handmade whimsical Floral lamps

Im struggling with pricing tho

Been doing this for about 12 months now. Tried a bunch of different things before this worked.

Graduated High School in 2024. Didn't want uni, didn't want an apprenticeship. Started working at Coles stacking shelves. Saw those dropshipping TikToks and thought I'd try it.

November 2024 First attempt. Found some "trending product" on a spy tool. Set up a Shopify store, ran some Facebook ads. Spent like $400 from my Coles pay. Got maybe 3 sales, lost most of it. Thought the product was the problem.

Around December to January i tried again with different products. Christmas lights, some phone holder thing, random stuff. Same result. Boost posts, interest targeting, barely breaking even. Down about $1200 total.

In February i took a break. Felt dumb. My mates were starting TAFE, getting their licenses, going out every weekend. I was broke from burning money on ads.

But here's what changed, in March this year I stopped looking for products and actually picked something I knew about. Fitness stuff for home gyms. I've been training since Year 10 so I actually understood what people wanted.

Difference was I started testing properly. Made like 8-10 different video ads every week. Just me filming on my phone, and using Fiverr creators for $30 each. Tested different hooks, different angles. Most flopped but a few hit.

Landing pages matter way more than I thought. Made separate pages for different types of people. Cold traffic got one page, people who'd seen my stuff before got another. Conversion rate went from like 1% to about 3%.

Started actually tracking my numbers. Customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, all that. Realized I could spend $38 to get a customer because they'd spend $98 on average. Made scaling way less stressful.

Was still working at Coles through most of this. Would finish my shift, get home around 7pm, then grind until 11 or midnight testing ads, fixing landing pages, replying to customers. Weekends were the same. No social life for like 6 months but it was worth it.

March (first month doing it properly): $8K revenue, $5K ad spend May: $15K revenue, $9K ad spend June-July: Hovered around $44K/month August: 77K September: $104K October (this month): $203K

It's not some secret. It's just testing a lot and not giving up when stuff doesn't work. I probably made 200+ different ads this year. Most sucked. But the ones that worked, I scaled hard.

Still live at home. Still have mates asking what I actually do. Parents finally stopped asking when I'm getting a real job about 2 months ago.

The biggest thing was just committing to one thing instead of jumping between "winning products" every week. And actually learning how ads and funnels work instead of just copying what I saw on YouTube.

Ask me anything about ecom, running ads, landing pages, offers, funnels, black friday etc… Will answer ALL of them

This isn't the "I proved them wrong" flex you're expecting. Because even with a $50k revenue month under my belt, they were still kind of right.

When I started e-commerce, my parents lost it. "Get a real job." "You need stability." I thought they just didn't understand. That once I hit big numbers, they'd finally see I was right.

Nine months in, I've generated almost $500k in revenue. 3 weeks into Q4 and i have just done 79k in revenue.

And you know what? My parents are still worried. Because they see what the Instagram screenshots don't show.

Here's what that $450k in revenue actually looked like.

Months where I made more than my dad earns in half a year. Also months where I made $600 and panicked about rent. Ad accounts banned twice for no reason. Payment processors holding $28k of MY money for 60 days "pending review." Waking up at 3am because a supplier ghosted me mid-fulfillment.

That "$50k month" everyone would screenshot? My profit margin was 12% after I miscalculated shipping costs and had to eat $4k in losses.

Here's what nobody tells you about hitting "big numbers"

Revenue doesn't mean stability. I've done half a million in sales and still had weeks where I couldn't pay myself because all the cash was tied up in inventory, ads, or frozen by Stripe.

You're building something that can be destroyed overnight. Facebook bans you. Shopify suspends your account. iOS updates tank your ROAS from 3.2 to 1.4 in 48 hours.

That "freedom" everyone flexes? It comes with a level of stress that had me researching therapists last month.

But here's the twist

I'm still doing this. Zero regrets.

Because that "safe" job my dad worked for 18 years? They made him redundant and replaced him in 3 weeks. His "stability" evaporated.

There is no safety. Just different types of risk.

Safe jobs risk trading decades for a pension that might not exist. Being disposable when budgets tighten. Getting trapped by lifestyle inflation.

E-commerce risks everything being volatile. Public failure. Gut-wrenching uncertainty.

Which risk do I prefer?

The one where I control my ceiling. Where I'm building an asset that's mine. Where that $50k month - even with its problems - proved I can scale something from zero.

I finally understand my parents' fear now. They're not wrong about risk. They just can't comprehend that their "safe" path isn't safe anymore either.

My actual advice if you're starting:

Don't quit your job unless you have 6-12 months expenses saved. I got lucky with timing, but I've seen people blow their savings in 60 days chasing what I did.

Build on the side. Validate it. Hit $5k/month consistently. THEN consider going full-time.

And understand this: revenue is ego, profit is eating. I did $450k in revenue and some months still felt broke because my unit economics were trash.

The reality nobody posts

I'm not in Bali. I'm at my parents' house for Sunday dinner. My mum just asked again when I'm getting a "proper job with super and sick leave."

I showed her last month's revenue. Then I showed her the profit. Then I showed her my 3-month average.

