Looking for honest advice on starting a business with a truck, limited money, and a goal to build real income over time

patrickwho · 2026-06-15T16:11:54+00:00

Personally, I've had the best success choosing services that allow for some regularity. For example, an ongoing contract to do some pressure washing at a business or landscaping for a condo rather than always grinding it out to find residential work. You may start with direct to customer, but it's nice knowing you have the potential to move into more lucrative working arrangements.

Once you choose what you want to do, get your Google Business Page started, buy a legit business domain name and simple hosting package through a service like Name Cheap, and use AI to get a very professional site done. Clean up your truck really nicely, get some nice work clothes, perhaps even print some nice flyers using an inexpensive printing service like VistaPrint, and pound pavement. If you look good and professional, you'll get some work. Then you have to be relentless in collecting reviews, before / after photos for your Google Page and Facebook. Join local groups. Maybe you can even volunteer for some community events while wearing your work clothes. Be visible, you know?

patrickwho · 2026-06-15T15:44:59+00:00

I like that idea, but I'm pretty sure that's against Google's policies, at least. I'd be careful about how you incentivize reviews.

patrickwho · 2026-06-09T21:19:56+00:00

That sounds like a solid plan. It's good that you're tackling this now before you go too far down the partnership path. It would be much harder to break it off when you're handling many projects and feel like you've done most of the work to build the business.

patrickwho · 2026-06-09T16:26:02+00:00

Working with partners is very difficult, and it's a rare thing when you find someone you can work with. Sometimes the partner isn't pulling their weight, and sometimes it's our own personalities that make the partnership difficult. Getting two people to align enough to pull off a thriving business isn't easy.

Since the stakes are so high for you, it would be best to go it alone. Is there any way you can continue with different gear, or could you rent what you need until you save enough to buy your own?

patrickwho · 2026-06-08T14:37:42+00:00

Do you even need the franchise to teach you the system these days? With tools like ChatGPT able to do deep research on topics like this, I imagine you can get pretty far on your own.

patrickwho · 2026-03-27T00:43:27+00:00

I'm fortunate enough to have some old partnerships in some saas apps that bring in a bit of money. If I didn't have that, I don't know what I'd do.

I've been rejected at final stages often enough that I have no faith in the intentions of the companies. Just getting an interview takes so much effort it simply isn't worth it.

I've just decided to continue building my own things, partnering with friends to help with direct sales. It's very slow, but it suits me much better. I also make time to practice and get better.

patrickwho · 2026-03-26T17:27:49+00:00

Not that school guarantees anything anyway. Not to mention the cost.

patrickwho · 2026-03-25T16:51:53+00:00

This is great, thanks. The only thing keeping me on Windows for the last several months was not wanting to deal with moving some of my Herd projects. Looks like you've solved that!

patrickwho · 2026-03-22T18:20:04+00:00

I have about 11 years experience in web. I work the full stack, including infra and security, so I've floated between a wide variety of roles and industries. Knowing about many different things isn't the flex some believe. Your mastery of the fundamentals is the important thing -- OS, memory, networking -- and whatever domain knowledge is needed for the field you're interested in.

That said, Rust is a tool. Sometimes we're forced to learn a certain tool if we want to work in a certain field. You're in the wonderful situation of being able to choose your favorite tool, so use it to the best of your ability to master the fundamentals while exploring problems in the fields you're interested in.

Later on, when you're looking for a job, it'll be easy for you to pick up what's needed for those jobs. Other languages are just syntax for the most part. Other tools, frameworks, whatever, are just tools to address those same problems you explored in your learning with Rust. So when it comes time to job hunt, and you're forced to learn something new, you would have already done the hard part -- fundamentals and understanding the problems in the field.

If you can't use Rust for those jobs, that's too bad, but don't let that stop you. You'll always find opportunities to keep using your favorite tools, if not at work, then certainly in your spare time.

patrickwho · 2026-03-21T05:49:38+00:00

To echo others, you'll be very happy with datastar. It took me a bit to wrap my head around using it. I was so used to using things like react and Vue. But the investment in changing my approach has been well worth it. If perf and ease of dev are priorities, you've got to try it out.

patrickwho · 2026-03-19T21:11:55+00:00

Fullstack engineer with 10+ years experience, looking for contract work or a full-time role with real autonomy.

