0:02 what's your story I lived with my parents working as a waiter part-time to make I think $10
0:10 per hour I was telling people I'm going to make it I'm the next Mark zukerberg
0:13 and I'm going to have a billion dollar startup idea and I'm going to focus on
0:18 it this is Mark a guy who tried everything to become an entrepreneur but
0:24 nothing was working I didn't have any salary I didn't have any savings I was
0:27 like broke like crazy like we're living in like I don't like 12 square m they
0:33 were cockroaches then after years of failure he finally built a business that
0:38 worked at some point life become like very beautiful like finally I made it I
0:41 have my apps I make enough money to sustain my life and Co hit everything
0:45 that I built for the last two years just suddenly disappeared wipe
0:49 out I've been in the journey for like almost 5 years already I failed 30
0:55 startups and I didn't build anything I didn't save any money I didn't create
0:59 anything that would last and then one morning I start to cry for no reason in
1:04 his darkest moments Mark does something he never thought he would have to do it
1:09 made me question why I was an entrepreneur why am I doing all that if
1:13 I can just get a sense of like worthiness having a job but with
1:18 everything on the line Mark discovers something that would change his life I
1:24 feel bad and I decide I got to change everything I'm going to be an
1:26 entrepreneur again but these times I'll do things differently this is the story
1:31 of how Mark Lou went from working as a waiter for $10 an hour to making $1.5
1:38 million a year as a solopreneur welcome story I was born in a family of
1:48 Engineers know one of my friends or family members are entrepreneurs and I
1:52 grew up like 25 years in this ecosystem or the only thing that matters is that
1:54 you have to have good school grade you have to go University and I think that
1:58 created a frustration inside of me because I didn't for some reason I
2:01 didn't care about school so I was a bad kid I had bad grades I didn't feel like
2:05 I was belonging to where I was people wanted to do stuff and I wanted to do
2:09 the opposite a university was the same so they were partying but also studying
2:12 and I didn't know what I was why I was learning what I was learning after four
2:16 years of partying and barely attending lectures Mark graduated and had to make
2:24 decision when my friends and I graduating from uni they all got a job
2:28 pretty easily in Paris as a software engineers and I think around the time I
2:32 might have seen the movie The Social Network with Mark zukerberg and for some
2:36 weird Connection in my brain I was like this is me I'm the next Mark Zuckerberg
2:40 and I'm going to have a billion dollar startup idea and I'm going to focus on
2:45 it and the idea was to create a Tinder for sports lover there was no business
2:50 plan in mind there was not even an idea of how to monetize that thing I was just
2:53 I have to build that thing Mark has a brilliant idea that he believes will be
2:59 the next billion doll unicorn so he takes The Road Less Traveled as I chose
3:04 a different path I lived with my parents working as a waiter part-time like at
3:09 night basically to make I think $10 per hour I was so arrogant that I spent a
3:13 year working on this app I was telling people I'm going to make it I build this
3:17 identity for one year of this guy who is going to build the next brilliant idea
3:20 and you cannot even know what I'm working on because it's a brilliant idea
3:25 right and I realized after 365 days that this app would never exist because I
3:29 didn't have the capacity to build it and would never make money everything
3:33 crumbled like all my oneyear arrogance belief fell apart and that's the moment
3:38 where I stopped working on my app like I threw away all the code in 24 hours quit
3:42 my girlfriend cuz I was a terrible boyfriend and moved to South Korea to
3:47 the other side of the planet Mark experiences his first failure but he's
3:52 still committed to becoming an entrepreneur he wants to prove to
3:57 everyone that he can do this a different a friend of mine gave me a call he was
4:04 in South Korea and he said he could raise some money from VC to build an AI
4:08 startup back in 2017 which was pretty cool we were both Engineers none of us
4:12 was was good at marketing none of us was good at product and you know business
4:16 and so we ended up having that This brilliant idea again is going to work
4:19 out if we build a product we build a product it took 6 months to make an app
4:23 but we didn't get any customers so in the end nothing happens after spending a
4:27 year building another product that got zero customers Mark realized realized
4:32 that maybe this whole Venture Capital thing wasn't for him but this gives him
4:41 idea after the AI startups I didn't have any salary I didn't have any savings I
4:45 was like broke like crazy like I was living with my girlfriend as well we
4:48 were living in like I don't like 12 square m they were cockroaches in the
4:53 bathrooms and stuff the frustration of doing stuff for 2 years that led to
4:58 nothing it made me desire the craving for like tiny project that have quick
5:02 instant results I saw this ad on Facebook where you have those two people
5:06 holding hands together inside of one mitt with thousands of likes I knew that
