I went through a phase recently where I was pretty sure I had it figured out.
AI was everywhere. Every other post was about side hustles, passive income, and digital products. People were making money online in ways that felt oddly accessible. It started to feel like if I did not at least try to take advantage of it, I was missing something.
So I did what I think a lot of people did. I started trying things. A lot of things.
First it was those Canva-style theme packs. The idea was simple enough: use AI to speed up the design process, package everything cleanly, throw it on Etsy, and let it run. It felt efficient. Almost too efficient. Like, why would this not work?
Then I started branching out into digital products more generally. Etsy, Gumroad, anything where you could create something once and sell it over and over again. That whole make-it-once-sell-it-forever idea is hard not to get pulled into.
At some point, I even wrote a kids book. I still like that idea, honestly. It is sitting there half-finished, waiting for artwork I never got around to doing.
The pattern was always the same. Everything felt close. Like I was one small adjustment away from something clicking. But nothing actually did.
So I pivoted. If digital products were not working, maybe websites would. That felt more grounded. More real.
I built a kettlebell calculator. Simple, useful, something I figured people might actually search for. The kind of thing that could quietly get traffic and maybe make a little money with ads in the background. It did not happen.
Then I built something I actually liked more: a website about obsolete tech. Better concept. More effort. Something with personality. Still did not go anywhere, at least not in the way I expected.
Looking back, I do not think the issue was the ideas. And it was not even the execution. It was the mindset.
I was not really trying to build something. I was trying to find something that would work. Those are two very different things, even if they feel the same in the moment.
AI made everything feel easier. And to be fair, it was easier, at least when it came to creating things. Ideas turned into outputs fast. Faster than I was used to. Faster than I probably should have been comfortable with.
But that speed came with a side effect. It made me feel like I was making more progress than I actually was.
Because building something quickly is not the same as building something valuable. I think I blurred that line for a while.
None of those attempts were wasted. I do not look back at them like failures. If anything, they were necessary. But they were all built on the same assumption: that if I could create enough things, quickly enough, something would eventually hit.
That assumption did not hold up.
At some point, I had to stop jumping from one idea to the next and ask a different question. Not, "What can I build fast?" but, "What is actually worth building at all?"
That shift did not happen all at once. But once it started, it changed everything that came after.