A rich businessman wanted to prove that from scratch you can become a millionaire in one year. His experiment turned out to be bittersweet

At the end of 2020, Mike Black could be found in a shelter in his area in Austin, Texas. However, while most of those who were there were there because they had no other choice, Mike had been planning this for a long time. In fact, Black’s current account was in the seven figures, but he decided to help those who were in an unfavorable situation by showing that with persistence and hard work, success can be achieved from nothing. It was a story about a millionaire who stopped being a millionaire only to become successful again and everything went wrongand how almost no one knew anything about this amazing story until now.

A million from scratch. In July 2020, Mike Black uploads his first video to YouTube, in which he explains his case and the project he is planning. As he later explains, the comfortable life he leads will soon end. He will put his entrepreneurial business on hold, cut off his entire network of professional contacts, terminate his apartment lease, and be forced to earn a living by finding accommodation for the night. All this, remember, is in the midst of a pandemic.

In his backpack he will only carry a phone, some clothes and a bank account with zero dollars. Thus begins a project in which he will try to show his channel’s viewers that he is capable of starting from scratch and making a million dollars in 12 months (money that can only be generated by the revenue generated by the companies he launches within 12 months). process). . By the way, he even changes his name to “Scott”, clearly an “aspiring cinematographer”.

Because. The big question you’re probably asking yourself was answered in those same days. As Black explained, he had seen many friends and acquaintances lose their businesses and “experience depression and lack of self-esteem,” which he believed was happening all over the world. with your project He wanted to put himself in the shoes of all those people who start from scratch. “I’ll share everything I know about building a business, and you can see how I try to make a million dollars, step by step. You will be able to see all the wins, losses, mistakes and learning experiences I encounter. throughout this project.”

Black was faced with a reality he was clearly unaware of. Rebuilding his wealth will take him longer than he thought. Perhaps 12 months was too optimistic. During the first weeks he experienced all sorts of problems and hardships. For example, in his videos, he details the struggle and lack of resources to obtain housing without an income, including the difficulty of finding one of the shelters.

The man lived in a van for some time. After the first weeks, he saw the light, receiving his first income ($300) from selling furniture on Internet pages. In fact, seeing a visible vein, He focused his efforts on selling furniture through pages such as Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.. Black acted as an intermediary and received a small percentage of sales, with the commission gradually increasing.

Soon his activities in the furniture market brought in enough money to buy a computer. He also found an apartment and landed a position as a social media manager within three months. This was the best part of the project when his ambition led him to launch his own coffee brand. “I’m opening a coffee brand. Now I have a cafe of sorts in Austin. “That is, everything is going in the right direction! Three months ago I was homeless!” he said in one of the videos.

However, Mike received news that changed everything. His father had colon cancer and after 10 months he decides to put an end to the project: “I have officially decided to complete the project ahead of schedule. Now, as much as it hurts me to do this, especially when there are only two months left, I feel like it’s the right thing to do,” he said on the channel, adding something he hasn’t revealed until now:

I’ve personally struggled with a lot of things, and something happened recently that really pushed me over the edge. My personal health has deteriorated to the point where I really need to start taking care of it. I didn’t share this with you throughout this project, but I was in and out of the doctor’s office.

Mike Black managed to raise $65,000 within 10 months of the project, which, if you look closely, is still an astonishing figure considering the circumstances and conditions under which he set himself the task of “succeeding”, although it is clearly far from the million he was aiming for. Also, on a positive note from Black himself, he said he learned the most valuable lesson of all: “we should always remember to help those in need because this may be the opportunity they need.” He also explained this in hindsight. , today we are not like that. If I did the same thing, the approach would be different.

However, there is one thing that was not very clear. You’re unlikely to find articles online about Mike’s story as it happened. In fact, his video concluding the project is dated May 14, 2021. On the other hand, the first news that appears on us that “a millionaire leaves everything to start from scratch” appeared just six days ago, what kind of witchcraft is this?

The answer is given by Mike himself in a video he uploaded to YouTube two days ago, where in the process he gives some clues about how networks work. Apparently tweet On April 18, a user named Eddie Cheng started a thread dedicated to the history of the project, and did so with a title and intro that were, shall we say, “overly” catchy. The rest of the thread talking about the project, according to Mike himself, This was done using AI..

Having visited the GPTZero.me website and finding with a 99% probability that the text was created using artificial intelligence, it became absolutely clear. Result? The Twitter thread received 34.4 million views.most of them, according to Mike, with an aggressive tone towards him because of the way his project is described.

The topic of artificial intelligence as a tool for viralizing a story or message is interesting, but difficult to test. Either way, what happened is still a great example of how networks work and the types of stories that are easy to propagate. This story had it all: a man with no economic problems, with “financial freedom” who decides to “be poor” to demonstrate his strength of resilience and thus help those in similar circumstances. If we exclude this last “help” from the message, then it will be very difficult for what finally happened not to happen.

Image | Mike Black/YouTube

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