Please don’t take any offence at this, it’s not meant to offend at all. I just feel like perhaps part of your outlook here may help to explain where you’re curr

Please don’t take any offence at this, it’s not meant to offend at all. I just feel like perhaps part of your outlook here may help to explain where you’re currently at. Firstly, you’ve learned that social media influencing is in essence a MLM scam. Good! A lot of people never realise this and get themselves into incredibly dire situations as a result, so kudos for realising this. > I tried everything - building an audience, making sure my product actually solved a problem, getting paying customers, and writing high-quality content and contributing to the community. But no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get anywhere. My efforts were fruitless and I'm tired of trying. I barely had 20 followers, my substack and product blogs didn't get any signups, and while I did get a few upvotes (8) on Product Hunt once, I never had a paid customer. It was as if the world was against me and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make any progress. You’ve missed out on one critical ingredient in the above. Luck. A lot of things need to fall together just so in order for a product to gain traction. Broken down these are all fairly logical non-chance related factors, but no-one is realistically able to anticipate the millions of externalities that will play into that ahead of time, so from the perspective of someone trying to get a business off the ground, it is luck. All those factors you talked about in terms of substack and product hunt should be viewed as the cost of getting slightly better odds on your lottery ticket. YCombinator doesn’t expect a single random applicant to become AirBnb, and they have more experience in this than anyone. You’ve learned that social media is bad for you and that nothing on it is real. This is also good. You can take some time, and if you choose to have another attempt at this later, you’ll have that wisdom to carry with you. > Don't let your dreams consume you like they did for me Dreams are fleeting, but they’re still precious. It feels strange to say that as in my 20’s I had a very all-or-nothing view of success, but life happens regardless and what you want to get out of it will change over time. I’m grateful for my lot, and if I should achieve those dreams later then I’ll be grateful for that too, but if it doesn’t happen I really don’t regret the pitfalls along the way. You can’t take any of it with you anyway. > PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PROTECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AT ALL COST! Don't make the same mistakes I did and realize that entrepreneurship may not be the path for you. It's okay to admit defeat and move on to something else. This is the correct answer. Speaking as someone with wild stories that are a little too close to the bone for sharing on the topic of mental health, it really does need to come first. Speaking personally - the costs aren’t obvious, they sneak up on you, and you’re usually the last to see it. Take the win here - learning this lesson while you’re young is very much “the easy way”. I wish you well and happy to chat if you ever want to reach out.