The “pull yourself by the bootstraps” myth is still going strong, so much so that one privileged individual decided to test it out to finally prove, once and for all, that anyone could climb the ladder and become a millionaire. Mike Black, a young American multimillionaire decided in 2023 to give up all his wealth to prove that it was possible to earn one million dollars in a year starting from scratch (aka, become rich again). To no one’s surprise, he failed.
Because of his previous jobs, director of Told Media, a software development agency that helps companies with employee recruitment and online business mentorship programs developer, he decided to bite the bullet and take his own advice to prove that he could do it. This is what is called the “Million Dollar Comeback Challenge” and it is meant to show that anyone can get a million dollars if they just applied themselves to the cause.
Why this myth is dangerous and not everyone can become rich in a year
What Mike forgot to take into account is that he already came from a privileged background. He is educated and started his first tech company at 16, while still under his parent’s umbrella which allowed him to take risks and fail with few consequences. This gave him a springboard into a future that was bright, and yes, he had to work very hard and be smart to get where he was at such a young age, but he still had a lot of advantages that gave him a very competitive edge.
He gave up his house, car, and job and made a strict set of rules for himself, like not being able to rely on any of his contacts from the business world and not being able to contact loved ones either. What gave him the idea was the pandemic. As he explained on a video in his YouTube channel that he created to document the experience “I knew a lot of people who lost everything during the pandemic and they got really depressed. I even had a friend that lost a $10 million business overnight.”
His start was rough, starting out sleeping on a bench with only a few clothes and a cellphone (a lot more than many homeless have) and soon posted an add on craigslist asking for a place to sleep in exchange for work. He could only afford to do this because if he got into a truly unsafe situation he had a backup, an out, which most people do not have. He was not truly homeless or undocumented, he could leave and would be missed, but it was still a start.
He then started flipping furniture he found for free. He explains “One of the best things to sell is tables. I started posting ads in the free section of Craigslist, uploading them to Facebook Marketplace, and flipping them for profit.”
This little scheme allowed him to buy a computer and rent an apartment in only three months. He then fell back on his training and established himself as a freelance social media manager and soon after, launched his own coffee brand. And he managed to succeed “Look at where we’re at right now. We’re not making millions of dollars, but look at this – going to be living potentially in a mansion rent free. I’m getting on calls with big tech companies pitching them on running their social media. I’m starting a coffee brand I have a coffee dude in Austin now. I mean everything’s going in the right direction. Three months ago I was homeless!”
However, his experiment came up against the realities of life and being poor. His father was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and had begun chemotherapy sessions. This stress combined with the ungodly amount of hours he had to “grind” to make ends meet, triggered his own illnesses, two autoimmune conditions and a tumor on his hip that prevented him from continuing as he was. Anyone else and he would have gone back out one the streets bankrupt and without being to afford any more healthcare.
Ten months in, he pulled the plug having raised about 64,000 dollars, very far form the million he had set to achieve but still fairly impressive.