The Underdog: From $200K in Debt to $1M App Maker – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.yep start the story all that I had to my name was a debt of $200,000 my business had failed my possessions were gone my relationships had broken down my whole identity as a person disappeared this is Adam lidel and at first he thought he was a Founder genius the business was growing every year it seemed to just grow and grow I thought I was balling I thought I was invincible and I thought this is what life was always going to be like but what comes up must come down so all of a sudden my business collapsed pretty much overnight I thought that's it I'm bankrupt and I can't fulfill this this dream of mine I'll have to work for someone and do a a 9 [Music] to5 it was very very lonely I'd lost my community I'd lost my family I'd lost my business i' lost my purpose in life I would was at the absolute lowest that I could that that I've ever been when everything was at its worst Adam came across a business that would change his life forever as of last month I'm 100% debt free and the only way that I was able to achieve that was through building apps this is the story of how Adam liel went from $200,000 in debt to making $50,000 a month with a portfolio of mobile apps welcome to starter story Adam grew up in a troubled home with a lot of drug and alcohol use in his family naturally he found himself gravitating towards computers and Technology he could understand them better than he could understand people as a kid I'd be role playing having my own software business making software even at a at a young age and I really enjoyed and loved the process of just working out how the computer works working out how to create things and then in high school I started my own shareware business I was creating my own software and releasing it online I was making a few dollars on the side of my part-time job but then piracy came into it and people were downloading my apps for free and all of a sudden not generating much revenue from it Adam faced his first real setback Society expected him to follow the traditional path get a degree work a stable office job but Adam had other plans I wasn't all that great at school I didn't feel like I was the sort of person that could do a 9 to5 and I was the sort of person that could do this sitting in an air conditioned office being away from the kids is not the environment that I could see myself in so I wanted to follow my passions and turn my passions into my business Adam knows he must follow his dreams of making a living from building stuff on his computer so instead of going to college he decides to pursue a different route not realiz realizing he's about to stumble into a Gold Rush After High School I set up my own agency creating websites for businesses and this was prior to services like Wix and Squarespace at the high point of the business it was generating around about $300,000 profit per year I thought I was balling I thought that I was invincible and I thought this is what life was always going to be like this opportunity was hot and Adams agency started generating really good income within just a couple years but the success went straight to his head debt I felt was this this tool to buy things to live a lavish lifestyle now with the intention of paying it back later so I ended up just making poor decisions and ended up getting myself into $200,000 of credit debt and car loan debt and to keep up with this lavish lifestyle and the image of being a baller Adam had to increase his workload every year it seemed to just grow and grow and I didn't realize it but I was too focused on the business too focused on clients too focused on deadlines I just wasn't there with the kids and I wasn't there with the family I was too self-interested selfmotivated just fixated on what I was doing and everyone around me just had to fall into line to accomplish the goals that I wanted to achieve with my business and my finances and and the things that I wanted to purchase as the business business stayed profitable Adam could keep his head above water but he never planned for what would happen next I could no longer be charging $10,000 to build a website when people were just going to Wix or Squarespace and they could create a website for $10 a month so all of a sudden my business collapsed pretty much overnight my whole family was riing on the business it was putting a roof over everyone's head it was putting food on the table my logic was I have to work harder I have to keep persevering I to keep digging this hole that I'm in which meant lowering prices and as my prices lowered I was working more hours and it ended up resulting in a total burnout where I couldn't do any more couldn't access that higher level of thinking to even sit down on a desk to do work and I started to default on some of the debts things started falling apart slowly then all at once his cars got taken away his accounts were frozen and soon he was left with nothing all that I had to my name was a a debt of $200,000 that was unsecured now my business had failed my possessions were gone my relationships had broken down my whole identity as a person disappeared because my identity was this successful person that ran a web agency that was making good money it was very very lonely I'd lost my community I'd lost my family I'd lost my my business and lost my purpose in life I was at the absolute lowest that I could that that I've ever been Adam's life is breaking down before his eyes and with $200,000 of debt looming over him he realizes he has to find A New Path I could no longer sit in front of a computer and I just had this need to just not be in the house and I just would walk and walk and walk and I ended up coming up with the idea of if I put a lawn mower in front of me I could get paid to walk around so I got the lawn mower put an add-on air Tasker and I'd get people say hey can you mow my lawn for 20 bucks can you mow my lawn for 30 bucks and I say yes yes yes and in that process I started to sort of build my confidence again I started to build this sense of I wanted to do more again the more Lawns Adam cut the more confidence he got back in himself and his Services then one day while driving in his now secondhand car from one mowing gig to another he runs in to a problem the issue that I had was I'd have to work out where people lived plot it on Google Maps work out the best way to get to all of the clients in the most time efficient way possible and I asked some of the people that were mowing they said well it's easy you get a piece of paper you write all of your jobs down on one side that's week one you flip it over and you write all of your jobs down down on the other side that's week two and I said why why don't you use an app for that and one guy said to me well no app exists and someone should look at making it and I thought to myself I could be that someone with his passion reignited Adam sets out to build an app for lawnmowers he doesn't do it for the money but still has high hopes that the app will perform well finally it was ready I spent 6 months building this lawn mowing app I released it and it didn't actually do all that well I tried to work out why is it that this app that I have a very clear intention a use case and there's a need for it why did that fail Adam was stuck his app had failed and he had no clue why with $200,000 of debt he needed answers fast so he decides to do something crazy the best way and the only way I know how to learn something new is simply just to throw myself into and just start building so I set myself a challenge to create one app every single month Adam realized quickly that launching fast and validating ideas was the best way to approach new business ideas that's what started this whole one app a month challenge but what if you wanted to do this for a different business idea like a service-based business that only requires a website well hostinger is the fastest way to do it and they're the 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right now back to Adam's story I was mowing lawns from 6:00 a.m

