raw reality of making $1.5m a month

All right, so I wanted to make this video to talk about what it takes to actually become a millionaire and win the game of life at the highest level. Now, what gives me any authority to talk about that? Well, you know, if you don't know me, my name is Micaiah, and when I was 25, I founded a company called Prodigy. We built the online checkout for car dealerships, and over the course of six years, we built that up and sold it for $110 million. And so... I don't know. It's kind of cool. If you do the math, it works out to almost $1.5 million a month every month for the six years and one month it took to build that company. And along the way, there were just so many lessons, so many ups and downs that I think don't make it into... uh the online social media world of today you know today is all about showing off the yachts and the fancy cars and things like that and in this video i want to have more of a heart-to-heart team just be like hey here's what it actually takes here's what you're signing up for um and here are some maybe some things i've learned along the way that might help you uh you know i saw someone another entrepreneur that did a video like this and he opened talking about video games and how many of the most successful entrepreneurs that he sees online or that he's met were into video games or addicted to video games and that really resonated with me. I didn't have a great childhood and so growing up video games were my escape and my favorite game by far was the Final Fantasy series. I'm talking, I was such a nerd, I wrote my college application essay on Final Fantasy 7 and how it changed my life. Not surprisingly, every college except one rejected me, but I ended up going to school. to make video games. And my whole life passion when I was 17 was just to go to school, get a computer science degree, and make video games. And the way that I got into business was sort of out of necessity in many ways. I had to pay for my own college. My parents had enough money to pay for it. And so I needed a way to make money while going to college. And starting a business just seemed like the best way to do that at the time. What very quickly happened is I started to look at building a business the same way i would look at my video games and that like in the video game you want to get the best character with the best armor and the best weapon and the best spells so you can go take on like bigger and better bosses in many ways uh business became my video game like i wanted the best landing page i wanted the best marketing campaigns and i wanted the best sales pitch and i wanted the best product and just like the process of incrementally leveling up these different areas of my business and myself, there was a lot of personal development work there, really for, I don't know, probably almost close to a decade, actually replaced my love for video games to the point where I wasn't even playing video games most of my late teenage years and early 20s. I was just playing this game of business and treating it like a video game. And I think there's something really true in this process that is maybe lost in today's flashy entrepreneurship culture and flashy entrepreneurship vibe that you get on social media. You know, social media is all about, hey, like get to $10,000 a month in 30 days or the fastest way to become a millionaire and things like that. And, you know, there are real shortcuts in life and, you know, hopefully in this video I'll explain some of them. But the reality is a lot of becoming successful is just this daily grind. It's this like you wake up, you put in the work, try to get 1% better, level up like one little aspect of your character or your business or whatever. And over time, these things do compound. It's something that takes a while. And in the same way, if you were playing your favorite video game, you wouldn't expect like maybe you're an hour into the video game, level three, you've got like some basic weapons and stuff. You wouldn't expect that you can go beat the final boss. In fact, if you did beat the final boss, you'd kind of be like, man, this game sucks. Like, this is not fun. And it's just, it's over already. Business and succeeding in life is kind of like that. And that your goal of making millions of dollars and everything else is sort of like your final boss. But the reality is you're probably like level three, level four, you're just starting out. And I think it's really healthy to give yourself time on the journey. It's not something that you probably want to hear. It's not something that I would have ever wanted to hear. But the reality is, you know, in my personal journey, I started business when I was 17 years old. And I had a couple of businesses that did pretty well. And then the last business, Prodigy, that we sold for $110 million, obviously did very well. But I sold that when I was 31 years old. So there's like 14 years of leveling up, putting in the grind, failing and learning from my mistakes that I think, again, it's just sort of not sexy enough to sell on social media these days. So you don't hear about it as much. The reality is it is just, it's a long journey and one that you're signing up for if you want to go down this path of actually becoming like wildly successful at a young age. And, you know, maybe another part of this is that I think, you know, doesn't make it onto the social media side of things and that you probably don't see if you're just, you know, watching videos of entrepreneurs and things like that is really the sacrifices that come along the journey. There was this weird phenomenon for me, especially running my last startup, where there are literally like months and quarters and years that just I almost have no memories of in a weird way. It would be like I would be dealing with this problem and I'd kind of blink and like six months were gone. And in the meantime, I'd like missed birthdays. I'd missed hanging out with friends. I'd miss doing all the stuff that. you might expect to do in your 20s. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and it was just this time warp phenomenon where building the business became an obsession that never left me, that I was always thinking about. And I think this level of obsession is in every successful person. It is what it takes to win, but it has some real drawbacks. I remember very vividly, I was in Hawaii with my girlfriend at the time, now my wife of almost five years. And we're in Kauai. And it's beautiful. You know, beautiful sunny days, crystal clear water. We're on the boat. We're swimming around. There was turtles and everything. And I'm just like numb inside. There's no joy. There's no happiness. You know, I try to smile because I want. my uh girlfriend to like not think i'm a psycho and i want to you know smile for the photos and things like that but you know in my back of my mind i'm thinking about you know that customer that might cancel that new product feature that is late um and this sort of obsession is is what it takes to win but it's such a big cost to life and i think if you're not if you're not willing to actually allow your business and your journey to completely overwhelmingly consume you what will probably happen is you'll treat it like a nice to have but then you'll have these other things that you're working on whether it's building a