Got ripped off by too many courses so took matters into my own hands

I scraped 112K total comments from Facebook Groups, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, and X on discussions related to side hustles.

Used Grok and Gemini 2.5 to filter the ones with most sources reporting success & least upfront investment. Sorted into offline & online.

Offline side hustles:

1. Odd jobs on Taskrabbit like assembling furniture, mowing lawns or pressure washing. People say the leads are consistent and they can set their own schedule.

2. Dog sitting / walking on Rover then building your client list for long term stays which pay way more as some people avoid doggy day cares. With multiple dogs, people are making a solid income.

3. Being a senior companion through Care or Nextdoor / Facebook Groups. You don’t need medical experience. Just offer rides, company, or light errands. People are making a full time income with just a few clients per week.

4. Organize & promote local meetups related to specific interests. You find the venue and sell tickets through Facebook Events or Meetup. People host business networking, senior events, or dating advice seminars this way and make thousands per event every week.

5. If you live near even a semi-touristy city make a listing on Airbnb experiences for things like walking tours, food tours, bar crawls, couples photography, or other experiences. Earnings vary widely.

Online side hustles

1. Create an online newsletter for your city or county using Beehiiv. Write a bit of local news and feature ad spots for local businesses. Promote the newsletter by running Facebook Ads at very low daily spend that are geo-targeted to your city. Depending on population people report making more than their corporate job.

2. Make quiz videos & Reddit story videos using VUBO and post them on TikTok and YouTube shorts. Until you’re eligible for adsense & TikTok creator fund payouts, you can sell your own digital product, an affiliate offer, or get paid by brands to feature their logo/product in your videos. Several people in a Facebook Group report earning a full income doing this.

3. Write and publish ultra specific books on Amazon KDP and rank for long keyword searches. “First Time Mom Guide to C-Section Recovery” or “How to Train a Rescue Greyhound”. People report using AI to help them outline and write books and claim that you can make serious money once you publish many titles.

4. Sell Print on Demand products on Etsy. People are using ChatGPT to make designs then putting them on mugs, tshirts, bottles and candles, and listing them on Etsy. Get inspired by best sellers and don’t reinvent the wheel. Most report using Printify for fulfillment.

5. Make UGC (user generated content) for brands. Find clients through Billo, Collabstr, Fiverr and X. Film some portfolio videos with products around your home. People are making more than jobs by doing this part time and the secret is to craft your niche. Example: health and wellness products.

Hope this helps! Now go make that bread!

Dropshipping Reality Check

Got tired of seeing the same bullshit dropshipping success stories everywhere.

I spent 18 months and $8,000 of my own money testing what these gurus actually teach. Tried 47 different products, 12 different suppliers, ran ads on Facebook, Google, TikTok. Here's what actually happened.

The Numbers Don't Lie:

• Total revenue: $14,300
• Total ad spend: $11,200
• Product costs: $3,800
• Chargebacks/returns: $1,900
• Net loss: $8,000 (including my time)

What Nobody Tells You:

Facebook Ads Are Brutal Now iOS 14.5 killed tracking. My winning ad campaigns from 2021 don't work anymore. CPM went from $8 to $25+ in my niche. You need 3x the budget just to test products now.

Supplier Issues Are Real AliExpress shipping times killed my conversion rates. Customers expect Amazon-speed delivery. Tried 3 different "US warehouses" - all dropshipped from China anyway. One supplier disappeared with $1,200 of my money.

Customer Service Nightmare Spent 2-3 hours daily answering angry emails about delayed orders. Had to issue refunds constantly. My Shopify store got flagged for too many chargebacks. PayPal held my funds for 6 months.

The Real Competition Amazon has the same products for cheaper with 2-day shipping. Why would anyone buy from my sketchy website? I was competing against billion-dollar companies with my $500 budget.

What Actually Works Instead:

Found 3 business models that beat dropshipping:

Local Service Flipping Buy services on Fiverr for $20, sell to local businesses for $200. Did this with Google My Business optimization. Made $3,200 in 2 months with zero inventory.

