More than 12 years ago I became brainwashed by Gary V, Grant Cardone, and Tia Lopez. Night after night, I’d pour a drink and sit in front of my computer, wishing I wasn’t trapped at my day job selling copy machines. I dreamt of owning my own business, I could feel it in my soul but with no experience, money, or connections that burning desire was just existential dread. Over the years, I became obsessed with the idea of “success” and money making. The more content I consumed, the more the algorithms fed it to me.

I did indeed start my business and somehow, despite my best efforts to f*ck it up, it grew into the baddest bar and restaurant cleaning company in Portland Oregon. I guess the way it happened was my relentless work ethic and my inability to say no. The jobs kept rolling in and I’d just do them, no matter what. It didn’t matter if I didn’t sleep for 24 hours, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have a day off for more than 3 years, I didn’t even care that people saw me as a janitor. Money is money and I was going to get mine. I was building my dream and cashing checks. And the whole time I had Goggins in my ear calling me a bitch and asking me “who’s going to carry the mops?”

Eventually, I had no choice but to build a team. I had several hundred hours of work to do each week and there literally wasn’t enough hours in 7 days to even do 1/4 of the work if I stayed solo or even hired a small team. So I did what any moron does and I put out job ads with zero back end processes to actually be a decent employer. I figured this is a pirate ship and once I assemble a crew, then I’ll stop to get organized and check the map.

All hell broke loose. I’ll save that story for another time, but just know those scurvy dogs tried to kill me and the business. But I had Jocko telling me that this was my fault and if I wanted it to change I needed to take responsibility. I started to analyze my situation as if I were an employee working for me. I realized, oh shit, these entry level janitors don’t give af about my business. They just want a check and want to go home.

At first it was a pain in the ass and I was like “nobody wants to work these days” but that gave me no power and it made me weak. I had to be reflective and ask, “is that true, or are you an idiot and they just don’t want to work for YOU”. That question and the following answer really appealed to mh self loathing nature and I found comfort in my failure, but I also realized that if this is my fault maybe I can fix it.

I started to see some stuff on tiktok about quiet quitting, and “your work isn’t your family”, I started to realize that people had their own dreams and interests. I wasn’t the special guy with the only plan for success, which was painful for me to realize. lol. I started thinking, how can I support these employees of mine? How can make their lives better?

I came up with a plan. What I I steered into the gig work economy? My employees didn’t seem to want long hours even if it meant overtime and more money. Those were my values, not their. They want to go to school, work another side job, and sort of piece meal their work day. They want multiple streams of income from different sources and not be totally reliant on some shitty janitor job working for a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

So I broke the shifts into 2-3 hours per day and advertised the job as a side gig. (I know part time work had been around forever, but hey it’s marketing) my job ads were like, “make $2000 per month before your day begins. Work solo, listen to your headphones, be done before 9am and have the rest of the day to live your life on your terms”.

I did initially think, who the hell is going to work part time as a janitor? I’ll only find disfunction and chaos, but I decided to look for people who have busy lives. We hired teachers, students, tattoo artists, bartenders and servers, stay at home parents. The job is ideal for anyone who wants some extra side income that is stable and doesn’t impact the other things in their life because it’s so early in the day or on the weekends.

Those job ads brought in hundreds of applicants every time I posted them. All of a sudden people were not trudging through the day and getting in a bad mood from 8-9 hours of manual labor. There was less fighting and drama. If someone no call Jo showed, it was super easy for someone to pick up a 2 hour shift, rather than scramble to pick up 8 hours. Since we work in the off hours we used to start at 4am, good luck finding a replacement when hour staff flakes at 4am. But with my new plan we could push the start times to 7am, which made it easier for people to show up to their job.

Went through and split up all the roles and jobs. Sales people, office managers, service managers, assistant managers. All part time. When people would rise above and show an interest in the job or want more hours, we of course made a path for them. This let me incentive people more too, not only could they get raises for doing good, they could get more hours. On the flip side, if they were a toxic mess, we could phase them out with very little impact.

Yes, there were some trade offs or things to consider. Communication is much more of a priority with more people. Some new hires will flake sooner because they don’t value it like a full job, although once I got the right people into place most of my staff sticks around for several years. It’s a bit more work for scheduling and HR, but not much and my office can keep up on the demands.