5:11 if it works for them then it would work for me too I ended up going in the
5:14 street sending those gloves because I was terrible at Facebook ad so I
5:18 couldn't sell any online even though we we made zero with the gloves we probably
5:23 like sold 30 gloves I still want to chase that thing show a different path
5:26 show a different way and show that you can also make it with a different
5:31 strategy with three failed businesses in countless Lessons Learned Mark realizes
5:36 he needs to do something different he doesn't want to be a Starving Artists
5:40 sharing his flat with cockroaches and spending all his time working on
5:45 projects that never make money with this in mind he starts looking for his next
5:50 [Music] idea I had this learning from those previous startup to start first with the
5:56 problems and I was like what is a universal problem that everybody has
6:00 that I can solve every business wants wants more customers right so maybe I
6:04 can help any business get more customers and the idea was to create a little tool
6:09 for escape room businesses to help them get more customers but I met a guy who
6:14 is 100% marketer his job is marketing and he's like why don't you just try to
6:19 sell it before you make it I listened to him I did exactly what he told me I sent
6:22 some cold emails and I'm supposed to have the call with his business in
6:26 Australia it's the first time I do a like a call with a lead I'm thinking
6:29 like an engineer and I'm I like I'm scamming her just talking to her but
6:33 she's so friendly she's like yeah so what is your idea and in the end of the
6:37 call after 42 minutes she's like all right yeah send me the invoice I'll pay
6:41 I'm sweating like my my armpits are sweating so much and I make her confirm
6:44 I was like are you sure and then she said yes after a couple years and several failed ideas
6:53 Mark's efforts finally paid off he made his first dollar he didn't need a fancy
6:57 website or a perfect product all he needed was a solid idea and someone who
7:02 is willing to pay for it if you're someone like Mark looking for their
7:05 first idea trying to make your first dollar online then I have something
7:10 special for you this is a free breakdown of 50 plus solo developer ideas to help
7:15 you get started it includes a bunch of stuff business models Revenue strategies
7:20 and a bunch of other stuff you'd want to know and it's for everyone no coders
7:25 developers Indie hackers just click the first link in the description and we'll
7:29 send it over to you for free mark efforts finally paid off he's made his
7:35 first dollar online but most importantly he now knows firsthand that
7:40 entrepreneurship works but when everything was at its best something
7:47 very unexpected happened so this viral bought project quickly it made some
7:51 enough money to sustain my life like $1,000 per month we moved to Bali and my
7:56 days would be exactly the same I would uh send some emails in the morning try
8:00 to get someone on the the phone call exactly like I did for the first dollar
8:04 in the internet and the revenue grew to at the top you went until $4,000 in
8:08 monthly recuring Revenue at some point life become like very beautiful like I
8:11 finally I made it I have my apps I work on my own project I don't have any
8:15 meetings I have customers I make enough money to sustain my life I live in belly
8:19 I learn how to surf it's just so nice the revenue is going up and then I was
8:23 working with physical businesses and Co hits everything closed down Revenue went
8:29 from $4,000 a month to zero in like 24 hours hours everything that I built for
8:32 the last 2 years just suddenly disappeared wipe out after Co brings
8:38 Mark's business to zero he decides to take a break he keeps on surfing and
8:44 living life then when the lockdown eased something insane happened my girlfriend
8:49 and I decided to get married so we flew back to France and we had a beautiful
8:53 wedding after a couple weeks they started to lock down everything again we
8:57 were supposed to come back to belly but we couldn't so I'm I'm 28 years old I'm
9:01 a married man I don't make any Revenue most of the businesses I've tried failed
9:06 and I think at this moment I feel not so good like I don't know why I'm doing all
9:11 that anymore I feel like I've I've never achieved anything really and I'm back at
9:16 28 years old in the house where I left to try to show there was another way
9:20 showing that I failed basically and then one morning I have no clue what is
9:26 happening I start to cry for no reason like I usually control my emotions I
9:28 start to cry but have no idea what's going on and I look at my wall and I
9:32 start to punch my wall four times like without even thinking my wall is pretty
9:36 thin so it go through the wall and I'm shouting and I'm like I don't know like
9:41 so much anger that just comes out it's like I've never felt this bad before I
9:45 don't really know what depression is but the this lack of control that I had on
9:50 me and these emotions bursting out without me controlling anything
9:57 maybe after 5 years of failure with no income or savings 28 year-old freshly
10:02 married Mark decides to do something that he never thought he would have to
10:07 do he applies for a few software engineering jobs luckily because of his
10:12 experience he quickly lands one of the positions and the job is like offering
