“Wait this shit sucks, nevermind.”
-Mike Black, probably
Now try it again but give yourself amnesia so you don’t have any prior knowledge of skills or lessons learned from before.
Give yourself a severe drug and/or alcohol addiction for several years so you develop chronic health problems and hardcore substance dependence.
Experience enough traumatic events that you develop some severe form of mental illness, preferably multiple at the same time.
Destroy all your contacts from your former life, don’t record anything or log anything because you can’t have any permanent support group. Surround yourself only with people as or more desperate than you.
Make sure your social problems have caused you to rack up a significant number of criminal charges, bonus points for felonies that stay on your record for all to see if anybody even considers hiring you.
Now you’re close to experiencing what many homeless folks’ lives are actually like. This guy’s “experiment” is asinine. Just another sigma grindset bootstrap husk social influencer who has no idea what it is actually like to have nothing.
His conclusion is that people are homeless because why? They aren’t grinding hard enough? Because they aren’t putting in the hours? Because they just don’t really want it bad enough? Miss me with that bullshit.
Honestly, I do like he did it though. Now people can go, “Even he, with all his experience, his contacts, his health couldn’t manage it. So why are people buying the idea that a regular person can?”
Very true.
He did make 64000 dollars in those 10 months though so people will probably still use that as a talking point to claim homeless people are just too lazy
Give yourself a severe drug and/or alcohol addiction for several years so you develop chronic health problems and hardcore substance dependence.
Experience enough traumatic events that you develop some severe form of mental illness, preferably multiple at the same time.
If you’re rich enough these don’t even count as problems, just personality traits.
“Oh don’t worry about Jeffrey, dear, he’s just eccentric.”
Yeah, wealth and privilege lessen the risk factors significantly. Even if you get totally addicted and actually need help, if you’re rich, you (or your family) can afford to put you in luxury rehab clinics.
That’s why you see so many celebrities in and out of rehab multiple times. They can afford to destroy their lives over and over because there is always a way back for them.
Thank you for writing this. You’ve inspired me to try to do some community service
Simply accept free furniture on Craigslist and sell it on Facebook, what is the difficulty? Everyone has a pickup truck or SUV they can use to tote furniture around and a house they can use to store it pending the sale. You can easily make a million in a year, I would have done so but I had to stop early because of reasons.
He quit because real life problems were affecting his ability to make money. Welcome to reality. What’s his takeaway? He stopped his poor life social experiment because he wanted to focus on his health, but if we try to focus on our health, we simply aren’t making money.
He stopped at the top of the rabbit hole, he should’ve gone in.
Nickeled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich is one person’s decent. It was awful for her.
I had an economics teacher get us to read that as a class in high school and it was formative as hell on me. It was all pre-ACA too so the stories some of the workers had about their health problems and lack of medical care were just horrendous.
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Black ended the challenge having completed 10 months, with just 60 days left to run. He had managed to make a grand total of $64,000.
Pretty damn far from a million, but much more than many make in a year still. I do wonder if he used contacts/network he made while wealthy, that would easily completely invalidate the point he was trying to make.
I read a bit about this the other day. He absolutely used his connections and skills to make this money.
In fact one of the first things that happens is he gets a free place to live while working. He’s documenting this process the whole time, you see, and someone who was a fan let him stay in their trailer.
He winds up making money by reselling coffee marketed as “for dog lovers”.
How in the fuck a homeless person is supposed to even start doing that is beyond me, nevermind getting a free place to stay.
So his experiment to make a million in a year while being homeless entailed not being homeless and then scamming people? Damn, why didn’t I think of that?
Because you’re not a millionaire who obviously worked super hard to achieve success
While not having to pay rent. Take rent out of that 64k and he made like 40k
So dumb. Why yes I would also have money left over if I didn’t spend a third of my income on rent.
Even if he didn’t use contacts just experience, education and soft skills are worth a lot
Black wanted to help his friends rebuild their lives
By not actually helping and instead saying “it’s not that hard. Look, I’ll do it!”
He then proceeded to not do it.he hustled 24/7 and managed to make the same amount of money as an entry level recent graduate dental hygienist, RN or factory machine operator (60k in 10 months)
and we can assume from the meetings he got with big businesses that he was trading on his prior reputation rather than going incognito.