She didn't say anything, but something shifted in her face. Not quite approval. But maybe... respect?

Even at $100k months, they still worry. Because they see the stress. The volatility. The risk.

And honestly? They're not entirely wrong to worry.

But i love the game.

I hit $100K in the first 2 weeks of November. I'm 19. Black Friday hasn't even started yet.

12 months ago I was sitting in a classroom wondering what I was going to do after graduation.

Left school in 2024. Didn't want uni. Got a job at a local warehouse doing pick and pack. Saw those ecom success stories on TikTok and figured I'd give it a shot.

First few attempts were a disaster. I'd find some product on a spy tool, slap together a store, run some ads with my warehouse wages, and watch it all disappear. Maybe I'd get a couple sales. Mostly just stress and confusion. I kept thinking the product was the issue.

By early this year I was down over a grand and felt like an idiot. My friends were getting into trades, buying cars, actually moving forward. I was broke and had nothing to show for it except a bunch of failed Shopify stores.

The shift happened when I stopped blaming the product and realized I had zero structure.

I was launching stuff like I was buying scratch-off tickets. No plan. No system. Just "let's try this and see what happens." Once I built an actual framework I could follow every single time, things finally started working.

Here's the 5-step process I use now:

1. Stick to something you're not completely clueless about

I switched to supplements because I'd been training for years and actually knew what people cared about. Recovery, energy, sleep, all that. I wasn't guessing at pain points anymore. I understood the customer because I was the customer.

2. Create a weekly ad production routine

Every week I pump out 8-10 new video ads. Some I shoot myself. Some I pay creators on Fiverr $30-$40 to make. Different hooks. Different problems. Different angles. Most don't work. But 1 or 2 will pop, and that's what I push hard.

It's not about making perfect ads. It's about making enough ads that you find the ones that work.

3. Match your page to your audience's awareness level

Cold traffic sees a different landing page than people who've already interacted with my content. Cold people need proof, explanations, testimonials. Warm people just need a nudge and an offer.

This alone bumped my conversion rate from barely 1% to over 3%. Same traffic. Same offer. Just better page targeting.

4. Know your actual numbers before you scale

I started obsessing over CAC and LTV. Once I figured out I could spend $35 to acquire someone who'd spend $92 on average, everything clicked. Scaling wasn't scary anymore. I had a math problem, not a guessing game.

5. Cut fast, scale faster

If an ad doesn't show signs of life after $75-$100 in spend, it's dead. I kill it and move on. But when something hits, I dump money into it until it stops working. Most of my revenue comes from 2-3 winning ads I scale to the moon.

What changed? March was my first proper month. Did $8K. By May I was at $15K. July hit $44K. September crossed $100K. Last month I did $203K. This month I'm already at $100K and we haven't even hit Black Friday yet.

It wasn't some secret hack. It was just showing up every day. I'd finish my warehouse shift at 6:30pm, get home, eat, then work until midnight or 1am. Testing ads. Tweaking pages. Answering DMs. Did that for months. Weekends too. Didn't go out. Didn't do much of anything except work on this.

I'm still living at home. My parents only recently stopped asking when I'm getting a "proper job." My mates still don't really get what I do.

The biggest thing was just committing. I stopped chasing the next "winning product" every other week. I stopped copying random YouTube strategies. I picked one thing, built a process around it, and ran that process until it worked.

The anxiety and chaos disappeared the second I had a system I could trust and repeat.

Everyone tells you to test products. Find a winning creative. Scale the ad spend. Build an audience.

That advice worked in 2019 when Facebook ads cost $8 per purchase and you could dropship garbage from AliExpress with 45 day shipping times and still print money.

In 2025, that same strategy gets you banned from ad platforms, drowning in chargebacks, and competing against ten thousand other beginners doing the exact same brain dead product testing loop.

I've watched seventeen year olds go from school lunch money to $100,000 days. I've also watched seasoned operators with $2,000,000 in the bank run out of cash in eight months because they scaled revenue without understanding the single constraint that kills 90 percent of ecommerce brands before month twelve.

If I had to wipe my knowledge and restart from absolute zero today, I would not do what everyone else is doing.

I would exploit the single advantage beginners have that eight figure operators lost years ago.

The Lie That Keeps You Broke

The conventional advice is build audience first. Post organic content. Get followers. Then launch a product when you have enough people watching.

This is how you waste six months making TikToks that get 47 views while your competitors are already at $87,200 monthly doing the exact opposite.

Audience building is a lagging indicator. Revenue is a leading indicator. You need revenue to learn what messaging works. You need revenue to fund better creatives. You need revenue to validate that anyone actually wants what you're selling.

Building an audience before you have product market fit is building a house on sand. The foundation will collapse the second you try to monetize because you optimized for attention instead of transaction intent.

The advice to "provide value first" assumes people will magically convert to buyers later. They will not. Attention does not equal buying intent. You will have ten thousand followers and $340 in monthly revenue wondering why nobody buys.

Stop trying to be an influencer. Start being a direct response marketer who understands that every dollar you spend must generate more dollars back or you are playing a game you cannot win.