10:18 you $9,000 a month I look at that I was like i' I've been making $1,000 a month
10:22 for 5 years and now you're offering me $9,000 per month I was like what the
10:26 [ __ ] is going on so I jumped straight into the job and when you have a job
10:30 your boss is telling you today I want you to do that so at the end of the day
10:34 once you've done that you've created the value for the person and it makes you
10:38 feel like you're worthy I didn't get any of this in in the P so it really feels
10:42 like I was useful to someone making more money than he ever had all while feeling
10:48 useful to society Mark starts the question if he was ever meant to become
10:54 an entrepreneur and maybe for him having a regular job is enough to live a
10:59 fulfilling life those years of ENT preneurship you aim to create something
11:02 people want and when nothing is actually working you're basically creating void
11:06 and nobody cares about what you do nobody needs anything that you're doing
11:09 so it feels like you're just useless it made me question why I was an
11:13 entrepreneur why am I doing all that if I can just get you know a sense of like
11:17 worthiness having a job I started to have time for me on weekends because I
11:20 didn't allow myself to take time off in the past it made me prioritize other
11:24 parts of my life that I haven't touched previously from sleep to reading books
11:27 to working outs and the overall happiness everything like the burst I
11:31 had previously everything started to better 6 month after getting the job
11:40 lockdown started to disappear and my wife and I decided to go back to belly I
11:44 started to feel this little desire of Freedom that I didn't crave previously
11:48 because I had 100% freedom but 0% worthiness but now the fact that I had
11:52 to show up from Monday to Friday within 2 months I was already thinking like
11:55 sometimes I don't want to do this meeting I don't want to go there I don't
11:58 want to do that and I was seeing some tweets from from other software
12:01 Engineers who either got fired who pursue their passion whatever and I see
12:04 that there are some guys who have a totally different approach to
12:08 entrepreneurship they don't raise money they don't work with the team they do
12:11 whatever they want they build tiny project they make it fast maybe I want that a little seed is
12:19 planted in Mark's mind yet again that maybe he can actually do this but he
12:25 remembers all of the failures he's gone through plus he's got a great job and
12:31 he's not ready to quit right away then one day he receives a phone call that
12:35 would change his life around this time in Bal like couple month after we're
12:39 here I just received a call they're like hey it was nice working with you bye and
12:43 so when I got fired it was totally fine because I was I was already thinking of
12:47 going back to the entrepreneurship world to get that uh sense for Freedom
12:55 again the moment I get fired I build my new identity I'm going to be an
12:57 entrepreneur again but these times I'll do things differently I will never spend
13:01 month on a product I will never raise money I never have employees I'll never
13:04 do all the things that frustrated me in the past I started to realize that each
13:09 failure is not a failure if you don't give up each failure is a learning or a
13:15 frustration for a future success and unless I quit in the middle all those
13:19 failures will bring the success later it's just making a matter of making
13:23 small bets small bet here small beted there and maybe something will work out
13:27 I also decided to at the same time I build stuff I'm going to try to share
13:31 this publicly so that people can see it so that if my app goes wrong if nothing
13:35 happens then in the worst case maybe I'll have created a little following
13:39 that's for the next project that I can use to get some eyeballs and not
13:43 starting again from zero with a reignited passion and a new approach to
13:49 entrepreneurship Mark starts to ship the first app I build is called mood to
13:52 movie it's basically an app that match your mood and recommend you movies based
13:57 on how you feel and then habits Garden it's like a little habit tracker I got
14:01 around 10,000 users which I was super proud of because it's like also like
14:04 it's helping people to get better in life I was so happy I worked on a tool
14:10 that ranks productivity tips I built a landing page generator so you input some
14:15 text and it's going to create an entire website for you with text images and
14:19 buttons I created a link in BIO tool for entrepreneurs where uh you can show your
14:25 entrepreneur resume Mark launched six projects in 7 months but he was still
14:32 facing a big problem income he was only making $1,000 a month and he needed to
14:38 figure out how to crack the code to make more money I start to make painkiller
14:42 apps where it's actually solving a problems like I try to focus on that and
14:45 I also try to focus on apps that that are not free that like users at some
14:49 point have a pay wall the fact that I was shipping painkillers means something
14:52 people know their struggle they know their pain so I come up with a solution
14:55 so it's much easier to sell than a vitamine where like the Habit tracker
14:59 for instance where it's fun but you don't necessarily need it I try to get a
