Road from $0 to $1,000,000

[LordFall]

I'm in a pretty unique financial situation right now so I think it'd be valuable to journal and document for others to witness the journey as well. I've been working on my business as a photographer and media marketer for about 9 years by now. Before then I was a semi professional League of Legends player for a bit. It's been ups and downs as my personality type is not very industrious(INTP) and struggles with work ethic and well running a business.

I've been watching a lot of Alex Hormozi content lately and he explains roadblocks and bottlenecks in business so well that's its helped me make sense of my whole life and why my business has been mostly unsuccessful so far. I've made somewhere around $75,000 CAD with it over a few years which is enough to sustain me for periods of time and then I end up having to get a random minimum wage job to pay the bills for a while then quit when I think I have a cushion and the business is working and cycle repeats, like 5 times now. 

I do think that now I have gotten the hang of it and the new people that I'm working with will be a competent team that I can lead and shape towards a multi million dollar business over the next few years. 

Also I'm in a funny spot where I basically have no money currently literally basically $0 until I receive my next $500 client payment in a few days. Considering the credit card debt I have I'm definitely below $0 net worth so hopefully this is a fun journey to document. 

I have a Vlog series that I do as well but I'm finding a lot of pleasure in writing lately as it allows me to go deeper in my thoughts as opposed to being a bit stressed and nervous on video so both will be worth watching if you're into this sort of quest. 

I'm a nerd at heart, this is partly inspired by the road to commander series that happened back in the days where Call Of Duty Youtubers would document their journey from level 0 to level 70(rank commander) in Modern Warfare 2. 

Feel free to ask questions or comment if you have thoughts. I'm also gonna be doing this as an accountability challenge and aim to get a post up weekly, as part of what I've noticed is holding back my life is consistency! 

I also find cringe the anti materialism that spiritual circles seem to embrace, I believe it to be spiritually bypassing and an avoidance of learning to be a competent human being that offers tangible value consistently to other human begins so documenting this on a spiritual forum is important to me as well. I tend to be more aggressive in forum posts than I mean to but if I have to read another comment from someone on their high horse about how business and wealth are corrupt and not worth pursuing while the only reason that we are here on this forum is because Leo heavily prioritized business and marketing to free himself financially and ultimately emotionally to have the bandwith to dedicate his life to the pursuit of truth and the ascension of mankind. A pursuit only possible for a human that can sustain themselves financially without having to work for another.  

I believe that becoming rich is one of the most spiritual things you can do, reach the abundance the formlessless gives us ultimately but in material reality while building out our shared universe and eventually exploring the confines of the galaxy. If we're talking about life purpose I also believe I will own at least 3 planets in the future so here's my proof that it was not luck I planned it from the start boys and girls.

First let's do $1M though I hear planets are expensive. 

Edited February 19 by LordFall

[LordFall]

Got paid $500 by my main client right now so I have some spending money. I mainly get leads from Instagram ads and it works consistently which is nice and eventually will be endless money if I can master the system but it's hard. Alex Hormozi said in a recent video that he talks about ad budget management in his 3rd money book money systems so I'm excited about that because ads are really a crazy misunderstood thing. 

If you can do them well you can acquire endless new clients that want to give you money for whatever offer you're running but you have to run a profitable offer and manage your bankroll well. All skills I currently lack and thus why I sleep on my buddy's couch right now but I'm closer than ever to figuring it out so feels good. 

I pay a guy $50 to assist on the podcast so I keep $450 of it and had to pay my phone bill so down to $400. Should have another podcast in a week which will take my bankroll to $900 then right back to $400 with paying $500 in rent at the start of the month but now I got some play money at least. 

Edited February 23 by LordFall

[LordFall]

New agency vlog, covering how I'm starting to learn AI agents for my business and other projects and how I do my instagram ads to get clients. 

Recommend this one especially if you've never gotten a paid client before and want to learn how. 

[LordFall]

Good can always been found out of bad. 

I had watched this Alex Hormozi video recently and in it he breaks down customer segmentation where 90% of wealth is held by the top 1% and shoul be target as your customer base to scale easier. 

I have a realtor friend who I met while in Calgary who owns a few properties in Toronto but now lives in Madrid a lot of the year. We've talked previously about doing some business stuff together as he's also in self-development and was part of a few of my groups. We talked about advertising towards Toronto based expats who would like to relocate themselves or move some of their assets to europe/spain/madrid. 

The current conflict in the middle east makes this opportunity even more pressing as it now becomes a hotbed for conflict and rich people/assets/the market as a whole hates conflict and uncertainty. 

I'll be talking to a buddy of mine tonight and seeing if he's down to help with this idea and help build a platform targeted at asset listings in Europe and expat arbitrage opportunities, similar to Nomad Capitalist. 

