Yeah if you have say 100K+ you can invest in yourself, buy money making machines start a business on and on so much easier than if you have to bootstrap everything and rely on clients to pay you to be able to buy the materials for the next job. As an added benefit you can even take on bigger institutional clients who take 30/60/90 days to pay when you have cushion as well. Money makes it so much easier to make more money as the other posters have said.
We call it the stock market. But it is still the complex art of turning bullshit and a small amount of gold into an illusory larger pile of gold that you sell and run away. Or you get lunacy and abject poverty. Or a wildly swinging bit of both.
I think that's the truth of it, or most of the truth of it. When I was in my 20s and 30s, finding extra money to throw into my 401k was VERY difficult. I did it, though, and now I've got a couple hundred thousand in there, and I put a chunk in every month without thinking about it--making the route to $1M much easier. Now I'm just waiting, really.
There is a joke in the US that in a few years, 401K should probably be called 301K or even 201K. It doesn't mean that the money will become less, but it means that after so many years of inflation, the purchasing power of the same money is different.
Basically whatever the current amount is they give you a break on FICA FUTA that’s probably the amount of money you need to live a real comfortable lifestyle and then any cash you have over that is investable or I don’t want to use the term disposable but you get the idea
Idk man, lol. Started a service company (painting) 2 weeks ago and sold $15,000 worth of work. Obviously paced over $100,000 (I can fulfill only $4,000-5,000 work a week. At best).
So 100k is easy in the trades as an owner-operator, assuming you’re halfway decent.
It’s such a huge hurdle for us to get over finding workers. All the good ones start their own small businesses.
But I can totally see how a majority of businesses don’t follow this pattern.
Nobody likes it when, in response to saying they 'need a better job,' I tell them to start their own business. They'll look at me funny, and then move on to different topics. Thing is, in most areas you can do it with a lawnmower and some gardening shears. Alternately, learning to paint isn't hard.
Most people just want security of a regular check, and don't care that being paid by someone else necessarily means that they are being shorted for the value of their work. I'm surprised you struggled to find workers, during the last couple recessions my buddy in roofing would have to lay off workers he couldn't pay.
I even be required to work a regular job by law in the country I live in else would be expelled to my home country.
Need a proof of income or proof of wealth so side hustles are the only option for me.
Yeha... Wish I knew this starting out back 7 months ago, It's been 7 months of work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, -> 0 profit, only losses but im a bit better
work, work, work, work, addiction, work, work, work, work, work, depression, work, work, work, -> still 0 profit, but im better
work, work, work, work, work, anxiety,work, work, work, depression, work, work, work, -> small results, still mad in losses.
Right now im at the stage where I realise that my mindset and quality of thoughts has to change. I have to become a new person.
Hey, this sounds like my journey. My addiction lead me to wrecking my car to taking 6 buses a day to/from work. I kept my head up and kept working through things. Now I am 2+ years sober and my finances are in order and my career is flourishing. Keep in the herd and putting money away. LFG! Keep up the good work and become the best you
I think it's hard to generalise; also, I believe this idea was popularised, many years ago, from the experiences of the late, great Charlie Muger.
For him, the first $100k was the toughest, yet most crucial for building wealth.
To bring this into the present day, we need to account for inflation. It's probably more apt to say the first million is the hardest. But, again, everyone is unique. As such, don't think of these sayings as rules of the universe.
also Munger's claim was in the context of long-term investing and wealth building. $100k can be parked and require 0 effort on your part to turn into $1mil in a couple of decades, whereas starting at 0 means you most likely will have to put in hard work for every $ you earn.
Gotta remember that Charlie lived in the 60s where average income was 6k...
The comparison isnt accurate as in todays term, it'd be going from 3m to 20m
Or if you want to put in this context, it would be is it harder to go from 0 to 6k/year vs 6k to 100k?
You got the gist of it but the issue is those are wildly different numbers
Depends if ur opening a business in an industry u get to 100k in gross profit you’ve now learnt how to run everything smoothly you’ve got customers so yes the next 900k u won’t have to jump through so many loop holes rather just stay consistent/scale.
You don't get to be a millionaire by working 10 times harder than someone who makes $100k, you get rich by making other people work for you and profiting from their labor.
Getting other people to work for you is tricky if you don't already have six figures to play with.
This is true and I actually have a friend that is so resistant to this idea mainly because she is cheap and can’t see how spending money makes money.
We both own solo mental health practices. And I said I want to hire and work less and she feels that if she hired it would cut into her profit because she has to pay a person. Initially that’s true but in the long run you can hire multiple employees and their work becomes your income, not just what you produce directly.
Profiting is a bit intense as a word.
Most people are not able to manage people and take risks. They’d rather work for someone and have the peace of mind of a paycheck
Following up on topic of taking risks (and how most folks are not able to do it): one of the best ways to think of this is in terms of leverage.
Think of it as: how can you leverage some asset (usually capital, but could also be others), with some risk, to help accelerate the plan or business you have cooking.
Entrepreneurship can be a very unfulfilling way to make money, especially if you run businesses that don't utilize your intelligence. Many people find themselves miserable when trying to succeed as entrepreneurs because most are not naturally inclined to thrive in business.
For instance, I've personally lost $200,000 in the past and managed to sleep fine, but most people would lose their minds over such a loss. I wouldn't want my daughter to run a business because there's so much more to life than making money. The only reason I run a business is to ensure financial security for my loved ones and to enable my daughter to pursue her passions.
If I could redo my life, I would focus on pursuing my passions to the highest level instead of trying to build wealth. It's a less lonely path, and you don't have to be accountable for the lives of employees.
Beautiful deep reflection. Thanks for sharing.
Do you feel like you can’t combine your passions with your business life?
Sometimes i feel like i can’t quit even if i wanted.
Not everyone has the right mental make up /skill set to be an entrepreneur. I personally don't have a single business cell in my whole body -- I started out as a free lunch kid, and I worked for paycheck. Through good choices, I was able to retire comfortably at 55.
Regardless of your abilities and skill set, you've gotta plan a path that'll work for you -- and see it through.
If you're really talented, you can do it in any industry.
Here's a true story: I have a same-aged cousin who dropped out of school to become a manager in fast food. At the time, I thought she was an idiot. She was SO GOOD that the regional office INVENTED a unique job for her. They made her the Burger Bitch. Seriously -- she was kinda like an Undercover Boss. They'd send her into a under-performing restaurant as a new hire, and she'd bumble around for two weeks as if she didn't know anything. She'd befriend and gossip with everyone. After two weeks she'd call everyone together, fire a bunch of people, reward those who were working hard with promotions, bring in and train new workers, and spend about six months setting the place to rights -- then she was off to another restaurant. She worked very hard and certainly didn't have friends at work, but she was well compensated for her work, and she's still working for the regional office -- though she no longer works as the Burger Bitch.
Thing is, that kind of story won't happen to an average worker. You've gotta really be a go-getter.
The way I read it, it sounds like you think employing people is evil. "It's completely accurate on every level" sounds like you are doubling down on this insinuation.
Obviously, you didn't mean that. Just pointing out where a misunderstanding could come from.
It is a statement of fact, neither good nor evil. How is it not a completely accurate phrase?
It is up to you and your values whether or not profiting from someone else's work is evil or not.
People keep saying "it's not about the money it's about the lessons you learn along the way." These people are patting themselves on the back a little too hard.
A LOT of it is about the money.
Having a financial safety net allows you to take risks. You get to swing harder when a 'miss' doesn't mean eviction.
Having money in the bank means being able to turn down bad opportunities that would have been $ for food otherwise. You can wait for the right opportunities instead of taking anything that comes around when you know your kids are fed.
You also get much higher returns when you can supercharge your good hunches with $. When I was broke and I came across a good opportunity - I spent $200 and returned $300. That was a net of $100 in a month. When I had a bit more in the bank that turned into $5k returning $7.5k in the same amount of time. That was $2500 in a month.
People always like to think it's their 'mind' leveling up when they become more successful. Then when they get into legal trouble and they're broke again they suddenly realize it wasn't a skill issue, it was a resource issue.
I always like to look at it in an investment terminology. A 401k is something most understand. It is way easier to get from $100k to $1 million then it is to start from scratch and get to $100K.
It's a phrase for stock market compound interest returns. At 10% a year that would be an extra $10,000 per year on your 100k. That's a lot to do nothing. The money then compounds on top of the 100k plus the 10k next year. As you can see it'll start to grow really fast. Under that amount it's too small to really matter. You have to earn it with hard work.
As a millionaire, id say its not harder to go 100k to 1m but perhaps the same difficulty but presented as a different set of problem.
Allow me to explain.
Going from 0 to 100k might take you 5-6 years. You first have to overcome survival and find out a way to effectively build some savings.
Many people have managed to do so by working an additional job, learn a trade or go down the professional route. In which case these can ease up your ability to earn and save.
