I work on heavy equipment components making $40Hr, pay scale goes up to $55hr in my shop. Field service guys can get paid up to $75hr. I'm content with my path, especially not having or needing a degree in my field.

The grass isn’t always greener. I’ve had both. Sold my business several years back. Most of the time I prefer being a wagie. I have barely any responsibility, don’t have to deal with chit employees, work less, and still make great money.

What kind of business did you have bro?

Based

If my “side hustle” makes 3 or 4 times what my day job does, is it still a side hustle

Or is that actually my main job

I did the same thing, was in a union job as a field tech. Made the leap last year to buying my own service truck and going out on my own and it’s insane how busy I’ve been and how much money I’ve made.
Went from around 120k last year to just under 300k this year. 90% of what I’m doing is just east stuff, minor electrical and undercarriage.


Plan to keep this up for the next few years until I have my home paid off and a bit more put away then I’ll cut down my hours to 4-6 a day and enjoy semi retired life.

Not bad for a high school dropout

How do you find customers

How do customers find you

Mirin if true

What equipment do you work on? What do you have invested into a service truck? Srs

Independence is still a worthy goal. The life of a free man is always worth pursuing.

Your finance buddies are doing it wrong unless theyre 23 years old. In which case theyre laying seeds to be ya boi. Bouta take the boat out once the tide comes in. Havent worked in weeks. Srs

So what do you do? I've been trying to think of a business I could start on the side and hopefully grow it to the point where I could quit my job. I came across one business selling credit card processing services to merchants but after careful consideration I didn't think it was very viable. Also thought about Amazon FBA but that one seems over saturated, thought about learning to daytrade. Other than that I don't have any other ideas at the moment.

Construction, agricultural and highway trucks. Some cranes too

Probably have 20k invested in hand and power tools(I’d need these either way) and I spent 5500 building a custom flatbed for a truck I already owned.

I already had most everything I needed so startup costs were low.
I still do the bulk of the work for the company that I worked for when I was an employee and I do road calls for a couple more construction companies, and I do 100% of the calls for a crane company. I also get calls most days from small time guys and independent truckers. Billing out 125 an hour and I’m still 50 an hour less than a dealer. I’m upping my rates to $150 an hour as of tomorrow. Hoping that will weed out a few small time and independent calls that I really don’t have time for.

What are you selling? I’ve spent the last year doing my own thing mainly selling cars. It’s been a low money year but had a lot of fun and have learned a lot on music with it what I wanna do the most anyway. Whatcha flipping bruh

No. I'm not creative enough to come up with something else to get an income outside of my job, overtime for it, and some day trading stock options here and there (overall I have a loss when it comes to this method btw :/).

The only thing I can think of wanting to do is to become a Twitch streamer, but it's a difficult and saturated industry. I think I have the personality and looks for it, but it would require being perhaps too rowdy to where my company would fire me for being stupid / cancelled.

Instead I'm just doing the following:

- Increase my frugality. Straying away from Uber Eats and most restaurants most of the time. Shopping at Walmart and/or a warehouse club more often for all my food/drinks.
- Invest in long term stocks with excess money. Occasionally day trade if an obvious opportunity appears.
- Hopefully retire in my 40s.

I sell a physical product that I designed and control the manufacturing of (so not white labeling generic products or FBA stuff). Keep swinging and don't be afraid to strike out. I spent the better part of a year, hired an engineer, did 2 rounds of prototyping, and then ditched an idea because the numbers didn't really work out in the end (material and tooling costs were absurdly high). But I took that experience and pivoted to something that does.

It's fine if you really don't want to, but don't say you can't. All those drunk vatos streaming across the border every day - half of them are going to start unlicensed construction businesses (or landscaping, tire shops, bars, bail bonds, etc. etc.) and charge $10k for a home depot bathroom remodel even though they couldn't pass a high school shop class. Or an english class, for that matter. There's no way they can outcompete you.

Have you spent any time examining what “freedom” actually means to you? Where has it developed from? Is it healthy/mature? Etc.

I read a psychology book long ago that brought to my attention the notions of “freedom from” and “freedom for”. One of these notions is quite negative (and typical of neurotics) whereas the other is positive; I’ll let you guess which is which. And along with these concepts the book made me realise that what I really wanted deep down was “freedom from”, which as this book went on to talk about is actually a kind of neurotic and less healthy desire for freedom.

From what I’ve seen you talk about on the topic of employment/jobs (translation: wageslaving), I think it would be worth your while to really reflect on what freedom is really all about for you, and whether it comes from a healthy place.

Yeah I have a lot of bad experiences socked away. I still get absolutely pumped even over small things like being able to gym in the middle of the day when no one is there, not having to attend bullchit make work meetings, and making a profitable decision that benefits me instead of just Mr. Schlomo Moneyberg. The very basic tenets of a free life, that most people spend their entire working lives without. I want to spread it.

This is badass man. I have to lol at the second part tho, the bigger issue IMO is competing against legit businesses run with illegals. Efficient and often customers who wouldn't normally support that end up without knowing.

Sorry, don't wanna drag down this thread with politics and chit, this is good stuff. I've got notebooks of ideas for a small time manufacturing business. There's so many ideas out there, so many things that haven't been customized or jazzed up. My idea has legs but the product is sort of large which is good and bad.

WTF

How are those “small things”

Those are the stuff of life, especially the last one about capturing the value of your labour for yourself

I honestly picked you to be more grateful

Ern I am disappoint