Getting rich will not make you happy. Spend some time thinking about the things that truly make you happy and prioritize those things in your daily calendar. For me it’s walking to and from school with the kids, family dinners, bedtimes, watching movies, going on hikes, snowboarding, creating music, and time with my partner. I plan everything else around those activities.

Good luck! That’s a cool niche space. Doing some good stuff for the world while making money is always fun.

I’m curious what you could weld at home to make money. My dad was a welder and he mostly build farm equipment. He had a shop at our house but most of his work was done elsewhere. This was about 40 years ago so things have probably changed.

Man reading all these comments I’m really happy with the decisions I made and the life that I’ve lived so far. In my 40s now and have had successfully business, lots of fun, a great family and friends, lots of travel and adventures, and plenty of money. I can honestly say I wouldn’t change much outside of the obvious hindsight bias. I always chased the thing that was most exciting to me and never settled.

I’ve had a lot of shitty things happen to me as well but they’ve all been temporary setbacks and I’ve always bounced back better.

The only advice I would give my younger self would be to spend more time with my dad before he got cancer and passed away, but there’s no way I could have planned for that.

“Everyone thinks it’s a great idea”

Who’s everyone?

How long would it take you to pay back 300k?

If owning a cafe is your dream there are lower barrier to entry ways to do it.

Do you have coffee experience?

Based on the info you provided this does not seem like a good idea.

I haven’t built a website in years. Shifted to mobile apps and software product management. But when I was doing it years ago wouldn’t touch anything for under 10K and most projects were around 50.

Clients were always getting something beyond a website. Usually marketing and branding, some sort of web or mobile app, and/or a CMS. Most projects would either be heavily brand and content focused or were highly functional.

Clients were all acquired through networking and referral. Built a reputation as the best development shop in a medium market. We were also really good at marketing because that’s what we sold.

We would bill for the projects and get paid at each two week milestone. And then charge a monthly service and maintenance fee. Spent a lot of time scoping and writing PRDs before doing any development work in order to be as efficient as possible.