I want to take you back in time. April 14th 2012.
I was a young buck back then with short hair and a yellow t-shirt.
Poorly fitting, filthy yellow t-shirt.
I did a video series back then. The first video series I ever did it's called
"Make Money Week" and the challenge was to make a $100 in one week.
This was the first entrepreneurial money that I ever made.
My first dollar is on video which i think is pretty sick.
In this video I'm gonna watch this and react to it.
Give you a little bit of context. Hopefully you find this valuable.
This was my first shot and entrepreneurship back in 2012.
Let's jump into it. Here's Day 1. It's a seven-day challenge.
Past Alex: It's day one of make money week.
-Off the bat, my voice sounds completely different! *Imitating past Alex* "It's day one of make money week"
How did I have any friends back then? It sounds like am a completely different person.
Past Alex: And my excitement from the first day carried over this morning
except, I've been posting freelance jobs. I've been posting thing trying to get
freelance jobs all day and no one's responded but that might be because it's
Saturday. So I'm gonna try something more hands-on tomorrow. I'm gonna go outside
tomorrow and really talk to people.
-So Day 1, my original plan with Make Money Week was to go on Fiverr and to go on Upwork.
I think Upwork, it might have been called oDesk or something else back then.
And so what I was doing was I was on these freelancer websites and I was responding to different job postings and
I got nothing in day one.
Past Alex: Make some more money hands-on tomorrow. Missed my goal of $14.29 today
but tomorrow I'm gonna make it up, and I have a lot of good leads.
-$14.29 was the goal. So in order to make a hundred dollars in a week,
I needed to make fourteen dollars and 29 cents a day and I failed today. Sad. *I do succeed by the end of this challenge.*
Past Alex: So, Make money week still on track. Even though day one I made $0.
-Alright Day 2 : New legs. Past Alex: Hey! Its day 2 of Make money week. I had to switch to this different camera
because that iPhone camera kinda maybe look a little heftier than I actually was but this
is what my body looks like you could see my legs.
-Oh! So I had this weird insight. So this was 2012, so this was around the time that Noah Kagan was putting out his
original appSumo videos and I was watching a lot of these guys- Andrew Warner
and I realized that - When you're watching somebody online, you
never really know them because you never see their full body it's just like from
the waist up. So I'll show you my full body right now. I'll have it back.
You can see my legs, you know, you can see my legs. Full throwback right there.
Thats why I was doing that. With no context I can see now as a Professional YouTuber
how weird that looked. Dropped my camera. That's enough dilly-dallying.
Let's get back to this reaction video.
Past Alex: I'm pretty disappointed still cause I still didn't make any money. But its really my fault because I was
trying almost that same stuff that I did yesterday and didn't make any money. Today I got leads though, some of the Fiverr stuff.
-So I didn't give any context here but if I remember this correctly, I had posted a few things on Fiverr they were all random tasks.
One was like - I'll give you business advice for five dollars. I think another one was
like - I'll write any copy that you want for five dollars, and I keep saying I'm
getting leads here because people were messaging me back.
So on Upwork, I was applying and got some messages back if I remember correctly on Fiverr, people were
going back and forth with offers, but nobody bought anything at this point.
Past Alex: I might be charging too much, I'm not sure.
-Five dollars for business advice. Charging too much lol.
Past Alex: Say but of course then I'm breaking into the copywriting
business but I don't think I really want to be a copywriter. I think I've been
taking the wrong approach to this sort of thing. I guess I'm really learning
what I don't want to do. Which is good and I'm learning how to handle rejection.
Today I called somebody on Craigslist who was looking for a marketing
& sales manager, and about a minute and a half into the conversation the guy said
he didn't want a marketing and sales manager and said he didn't actually put
that post up and then he just hung up the phone. So I'm dealing with rejection like that.
-I don't know if that was a minute and a half into the conversation but yeah I
remember cold calling people or if you can even call it cold calling
but just calling random people on Craigslist. I was trying all sorts of stuff here.
Past Alex: But it still haven't made any money and now that I haven't made money on
Sunday or Saturday, that means I have to make twenty dollars a day the rest of the days.
