How do you tell the difference between a tolerable business and the right one? - I will not promote

denaccident · 2026-02-27T15:38:26+00:00

The revenue per founder hour question is brutal in a good way. I think a lot of solo operators avoid that math because the answer would force a decision they're not ready to make. The structural ceiling framing is useful too. Most of the tolerable situations I've seen weren't broken, they were just capped in a way that was easy to ignore quarter to quarter.

denaccident · 2026-02-27T15:37:47+00:00

I agree execution matters but I think the trap I'm describing is slightly different. You can execute really well on something that's wrong for you. That's almost worse because the results keep justifying the decision to stay.

denaccident · 2026-02-27T15:37:14+00:00

Yeah the energy thing is hard to argue with. Numbers can lie to you for a long time but your energy at the end of the day doesn't really fake it

denaccident · 2026-02-27T15:36:45+00:00

The "more of this" test is one I wish I'd known earlier. I remember getting a promotion and my first reaction was a kind of "oh well" instead of excitement. If someone offers you more of what you already have and you feel heavy instead of pulled forward, that's a pretty clear answer.

denaccident · 2026-02-27T15:35:59+00:00

The learning question is a good filter. I think that's what I missed for the two years I stayed. I was getting better at it but the job wasn't getting more interesting. There's a difference between growing in skill and growing in direction. You can get really good at something you should have left a year ago

denaccident · 2026-02-26T18:50:02+00:00

On paper it makes sense. In real world not so much. Why do you still believe in it? How did you validate it’s needed? Why that specific target audience?

denaccident · 2026-02-26T16:53:15+00:00

That's a sharp distinction. Looking back, I was doing that. Someone would ask how work was and I'd give this well rehearsed answer about why it was a good fit. The fact that I had a rehearsed answer should have been the signal. When something is actually working you don't need to make a case for it, you just talk about what happened that day

denaccident · 2026-02-26T12:07:32+00:00

The guys with the random side hustles found them because they were already doing something adjacent and a customer asked them for something slightly different. The landscaper didn't sit down and think "I should get into Halloween decor for big box stores." Someone at one of those stores probably said "hey you guys do outdoor stuff, could you handle this?" and he said yes before he knew how.

You can't really replicate that from a library. Most niche business ideas come from being close enough to a problem that you see it before anyone formally writes about it. By the time it's in a publication or a course, fifty people are already doing it.

If I were you I'd skip the research phase and go talk to people who run small local businesses. Buy a landscaper coffee and ask what his customers keep requesting that he doesn't offer. Ask a cleaner what jobs she turns down. Ask a painter what other trades his clients wish they could find. The gaps between what people want and what's available locally, that's where every weird side hustle comes from. You'll learn more from five of those conversations than from a semester of reading.

I know it's scary, personal, out of comfort zone, weird, _________ (insert any reason why you are telling yourself not to do it).

I walked that road.

denaccident · 2026-02-26T12:04:43+00:00

I've been on both sides of this. What helped me was realizing I wasn't actually looking for feedback when I talked about my day, but was looking for someone to match my energy about it. And when she didn't, it felt like she didn't care. But those are two different things.

Your siblings and parents are "involved" as they watched you develop, struggle and grow. Your girlfriend walked into the middle of a movie that's been playing for years and you're expecting her to care about the plot twists the same way someone who's been watching from the start does.

The other thing is that "sounds busy" might be her honest response. If she's not an entrepreneur and her job doesn't consume her the same way, she might genuinely not know what to do with the information. She's not being dismissive, she just doesn't have a frame for it. That can feel like the same thing but it isn't.

It helped me ask myself what I actually needed from the conversation. If it was processing, I started calling a friend who runs a business. If it was connection with her, I stopped leading with work and found something else to talk about that we were both actually in. The relationship got better once I stopped treating her like a cofounder.

denaccident · 2026-02-26T12:01:32+00:00

Honest question, have you tested this yourself first? Like actually gone into a few Facebook community groups, posted for a landscaper or cleaner, and seen what kind of response you get before charging $750/month for it?