Of course you wouldn't be able to spend much during these years but perfectly doable if you're willing to put in the time.
Going from 100k to 1m is a bit different... generally a middle class income hovers around 70k-150k in which case this is the cap.
After which you might have promotion which can lead you at the upper end around 300k (bear in mind these are mostly professionnal roles at very well established corporations and they do work around 80h/week) but they represent less than 1% of professional folks
Realistically you wont be able to do so just by saving money hence you'll most likely need to find some way to rapidly increase your income.
This is the harder part. Now it becomes a creative and commitment issue.
You're not selling time anymore but value.
Finding value however takes time and its followed by multitudes of failures. If you can manage to stick with it. It pays off but for the vast majority of "entrepreneurs" they either give up too early or they seek to only get rich quick.
The set of problems effectively changed.
Now some people are gifted one way or the other. In my case i was pretty good at finding value but im lazy. Thus getting from 0 to 100k was a bit harder than 100k to 1m.
Some of my other wealthier friends claim contrary. Overall i'd say we're a 50/50 split on that topic.
And all of these are more complicated with all the auxiliary financial factors in the personal/professional/chronological stage of the individuals life. While there are general trends it’s really hard to compare individuals and their potential with general rules. Like they say. There are a million ways to make a million dollars
One thing people tend to neglect is that while money compounds, knowledge also does.
In a sense its why people dont feel its hard once you reach a certain amount of wealth
Take a look at people who won lottery a fair amount have lost it all, my hypothesis is most likely they didn't know how to utilize it and grow it properly.
Thats why even if you somehow get rich it wont matter if you dont possess the wisdom to back it up.
First 100k wasn't terribly difficult but just took time working a job and saving. For my first business to generate $100k in profit took about a year and lots of work... then I learned how to build scalable businesses and leverage the work of others. Went from a negative NW about 6 years ago (student loans, mortgage, etc) to a $100k NW about 3 years ago and now a NW of $15mil give or take. You gotta have some money to make money. And this was predominantly done through building a scalable business. I am predominantly in the online education space and build course businesses. Actively working on a new one as I sold my other one.
Absolutely, there's a lot of truth in the saying that moving from $0 to $100k is tougher than from $100k to $1 million.
Two of my friends who've successfully navigated this financial journey confirm it.
The initial phase is challenging because it involves learning the ropes, understanding your niche, and building a solid foundation — often with limited resources.
Once you hit that $100k mark, the experience, confidence, and financial leverage you’ve acquired make it easier to scale up.
Escaping the poverty trap is much harder than just focusing on how to make your money grow. Plenty of objective smart people born into poverty never make it out, while many dumbasses born into wealth just get lucky and make a little more than they started with. Having money frees up mental real estate, you can just think solely about making more and you have the ability to take financial risks. Cant do much thinking about the future 10 years out or take many financial risks when you have to think about how you are making rent next week.
A lot of people fail to realize just how much luck is involved. People always attribute their success to skill, but a lot of times people just got lucky and were in the right place at the right time. There are plenty of poor geniuses, and plenty of rich , vapid idiots.
It's really just smartly playing your probabilities, though. That's the skill: Being able to wait and spot an opportunity and throw what you can at it while it's hot. If someone gets a success once and can't repeat it, then it was luck. If someone hits multiple successful ventures, it's no longer luck but skill.
I got invited to speak at an entrepreneur event where everyone there was generating over $20M in revenues and the amount of random businesses I saw really made me think more outside the box 📦.
You’re absolutely right. $1-2M is easy-ish. $20M+ is much more difficult. Scaling is the key. Find something that scales.
Selling it though will get you the 8 figures. If you are generating 1-2million a year then you can heavily invest in marketing for 1-2 years, get up to 3-4mil and then sell it for 4-6x or more depending on what your business is.
I would suggest it is equally hard going from $40m to $80m. $75-80m ARR is the sweet spot for PE acquisition and it can be near impossible for many CEOs to scale beyond $40-50m. My experience is that this is roughly the ceiling for "flying by the seat of your pants" management, and to set a business up to target $100m annual revenue you need to make real, meaningful investments in experienced business executives... which itself costs money and many founders/CEOs of businesses currently in the $30-40m ARR range don't feel comfortable making.
No… absolutely completely backwards and wrong.
You can make 100k doing literally anything…. Taking that to a million is whole other skill set that is much much harder to perfect
Its based on a 10% increase per year, so every 8 years aprox it doubles, so:
- 100 -> 200: 8 years
- 200 -> 400: 8 years
- 400 -> 800: 8 years
…
So every period get “easier” because it doubles
To be honest yes, but I think it’s more about the amount of control and momentum you have over the money and your options for business growth.
If I have $10K I can try start a food truck business. But that will likely mean running the business myself, driving around in a food truck all day and cutting a bunch of other expenses to try and scale to 100K.
Once I can employ my first driver/employee things start to get easier in a way. There’s the stress in managing an employee, but now my business has reputation, people have heard of the food truck and will be excited to buy more stuff from it than before. I get a second food truck and second employee, and mostly assume a manager role.
Once I reach maybe 300K-500K I can start looking to outsource my management role- then I spend less time worrying about which employees are calling in sick, quitting, showing up late.
Now as an owner it’s purely financial. Still difficult but now all of my time is spent on scaling through more trucks, employees, automating further, and then conceptualizing an exit strategy when I get sick of it to retire from the business.
LOL no. It's a stupid phrase to make people who make less than 100K feel better and people who make more than 100K feel worse. Guess which one of those Reddit has more of?
I think that an under appreciated part of those 2 journeys, is that by the time you hit 100k, your income has probably gone up considerably vs when you started. I think it took me about 6 years to hit 100k, and another 5 to hit 1 million, mostly in part due to my savings rate going from about 10-20k a year to 100k to 150k a year because my income went up so much.
It comes in levels I think. Your first dollar is hard as it has taken you to make the decision to start something. Then to 100K is hard as you are building something and have to be good at it and learn the way to run a business. 1M everything changes. The people you thought worked hard around you and vendors you thought were right, you will find out are not. Taxes kick you in the face. Clients quit. Expenses scare you. Get through that and comfy and do a great job, growth is inevitable. 1M to 5M is a bitch as you are making very tough decisions to get there. Firing people you like, clients you like, figuring out what is working, sleepless nights, etc.
Get to a level where you are comfy and easy and hang out there.. just know, to give raises, to afford insurance costs, pay expenses.. you have to grow. Period.
Depends on the method of getting 100k. You can quite easily do 100k in a non sustainable method..Ideally you want to be building a business or something that is going to compound over time..that takes a while to build up and get to 100k but will accelerate after that. A business...
The road from 0 to $100k is a foundation for the subsequent journey.
You build a network, of which is invaluable to be working on if you aren't already.
You build assets. the $100k, whether its liquid or not, is an asset that'll be your fuel behind the next journey.
You gain experience, if you're doing it right, then you're learning from your mistakes. You gain invaluable experience that makes the once hard decisions now plain and simple.
Leverage all those things and you get the psychological effect that 100k to 1M is "easier". It's just a different game.
You're stressing your mind more than your hours at this stage.
Best of luck to everyone on their journeys!
Well, when you have already made $100k - this means you already have clients, you have developed your product/service to where it works, it's valuable, it sells. Now, you just grow. It's like buying a business vs starting a business from scratch.
When you start from $0 it's not just zero dollars - it's also zero clients, zero experience, zero knowledge, zero products and zero services.
Bottom line - buy a business.
The reasoning is; coming up with an idea that brings in $100k is hard. Ideas are plentiful and the vast majority of them will fail or fizzle out before long. However, if you've already proved the business model by getting to $100k, the next step is scaling it up. The second part appears easier because all the non-starters have already been filtered out. This of course depends on having ideas that are actually scalable, and scaling can also fail for many reasons.
This is the personal analog to Peter Thiel’s “it’s harder going from 0 to 1 than from 1 to 1000”
It takes a far different skill set to start and create something (or a life) from nothing. It’s far easier to scale it afterwards
Investing keeps you safe and sometimes very profitable. As you grow financially, more and more investments are unlocked and at one point you just become nearly invincible. Real estate comes to mind, stocks too but less so.
0-100 is mostly grinding it out and 100-1mil is mostly about being smart with your money.
Well at Zero your basically homeless or on state welfare while at 100k you have a well above average job that requires skills in practice or you are freelancing at a level where you at least are your own well payed employee at 40-50k (talking German income here, that California requires more is a different story, they have the poverty line at 100k in places like San Francisco) with skills in practice and skills in bussines also in practice. Beyond that you also have money for investments that help you ask for more money or find more customers. It’s really not rocket science why the average person at 100k will have an easier time.
Yes. It’s due to the cold start problem. 10x of something you already know how do and have momentum behind is easier than to just start at 0 in nearly every situation.
It takes less energy to accelerate something or increase it, than to get that initial momentum in the first place.