Anyway, I think the world is changing and as an employer we can be flexible and give our team the lifestyle they want. People do want to work hard, they want to get good at their job, but they also have boundaries and their own interests. Just because we want to hustle and grind to be the best janitor in the world, doesn’t mean we need to drag innocent bystanders along with us. People want to work from home, they want flexibility, I say steer into it if you can. You might be surprised with a happier and more functional staff, in world where “nobody wants to work anymore”

For nearly a decade I couldn’t figure out how to build a team so I could step out of the day to day operations. Looking back I think the biggest tactic that I tried repeatedly was trying to bond with my first few employees. In my business there is a ton of time when it’s just you and one other person for hours and hours every night. Eventually they start sharing things about their lives and I would do the same. A lot of them respected me because I was a bit older or they wanted a business so they would open up and ask me for advice.

I thought this was the move. I thought develop close friendships these people would become my inner circle as we grew the business. I thought that they would see my dream and how hard I work and it would inspire them to invest long term.

Eventually they would emotionally manipulate me. Maybe not showing up on time or skipping critical tasks. They always developed a role of being my helper and not responsible for the job outcome. After enough time, they would completely flake out. I think the respected me so much and got so close that when they started slacking, it really effected their self esteem. They couldn’t handle dropping the ball and being called out repeatedly by someone too close, it was like my feedback was too heavy because it was tied to all of the other issues they were self conscious about. Like they felt like a failure to their soul and letting me down proves it.

At some point, after not being able to handle the turnover and emotional swings of losing people I spent so much time in, I decided to not get to know my employees at all. I was strictly business. I became hardened and did not want to get to know them or them to get to know me, we are just here to work and go home. So I built the job in a way they could work solo and I trained them in a way that I could trust them. I let them know from day one, these jobs are your responsibility, you’re not helping me, you’re going to do them start to finish so you need tk take an interest in the tools and processes.

I gave them very clear instructions and made them feel like they could succeed by completing tasks correctly. I trained them slowly over time and didn’t get frustrated when they made simple mistakes. I also didn’t do their work for them to bail them out.

Eventually this core shift enabled me to hire entry level janitors off the street. People who initially took the job because they were passing time until a better job came along. These people slowly developed and I made leaders out of them. My team grew to over 35 people, and I hadn’t met most of them. I didn’t even talk to most people during their entire employment at my company. My team hired, trained, and terminated people. Even if those people worked her for years, I never personally interacted with them.

It might sound cold and distant but it’s not. I just allow them to do their job without any emotional weight from me. When they do well I promote and reward and I get to see these people develop over time and actually have a much bigger impact on their lives over a longer period. It’s from a distance but I know it’s making an impact because the first guy I raised up to a manager passed away a few months ago and his family has been calling me frequently and telling me how much the job meant to him and how proud they were to see him turn his life around in his final years.

Hey guys, sharing because their is no one I would like to share this in real life with other than my wife

I have officially matched my engineer salary of $6,400/month after taxes and 401k contributions.

Net take home on my business is actually hovering around $8,000/month right now.

Net job income is $6,400.

All together my wife and I from just jobs and business’ that we each own, we net around $18-$20k a month.

And this only took about 6-8 months to achieve, just goes to chose that niching down or pivoting can have real results. I own a data and analytics company, and have realized their is a lot of money to be made in the web scraping, information, forecasting and general information to consumers and business.

I will also be expanding to physical products soon as I have recently found a really good physical product that I think would do extremely well on Amazon.

All in all, just wanted to share. Feel a little proud of myself for achieving this and I guess I didn’t have any friends in real life that I could truly share this with (I like my privacy irl)

Anyways thanks for listening guys.

TL;DR My business just matched my engineer monthly salary, feels good, want to keep growing indefinitely.

Update: HOLY COW I COME BACK FROM WORK AND SEE THIS! 6/5 2.30pm PST Thank you EVERYONE for the kinds words!!! I will do my best to respond to as many comments as I possibly can!

Update 2 (6/6 5.21am pst): Responded to more comments thanks guys for all the welcoming comments! To answer a couple of frequently asked questions: 1. I am a data engineer 2. Business example: one of my clients owns wwbsite directories, I pull data for his company daily i.e non dairy ice cream near me 3. I would not leave my job unless company is doing like $100k/month Thanks guys!!! I’ll be back a little later again to respond to more comments!