Digital Product Creation Turned my dropshipping failure into a $39 "What Not to Do" guide. Sold 180 copies. Made more in 3 weeks than 6 months of dropshipping.

Retail Arbitrage Buy clearance items at Target/Walmart, sell on eBay/Amazon. Boring but profitable. Made $1,800 last month spending weekends at stores.

The Truth About Dropshipping:

• 95% of stores fail within 6 months
• You need $10K+ to test properly now
• Customer acquisition costs are insane
• You're competing with Amazon
• It's not passive income at all

If You're Still Gonna Try It:

• Start with $5K minimum budget
• Pick ONE platform for ads
• Test 10 products max
• Have a backup plan
• Don't quit your day job

Save yourself the headache and pick something else. There's a reason these gurus sell courses instead of actually dropshipping.

Anyone else been through this nightmare? What worked for you after dropshipping failed?

Look at Gymshark, selling bad products but their marketing is very good -> the CEO IS A BILLIONAIRE!

I built online retailer DankStop in my moms basement with $400. In 2020 I migrated all of our vendors to dropship, eliminated all overhead costs which brought us to profitability, and sold the business for $4.2M. After a few years working for the acquirer, I am now back to focusing on entrepreneurial ventures. AMA.

Back in early 2024, I was approached with an “amazing investment opportunity” to become a franchise owner of a local Steak and Shake franchise. They sold it to me as similar to the revenue sharing structure of Chick-fil-A. For only a $10,000 investment, I can become the owner, and take home half of the annual profits from the store. On average, they said it should be in the $120k range to start, and only more as you build your customer base.

The store I was taking over was a complete disaster. They had no GM. Only three employees. They hadn’t had a landscaper in over a year. The paint was peeled off half the property. There was a leak in the roof. The parking lot looked like a war zone.

The biggest issue this store was facing was that most locals didn’t even know they were still in business.

When I met with the brass; I said in explicit terms, that’d I’d only take this on if corporate was going to partner with me to get the place at least back to looking like it was open. They agreed. I paid my $10k fee, and took over.

The literal first week, I come to find out that the former manager had promised pay raises for two of the three employees who had both been there 10+ years. They showed me the receipts. I brought it to my area manager. He said that was the old person, so it didn’t mean anything now. Red flag #1.

Next, I asked if they had an existing landscaping company, and they said no that I could find one. So I did. A good friend has a lawn care business. Gave me a stupid cheap deal. After his first two cuts, he hadn’t been paid by corporate. Red flag #2.

I then asked if we could get the parking lot taken care of, because it looked like a war zone. I also said that the roof needed repaired because every time it rained; the kitchen flooded if there wasn’t a bucket down. Not only that, but that water was 100% in food prep areas.

The answer I got was “we can’t do that for you right now. We need to see sales at $xxx before we can approve any work. Also, you can only have yourself and two others working right now”. Red flag factory.

The final straw for me was on a Sunday it was just myself and a grill guy running the whole show. He was off at 5 and the two people, including the manager I inherited, no call no showed. When I called my regional manager, he said “no worries just lock the front door and run drive thru by yourself through dinner”.

I kindly told him to fuck off. And walked out the front door.

Turns out, I was the fifth or sixth person they’d done the same thing too. And keep in mind during your six to eight month probation period you DONT GET PAID. so I spent two months, basically paying them $10,000 to run their store.

I don’t know if this is happening all over the place, or if I just got lucky. I do know the regional manager and local managers I was working with both left the company on their own because of the shit show it was.

So, in conclusion, if you see this “opportunity” come across your desk, run the other way as fast as possible.

I took the leap into the solopreneur world. My plan was to disappear for a few months, build a product and launch it.

Luckily, a smart entrepreneur friend stopped me. He said “Building stuff is the easy part. Getting people to actually buy it is what’s hard. Try to sell your idea first before you build anything."

