Since everything in Las Vegas was shut down, I had more free time on my hands than normal. I spent a lot of my free time reading, consuming content, and learning.

One of my guilty pleasures over the last few months includes following the Million Dollar Comeback series religiously on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and EVERY. OTHER. SOCIAL. MEDIA. CHANNEL (Mike we get it, you want your content to be seen…Joking).

If you haven’t been keeping up with Million Dollar Comeback, on July 10th, Mike Black didn’t renew his lease on his apartment. He got rid of all of his belongings and ditched his network and resources. He drained his bank account to $0. He basically did a complete reset on his professional life like an absolute madman.

You’re probably asking yourself, “what kind of person does this?” Well, he’ll get into that in his series, but since you probably haven’t watched that I’ll share his goal with you.

Mike’s goal with Million Dollar Comeback is quite simple:

My goal is to build a new business starting from $0 to $1 million in revenue in 12 months. I’ll be going by a new persona so I can’t leverage my background or create any unfair advantage.

He even created a complete set of MDC rules to guide him along the way. You can read those for yourself. I don’t want to just paste all of his website content on my blog.

The thing that I really like about MDC and this project is how relatable it is. Starting a business is tough. It’s a constant rollercoaster, both physically and mentally. Mike puts this right out in the open for everyone to see.

I hope he doesn’t quit on this project because my YouTube subscription feed won’t be the same without Mike Black and the Million Dollar Comeback.

Abusing easy credit.

Students can easily get approved for one or more credit cards, and then spend themselves into a hole by graduation — often on top of tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.

College students are profitable targets because they’re more likely to get high-earning jobs down the road and become loyal credit customers. If they do fall behind, parents often absorb the heavy interest hit.

Missing payments.

Skipping a payment is worse than paying the minimum. The interest compounds, and a “30 days late” notation shows up in your credit report. Missed payments will hang around on a credit report for seven years.

Paying bills late.

Even if a credit card account is paid faithfully, the issuer can opt to hike its interest rate if a cardholder has made late payments on other bills, such as car loans, utility bills and other credit cards. This is called universal default.

Conclusion

In a perfect world, I would hope that we don’t all have to learn from the school of hard knocks. I have suggested that financial literacy needs to be a prerequisite for graduating. However, the big banking cartel wouldn’t allow that, so your next best option is to learn the rules to the game.

Agree? Disagree? I would love to hear your thoughts. And if you enjoyed reading this,share it with a friend. It would mean a lot to me.

This post was originally shared on Medium during the summer of 2016.

I’ll update this with my logic or lack of logic later.

Update: 5/26/2020:

I’ve checked my 2020 Stimulus Check Portfolio and as of 5/26/2020 this portfolio is up 34% ($415) in a little over a month.

Notes

1. I’m an idiot. I’m not a financial advisor. I probably won’t beat the market. Everything in this post should be viewed as a gamble and not an actual investment.

This post was originally shared on Medium, but I’m backing everything up on my personal blog.

1) Survive

VR isn’t mainstream (yet). VC funding isn’t flowing into this space. Find a way to support yourself, business, and team. Don’t die.

2) Find paying customers

B2C, B2B, or B2G…build something someone will pay you to use on a consistent basis. Use their feedback to improve your product. Find more people like them and repeat.

3) Give amazing demos

Most of the people you meet have never experienced #VR before. This is your opportunity to blow their mind. #VirtualReality is sexy, spreadsheets and databases aren’t.

4) Skip the networking events

Less networking events, more coding and talking to users. It seems like there is a new VR event every day, but you don’t have to go to them. You do not need to be everywhere. Pick two to three high impact events every year.

Head down, hoodie up. Keep building.

5) Bundle the hardware

Most people don’t own a VR headset…let alone a VR-ready rig or laptop. This will benefit you down the road when its time to upgrade (upsell). Factor this into your distribution/sales process.

6) Raise your price

Whatever you’re pricing your product at right now, double it, if not, triple it. VR is incredible and the experience is worth more than whatever you’re charging. You need money to survive and improve your product. Charge more.

7) Use the best hardware available

Whatever rig you use for demos, always have the best hardware. If your build is experiencing frame drops, you’re going to make people sick. $100,000 on beautiful assets doesn’t matter if it isn’t optimized and runs like

8) Do things that don’t scale

Paul Graham said it best, “Do things that don’t scale.” Whatever you have to do to gain users and generate revenue, DO IT RIGHT NOW! You can’t change the world if you don’t have users and run out of money.

9) Press doesn’t equal progress

If you’re chasing an ego boost, press is great for this. If you’re chasing revenue, spend more time talking to customers. Most of the time, press and articles feel great emotionally but deliver nothing. Chase sales and revenue, not vanity pieces and panel positions.

10) Don’t die

Yes, I put this in here twice. IT’S IMPORTANT! The VR industry has nowhere to go, but up. Nobody knows when virtual reality will reach mass adoption. If you can survive until this date, you will be years ahead of the competition. Be a cockroach.

This post was originally shared on Medium and adapted from a Twitter thread I posted in August 2018.