Yeah. Instead of giving a bad-faith summary, the article could’ve dug into how he couldn’t even hit middle-class without leaning on networking. Because saying he failed and had to quit because of his health, then admitting it was his DAD’s cancer and that he managed to earn his way fully to middle class, just didn’t work well.
he hustled 24/7 and managed to make the same amount of money as an entry level recent graduate dental hygienist, RN or factory machine operator (60k in 10 months)
While being given a free place to stay from a fan. What other benefits was he maintaining over typical homeless people?
and we can assume from the meetings he got with big businesses that he was trading on his prior reputation rather than going incognito.
Right. Probably where the vast majority of that money actually came from, and still nowhere near the $million that he claimed he could get.
60k in 10 months, so a some what average salary?
in context of “people who can’t make a million dollars in 12 months are just lazy” it’s pretty funny
To me the most sickening and predictable part is that he basically declared victory instead of actually learning and conceding his point.
I really appreciate your pointing that out. He went into the “experiment” with completely wrong assumptions and never acknowledged that he was wrong. The valuable lessons that he could point out to people about why reversing living outdoors are completely absent.
It’s the sort of scenario where my brother said he wouldn’t give money to a panhandler cause they can get a job at McDonalds only for me to point out that McD’s likely wouldn’t hire someone who hasn’t bathed in a week and has no permanent address and they wouldn’t get paid for at least two weeks so now how does he buy a meal when he hasn’t panhandled all day. My brother had no retort.
Yep, it’s not an experiment at all if those conducting it aren’t prepared to accept the results.
It’s just a biased pursuit of confirmation.
I mean, he managed to find himself an apartment and start a growing business, and then he quit in part to be with his dad who was on chemo. From the article’s details, he had a place to stay and office space, was on clip to make $80,000 in year 1 from being completely homeless, and had started multiple businesses that had serious growth potential.
I think “look, all you need is tons of ambition, sales skills, and networking” is a bad message, but the article is a shitshow of “our top-text pretends the facts in our bottom-text didn’t exist”. I wouldn’t say he failed at all.
I wouldn’t say he failed at all.
His goal was to make $1 million in a year. The difference between $80 000 and $1 000 000 is about a million dollars.
Also, a business “making 80k” doesn’t mean that he took home 80k. His operating costs and expenses could have been 79k for the year, leaving him with 1k in profit to pay himself out.
Fair enough. He showed that someone with his skills and experience can get out of homelessness, I suppose. I wasn’t looking at the $1M goal nearly as much as the “absolute failure” stuff.
someone with his skills and experience
And name recognition and a YouTube Channel. The group of people following and recording him probably helped people be more comfortable and more generous, he received a place to stay for free by a fan, I’m sure the back ground check helped with renting the work space, and all the investors knew who he was.
My point is this guy (and millionaires in general) are so out of touch with reality that he thought making a million in a year would be “easy”, and with all his connections and benefits he still didn’t make it 10% of the way to his goal. If my goal was to have $100 to spend on groceries by the end of the week, and I ended up with $8, then I have absolutely failed.
Even his “success” of making it out of poverty required so many benefits from his life prior that he doesn’t even think about because they’ve always been there. Of course he’d get help from people who know him, that’s how life works, to say otherwise would be like saying he’d have to do it without breathing.
He wasn’t even homeless. He got a roof over his head pretty much day 1-2, and it was some guy who drove 10 miles to get him (which is pretty sus). He was able to keep himself clean and presentable and had a place he could easily manage his new business. That is already way more than what the average homeless has access to
he had a place to stay and office space, was on clip to make $80,000 in year 1 from being completely homeless
Me, absolutely not a millionaire: “Hi, I’m homeless, will you sign me up for a one year lease?”
My landlord: “Absolutely, sir. Right after I run this background check that confirms you’re not actually homeless and do - in fact - have an amazing credit history with tons of assets to use as collateral.”
If only all the people in the world whose lives were on track for massive financial success could just rely on the millions they had tucked away when adverse personal events happened so they could focus on those instead. Oh wait…
Gosh if only every homeless person had as much experience with business and technology as he did, they’d be just fine. /s
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I’d say you missed the part where a medical emergency/family emergency derailed even his well thought-out and organized plans.
I can’t tell you how many of us would have broken through our financial challenges had it not been shit happening unexpectedly
I didn’t miss that part at all. The top-text just tells a different story from the bottom-text.
Ultimately, nobody should be homeless. But if they are, they shouldn’t have to have tons of skill running businesses or networking to get off the streets.