He was 100% right. I'm hitting a wall.

The problem is I have zero audience. I have always been a lurker on social media, so I have no followers to show my idea to. Most online communities have strict "no self-promotion" rules (which I get), so I can't post there. I feel like I have no options and I'm just going to look like a spammer.

It seems like my only choices are:

1. Burn money on Google ads
2. Send tons of cold emails that everyone hates getting. And this supposes you have or can find the contacts to reach out to

So I want to ask the people who have actually done it: If you started with ZERO audience, how did you really get your first paying customers? What specific steps did you take?

Legit means:

1. They got rich before writing the book, not from the book.

2. They aren't gurus and don't upsell courses to you.

3. No live poor to die rich index funds BS. This is the entrepreneur subreddit not investing. There isn't anything wrong with investing. It is just way better to invest as an entrepreneur. (Put 5k per month into index funds rather than 5k per year with a career)

4. They got rich from starting and selling a business or buying and selling a business.

This is assuming action is taken after reading the book.

I was running an eCommerce business and hired a marketing agency to scale up sales. Orders started flowing in, but strangely, over 90% of them got returned. I couldn’t figure out why. The traffic looked good, the numbers seemed exciting, but something always felt off.

So I switched to a different agency. The order volume dropped significantly, but so did the returns. At least the few customers I got seemed real.

The second agency was expensive though, so after some time I (stupidly) decided to go back to the first one. Boom, same pattern again. High order numbers, high return rates, and absolutely no clarity on why this was happening.

Eventually, I had to shut the business down.

Months later, a friend in the D2C space told me this happens more often than you’d think. Some shady marketing agencies actually generate fake orders to make their ad campaigns look successful. Bots, fake users, low-quality leads, whatever it takes to inflate your KPIs. But I still ended up paying for ad spend, shipping, logistics, COD charges, and return fees.

I thought I was scaling. Turns out, I was just bleeding money on ghost customers.

Lesson learned the hard way.

Alright, if you had to bet everything, what’s the most realistic way to actually make money online in 2025?

I’ve dabbled in dropshipping, ran some ads, tried the whole TikTok organic thing. Some sales here and there, but nothing that stuck long enough to feel like an actual business. I’m not looking for some “easy” method, but I do want something that isn’t just spinning wheels for 3 months with zero ROI.

So here’s the question: if you had to start over today with zero followers and zero capital, maybe $100 to $200, what would you do? What model, what niche, what strategy? Be honest. Ecom? Digital products? Freelance? Local lead gen? YouTube?

And if you’re already doing something that’s working, drop a one-liner on what’s working for you right now.

Let’s make this thread valuable.

The Accidental Market Research: For over a decade, I've been running Big Brother fantasy leagues using an impossibly complex Excel workbook. Friends loved it so much they kept asking me to sell the spreadsheet. I always said no because I knew it was a fragile mess only I could maintain.

Turns out I was accidentally doing 10 years of market research:

• Proven demand (people literally asking to pay)
• Deep understanding of user pain points
• Clear feature requirements from user feedback
• Validated user base who loved the product
• Annual recurring engagement (every Big Brother season)

The Pivot Moment: Had to launch by July 10th (Big Brother 27 premiere) or wait another year. That deadline forced me to stop overthinking and just build.

8-Day Sprint to SaaS:

• Day 1-2: Learned no-code development (Lovable platform)
• Day 3-4: Built core features (auth, leagues, scoring)
• Day 5-6: Advanced features (admin tools, payments)
• Day 7-8: Beta testing with existing users, bug fixes
• July 10: Launch day!

Key Insights:

1. Your "hobby" might be disguised market research
2. Sometimes your users see the business before you do
3. Deadlines kill perfectionism
4. Having existing users = built-in beta testers
5. No-code platforms can handle real complexity now

Current Status:

• Multiple active leagues running
• Tip jar revenue model (experimenting with monetization)
• Zero marketing spend (organic growth from existing community)
• Planning expansion to other reality shows

The Lesson: If people are asking to pay for something you've built "just for fun," listen to them. Sometimes the best businesses solve problems you didn't realize were problems.