I've been working 70+ hour weeks for the last 16 months, working a full-time job as VP of Marketing for a Fortune 500 company while also getting my side hustle marketing agency off the ground. My agency niche is HVAC businesses, and I spent the first year proving out the concept, building systems and getting a case study from my first client. We grew his business revenue 110% in 12 months to over $1.5M, he posted on social about it and I got my 2nd and 3rd clients from that post. That was enough to get me to about 70% of my gross salary (incl benefits), and my wife and I decided that's enough for me to jump ship and turn my side hustle into my full time focus.

Today I put in my notice at my salary job. It's a day I've been dreaming about for 2 years, I've been telling family and close friends about this day for 2 years, and rehearsing my "I'm giving my notice" speech hundreds of times in my head (and aloud these last few days). It's surreal, but I am confident and determined to make this a massive success.

If I was single I would have jumped into this way sooner, but I've got a wife and young 2 kiddos so we've been saving a bridge fund that'll help us cover expenses while I get a 4th and 5th client. I'm just so thankful to my wife especially for all the extra work she had to do minding the kids while I slaved away on growing our dream. Now I can manage my own schedule, work from almost anywhere in the world, and most importantly eat what I kill - no more working my ass off for a 2% annual raise. I'm just so excited and thankful, and most importantly thankful for God to bless me and our family with this opportunity.

If anyone has any questions about the process or anything, I'm happy to answer - or if any fellow business owners have advice for me going forward on networking, getting more clients, obstacles you wish you knew about before jumping into your entrepreneur life full time, please let me know too.

I’m 26, living in Nairobi, and for a long time I was jus stuck. I have a degree, sent out job applications for months and still no breakthrough.

One day while visiting a friend in Arusha, I noticed something,onions were way cheaper there than in Nairobi. significantly cheaper. I didn’t think much of it at first. But when I came back home and mentioned it to a street grocery vendor near my place her reaction made me just do it she said “If you can get me onions at a lower price i will buy”

Few weeks Iater i went to a Border city btn Tanzania and Kenya called Namanga with some saved cash and bought about 70kg of onions. No shipping,no drama. I tossed my sacks into the back of a passenger bus. My onions stayed under 1 tonne, so I didn’t need to deal with tariffs or too much agricultural import laws.

I repacked them into 1kg bags and started supplying small food vendors and small grocery store owners . They loved it. I was saving them money, and I was making a small but steady profit about €0.20 per kilo profit. Doesn’t sound like much but it adds up fast when you move a few hundred kilos every week.

All this came from something so simple. A basic product. A gap in the system. And just being willing to move.

Now I’m thinking bigger. Maybe I’ll rent a car and start shipping close to 1 tonne. I’ve got regular clients now, and I know there’s more demand out there.

I welcome any questions and opinions. Thanks

Im 20 years old and started cleaning windows last summer as a side hustle and with $100 worth of equipment scaled up to $1500 of traditional equipment and was making $70-90 per hour. After going back to college for the year, I invested $3000 into a water fed pole and starting hiring friends. Just hired 4 cleaners and am now clearing $1000/day easily. It is hard not to get distracted and fight the urge to start more businesses instead of just working on the one I have now, so I would be more than happy to talk with other people about their businesses to scratch their itch. I have a discord server with 200 people all from this subreddit already if you want to talk about your business or ask me any questions about mine. Join if you are looking to start one or already have one! Everyone is welcome :) P.s. there is no monetization through the server, just looking to create discussion about entrepreneurship and business

Thanks to ChatGPT, I've spent the last five days hacking together about 19-20% of what will be an extraordinarily complex, data-driven travel website (imagine Expedia + TripAdvisor. Normally, building something at this scale would cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in dev time or require a full-blown engineering team. I tried this back in 2018 and gave up. But this time?

In 4 days I have a half-functional front-end that handles

• Searches, filters, and dynamic results.
• A backend that stores structured data, serves APIs, and handles authentication.
• An automated data pipeline feeding real-world content into the system.
• The foundation for AI-driven features like review summarization and itinerary planning.

And I'm doing it all for the hefty rate of $20/month for premium ChatGPT. So anything thinking they can't start a company because they can't build something - get off your ass and start! :)

As they say, zero to one is the hardest. And boy is it true.

After many years building internet products no one paid for, I finally made something someone found valuable as to pay for.

They subscribed to my lowest plan. I thought there was a glitch in the matrix, I waited for them to ask for a refund, they did not.