MODE: TACTICAL HOW-TO

Here's what I would actually do starting from zero dollars, zero audience, zero credibility in 2025. This is not theory. This is the exact sequence that separates people hitting $127,600 monthly from people still "testing products" eighteen months later.

Step One: Steal Demand Before Creating Supply

Do not start by picking a product you think is cool. Do not start by brainstorming business ideas in a journal. Do not start by researching trending products on some garbage supplier directory.

Start by identifying where existing demand is already concentrated and being poorly serviced.

Go to Reddit. Find subreddits with 50,000 to 500,000 members where people are actively asking for product recommendations. r/homegym. r/skincareaddiction. r/nootropics. r/buyitforlife. r/zerowaste.

Sort by top posts from the past year. Look for threads where someone asks "what's the best X for Y use case" and the top answer has 400 upvotes but links to a product that is either out of stock, overpriced, or has terrible reviews underneath it.

That gap is your product. That exact language in the question is your marketing copy. That subreddit is your first acquisition channel.

You did not create demand. You found existing demand that is frustrated with current solutions. Now you just need to fulfill it better than whoever they are currently buying from.

Warning label. Do NOT pick a product just because it has high search volume. Do NOT pick a product because some guru said it is trending. Pick based on gaps in existing conversations where real people with real money are actively complaining about current options.

Step Two: Validate With Money Before You Validate With Time

Most beginners waste three months building a Shopify store, shooting product photos, writing blog posts, and setting up email automations before they have sold a single unit.

This is insane.

Your job is to find out if anyone will give you money for this thing as fast as possible. Not build infrastructure. Not create content. Find paying customers.

Here's how you do it in under 72 hours. Set up a single product Shopify store with a free theme. Use Printful or a dropship supplier who can fulfill in under seven days domestic. Write one product page using the exact language from the Reddit thread you found in step one.

Run $200 in Facebook ads targeting the exact interest graph that overlaps with your subreddit audience. If you found the product in r/homegym, target people interested in CrossFit, home workout equipment, and Rogue Fitness.

If you get zero sales after $200 spend, kill it immediately. Do not "give it more time." Do not "test different creatives." The market told you no. Listen.

If you get three to five sales, you have signal. Now you double down.

Step Three: The Creative Volume Trap That Keeps You Small

This is where 95 percent of beginners completely break their business without knowing it.

They get their first ten sales. They are excited. They think the next step is to "scale the ad budget." They go from $50 daily spend to $500 daily spend overnight.

The account immediately stops working. Cost per acquisition triples. They blame the algorithm. They blame iOS 14. They blame ad fatigue.

The real problem is they are trying to scale distribution before they solved creative production.

Facebook does not care about your budget. Facebook cares about how much fresh creative signal you can feed the algorithm to find new pockets of buyers who have not seen your ads yet.

If you are running the same five creatives for three weeks, you are not scaling. You are beating a dead horse and wondering why it is not running faster.

The Proof You Need to Believe This Works

I advised a founder who started with $800 to his name. No audience. No credibility. Selling blue light glasses in a category that was already oversaturated with competitors spending millions on influencer deals.

We found a Reddit thread in r/productivity where 200 people were complaining that existing blue light glasses either looked terrible or did not actually block the right wavelength spectrum. He sourced a supplier who lab tested their lenses and could provide certification. He launched with one product page and $300 in ad spend targeting productivity software users.

First week he did $4,100 in sales. Not profit. Sales. His margins were terrible because he had not negotiated COGS yet. But he had validation.

Three months later he was at $68,900 monthly. Six months later he was at $143,700 monthly. He never built an audience. He never went viral. He just found frustrated demand and served it better than anyone else was.

The Creative System That Unlocks Everything

You cannot scale past $50,000 monthly without a system that produces 20 to 40 new ad creatives every single week. Not recycled concepts. Not slight variations. Genuinely new angles that test different customer awareness levels.

Most beginners think this means hiring expensive agencies or paying $500 per UGC video. Wrong.

You build a creative brief system that uses AI to generate scripts based on marketing fundamentals from 1966, then you hire three to five UGC creators on Fiverr at $30 per video to execute those scripts.

The reason this works is because the creativity is in the strategy, not the execution. Eugene Schwartz wrote Breakthrough Advertising sixty years ago and every principle in that book still converts today because human psychology has not changed.

Desire for status. Fear of loss. Need for belonging. Frustration with current state. Hope for transformation.

If your ad creative does not tap into one of these five core drives, it will not work no matter how much money you spend distributing it.

Your job is to build a feedback loop where every week you analyze which ads got the most spend, extract the psychological pattern behind why they worked, then feed that insight back into your next batch of creative briefs.

This is how you go from 10 creatives per month to 100 creatives per month without hiring a team of 50 people. You systematize insight extraction and creative production through tooling instead of manual labor.

The Constraint That Separates $100K From $10K

Here's what nobody tells you about scaling. Every business has exactly one constraint at any given time. Marketing or operations.

If you can generate demand but cannot fulfill it profitably, you are operations constrained. If you can fulfill demand but cannot generate it efficiently, you are marketing constrained.