-I was better at math back then. I was doing a lot of Khan Academy
that's why I was able to do it so quickly in my head you might be looking
at past Alex and be like "How did he do that calculation $20 a day 20x5? I know modern Alex would not be able to do that"
Okay looking back into it. Past Alex: So I've got some good ideas for tomorrow that hopefully recording them
will make me actually do them. I've got some good ideas for tomorrow like I'm
gonna go into some Insurance agents' office and offer to do some
appointment setting for him. -Oh It was so weird back then, look at this.
I was studying a lot of body language back then so you can see my
head here. I remember feeling this, so I was talking
about going into the Insurance agents' office, I was watching myself in the
viewfinder and when I was saying the word 'Insurance office', my head went
slightly like this, which I had read means that if you're going like this, it
subconsciously means you're not going to do it. So if you watch my head switches
back to a full-nodding yes position. I was so f**ing awkward.
Past Alex: Office and offer to do some appointment setting.
- I'm loving this, I hope you're loving this.
Past Alex: Maybe some appointment setting for an insurance agent, thats basically my idea for tomorrow.
-The subconscious NLP technique: Neuro Linguistic Programming technique did not
work because I did not go into any offices. I didn't approach anyone in
person throughout this entire challenge.
-This is cool. This is the full Alex Berman past video.
This is the album cover for 'Floating Wilderness', a musical album. I produced the entire thing.
Sung on it, did all of that. That was just pinned to the wall here, I even signed it.
I signed my own album that was up on the wall. Hadn't made a dollar.
Never sold a copy. I think I sold actually one copy to my mom, she refunded it. She didn't refunded, she is very supportive.
Past Alex: If they can pay me $10 an hour or I can make a commission out of that, that'll be fine.
The problem is most of this stuff, most of stuff that I've been doing, it seems
like I'm copping out because Idk really what I want to do is just provide value.
I know it sounds like bullshit and people think like entrepreneurs are like
All they want to do is make money or want to make money & stuff and most of the time
the way I talk, it sounds kind of scammy. I don't know why it sounds scammy or
cheesy or whatever. But I'm just really this whole quest that I'm on is really
it to find out how I can provide value to the world like how I can actually
leverage what I'm good at to make the world a better place.
That's what I've been trying to do with this Make money week, but apparently, I've been using the wrong outlets.
It's not the people who are responding to me at fault, it's not
the prospects because I'm getting a 100% rejection rate, which means it's
something that I'm doing something in my copy or whatever.
-Where did all this come from? Wow! I don't remember being this good at
analysis back then, that's Wow! Past Alex: I'm a lot better in person, so selling to people in person.
I'll have a higher return tomorrow for sure. Definitely tomorrow. I'm gonna get out and do things and if I don't, throw
some bad comments my way or something. You can get me if I don't do it.
-So far we got four comments and they're all from recent times six months
ago and one year ago so let's move on to Day 3 here.
Past Alex: It's make money week.
-Oh I thought this was so cool by the way, this little effect here where it's writing
your name in the corner. Thought that was so sick. Past Alex: Day 3 of Make money week and got
some pretty good news, I actually made some money today.
Four dollars! I made four dollars from one of my Fiverr gigs. Some guy wanted
some copy for his website and I wrote it for him and made $4 so YES!
-That's my first entrepreneurial dollar right there. 4 dollars from a fiver gig. Amazing!
I don't remember what website it was I don't remember writing the copy.
I tried today like I said yesterday I was gonna go out in the world. I cold called whole bunch
of different insurance agencies. Try to find out if they needed to do scheduling
for them, to do appointment-setting.
-I said a whole bunch. I might have called one or two. I didn't know what 'a lot' was.
If I remember this correctly I had like maybe a list of 50 and I just bitched out. I got too scared, I only
called like one or two. Past Alex: Cold calling is pretty hard to do and I called 50 places and got turned down by.
-And I lied in this video. Very weird. I don't know why I felt the need to lie there.
Past Alex: Also I got this great idea for a company that I'll
probably keep working on after this Make money week, but I'm gonna try to
get some traction this week. It's a company that's going to, we're gonna make
videos for blogs that aren't monetizing yet, basically we're
going to come up with courses for them, and we're gonna help them make the course.
That's that's gonna be the business. But I have sent, I sent out a few
emails today, to try to get some bloggers onboard for that and at least people are responding to these.
But the responses have been positive encouragement wise, but not positive hiring wise.
- I wish I showed these cold email scripts, I have no idea where they'd be now I was reaching out to bloggers.