Super excited about this as my previous business ventures have mostly targeted low income segmentation of the market and that has so much headaches associated to it. I'm also really into politics so having high net-worth clients creates unite opportunities for high status networking. 

[LordFall]

This guy has a cool lifestyle. He ran talent agency and now is an investor that travels the world doing cool stuff. If I could work up to this lifestyle in the next 2 years so by Summer 2028 that would be pretty cool. 

[LordFall]

Gonna have a talk with my unofficial business partner today as he wishes to incorporate the business and have me give him 50% of shares.

I'm not really comfortable with that as I don't want to give up 50% to a single person as well as honestly he's a good reliable guy but not essential to the business and not worth giving 50% away but I have to navigate that skillfully to find a fair compromise to the both of us. 

[LordFall]

Working on the food brand, it's something I've done on and off in the past couple years as it's good for social circle long term I believe. Thinking of getting back into it more as AI is helping me think through my content system with more clarity and the automated content pipeline is starting to become easier than ever to manage.

Just edited together a pizza happy hour reel and boom that's 3 pieces of content. One youtube short, one Tiktok and one IG reel. 

[LordFall]

Part 9 of the Vlog

I want to be more consistent with these and post them weekly but I'm facing huge resistance in doing so. Mostly because there isn't that much progress each week and a lot of the battles seem to be internal. Meditated today and got the balls to post this one, a bit more honest than I usually am. I talk about my struggles with motivation and how I think my weed/porn habit might be a negative crutch that's stopping my business goals from materializing.

 

[LordFall]

Ive moved to Montreal about a month and a half ago, things are going well but slower than I’d like. 

Launching a new site for the Calgary Creatives brand this weekend, pre launched with a waitlist and already got 9 signups so that’s really good. This is more of a medium to long term play that I don’t wanna monetize directly but I have a brand ambassador contract with AI brand that’s giving me $25 USD per signup so that’s a can stack up quickly and will be a useful tool for the creatives in my community to use for brand outreach and content ideation

The journey continues 

Here's the trailer reel I made for it

https://www.instagram.com/p/DaMEPyIRZ5O/

 

Edited June 30 by LordFall

[LordFall]

Just posted the flyer to my first speed dating event I'll be hosting in Toronto. I almost postponed it but it's a really good opportunity since there is no real downside risk and if it works it'll be good profit and finally a way for me to get paid to travel to different cities which I've been looking to do for like at least 5 years if not 10 years so I had to do it.

I've fallen a bit into complacency lately so starting to take massive action again is bringing up some anxiety but it also feels good as results don't lie. So stay tuned, it'll be August 5th. Nothing better than chilling and smoking weed after hosting an event, I'm on a no weed break rn so gonna do that til then and either smoke the night after or the next day so that's me taking control of my reward cycle and trying to not be a slave to easy dopamine. 

I'll be having a beer to celebrate the launch of the event tonight, I dislike drinking so it's not very addictive to me. I can't really live fully with vices it's beyond me, kudos to those who can. They are a bit boring though so I don't know that I would change myself, as long as it works out in the end 

I had to delay the launch of the Calgary creatives website which really saddened me but the sign in system was not operational and when I showed it to my buddy who's a web developper he said because it's hastily coded there are high changes it'll get hacked so he suggested I postponed the launch. It was gonna be my big W of the summer so bummer but the dating event is looking promising so fuck it. I miss being in Toronto I haven't been in almost a couple years now so it'll be good to be back. Still won't be able to really fully enjoy it this year, it takes so much money to have proper fun there but it's a leap in the right direction. 

Edited July 23 by LordFall

[LordFall]

Didn't really have much to update this thread with but I got a new job recently so I can actually start planing my cashflow again. Update on that speed dating event, had to unfortunately cancel it since I ended up selling 7 men's tickets and only 1 complementary women's ticket. It was a positive in terms of the organic demand, I just put up the event on eventbrite and the 7 men's tickets sold steadily over a week and a half so I know the demand is there. I will have to come up with another strategy to get women to attend the events as even my dming a lot of them and offering them free tickets and running an an(albeit only for $30) I only managed to give away 1 ticket. 

In better news I managed to run an open mic event on September 17th remotely in Calgary from Montreal and host an online content creation mastermind just this past Sunday. Success with these events is really important to me since it's a proof of concept of scale and scaling my impact eventually globally. They aren't monetized yet but the GREAT part is no money was needed to be invested upfront and the content mastermind could itself end up making me millions down the line so I'm very optimistic for that. The current plan is to host them biweekly for around 6 months and after having built a community and increased my content mentorship, launch some kind of paid product sometime in Q2-2027.

Okay this next part I want to document to show to people because I feel like business and personal finance are so opaque and people don't like talking about it but I truly believe that talking money is so important to getting a handle of it.