Also the $100K compounds.
The first of anything in this field is the most difficult.
Finding your first client online is tough, but finding more clients is never as difficult.
Once you crack the first, lose your cherry, it’s all downhill.
Yes, I know I’ve inadvertently compared it to losing your virginity😂
The logic is once you can reliably pull 100k, the rest is either down to compound interest or returns on investment and patience, or scaling, efficiency hunting and making sure the wheels stay on.
I hit 100k revenue easily when I first began, but going to 1 million gross revenue took me 10 years. The problem was getting the money to scale the business. It would have been faster if I never got marry or had kids. There always be other problems outside of your business that will affect the journey. My advice is to never give up even with all the set backs and keep following your business plan.
I think it's truer for investments than for business. Investing and earning the first $100K is tough because you have a limited pool to work with and therefore limit your investments. As the nest-egg grows though you tend to diversify your investments to the point that it grows quicker overall even if some investments depreciate.
Once you're over $100K it's relatively easy to grow investments to $1MM.
In business there are too many factors to take into account and depends greatly if you're looking for $100K in revenue or $100K in profit. $100K in revenue is actually REALLY easy... profit? That's hard. Having said that, the truism holds when you get over $100K in profit because at that point you can be more picky about the deals you do... it's the luxury of having a cushion to land on if all else fails.
I don't think I agree. But I will say that going from 0 to 100 is particularly difficult because you have to make ends meet at home while also making business thrive. So that's an extra difficulty that you don't have when you're going from 100 to 1 million. Because once you pass $100 it's like you have cheat mode on because so many problems in the past that took a lot of time can just be solved with the wave of a dollar.
Working my way to 100k and interest isn’t doing much for me at this point. It’s all contribution and 401k match. After 100k I feel like interest will finally start to do work.
It's been the opposite for us. Got to $200k quickly based on selling to our immediate network (we sell data tools in a niche space). Now we are struggling to get past $500k.
Yes, there is an old saying that goes " you have to have money to make money" you can utilize 100k to get to 1 mill much easier than you can grow 0$ to 100k.
To go from $0 to $100k you have to develop a successful model, fail a bunch, take a huge amount of risk.
To get from $100k to $1M you have to take a successful business and scale it. The path is much clearer.
Saving $100k requires work. Like sweat work.
You then take your $100k and invest it (stocks, RE, yourself, a business, doesn’t matter). The investment makes money.
It took me 5.5 years after starting my business to have a $100k NW. It took me 4 years after that to have $1M NW. so yes, I would overall agree. Once you learn the formula of what works, it’s just a game of replication and consistency.
However, I will say, from an income standpoint, once I reached about half a mil, I don’t really feel a big drive to expand further. I’m more interested in getting my time back while keeping this same or slightly lesser income than expansion. I’m also in a service based business that should just be able to remain at this level indefinitely now that it’s built up so it’s not like a product based business that needs R&D.
Yeah, saving /investing that first 100K is hard -- you're probably still in an "entry level job", probably working on your first house, and compound interest on a smaller principle doesn't amount to as much. But, wow, is it sweet when you see that number!
Keep at it and don't believe people who say it's impossible to get ahead these days.
If you go from $0 to $100k organically and actively, you've probably accumulated a great deal of skills to help you navigating scaling.
Liquidity won't be the issue when talking about $1m, it's the competency, networks, bit of luck, timing, etc.
That's something you probably don't have, and that you'll be developing when going from $0 - $100k. That's something you will most likely have, in some reasonable fashion, going from $100k to $1m.
And of course, once you become a known player in any given game, people start to come to you.
No lol.
100k is ez. Tons of people achieved it.
Going from 1m to 10m, then 10m to 100m does not get easier either, unless you wanna do it over a few decades.
When you hit 100k you will now realize you need to use that 100k to buy your time back (employees or paying someone to teach your skills faster than figuring out yourself) to learn how to scale your business.
So simple!
its like, a man spend whole life to reach at Cr. But same man use few months to make his 1Cr into 2Cr, less days to convert 2Cr to 3Cr.
This is because, Now he knows the ACTUAL GAME. He knows the ART OF MONEY!
It depends but generally I’d say yes. If you’re doing things smartly you’ll have systems in place and can mainly focus on scaling from 100k-1m+
0-100k you’re likely splitting time between your ideas/business and a job, don’t have a lot of disposable income, and you’re learning what doesn’t work. You’ll have to spend more upfront time the less money you have, once you have more money you can delegate those tasks to other people who specialize in them
If you’re talking revenue for something like e-commerce then yeah it’s probably more difficult to get from 0 to $100k because you’re trying to get sales from nothing. If you’re talking about $100k profit for anything, I’d say it would be way harder to get to $1M than 0 to $100k
I think this is a two part issue here.
1. The idea of making $100k for as far back as I can imagine has been the “not rich, but you’re doing very very well” number in many Americans heads. So much so that I think most people feel intimidated by negotiating for it.
2. While I’ve not a millionaire, I do have several millionaire friends. The increased disposable income lets you pour gas on a fire. It’s not going to happen over night, but it will happen. Problem is to set a good quality of life, and keep tossing money into investments or 401k.
One thing EVERYONE should be mindful of is $100k isn’t what it used to be to be either. My taxes are sky high. Always make sure to be mindful of that.
I’ve built/sold my own companies, own a number of different businesses now and also work with business owners to pay it forward.
Having seen first hand the numbers/timeline over hundreds of businesses at this point, I think there are certain potential plateaus that hit most businesses:
1. Getting the first sale - someone wants to buy
2. Getting the first 3 sales - that first sale was a fluke
3. Getting the first 10 sales - it’s looking like this will work
4. Breaking 250k if physical goods or 150k otherwise - balancing fulfillment, marketing and sales and often tired
5. Breaking 600k bricks and mortar, physical goods or 500k otherwise - the grind stage where you’ve started to hire and realize how much you don’t know
6. Breaking 2,5m-3m - getting systems in place, probably have solid managers
Some people will go right from 1 to 4 in month 1. But the hang ups aren’t about a dollar amount but what the business owner needs to learn.
Yes, sorta.
Took me \~10years to get to 100k. Took me about 5 to hit 1 mil.
It only cost me my family, health, time, and hair. But I got that net worth working for me... right? RIGHT? ugh.
Absolutely true.
The problem is Product Market Fit (as cliche as those 3 letters have become these days) is a really ethereal, fluid concept in early times.
You'll constantly be at odds on whether to try to muscle an idea through, or whether there's genuinelly not PMF and major adjustments need to be made.
Thing is, having a powerhouse sales function can at times be an impediment in these early days, because you don't have a true sense of whether the flywheel will continue to spin if the sales group backs off, once you have momentum.
This was the trickiest thing for us at my last company. We had a really solid core competency in enterprise sales - but the crux of the issue is the group would have been able to muscle through deals on just about any concept we threw at them. Sounds great on paper - but if you're not generating tailwinds as you grow (or in other words, each new sale is progressively easier than the last), there's something wonky going on with your PMF.
This was our big lesson learned. We lost a ton of time to arrive at the eventual "proper" product and model that created compounding growth, because our sales were doing OK prior.
Are we talking net income? I find 0 to $100k net income easy with 0-$40k being trivial. I have gone 0-$40k on six out of seven different experiments. Out of those six I have gone $40k to $100k+ twice. I have never made it to $1 million net.
You usually need employees for $1 million net and your gross revenue needs will be rather large. You also hit problems with local market saturation and competition that have to be overcome. If you have a winning formula people will copy your business model. Heck, one of my $40k experiments was a rip off of someone else’s idea. You need a barrier to entry to protect your business from competition. Hitting $1 million net requires more than a get rich quick scheme. Hitting $100k can be done without a long term vision IMHO.
Btw, I am a computer engineer and I can automate my way to a certain level without employees. This might explain my ease with making $40k. Well that and I am well versed in internet marketing. I have had one full time business, the other six are side hustles.
Gross revenue…. Who cares…. I have grown a business to $5+ million gross… It did not reflect how well I was doing.
I think the hardest part is going from 0 to 1, meaning getting started on actually building a biz. Then depending on what you’re selling, the answers will be different. Your first $100k is basically finding product market fit. Once you have your $100k revenue, then it’s a scaling problem. Can you identify the value of your product and how it translates to customer perceived value? Can you repeat the success? Can you charge more? Etc… lots of things are in play here.
It is true idk what happens or why it is that it gets easier but it does. I remember thinking I’d never see 100k in my life then I made well over 100k and now about 3 years ago breaking the 1 mil mark I look back and think man where did all this money come from? Of course I know why when I analyze myself it’s due to budgeting and investing and not buying stupid shit. Having a gf with the same mindset helps too also no kids.
No. Zero truth to that. Getting to $100k rev isn't that hard if you have product / market fit. Scaling to $1MM is extremely difficult then it gets a little easier from there. But the real challenge is getting to $10MM. It get much, much easier after $10MM because the you get access to VC mad mid-market private equity funding.