Check out Poolside Picks if you want to try it out and run your own league!

Anyone else stumble into entrepreneurship through a personal project?

It was 17th December, 2021, I still remembered my first interview with the company I’ve now been working at for the past three years.

During the offer call, my CEO said something that stuck with me:

“I wouldn’t hire you if you weren’t moonlighting.” He wasn’t joking.

He shared how he built the company from scratch, wearing every hat, taking risks, figuring things out without waiting for permission.

“I want people who understand how hard it is to earn every single dollar. People who’ve tried to build something. People who don’t wait to be told what to do.”

Then he said, point blank:

“I’ll give you full independence either grow this company or burn it to the ground. Your call.” What sold me wasn’t just the job. it was the mindset.

He actively encourages moonlighting. He expects you to have something of your own on the side.

I was freelancing at the time and joined as a part-timer. He even told me he’d support my side gigs as long as they didn’t affect my work here.

That’s exactly the kind of culture I was looking for: remote, ownership-driven, and grounded in real accountability.

I am happy i successfully live up to that trust and still working with same company. :)

No, I’m not selling any courses or offering consultations, Please don’t spam my DMs.

I’m happy from my store.

Here’s my story;

I started my career at a marketing agency 6 years back and that is where I got to work with some of the most well-known dtc brands.

Looking at their sales number I was always like one day I’ll launch my own brand.

But for the longest time, I was like what if I would fail?

One day. I said screw it and sent a resignation email to my manager.

Now that my back was against the wall and i had no other option.

i went to the drawing board and tried to analyze what was the common sauce in brands which grew immensely vs which failed.

The brands built on hype or a trend miserably failed whereas brands built on insecurity and lust did great.

Having worked with Fashion and Personal Care brands of all sized. I was sure it had to be one of this two categories.

While clothing was an inventory nightmare my obvious choice was to build a skincare brand.

I took help from a contract manufacturer who used to build for one of my clients before.

I launched a clean no bs beauty brand for women’s with minimalist packaging and a clear messaging.

Now comes the most important part - Distribution.

I was always bullish on Community and UGC content from my past experiences.

Our gtm was giving free samples to female micro influencers (<1K followers) to try and post videos on their instagram in exchange of which I promised them to run ads on their reels giving them visibility. We onboarded over 500+ small and medium influencers.

We were all over the place. We saw over 100K+ users coming on our website in the first three month,

Another thing that gave us great results was having a mobile app for our store from the start. I saw it before too, brands with mobile apps had 2-3X higher conversions and 15-20% higher vs mobile web.

Weirdly we saw 4X higher conversion and 60% of revenue on our app.

The only sauce here was we were giving Flat 20% on the app on first order and a free moisturizer sample $29 worth on every order above $50.

We are net positive with 16% margins even after all the discounts and free gifts.

A significant part of our revenue now comes from subscriptions and the first party data collected from the app helps us with better retargeting on meta.

TLDR;

I have made 3X more money in the last one year than I did in the last 5 years combined.

If you’re stuck chasing the next gen product take a step back and build something boring that satisfies women’s hunger for beauty or man’s lust or insecurity. You'll make money 9/10 chances.

I have heard a lot of stories on this sub but all I mostly see are people struggling.

I don't hear small success stories so often. If it's a success story, it's one which is unbelievable.

So do you guys have some genuine success stories?

For context: I am operating an ai powered email design platform.

1. Researched topics that people would ask ChatGPT
   did some polls on Instagram and Twitter i.e. "What are you struggling the most with Email design?"; "How does ChatGPT help you with Email design". - build here a list as well.

2. Checked out what competitors are publishing
   Created a list of topics which my competitor posted (blogs) or rank about. I.e. One competitor published "Best Email Design Templates".

