Are you on the right path?

hi gents,

i would like to know if you had any direction for someone in their early twenties who wants to set themselves up financially.

i had a SaaS business that did well, then tried a brick and mortar business, which lost half of what i made with the SaaS.

now i am trying to do another SaaS project in the real estate niche. Using 99% AI, definitely lost my programming skills (if i had any before that even xaxa)

i dropped out of university to be able to manage the brick and mortar (i failed because of my lack of experience in anything that has to do with the niche the business was in, and the lack of experience in actual real life business, digital marketing, sales and leading). i dropped out also because it felt too much like school, a lot of time wasting, no good information, and "i made before, i can do it again"

i am able to live comfortably for a few years, bought a house before starting with the brick and mortar business too

i feel young and stupid (probably am) and do not really know what to do with my life at this point
i felt success and how it is like to have a good cash cow, but now i feel like there's no way to get back there

part of it is internal, i feel like i am failure because of the brick and mortar business loss and what i did was a one time thing, i was lucky.
i feel that there are too many choices. i feel tired of life sometimes, i do not know what is it all for anymore

part of it is external, the AI, the wars, the immigrants, the enshittification of absolutely everything and anything, it is hard to take it on a daily basis

it is hard to make myself learn new things, so instead i rely a lot on AI (i do my best to put a lot of effort into reading responses, crafting prompts as best as i can to ensure that my brain does not rot completely)
if i do not use AI I will be behind, if i do use it, i feel like shit and removes any motivation to learn and think

all in all, i would appreciate any guidance from the older members of this forum, i am sorry for the way i wrote this, if something is hard to understand or does not make sense, i can clarify
i gave myself this year to see how things are going to go, if i will be able to achieve any meaningful progress with my projects, if not i thought i would go back to university, so at least i have that paper

thank you to anyone who read this, i would love to hear the stories of your own paths in life and how did you deal with the bad or slow periods

void said:

forget the "right path" - there is nothing like that

at every moment in your life be ready to answer the question "what is your goal/preference" - it can and will change over time (even frequently) but if you don't have the answer it's time to stop doing anything and focus

preferences may vary, there is not a good/bad one and no one entitled to judge

you may want to be rich, famous, recognized, relaxed, invisible, to have a slow and easy life, adrenaline, adventure, you may want a (small/big) family, be free, have a different woman every night, ...

once you know always ask yourself whether what you do right now leads to your goal (whether you know and willingly decided to do it or somebody implanted this to your path for his own benefit) - if it doesn't don't do it - time is the scarcest and inflationary resource, doing nonsensical stuff means wasted time/opportunity to do something more valuable to you

on the way to your goal you most likely will gather some energy/money/assets/property - pay at least the same attention to protecting and not losing it compared to what it took to gain it

I wish someone told me when I was twenty... it's really that simple, I swear

thank you, i think this is extremely good advice. i will do my best to live by it.

the part about protecting it hits close to home. when i was doing good for myself, never have i thought about how hard it is to protect what you make.

the more i read this forum's post, the sketchier things get. business is very hard, and full of obstacles, and after all of that trouble - you must also go through the trouble of not losing all that you made.

very absurd world we live in.

void said:

that's the core and essence of life - look around how nature works - it's exactly it - endless struggle for energy and preserving it
don't be worried about it, just embrace it and everything will make sense

wise words, thank you

JohnnyDoe said:

You have been doing great, and failure is as important as success.
But there is one paragraph of your post that worries me:

You’re confusing the output with the understanding.
AI knows everything, yet, as of today, understands nothing.

LLMs are just next token predictors. They generate the statistically most likely continuation of text based on patterns scraped from the internet. No model of the world. No causal understanding. No internal criterion for truth. Just “what usually comes next.” That’s why they hallucinate with total confidence. They agree with you because sycophancy maximizes the reward signal. They have no skin in the game and no way to know when they’re outside the distribution of their training data.

MIT Media Lab (Kosmyna et al., “Your Brain on ChatGPT”): students writing essays with an LLM showed the weakest neural connectivity of the three groups tested, up to 55% less than the brain only group.
83% of the LLM users couldn’t quote a single sentence from the essay they had just produced minutes earlier!
The brain only group remembered and owned it, while search engine users sat in the middle.
Without cognitive load the memory and ownership signals don’t form, the brain doesn’t work and atrophies.
You feel like shit because there’s no mastery signal left, just a machine that did the work while your brain sat idle.

You can use AI it to pressure test your own reasoning, to argue against you. Then force yourself to reconstruct the answer from scratch without it and check the actual sources. If you cannot independently evaluate the output, you are not learning, just repeating empty words like a parrot.

By relying that way on AI you develop dependency on a tool that will confidently hand you the wrong answer the moment the question leaves its training data. What’s the point of that?