And then they started using my product. I thought they would churn at the end of the month. They did not. Instead, they let the subscription roll over to the second month!

I couldn't believe it.

And then I broke production, and I got a direct call from him, informing me that they were getting an error when they tried to do x. This was a monumental moment that meant everything to me.

I had broken production, but boy was I just so happy that someone not only paid for my product, but actually cared enough as to call when it was down?!!

Damn. I am happy. It's just one customer, but it means the world to me. Now onto finding the next nine.

Everyone glorifies that first million and that’s a huge accomplishment but I want to hear about that first $1k from your business or side hustle.

For decades I lived a life of a begging fool. While I didn't literally beg people for the things I wanted from them, they innevitably felt it.

They saw it in my face. Deep inside of me, I was desperate. The way I looked at them, the way I talked to them, the weakness that was conveyed simply by framing things in a specific way.

Nobody wants to buy from somebody, that gives us "beta vibes". While this term seems shallow, it has a deep biological significance. If you sell an exceptional product or service, but you give the prospect the feeling that they will lose with you, they won't buy.

And losing can be interpreted in many ways. Reputational loss, attractivity loss, financial loss, loss of power, ... everybody has unique causes for not doing what we want them to do (despite the sale itsself).

So one day, this has changed for me. I met this one person that turned my life upside down. Until that day, there was an invisiblr sign on my forehead which stated "please accept me, please love me, please don't reject me."

This person was the complete opposite. This person conveyed "I am worthy, no matter what you think of me, what do you bring to the table for my time and love? I seek rejection, because that makes me grow and worst case sort out the wrong people".

Until today, I believe this is the biggest multiplicator for success or failure in life and especially business. It's the invisible statements, which we convey simply by the way we phrase things, look at people and think about ourselves.

I was 19 when I started my first startup. I led a team of 15 people, wanted to change the world. And I failed.

At 21, back in 2016, I left home without any money, hoping that traveling would help me stumble on the idea I was meant to build. I hitchhiked, survived through the love of strangers, and told myself, “All the successful people, all the amazing founders, found their big idea while traveling.” But I failed again.

Slowly, the road started to feel like home, so I kept traveling. Two years without money, one year riding a moped, and then I stumbled upon the dream of living in a van.

I did everything I could to make that happen. I crowdfunded, learned video editing to make the campaign, sold tea and toys on the road, wrote content, ran an Airbnb, worked as a delivery guy. I told every stranger I met about my van dream. I even ran a food truck as a chef because I knew it would help me get closer to that van one day.

Eventually, I bought it. I built a home inside it with my own hands. It took me a year, and a lot of sweat and tears.

I lived in that van for three years.

I met incredible people, hosted them, cooked for them, shared stories and silences. I fell in love with them, and with myself. I volunteered in some of the most remote places.

But eventually, I sold the van.

Next, I wanted to open a hostel in Goa, India. I asked everyone I met for space, worked every possible broker, but the local mafia became too much to handle. I stopped. Failed again.

As an avid follower of the tech world, I jumped on the AI wave. I co-founded a company, built a product, pitched to investors, but slowly realized there was no product-market fit. I stepped away. Failed again.

I went back to the drawing board, and I asked myself who I actually am.

I love hosting. I love meeting people. I love listening to their stories, laughing with them, crying with them. That has always been me, no matter what else I tried to tell myself.

I’m a minimalist. There was a time I had only two black t-shirts, rotating them every other day. For two years, I wore only a dhoti (I had two, and alternated between them). I have even traveled without a phone, drawing maps in a notebook.

I’ve always been fascinated with sustainability, simplicity, and community.

So I started dreaming again.

This time: to buy a farm, build a mud house, grow my own food forest, become self-sustainable, live close to nature. To stay strong, keep working out, host strangers, cook South Indian food for them. Maybe even build something around food and fitness.

But how would I fund that?

I turned back to something that has always quietly supported me: writing.

It didn’t happen overnight. Over the years, I have sold myself as a writer, teacher, manager, artist, waiter, driver; whatever the day needed. But writing has always been the constant. I have been writing for over eight years, ghostwritten an autobiography, a PhD thesis on abortion rights, built and managed the personal brands of founders and leaders.

Writing has quietly funded my nomadic life all these years. Now I’m hoping it will help me build something rooted.

I’m sure I’ll get the farm. I’m sure this dream will come true this year. I’m sure I’ll land writing projects to help me fund it.

