JacobStyle

I plan the video I want, shoot the video I can, and edit the video I have. I've been through this process enough times to know how it goes. Usually everything is fine along these steps. Sometimes I have to make adjustments, but I still get something useful. Other times, I end up trying to polish a turd in the editing bay (especially when there are audio problems, gat'dang those are frustrating). Occasionally something gets so messed up along the way that I scrap the entire project or even kill the shoot right there on set. I've only had to do that a handful of times though.

Of course, creating good content that I am happy with does not guarantee the audience will like it. That has a lot of random elements and can't really be controlled directly. The levers that drive audience engagement are unwieldy in the best of circumstances.

If it doesn't interfere with my main customers or cause anyone problems or harm, and it doesn't break any laws, they are welcome to go for it. If it's a physical product, it's their property once they buy it. They can disassemble it, modify it, fix it, resell it, give it away, destroy it, and otherwise use it in unintended ways all they want.

If it's a digital product, there are IP laws that disallow piracy and unauthorized commercial use and stuff like that, but I don't really care about how people use my digital products if it's just for personal use (again, assuming they are not harming anyone). If they want to print posters of it, use it as art references, hold viewing parties, or whatever else, it's fine by me.

Your app is a task manager for families. Maintaining an organized task list for an entire family over the long haul requires a lot of discipline. You will never, ever, in a million years, retain more than a tiny sliver of your new users. It's just not gonna happen. Also, you won't get real feedback because your former users will never say, "It seemed like a good idea at first, but I am too fucking lazy to keep up with all this." They'll opt instead to come up with some excuse about missing features or UX problems.

Your dedicated lifelong users will come slowly. They will always be a teeny tiny fraction of your new users. Once you have them, though, you really have them.

Are your competitors actually thriving solely by maintaining a large user base with minimal churn for a dedicated family task manager app? Unfuckinglikely. They either have other apps in their portfolios, or they are not actually making money.

I don't know if I'd call it a mistake, but what they do is, they see people with the "entrepreneur" identity, and they want that identity, but they don't actually want to do the day-to-day stuff entrepreneurs do. They don't actually like doing entrepreneurship. You see this same thing in the arts a lot, people wanting to "be artists" or "be musicians" or "be actors," but they don't actually like making art, playing music, or acting.

There's a lot of the same thing in the filmmaking subs I'm on. People post in there about wanting to be great directors, and their posts are all like, "I have wanted to be a director for years. I watch films by Tarantino and Nolan and Spielberg and I find them so inspiring. I want to be like those guys. Despite wanting to be a director for years, I have never actually made a single film of any kind. Yes, I have owned a phone with a high quality camera built into it for my entire adult life, why do you ask? I don't see how that's relevant."

GoDaddy lost most of their customers back in the day when they showed their true colors and released a statement in support of SOPA/PIPA. Since then, the only way they've been able to stay afloat is with the shadiest of business practices. Steer clear of those scumbags. Shopify is a way better platform.

There are a bunch of business name generators online that allow you to play around with different inputs. They probably won't give you your forever name, since they aren't concerned with things like memorability, simplicity, search placement, etc. but they might give you just enough input for you to come up with something that works well for your business.

You don't need to be rich to get away from your toxic household. You just need a basic livable income, like you could get working any full time job. Honestly, if you are in a bad living situation, any attempt to better yourself, whether it's entrepreneurship, love life, or fitness, will fail. You've likely already seen that happen time and time again. Your single driving ambition should be to get out on your own, away from your toxic household. Nothing else you do will matter until then. One job application working out could do it for you. You don't have to be superman to make that happen.

With my existing business, I would 1000% use that as studio space for photography and film.

I film a lot of models who build their branding around their butts and am even launching a butt-themed subscription-based pay site soon. I am on set for every shoot featured on the site. I also work with other butt-adjacent sites like Amazon Amanda's new site, BBW Adventures. This puts me in a lot of conversations about plaforms like yours, with the exact models you're looking for.

I was going to write out a few thoughts here because it seems clear to me where a lot of little things are holding your platform back from growing like you would want it to, but my energy drink kicked in and I ended up doing a deep dive into your business, and the "here are a couple questions models would want to know" post kept expanding as I looked through your site more. I'll reach out in a DM.

The biggest challenge in renting equipment (other than actually acquiring the customers in the first place) is that anything you rent out gets destroyed quickly, due to transport and whatever setup/teardown you have to do. A piece of equipment with a 5 year lifespan may be designed with the assumption of 1-3 transport/installations over the course of its entire life, and here you are moving and reinstalling it every week. Not to mention, your customers will be less experienced with using it, so they are more likely to break things.

The key to being able to compete with larger rental companies on price and reliability as a one person operation, is to rent out something that you know how to work on. This will give you a big competitive edge because you don't have to replace anything or hire expensive third party repair services for basic maintenance and fixes.

Large work site equipment like generators and stair climbers could work. You could also do event stuff like sound systems and stage lights. You could do boats or work vehicles. Camera gear is a hot one, but my god is it fragile and expensive.

I immediately thought of "accidentally tripped over a barbell and became Arnold" when I read the OP.

I have worked jobs that made me think like a cynical asshole due to bad working conditions. I quit those jobs and regained my kind, egalitarian attitude. If you do not like who you are becoming as a business owner, you can quit and find some other way to make a living.

Also you will not accidentally make a huge company. Scaling up like that is an extremely deliberate process, involving a lot of different people cooperating, that usually doesn't work even under the most favorable conditions.