15:03 new approach of like launching viral I would focus on the launch part try to
15:08 get as many ice balls as I can and I started to make those like skit where I
15:13 would go on a podcast with jogan or I would be on a movie with Leonardo
15:17 DiCaprio and this did really well like people felt that I was having fun and
15:21 that's where my Revenue went from like around $1,000 per month to I think it
15:30 $4,000 in 2020 3 mid 2023 I had built somewhere around 10 to 15 products and I
15:35 realized I was doing the same thing over set up a landing page deploy it add a
15:40 button for people to pay send them an email create an account I was like What
15:43 if I just create a little code base that I can reuse for every new project that I
15:47 create so whenever I have a new ID I can make it faster I can ship it faster I
15:51 did that I built it I think in like less than a week and I was like this is super
15:56 cool why not just putting a price tag on it and offering it to other developers
16:00 if they want to use it but I remove expectations from anything that I would
16:03 launch I told my wife like hey you know maybe we'll make 100 bucks that would be
16:07 nice I shipped the product went skating and I came back home opened my dashboard
16:11 my strap dashboard like after 2 hours of skate I was like I made 500 bucks which
16:16 is what I would make in like a week an entrepreneurship before in 2 hours I was
16:21 like something is going wrong like I I I really couldn't believe it and then the
16:25 next day I had made somewhere like around3 to 4,000 and I was like what the
16:30 [ __ ] is going on like I would make my best monthly salary in one day it's just
16:35 insane I think the first month I made around 40,000 us the second month on
16:40 November for the Black Friday that day I made S I think $8,000 I very surprised
16:47 it was steady around like $50,000 a month except in November where there was
16:51 like a burst at 65 and I realized one thing is product Market fit when it hits
16:56 it's like it's there you can you can feel it I would receive messages from
16:59 people that say like hey I cannot pay using your credit cards you except
17:02 crypto like you would have people like ask me like to give me money it's the
17:06 first time ever never usually I'm trying to convince people to give me money for
17:10 my product I felt so happy I couldn't sleep at night I was awake looking at
17:14 emails looking at the stripe dashboard going up I don't know it's a pure blee
17:20 feeling it's just insane and receiving those messages from people who's like
17:24 thank you you changed my life for me is like it was I don't know
17:32 [Music] so the launch gave it an initial boost I also did uh lots of like free tools
17:39 marketing so I would build this like logo generator and then on the right
17:42 side you would have a banner that says like uh are you building a startups ship
17:46 it fast with ship fast and there's obviously the YouTube episode that came
17:50 a little bit later added lots of Revenue to the product ship fast so it went from
17:55 like $50,000 a month to somewhere around $85,000 on the first month then 135 in
18:01 the second month 135 in the third month and now it's slowing down a little bit
18:09 month okay so I do believe there are multiple people living up there and
18:13 there is one that's very strong and that always thinking is telling you stuff is
18:17 overthinking it's blocking you from making the first step it's going to find
18:21 a good excuse for this idea to not work it's going to tell you that the idea
18:24 you're working on is not perfect enough enough to be launched so my advice would
18:29 be to it's cliche but it's start anything start make the smallest version
18:35 of your app as fast as you can and the second part learn where you're
18:39 comfortable sharing your ideas if it's text go on Twitter if you're comfortable
18:42 with videos go on Tik Tok if you're comfortable with images and you know how
18:45 to tell beautiful stories with one image go on Instagram and learn how to blend
18:50 those two things together and see how things react I failed 30 startups around
18:55 that but if you don't quit then at some point you'll win it's just a matter of
18:59 not quitting before you win start now and ship fast that's Mark's formula for
19:05 being a successful online entrepreneur but here's the problem when you're
19:08 starting out and when you have an idea for something you don't really know a
19:12 whole lot about what to do you don't know necessarily if the idea is good you
19:15 don't know how to validate it and you don't know how to monetize it well the
19:19 best way to learn is to talk to people or study people who are a few steps
19:23 ahead of you that's what starter story is for it's a library and community of
19:28 inspiration practical advice and stories that you can apply to your own business
19:32 to give you a sneak peek of what that looks like I'm going to be giving you a
19:37 free download of 50 plus solo developer ideas just like marks that will give you
19:41 ideas and inspire you for your own thing it'll give you a bunch of winning ideas
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19:50 first link in the description and we'll send it to you for free also if you're
19:55 serious about building your business come join starter story and we will help
19:59 you do that I really hope you guys enjoyed this Underdog I'll see you in