I've been the brokest I've ever been these past few months but it's given me a lot of appreciation for the simple things in life and knowing even though I have expensive tastes, a nice lifestyle is something I could do without. Any type of meal, a cup of coffee a day, a warm shower and a place to sleep is all I really need. 

It's also looking like I'll be able to go from basically $0 to accumulating $15,000 CAD in the next few months ,if everything goes according to plan, which is nice. 

So currently I'm crashing with my dad and have borrowed money from him for the last few months. My plan was to get a job in the first few weeks of getting to Montreal but it's been tough. I got here mid May and I only started working this past Thursday October 1st so 4 and a half month schedule. Even at minimum wage with my low spending that's about $1500 in reserve each month so $6000 I'm down compared to the ideal plan. 

This is where we're at now 

Did I mention I have a new goal of buying a castle? Gotta feel it before you live it baby. I will one day sit in my castle with people and show them this thread to tell them it didn't manifest itself from thin air, it's bought through my multi years of pain and struggle but the dream is gonna happen I promise. 

The $13.62 in Crypto is staked in Polkadot(what a useless coin) and it costs $10 to take out Crypto on Krane and I acn't touch the monero its been unlisted so it's really about $10.50 liquid I have there and about $7 in coin I have in my drawer. Let's call it $18 to be generous if I add up the $0.05 coins.

I could ask more money from my dad but he himself is stressed with cash and if anything my finances in a few years are gonna be his lifeline so we're in a strange situation. That's also part of what I've appreciated from this situation, I used to consider myself a lone soldier type of guy but it's nice to have people that can help out when I fuck up. I tend to think my intellect can get me out of anything but it's fucked me over this time and I ran out of funds without a safety net. My income quite quickly went from $5,000/month to $2,000/month to $1,000 a month to $0 for months. It's given me a lot of compassion for what humans everywhere have to deal with, I perhaps thought I was beyond struggle a bit. 

Anyway unto the fun part: 

Good thing about being broke is I've started tracking every single dollar I spend and coming up with a personal finance tracking system. I also noticed that when I was making way more cash, I felt like I didn't know where it was going and it was giving me even MORE anxiety than having no money! So I decided the only logical move was to track every single dollar I make and spend from now until I become a billionaire and just master my finances. 

This expenses board is quite bare bones and I like to enjoy myself so my real savings goal is at least $3000 by Jan 1st, and ideally $3500 that's my target. 

Another interesting part is I have a study fund that my parents invested into and even though I don't really believe in university, if they're gonna pay me to go then dammit I'll go. I have $16,000 in it and the max I can takeout per semester is $8K so I signed up for winter 2027 classes in applied marketing which will be useful for my business. If I get in then that will be a beautiful day as the classes cost about $6,500 so that will be added to my $3,00 saved so I will end up at around $10,000 CAD by the end of January. 

I had $8,000 in my bank in October 2024 and I spent that shit so fast so I will still count every dollar and live cheaply even this next egg. My plan is to restart my dating business which I've put on pause all this year and unlock a new arm of cashflow. I have a pretty good idea how to bring it to around $3000/month in revenue and perhaps beyond but that'll be the first goal. Once that's done I'll quit the job I have right now and be back to a full time entrepreneur lifestyle with a nice nest egg and deployable capital and hopefully this will only be the start of a many very profitable cashflow verticals. 

It's very cool how life works and I'm quite thankful for my journey. Even though this summer on paper has sucked, I would rate it about 8/10 and I've had a lot of fun. I've been doing more worldbuilding than ever for Legend of the Abyss and smoking a lot of weed so that plus caffeine has kept my mood about top notch and it's exciting to be working again. My personality type is very pie in the sky so even though I have proof of concepts and my ideas seem to be going in the right direction, mingling with people at the Italian deli has been really fun and I feel more enlightened than ever so it's actually a trippy experience working there. I really feel like I'm serving myself and just growing this vessel through its necessary journey before it's ready for the next level. Anyway I wanted to document this journey to both reminisce once I'm on the upside of it and also to show people that are also struggling or just the haters that think I had it easy.

I worked for a multimillionaire from end of 2024 to 2025 and we talked money a bunch and before that I was friends with another millionaire in Toronto and would host parties and events at his penthouse often. It's interesting this perspective that it's given me so even though I'm not where I wanna be right now, I know that these guys were just human like me but had the right ideas and executions to build their assets to where they are now. Struggling has given me a lot more humility whereas if I got rich in my early 20s I would honestly have become a horrible person so it seems it's all working out. 

It's really fun to spend time talking about money with AI, I've spend hours so far and it's given me a control for my finances that I've never had before. I wish I had this in 2025 when I had more money to allocate but the pain of fucking up is what will surely drive me toward financial mastery in the future. This comment right here is truly my zero to hero moment, looking forward to what I have to share with the next update! 

Edited 4 hours ago by LordFall