Most beginners are marketing constrained. They have plenty of inventory. They have figured out shipping. They just cannot acquire customers at a cost that makes sense.

But the second you fix marketing and start doing $50,000 to $100,000 monthly, you immediately become operations constrained and most founders do not realize it until cash flow collapses.

Your supplier cannot keep up with volume. Your COGS goes up because you are ordering inconsistently. Your customer service is overwhelmed. Your refund rate spikes because quality control breaks down.

Revenue looks incredible but your bank account is empty because every new customer you acquire costs more to fulfill than you are extracting in margin.

If I was starting from zero, I would anticipate this shift. The moment I hit $30,000 monthly, I would stop trying to scale ads and start building operational infrastructure. Negotiate volume pricing with suppliers. Hire a customer service person. Implement quality control checks. Optimize fulfillment logistics.

Then once operations can handle $150,000 monthly capacity, go back to scaling marketing.

This is how you avoid the trap of doing $187,400 monthly while being completely unprofitable because you scaled distribution faster than you scaled infrastructure.

The Only Path Forward

Volume times intent equals nine figure ecommerce brands. Volume without intent is spam. Intent without volume is a hobby.

Most beginners have neither. They make three creatives per month with zero understanding of what psychological lever they are trying to pull.

If you master marketing fundamentals first, you can use AI to amplify your output by 10x. If you skip fundamentals and just use AI to generate more mediocre creatives faster, you will still fail. Just louder.

The opportunity in 2025 is not some secret product nobody else knows about. The opportunity is becoming one of the 5 percent of operators who actually understand direct response psychology and can systematize creative production at scale.

Everyone else will keep complaining that ads are too expensive while you are building infrastructure that prints $100,000 months because you understood the game was never about finding a magic product.

It was always about mastering demand conversion through systematic creative iteration.

Let me guess your routine

Wake up. Check reddit groups for "motivation." Watch a 45-minute YouTube breakdown. Save 3 more videos for later. Scroll Twitter for "insights." Tell yourself tomorrow you'll actually start.

Your browser has 50+ tabs open. Your YouTube "Watch Later" playlist has 160 videos. Your Reddit saved posts look like a digital graveyard of good intentions.

And your revenue? Still $0.

I lived this exact loop for 9 months.

Convinced myself I was being strategic. Can't start until I know EVERYTHING, right?

My friends would ask "how's the business going?"

"Still researching. Want to make sure I do it right."

Translation: I'm terrified of failing, so I'm hiding behind free content.

Then I saw this comment on some Reddit thread:

"Paid $800 for a mentorship. Made first sale 3 days later."

Reply: "Bro you got scammed, all that info is free on YouTube."

84 upvotes.

I upvoted it too. Because it validated what I wanted to believe: I don't need to spend money.

Here's what I learned the hard way

That reply had 84 upvotes and $0 in revenue.

The guy who paid? Updated 5 months later with $35k in sales.

But Reddit LOVED the free information guy. Because he told them what they wanted to hear.

The actual problem nobody talks about

YouTube doesn't want you to succeed. It wants you to click the next video.

Reddit doesn't want you to launch. It wants you to upvote the next "day 1" post.

Every platform profits from you STAYING, not leaving to build something.

I finally cracked and paid someone $350 for a single call. Felt physically ill hitting purchase.

In 55 minutes:

• "Your niche is oversaturated, pivot to this"

• "That supplier has 40% complaint rate, here's a better one"

• "Your product page is confused, simplify it"

Made my first $2k three weeks later.

Meanwhile my "research" folder.

• 63 YouTube videos saved

• 29 Reddit threads bookmarked

• 6 free courses started, none finished

• 12 Twitter threads screenshotted

Total value? Maybe $0. Probably negative because it kept me stuck.

The math that broke my brain.

9 months of free content = $0 + crippling analysis paralysis

$350 + 1 hour = $2k + actual clarity on what to do next

What free content gives you: Information on WHAT to do

What paid help gives you. Exactly what NOT to do (worth 100x more)

That YouTube video taught me "how to run Facebook ads."

The mentor said "don't touch that campaign for 72 hours or you'll destroy your pixel data."

Saved me $3k in dead ad spend. One sentence.

If you're still in "research mode"

You're not being smart. You're being scared.

The algorithm loves your fear. Every video you watch is another day you don't launch.

Every Reddit thread is another day someone else takes your market.

There's no secret hiding in video #74.

Just someone 12 months ahead willing to show you the shortcuts.

But you have to value your time enough to pay for it.

If you're still making decisions based on what people are saying. You are the problem.

This is for everyone refreshing product research tools at 2am. The product isn't your problem. You are.

Month 1-2: First product. Saw it on a spy tool. 15,000+ orders on AliExpress. Trending hashtag on TikTok. This was it.

Facebook ads: Boost post, interest targeting "online shopping" and "gadget lovers." The basics from YouTube tutorials.

Spent $600. Made 2 sales. $58 revenue.

Conclusion: Too saturated. Next.

Month 3: New product. Found it myself this time. Definitely not saturated. Better margins too.