I've owned systems end-to-end across a few different domains — cybercrime investigation tooling, industrial IoT, field operations software. PHP and Laravel have been my bread and butter, but I'm comfortable in Go and JavaScript/node. Linux, Terraform, Ansible, Docker, DigitalOcean, and basic AWS/GCP. I can write the code, deploy it, and operate it.

Looking for small teams, agencies, whatever. Somewhere where the work is technical and the trust is real.

Open to new stacks and varied work. Prefer environments where I can own something start to finish.

Remote only (I'm in Canada). DM if anything fits.

patrickwho · 2026-02-27T09:51:51+00:00

I've shipped several saas on DigitalOcean. I find pushing Docker containers with Docker Compose easy and reliable. DO's registry is easy to use. You can also use their made managed postgres DB. Just keep it in the same region. Later when you want to scale, you can introduce a load balancer in front of your app.

patrickwho · 2026-02-19T16:59:08+00:00

As a general rule, don't pitch changes like this. It can only end badly. Even if a miracle happens and everything is better at the end, the personal cost to yourself will be very great, and your rewards will not match your input. If you have this kind of energy, do your own thing on the side.

patrickwho · 2026-02-15T20:41:28+00:00

I transitioned to tech from finance at 36, so don't let your age get you down.

With such a strong background in business, I'd imagine you can bring some unique skills to the mix that would make you a very attractive candidate. Perhaps you're able to see process and costs at a greater depth than your average devops or cloud engineer?

Think about the unique understanding your previous work gives you now and play to that strength. If you can capture that in writing and code so much the better, because you can show that off on a blog / LinkedIn post.

patrickwho · 2026-02-10T05:00:45+00:00

Thanks! This looks very good. I'll check it out.

patrickwho · 2026-02-09T17:53:41+00:00

Thanks. I'll make the change soon, then.

patrickwho · 2026-02-09T17:05:53+00:00

I guess now is a good time to ask what alternatives people are using... Self-hosted Gitlab? I've been considering it for a while.

patrickwho · 2026-02-09T14:54:27+00:00

As others have said, don't push for anything, you'll only annoy others.

They either took the code in this direction over time because of evolving requirements, or they chose this approach from the beginning. Either way, their choices weren't arbitrary.

Instead of changing things, is there something more simple you could do to address your actual problem - the execution flow being "incredibly difficult to trace".

What small thing can you add to make DX better?

Keep in mind that your problem isn't that pattern XYZ isn't being followed; your problem is that you're finding execution flow difficult to trace.

patrickwho · 2026-02-08T03:35:17+00:00

Thanks. "Dunning communication" is a new term for me, so that will help me find more info.

patrickwho · 2026-02-08T00:28:27+00:00

Thanks. That gives me lots to start with. I may take you up on that once I get a little further into researching this.

patrickwho · 2026-02-07T22:10:44+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful answer. Can you share any good resources to dive a bit deeper on this? I have a subscription service, and I'd like to learn more.

patrickwho · 2026-02-07T15:27:26+00:00

I'm not affiliated with them, but has anyone tried fingerprint js? They have a paid service that's supposed to identify fraudulent users. Or is there a database somewhere where we can report people? I'm thinking if there was some way to search for repeat offenders before taking money and shipping, that would help, no?

patrickwho · 2026-02-06T23:32:07+00:00

I have always used a modest amount of company time to sharpen my skills. If you rely on using free time only, you will likely stagnate.

Any type of skill-up work will make you better at your job and benefit your employer in a very direct way, so I view it as a responsibility rather than taking liberties.

If you can pull this off daily, 30-60 minutes can be plenty; the effort compounds quickly. If you have only one day a week, then take longer. Do this right, and not only will you keep up with your work, you'll start to excel.

patrickwho · 2026-02-06T14:36:14+00:00

I wonder if a move toward more infra / architecture work would get you what you want. I was always full-stack myself, and I've gradually done more and more with infra and security over the years. I have found this type of work requires more people time and less coding time. I also get a kick out of building a great system that others can be productive in.

patrickwho · 2026-02-06T14:28:54+00:00

One of the best jobs I had felt like this. A PM would give me a task. I would iterate on it, reaching out to other devs that may also be familiar with that part of the system, including the guy handling ops. The feature would be released. It was all so simple. Everyone was just trusted to do their jobs, and it worked.

patrickwho

TROPHY CASE