The Underdog: From $10/hr to $1.5M/Year

what's your story I lived with my parents working as a waiter part-time to make I think $10 per hour I was telling people I'm going to make it I'm the next Mark zukerberg and I'm going to have a billion dollar startup idea and I'm going to focus on it this is Mark a guy who tried everything to become an entrepreneur but nothing was working I didn't have any salary I didn't have any savings I was like broke like crazy like we're living in like I don't like 12 square m they were cockroaches then after years

of failure he finally built a business that worked at some point life become like very beautiful like finally I made it I have my apps I make enough money to sustain my life and Co hit everything that I built for the last two years just suddenly disappeared wipe out I've been in the journey for like almost 5 years already I failed 30 startups and I didn't build anything I didn't save any money I didn't create anything that would last and then one morning I start to cry for no reason in his darkest moments Mark does

something he never thought he would have to do it made me question why I was an entrepreneur why am I doing all that if I can just get a sense of like worthiness having a job but with everything on the line Mark discovers something that would change his life I feel bad and I decide I got to change everything I'm going to be an entrepreneur again but these times I'll do things differently this is the story of how Mark Lou went from working as a waiter for $10 an hour to making $1.5 million a year

as a solopreneur welcome to starter story I was born in a family of Engineers know one of my friends or family members are entrepreneurs and I grew up like 25 years in this ecosystem or the only thing that matters is that you have to have good school grade you have to go University and I think that created a frustration inside of me because I didn't for some reason I didn't care about school so I was a bad kid I had bad grades I didn't feel like I was belonging to where I was people wanted to

do stuff and I wanted to do the opposite a university was the same so they were partying but also studying and I didn't know what I was why I was learning what I was learning after four years of partying and barely attending lectures Mark graduated and had to make a big decision when my friends and I graduating from uni they all got a job pretty easily in Paris as a software engineers and I think around the time I might have seen the movie The Social Network with Mark zukerberg and for some weird Connection in my

brain I was like this is me I'm the next Mark Zuckerberg and I'm going to have a billion dollar startup idea and I'm going to focus on it and the idea was to create a Tinder for sports lover there was no business plan in mind there was not even an idea of how to monetize that thing I was just I have to build that thing Mark has a brilliant idea that he believes will be the next billion doll unicorn so he takes The Road Less Traveled as I chose a different path I lived with my

parents working as a waiter part-time like at night basically to make I think $10 per hour I was so arrogant that I spent a year working on this app I was telling people I'm going to make it I build this identity for one year of this guy who is going to build the next brilliant idea and you cannot even know what I'm working on because it's a brilliant idea right and I realized after 365 days that this app would never exist because I didn't have the capacity to build it and would never make money everything

crumbled like all my oneyear arrogance belief fell apart and that's the moment where I stopped working on my app like I threw away all the code in 24 hours quit my girlfriend cuz I was a terrible boyfriend and moved to South Korea to the other side of the planet Mark experiences his first failure but he's still committed to becoming an entrepreneur he wants to prove to everyone that he can do this a different way a friend of mine gave me a call he was in South Korea and he said he could raise some money from

VC to build an AI startup back in 2017 which was pretty cool we were both Engineers none of us was was good at marketing none of us was good at product and you know business and so we ended up having that This brilliant idea again is going to work out if we build a product we build a product it took 6 months to make an app but we didn't get any customers so in the end nothing happens after spending a year building another product that got zero customers Mark realized realized that maybe this whole Venture

Capital thing wasn't for him but this gives him an idea after the AI startups I didn't have any salary I didn't have any savings I was like broke like crazy like I was living with my girlfriend as well we were living in like I don't like 12 square m they were cockroaches in the bathrooms and stuff the frustration of doing stuff for 2 years that led to nothing it made me desire the craving for like tiny project that have quick instant results I saw this ad on Facebook where you have those two people holding hands

together inside of one mitt with thousands of likes I knew that if it works for them then it would work for me too I ended up going in the street sending those gloves because I was terrible at Facebook ad so I couldn't sell any online even though we we made zero with the gloves we probably like sold 30 gloves I still want to chase that thing show a different path show a different way and show that you can also make it with a different strategy with three failed businesses in countless Lessons Learned Mark realizes he

needs to do something different he doesn't want to be a Starving Artists sharing his flat with cockroaches and spending all his time working on projects that never make money with this in mind he starts looking for his next [Music] idea I had this learning from those previous startup to start first with the problems and I was like what is a universal problem that everybody has that I can solve every business wants wants more customers right so maybe I can help any business get more customers and the idea was to create a little tool for escape

room businesses to help them get more customers but I met a guy who is 100% marketer his job is marketing and he's like why don't you just try to sell it before you make it I listened to him I did exactly what he told me I sent some cold emails and I'm supposed to have the call with his business in Australia it's the first time I do a like a call with a lead I'm thinking like an engineer and I'm I like I'm scamming her just talking to her but she's so friendly she's like yeah

so what is your idea and in the end of the call after 42 minutes she's like all right yeah send me the invoice I'll pay I'm sweating like my my armpits are sweating so much and I make her confirm I was like are you sure and then she said yes after a couple years and several failed ideas Mark's efforts finally paid off he made his first dollar he didn't need a fancy website or a perfect product all he needed was a solid idea and someone who is willing to pay for it if you're someone like