3. Tracked how others rank on ChatGPT
   With no tracking, it was hard for me to see if I rank better or worse on some pages.
   I tested tools like RankZero and Profound to gather data and see if what I was doing would change my ranking (was good to find out prompt & analyse competitors too).

4. Create content about topics
   - I created content about all the question my community feedbacked either as blog or as some sort of interactive option on my platform i.e. "Find the best product grids for your brand", option for them to click and add their brand parts for free and get a header based on industry best practices.
   - additionally, I used the content already used from competitors rewrote it and went more in depth about the topic.

5. Creditability of other sources
   - reached out to marketing blogs to list my option on their upcoming posts to get 3rd party credibility
   - asked my customers that they, if they are happy, share something on social about the product (at the beginning started with giving them discount - realised at some point if they are happy they also like to help you for free)

6. Consistency with new posts
   I saw a significant jump in traffic after being consistent for 7 weeks. Posting new content every week, I began to notice a big impact within just a couple of weeks. Consistency = Key to rank (similar like with SEO).

When I first started sourcing products for my ecomm store, I was super cautious. I'd heard every horror story, wrong items, sketchy communication, quality tanking after the first order. I was legitimately terrified of ordering anything.

Fast forward a few years and I've basically got a long distance supplier soulmate. I found them on Alibaba when I was just looking for someone to help with my first product run. I was nervous, but they were patient, answered every question, and even helped tweak the design to bring costs down without sacrificing the look.

Since then, we've worked together on a bunch of different products. I've had last minute order changes, weird requests, and one very chaotic moment where I realized I was about to miss a big holiday sale. Every time, they've gone above and beyond. One time they pulled an all nighter to get something out the door in time. I'm extremely grateful and aware of how fortunate I was to find them.

We would video chat pretty much every time I placed an order to iron out details and somehow that blossomed into a close friendship. We send memes, wish each other happy holidays, and they even invited me to their wedding next year!

I know not every supplier relationship goes this way, but I'm a big believer now that it can be more than just a transaction if you treat it that way. Respect, clear communication, and paying on time go a long way. I'm not sure if they go the extra mile for all their customers but my buddy definitely makes sure I'm taken care of. At the height of the tariff craziness, we managed to work out a deal where they would eat a bit of the costs of the new tariffs so the burden wasn’t entirely on my business and we could preserve our working relationship.

So consider this your reminder to make sure you have a good relationship with your suppliers because it really is a huge asset.

I have been at research and gpt-ing for about 2 years, just to find a solution, a problem or anything that can be the foundation of my business. But no matter how much I think, my brain is just not wired to do creative stuff like this. I have a talent in software developement but no creativity or whatsoever. My degree was space sciences and technology, which itself is an overwhelming field for a small brain guy like me but i need to start at software but what niche amd what goal, i cant figure out.

I need a professional business consultation 😔.

I run three different ecommerce brands across totally different niches fitness, pet, and home goods. Each one has its own offers, target audience, and ad strategy, which makes it interesting to say the least but also a bit chaotic, especially when it comes to managing spend.

At first, I had all the ad budgets running through one business card. That got messy fast just trying to figure out which charge belonged to which store, especially when you're testing campaigns across Meta and Google at the same time, was a nightmare. Now I’m trying to be more structured. I’ve set up separate business cards for each brand all under one account using Adro banking so I can track spend by niche without everything getting mixed together. Each card has a set weekly limit, and I check in a couple times a week to make sure things aren’t creeping out of control. It’s not perfect, but it gives me way more visibility than I had before. Beyond that, I’ve started tagging transactions inside our dashboard and doing a light manual audit at the end of each week. We’re not doing deep financial modeling yet, but it helps spot subscription creep or forgotten campaigns.

Still figuring out the best rhythm. Sometimes I wonder if I should be reviewing spend daily, or automating more of it with alerts or reports. Curious how others here do it especially if you’re juggling multiple products or brands. Always trying to tighten things up without slowing down growth.