You own your mind, don’t outsource it. Remain free to think.

Yes, I totally agree with you.

I never said that by reading the output, or using AI - I will understand a subject or the output itself. Quite the opposite most of the time.

I use the AI in the following way:
0. Programming & automation only, never do anything else with it besides that
1. I have somewhat of an idea that I want to build, I try to put that idea into words as good as I can
2. I give AI the plan, ask it to find holes. I test the response it gives against my own general knowledge of the subject (i am a generalist, something that i tend to find annoying about myself lately, but it is hard for me to justify spending time to master one thing, when it may become obsolete in the future)
3. I let it build it, I test it, make sure it works according to my own wishes, I fix things that I dislike from simply using/ interacting with the software
4. Rinse and repeat

I do sometimes tend to simply stop thinking, especially when tired, and to just go along with it and tell the LLM "do this, make no mistakes". I become a Meat Proxy (a term by Niklas Gruhn) which is messed up. I understand why I do it, but as I am sure most people here know, it is more difficult to choose the harder path when your energy is depleted.

The reason I even use AI is because I do not posses the knowledge to build X or Y, I understand how things should work on a basic level and I can come up with the idea, and use AI to ship it faster than I ever would. It is stupid, I know. But if I can launch a business in one week compared to a year of learning how some frameworks work, and then half a year of building, then I will choose the faster path in this case, as by the 1,5 years is past, that business may not even be worth it anymore. Or someone else could have built it already, with AI, and stole the whole idea.

I do not know how to take it slow, and learn step by step in a world that forces or indoctrinates you to act now, and act fast. Another thing that is hard to find are trustworthy resources to even learn the things you want to know, everyone nowadays wants to grift you out of your cash.
Maybe it is the hard, but the right choice to go slow. I do not know, hence I am here.

Laid Back Llama said:

I'm young too (and similarly to you I made even worst mistakes with schools compared), I run a marketing agency and I’m building my own SaaS as well, so a lot of this sounds familiar and honestly I don’t think you’re stupid, you built something that made money, most people our age wish to have that.

So you already did the hard part, you're not starting from zero, you have tons of advantages compared to most, giving yourself a year and going back to uni if it doesn’t work is a solid plan in my opinion and that’s not even quitting, you're just having a backup.

You’re doing better than you think.

Also turn off the news, because wars, immigrants, everything getting worse etc. you can’t do anything from your laptop anyway, so it just drains the energy/focus you need for your own stuff.

Just focus in something you like or you're familiar with and become the best at it, then you can innovate in it as well and expand from there (don't worry that spark is going to appear when you reach that point and you'll have drive to wake up everyday and work in what you really like)

thanks for the advice.

this is pretty much what i was already trying to do.

the wars, news and everything was already turned off. i never had social media or the like.
but it is still impossible to completely close your eyes to these facts when you live in them.

going outside for a coffee, and all you see is migrants that come from cultures completely different from ours, and have no place here.
and the other things too such as the pollution and garbage everywhere, hard to just pass them over.

i know that i still will make no change to things, but they are still there, lingering sometimes in the back of my head.

you mention having a backup, i personally think that is pretty bad mentally for someone to have. if you have a backup, you are less likely to give it all to the plan you are currently executing
so i am trying my best to not have any backups, and push as hard as i can. i do not want to go back to university, i will consider that failure

Laid Back Llama said:

If those things bother you that much then just move, you’re young, you have money and no boss, you’re one of the few people who actually can (I would never live in EU either for a lot of reasons 😂)

About the backup, I didn’t mean get a degree so you can go work for someone else if things go wrong, I meant it more as getting the basics and knowledge for yourself, so you’re more educated in whatever you do and that makes you succeed even more + opens a lot of opportunities you don’t even see right now + gives you more interests and makes you smarter.

And thinking uni = failure is the same ego (this is how I see it) that told you a shop in a niche you didn’t know would work because the SaaS did, not saying go back, just saying the thing you’re most sure about might be the thing worth questioning (I questioned so many decisions myself and I am still young like you)

Yes, you are right. And you are spot on about the ego thing. It most definitely is an ego thing.

JohnnyDoe said:

Sadly, it sounds like you are living in the EU. Therefore, your priority now should be to plan your escape.

Thats not true. It takes far fewer people disobeying to destroy a state than brainwashed people obeying to keep it functioning.

That’s sad. They are fucking up young people’s minds. You need to get out of that toxic environment, it is built to produce losers.

That’s the mindset of a winner 👍
But it doesn’t prevent you from having multiple projects running at the same time, that’s called diversification. It’s a smart strategy, and good for your mind too not to be obsessed over a single topic.