Past Alex: In terms of them actually taking out their wallet going
"I'll pay for that! I'll pay for that!" so maybe it's not a strong enough pain point
or maybe I'm not marketing hard enough but I am gonna push a little further. Since I made four dollars,
that means the next four days, I have to make twenty four dollars a day.
- Look at me not even looking at notes! I highly recommend KhanAcademy.org if you want to learn mathematics.
Past Alex: Yeah I just do that math in my head, I didn't really but
- This videos a mess by the way. This video is a complete garbage fire so far.
Past Alex: Anyway, I need to make 24 dollars a day and that's basically it, Made four dollars today. Yeahh!
Four percent of the way done & it's day three.
- Let's go to the next day. I'm looking good in this video.
Past Alex: Hello there! Its day 4 of Make money week and I made about $4-$5 today doing random stuff.
But, I actually have an update from Day 3 because after I made that video, I ended up getting approved to write freelance articles.
And ended up making $10 there, and $6 doing someone's homework.
- Oh yeah! So after this, I found there were two other sites that I
was going through one was to do other people's homework, they would post their
questions and then you would answer them and they would pay you for that. And then
the other one was some content form where they would pay you per word for these articles.
So those were the two channels I made the most money from for this Make money week.
Still it was a pittance.
Past Alex: And $4 on Fiverr, so I did hit my quota yesterday in terms of making money.
-"I did hit my quota" I'm so glad I don't talk like that anymore.
This is what six or seven years of YouTube will do to somebody. It'll transform you from goof to greatness!
I am the pinnacle of humanity! I am the ultimate man! *I'll stop*
Past Alex: Brought the grand total up to $24 I've made and it is Tuesday and I've made $24 and got $76 to go.
-This is actually a really good example of exponential growth because the first couple days, I made nothing.
Then I made a little bit, then I made more and then as you see throughout
this challenge, it goes up. In the next couple videos you see that I make that $76 and it's
like over just a couple days, so if I had quit after day one making zero dollars
or even after day two of making zero dollars or day three because I only make
four dollars, this whole challenge would have been for nothing because all the
money was made on like Day-6 or 7.
Past Alex: Which is approximately $26 a day so if I can make $26 a day, I still got this Make money week thing in the bag.
In terms of plans for tomorrow, I am gonna get some more freelance articles and try to see if I can make some money with that!
I got approved for another freelance site, scripted.com, but none of the jobs over there are available, which is weird.
- Okay, go watch this full video if you want. I'm just gonna skip to the next one.
But this proves an interesting theory
You test a bunch of stuff and then something works, and then you keep going.
It's the agile process before I even knew anything about agile which is cool.
But I was trying a bunch of things and one thing made money so I kept doing
that thing over and over again. That's how we still do business to this day,
it's a bunch of little experiments something works out - you double down, you
triple down on that one thing and you don't worry about everything that didn't work out.
Notice I never went to Craigslist again.
Cause it didn't work, I tried something else and that did work so I worked more on that.
Here's Day 5, I'm wearing a spicy shirt.
What a Shirt!
Past Alex: It's Day 5. Today I made $21 so $4 short of my quota for today, which means
I made a grand total during Make money week of $45 so far and I have to make
$55 more which is $27.50 per day. Today I'm so drained because I feel like what it's like to work by the hour.
Cause all I did it is just basically fill out psychological surveys on Amazon.
-Oh dude! this was a nightmare! It was like 25 cents per survey and you would sit there
for so long and just answer question after question and I was just trying to
grind to hit this $100. I still have PTSD from that but yeah
what I'm talking about I finally know what it's like to work by the hour.
I didn't have a real job up to this point. Except for one time I worked at Jimmy John's
I must have known or was this, this might have even been before I
worked at Jimmy John's but I must have known what it was like to work by the
hour and this must have forgotten.
Past Alex: And then I worked it out and I was getting paid for probably $3 an hour for it but that's what I am doing on the internet now.
Until I figure out scripted or until Textbroker approved my articles.
-Textbroker was the content form that paid
per word I don't know if they're still around.
Past Alex: It was homework, you need to figure out the country code for America and its +1 and i told them and they gave me a dollar for that.
-Dollar per answer. Lets see Day 6 here.
Past Alex: Hey, it's Thursday, its Day 6 of make money week
and you know I started the day I was like - I don't think I'm gonna be able
to do this. I don't think I'm gonna be able to make any money this week!
