became a millionaire by his 30th birthday, and his life is "literally focused around stocks" now. At least his financial life is - he's also a father and husband.

"I wanted to live life on my own terms," he says. Thanks to a combination of strategy and patience, his goal was achieved.

He invested time to build new revenue streams

While Lefebvre, now 31, was working at the gas station, he was also working hard on the side to build up a large stock portfolio. At 25, when his portfolio was worth about $200,000, he decided he wanted to jump into managing stocks full-time. "For a year or so, I just focused on stocks," he says.

After about 12 months of this, in 2016, he decided it was time to get back to more traditional income-earning activities, so he started a real estate marketing business, JLBrandsProduction.

Living in Las Vegas, the closest clients he could get were in St. George, Utah - about two hours away. Eventually, he was able to sign clients closer to home, but it was a slow start. Despite lots of hours put in, he only earned about $20,000 that first year.

Around the same time, he started a YouTube channel. "That was really, really slow to build as well," he says. He made about $300 that year on over 100 videos. "If you divided how many hours I spent on YouTube in 2016 versus how much money I made ... I could've done any job and made more."

He soon increased his income

Things started to look a little different in 2017, for both YouTube and his marketing business. Adding more accounts to JLBrands, he doubled his profits from 2016 and made about $40,000.

But perhaps more exciting, Lefebvre's YouTube channel was starting to take off. He was making videos about personal finance, and some were slowly getting pushed by the YouTube algorithm.

Then, he started a series called Three Stocks I'm Buying. "It forever changed my channel," he says. It was obvious people liked not just personal finance content, but stock-specific videos. "It's like people picked where I was gonna go over time."

With each year and every new viewer, his income increased. In 2017, he made about $50,000 from YouTube. By 2018, his growth on the video-sharing site was exponential, earning him over a quarter of a million dollars, according to records viewed by Insider. It was also this year he decided to focus fully on his channel, now significantly out-earning the marketing business.

He also created an e-course 2018, detailing how he picks stocks and runs his portfolio. In 2019, this out-earned his already high income from his YouTube account. In total, he's made over $2 million from course sales, according to documents reviewed by Insider.

He invested strategically in individual companies

While his income grew significantly over five years, investing his money was the key to taking Lefebvre from a high earner to a wealthy individual.

Investing in individual stocks has been a part of Lefebvre's life since he was in college, but with increased income he was able to up his contributions significantly. Not being tied to a traditional job also meant he could dedicate more time to research.

At this point, he spends about 20 to 25 hours a week managing his portfolio, investing about $10,000 to $20,000 a month in about 20 companies.

He keeps a portion of his money in a savings account

When it comes to his day-to-day spending, he invests or saves most of his earned income. Working for himself means setting aside about 30% of his money for taxes - although living in Nevada does offer the slight benefit in that there are no state income taxes.

Another 20% goes towards his expenses, and he invests the other 50% back into his portfolio.

"Nowadays, I keep money in a savings account, too," he says, "When I was working at QuikTrip, I used to be about 90% invested at all times." While his thought process then was to put as much money as possible into his portfolio, he now keeps about 10% to 30% of his money in cash.

"Because the stock market can be so volatile, I always have a large chunk of money on the sidelines ready to go," he says. "So if the market goes down 10% next week, I'm good, or if a stock falls a bunch, I'm ready to buy that stock."

Despite achieving a lot, he says he's still working towards new goals every day. He recently launched an app, Hungry Bull, that allows users to track stocks, crypto, research stocks, listen to earnings calls, and read a daily newsletter.

But his ultimate goal is to have money to give away. "If I'm fortunate to live a full life, I imagine the back half of my life will be much more focused on giving money away," he says.