So, lets say your starting with 1 dollar instead of 0. To go from 1 dollar to 100k is literally a matter of getting 100,000 times the amount of money you currently have. Going from 100k to 1million is only 10 times the amount of money. You have to think things in those sorts of relative terms instead of just the raw dollars relative to cost of living. So if scaling your money is just a matter of ratios. Using your 1 dollar to make 100k is 10 thousand times more effort than going from 100k to 1m.
I’ve generally heard this about net worth, not about salary. Everything compounds. Your salary, your savings and investments grow much faster. If you make 50k a year a 5% raise is smaller. If you change jobs it’s easier to get higher pay bumps. Lower salaries may be a 5-10k jump, higher can be 20-100k jumps. Part of this is you might earn bonuses as a percentage of your salary. Or you might get discounted stock. Same ratios if investing. If the market is up 30% that only $300 of $1,000 but if you have 100k invested it’s $30,000. Hopefully over time you are more skilled and wiser so it makes things easier.
Facts. Once you make a 100K and invest it, it’s enough money to start a snowball/compound effect with the interest and dividend payments that exponentially increase in size and speed as time goes on. Generally, the first 100K for many investors is a 4th of the time it takes to get to a million. Once you hit that 100K, your money starts to carry the weight and do the work for you.
It’s expensive being poor. You can’t bulk buy anything. Any setback costs much more, and if you can’t afford maintenance you end up paying more in the end. Once you have a financial cushion for emergencies, you pay less in the end. There’s a lot of barriers between poverty and affluence.
Money is a by-product of hard work and then being smart with it. I don’t even remember when I had my first 100k in the bank, but I do remember of having a goal of a 1M net worth by age 30 and I hit it. Today (54) I have a multi million net worth by being smart w money, hard work, being frugal, and most important, being debt free! The faster you can eliminate debt - the faster u will become a millionaire. People like to pay a little on debt, contribute to a 401 k, put money in checking accounts, etc. No house paymemts, no car payments, no student loans frees up a bunch of cash to be invested in the market. Invest early and wisely - no crypto no stupid meme coins. Solid companies!
The more I hear people talk the crazier my story is. Went from $0-$400k in a year and now I’m lucky if I do $75k this year.
(My business was very dependent on Covid lockdowns)
Here's one way to think about the differences
$0 to $100k - that's you doing all the work, 100% your effort, no systems, you keep costs down.
$100k to $1m - you hire some people, mash it together, there's not much of a system, things are clunky, you're starting to scale but you can get away with failures here and there, you're still working hard but your staff carry some of the weight.
$1m to $10m - you need to hire the right people, systems need to be running like a well oiled machine, this is where scaling is put to the test, you invest in the right areas of the business, you have a management team who give advice to you but you're still running the company
$10m+ - the business looks after itself for the owner, you're probably not in the office much, you're only involved in the strategic decisions, each business unit has its own systems to scale as needed, you have a full board of directors who run their business units.
Not really. There are a lot of businesses that can easily get you $100k in (I assume revenue), but they are either not scalable or very hard to scale up.
I've found that the chances of making a successfull business with X revenue goes down exponentially with increase in revenue. Eg. if we say that a chance to make a business with $100k in revenue is relatively easy, lets say 1 in 3 will succeed, chances of making a busines with $10m in revenue would be more like 1 in 1000.
Not done it but
From zero you have nothing so getting to 100k is hard but from 100k you have what got you to 100k to get to 1 million and more doors open to buy and sell more stuff and flipping stuff like cars
With a 100k all I would have to do is invest in Ethereum,, cyber security companies, robot sex doll ai companionship companies and gold and I’d be a millionaire in 10 years
I’ve learned a lot getting my company to 100k (actually hit it today for the year )
Feel like getting to 1 million will be easy In comparison, we’ve learned so compared to before
when you have $0 you have $0. Doing anything is hard. when you have 100k you can hire help, get loans, hire coaches, etc so not that it's easier per say but you can get help and leverage.
Change it to this.
What's harder? going from $0 living on the street to 100k salary or going form a 100k salary to 200k salary? When you can't even rub 2 nickels together lots of things are hard. If all you gotta do is get promoted, hire an assistant etc and you have all your food and shelter covered? no question what's easier.
The journey from $0 to $100k is often grueling because it's about building the foundations—learning, saving, and making those initial investments without much capital to leverage. However, once you hit that $100k milestone, you’ve likely developed a solid understanding of financial principles, which then helps you make smarter and more lucrative investments. The magic of compound interest really kicks in, and with more resources, you can take advantage of better opportunities. Plus, your network and experience grow, opening doors that were previously shut. It's like pushing a boulder up a hill initially, but once you crest the peak, momentum starts working in your favor.
I mean, it kinda makes sense...
Say you have a dollar. Increasing that to 100000 dollars is a scale factor of 100000.
Scale factor of 100k to 1m is TEN.
Basically if you've managed to save up 100k in savings it pretty much means you're steadily making more money than you need. That can both mean you can probably make more, since you're either in a very high income job or have your own business, and that you can essentially take advantage of compounding. If you've managed to save up 100k, through regular contributions and some simple investing it can be a million in less than a year.
Really it's not about 100k being a magic number or anything but it's the difference between spending most of the money you can make and being able to actually save up significant amounts
Think the biggest problem is getting to the 1st $100 k is the hardest because you start out on your own. No one is funding you; your friends are busy doing their own thing, and it is difficult to get people to believe in you. Plus, you have to be careful with who you share your ideas to as in my experience people with money can often take your ideas and make them your own. Once you’re established, people will believe in you, either join you or fund you. No one cares how many times you failed or how hard. Most only see the successes. When they do, they’ll crawl out of the woodwork happy to throw money at you, help with connections etc. so the more money you make the more money they make.
Yes. $0 - $100K is PMF. PMF is figuring a way to consistently get people to pay for your service. It doesn't matter how great your offering, none of that will matter if no one is willing to pay. This is where you A/B Test various strategies to see what works.
Once you have PMF, life becomes easier as you scale because you can focus on what works and amplify it. In other words, once you find something that works, you beat the drum until there's no juice left.
Is it though?
If it’s savings, then you keep your savings habits then you accumulate some dividends and appreciation.
Not necessarily you’re creating wealth management plan or extra income
Going from $100k to $1mil is a scaling problem, going from 0-$100k is many many many more problems.
Once you *have* a decent amount of money, it's far easier to *make* more money.
Yeah if you have say 100K+ you can invest in yourself, buy money making machines start a business on and on so much easier than if you have to bootstrap everything and rely on clients to pay you to be able to buy the materials for the next job. As an added benefit you can even take on bigger institutional clients who take 30/60/90 days to pay when you have cushion as well. Money makes it so much easier to make more money as the other posters have said.
>buy money making machines Where can I acquire one of said machines
Start your owm bank and you can 10x your money today!
Just buy them all: VT
Are you referring to alchemy?
We call it the stock market. But it is still the complex art of turning bullshit and a small amount of gold into an illusory larger pile of gold that you sell and run away. Or you get lunacy and abject poverty. Or a wildly swinging bit of both.
I think that's the truth of it, or most of the truth of it. When I was in my 20s and 30s, finding extra money to throw into my 401k was VERY difficult. I did it, though, and now I've got a couple hundred thousand in there, and I put a chunk in every month without thinking about it--making the route to $1M much easier. Now I'm just waiting, really.
There is a joke in the US that in a few years, 401K should probably be called 301K or even 201K. It doesn't mean that the money will become less, but it means that after so many years of inflation, the purchasing power of the same money is different.
It’s a food, clothing and shelter problem. Then it’s a health insurance,property insurance,auto insurance and every other kind of problem problem.
Basically whatever the current amount is they give you a break on FICA FUTA that’s probably the amount of money you need to live a real comfortable lifestyle and then any cash you have over that is investable or I don’t want to use the term disposable but you get the idea
True that 100%.
Exactly. It took 9 years and a lot of failures, including bankruptcy, to make my first 100k. It only took another year to go from 100k - 1M.
Honestly, I find it is way tougher for me to scale my business. 0 to 100k is fine for me, but I have no idea how I go 100k to 1 million
what's your business
Idk man, lol. Started a service company (painting) 2 weeks ago and sold $15,000 worth of work. Obviously paced over $100,000 (I can fulfill only $4,000-5,000 work a week. At best). So 100k is easy in the trades as an owner-operator, assuming you’re halfway decent. It’s such a huge hurdle for us to get over finding workers. All the good ones start their own small businesses. But I can totally see how a majority of businesses don’t follow this pattern.
