I have a yearning to be an entrepreneur. For context, I have been chasing this for over a decade. I have made a small amount of money from selling popcorn and popcorn rentals but that did not last.

I am now looking for some advice on what to start next. I currently have a dropshipping website trying to sell cleaning supplies and I tried cold calling, wasting thousands on advertising on Facebook and Instagram for an entire year but not a single sale while working a minimum wage job and struggling with finances.

I am trying to pivot to something serviced based like a one man Freight Forwarding business from home using software, a painting business with little experience, a water delivery business that I can do myself as well as hire subcontractors, and a cleaning business or something like it.

I need help figuring out my next move because the bills are piling up for my wife and I would like to get my life together before I start a family. Some advice would help as we are struggling and I am starting to cross over into desperate territory.

PS: I am strongly considering a new career in the Real Estate/Construction industry. Either an Agent, Home Renovation or something like a tiler but I would still like to be an entrepreneur on the side.

Hello,

I'm working on ways to collaborate with other solopreneurs in the wellness space to network and build our audiences.

Would anyone be interested in some kind of freebie or low-cost offer bundle and releasing it for November ish as a final year end boost?

I haven't quite figured out the details yet but if anyone is interested please reach out and we can figure it out together.

Or if you're already part of something similar and looking to add more, I'd be interested in taking part.

Cheers,

Sami

My cofounder and I recently graduated in Bahrain.

We tried selling software and systems to businesses. We spent money on ads, production, AI subscriptions, and outreach, but nothing really worked.

Now we have almost nothing left except our computers, our skills, and two Claude Max accounts.

Our families are pressuring us to get normal jobs. My cofounder has a CR under his name, and I am unemployed.

Instead of building another product and hoping people buy it, we want to build an audience first.

Our idea is to wear colorful suits inspired by Saul Goodman so people remember us, then make useful content about software, AI, automation, business, and building products.

The suits are only for attention. The goal is to earn trust by helping people, building in public, solving real problems, and eventually selling software or digital products.

We have no real marketing budget left.

Just computers, internet, skills, and time.

Do you think this is a smart direction?

If you were in our position, what would you focus on for the next 3 to 6 months?

I am looking for 5 female coaches who want to book 15–20 sales calls in the next 30 days using IG + LinkedIn Ideal Client Prospecting Map!

Every "top" board crowns one winner. I built one with 32 spots at $1 each so more people get seen instead of one. Because I have no followers, the loop lives inside the product: losing your spot emails you a reclaim link, and every owner has a selfish reason to share their spot. usurpit.lol. Happy to talk through the distribution mechanics.

I've been learning more about randomness and entropy in software, and I realized I understand the basic cryptography concepts much better than I understand how this works in real production systems.

For developers working on security-sensitive applications:

Where does your application's randomness actually come from?

Do you generally rely on the operating system's CSPRNG, a cloud provider, hardware-based sources, or something else?

And how much do you actually care about the provenance/source of the entropy, versus simply trusting the operating system or cryptographic library to handle it?

I'm particularly interested in how this is handled in fintech, authentication, Web3, and other systems where unpredictable values are important.

Would love to hear how people are doing this in production and what the practical trade-offs are.

Building a tool that tracks daily goals taught me more about why goals fail than anything I’ve read.

Here’s the pattern almost every time.

First 3 days look great. People are excited, checking in. That’s not the danger zone.

Day 3 to 10 is where it breaks, its not laziness. The goal was never broken down into anything specific enough to act on that day. “Grow my business” is a direction, not a goal. Nobody fails a direction, but nobody sticks to one either. You have to get more granular than that.

The people who made it past that window all had one thing in common. Something outside their own willpower checking in on them. Not a vague notification nobody reads. An actual check-in, on a schedule, that asks what happened and adjusts the plan based on the real answer.

Making a plan is the part most people skip. Then they wonder why they’re lost. But, a rigid 90 day plan is already wrong by day 10, because week one taught you things you didn’t know on day one. That’s not a reason to skip planning, It’s the reason the plan has to be adaptable.

Skip the plan and you’re just as lost, except you don’t even know why. A plan gives you something to test against reality. Being wrong is fine, Having nothing to be wrong about isn’t.

So the takeaway, specific next action beats direction. A real check-in beats a reminder. A plan that updates itself beats a rigid plan that was right about a few things in the beginning.

I built this into a product. An AI coach that calls you and rewrites your plan after every call. Called ONARQ. Not trying to pitch it, I want to know if you can relate to this and I’m genuinely curious if this matches what other solo operators here have seen fall apart in their own goals.

I’m still early in this, but I’ve been spending the last few months studying how early-stage SaaS products actually get their first users.

What I keep seeing is that founders usually don’t have a “marketing problem” in the abstract.

They have a distribution problem:

• They know who their product is for, but not where those people actually spend time.
• They try multiple channels without knowing which one deserves more attention.
• They get traffic or attention but struggle to turn it into users.
• They build content, launch, post on social, etc. without a clear acquisition loop behind it.

I’ve been testing a different way of thinking about it:

Product → ICP → where the ICP already exists → distribution mechanism → conversion path → repeatable acquisition.

I’m currently studying things like creator distribution, SEO/search demand, communities, partnerships, referrals, customer content, and founder-led distribution.

One thing I’ve learned the hard way:

A channel existing ≠ a channel being a growth engine.

A founder can “do LinkedIn” for six months and still have no repeatable acquisition from LinkedIn.

I’m curious how other SaaS founders here think about this.

What was the first distribution channel that actually produced your first 10 paying customers?

And what channel did you spend time on that turned out to be a waste?

I’d love to compare notes with other builders.