Let that be a lesson to all the homeless people… make sure you go to your doctor regularly… your health is important!
Exactly! Like that if their health is too bad, they can also stop being homeless.
Is this comment sarcastic? Just like anyone not dropping everything to see a doctor right now we all have priorities. Like “should I use my sick day today?”, “Should I see a doctor for this rash?”.
If you are broke, hungry and homeless sometimes there are things more important than seeing a doctor. Like “Should I get this checked and miss the lineup for the food bank?”, “Should I go to the doctor and miss my spot at the homeless shelter?”, “Should I walk to the doctor and back and use up my day to get a yearly physical?”. Homeless has priorities/barriers in seeking healthcare, just telling them to care for their health doesn’t help.
‘My personal health has declined to the point where I really need to start taking care of it. Throughout the entire project, we haven’t shared it with you, but I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.’
From the article. He was going to a doctor throughout the entire “experiment”.
There’s no way that comment wasn’t satire, for the reasons you point out.
Yes, it was sarcastic.
concerns about his health led him to end the challenge early after facing the harsh realities of homelessness and his own health issues
‘My personal health has declined to the point where I really need to start taking care of it. Throughout the entire project, we haven’t shared it with you, but I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.’
Health concerns? Bitch, you’re supposed to swallow that shit up and work anyway
Black wanted to help his friends rebuild their lives and prove that luck or money was not necessary to become a millionaire - just hard work.
Spoiler alert: he was wrong
Black started off small and managed to make his first $300 by selling furniture online.
‘One of the best things to sell are tables,’ Black explained. 'I started taking ads on Craigslist in the free section, putting it on Facebook Marketplace and selling it for a profit.
‘I acted as the middleman, handling all the logistics between the buyer and the seller.’
Not exactly what I’d call hard work, but shitty assholery
Despite failing to make the million dollars he had aimed for, Black says it was still a successful experiment after demonstrating how it was possible to rebuild his life through the power of determination.
Power of my fucking ass, balance those 64k you made with paying your dad’s chemo and your own health.
Also a noteworthy comment from a reader:
Not to mention the entrepreneurial and computing skills that he had - that he didn’t pick up while living in poverty on the streets.
Of course the “everybody just needs to work hard to get rich” guy gravitated immediately towards shitty parasitic schemes that take advantage of others.
Enriching (barely) himself by making things slightly worse for numerous other people. I’m shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
“OMG there is money on the table here!!”
“…no, I just want to give it away and someone who needs a table can be happy to get one for free.”
“Mmmmmmooooonnnneeeyyyy ooonnn ttthhheee tttttaaaabbbllleee!!!” (Capitalist head explodes)
It seems simple, but I think it’s a perfect example of the underlying shittiness in our culture, where you are a bad or dumb person for not taking advantage of people when you have the opportunity. If you manage to do it a lot, you get admired for your hustle. If you make more money than you could ever spend and you STILL keep doing it 12 hours a day, we’ll put you on the cover of a magazine!
(I’m speaking from a US perspective, because we are great at exploiting each other, but it happens all over the world)
Despite failing to make the million dollars he had aimed for, Black says it was still a successful experiment after demonstrating how it was possible to rebuild his life through the power of determination.
Bro really achieved 6.4% of the goal and called it a success
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Not exactly what I’d call hard work, but shitty assholery
Giving someone shit because they can sell things that others give away for free is… interesting.
There isn’t a business on the planet that doesn’t make more money than they pay for what they do. The guy literally took what others were throwing away and effectively recycled their trash and made a profit on it. When you are starting with literally nothing you need to find money somehow.
I bought a dresser from a guy with a storage unit full of furniture he buys from estate sales. I don’t have time to go to estate sales. I got a pretty awesome deal on the piece I got. Even if the got it for free or by running a 800 got junk type deal I would not hate. Better than another thing in the landfill!
There isn’t a business on the planet that doesn’t make more money than they pay for what they do.
Yes, but usually they do something that provides value. A mechanic charges you more than their costs, but they are also charging for their expertise and skill.
When you are starting with literally nothing you need to find money somehow.
Nothing except for the internet, a device to access it, and a method of transportation. Also presumably somewhere to sleep, shower, and wash his clothes. And the ability to see a doctor anytime.
Also, it’s interesting how his method of gaining wealth depended on the generosity of others giving him things for free. It’s right there: when you have “literally nothing” you need help from other people to get started.