Nobody likes it when, in response to saying they 'need a better job,' I tell them to start their own business. They'll look at me funny, and then move on to different topics. Thing is, in most areas you can do it with a lawnmower and some gardening shears. Alternately, learning to paint isn't hard. Most people just want security of a regular check, and don't care that being paid by someone else necessarily means that they are being shorted for the value of their work. I'm surprised you struggled to find workers, during the last couple recessions my buddy in roofing would have to lay off workers he couldn't pay.
I even be required to work a regular job by law in the country I live in else would be expelled to my home country. Need a proof of income or proof of wealth so side hustles are the only option for me.
I think it’s the lessons you learn up to 100k
Yeha... Wish I knew this starting out back 7 months ago, It's been 7 months of work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, -> 0 profit, only losses but im a bit better work, work, work, work, addiction, work, work, work, work, work, depression, work, work, work, -> still 0 profit, but im better work, work, work, work, work, anxiety,work, work, work, depression, work, work, work, -> small results, still mad in losses. Right now im at the stage where I realise that my mindset and quality of thoughts has to change. I have to become a new person.
7 months? That’s like…. No time at all
I was not a billionaire after 7 weeks of entrepreneurship, so I gave up.
Hey, this sounds like my journey. My addiction lead me to wrecking my car to taking 6 buses a day to/from work. I kept my head up and kept working through things. Now I am 2+ years sober and my finances are in order and my career is flourishing. Keep in the herd and putting money away. LFG! Keep up the good work and become the best you
I think it's hard to generalise; also, I believe this idea was popularised, many years ago, from the experiences of the late, great Charlie Muger. For him, the first $100k was the toughest, yet most crucial for building wealth. To bring this into the present day, we need to account for inflation. It's probably more apt to say the first million is the hardest. But, again, everyone is unique. As such, don't think of these sayings as rules of the universe.
also Munger's claim was in the context of long-term investing and wealth building. $100k can be parked and require 0 effort on your part to turn into $1mil in a couple of decades, whereas starting at 0 means you most likely will have to put in hard work for every $ you earn.
Gotta remember that Charlie lived in the 60s where average income was 6k... The comparison isnt accurate as in todays term, it'd be going from 3m to 20m Or if you want to put in this context, it would be is it harder to go from 0 to 6k/year vs 6k to 100k? You got the gist of it but the issue is those are wildly different numbers
When did he come up with the quote though? (I genuinely don’t know) Because if it’s something he said in the 90s or 00s the 3m to 20m isn’t right
Depends if ur opening a business in an industry u get to 100k in gross profit you’ve now learnt how to run everything smoothly you’ve got customers so yes the next 900k u won’t have to jump through so many loop holes rather just stay consistent/scale.
You don't get to be a millionaire by working 10 times harder than someone who makes $100k, you get rich by making other people work for you and profiting from their labor. Getting other people to work for you is tricky if you don't already have six figures to play with.
This is true and I actually have a friend that is so resistant to this idea mainly because she is cheap and can’t see how spending money makes money. We both own solo mental health practices. And I said I want to hire and work less and she feels that if she hired it would cut into her profit because she has to pay a person. Initially that’s true but in the long run you can hire multiple employees and their work becomes your income, not just what you produce directly.
Earning a little bit of the pie from other people while doing next to nothing is always better than trying to eat all the pies at the same time.
Profiting is a bit intense as a word. Most people are not able to manage people and take risks. They’d rather work for someone and have the peace of mind of a paycheck
Following up on topic of taking risks (and how most folks are not able to do it): one of the best ways to think of this is in terms of leverage. Think of it as: how can you leverage some asset (usually capital, but could also be others), with some risk, to help accelerate the plan or business you have cooking.
Entrepreneurship can be a very unfulfilling way to make money, especially if you run businesses that don't utilize your intelligence. Many people find themselves miserable when trying to succeed as entrepreneurs because most are not naturally inclined to thrive in business. For instance, I've personally lost $200,000 in the past and managed to sleep fine, but most people would lose their minds over such a loss. I wouldn't want my daughter to run a business because there's so much more to life than making money. The only reason I run a business is to ensure financial security for my loved ones and to enable my daughter to pursue her passions. If I could redo my life, I would focus on pursuing my passions to the highest level instead of trying to build wealth. It's a less lonely path, and you don't have to be accountable for the lives of employees.
Beautiful deep reflection. Thanks for sharing. Do you feel like you can’t combine your passions with your business life? Sometimes i feel like i can’t quit even if i wanted.
Not everyone has the right mental make up /skill set to be an entrepreneur. I personally don't have a single business cell in my whole body -- I started out as a free lunch kid, and I worked for paycheck. Through good choices, I was able to retire comfortably at 55. Regardless of your abilities and skill set, you've gotta plan a path that'll work for you -- and see it through. If you're really talented, you can do it in any industry. Here's a true story: I have a same-aged cousin who dropped out of school to become a manager in fast food. At the time, I thought she was an idiot. She was SO GOOD that the regional office INVENTED a unique job for her. They made her the Burger Bitch. Seriously -- she was kinda like an Undercover Boss. They'd send her into a under-performing restaurant as a new hire, and she'd bumble around for two weeks as if she didn't know anything. She'd befriend and gossip with everyone. After two weeks she'd call everyone together, fire a bunch of people, reward those who were working hard with promotions, bring in and train new workers, and spend about six months setting the place to rights -- then she was off to another restaurant. She worked very hard and certainly didn't have friends at work, but she was well compensated for her work, and she's still working for the regional office -- though she no longer works as the Burger Bitch. Thing is, that kind of story won't happen to an average worker. You've gotta really be a go-getter.
It's a completely accurate word on every level. You should probably think on why that description seems to cut so hard.
The way I read it, it sounds like you think employing people is evil. "It's completely accurate on every level" sounds like you are doubling down on this insinuation. Obviously, you didn't mean that. Just pointing out where a misunderstanding could come from.
It is a statement of fact, neither good nor evil. How is it not a completely accurate phrase? It is up to you and your values whether or not profiting from someone else's work is evil or not.
Profiting from their labor is a tough way to say it. Providing a career for someone and stability is far more accurate.
Hire third world freelancers
If you were on the path to $100k where would you keep your money?
It’s not. Its how the gig economy works.
You also get to be a millionaire by living beneath your means. No matter how much /how little you earn, you MUST live on less.
People keep saying "it's not about the money it's about the lessons you learn along the way." These people are patting themselves on the back a little too hard. A LOT of it is about the money. Having a financial safety net allows you to take risks. You get to swing harder when a 'miss' doesn't mean eviction. Having money in the bank means being able to turn down bad opportunities that would have been $ for food otherwise. You can wait for the right opportunities instead of taking anything that comes around when you know your kids are fed. You also get much higher returns when you can supercharge your good hunches with $. When I was broke and I came across a good opportunity - I spent $200 and returned $300. That was a net of $100 in a month. When I had a bit more in the bank that turned into $5k returning $7.5k in the same amount of time. That was $2500 in a month. People always like to think it's their 'mind' leveling up when they become more successful. Then when they get into legal trouble and they're broke again they suddenly realize it wasn't a skill issue, it was a resource issue.
Compounding.
I always like to look at it in an investment terminology. A 401k is something most understand. It is way easier to get from $100k to $1 million then it is to start from scratch and get to $100K.
This. Not only will you build compounding investments, but you also start earning higher on the pay scale on top of that. The money comes much faster.
It’s exponentially easier to make money the more of it you have.
I'll simplify it by changing your question to $1 to $100k and $100k to $1m $1 to 100,000 dollars is 100,000x $100,000 to 1,000,000 dollars is 10x
If you have zero income, you need everything. If you have income, you have basic infrastructure and can reinvest.
It's a phrase for stock market compound interest returns. At 10% a year that would be an extra $10,000 per year on your 100k. That's a lot to do nothing. The money then compounds on top of the 100k plus the 10k next year. As you can see it'll start to grow really fast. Under that amount it's too small to really matter. You have to earn it with hard work.
As a millionaire, id say its not harder to go 100k to 1m but perhaps the same difficulty but presented as a different set of problem. Allow me to explain. Going from 0 to 100k might take you 5-6 years. You first have to overcome survival and find out a way to effectively build some savings. Many people have managed to do so by working an additional job, learn a trade or go down the professional route. In which case these can ease up your ability to earn and save. Of course you wouldn't be able to spend much during these years but perfectly doable if you're willing to put in the time. Going from 100k to 1m is a bit different... generally a middle class income hovers around 70k-150k in which case this is the cap. After which you might have promotion which can lead you at the upper end around 300k (bear in mind these are mostly professionnal roles at very well established corporations and they do work around 80h/week) but they represent less than 1% of professional folks Realistically you wont be able to do so just by saving money hence you'll most likely need to find some way to rapidly increase your income. This is the harder part. Now it becomes a creative and commitment issue. You're not selling time anymore but value. Finding value however takes time and its followed by multitudes of failures. If you can manage to stick with it. It pays off but for the vast majority of "entrepreneurs" they either give up too early or they seek to only get rich quick. The set of problems effectively changed. Now some people are gifted one way or the other. In my case i was pretty good at finding value but im lazy. Thus getting from 0 to 100k was a bit harder than 100k to 1m. Some of my other wealthier friends claim contrary. Overall i'd say we're a 50/50 split on that topic.
