A miscalculating statement small businesses and founders are hammered is, ‘Ideas are worthless! Only execution matters.’

No, this is a misinterpretation.

You had patents and other protected IP, which are expensive to get and worth exactly as much as your ability to defend them.

Our lawyer took a long time

Sounds expensive.

You clearly had cash to spend on a lawyer, and were lucky enough that the company chose to settle.

You must construct additional pylons!

From 300 odd followers on Twitter/X, I’ve managed to generate a couple hundred thousand in project revenue over the last few years. I’m a tech consultant targeting large orgs, so that’s really only a few projects, and it’s mostly come in the form of referrals from colleagues - generally, they get a job that’s too small for their gigantic company, so they send it my way and it’s plenty big for me.

My content strategy is generally:

1. Posts venting about customers. Anonymised and time-shifted, so that it’s less bad if customers find it. Colleagues in my field relate to these posts and so I get a small amount of quality engagement from them that keeps me front-of-mind
2. Links with commentary
3. Technical solutions (link to my blog)
4. Replies on relevant hashtags, and to relevant content for the people I follow

And to be honest, I mostly just use it for #1 lately.

Feel free to ask me about that, if you have questions.

In general, I don’t know of anyone that is a particular Twitter/X marketing specialist at the moment. It’s not very popular atm, and it’s never been super popular with marketing people anyway, because the click-through/ROAS has never been great, but I’ve always loved it for its organic reach, which I think most marketers suck at, and there are 100% definitely some people that are absolutely KILLING it with Twitter marketing.

They’re mainly doing long-form content spread across multiple tweets. It’s become a platform for story telling, in tech marketing. But obviously the more followers you have, the more reach your story will get.

Not sure what sort of content you’re looking to create, but feel free to describe your niche/industry and I’m sure people can give you some ideas

Why can’t you link it here?

He mentions “creating things”, and in one of his other posts linked a video where he creates a water-cooled pillow.

So, I believe his belief is based on acquiring parts to make things in each video.

And you’re absolutely right. Lots of ways to make videos in this niche without spending a fortune.

i dont even like programming anyways

I have a CS degree, and am not a programmer. I do code a bit, but it’s baby programming. Get into corporate tech consulting - way more fun (and money).

Anyway, yeah working full-time and working on your business on the side is hard. Really hard. It’s not for everyone. But for those who it is for, it’s totally worth it.

and almost 26 dollarydoos, but, I am assuming they did a conversion and are comparing dollars to dollars. What it doesn’t take into account is the relative cost of living.

The Big Mac Index is always fun. $4.71 in France, $5.45 in the USA but only $4.63 in New Holland, so definitely getting more mac for your buck downunder.

this was a deliberate choice to provide exclusive features but at the same not to penalise free users by restricting existing features.

I just left another comment about episodecalendar. Being completely honest, the reason I paid for a premium sub on that site is that he had a 20 show limit and I wanted to track more shows.

If I look at your free plan, it’s got “unlimited titles”, “unlimited lists”, “unlimited reviews” etc.

There might be some better startup advice around freemium feature pricing models, but I’d do something like workout a behaviour threshold that the top 20% of your users are in - then say okay, anyone who keeps using it like those people should be considered premium from now on, and will have to pay.

You’d have to come up with a strategy to transition those people from free to premium (restrict future behaviour or just give them premium for free as a loyalty thank you), but you could at least make sure that anybody else who crosses the threshold now has to become a paid user if they want to keep using the site.

So behaviour threshold could be something like adding X titles to their library, or something like that.

I’m a paid member of episodecalendar.com, which seems to be a similar sort of site. I got my friend onto it, and she’s a paid member too.

I did a lifetime plan, and I don’t remember what I paid, but it’s $39 US at the moment.

If the dude had to shut down the site and asked for a bit more cash to cover expenses, I’d probably chip in. It’s probably not worth me paying $10/mo for, but it’s a website I find useful.

I think the main reason I upgraded to a paid plan was because he had a limit on how many shows I could add to my list.

Having looked at your membership options, yeah, dude, $5/mo just seems. I dunno, I hate paying things like this monthly. It’s useful, but I could live without it. You should at least have multiple pricing tiers.

And uh, “be our first supporter” looks sad dude, take that bit + the “backers list” out. You ever seen a begger shaking an empty tin? There’s always gotta be a coin in there to make that rattle, to show that someone else has shown a generosity that you’re at risk of not having.

This was posted 11 hours ago and I don’t see you replying to comments, so suspect you won’t reply to this, but here goes…

These are not bad tips. BUT, it lacks context. Can you give us some more details around the sort of side hustles you’ve found succses with and the sort of money one can expect to make from them?

Happy cakeday botto

Did that speaker sell cleaning supplies? Or courses on how to start a cleaning company?

Onlyfans for feet

Instructions unclear. I burnt my home down and insurer denied my claim.

Quit exposing yourself to people.

Reading some of OP’s replies, I agree - it’s not the problem here.

I think people will always be too lazy (or otherwise unwilling for various legitimate reasons that aren’t ue to laziness) to do things for themselves, and that includes asking AI to do it for them.

That being said… the industry is about to be disrupted in a big big way.

Yeah, I kind of mentioned that in my reply to his reply.

I haven’t seen anywhere that he mentions it’s actually software, but a lot of people seem to assume this is the case.

My initial assumption was that he’s engineered a physical tool, rather than coded a piece of software, and so on the basis of it being a non-novel physical tool that already exists on the world, I asserted that there’s nothing to own, from an IP perspective, aside from (as I said), the engineering templates he’s developed… which in theory he could rebuild on his own time, assuming that this is a non-novel physical device that already exists in the world.

If it’s software that he’s built on company time… yeah, definitely some IP ownership concerns to be had there.

As far as trade secrets go, if I came by the coca cola recipe by some honest means, say by finding it in a scrapbook in the bottom of a chest of drawers that once belonged to John Pemberton’s second wife, AFAIK and INAL there’s nothing legally protecting it - the primary legal protection exists in the employment agreement between OP and employer. At least in my country.

Google says this may not be the case in the US, but that it still requires a novel element, which would seem to exclude this instance.

In any case, best to just open a dialogue.

Well said, but also maybe with a splash of hyperbole. Literally everyone is hyperbolic these days.

Yeah, but… what could your company actually ‘own’?

IANAL, but presumably if the idea isn’t novel, and can’t be patented, then anyone can make it. That includes you. They can’t own your invention because there’s nothing to own. You also can’t own it, either.

But IP comes in many forms. From your comments, my guess is you might have some CAD or other kind of engineering templates that you’ve developed. THOSE might be owned by the company.

From my life, I’m an IT consultant. I’ve built tools while working for other companies that I couldn’t bring with me when I left. That’s just how it is. But nothing stops me from re-developing those tools using the knowledge in my head (as long as it doesn’t step on the toes of their trademarks, copyright, etc.).

But really, you signed a thing that said they’d own your inventions while you work there. You willingly did this, of your own accord, and presumably this is the kind of thing it’s meant to cover. How much is your word worth to you?

I’d say the easiest thing is to have a conversation with them. Maybe they’d like to commercialise it (this is where 3M’s post-it notes came from) and cut you in, or maybe they’d be willing to put something on paper saying they don’t mind if you do. Maybe they say no… that would suck - but if it were me and I had developed most of the company templates, it wouldn’t make me feel very valued

If it’s not novel, what is there to own, aside from the physical tool?

Being not novel means it can’t be patented, so there’s no IP to own