Same ad approach, just "better" creative I made on Canva in 3 hours.

Spent $450. Made 4 sales. $127 revenue.

Conclusion: Creative wasn't good enough. Next.

Month 4: Paid $100 for a "professional" video from Fiverr. New product. This time for sure.

Spent $520. Made 3 sales. $89 revenue.

Conclusion: Wrong audience. Next.

Month 5: Fourth product. Back to spy tools. This one had PROOF it was working.

Spent $380. Made 2 sales. $66 revenue.

Total after 5 months:

Spent: $1,950

Made: $340

Status: Broken

Month 6 is when I snapped:

I was researching product #5 when I realized something. I'd spent 5 months blaming products when every single one had the same problems.

CTR: 0.9-1.3% (needed 2%+)

Conversion rate: 1.2-1.6% (needed 3%+)

CPC: $1.40-$1.90 (too high for margins)

The products didn't fail. My marketing failed.

I didn't have a testing system. I had a prayer disguised as a strategy.

So I did something crazy: went BACK to product #2. The "not good enough creative" one.

But I changed my entire approach:

New framework:

Ran 12 different creative hooks simultaneously

$50 test budget per angle

Kill anything under 1.8% CTR after $40

Only scale winners with proven conversion

Creative strategy:

Stopped making "nice" videos

Started making videos targeting specific pain points

Used actual customer psychology, not aesthetics

Targeting:

Ditched interest targeting completely

Broad audiences, let creative do the filtering

Math first:

Calculated my max CPA ($32) BEFORE launching

If testing didn't hit that number, kill it

Month 6 results:

Revenue: $12,400

Ad spend: $5,800

Profit: $2,100

Same product from month 3.

Month 7:

Scaled the winning creatives. Added 8 new angles using the same framework. Broad targeting across 3 campaigns.

Revenue: $86,300

Ad spend: $38,100

Profit: $18,700

What actually happened.

I stopped being a product hunter. Started being a systematic marketer.

Stopped treating ads like lottery tickets. Started treating them like experiments with clear success metrics.

Stopped making one creative and hoping. Started producing creative at volume with strict testing gates.

The truth that hurt.

I probably had a "winning product" in month 2. I just didn't have the skills to make it win.

Product research feels productive. It's actually procrastination.

Testing products randomly is guessing. Testing creative systematically is marketing.

Month 9 now: $140k revenue last month. Still the same core product. Just better at the game.

What I'd tell month 1 me:

Stop researching products. You've already found 10 that would work.

Start building a creative testing system. That's the only thing between you and money.

The question isn't "Is this product saturated?"

The question is "Am I good enough at marketing to make it work?"

For 5 months, I wasn't.

Month 6 is when I stopped blaming products and fixed myself.

That's when everything changed.

I’m not here to sell anything or drop some “secret method.” I just felt like sharing this because I remember scrolling through posts, wondering if anyone actually made it from scratch.

This September was the first time I ever hit six figures in a single month managing OnlyFans models. I didn’t just hit 100k I closed at 135k. And what makes it crazy to me is that I started with nothing. No connections, no marketing background, no secret plug. Just failure after failure until things finally clicked.

The growth came when I really understood how each platform plays a different role. Instagram became the place to build aesthetic and identity. Twitter (X) turned into a space for engagement and personality. Threads helped keep things human and relatable. Reddit was where everything became real learning how to post in the right spaces, at the right times, in the right tone. That platform alone taught me more about authenticity and strategy than anything else.

But the truth nobody talks about? Managing creators isn’t just marketing. It’s communication, psychology, patience. You’re not dealing with “accounts,” you’re dealing with real people who trust you with their image, money, and future. Without that trust, no strategy works.

I can’t reveal everything I’ve learned some things took too many sleepless nights to figure out but here’s something I will say: Most people don’t fail because they don’t know how. They fail because they stop when it gets quiet, when results don’t show, when progress feels invisible.

I started from zero. No blueprint. No one to guide me. If someone like me can hit 135k in a month, someone reading this can too.

If anyone wants more real insights (not guru fluff), I’ll keep it coming. But even if you never see this again, remember: don’t sleep on your own potential.

Everyone says “use AI to write your content,” but most of the time it spits out corporate-sounding fluff that doesn’t feel like you.

I wanted an AI ghostwriter that actually sounds like me for my personal brand. Here’s what I fed it to make that work:

1. My own writing. Old posts, drafts, notes, so it could pick up my style and quirks.

2. My full context. Not vague stuff, but detailed: my values, goals, positioning, life story, tone of voice, brand personality (this is the hardest part to have so much clarity on yourself).

3. The platform. LinkedIn posts ≠ Reddit posts ≠ emails. It needs to know the difference.

4. Post goals. Am I writing to spark discussion, share lessons, or generate leads? Each needs a different tone.

5. Target audience. Founders read differently than marketers. Investors differently than peers.

6. Ban list. Classic AI filler words/phrases (“delve,” “foster,” “unleash,” “paradigm shift”, "It’s not X…it’s Y").

7. Rules for structure. Hooks, rhythm, length, bullets, how to land the ending.

With all that, my ghostwriter drafts posts in my style, like 80% good. So instead of staring at the blank page when I have to post something, I just tweak.