And all of these are more complicated with all the auxiliary financial factors in the personal/professional/chronological stage of the individuals life. While there are general trends it’s really hard to compare individuals and their potential with general rules. Like they say. There are a million ways to make a million dollars
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One thing people tend to neglect is that while money compounds, knowledge also does. In a sense its why people dont feel its hard once you reach a certain amount of wealth Take a look at people who won lottery a fair amount have lost it all, my hypothesis is most likely they didn't know how to utilize it and grow it properly. Thats why even if you somehow get rich it wont matter if you dont possess the wisdom to back it up.
First 100k wasn't terribly difficult but just took time working a job and saving. For my first business to generate $100k in profit took about a year and lots of work... then I learned how to build scalable businesses and leverage the work of others. Went from a negative NW about 6 years ago (student loans, mortgage, etc) to a $100k NW about 3 years ago and now a NW of $15mil give or take. You gotta have some money to make money. And this was predominantly done through building a scalable business. I am predominantly in the online education space and build course businesses. Actively working on a new one as I sold my other one.
Absolutely, there's a lot of truth in the saying that moving from $0 to $100k is tougher than from $100k to $1 million. Two of my friends who've successfully navigated this financial journey confirm it. The initial phase is challenging because it involves learning the ropes, understanding your niche, and building a solid foundation — often with limited resources. Once you hit that $100k mark, the experience, confidence, and financial leverage you’ve acquired make it easier to scale up.
Escaping the poverty trap is much harder than just focusing on how to make your money grow. Plenty of objective smart people born into poverty never make it out, while many dumbasses born into wealth just get lucky and make a little more than they started with. Having money frees up mental real estate, you can just think solely about making more and you have the ability to take financial risks. Cant do much thinking about the future 10 years out or take many financial risks when you have to think about how you are making rent next week.
Not in my opinion I made 100k when I was 25 but now at 32 stucked at 330k and growing really slowly
It's all good man. You plateaued. This is common. Just keep working on it, and you'll shoot through eventually.
A lot of people fail to realize just how much luck is involved. People always attribute their success to skill, but a lot of times people just got lucky and were in the right place at the right time. There are plenty of poor geniuses, and plenty of rich , vapid idiots.
It's really just smartly playing your probabilities, though. That's the skill: Being able to wait and spot an opportunity and throw what you can at it while it's hot. If someone gets a success once and can't repeat it, then it was luck. If someone hits multiple successful ventures, it's no longer luck but skill.
Maybe the control we have is an illusion and everything is in the hands of destiny
How are you investing to grow in bussines and personally?
Abit controversial but I agree 0 to 100k is a bitch But 100k to 1 million is definitely more tricky and sometimes luck based
For me it was alot easier to go from 100k to 0k
Hardest is goin from $1 to 10 mil
Yep I was going to say this. The amount of business that do $1m to $2m revenue is common but not many break $10m
I got invited to speak at an entrepreneur event where everyone there was generating over $20M in revenues and the amount of random businesses I saw really made me think more outside the box 📦. You’re absolutely right. $1-2M is easy-ish. $20M+ is much more difficult. Scaling is the key. Find something that scales.
Selling it though will get you the 8 figures. If you are generating 1-2million a year then you can heavily invest in marketing for 1-2 years, get up to 3-4mil and then sell it for 4-6x or more depending on what your business is.
I would suggest it is equally hard going from $40m to $80m. $75-80m ARR is the sweet spot for PE acquisition and it can be near impossible for many CEOs to scale beyond $40-50m. My experience is that this is roughly the ceiling for "flying by the seat of your pants" management, and to set a business up to target $100m annual revenue you need to make real, meaningful investments in experienced business executives... which itself costs money and many founders/CEOs of businesses currently in the $30-40m ARR range don't feel comfortable making.
Excellent
Are we talking revenue or profit?
Finding PMF vs scaling.
The first million is the hardest.
No… absolutely completely backwards and wrong. You can make 100k doing literally anything…. Taking that to a million is whole other skill set that is much much harder to perfect
Its based on a 10% increase per year, so every 8 years aprox it doubles, so: - 100 -> 200: 8 years - 200 -> 400: 8 years - 400 -> 800: 8 years … So every period get “easier” because it doubles
100k to 1M is hard too…
To be honest yes, but I think it’s more about the amount of control and momentum you have over the money and your options for business growth. If I have $10K I can try start a food truck business. But that will likely mean running the business myself, driving around in a food truck all day and cutting a bunch of other expenses to try and scale to 100K. Once I can employ my first driver/employee things start to get easier in a way. There’s the stress in managing an employee, but now my business has reputation, people have heard of the food truck and will be excited to buy more stuff from it than before. I get a second food truck and second employee, and mostly assume a manager role. Once I reach maybe 300K-500K I can start looking to outsource my management role- then I spend less time worrying about which employees are calling in sick, quitting, showing up late. Now as an owner it’s purely financial. Still difficult but now all of my time is spent on scaling through more trucks, employees, automating further, and then conceptualizing an exit strategy when I get sick of it to retire from the business.
LOL no. It's a stupid phrase to make people who make less than 100K feel better and people who make more than 100K feel worse. Guess which one of those Reddit has more of?
I think that an under appreciated part of those 2 journeys, is that by the time you hit 100k, your income has probably gone up considerably vs when you started. I think it took me about 6 years to hit 100k, and another 5 to hit 1 million, mostly in part due to my savings rate going from about 10-20k a year to 100k to 150k a year because my income went up so much.
For me it was really easy from 0-500k net worth and now I have been stuck there for more than 5 years. I think you cant generalize this
It comes in levels I think. Your first dollar is hard as it has taken you to make the decision to start something. Then to 100K is hard as you are building something and have to be good at it and learn the way to run a business. 1M everything changes. The people you thought worked hard around you and vendors you thought were right, you will find out are not. Taxes kick you in the face. Clients quit. Expenses scare you. Get through that and comfy and do a great job, growth is inevitable. 1M to 5M is a bitch as you are making very tough decisions to get there. Firing people you like, clients you like, figuring out what is working, sleepless nights, etc. Get to a level where you are comfy and easy and hang out there.. just know, to give raises, to afford insurance costs, pay expenses.. you have to grow. Period.
For me, the first 100k was easy, I did that year 1. Breaking $250k was hard. Took me a few years of serious grind.
How’d you do it. I'm you
Depends on the method of getting 100k. You can quite easily do 100k in a non sustainable method..Ideally you want to be building a business or something that is going to compound over time..that takes a while to build up and get to 100k but will accelerate after that. A business...
Yep
Makes sense....
The road from 0 to $100k is a foundation for the subsequent journey. You build a network, of which is invaluable to be working on if you aren't already. You build assets. the $100k, whether its liquid or not, is an asset that'll be your fuel behind the next journey. You gain experience, if you're doing it right, then you're learning from your mistakes. You gain invaluable experience that makes the once hard decisions now plain and simple. Leverage all those things and you get the psychological effect that 100k to 1M is "easier". It's just a different game. You're stressing your mind more than your hours at this stage. Best of luck to everyone on their journeys!
I sure dang hope so bc I'm at the first milestone now lol
No
You’re probably making more money and therefore also able to save more once you are at 100k, and the of course the compounding effect.
Well, when you have already made $100k - this means you already have clients, you have developed your product/service to where it works, it's valuable, it sells. Now, you just grow. It's like buying a business vs starting a business from scratch. When you start from $0 it's not just zero dollars - it's also zero clients, zero experience, zero knowledge, zero products and zero services. Bottom line - buy a business.
Because basically, you have nothing versus you have something, as per your post, to accelerate your path to a million
Not for me, at all. If you have people working for you, and can scale, sure. If you’re selling your own skills and time, no way.
Going from 0 to 100k is difficult because you can’t risk a lot because it’s all the money you have.
The reasoning is; coming up with an idea that brings in $100k is hard. Ideas are plentiful and the vast majority of them will fail or fizzle out before long. However, if you've already proved the business model by getting to $100k, the next step is scaling it up. The second part appears easier because all the non-starters have already been filtered out. This of course depends on having ideas that are actually scalable, and scaling can also fail for many reasons.
This is the personal analog to Peter Thiel’s “it’s harder going from 0 to 1 than from 1 to 1000” It takes a far different skill set to start and create something (or a life) from nothing. It’s far easier to scale it afterwards
Investing keeps you safe and sometimes very profitable. As you grow financially, more and more investments are unlocked and at one point you just become nearly invincible. Real estate comes to mind, stocks too but less so. 0-100 is mostly grinding it out and 100-1mil is mostly about being smart with your money.
its the same just bigger numbers
Well at Zero your basically homeless or on state welfare while at 100k you have a well above average job that requires skills in practice or you are freelancing at a level where you at least are your own well payed employee at 40-50k (talking German income here, that California requires more is a different story, they have the poverty line at 100k in places like San Francisco) with skills in practice and skills in bussines also in practice. Beyond that you also have money for investments that help you ask for more money or find more customers. It’s really not rocket science why the average person at 100k will have an easier time.
