I think the key is to not think that you need to build some crazy big SaaS app that you're going to charge $1000 a month for or whatever for a product that isn't specifically tuned to the specific customer. That world is fundamentally dead outside of some niches, so your value comes in building some bespoke tools that EXACTLY solve a problem the customer has, and charging for maintenance on it.

If I can keep this going, I figure I'm physically capable of supporting about 5 to 10 small businesses with this strategy, which by the time the dust settles probably generates something around $3000-$10,000 month depending on how much they want, etc. And a lot of this is going to be recurring revenue to maintain various things and produce new creative solutions to problems, so even though I won't be clacking out the code on my keyboard as much I'll be thinking about things much more than I was at my old job.

You could probably "scale" this model or whatever, but I honestly don't really want that? Everything that gets big like that turns to crap in my experience. So, I'm going to try to be a boutique and do a good job. The other thing I'm doing along the way is reinvesting in myself with education. If you pour your wallet into your head, nobody can ever take it away from you. This sort of "bespoke applications engineering" or whatever is going to grow in scope too.

Right now it's just software, but in a few years someone is going to need to set up the robots at Bob's grass cutting service or configure the drones for Steve's delivery service. That's going to be me.

After that though, the economy probably breaks? And I'm fine with that too - it'd be nice to step off the hamster wheel, but I can't yet.