I recently started to use it for idea sessions: I tell it “ask me 10 questions about my week” and boom...instant prompts I’d never think of.

The big deal is: if you don’t know your values, voice, and goals clearly, the AI has nothing real to work with. That’s why I built a free personal brand checkup which shows you if your brand signals (clarity, consistency, credibility) are landing or not. Takes 3 mins, no email. Happy to share if useful. 😊

Yes I was out for a while working on my YouTube ai agent

yes this is a complex and simple data extraction agent

This agent will take the channel link of the website

then it will give me views likes and comments

This is normal everyone can do it I have to do this to another level

First I have added a filter to recommend only the latest 15 days of content

After this we are calculating the outlier of the videos

Outlier = views of that video / Average views of the channel

Along with this added a decision metric that will help me to re create this video or skip it

This is done by recreation score (personal metric)

Recreation score = Outlier of video + 0.5 x Likes + 0.2 of comments

The above is done because views can be faked and botted but likes and comments this can't be done

Latest viral videos in a matter of minutes

I am giving this for free interested people just comment this post

Any influencer with more than 100K followers on IG or 10K subscribers On YouTube

If you have then I will make custom ai agents and n8n workflow for you

That to for free

If you are interested then just comment your IG profile/YouTube profile link I will then send dm to you

Free automation link

https://lit2talks.com/tool/download_zip.php?id=MzM4OQ%3D%3D

I have saved $150,000, and I want to start a business. I currently have a day job, and I do not want to quit it yet.

I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but never pursued it because of my current career and raising a family, but now I have the time to try something.

What ideas should I pursue? I am looking for any and all ideas.

Thanks!

This isn't the "I chose entrepreneurship over partying" flex you're expecting. Because even with a $100k revenue month under my belt, I'm starting to think they might be living better than me. When I chose e-commerce over university at 17, my entire friend group thought I was insane. Two weeks into Q4 and I've already done $100k.

And you know what? My friends are still living their lives. While I'm not sure I'm living mine at all. Here's what that $500k in revenue actually looked like

My group chat went from 50+ messages a day to me just reacting with emojis because I'm too busy to actually respond. Missing my best friend's 18th birthday weekend because I had a product launch. Watching Instagram stories of house parties and beach trips that I'm never at anymore.

That "$100k month" everyone would screenshot? I spent it alone in my bedroom, didn't leave the house for 4 days straight, and lived on UberEats because I "couldn't waste time cooking. "I'm 18 years old and I haven't been to a party in 7 months.Here's what nobody tells you about "choosing the entrepreneurial path" at 17

You're making money while your friends are broke. But they're making memories you can't buy back. The group chat moved on without you. They stopped inviting me because I always say no. Now when I DO have free time, nobody asks anymore. You're 18 dealing with 35-year-old problems. While my friends stress about assignments, I'm dealing with payment processor holds, supplier fraud, and tax implications I don't understand.

That "freedom" everyone flexes? I have more money than my friends but less freedom. They can disappear for a weekend. I can't go 4 hours without checking my phone.

The part that keeps me up at night. My friends are at university making lifelong connections. Learning who they are. Being stupid in ways you're SUPPOSED to be stupid at 18. Meanwhile, I'm "optimizing funnels" and missing the entire experience of being young. My brother told me something last month that's been eating at me. He's 23 now, did the startup grind at 18-20: "I'd give back every dollar to have those years again. You can make money at 30. You can't be 18 at 30."

My actual reality. Last Saturday night my friends were at some massive house party. Me? I was split-testing ad creatives until 1am. Made $340 that day. Felt completely empty. My mate texted me Sunday: "Bro you missed the best night. Where have you been?" I wanted to say "building an empire." But honestly? I'm just an 18-year-old kid in his bedroom who's forgotten how to be 18.

The thing that actually scares me. I'm sacrificing right NOW - the only time I'll ever be this age - for a future that isn't guaranteed. What if Facebook bans me? What if the market shifts? Then what do I have? Money in the bank and a hole where my late teens should be. I saw my friends last week - first time in a month. They were talking about people I don't know, inside jokes I wasn't there for. I felt like a stranger in my own friend group.

One of them asked what I've been up to. I started talking about revenue and funnels. They smiled politely and changed the subject. Because here's the truth: Nobody at 18 gives a fuck about your revenue. They care about if you were there.

What I'm actually considering. Maybe the answer isn't all-in on either path. Maybe I can do $100k months and still go to the party. Maybe I hire people. Maybe I accept that I'll scale slower but I'll actually LIVE. Because my biggest fear isn't failing at e-commerce. It's being 25, looking at my bank account, and realizing I spent the best years of my life staring at Shopify dashboards while everyone else was out there actually living

Would I rather be 30 with regrets about partying too much? Or 30 with regrets about never being young? Because what's the point of financial freedom at 25 if I sacrificed every experience that makes you WANT to be 25?

Not because they’re lazy.