2.in the morning till 6:00 p.m

3.in the evening and then I would be sitting down and just building apps with the intention of I want to give back more to the world than I had taken previously and then learning as I'm doing it Adam buries himself in building these small apps with the hopes of escaping his debt his failed businesses and his crumbling personal life but reality would still come back to bite him at one stage I was taken to court over refunds for a client I looked and thought if if I get a judgment against me that's it I'm bankrupt my career as as my own independent developer stopped and I can't fulfill this this dream of mine I can't keep building apps I'll have to work for someone and do a a 9 to5 one of his past agency clients had demanded a refund and Adam didn't have the money to pay it back filing for bankruptcy would mark an end to his entrepreneurship career but it seemed like that was the only choice until a miracle happened starting this journey of building an app per month one of the first apps that I built became hugely successful it was generating around about $11,000 a month which at the time was huge and at this stage I had someone reach out who wanted to to buy the app he said I'll buy it for two times annual revenue $224,000 that was a lot of money to me I was able to pay back the amount before I ended up going to court and I was able to keep the debt collectors at B just just enough to keep my dream alive and just enough to keep creating and and building with a little beginner's luck Adam had an initial success with building apps that not only saved him from his bankruptcy but more importantly made him realize that you can actually make money with this thing that's when this business model flipped from I can create an app every month and this is a really nice creative Outlet to I can create an app every month and I can generate two years worth of revenue from that one app I thought of it like like a Runway so I'd sell an app I'd have a Runway extended and then I could try to release another app that becomes successful before my Runway runs out and that's what I did for for 2 years when Co hit Adam's lawnmowing side hustle got shut down so he threw himself into app development while supplementing his income with some freelancing on the side and for a while this worked Adam was living the dream waking up every day to build apps but he was still deep in debt and every influx of cash from an app sale only brought him a few more months of Runway then one night something happened that would make Adam rethink everything there was one instance where we went to a restaurant I wanted to get a Pepsi Max but I couldn't afford a Pepsi Max I realized in that moment what am I doing what am I doing with my life am I following a dream or a passion that isn't going to come to fruition am I going down a path that's wrong how can I be in a situation where I've still got debt over my head I can't go out for dinner and I can't even afford a a a Pepsi Max Adam realizes that the business model of building apps purely to sell them isn't sustainable so he comes up with a new strategy start building more apps so that even if each one makes only $2 to $500 a month the total revenue is still enough to keep paying off the debt and providing for his family and this is the time when chat GPT came out and there was this joke that chat GPT makes you a 10x developer so prior to that I was building an app every single month to be a 10x developer that means I would have to create 10 apps this month I worked as hard as I could to try to get 10 apps out but I failed it turns out chat GPT only made me a 9x developer because I only had nine nine apps released that brought me out of the grind of building selling building selling where the apps themselves I had enough in my portfolio to generate enough Revenue that I no longer had to sell an app to keep a pipeline going I now had a consistent Revenue that was coming in month after month which now could pay down all my debts pay the rent and take my family out for dinner I've lost track of how many apps I've built it's over 50 at this stage I've sold quite a few and I've built quite a few so I can't remember exactly how many apps and in July I set up my YouTube channel and I thought I'm going to do some tests with my apps and see what works what doesn't work and then give some feedback on the channel I created a new pay wall and I created a new onboarding flow and that turned my revenue from generating $10,000 a month to $50,000 per month pretty much overnight so for the last couple of months it's been consistently going up and each month the business is making around about 50,000 to $60,000 the reality of that hasn't even set in that let me pay down all of my debts last month no longer in hardship payments no longer have 4 years of debt payments to go now I can provide a really comfortable lifestyle for myself and and my family while also letting me do what I'm passionate about which is building and creating I'm often asked all the time what ideas should I create for an app how can I how can I do this and nine times out of 10 the motivator is I want to build something to make money but from my experience if you don't have the passion you don't have the creativity and you don't have the drive behind you then it's going to be just as bad as being in debt just in bad just as bad as having chains on you you're going to be stuck in something that you don't want to build stuck in something you don't want to create so the best way to sort of work out what apps can be created is just a simp live life go out there and then try to work out where there's a need for an app or where there are apps that aren't doing a good enough job and that's where all of my Inspirations come from and what I've learned is the more you put out into the world that has a positive impact or a positive net positive result the money and the revenue flow as a byproduct of that passion as a byproduct of building as a byproduct of creating I couldn't get out of bed in the morning I felt so overburdened by the world that no matter what I did I'd still have debt and I'd still have people chasing me I'd still have clients upset with me all I could do was just put my head under the blankets and just not even get out of bed but everybody seems to have this ability or this drive in them to create something and it seems to be from my own experience the antidote to depression and the antidote to that feeling of being alone and lost and that's the advice that I would give which is follow those motivating passions that are actionable that make you want to learn and make you want to build hey guys Pat here I hope Adam's story inspires you and motivates you to start your own thing Adam is proof that you don't have to have the perfect situation to get started as long as you show up every day good things can happen if you're curious about doing something similar to Adam but you're still looking for an idea well right now you can download our deep dive solo Dev report for free it breaks down 50 different solo developer business ideas and apps like Adam built including their business models Revenue marketing strategies and tons of other stuff you'd want to know to help you get started on your own thing that can actually start making money just click the link to business ideas in the description and we'll send it over for free also I'd love to hear more what you thought about this documentary and and what you'd like to see on the channel going forward please drop a comment I make sure to read every single one all right guys much love I'll see you in the next one very soon peace [Music]