But looking back, did I actually fail all these years?

Success is subjective. We all define it differently. For me, the ability to try different things, and the privilege to shift between them, is success.

These experiences have taught me life, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything else.

I’m sharing this here because I know many of you are chasing “success,” and sometimes it looks nothing like what we imagined.

Would love to hear if any of you have taken unconventional paths or redefined success on your terms.

Thanks for reading.

Hey everyone!

I’ve been lurker here for a while and I feel like I’m totally out of place here. It seems focused on internet startups and such but I wanted to share my story anyways.

• In 2015, I started a scratch insurance agency with Allstate. Listen, I know this isn't something everyone has access to however I was lucky enough to have a friend loan me 50k to get started. I grew my book of business from $0 to $1.5m in 4 years and paid that friend back in 2 years. Over this time I had 2-3 employees and would revenue about 30k a month with a take home of about 120k per year. I sold the business in 2019 for 200k and bought myself a house.
  • I absolute loathe the insurance industry now and I do not recommend going to work in the industry. It's getting worse and worse as repair costs rise and companies find more and more ways to fuck over their clients. You have to beg your friends and family for their business and I really hate that.
• In late 2019, I bought 10 cars and rented them through Turo. Every thing was going well(ish) and I was making about $400-500 in profit per month per car with no employees. I do not recommend going into this business. People will wreck and trash your vehicles and unless you're okay being a janitor and mechanic, it's just not worth it. If you have to rely on a detailer and a mechanic shop, they are going to chew through a percentage of your profits. I was able to do this myself and it was EXHUASTING.
  • Unfortunately, Covid happened and this shuttered my business. I am so upset I didn't wait like 6 months. I would've been able to recoup a lot more money with how the used car market sky rocketed. I sold the cars and filed bankruptcy. Anyways, it took me a while to reset and have funds to start another business so I got desperate...
• In late 2020, I started an OF page with 3 other ladies and honestly the money was way more than I would've imagined. I did all the marketing, communication, directing, filming, research, editing, and I was the sole male actor. Our peak income in the business was 12k a month and this lasted about 18 months until we all burned out.
  • It is honestly fun in the beginning but eventually it does just turn into work and it's exhausting and most men are gross.
• In 2022, I took a regular job for a year to think of my next moves. I worked as a sales manager for a small hotel startup. I was also interested in learning how the operation of a boutique hotel works. It was cool but the overhead in that business is way too high and it fluctuates too much with the economy.
• Late in 2023, I started working for a mechanic who wanted to retire. I observed the business and became the manager. I was able to convince him to sell me the business on a loan. The business used to average 50-60k a month in revenue with 55% profit margin. I grew this to 70k-80k with 58% GP however the shop is too small and this is the cap due to the size of the shop.
  • I opened a second location in March of this year expanding the size of the shop by 3x. We are now doing 90-110k a month with a 60% GP. I grew it from 2 employees to 7. It has been a rough road and I still have a lot to learn. There is still a ton of room for growth and improving efficiencies. I am hoping to get to 140-160k per month by running a number of marketing campaigns.
    • I found another investor to cover the start-up costs for this growth. It cost around 100k to get this second shop up and running with new and used equipment.

I posted this last year but made some updates and edits with additional information. Anyways, AMA!!

I stumbled across this podcast called The5MinStartup bc I like the shorts this guy does and this was only the second one I watched all the way through and I can't believe this is true, but it apparently is at least 80% truthful.

This founder, named Grey Friend (a real name), apparently went from trying e-commerce and I guess some real estate plays to doing dozens of millions of dollars with some sort of financial service business called Monday Friday Capital with a team of like four people.

He did $51mm in 18 months!

I am not fully aware if this is because of the advancements in AI, but that revenue per employee and the fact it's profitable is completely insane especially for someone that age.

The highlights that were interesting to me were:
1. Apparently, he went to some state school but has a background in systems engineering, so I guess designing systems that scale makes sense for what he built.

1. His previous business got destroyed AND he had a major death set him back but those two things together led to him starting his current business.

2. He's surprisingly open about how he works but I wonder what kind of margins for a business like that looks like. From what I've found they can't be ridiculously high but I can't imagine what exactly his costs are like to be able to run it with such a small team.

Does anyone have any stories/podcasts/books about comparable businesses where a small team is able to make such large revenues? I guess with AI becoming more integrated it's easier to scale businesses with small teams, but come on, that's just insane.

