Author Topic: What can I enjoy making/producing?  (Read 823 times)

wemmm

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What can I enjoy making/producing?
« on: May 24, 2025, 02:15:58 PM »
Any suggestions on figuring this out? I want to make/produce something, and keep doing it for a decade. I would like this thing to be something I can distribute and monetize. This is tricky because there is a conflict of interest between "I do this because I enjoy it" and "I do this because it increases my NW". I also switch back and forth between "its enough if I make $2-3K/mo with 20hr/week" and "I must be able scale this to 1M+ in total profit"

I don't like: touching computers, staring at screens
I like: social dancing, meeting new people, traveling
Background: spaghetti code, graphic design, seo. Google & palantir rejected me on first round for a technical position but I look good on paper
+I can travel a lot, incorporate in different countries
-not a native english speaker, maybe bad at selling, idk if I'm a good team player, I never had a human boss.

Ideas:
1. outsourcing agency. I might love making money / creating a business by talking to people, but idk how exactly to convince companies in HCOL areas to hire contractors in LCOL areas from me.
2. copy stevenmarkryan but for another popular stock (Any suggestions?). He makes pro TSLA narratives, makes $0.025 per view. I'd enjoy narrative creation. I might hate editing
3. $10/mo membership fee for access to fatherly advice and online community of similar people. It's for people who didn't have a good father. You can ask questions to your e-father AI or get a crash course from a father on life. Content includes advice about relationships (with your self, friends, opposite sex, coworkers, your kids), family life, investing, taxes, media. Traffic source: Commission to youtubers, reddit mods, relevant websites
4. a mix of https://x.com/coldhealing/status/1815845335840768049, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NDy6Rlijzo, group yoga and maybe social dancing. Weekly meetings in multiple cities depending on member count. Monetization: Admission fee, affiliate (dance school, cafes, yoga retreats). Traffic source: Social media, word of mouth. 
5. copy travelingwithkristin (relocation business, $ from affiliates)
 
« Last Edit: May 24, 2025, 02:25:05 PM by wemmm »

reeshau

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Re: What can I enjoy making/producing?
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2025, 02:30:35 PM »
This seems like a narrow list of possibilities.  Particularly for someone who starts with:

I don't like: touching computers, staring at screens

Does it have to be online?  Does it have to be monetized?  Are you trying to make this a side gig, or your primary occupation?

How about:

Tour guide

Make and sell something at a farmer's market

See what your neighbors would like to get locally / of quality / cheaper, but can't

Does it have to make millions to make you happy?  Are you primarily scrounging for money, or trying to add variety and satisfaction to your mostly-at-a-computer-screen life?

314159

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Re: What can I enjoy making/producing?
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2025, 05:26:10 PM »
I heartily agree with @reeshau. The first thing you tell us is you don't like touching computers or staring at screens, but then you list 5 ideas, 4 of which will surely involve staring at screens, even if they don't involve writing code.

How about you brainstorm a lot more ideas, cut down your list, then brainstorm a bunch more? I think 100 ideas is not too many when it comes to choosing the next part of your life.

Reeshau's suggestion of tour guide is a good one if you want to be paid to meet people and be in an interesting location.

If you do want to move forward with leading dance or yoga classes, why not start with leading one one class and go form there? Pick a date and a public park, put up some flyers (and if you insist, a social media post), charge nothing (but collect emails or phone numbers) and see how it goes. Keep your time and money investments minimal to start and then scale up or down from there.

Will this be your single source of income to live off of or do you have a 'stache built up that just needs a bit of supplementation? The answer could strongly affect your choices.

Metalcat

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Re: What can I enjoy making/producing?
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2025, 06:55:41 PM »
Why do you specifically want to make/produce something, what does this even mean to you, because it's unclear to me.

Do you mean you want to launch your own business? Because that could mean anything.

I personally made a huge career pivot in my 40s and now have my own business, but I don't make it produce anything, people pay for my time and expertise.

But I did an enormous amount of research to figure out what kind of business I wanted to be in, and it's less about your ideas and more about how you want to live your day to day life.

The biggest question is "who do you want to be beholden to for your business to succeed?"

In my business, I'm beholden to my clients and to my referral network. So when I chose this business, I had to understand what that meant for my day to day work, and it's heavily shaped the specifics of how I work.

So let's say you literally want to make something, like manufacturing an item. Who do you want to be beholden to? Is it a cheap, mass market product? Okay, then you are beholden to the general public, you need to master marketing to them, making them happy. But what if it's a very high end, highly specialized product, then you are beholden to a very specific market, and need to understand the ins and outs of that population of buyers in order to appeal to them.

This makes for wildly different day to day experiences.

My aunt ran a company that mass produced many very common products, products I see in the wild on a nearly daily basis, they're that ubiquitous. My uncle runs a company that produces commercial luxury goods that cost more than all of my properties combined, these are products I will likely never see in the wild because he has virtually no customers in North America. Their work is very different in so many important ways.

They both have/had jobs that involved manufacturing and selling a precision product. But their experiences were not the same. Whoever pays for your product or service will heavily define what your work is like.

You can't figure out how you want to make money until you figure out who you're comfortable taking money from and what they will demand of you in return.

My favourite example of this was my mom who became a dog breeder after she left the corporate world. She bred large dogs and charged below market value for them. She loved what she did and she had 3+ year wait lists for her puppies because vets all over the country recommended her.

She could easily charge more, but she didn't, because when she tried to, her market changed and she fucking hated the clientele who spent a lot of money on dogs. It sucked the fun out of the business and made the day-to-day job of keeping the clients happy a miserable process.

So you can pick an industry or a style of business or whatever, and have a good idea that might be profitable. But unless and until you know who you will be beholden to, you can set yourself up for a world of pain and hit a lot of unexpected barriers to success that might be very painful to overcome.

I love running my own business because I love the autonomy of it. However, I know my market, I know who I'm beholden to, and like my mom, I'm limited to a certain business model because the one necessary for growth would make me want to pluck my own eyeballs out with a spoon.

I could easily do it. I have the skills and I could scale significantly and make a lot more money, but I would hate my life. But I knew this *before* I built this business, I knew it before I retrained in order to build this business. I had an earnings target, I very easily met it with ease, and I enjoy my days, because I knew who I would be taking money from, I knew what they would want from me, and I'm happy to give them what they want.

So think carefully about whose metaphorical balls you need to tickle to get paid, because ultimately that's what defines whether you enjoy your work or not.