Yes, but usually they do something that provides value. A mechanic charges you more than their costs, but they are also charging for their expertise and skill.
Not all jobs are that clear cut though. Most white collar jobs are bullshit (sauce: been working in corporate environments for close to 15 years.)
Car Salesmen are useless for me. They’re still legally required. They get paid WAY too much to swindle grandparents out of a few thousand dollars per car.
Real Estate Agents generally do not produce any real value but are again required. 4-5% commissions for selling a home which today in the boston area is a median of over 700k. Don’t try and tell me that $35k of effort goes into creating a listing and doing a showing, and helping someone throw in a bid. It should be a couple thousand at most. Sales here are almost always a weekend of two open houses then offers due on tuesday… and then a P&S is signed on Friday.
If car salesmen and real estate agents are so valuable, then i’m sure a middleman finding furniture and reposting it on other sites that are more visited than craigslist free section and taking a commission is hardly any more dubious. After all the agents and salesmen in these cases do not create any value - they didn’t build the car or ship it over or really do anything except maybe detail it before delivery, even the paperwork is done by others! Same deal with the agents… they arent the lawyer, mortgage broker, house inspector etc which you still pay yourself out of pocket as closing costs as a buyer.
Anyway, yeah I totally agree about people needing handouts to get on their feet. I’m very much for housing the homeless and giving basic necessities to all (basic shelter, food, water, basic clothes, internet, electricity, smart phone.) We just aren’t that kind of nation though. We’d rather prop up insurance companies and pharma profits than lift a finger for the homeless. “IGMFY” is the way the US works, mostly.
Car Salesmen are useless for me.
“These professions perform a similar function and I think they’re useless. That makes this worthwhile” is certainly an interesting take.
It sounds like you agree that obtaining free furniture and selling it for money is just as parasitic as a Car Salesman or Real Estate Agent.
Of course presumably the Car Salesman or Retail Agent also brings some expertise to the situation that is not needed for flipping furniture.
The more I think about it, the more I think he’s right about these jobs adding no value.
Where do you draw the line between this and flipping houses?
There’s a pretty big difference. Furniture is easily accessible to everyone. Just about anyone can find someone selling their used furniture online, or even buy brand new at reasonable prices. I’ve never heard of a furniture shortage gripping an entire generation of people.
Ur gonna be mad at dude who’s homeless for getting a free house? Ok buddy.
They want their cut. Nobody with less than them can be given anything without them getting their cut. They had to work for it so why shouldn’t everyone else!!111
Seems to be the mentality anyway. “igmfy” It’s why people are anti-immigration (we’re all immigrants if you go back far enough.) It’s why they don’t want social service programs (taxing ME is theft, tax those others!), they sure as shit don’t want free education (hurr durr I paid for mine / I didn’t need it so why should I pay for theirs!!1111oneone)
It blows my mind that so many don’t want any change to the status quo because things were shit for them. It’s like at some point the resentment for being handed a shit deal is replaced by resentment for others who haven’t made it yet.
No I’m talking about making profit by acquiring something for less than it’s worth (the proof of this being that you are able to find someone who will pay more for it, during a short enough time frame that it is worth your time to do so)
People are quick to shit on real estate “investors”, this is kinda the same thing.
I moved recently and instead of dealing with the hassle of having to haggle, I decided to post on an internal company channel and give away all my stuff to coworkers. Since I was going to get charged for disposal, having a random unknown coworker (presumably a trusted person) come to my place and take away stuff for me for free was actually saving me money. Plus I don’t have to deal with actual strangers from Facebook who would probably try and haggle last minute. I got value out of that transaction.
But what if those coworkers sold my furniture instead of keeping it for themselves? Is that somehow dishonorable? What if someone decided to have their entire income be based off flipping furniture like this?
And if you’re OK with all of that, why not keep going and flip houses? It’s the same shit. You are not improving the product in any way (and sometimes house flippers do renovate). Or do things magically change because of the Barrier to entry?
But what if those coworkers sold my furniture instead of keeping it for themselves? Is that somehow dishonorable?
If you’re going to bring honor into it, yeah it can be pretty dishonorable. Your worker would be using his privileged position of access to people who are in a financial position to just discard valuable goods, and if he’s then reselling those at market rate rather than cost plus, then he’s not so much compensating himself for the work of reselling the products as he is exploiting the ignorance of his customers to maximize profit.
And if we understand honor be rooted in transparency, honesty, fairness, etc (which is what we immediately think of when we think of an “honorable” fight or dual, for example), then yes that can be very dishonorable.