So I work in a Sales position in the e-commerce department of a large hydraulics distributor. A little while ago I built a tool that scrapes our biggest competitors e-commerce storefront twice a day, dumps that data to a DB and then serves that up on a nice dashboard behind authentication. Dashboard allows you to select a date range to filter by and displays the estimated revenue for the time period, a paginated table with every single part and its price, quantity sold, restocked, current quantity on hand etc. You can also filter it by column and export the entire thing to excel. It also shows the top 10 sold and top 10 restock units.

Anyways over time this data is going to prove very valuable to the company because it will allow them to adjust stock purchases to match what the competitor is selling.

Anyways jump to today and my boss comes in my office... he goes on to say that it would make more sense to have the dashboard and database be served on an "internal" server and goes on to talk about my hiring contract and the restrictive covenant clause. He says that anything I build on company time even if on my own PC is owned by the company. I scoffed and said I dont remember seeing anything like that and low and behold when I go check all it says is I cant sell or solicit to any of the companies clients for 1 year after I leave. So no. The cynic in me feels he wants to get rid of me because I have just started a divorce process and he feels like im a burden needing time to handle things. But the worst part is I dont want to give away this system for free seeing as how valuable to them it will be.

Im looking for advice on how people here would handle this if they were in the same situation.

Thanks!

Hey guys so I've been working on my public toilet locator app NearToilets so far for one month of building and promoting I got a good results

10k visits
120 signups
200 public toilets submission

Now I'm finding ways to monetize this app, like allowing users to list their private toilets for a fee, like AirBNB of toilets. Do you think I have a real chance here? Is anybod can easily relate to this idea?

I want to build something big and meaningful

Recently Microsoft made it public that they indeed saved about $500 million using AI and AI tools. This got me thinking how other entrepreneurs are using AI to save money in this difficult economy with tariffs and what not.

Personally our business saved $50K+ I can think off. Here is how specifically

• Outbound Email Automation: We used to have a remote contractor we hired as an assistant to find potential customers and DM them on LinkedIn/email them to book a sales call based on our playbook. We not automate the whole process using AI tools like Clay, Persana and AISDR. Saves about $10k per year
• SEO & Blogs Automation: Similarly we used to hire a contractor on Upwork to write SEO blogs weekly and post it on our wordpress website. We would also pay them to do competitor analysis, discover keywords etc. This process is now fully automated using AI tools like Frizerly. All we do is review and click publish. Even this step can be automated but we choose not to. Again saves about $10k per year
• Support: We were able to reduce our remote support team to be 1 member instead of 2 because a lot of questions were repetitive and were already documented in FAQs etc. We have been now able to auto resolve these using AI tools like Intercom Fin. Saves about $30k per year!

So curious, how are you all saving money using AI and how much did you save?

SaaS Reality Check

Every Twitter guru makes building SaaS look easy. "Just solve a problem and charge monthly!" Yeah right.

I've launched 11 different SaaS products since 2021. Spent $23,000 of my own money on development, hosting, and marketing. Only 2 are still running and profitable.

The Brutal Stats:

• Total development costs: $18,500
• Marketing spend: $4,500
• Current MRR from 2 surviving products: $3,200
• Time to first dollar: 8 months average
• Customer acquisition cost: $240 per customer

My 9 Failures and Why They Died:

Social Media Scheduler #847 Competed with Buffer and Hootsuite. Took 4 months to build, got 12 users. Turns out people don't want "another scheduling tool." They want the one everyone else uses.

Email Marketing for Restaurants Seemed like a great niche. Restaurants don't give a shit about email marketing. They're too busy keeping the lights on. Learned this after building the entire platform.

Invoice Generator for Freelancers There are literally 500+ invoice tools already. Mine had "better UX" but nobody cared. Free alternatives exist everywhere.

