How I Made Millions Starting From Nothing (The Brutally Honest Truth)

Just about two years ago, I sold my business for millions.

Today I'm going to show you exactly what I did because it wasn't difficult. And I honestly believe that anybody can do the exact same thing if they just follow these steps.

(Warning: This might not be the success story you're expecting.)

Step 1: Find the "Perfect" Idea (Just 2 Years of Research)

For me, it was incredibly easy. I was building it with a friend I'd known since we were six years old, and we realized that the only thing we really needed to make millions was to have the perfect idea.

And the perfect idea was so incredibly easy to come up with.

All we had to do was spend about two years talking to like 400 people who were potential customers and deep-diving into 50 businesses to understand their business models, gaps, faults, and strengths.

You know, that was two years we couldn't work. We had to quit our jobs. We had absolutely no way to make money. And life was miserable.

But if you can do that, if you can take those two years, you'll be in the exact same position where everything gets easier.

(Spoiler alert: Nothing gets easier.)

This obsessive research phase is what many people mistake for analysis paralysis—but we called it "being thorough."

Step 2: Execute on Your Perfect Idea (Simple!)

Because once you have the idea, then you just have to execute on it. And executing was also just about as easy as finding the idea.

We had to get some money so we could live and survive, maybe bring on a couple of contractors. So both of us just had to go and beg our wives to take out all the money we had in our retirement accounts.

It was about $50,000 each, and that was just enough to hire people for like three months.

All that money, all the things we had saved, were just gone in the blink of an eye. But it was worth it because we at least thought maybe we had an idea that was pretty good.

Step 3: Build the Thing (Totally Manageable)

Once we had the money, we had to actually build the thing. And building is so simple.

If you don't have the skills already, all you have to do is re-enroll in college or university courses to learn programming, or find a way to squeeze an extra eight or ten hours out of every single day to learn what's current, figure out how AI works, develop skills in process automation, and gain all the business knowledge you need to build the product you ultimately want to sell.

That's pretty easy, right? There are all kinds of time-saving tips online. There's the deep focus method. Whatever you need to do, just find a way to squeeze an extra couple of years out of whatever you're currently doing.

And then you'll have the thing built.

(At this point, you might be detecting some sarcasm. Good. Keep reading.)

The confidence required to learn entirely new skills while your savings dwindle is exactly what we mean by entrepreneurial confidence—the ability to act despite massive uncertainty.

Step 4: Marketing (The Fun Part!)

Now, from personal experience, I can tell you this is when it was the most fun, because having built something, now you get to market it. You get to just watch the customers flood in.

And yeah, the first six or nine months of that marketing, nobody's going to listen. You're just going to be screaming painfully and shamefully into the void with nobody caring, nobody paying attention, blowing whatever money you had left on marketing campaigns that do absolutely nothing.

But if you can survive that, if you can have some fun while you waste your life savings, then at the end of that, you'll have a couple of people who'll say, "You know what, fine, I'll take a look. I'm not going to pay you anything for it, but I'll take a look and tell you I don't like it and you should have built something different."

And that is so rewarding because it really tells you that you've made terrible life decisions and that absolutely nothing is ever going to work out for you because you're a failure.

This phase often triggers massive impostor syndrome—questioning whether you belong in business at all when your "perfect" idea meets market indifference.

Step 5: Scale It (Almost There!)

But if you can get through all of that, then it's just a matter of scaling it.

Finding some more money somehow, maybe going back to your savings to hire an even bigger team, desperately begging people to invest in you, finding those first customers, dealing with all the headaches and crashes, barely making payroll every single week for like five or six years and just hoping that the ulcer you're developing goes away magically because you don't have time to go to the doctor.

And then at the end of that, someone might come along and say, "Yeah, I'll take it off your hands. I'll buy it from you. Not because I want to use it, but because it'll look good on a sales sheet somewhere. Our competitors have something like it, but we're not really going to do anything with it. And we don't want most of your team, so if you could lay them off first, that would be great."

The "Success"

But if you can go through that, you might just have a sale that gives you a little bit of money so you can take care of all the anxiety issues you now have.

I'm joking, although that is sadly, basically the experience I really had running my last business.

The Real Truth About Entrepreneurial Success

What I wanted to make this video for was to tell you that all of those things may or may not be your reality, but there are also things you can learn. There are things that over time you just get better at dealing with. There are people who will be there to support you through it.

They shouldn't be the things that stop you from trying.

Because the hardest part of starting that business—of starting any of the businesses I've ever started—has nothing to do with money, ideas, or execution.

It all comes down to the confidence to even try.

What Really Matters

Confidence is the thing that in all of those steps allowed me to just wake up and try one more time:

• The confidence to put myself out there
• The confidence to build something not knowing if anybody wanted it
• The confidence to ask for money, whether from investors or customers
• The confidence to say, "You know what? I think we can make this work if we just try a little bit more"

This experience taught me that most people don't fail because they lack business skills—they fail because they're scared to start or they quit when things get difficult.

Why I'm Telling You This

That's actually why my new business is all about helping people experience what it's like to be an entrepreneur.

I realize that you can take courses on programming. You can have other people help you come up with ideas. But the thing you need to learn if you want to start a business isn't any of that. That's all stuff that will come over time.

You need to learn how to be more entrepreneurial:

• How to actually wake up every day and put yourself out there
• How to ship things before you're ready
• How to develop the muscle memory so when you're in tough situations, you don't back down, don't fold up, and just keep going forward

The Real "Anyone Can Do This"

So yes, anyone can do this. But "this" isn't some easy path to millions. "This" is:

• Developing the resilience to handle years of uncertainty
• Building the confidence to act despite not knowing the outcome
• Learning to find meaning in the process, not just the exit
• Understanding that the real value is who you become, not what you make

The millions? That's just a nice bonus if you're lucky and persistent enough.

The real treasure is the entrepreneur you become along the way.

(And yes, I realize how that sounds, but it's actually true.)

Your Next Step

If you're waiting for someone to tell you the "real" secret to making millions, here it is: There isn't one.

But if you want to develop the confidence and resilience to handle whatever entrepreneurship throws at you—including the possibility of success—then you need to start practicing those skills now.

Not when you have the perfect idea. Not when you have enough money. Not when the timing is right.

Now.

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Ready to build real entrepreneurial resilience instead of chasing get-rich-quick schemes? The First Step Entrepreneur program helps you develop the confidence and skills to handle the actual reality of building a business.

Want to understand what entrepreneurial thinking really looks like? Learn how to think like an entrepreneur by stopping thinking and starting doing.