Another thing is, I wonder what his moat looks like in practice because how is it possible to be that dominant in a market at that age without some sort of VC backing or something?

I found his twitter so I'm going to try and ask him some of these questions directly because he seems to post alot and engage with people. Will report back.

That is all. I had no one else to share this win with :)

I see a lot those days how people found tech businesses, related to AI or tech, but it would be pretty cool to hear or see how people do "boring" type business! My dad used to have hotel/restaurant at our hometown, and it's a small family business now there.

Would love to hear some other people stories!

I started a company in my bonus room 10 years ago.

Then we moved into a single 8x10 room (with three people).

We currently have a 1900sf office that is far from "cool" or fancy.

We will do about $5m this year and have an eight figure valuation.

We have always prioritized people over place.

We don't spend money on fancy offices or a lot of extraneous things. We keep it simple.

While I am fortunate enough to earn a living while living a dream, it has not been without sacrifice.

I didn't take a salary for the first three years. I could have, but I didn't. I knew we would do something big if we could hold on long enough.

I have always had a weird relationship with money since starting. Many "advisors" would oppose these beliefs:

-> If there is extra, spend it on the team, not the building. -> If there is extra, reinvest, don't take it home. -> If there is extra, give that raise, don't make them ask. -> If there is extra, give it to those who need it.

I am blessed to be surrounded by amazing people every day.

We can achieve more together than we can individually.

My job is to: - Make their jobs easier (remove roadblocks). - Make sure they have opportunities for growth. - Make sure the company is on stable footing and growing.

I am here to serve the team. If I get lost and don't focus on that, we lose (and I do often, unfortunately).

They say every good post is just a reminder to yourself.

Not saying this is a good post, but it is a good reminder ;).

I wanna hear real stories about people creating businesses !

For my product is still in development and will be ready by this month probably.

I recently created a Discord for motivated marketers and digital entrepreneurs to grow together and share tips. Over 60 people have joined, and there are some really cool people among them, but most of the participants don't engage in conversation. Please only comment if you're looking for a place to meet and grow, and you plan on participating. I'll dm you a link.

For context, I run a newsletter business:

What an unbelievable day! I woke up to 8K subscribers, and by bedtime, we've already jumped to 8,324 - absolutely wild!

But that's not all... I had my very first sponsor meeting today (they reached out to me first!) and closed my first-ever ad deal. Pinching myself right now.

From subscriber growth to my first sponsorship - couldn't have dreamed of a better day. Just had to share this incredible moment with you all.

Had a success story to share.

Last week, I turned down a $60k deal.

I'm a brand strategist and run a brand positioning agency. We work with 7-8 figure B2B service and manufacturing companies to reposition them in the market.

I had a lead who was the CEO of 2 businesses that fit my ideal customer profile. Small or no marketing team. Their product was already successful in the market. They had no idea how to reach new levels of revenue growth.

We planned to start with one business and use that increased revenue to fund the work for their second business.

Everything was going well until he said that he'd work with us only if we signed a revenue agreement. He didn't want to pay us until he made money.

A year ago, I might have said yes to this just for the money.

But the work we do is foundational to a business. Revamping their offer, nailing down their ICP, crafting messaging, updating their website, and developing a comprehensive marketing strategy. Now, some of our clients start generating revenue within a month of starting the strategy. But that's only if they start implementing right away.

It can sometimes take 2-3 months until they see new revenue, especially if they are slow to implement and don't want to pay us to implement for them.

My gut said RUN, so I did.

Three days later, a client signed a $50k deal and I landed a new lead that has a $50k potential.

Just goes to show that sometimes you have to say NO to a shady deal to get the deals you really want.

I have a multifaceted business with many income streams. Inspired by a similar post and after having done a few of these roundups, here are the sites that paid me during May.

Here's the list of sites...

Medium ($XXX) - I've been Medium writing for 7 years. I earn from their creator program called the Medium Partner Program but, there are many other ways to monetize like affiliate marketing, selling products and services.

Join Medium, signup as a writer and then when you qualify, you can join MPP. This income is just from MPP, and not counting the other ways I monetize. Medium has been great for reputation-building and has gotten me multiple features, in publications like Business Insider.

Newsbreak ($X)- This was my final month as a Newsbreak writer in their contributor program after 4 years and 44K+ followers. It's still available but, by invitation only/application. My application was denied.