Mark looking for their first idea trying to make your first dollar online then I have something special for you this is a free breakdown of 50 plus solo developer ideas to help you get started it includes a bunch of stuff business models Revenue strategies and a bunch of other stuff you'd want to know and it's for everyone no coders developers Indie hackers just click the first link in the description and we'll send it over to you for free mark efforts finally paid off he's made his first dollar online but most importantly he now knows firsthand

that entrepreneurship works but when everything was at its best something very unexpected happened so this viral bought project quickly it made some enough money to sustain my life like $1,000 per month we moved to Bali and my days would be exactly the same I would uh send some emails in the morning try to get someone on the the phone call exactly like I did for the first dollar in the internet and the revenue grew to at the top you went until $4,000 in monthly recuring Revenue at some point life become like very beautiful like I

finally I made it I have my apps I work on my own project I don't have any meetings I have customers I make enough money to sustain my life I live in belly I learn how to surf it's just so nice the revenue is going up and then I was working with physical businesses and Co hits everything closed down Revenue went from $4,000 a month to zero in like 24 hours hours everything that I built for the last 2 years just suddenly disappeared wipe out after Co brings Mark's business to zero he decides to take

a break he keeps on surfing and living life then when the lockdown eased something insane happened my girlfriend and I decided to get married so we flew back to France and we had a beautiful wedding after a couple weeks they started to lock down everything again we were supposed to come back to belly but we couldn't so I'm I'm 28 years old I'm a married man I don't make any Revenue most of the businesses I've tried failed and I think at this moment I feel not so good like I don't know why I'm doing all

that anymore I feel like I've I've never achieved anything really and I'm back at 28 years old in the house where I left to try to show there was another way showing that I failed basically and then one morning I have no clue what is happening I start to cry for no reason like I usually control my emotions I start to cry but have no idea what's going on and I look at my wall and I start to punch my wall four times like without even thinking my wall is pretty thin so it go through

the wall and I'm shouting and I'm like I don't know like so much anger that just comes out it's like I've never felt this bad before I don't really know what depression is but the this lack of control that I had on me and these emotions bursting out without me controlling anything maybe after 5 years of failure with no income or savings 28 year-old freshly married Mark decides to do something that he never thought he would have to do he applies for a few software engineering jobs luckily because of his experience he quickly lands one

of the positions and the job is like offering you $9,000 a month I look at that I was like i' I've been making $1,000 a month for 5 years and now you're offering me $9,000 per month I was like what the is going on so I jumped straight into the job and when you have a job your boss is telling you today I want you to do that so at the end of the day once you've done that you've created the value for the person and it makes you feel like you're worthy I didn't get

any of this in in the P so it really feels like I was useful to someone making more money than he ever had all while feeling useful to society Mark starts the question if he was ever meant to become an entrepreneur and maybe for him having a regular job is enough to live a fulfilling life those years of ENT preneurship you aim to create something people want and when nothing is actually working you're basically creating void and nobody cares about what you do nobody needs anything that you're doing so it feels like you're just useless

it made me question why I was an entrepreneur why am I doing all that if I can just get you know a sense of like worthiness having a job I started to have time for me on weekends because I didn't allow myself to take time off in the past it made me prioritize other parts of my life that I haven't touched previously from sleep to reading books to working outs and the overall happiness everything like the burst I had previously everything started to fade away and I started to feel much better 6 month after getting

the job lockdown started to disappear and my wife and I decided to go back to belly I started to feel this little desire of Freedom that I didn't crave previously because I had 100% freedom but 0% worthiness but now the fact that I had to show up from Monday to Friday within 2 months I was already thinking like sometimes I don't want to do this meeting I don't want to go there I don't want to do that and I was seeing some tweets from from other software Engineers who either got fired who pursue their passion

whatever and I see that there are some guys who have a totally different approach to entrepreneurship they don't raise money they don't work with the team they do whatever they want they build tiny project they make it fast maybe I want that a little seed is planted in Mark's mind yet again that maybe he can actually do this but he remembers all of the failures he's gone through plus he's got a great job and he's not ready to quit right away then one day he receives a phone call that would change his life around this

time in Bal like couple month after we're here I just received a call they're like hey it was nice working with you bye and so when I got fired it was totally fine because I was I was already thinking of going back to the entrepreneurship world to get that uh sense for Freedom fulfilled again the moment I get fired I build my new identity I'm going to be an entrepreneur again but these times I'll do things differently I will never spend month on a product I will never raise money I never have employees I'll never

do all the things that frustrated me in the past I started to realize that each failure is not a failure if you don't give up each failure is a learning or a frustration for a future success and unless I quit in the middle all those failures will bring the success later it's just making a matter of making small bets small bet here small beted there and maybe something will work out I also decided to at the same time I build stuff I'm going to try to share this publicly so that people can see it so

