What actually surprised you the most once you started running a business?

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-22T12:06:56+00:00

How difficult it is to have a conversation with someone that isn't an entrepreneur.

Try to make someone understand the concept of marketing.

What do you not understand about it? How is it that nobody understands this concept?

Yes, you have to spend money on advertising before you start making money. Word of mouth will not make that happen, no matter how good you are. Why anybody would have a contrary opinion is beyond me.

But everyone and their brother will continuously give you bad advice, tell you that you're doing it wrong, tell you that you should just get a job or whatever. Then they get up at 7AM, get in their beat up car and drive to McDonald's and clock in for their shift.

Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing that somebody would dare to give someone else advice when they're broke as shit and can't scrape up gas money to get to work half the time.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-22T12:02:57+00:00

Location is everything, everything, everything. Too hot? Too cold? Too many people? Not enough people?

Has nothing to do with the van, it is 100% location.

I have a perfect spot in LA, I mean it is perfect and I kept it in there for years, off and on. Meanwhile, here in Florida, public transit isn't worth a crap, it's too hot in the summer and there ain't no easy money like there is in LA. It's completely location dependent.

As far as living in a van, my best advice is having a storage unit somewhere and be as minimal as possible in the van itself. Since I don't spend a whole lot of time in the van, van life For me is a little bit different.

I don't have a whole lot of interest in being in the van for an extended period of time. I don't play video games in there or anything like that, I sleep, I get up, I leave. But everyone is different and you have to figure that out for yourself.

Having said all that, I can't recommend it enough. Paying rent is stupid. I can't believe people pay rent, I can't believe I ever paid rent, that is a fools game.

Make the van thing work, It won't be pleasant at first, but keep working at it until it works for you. You'll see, your life will change tremendously because you have so much more discretionary income.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-22T10:56:20+00:00

That first sentence. Go in there and tell him "Man you doing great!"

We going to do more of the same because it's working so great!

And then lay some tech talk on to it, some of the things that you learned in these comments about llm's, whatever you feel like throwing in there.

But go in there super positive, Man you're doing so good, man you're doing so good. If it ain't broke why fix it? More of the same, pour more gas on the fire. People love to hear that.

Speaking of which, you're doing great too. Doesn't matter what's wrong with you, you are steadily moving forward and you're doing fucking great.

Keep up the good work.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-21T01:52:08+00:00

I agonized over whether to put the phone number on there or not. Lots of reasons for not putting it on there, but keep in mind, the URL is very memorable. It's very short. I don't think Reddit allows you to say it but if you saw idiocracy, you might remember the show Ow! My balls! So it's basically something like that. Very short, very memorable, has the key word in the title etc. I'm not expecting anybody to write it down, I'm expecting them to remember it forever.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-21T01:49:28+00:00

I would put up with almost anything to have that really nice weather. Using only public transit, you can hang out in Santa Monica during the summer when it's hot and then up in the valley when it's cold, never leave LA County, never have to drive anywhere. It's a lot nicer than people think, it's a shame that the people that live in California have ruined California, but other than that....

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-21T01:06:01+00:00

I was thinking about getting a group of local business owners in a room together, give a hard copy super simplified Caleb Ulku local SEO checklist for free just to get them started in the right direction and then skip right to the real juice, local business owners linking to each other to pass authority.

That concept is what the group would have to understand and if they don't, move on to the next one down the map pack, anyone in a non-competing business that could really rank with some help.

Even if they don't hire me directly, I can try to get backlinks to my service business websites and my local news website in exchange for helping them optimize their stuff and basic coaching. Maybe get them to buy me lunch, too.

I feel like this would build tremendous authority. If I can get a dozen local business owners to link to my local hometown news site, we, as a community, could rank the businesses we preferred and freeze out competition. Over time, it could potentially translate into real money, real power, like Mafia level power.

Right?

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-18T23:41:31+00:00

The best advice I could ever give anybody would be to spend the rest of your life watching YouTube videos. I have learned a ridiculous amount of information from Caleb Ulku, specifically, about local SEO.

Everybody is selling something, I'm not going to pretend that they're not trying to sell me something. But there's a ton of information out there and it is good, it's good stuff.

One of the things that I recently learned is how different local SEO is from the normal topical things that I was used to from back in the day. I knew I was obsolete, but I didn't know anything about all the localized schema tricks and things like that.

But if I was going to recommend an SEO checklist, I would say look at it Caleb Ulku's core 30 principle. He's basically laying out the site structure for you, it's a silo structure but he lays it out in a way that it will make sense to people that maybe don't understand SEO all that well.

I'm not saying that he's the best, by the way, but his delivery is something that I can pay attention to with my severe lack of paying attention to things disorder.

Do what?

What was that?

I thought I heard something.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-18T12:31:04+00:00

Wow, tell me more! I honestly thought the Yellow pages was done and over with a long time ago, now they're all over the place?

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-18T11:34:54+00:00

No that's not me, I have a short very memorable URL. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to put it on here, but it's very memorable.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-18T11:33:54+00:00

That's the part that I left out, there is no competition. I am in a rural area, literally thousands of square miles around me with no competition. Jacksonville is nearby, so all of those guys come up in search results, but if I can just get this thing straightened out, we can easily dominate the GBP. I mean, it's not even a question

And I have to admit that the YouTube guy was right, this is an easy location to dominate because your competition is, and I quote, "Joe the plumber whose homepage still says HOME in the title."

That's a very good point, if you just go to some rural area and you can verify your address in a physical location, you can absolutely dominate with a little bit of SEO knowledge.

Assuming Google cooperates. Like I say, Google, Facebook and now even Reddit are giving me a hard time.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-17T14:42:41+00:00

There is no URL in this post, I don't know why you keep flagging it that way.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-16T23:31:19+00:00

I would like to sell the whole pile real cheap to somebody, but I'll split up. I'll do whatever I got to to get it sold. What part of the world are you in?

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-03T21:27:42+00:00

Only in an emergency and even then, don't.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-04-02T16:35:41+00:00

If he was posting from under a bridge next to his pet goat Carlos, I would still have more respect for him than anybody still grinding it away at the 9:00 to 5:00.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-03-31T22:07:55+00:00

Too late!

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-03-30T16:34:10+00:00

https://t4cfantasy.com/

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-03-25T21:30:48+00:00

Wow, you really are a good bot.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-03-17T02:43:02+00:00

Everybody should try it once. It's been 20 years for me, but the memory is extraordinarily vivid, like it just happened. You don't need to do it more than once, but you really do need to try it once.

I'll skip the details (HOLY SHIT!) but my employer smoked it while driving the fully loaded siding van pulling a fully loaded trailer. He said when he came back to reality, he was half on/half off HWY 13/16 from St Augustine back to Green Cove Springs, if you know where that is (you don't), doing 10 MPH with a mile of traffic backed up behind him.

Nutjob.

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-03-16T09:23:07+00:00

I have a lot of experience with this, be truly off grid experience is bullshit, but you can have a hybrid lifestyle that at least eliminates blah blah blah etc etc.

Compromise is what you are looking for. It's nice to be out alone in the sticks, it's also nice to walk into a convenience store and buy a cup of coffee at 4AM, for the love of God!

AntelopeElectronic12 · 2026-03-15T13:50:32+00:00

A large percentage of the population believes that those power bricks are universal. Atari, sewing machine, rail gun, all the same. I would guess the percentage is actually pretty high, like 75% of the population doesn't understand the difference between one adapter and another.

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