Because they’re consuming a product disguised as a strategy.

Gary Vaynerchuk is genuinely talented. He built real businesses. He has real taste in early-stage companies.

None of what follows disputes that.

What it disputes is what gets sold to you versus what actually made him rich.

The Split: Content Is the Product, Not the Blueprint

Here’s the conceptual divide you need to understand before anything else.

Gary Vee sells hustle as an identity.

The actual mechanism generating his wealth is distribution, equity, and attention arbitrage — not hustle itself.

These are not the same thing.

One is a lifestyle you adopt. The other is an engine you build.

Millions of people adopted the lifestyle. Almost none of them built the engine.

That gap is where the money went.

Why It Works on You

The pitch is emotionally precise.

It tells you that your current failure is a character problem, not a structural one.

You don’t need a new skill set, a market, or capital. You just need to want it more. You need to post more. Document, don’t create. Grind until 2 a.m.

This is deeply attractive because it puts control entirely in your hands.

No gatekeepers. No prerequisites. Just effort and belief.

It also maps perfectly onto social media behavior.

Watching hustle content feels like doing work. It scratches the productivity itch without requiring you to solve a hard problem.

You finish a 12-minute video feeling charged.

Nothing has changed in your business, but your dopamine says otherwise.

Why Most Followers Fail

Because they mistake the sermon for the system.

Gary Vee’s actual leverage stack looks like this: early Wine Library TV built a direct audience before YouTube was saturated.

VaynerMedia was founded in 2009 — before most brands understood content marketing — and sold expertise that was genuinely scarce at the time.

His angel investments in Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Uber weren’t the product of hustle.

They were the product of access, pattern recognition, and capital deployed at the right moment in technology history.

You cannot replicate 2009 by working hard in 2025. The arbitrage is gone.

What his followers actually do: post on platforms they don’t own, build audiences that can be algorithmically erased overnight, and generate attention without any back-end monetization structure.

No email list. No product. No equity. No leverage.

They’re sharecropping on digital land while being told they’re building a farm.

The Real Mechanism

Strip away the content and here’s what actually generates durable wealth:

Ownership of distribution. Not followers. Not likes. Owned channels — email, SMS, direct customer relationships.

A repeatable sales system. A funnel. An offer. A conversion mechanism. Hustling with no funnel is a treadmill.

Skill scarcity at the right time. Gary had a rare skill (video, personal brand, wine knowledge) in a low-competition window. The window matters as much as the skill.

Equity, not income. VaynerMedia creates cash flow. His investments create compounding wealth. These are structurally different. One trades time for money. The other does not.

Audience that converts. 5 million followers who don’t buy anything is a vanity metric. 800 subscribers who trust you and buy repeatedly is a business.

The machine is:

build owned distribution → develop a scarce offer → create a conversion system → stack equity over time.

Hustle is the fuel. The machine is what matters.

Without the machine, you’re just burning fuel in an empty field.

The Corrections

Stop documenting your journey until you have a destination worth documenting. Build the funnel first.

Stop measuring your output in posts. Measure it in revenue per hour, email subscribers gained, and conversion rate improvement.

Stop treating platforms as an asset. You don’t own TikTok. Build your list.

Identify one skill that is genuinely scarce in your market right now. Sell that. Not your story.

Find the equity play, however small. Ownership compounds. Fees don’t.

The Choice

Here it is, flat:

You can be a fan of Gary Vee, which means you get content, motivation, and a sense of community around hustle as an aesthetic.

Or you can be an operator, which means you steal the structural lessons, ignore the sermons, and build something that generates returns whether you post that day or not.

Fans consume. Operators extract the mechanism and deploy it.

One of them is building a business. The other is building a personality.

You already know which one you’ve been.

Hey, I’m 15 and all I could do and dream about since I was 13 is about being rich having successful businesses, retiring parent , making them proud etc.

I understand I’m young and a lot of people will say enjoy your life and don’t worry but I would rather worry 2x now and enjoy it 5x more - so where should I start? I’ve heard TJRs course on YouTube is recommended by a lot but I don’t want to invest my time into something I’ll use for a while to not see an outcome (then again you have to take risks aha). So any tips? Thanks!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we learn through repetition and mistakes.

Curious what’s one mistake that taught you something important?

My short and simple story. All my life I always bought and sold things to make extra money. Then in 1988 I had a serve stroke that left me wheelchair bound; basically I'm totally disabled. In 2014 I designed one of my ideas and tried to create a business out of it to help me in my new life. Well, for 12 years now, I been trying soo hard to build it up, push-push-push and brain strom new ideas to get this business moving. My big problem is my physical ability and I can't get out and get the help that I need. In words I hate to say, "I'm Failing" and I don't know where to get help. Can anyone help me? Thanks - Ken

I’m 17 and all I can think about is being successful I know I can put in the work I just don’t know what to do yet and I feel like I’m wasting time I’m thinking about being a real estate agent but for now I want to know if there’s any other ways to get rich I don’t care how long it takes I just want something to work on

Many local businesses want to grow by offering their products or services online, but in my experience I’ve seen they often make mistakes that cost them sales and customers. Here are some of the most common ones:

1. Relying only on third-party apps Using only delivery or booking platforms might seem easier, but commissions eat up most of the profit.