So it’s the seller’s responsibility to say “BTW I got this for free so you should pay me less” even if the product is of objective X quality?
All these comment chains are bonkers, yo.
Back to the main article, the entire point was supposed to be that the guy was making money by being a middle man that spent their time handling logistics in a way that made it worthwhile to acquire a thing and sell it to someone who felt they were getting a good deal. That’s much more value than “herp deep I’m a landlord, where’s my rent”.
“Using their privilege of being a coworker of someone who is in a position where it’s more valuable to them to give away furniture cuz it’s more annoying to sell it” is kind of a stretch. Not that it should matter but the vast majority of my shit was IKEA garbage from 11 years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, this is among the least offensive iterations of the phenomen, but middlemen can be pretty shitty in any transaction.
Sometimes they provide a useful service, acting as a sort of external sales and marketing department for producers who for whatever reason don’t have the mechanisms in place to get their products out to their would-be consumers.
But who likes a scalper? Who believes that a guy with an automated purchasing script is adding value to Taylor Swift tickets? Or that the people buying multiple PS5s during the early days just to resell them were providing a useful intermediary service? No one.
And likewise taking something you don’t want off of Craigslist before someone who actually wants it can get it, only to flip it on another site, doesn’t add value or provide a useful service.
Something that I didn’t see mentioned (except maybe one comment).
Even without considering connections or know how, He was not burned out, not at all.
That’s why all these experiments are faulty in principle. People don’t become homeless when they are ready for a challenge. They become homeless after they become burned out.
After the 10 months, he was closer than he has ever been in his life (still not there since he had $60K) to being homeless and that’s when he couldn’t continue and had to quit. Lol
Also substance abuse or mental disabilities… or both.
Substance abuse as a stand in for medical care to treat chronic pain.
Mental disability thanks to physical abuse from your elders/peers, malnutrition, and chronic stress.
A criminal record from living on the street as a vagrant. Nevermind hygiene issues.
But it’s no sweat. Millionaire in 365 days. Easy. Anyone can do it.
This is the real thing. You need some combination of substance and mental health problems and not have access to anyone who can help you. You’re guaranteed to be homeless.
That’s one reason why I’ve always been told never to give money to homeless people sure it could help but most of the time they are just going to blow it on drugs so if you actually want to help give them food or a comb or cologne so they can make themselves more presentable in a job interview
The saddest thing is that he didn’t learn anything from it and continues to support his previous ideas…
Worse: he has all of the experience with social media and computing, as if the average homeless person does. His wheeling and dealing is not something on the street is going to do.
I mean, the article does close with him saying 'We should always remember to help those in need because it could be the opportunity that they need’, that’s something I guess.
“Remember to help those in need. Be sure to like and subscribe and visit my merch store.”
His mistake was playing it straight rather than trying to rig the game in his favor.
You mean he didn’t rig it enough
Not when he’s $940k short of the $1M mark.
Not even close.
Try it with:
- No state-issued ID (and depending on the state, missing pre-reqs for getting one)
- No bank account
- Outstanding debt
- Bad credit
- Blemished background check
- No recent rental history (or recent evictions)
We have plenty of ways to mark people as undesirable, which are harder to fix than having zero cash on hand.
Also: the dude was in and out of the doctors office,.obviously didn’t give up his health coverage, and had a relationship with both of his parents.
‘My personal health has declined to the point where I really need to start taking care of it. Throughout the entire project, we haven’t shared it with you, but I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.’
Maybe taking care of his father, I Believe the article is deliberately ambiguous, it is written vaguely with the notion that it was for his own health, but I’m not sure that’s the case. If it is then the entire project is null and void imo, you don’t get health care flipping tables and selling beans. (Which should be the name of the book he inevitably writes)
It also talks about how he had auto-immune diseases. I wouldn’t be so sure the visits were for his father.
It is honestly impressive that with (presumably) only hard work, an education, a lifetime of business experience, and the kindness of strangers, he was able to work his way up to 6.4% of his goal.
A regular Ozymandias, that one.
I don’t get it, why didn’t he just pull up his bootstraps?
How is this possible? Either he didn’t work hard enough or there are systematic barriers to accumulating wealth, because the game is rigged against poor people so that rich people can steal the value of their time and labor.
He must not have worked hard enough.
Unrelated, but are y’all really linking the daily mail?