good social circle or dating and things like that and the reality is from like basically 17 until I would say probably like 28 29 years old I really didn't do any of that like I didn't party in college at all I had very few friends in college. I had like one or two close friends in my early and mid 20s. But I was basically just heads down working on the business. And it sucked. Like if I'm being honest, it's not that I wouldn't, I wouldn't do anything differently. Certainly if I look at my life now, like, and I'm very, I don't want to make this like a woe is me video. Like I'm so lucky to be living the life that I'm living. And I'm so fortunate. um but it it does come at a real cost and i just my hope is that in this video you can kind of understand that and understand what you're getting into you know now a lot of entrepreneurs come to me and say hey you know i want to start a business i want to start a startup and i think it's easy to want to do that because it's so um like glamorized online but my advice to people that always ask me like you know how can i start a startup should i start a startup i always try to convince them actually not to do it Because my hope is that if I can just outline all the negative things that they're stepping into, and if that's enough to actually convince them not to do it, then I've probably saved them like a minimum two to five years of like real heartache and struggle. And so I think it's actually sort of an ironic thing when everyone comes to me and says, I want to start a startup. I just try to convince them not to do it. And that has like... a pretty high success rate and then the ones that actually have like after my little heart to heart still gone on to do it have all been like really successful actually um but it's one of those things where you've just gotta like know what you're getting into and and know that it's gonna be it's not gonna be a year it's not gonna be two years it's gonna be five ten years of your life really we're just putting in this grind and and it's it's a super rewarding journey but it's one that will test you But, you know, probably the thing that makes entrepreneurship the hardest thing to win at and the reason why so many people end up either giving up or sort of like going through the motions but not really succeeding is this creeping doubt. And it's not a doubt that they're not good enough or anything like that. I mean, it is like everyone has these deep doubts like I'm not good enough. What if I fail? Things like that. But I would say the number one doubt that. i dealt with and that you'll be dealing with as an entrepreneur is really what if it's all not worth it like what if you miss the birthdays you miss the parties you miss dating you miss all these big parts of life five ten years later and you're still broke and nothing's really changed and this creeping nagging doubt of like what if it's just not worth it what if it all fails i would say is is the hardest part of being an entrepreneur honestly And it's something that you honestly just have to deal with. It doesn't go away. The only way that you will actually know if it was worth it in the end is if you hit your goal. Having said that, I do think people kind of underestimate the positive impacts of being an entrepreneur. I mean, yes, your first business probably won't succeed. Or if it does, it certainly probably won't hit the targets that you're aiming for. it's not just your financial situation that's changing when you're an entrepreneur the actual skills that you're building are so valuable and it's kind of like my video game metaphor like sure you may you know lose to one boss or mini boss or something but then you come back uh later and you're leveled up more and you have better skills better weapons and you're able to take on that boss that you couldn't previously take and so what ends up actually happening is it's not like a binary thing you know, success in entrepreneurship is not either win or fail. It's really like continue or give up. And as long as you keep continuing and you level up, you're learning more skills, you're getting better at your craft. Eventually, you're able to take on those bosses and win this game. But for me, you know, treating it like a game does help alleviate some of these. really negative downsides the other thing that I would say that you know probably had the biggest impact on my life is trying to build a community of like-minded people that are going through the same thing you know I was actually just talking with the founder last night that I met this event and I was like hey like you know how many other founders do you know how many CEOs are you meeting with regularly to talk about your problems and like you know what's going on and he's like I don't know any and I was like man that's That's really dangerous because you're going on this incredibly taxing, incredibly stressful journey with no support system. It's the same way like people don't really solo climb Everest. Maybe the super crazy people do, but most people go there with Sherpas, with guides, with other groups. And so you're doing this thing, this incredibly hard thing together. And entrepreneurship is no different. You really want to build a community of people who... are going through exactly what you're going through so that is not like you're the ceo and then you're talking with other sales managers like you really want to be meeting other founders other ceos and catching up with them and just sort of sharing what's going on with your life in a very transparent and vulnerable ways so that they can also share what's going on in their life and and you kind of you share tips about you know this game that you're playing and what's working for you and what's working for them and you guys level up together and this process of uh you know building a community is isn't hard um but it's it's one of the most important things you can do to actually uh propel yourself forward and so in some closing thoughts you know i i hope this video has been helpful and sort of chatting a little bit about my journey and maybe some of the sacrifices and drawbacks that are to entrepreneurship. Don't get me wrong. Now I am traveling the world and racing supercars and all that fun stuff. But that kind of stuff happens after your journey. It's not the sort of thing that you see on Instagram where it's part of the entrepreneurship journey. The entrepreneurship journey is heads down, sort of grinding. failing, grinding, failing, and continuing until you get to the end game. And then you can kind of enjoy all these parts of life. Having said that, there are different paths that you can take that make this either an easy game or a hard game. And I think one of the most important decisions is really like, how are you going to get to your end result? And so it's too much for this video, but I did just do a deep dive on like the smartest way to make your first million as a beginner entrepreneur. I will put the link over here. So I hope that's helpful as well. And thanks for watching.

Watch this next: https://youtu.be/y5ks4FhoGfQ

If you're new here my name's Michia (Muh-ky-uh). I'm a serial entrepreneur and investor. Since selling my last startup for 9 figures, I'm investing my own money into the next wave of founders at my VC firm, L7V. 

I'm sharing everything I learn here so subscribe and stick around.