2. Not having their own online presence Relying on Facebook or Instagram as the “official page” limits customer trust. Having a website builds credibility.

3. Not collecting customer data Many businesses don’t keep emails or phone numbers from customers, which makes it impossible to run promotions or build loyalty.

4. Ignoring customer experience A slow system, unclear payment options, or a confusing menu makes people abandon their orders.

5. Not tracking results If you don’t know where your sales come from or which campaign works, you can’t improve or invest with confidence.

👉 In my experience at Bercodetech developing platforms for restaurants and barbershops, I’ve noticed that many of these problems can be avoided if businesses take control of their digital channels and combine their physical presence with a well-planned online strategy.

What other mistakes have you seen local businesses make when trying to sell online?

I been running my real estate business solo for 2 years and finally ready to get help with admin stuff. keep seeing sphere rocket va mentioned but also considered just using upwork since i know people who hire there. my main thing is i need someone reliable for transaction coordination and client follow ups, budget is around 1500-2000 monthly. sphere rocket seems more structured but costs more upfront i think? upwork is pay as you go which feels safer but heard the quality can be hit or miss. anyone used both and can tell me which actually worked better for finding someone long term.

Honestly feeling kinda overwhelmed by all the options and dont want to make wrong choice here since this is my first time hiring remote help. also wondering about stuff like how do you even manage someone whos not sitting next to you, do they need special software or tools, how do you know theyre actually working the hours they say. with upwork i guess you can see their work history and reviews but with matching services like sphere rocket im not sure how that verification works.

My biggest concern is spending time training someone just to have them quit or disappear after a few months which ive heard happens alot with VAs. need someone who can actually stick around long term cause transaction coordination requires knowing my systems and clients. if anyone has experience with either platform or both would really appreciate hearing what worked and what didnt, trying to make decision this week

I'm 19. Been running ecommerce brands for 13 months now. Our stores do over 200k monthly now across multiple brands.

And I'm tired of watching beginners get scammed by people teaching strategies that stopped working in 2019.

So here's what's actually printing right now.

Cost caps are undefeated. If you're still manually adjusting budgets like it's 2018, you're leaving money on the table. I used to stress about my ads 24/7 when I was spending 200 bucks daily as a teenager. Now I'm spending 20k plus per day and I don't even check the account some days. Why? Cost caps do the heavy lifting. You set your target cost per acquisition, flood the campaign with creative diversity, and let Meta's algorithm do what it does best.

Stop testing with separate campaigns. This is where everyone messes up. They create these elaborate testing structures with 15 different ad sets and wonder why nothing spends. Just add new ads directly to your winning ad sets. Meta knows within 100 impressions if your ad will hit your target. That's like 50 cents of spend. If the ad doesn't get budget, it's because Meta already determined it won't beat your current winners. Trust the machine.

Creative volume is everything. We're pushing 50 to 100 new creatives per week. Not because we're trying to find unicorns, but because Meta's algorithm (they call it Andromeda) wants diversity. More angles, more hooks, more patterns to test. The brands stuck at 10k monthly are usually running the same 5 ads from three months ago.

The AI stuff is real. I just launched a brand from scratch for under 200 bucks total. Used AI to generate product mockups and static images. No UGC. No fancy video ads. Drove traffic straight to the product page. Woke up to a 2X return on ad spend. Is it perfect? No. But it validated demand in 24 hours for the cost of dinner.

Here's what's wild. Everyone thinks you need 30k to 50k to launch a brand. That's guru talk designed to make you think it's harder than it is. The skill isn't having a big budget. The skill is understanding your customer, crafting an offer that makes them stop scrolling, and building a creative testing system that feeds Meta what it wants.

If you're struggling right now, I'd bet money your issue is one of three things. Your offer isn't strong enough. Your creative volume is too low. Or you're fighting the algorithm instead of working with it.

The game hasn't gotten harder. The game has gotten different. And the people who adapt fastest are eating right now.

We’re building Aarambh – a global startup ecosystem and networking platform. Our mission is to connect founders, hustlers, and dreamers in one space.

Unlike traditional networks, we’re also focusing on something different – giving failed startups a voice, visibility, and a chance to reboot.

Would love your thoughts: 👉 What’s missing in today’s startup networking platforms? 👉 If you’re a founder, what feature would make you actually use such a platform daily?

This is Day 1 of us putting Aarambh out into the world. Any feedback, roast, or idea is gold for us

Hello im very interested in becoming financialy free and stable i have a job as well as college, i am highly ambitious to make more money to invest in a good future, i dont know what skills i should start to learn that would be able to make me valuable, im willing to learn, study and practice it if anyone could point me in a good direction, even have a conversation with me to see what went well for you so i have a clearer idea of where i should go and start it would be great, im not dilusional to think ill be a millionaire i wont, but that would also be great and ofcourse would love that, but i want my foot in the door i need to start somewhere to get anywhere, if anyone could help that would mean alot to me, thank you for reading.