The Real Problems I Faced:

Customer Discovery is Everything I built products I thought people needed. Wrong. Spent 6 months building a project management tool for agencies. Talked to 3 agencies after launch.

Marketing Costs Are Insane Google Ads for SaaS keywords: $15-40 per click. Facebook ads don't work for B2B. Cold outreach gets 0.5% response rates. Content marketing takes 12+ months to work.

Technical Debt Kills You Rushed MVP launches mean constant bug fixes. Spent more time fixing than building new features. Users churn because of glitches, not lack of features.

Support Nightmare 24/7 support expectations from customers paying $19/month. Spent 3 hours daily on support tickets. Had to hire VA for $800/month just to handle basic questions.

What Actually Works:

My 2 Surviving Products:

Local Business Review Tool Helps restaurants/dentists get more Google reviews. $49/month. 31 customers. Found this by talking to 40+ business owners first. Took 2 weeks to build MVP.

WhoMails - B2B Prospecting Extracts executive contacts via WHOIS data. $20/month. 82 customers. Built because I was tired of manually searching for CEO emails for hours.

Key Lessons:

Talk to Customers BEFORE Building My failures: 0 customer interviews before building My successes: 20+ interviews before writing code

Boring Niches Win Sexy markets = tons of competition Boring markets = desperate customers with money

Start Stupidly Simple My successful products do ONE thing well My failures tried to be everything to everyone

Charge More Than You Think Started at $19/month, customers said it was too cheap Raised to $49-89, churn went DOWN

The Harsh Reality:

• 90% of SaaS products never hit $1K MRR
• Takes 12-18 months to know if it'll work
• Customer acquisition is your biggest problem
• Most "problems" aren't worth solving

If You're Building SaaS:

• Talk to 50+ potential customers first
• Build for a tiny niche you understand
• Charge $50+ from day one
• Focus on ONE feature that saves time/money
• Budget 2x what you think for marketing

Stop following the Twitter SaaS bro playbook. It's mostly survivorship bias and bullshit.

Anyone else been through the SaaS graveyard? What killed your products?

Basically the title. I've had a life long dream of owning/running a coffee shop, I just KNOW it would be super cute and have delicious treats, but I don't know if it would kill me. I'm okay with long hours and hard work, but would it be worth it? My corporate job is pretty cushy but it's sucking the life out of me. I'd love to create a place where the community can gather and enjoy themselves. Does anyone have experience with this? How'd it go? I'm also interested in an all day cafe, potentially a yoga studio...

Im 20M and work full time at a car wash and make $12/hr, not a big fan of it but it pays necessities.

On the side between my hours on days off, I resell items on ebay, especially golf clubs and video games from thrift stores and marketplace.

My first month just finished and I made $373 in sales and netted about $200. 20 listings, 12 sales. It’s not much but it’s a good foundation.

My question comes from seeing several people online talk about reselling being unethical because it’s driving up thrifting prices and putting poor people behind.

What is y’all’s opinion on what I’m doing at the moment when it comes to ethical concerns?

Thank y’all.

When I left my last role, I said I was “starting a business.” But if I’m honest, I didn’t really know what that meant. I had ideas. I had a few people in my corner. But what I didn’t have was a proper strategy.

I was working long hours - trying everything, chasing opportunity, watching YouTube videos, writing down offers, setting up automations, fiddling with logos. I looked busy. I felt busy. But deep down, I knew I wasn’t really moving forward.

The turning point was when I admitted I was hiding in the “building” phase. Avoiding conversations. Avoiding asking for feedback. Avoiding testing. Once I started having real conversations with people in my space - especially people who’d been there before - everything started changing.

That’s when things clicked. I stopped trying to “launch” something perfect and just focused on solving real problems for real people. Momentum started to build.

If you’re in that early stage limbo, maybe spinning your wheels - you’re not alone. But don’t stay stuck in the planning phase too long. Talk to people. Ask questions. Get uncomfortable. You’ll move faster than you think.

What helped you make the leap from planning to actually building?