A man who went viral after making himself homeless during the Coronavirus pandemic has explained why he did it.
During Covid-19, people around the world were faced with terrifying uncertainty as the world around them shut down indefinitely. Aware that people around him were now struggling, businessman and YouTuber Mike Black decided to see if he would be able to rebuild his life from zero.
Embarking on a journey called 'Million Dollar Comeback', Black drained his bank account to zero, put his business on hold, and left his home to see whether or not he could make $1,000,000 (£802k) within a year - beginning with just a mobile phone and the clothes he was wearing.
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"I wanted to do this to help people," he later said of the project. "That was the goal of the entire project, not just tell people 'here's what I would do if I was starting over', f**king do it. Show people with action."
So, what happened?
Black's project ended after just 10 months, with the business owner forced to cut his journey short after experiencing health issues. However, he was able to make around $64,000 (£52.7k) during the process after flipping furniture on Craigslist, reinvesting the money to get a laptop and securing various marketing gigs before making an e-commerce business of his own.
The business owner would also suffer numerous setbacks during the 10 months, including the devastating news that his father had been diagnosed with stage four cancer.
Why did Mike Black do the 'Million Dollar Comeback' challenge?
Black's project would later resurface on the internet in 2024, after a thread claiming his experiment was to prove 'anyone can make $1M in 12 months with just a phone' went viral across social media.
Naturally Black went on to receive backlash online as his challenge reached more and more people, with many branding his actions insensitive to the challenges that homeless people face on a day-to-day basis.
The backlash led Black to make a follow-up video explaining why he decided to do the project and clarifying that it wasn't a social experiment to see if anyone could go from being homeless to a millionaire.
"It had nothing to do with homelessness," he said in the video, explaining that he wanted to prove it was possible for people to reinvent themselves.
Responding specifically to the comments that claimed that he'd said anyone could go from being homeless to a millionaire in a year, he added: "None of this is true. If you go through my content I don't say things like 'anyone can make a million dollars'... especially in 12 months. There's a lot of inaccuracies here."
You can catch Black's full journey on his YouTube channel now.
Brenna Cooper