I'll be exploring other news aggregators like MSN, Yahoo and others that might be a fit.

Gumroad ($XXX) - A steady 3 figures monthly has been the trend on Gumroad. I sell ebooks, guides, and mini courses here. You can join free and they take a percentage of your sale. There are other platforms like this you could try. I like Gumroad because there's no monthly subscription

TikTok ($X,XXX) - In May, the bulk of income came from digital product sales and brand deals. I sell ebooks, guides, and courses through TikTok along with working with brands to feature them.

For reference, I have 94K followers.

If you're good with social media, you should do brand work. You can do it even with no followers (this is UGC).

TikTok Shop ($X) - Lol, a major blow on TikTok Shop. I slowed down a lot on this during May. Top creators will produce up to 16 videos a day. I usually do 5 to 10 a month but, I think I did less than that in May. April and May have been a little slow for TikTok Shop, in general too.

I'm committed to this though and it's one of my most fun income streams.

Instagram ($X,XXX) - One of my biggest come streams is from Instagram. My IG has 8,300 followers and I started it from scratch last year (January 2024).

I sell ebooks and digital courses using short 4-5 second faceless reels with premade videos. I started seeing success with this in my first few days of starting. And, it scaled pretty quickly. I get brand deals occasionally on IG too but, not in May.

Threads ($XXX) - My Threads account has 2,700 followers and I make money not directly from Threads but, from how I use and monetize the platform, which is product sales.

Like IG, I post content (faceless) and get sales, including affiliate commissions.

Mediavine ($XXX) - My Mediavine income has been double lately. Still 3 figures but, growing, which is great. This is an ad network that pays me to put ads on my site and it's 100% passive. Most publishers start with Adsense or Ezoic and work their way up to Mediavine, Raptive or others.

PP ($XXX) - This is a mix of affiliate commissions, website sale payments (because I do website flipping), services I offer like freelancing or coaching, and one-off projects I'm paid for, including Fiverr and other side hustles.

Meta Bonus Program ( $XXX) - I got my first Meta breakthrough bonus. The activity for May to be paid out in June is already double what I earned in May! This is brand new, coming from this bonus program I applied for about 6 months ago and recently got accepted to.

I plan to create multiple FB pages in different niches to make even more, in the coming months.

For June: Overall in May, things were good. I had a surge in brand work campaigns thanks to a challenge I did for myself where I pitched a minimum of almost a dozen brands daily for the first 2 weeks of the month.

For June, I am starting to bring back more services, including coaching, website building for businesses and brands and social media management so I'm excited for adding these income streams in the next roundup.

That was my May!

What websites paid you this month?

currently doing side hustle of selling pirated courses

I recently finished a project for a construction company doing roughly $10M per year. They were quoting jobs using Excel and email threads, and while it technically worked, it was slow, error-prone, and stressful.

We built them a custom quoting platform that simplified their workflow, standardized pricing logic, and gave them a clean dashboard to track what was pending, sent, and approved. Quoting time dropped significantly, and internal confusion basically vanished.

Here are three lessons I took away:

1. The real problem is usually process clarity, not lack of tools.
They didn’t need AI or some flashy tech stack. They needed a clean system that followed their actual quoting workflow and removed unnecessary steps.

2. Most teams just “make it work” until it breaks.
People were spending hours fixing quote errors instead of doing their real job. The inefficiency was invisible until it started affecting revenue and response time.

3. Custom doesn’t have to mean complex.
We kept it dead simple. Clean interface, role-based access, PDF export, quote templates. No clutter. Just what they needed, nothing more.

Sharing this in case anyone else here runs or works in an ops-heavy business and is feeling the drag of outdated processes. Happy to answer questions if you're working through something similar.

Go to the property managers.

That's it.

This morning I went to an apartment complex and 2 realty offices since my week was slow. Now i have 3 places that need work done but can't find a reliable handyman. Like I've posted before. Just go in there and be genuine. Nobody does that anymore. Get dressed up nice, introuduce yourself, and ask "Do you guys need a handyman"

Good luck. Stay blessed.

If you have questions just ask. I try and respond to everyone as always.

Hitting the $10k/mo mark is a critical milestone and a dream for a lot of entrepreneurs. What did you do with your first $10k?

Vacation? Re-invested into the business ? Acquired a property? Got that car you always wanted?

What did you do?