But, by the end of the day, something it was like lightning hit me and I went on the
Tutor website and just started doing people's homework like crazy and I ended
up passing my quota for today, making about $28 of the $27
I was supposed to make, and now I'm actually in the mid 70s in terms of
making money and I've got about twenty six dollars to make tomorrow but I
learned an important lesson: When I was doing surveys yesterday I was doing work
that could have been done basically by anyone but the Fiverr thing and the
tutoring thing taught me that the more value you deliver, the more you get paid
And I mean I always knew that, but I didn't
actually learn it in practice until I actually got out there and made money.
And that's one of the real benefits of this sort of thing it's just actually
learning what you can do or where you can actually provide value. So it was
really cool to do people's homework and just take knowledge out of my head and
just put it on their papers and just get paid for that. The tutoring stuff, it's
really great. Now, that it's the end, that it's almost the end. There's only one
more day to make money week, I'm kind of afraid that this will turn into
something where I feel like I don't need a start a company because there's always this stuff.
You always hear when people go into getting a job. They fear, they
feel like - Oh! this is so comfortable. I don't think I even want to break into
entrepreneurship because it's just so comfortable. I can just do this.
Maybe I'll just put off entrepreneurship for a little bit. Before I would have
looked at those guys no I would have been like - Yeah! yeah! Go for it!
You just put off that entrepreneurship. You're so good at what you do.
That was my sense of humor back then. Solid. I did want to be a stand-up comedian by the way, back then.
Past Alex: But now I kind of see where they're coming from. I don't agree
with them and I still really want to be an entrepreneur more than anything.
But I see how one could be comfortable and not hate their job completely. I hope you're
doing as well as I'm doing. Send me your comments.
- I was pandering for likes even back then. Had 75 views on this video. Lets see.
Alright final video, I'm holding a hundred dollar bill it sounds like it's
gonna be great.
Past Alex: Hey, Its the final day of Make Money Week and you might be able to already guess by my smile that I did it.
I made it!
-I got that hundred dollars from my bank
I think I'll talk about this in this video but I never held an actual hundred
dollar bill as far as I can remember before. I got it just for the effect, you know,
I'm a Stone-Cold Youtuber at heart!
Past Alex: This $100 didn't exist. I traded my ideas and my time
and I got this and it's it's pretty damn cool.
I had no idea that you could just
like go out and just make money. Just like provide people value and make money.
I mean, I've heard about it before, and I was reading the book Rich Dad Poor Dad a
couple months ago and he talks about how the rich they're always like they never
say the word "I can't afford it" because they always know they can make money and
I think I have that mindset now.
- That'd be so cringe able if it wasn't completely true. "How can I afford this?" instead of
"Can I afford this?" is gigantic! It's a huge mindset change.
Past Alex: I could just make a hundred dollars whenever I want now. So if I ever need something that'd
cost a hundred dollars, I don't have to dip into savings anymore!
-This is before I got $20,000 into debt by the way so I wouldn't a hundred percent believe this
mindset will set you free. This April 20th 2012 Alex mindset.
Past Alex: I can just make a $100. And its kind of a shock cause I can
just throw that on the ground and just have money on the ground because I can
just make new money to replace it. It's such a cool mindset to have that it really is so
Make Money Week - SUCCESS! Hundo! And yeah, I hope you did well too, I'll talk to you later.
- That was Make money week. If you want to do your own make money week, maybe you want to go
out there and try to make $100 because you're new to entrepreneurship or you
want to change the dollar amount. Maybe you don't want to make $100, you want to
make a $1000 in a week. I would recommend starting lower but try it.
Let me know how you do in the comments below, I would love to know.
I'm acting like myself in the past by accident. I gotta watch some videos of
myself now so I can start acting like how I'm supposed to act instead of how I used to act.
Trippy.
If you liked this video I would love if you would share it with a friend.
Subscribe for more content like this.
If you have a digital agency and
you want more enterprise clients, you can check out experiment27.com
We help agencies work with billion dollar brands.
If you want the proposal that we use at
our video production company, you can have that proposal for free at
experiment27.com/proposal and if you want the questions we ask on call number
one with our X27 clients, how we qualify marketing clients on call number one,
that is over at experiment27.com/discovery
And if you want this shirt that's over at Wohello.com. Grab the same shirt that I'm wearing right now!
Thanks for watching! I'm Alex Berman.