From 0 to $1m challenge

Check out the $1,000,000 Visualization Grid

I turned 30 a few months ago and I want to become a millionaire by the time I hit 40.

This gives me 10 years to figure things out, while also (hopefully 🤞) not burning myself out in the process again.

So if you’re wondering why I’m giving myself so much time, here’s the answer, lol.

Little about me

At my core, I’ve been a developer since 2013, and in the last 5 years I’ve also:

wrote articles on my blog (this one)
made a YouTube channel ($50k)
wrote an eBook ($30k)
co-created a coding course ($150k)
made a SaaS ($60k)
started communities (P.S. The Indie Action Community has launched!)

And some other ventures…

As you can see, during these 5 years I made about $300k from various projects and the plan is to continue this to bring my net worth to $1m in the next decade.

For the fun of it, here I’ll start documenting from $0 revenue up to $1m. We’ll just keep it simple without considering the previous amounts (which went on taxes, expenses and some investments).

Just keep in mind that I already have projects that bring in some revenue every month, and I have an audience on X and YouTube.

I don’t believe having an audience is a requirement to complete this challenge but it’s not bad to have, of course.

Why $1m?

This is how much we’d need to be financially free. (we = me + wifey 💜)

This amount invested would give us $40k per year based on the safe withdrawal rate of 4% which will give us a pretty good lifestyle on “autopilot” financially.

If I really think about it… the main goal is freedom. Freedom to do what I want, when I want, with whoever I want.

Do we really need $1m invested though for that? No, not really. With a $4-5k monthly income, we’d be good to go.

But it would be nice to have that as passively as possible. And, it wouldn’t be such a fun challenge if it would be super easy, amirite? 😆

So… $1m it is!

How do I plan to make money?

I plan to continue launching and monetizing apps and products, while sharing the process online → this will help with the marketing/distribution side of things. Besides this, I also want to learn how to use paid ads.

To begin with, I need to hone down my dev and marketing skills.

I need to learn how to:

launch an MVP of an idea fast
market it to the right audience
see if it’s worth doubling down on (if it brings in enough revenue), or it’s a sign I need to move on to the next idea
automate everything where possible

To launch an MVP fast I already know how to build websites (the frontend) but I need to learn better how to do the backend side (how to set up auth, db, payments, etc).

For marketing, I’ll:

launch on different channels (Reddit, hacker news, indie hackers, product hunt?)
make videos and/or streams about it
talk about the product in public
learn and try ads (heard these are powerful if done right)

The actionable plan

Since I don’t necessarily need a big hit fast, I was thinking of launching many small apps to see what skills I lack or need to improve.

I like the idea of launching many small bets. Trying many things and seeing what works. This will force me to act fast, fail fast, and learn fast.

Challenge: Launch 100 projects (Crazy, eh? 😆)

If let’s say, hypothetically, I’ll launch 100 projects and apps in the next 10 years, and on average each of the apps makes $100 per month, that’s $10k per month in total.

I know this is just the theory and in reality only a few will be successful… But considering the high amount of apps (100), I believe that this will create a big surface area for luck to fit in at some point.

And even if it doesn’t work out, during this time I’m going to develop strong skills that will help a lot in other areas. For example, I could switch my focus to helping other businesses launch and try their ideas, as I’ll have stronger dev & marketing skills.

All in all, I think this will turn out well eventually.

At least I hope so, lol. 😆

Nonetheless, I’m going to share my experience here so… Stick around to see what’s going to happen.

Cya! 🫶