that if my app goes wrong if nothing happens then in the worst case maybe I'll have created a little following that's for the next project that I can use to get some eyeballs and not starting again from zero with a reignited passion and a new approach to entrepreneurship Mark starts to ship the first app I build is called mood to movie it's basically an app that match your mood and recommend you movies based on how you feel and then habits Garden it's like a little habit tracker I got around 10,000 users which I was super

proud of because it's like also like it's helping people to get better in life I was so happy I worked on a tool that ranks productivity tips I built a landing page generator so you input some text and it's going to create an entire website for you with text images and buttons I created a link in BIO tool for entrepreneurs where uh you can show your entrepreneur resume Mark launched six projects in 7 months but he was still facing a big problem income he was only making $1,000 a month and he needed to figure out

how to crack the code to make more money I start to make painkiller apps where it's actually solving a problems like I try to focus on that and I also try to focus on apps that that are not free that like users at some point have a pay wall the fact that I was shipping painkillers means something people know their struggle they know their pain so I come up with a solution so it's much easier to sell than a vitamine where like the Habit tracker for instance where it's fun but you don't necessarily need it

I try to get a new approach of like launching viral I would focus on the launch part try to get as many ice balls as I can and I started to make those like skit where I would go on a podcast with jogan or I would be on a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and this did really well like people felt that I was having fun and that's where my Revenue went from like around $1,000 per month to I think it was around $4,000 in 2020 3 mid 2023 I had built somewhere around 10 to 15

products and I realized I was doing the same thing over set up a landing page deploy it add a button for people to pay send them an email create an account I was like What if I just create a little code base that I can reuse for every new project that I create so whenever I have a new ID I can make it faster I can ship it faster I did that I built it I think in like less than a week and I was like this is super cool why not just putting a price

tag on it and offering it to other developers if they want to use it but I remove expectations from anything that I would launch I told my wife like hey you know maybe we'll make 100 bucks that would be nice I shipped the product went skating and I came back home opened my dashboard my strap dashboard like after 2 hours of skate I was like I made 500 bucks which is what I would make in like a week an entrepreneurship before in 2 hours I was like something is going wrong like I I I really

couldn't believe it and then the next day I had made somewhere like around3 to 4,000 and I was like what the is going on like I would make my best monthly salary in one day it's just insane I think the first month I made around 40,000 us the second month on November for the Black Friday that day I made S I think $8,000 I very surprised it was steady around like $50,000 a month except in November where there was like a burst at 65 and I realized one thing is product Market fit when it hits

it's like it's there you can you can feel it I would receive messages from people that say like hey I cannot pay using your credit cards you except crypto like you would have people like ask me like to give me money it's the first time ever never usually I'm trying to convince people to give me money for my product I felt so happy I couldn't sleep at night I was awake looking at emails looking at the stripe dashboard going up I don't know it's a pure blee feeling it's just insane and receiving those messages from

people who's like thank you you changed my life for me is like it was I don't know if I can ever be happier than that [Music] so the launch gave it an initial boost I also did uh lots of like free tools marketing so I would build this like logo generator and then on the right side you would have a banner that says like uh are you building a startups ship it fast with ship fast and there's obviously the YouTube episode that came a little bit later added lots of Revenue to the product ship fast

so it went from like $50,000 a month to somewhere around $85,000 on the first month then 135 in the second month 135 in the third month and now it's slowing down a little bit to somewhere like around $80,000 a month okay so I do believe there are multiple people living up there and there is one that's very strong and that always thinking is telling you stuff is overthinking it's blocking you from making the first step it's going to find a good excuse for this idea to not work it's going to tell you that the idea

you're working on is not perfect enough enough to be launched so my advice would be to it's cliche but it's start anything start make the smallest version of your app as fast as you can and the second part learn where you're comfortable sharing your ideas if it's text go on Twitter if you're comfortable with videos go on Tik Tok if you're comfortable with images and you know how to tell beautiful stories with one image go on Instagram and learn how to blend those two things together and see how things react I failed 30 startups around

that but if you don't quit then at some point you'll win it's just a matter of not quitting before you win start now and ship fast that's Mark's formula for being a successful online entrepreneur but here's the problem when you're starting out and when you have an idea for something you don't really know a whole lot about what to do you don't know necessarily if the idea is good you don't know how to validate it and you don't know how to monetize it well the best way to learn is to talk to people or study

people who are a few steps ahead of you that's what starter story is for it's a library and community of inspiration practical advice and stories that you can apply to your own business to give you a sneak peek of what that looks like I'm going to be giving you a free download of 50 plus solo developer ideas just like marks that will give you ideas and inspire you for your own thing it'll give you a bunch of winning ideas strategies and other cool information to help you go from 0 to one just click the first

link in the description and we'll send it to you for free also if you're serious about building your business come join starter story and we will help you do that I really hope you guys enjoyed this Underdog I'll see you in the next one peace