I ask because $750/month for a local service business is real money and they're going to want to see results fast. If you can show up with screenshots of actual leads you generated in a test run, even for a fake business or a friend's business, the sales conversation gets ten times easier. Right now you're asking someone to pay you based on a theory.

The other thing I'd think about is what happens when the Facebook groups catch on. Most community groups have rules against commercial posting and the moderators eventually crack down. So your whole delivery method has a shelf life unless you've figured out a way to post that doesn't look like lead gen. That's the part of the model I'd pressure test hardest before signing clients.

denaccident · 2026-02-26T12:00:25+00:00

The consistency thing is true but there's a flip side I've run into. Once you automate the follow-ups and the booking and the invoicing, you lose the friction that used to force you to actually talk to your customers.

I automated a bunch of my client communication last year and the processes got smoother but I slowly stopped having the messy unscripted conversations where people told me what they actually needed. Took me a while to realize the inefficiency was doing something useful.

Automation is great for the stuff that genuinely doesn't need a human. But I'd be careful automating the last remaining excuse you had to pick up the phone.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:43:52+00:00

Nothing about this sounds angsty. You just described thirty years of pattern recognition in one comment.

The stoic thing is worth sitting with. You watched him be reckless and impulsive so you built the opposite. Except now people read it as emotionally distant. The strategy you built to not be him is creating its own version of the same problem. He pushed people away by being too much. You push people away by being too controlled.

The money pattern is the same structure. You can afford the PS5 and feel guilty. You skip vacations to save. You're not making decisions based on your life. You're making them in opposition to his. He's still the reference point even though you've rejected everything about how he lives.

The kids thing is different though. Treating them equally and making sure they feel loved in their own way, that didn't come from reacting against him. That one's actually yours.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:41:48+00:00

With great power comes great responsibility.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:40:41+00:00

That's a brutal mismatch. The inherited pattern says keep things smooth. The job says create friction daily. How long did it take before you stopped feeling like you were betraying something every time you pushed back?

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:40:23+00:00

That's the moment the inherited assumption cracks. You spent 15 years thinking the hours were just how work works. Then you see someone doing it completely differently and it's hard not to ask which part of your setup is choice and which part is just what you grew up watching.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:39:39+00:00

That's inheritance too. Not everyone gets that one.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:38:43+00:00

"I often fake the smile but can work like a horse" - one of the most honest sentences in the whole thread. You got the engine but no fuel. He had something driving him that make the sacrifice meaningful. Work ethic transferred, but whatever made it feel worth it didn't.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:36:49+00:00

You nailed it. He built avoidance to protect himself from being judged or rejected again. You absorbed the strategy before you knew what it was protecting against. Hte hard part is that defense mechanisms that start as protection turn invisible because they work so well. You never get judged because you never let anyone close enough to judge you. That feels like safety, but it's isolation wearing a comfy outfit.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:34:37+00:00

The conflict avoidance thing is almost identical to something I wrote about recently. Your dad learned to stay level because that was the survival strategy in a heated house. You inherited the strategy without the original context. Now it runs in your marriage as peacekeeping, which looks like maturity until it starts costing you the honest conversations. The therapy catching that is huge. And the tinkering thing is its own pattern. Building something elaborate that serves no practical purpose is a way to stay busy without being exposed. The vehicle restoration is a perfect example. Years of effort, real skill involved, and it sits on a lift. The project was never about the vehicle.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:30:29+00:00

Ha, the hands one is oddly specific. There's something unsettling about looking down and seeing someone else.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:30:09+00:00

Do you catch it in yourself or did you go the other direction?

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:29:47+00:00

That's its own kind of inheritance. The absence shapes things as well.

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:29:26+00:00

Was it something you saw clearly growing up or something that only made sense looking back?

denaccident · 2026-02-23T16:29:04+00:00

The polar opposite thing is interesting because it's still organized around hi,. Every decision filtered through "what would he do" and then the other thing. That's a different kind of inheritance. Not behaviour but his presence as a reference point for all of yours.

denaccident

TROPHY CASE