So let me be honest with you about something I've been sitting with for a while.

When I was figuring out what I wanted to do — whether to go into the education space, make courses, teach stuff — I looked around at what everyone else was doing. And it was the same thing everywhere. Same fantasy being sold on repeat. Make lakhs while you sleep. Quit your job in 30 days. Build a six-figure business from your laptop.

And look, I get it. That stuff sells. It scales fast. People click on it, they buy it, the numbers go up.

But it just didn't sit right with me.

I Couldn't Sell Something I Didn't Fully Believe In

That's genuinely where it started. Not some big moral stance. Just — I couldn't look someone in the eye and charge them for a dream I wasn't sure would work out for them. Some people can do that fine. I'm not judging. It just wasn't something I could do personally.

The education space has this thing where the product is hope. Buy the course, change your life. And sometimes it works. But a lot of times the person selling the dream is the only one actually making money — from selling the dream itself. That loop felt hollow to me.

So I didn't go that route.

The Quieter Path — Just Keep Building

What I did instead was way less glamorous. I kept building stuff. Actual products. Things people could pay for, open up, and use.

I took a remote dev job to stay afloat while I was shipping on the side. That's the part nobody really talks about — sometimes you need a stable income while you figure things out. There's no shame in that. I wasn't going to burn everything down and bet on hype.

Started with lifetime deals first. That's a good way to get early revenue without needing a massive audience — you price something as a one-time deal, people who believe in the product early get in, and you get enough to keep going. Then launch after launch from there.

It's slow. Like genuinely slow compared to the course-selling route. But every customer who paid me paid for something real. Something that existed. Something they could actually use.

Why the Dream-Selling Route Hollows You Out

Here's what I think happens when you build a business on hype. It works — until it doesn't. You're constantly feeding the machine. New hooks, new angles, new reasons for people to believe the fantasy. And somewhere along the way you stop building and you're just... marketing. All the time.

And I don't know man, that sounds exhausting. More than that, it sounds like you lose the plot of why you started.

I started because I like building stuff. That's it. That's the whole thing. If I had gone the dream-selling route I would've optimised away the part I actually enjoy.

Plus — and this is the practical side — businesses built on trust compound differently. The customers stick around. They tell people. They come back. You're not constantly hunting for the next person to sell hope to.

What I Actually Did Instead

So here's roughly how it went for me:

Kept the remote dev job. Gave myself breathing room. Wasn't desperate, wasn't in survival mode — that matters more than people admit.

Started shipping products on the side. Lifetime deals first because that's a lower-friction way to validate if something's worth building more of.

Built from there. Launch to launch. No dependence on ad revenue, no dependence on hype cycles.

And the content I made — videos, reels, whatever — was about the actual building. Not "here's how to get rich." Just here's what I'm working on, here's how it works, here's what I think.

That's a slower audience to build. But it's a real one.

This Isn't Me Saying Courses Are Bad

Just to be clear — I'm not saying everyone selling courses is doing something wrong. Some people teach genuinely useful stuff and charge fairly for it. That's fine, that's good actually.

What I'm talking about is the specific pattern of selling a lifestyle outcome you can't honestly guarantee. The "quit your job in 30 days" stuff. That's the part that didn't work for me personally.

If you're building a course around a real skill you actually have and you're honest about what people can expect — cool. Do it.

If You're Trying to Figure Out Which Way to Go

So yeah, if you're at that point where you're deciding — do I go build real stuff or do I go sell the dream — here's what I'd say.

The dream-selling path is faster to revenue. No question. If you're good at marketing and you're okay with that being your main thing, it works.

But if you're like me, if you actually like building, if you want to look at what you've made and feel like it's real — take the slower path. Get a stable income if you need it. Ship stuff on the side. Do lifetime deals. Build up slowly.

Trust compounds longer than hype. That's just how it works.

And you can actually sleep at night, which is underrated.

I talked about this more in depth on the podcast — if you want the full conversation, it goes a lot deeper into the actual decisions I made and why. Worth a listen if this resonated.

This post started as a reel on Instagram.