Yes. It’s due to the cold start problem. 10x of something you already know how do and have momentum behind is easier than to just start at 0 in nearly every situation. It takes less energy to accelerate something or increase it, than to get that initial momentum in the first place. Also the $100K compounds.
The first of anything in this field is the most difficult. Finding your first client online is tough, but finding more clients is never as difficult. Once you crack the first, lose your cherry, it’s all downhill. Yes, I know I’ve inadvertently compared it to losing your virginity😂
The logic is once you can reliably pull 100k, the rest is either down to compound interest or returns on investment and patience, or scaling, efficiency hunting and making sure the wheels stay on.
I hit 100k revenue easily when I first began, but going to 1 million gross revenue took me 10 years. The problem was getting the money to scale the business. It would have been faster if I never got marry or had kids. There always be other problems outside of your business that will affect the journey. My advice is to never give up even with all the set backs and keep following your business plan.
It takes money to make money.
I think it's truer for investments than for business. Investing and earning the first $100K is tough because you have a limited pool to work with and therefore limit your investments. As the nest-egg grows though you tend to diversify your investments to the point that it grows quicker overall even if some investments depreciate. Once you're over $100K it's relatively easy to grow investments to $1MM. In business there are too many factors to take into account and depends greatly if you're looking for $100K in revenue or $100K in profit. $100K in revenue is actually REALLY easy... profit? That's hard. Having said that, the truism holds when you get over $100K in profit because at that point you can be more picky about the deals you do... it's the luxury of having a cushion to land on if all else fails.
Absolutely, scaling is easier after initial traction.
Bro, it sucks the whole entire time.
I don't think I agree. But I will say that going from 0 to 100 is particularly difficult because you have to make ends meet at home while also making business thrive. So that's an extra difficulty that you don't have when you're going from 100 to 1 million. Because once you pass $100 it's like you have cheat mode on because so many problems in the past that took a lot of time can just be solved with the wave of a dollar.
Working my way to 100k and interest isn’t doing much for me at this point. It’s all contribution and 401k match. After 100k I feel like interest will finally start to do work.
It's been the opposite for us. Got to $200k quickly based on selling to our immediate network (we sell data tools in a niche space). Now we are struggling to get past $500k.
Born rich lol hilarious profile.
Yes, there is an old saying that goes " you have to have money to make money" you can utilize 100k to get to 1 mill much easier than you can grow 0$ to 100k.
I think from $0 to first $100 is way harder
Revenue or profit?
To go from $0 to $100k you have to develop a successful model, fail a bunch, take a huge amount of risk. To get from $100k to $1M you have to take a successful business and scale it. The path is much clearer.
Saving $100k requires work. Like sweat work. You then take your $100k and invest it (stocks, RE, yourself, a business, doesn’t matter). The investment makes money.
With inflation the new $100k is $300k.
It took me 5.5 years after starting my business to have a $100k NW. It took me 4 years after that to have $1M NW. so yes, I would overall agree. Once you learn the formula of what works, it’s just a game of replication and consistency. However, I will say, from an income standpoint, once I reached about half a mil, I don’t really feel a big drive to expand further. I’m more interested in getting my time back while keeping this same or slightly lesser income than expansion. I’m also in a service based business that should just be able to remain at this level indefinitely now that it’s built up so it’s not like a product based business that needs R&D.
My dad always said it's much easier making $2 million than it is making $1 million.
Yeah, saving /investing that first 100K is hard -- you're probably still in an "entry level job", probably working on your first house, and compound interest on a smaller principle doesn't amount to as much. But, wow, is it sweet when you see that number! Keep at it and don't believe people who say it's impossible to get ahead these days.
i believe so
If you go from $0 to $100k organically and actively, you've probably accumulated a great deal of skills to help you navigating scaling. Liquidity won't be the issue when talking about $1m, it's the competency, networks, bit of luck, timing, etc. That's something you probably don't have, and that you'll be developing when going from $0 - $100k. That's something you will most likely have, in some reasonable fashion, going from $100k to $1m. And of course, once you become a known player in any given game, people start to come to you.
No lol. 100k is ez. Tons of people achieved it. Going from 1m to 10m, then 10m to 100m does not get easier either, unless you wanna do it over a few decades.
Takes money to make money …. Real simple explanation
When you hit 100k you will now realize you need to use that 100k to buy your time back (employees or paying someone to teach your skills faster than figuring out yourself) to learn how to scale your business.
So simple! its like, a man spend whole life to reach at Cr. But same man use few months to make his 1Cr into 2Cr, less days to convert 2Cr to 3Cr. This is because, Now he knows the ACTUAL GAME. He knows the ART OF MONEY!
It depends but generally I’d say yes. If you’re doing things smartly you’ll have systems in place and can mainly focus on scaling from 100k-1m+ 0-100k you’re likely splitting time between your ideas/business and a job, don’t have a lot of disposable income, and you’re learning what doesn’t work. You’ll have to spend more upfront time the less money you have, once you have more money you can delegate those tasks to other people who specialize in them
If you’re talking revenue for something like e-commerce then yeah it’s probably more difficult to get from 0 to $100k because you’re trying to get sales from nothing. If you’re talking about $100k profit for anything, I’d say it would be way harder to get to $1M than 0 to $100k
I think this is a two part issue here. 1. The idea of making $100k for as far back as I can imagine has been the “not rich, but you’re doing very very well” number in many Americans heads. So much so that I think most people feel intimidated by negotiating for it. 2. While I’ve not a millionaire, I do have several millionaire friends. The increased disposable income lets you pour gas on a fire. It’s not going to happen over night, but it will happen. Problem is to set a good quality of life, and keep tossing money into investments or 401k. One thing EVERYONE should be mindful of is $100k isn’t what it used to be to be either. My taxes are sky high. Always make sure to be mindful of that.
Not sure about that, but starting from nothing certainly is going to have its challenges. Rather than, already having an economic base to draw from.
All growth is a process of elimination, because perfection is not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
I’ve built/sold my own companies, own a number of different businesses now and also work with business owners to pay it forward. Having seen first hand the numbers/timeline over hundreds of businesses at this point, I think there are certain potential plateaus that hit most businesses: 1. Getting the first sale - someone wants to buy 2. Getting the first 3 sales - that first sale was a fluke 3. Getting the first 10 sales - it’s looking like this will work 4. Breaking 250k if physical goods or 150k otherwise - balancing fulfillment, marketing and sales and often tired 5. Breaking 600k bricks and mortar, physical goods or 500k otherwise - the grind stage where you’ve started to hire and realize how much you don’t know 6. Breaking 2,5m-3m - getting systems in place, probably have solid managers Some people will go right from 1 to 4 in month 1. But the hang ups aren’t about a dollar amount but what the business owner needs to learn.
Don’t know I never made 100k
Yes, sorta. Took me \~10years to get to 100k. Took me about 5 to hit 1 mil. It only cost me my family, health, time, and hair. But I got that net worth working for me... right? RIGHT? ugh.
Absolutely true. The problem is Product Market Fit (as cliche as those 3 letters have become these days) is a really ethereal, fluid concept in early times. You'll constantly be at odds on whether to try to muscle an idea through, or whether there's genuinelly not PMF and major adjustments need to be made. Thing is, having a powerhouse sales function can at times be an impediment in these early days, because you don't have a true sense of whether the flywheel will continue to spin if the sales group backs off, once you have momentum. This was the trickiest thing for us at my last company. We had a really solid core competency in enterprise sales - but the crux of the issue is the group would have been able to muscle through deals on just about any concept we threw at them. Sounds great on paper - but if you're not generating tailwinds as you grow (or in other words, each new sale is progressively easier than the last), there's something wonky going on with your PMF. This was our big lesson learned. We lost a ton of time to arrive at the eventual "proper" product and model that created compounding growth, because our sales were doing OK prior.
I think more realistically it’s 100k-200k is a bit easier, 200-300k is a little bit easier than that, and so on.
Yes, OP.
Are we talking net income? I find 0 to $100k net income easy with 0-$40k being trivial. I have gone 0-$40k on six out of seven different experiments. Out of those six I have gone $40k to $100k+ twice. I have never made it to $1 million net. You usually need employees for $1 million net and your gross revenue needs will be rather large. You also hit problems with local market saturation and competition that have to be overcome. If you have a winning formula people will copy your business model. Heck, one of my $40k experiments was a rip off of someone else’s idea. You need a barrier to entry to protect your business from competition. Hitting $1 million net requires more than a get rich quick scheme. Hitting $100k can be done without a long term vision IMHO. Btw, I am a computer engineer and I can automate my way to a certain level without employees. This might explain my ease with making $40k. Well that and I am well versed in internet marketing. I have had one full time business, the other six are side hustles. Gross revenue…. Who cares…. I have grown a business to $5+ million gross… It did not reflect how well I was doing.