It is never a step backwards to study, and you can do that while you keep developing your projects.
@jafo knows something about going back to school. He’s a bit extreme 😬 but the proof that it can be done successfully.

I agree with everything you say here.

On diversification, already doing that, doing my best to focus on 2-3 projects at a time. I think the max I can take is 2 projects at once, otherwise the focus you need to build something from ground zero is not going to be there if you have 2+ things going on at the same time.

And yea, the fucking with young people's minds is really bad. There are so many psychological operations going on at the same time, it is quite hard to trust or care about any information coming from any source. And the amount of influence all of these agendas being pushed have on the younger generations (and older too of course) is insane.

I would love to hear what @jafo has to say about going back to school!

Justit said:

To succeed in business, it’s not necessarily just about your skills or abilities. Timing, circumstances, opportunities, and sometimes simply being in the right place at the right time also play a huge role. So failing at something doesn’t always mean you lack the ability to manage that particular business. There are so many things that can go wrong, including things completely beyond your control.

After all, I doubt there’s a single person who has succeeded at everything they’ve ever tried. Failures are often just as important as successes (maybe even more) because they teach you things you could never learn from books or from success alone.

My advice would be to focus on developing the skills you’re good at and the things that genuinely interest you. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself by setting overly specific deadlines. One year is actually a very short time to build something meaningful, and you might need more.

I’m not saying that a university degree isn’t valuable, but having a degree and being able to build something of your own and make money from it are two very different stories. Almost everyone can obtain a degree, very few can develop any successful business and earn money. Definitely, maintaining and growing what you’ve already earned is more challenging in the long run, but you still have to earn it first.

Having said all that, what I see in your story is a very promising and inspiring beginning that could develop into something genuinely interesting. Don’t focus too much on the final result or on whether you’ve reached a particular goal yet. The journey itself matters, too: discovering new possibilities, understanding what works and what doesn’t, and learning to draw valuable conclusions from both your losses and your victories. The most important thing you gain isn’t necessarily immediate success, but the experience and understanding that put you in a much stronger position to succeed in the future.

Very wise words, thank you very much for them.

I think you make a very good point. Must look at yourself as the biggest and most important project that you are working on, everything else, is a fugazi.

Paratore said:

A university degree can be useful, but absolutely is not a guarantee of nor a predictor of success. I am very anti-credentialist. Comparing the US economy to that of the EU or parts of Asia, particularly in the start-up ecosystem, appears to confirm that opinion. That said, much of the world is very credentialist. Having the right set of letters by your name can be very useful in building credibility with people who are not smart enough to know better. It’s a tool to make things easier, but not necessary.

A lack of optionality is not a substitute for a lack of discipline. If you play chess, you know that it’s better to control the center of the board. Move your pieces to where they have the option of attacking in multiple directions. When you commit to your attack, you push all your pieces into it. Until you commit, you have the ability to easily adapt to your opponent and take advantage of mistakes. That is opposed to committing early and telegraphing your attack from the beginning. It translates well to life. Having options does not obligate you to use them nor does it prevent you from fully committing to a course of action.

Diversification is an important corollary to optionality. You will be wrong. In some things, like investing, you will almost always be wrong. You are always going to leave money on the table when you invest in stocks or crypto. You’ll never time anything exactly. Diversification is how you protect yourself and your assets from all the times you are wrong. Another chess analogy: you build an attack by developing multiple pieces that support each other, not by pushing your queen forward and leaving your other pieces behind. It’s slower but ultimately more effective, just like diversification is slower but more secure.

Enshittification and AI make mastery more important. AI brings mediocrity within the reach of anyone. Enshittification of everything gives the master a competitive advantage. Insulate yourself from the enshittification with wealth and the ability to build the lifestyle you want. Experiment with how to use AI (we all are right now) but do not stop learning. A master with mediocre tools will outperform the fool with excellent tools every time, and the difference only becomes more pronounced when the tools approach parity.

The main thing, more than anything above, is to figure out what you want and why you want it. An unexamined life is a wasted life. Both the what and the why can change. There are no wrong answers to either as long as you are self-aware. It’s also fine if you don’t know yet. If you don’t know, build optionality so when you do figure it out you can pursue it.

Very well said. Thank you for taking the time to write your thoughts out.

You say that mastery becomes even more important in the age of AI, but what about flexibility? From what I see being flexible and able to adapt to most situations is way more important that mastery in the current age. Flexibility can be financial, but also knowledge wise. If you are a generalist, I believe you have more chances of seizing opportunities in different domains, yes, you might be not as good as the ones that have been only doing that their whole lives, but you can get to a point where you can compete once the opportunity has been seized.
Financially too, if you have savings and are able to live comfortably without having to work, you are able to explore more avenues compared to someone that must work a 9-5.