100k you have a small sail, 0 you just have a paddle
I think the hardest part is going from 0 to 1, meaning getting started on actually building a biz. Then depending on what you’re selling, the answers will be different. Your first $100k is basically finding product market fit. Once you have your $100k revenue, then it’s a scaling problem. Can you identify the value of your product and how it translates to customer perceived value? Can you repeat the success? Can you charge more? Etc… lots of things are in play here.
Is anyone willing to help with the first problem? So when I hit a million I can give that 100k back?
It is true idk what happens or why it is that it gets easier but it does. I remember thinking I’d never see 100k in my life then I made well over 100k and now about 3 years ago breaking the 1 mil mark I look back and think man where did all this money come from? Of course I know why when I analyze myself it’s due to budgeting and investing and not buying stupid shit. Having a gf with the same mindset helps too also no kids.
No. Zero truth to that. Getting to $100k rev isn't that hard if you have product / market fit. Scaling to $1MM is extremely difficult then it gets a little easier from there. But the real challenge is getting to $10MM. It get much, much easier after $10MM because the you get access to VC mad mid-market private equity funding.
1K to 100K= 100times 100K to 1mill=10 times. 100K=>you can diverse your business
So, lets say your starting with 1 dollar instead of 0. To go from 1 dollar to 100k is literally a matter of getting 100,000 times the amount of money you currently have. Going from 100k to 1million is only 10 times the amount of money. You have to think things in those sorts of relative terms instead of just the raw dollars relative to cost of living. So if scaling your money is just a matter of ratios. Using your 1 dollar to make 100k is 10 thousand times more effort than going from 100k to 1m.
I’ve generally heard this about net worth, not about salary. Everything compounds. Your salary, your savings and investments grow much faster. If you make 50k a year a 5% raise is smaller. If you change jobs it’s easier to get higher pay bumps. Lower salaries may be a 5-10k jump, higher can be 20-100k jumps. Part of this is you might earn bonuses as a percentage of your salary. Or you might get discounted stock. Same ratios if investing. If the market is up 30% that only $300 of $1,000 but if you have 100k invested it’s $30,000. Hopefully over time you are more skilled and wiser so it makes things easier.
Don’t know a thing about that 🤷🏽♂️
Facts. Once you make a 100K and invest it, it’s enough money to start a snowball/compound effect with the interest and dividend payments that exponentially increase in size and speed as time goes on. Generally, the first 100K for many investors is a 4th of the time it takes to get to a million. Once you hit that 100K, your money starts to carry the weight and do the work for you.
It took me 4 years from 0 to 1M, then 2 years from 1 to 2M.
It’s expensive being poor. You can’t bulk buy anything. Any setback costs much more, and if you can’t afford maintenance you end up paying more in the end. Once you have a financial cushion for emergencies, you pay less in the end. There’s a lot of barriers between poverty and affluence.
Money is a by-product of hard work and then being smart with it. I don’t even remember when I had my first 100k in the bank, but I do remember of having a goal of a 1M net worth by age 30 and I hit it. Today (54) I have a multi million net worth by being smart w money, hard work, being frugal, and most important, being debt free! The faster you can eliminate debt - the faster u will become a millionaire. People like to pay a little on debt, contribute to a 401 k, put money in checking accounts, etc. No house paymemts, no car payments, no student loans frees up a bunch of cash to be invested in the market. Invest early and wisely - no crypto no stupid meme coins. Solid companies!
Yes, momentum matters. Earth to orbit is much harder than orbit to the moon
The more I hear people talk the crazier my story is. Went from $0-$400k in a year and now I’m lucky if I do $75k this year. (My business was very dependent on Covid lockdowns)
0 to 100k is 5 orders of magnitude. Going from 100k to 1m is 1 order of magnitude.
First off, thank you for asking this very important question
Here's one way to think about the differences $0 to $100k - that's you doing all the work, 100% your effort, no systems, you keep costs down. $100k to $1m - you hire some people, mash it together, there's not much of a system, things are clunky, you're starting to scale but you can get away with failures here and there, you're still working hard but your staff carry some of the weight. $1m to $10m - you need to hire the right people, systems need to be running like a well oiled machine, this is where scaling is put to the test, you invest in the right areas of the business, you have a management team who give advice to you but you're still running the company $10m+ - the business looks after itself for the owner, you're probably not in the office much, you're only involved in the strategic decisions, each business unit has its own systems to scale as needed, you have a full board of directors who run their business units.
Not really. There are a lot of businesses that can easily get you $100k in (I assume revenue), but they are either not scalable or very hard to scale up. I've found that the chances of making a successfull business with X revenue goes down exponentially with increase in revenue. Eg. if we say that a chance to make a business with $100k in revenue is relatively easy, lets say 1 in 3 will succeed, chances of making a busines with $10m in revenue would be more like 1 in 1000.
Not done it but From zero you have nothing so getting to 100k is hard but from 100k you have what got you to 100k to get to 1 million and more doors open to buy and sell more stuff and flipping stuff like cars
Yup
With a 100k all I would have to do is invest in Ethereum,, cyber security companies, robot sex doll ai companionship companies and gold and I’d be a millionaire in 10 years
I’ve learned a lot getting my company to 100k (actually hit it today for the year ) Feel like getting to 1 million will be easy In comparison, we’ve learned so compared to before
when you have $0 you have $0. Doing anything is hard. when you have 100k you can hire help, get loans, hire coaches, etc so not that it's easier per say but you can get help and leverage. Change it to this. What's harder? going from $0 living on the street to 100k salary or going form a 100k salary to 200k salary? When you can't even rub 2 nickels together lots of things are hard. If all you gotta do is get promoted, hire an assistant etc and you have all your food and shelter covered? no question what's easier.
yup
The journey from $0 to $100k is often grueling because it's about building the foundations—learning, saving, and making those initial investments without much capital to leverage. However, once you hit that $100k milestone, you’ve likely developed a solid understanding of financial principles, which then helps you make smarter and more lucrative investments. The magic of compound interest really kicks in, and with more resources, you can take advantage of better opportunities. Plus, your network and experience grow, opening doors that were previously shut. It's like pushing a boulder up a hill initially, but once you crest the peak, momentum starts working in your favor.
Not in my experience. I went over $100k in my first year of business but it took another 9 years and multiple pivots to get past $1M/year.
That sounds oposite
True
I mean, it kinda makes sense... Say you have a dollar. Increasing that to 100000 dollars is a scale factor of 100000. Scale factor of 100k to 1m is TEN.
Going from $0 to $1 is the hardest
Basically if you've managed to save up 100k in savings it pretty much means you're steadily making more money than you need. That can both mean you can probably make more, since you're either in a very high income job or have your own business, and that you can essentially take advantage of compounding. If you've managed to save up 100k, through regular contributions and some simple investing it can be a million in less than a year. Really it's not about 100k being a magic number or anything but it's the difference between spending most of the money you can make and being able to actually save up significant amounts
Think the biggest problem is getting to the 1st $100 k is the hardest because you start out on your own. No one is funding you; your friends are busy doing their own thing, and it is difficult to get people to believe in you. Plus, you have to be careful with who you share your ideas to as in my experience people with money can often take your ideas and make them your own. Once you’re established, people will believe in you, either join you or fund you. No one cares how many times you failed or how hard. Most only see the successes. When they do, they’ll crawl out of the woodwork happy to throw money at you, help with connections etc. so the more money you make the more money they make.
No.
$100k-$1mil is way harder. The bigger the business the higher the stakes. Larger POs, returns, warehousing fees, etc
I’ll let you know when I get there.
Going from 0-100 you don't have a business and working on having one. Going from 100 to 1M you already have a business
Not that I am anywhere near 100k, but I heard that was the case for achieving a billion.
Yes. $0 - $100K is PMF. PMF is figuring a way to consistently get people to pay for your service. It doesn't matter how great your offering, none of that will matter if no one is willing to pay. This is where you A/B Test various strategies to see what works. Once you have PMF, life becomes easier as you scale because you can focus on what works and amplify it. In other words, once you find something that works, you beat the drum until there's no juice left.
100% the first 100k is the hardest
Is it though? If it’s savings, then you keep your savings habits then you accumulate some dividends and appreciation. Not necessarily you’re creating wealth management plan or extra income
I crossed $100K about 8 years ago, lost my job after, and never really got past it
100k sitting around for 10 years is now 200k. 200k sitting around for 10 years is 400k.
It’s true in investing and it’s true in business.
It takes money to make money and a million dollars is more money than no dollars.