u/Business-Bimbo

So I’m graduating.

After dropping out of campus 6 years ago and subsequently being cut off financially by my parents, moving out and spending years working my ass off not to ever have to return home, losing everything and being forced to move back anyway while re-enrolled in a business course, I have finally managed to get through university and will be attaining my bachelor’s degree tomorrow.

I couldn’t afford to pay for the graduation gown or logistics for attending the official ceremony, so I don’t think there will be any sort of follow-up celebration /afterparty for me at home either (a preferred option since family gatherings tend to turn dramatic).

Now I’m here thinking of what I can do to commemorate the event in a meaningful and affordable way.

I wouldn’t have minded taking pictures in the studio but I don’t have a gown😅 and I don’t care for one either.
Should I get a graduation cake? Should I go to the bar? Should I organize something with my friends?
I’m overwhelmed with options, and also depressed.

Any suggestions?

When did it occur to you that you were actually going to become rich?

I know this place is not an amazing environment for us to develop and build our empires, but people seem to be making it everyday

If you did like a tech startup or something and have actually touched money, how did you do it and at what point did you finally acknowledge the fact that you were going to be wealthy?

This is not a promotion😆 but I got Bwat to try using it on my website because BUBU all the way and I’ve been checking it out all afternoon

While other AI agents say “thinking” when they are loading the code
Bwat is busy saying “Barakaring”
Kusimbularing?
Going to the kafunda??
Boomshakataring??!
Being Gumite💀

Oba how much is this kathing😂 love it
Kudos to the creators

My baby heard about my AI agent dilemma and designed a working website prototype for me
For some reason I’m so touched!!
It’s better than I could have done
And he translated my vision so nicely

I guess this is a nerd’s version of flowers

I feel this at least once every year

My life has been turned upside down in the past few weeks in which everything I thought I had learnt about life and about myself has been tested, and somehow I’m still standing.

Fucking exhausted, ready to give in, but still standing.

Founders, does it get better?

My chatgpt plus is ending this weekend
I’m gonna subscribe to the most affordable Ai coding agent I can get to finish and deploy my company portfolio website
Any suggestions?

Today I learnt that the more beautiful you are, the better people treat you.
That’s just it.
It’s not about being conventionally attractive, but about how you feel in your own skin. How you make yourself feel beautiful.

Zero development done today. I will make up for it this weekend.

I didn’t do any web development today because i spent all day in line at my rubbish wonderful university trying to get them to let me graduate.

I did, however, receive a kindness from a cobbler in town today when my shoe snapped right in front of his stall as he was closing down. He helped me fix my shoe and refused any form of payment, which I thought was really nice of him.

Having frequent encounters like this has made me start to wonder if Uganda truly is a low-trust society as some say, or if trust is merely eroded by systemic forces.

It seems more natural for Ugandans to extend kindness to one another than to segregate and discriminate among ourselves.
I have noticed that even the “misfits” (drunks or mentally ill people) typically have communities where they fit in, are taken care of and are not ostracized, especially in smaller towns. We are such accepting and hospitable people honestly.

All it takes is an open mind, which is where we sometimes fall short as we tend to be more conservative and conforming to deeply ingrained beliefs and traditions.

There was a library around Kisementi-Acacia which put Uganda’s trust system to the test by lending people books for free for a given time period, no strings attached.
I wonder how they are doing and the data they accumulated from this arrangement.

So after my very valid crashout, I found a free ChatGPT Plus trial on my account and I’ve decided to use it to rebuild my company website (which I lost in my last burnout phase)

It’s expiring in exactly 7 days and I’ve been putting it off for way too long, so I need to get all the work done in this time and deploy the site with minimal costs, like a true lean founder

I have no idea how to code, but I’m good at prompting, so let’s go AI!!
Let’s see what we can make of this in 7 days and hopefully, I’ll be able to post the final result here

Posting here is my way of forcing myself to be accountable and follow through (I’ve lost 3 days already to procrastination and exhaustion) so help us God. Daily updates incoming

I’m at the stage of my business where anyone with half a brain would tell me to just quit and look for a job.

Since I’ve adamantly refused to get a 9-5 job because ’my business needs all my time and it’s imperative that I see the vision through’, and since my business skills continue to be shit even after years of learning, immersing myself and trying to study/networking, going to business school, and since I am extremely talented but basically useless at monetizing and marketing due to subconscious blocks, traumas, fears, shame and limiting beliefs I’ve failed to unearth, I think it’s time for me to just get going.

Every decision feels like the wrong decision. Everyone is trying to ahead, doing what they can, and I’m here fearful and stuck in my mind for years now.
I have no idea of business structures even though I’m obsessed with them, no guidance and nothing I do seems to work. My initial clueless entrepreneurial bravado is gone after seeing just how self-serving people can be, and after countless betrayals. I have failed to trust myself again. I feel useless.

None of my many siblings have managed to maintain any form of financial success anyway, and we are all stuck in a state of constant struggle and survival despite growing up in “middle income”. It’s like we are just here to fulfill the generational curses/errors handed down to us by people who didn’t ask for our consent to be here, and somehow we are still the disappointments. The ones who succeed always end up taken back in some way, or dead. It might be a spiritual thing at this point.
I’m bored with the whole thing. I didn’t sign up for this.

Let the people who chose this life do it. I’m sick of it.

The annoying thing is I know I’m just having a bad morning, but let me rant anyway. I’ll be back, because of my fucking unbreakable entrepreneurial spirit.

Sometimes I think I might just lose my mind and do the thing. The thought doesn’t scare me anymore.
Is that a red flag? Somebody let me know

I get this urge at least once a month, trying to get ahead and at the same time stuck in the same place. Like running on a fucking treadmill.

I need to get out of here somehow.

Captain Witty?

Not sure my clients will love the idea of using a pit latrine when they book my services.

I am opening a shared studio for fashion designers/entrepreneurs to access equipment and space to create their work freely without excessive starting costs of buying equipment, renting space etc. It’s also close to town so you can easily get extra supplies or material when you need it.

A half-day session lasts five hours (8am - 1pm, 1pm - 6pm) and clients will definitely need to use the bathroom at some point during the day.

I have one small issue bugging my mind: the studio does not have a flush toilet, but a latrine (not attached to the same building).

It will take me time to remodel it as I am currently looking for funds/a loan and I want to know how much it might cost to convert it into a sitting toilet, tile or paint the walls and install a sink.
This latrine is currently older than me I think.

Anybody in construction/ remodeling here? Any idea of the possible costs?

So you guys
I’m starting a thing
I have this good space that I’ve been using as a sewing workshop forever, and I want to open it up to designers/tailors who need access to good machines/working space.

So if you have the ideas but not enough capital to open your own workshop somewhere, you can access all the tools you need in our open studio.

When you come in, you’d have access to:
- Serviced industrial sewing machines; standard, overlock, baby lock and knitting
- Full sewing kit; needles, scissors, pins, thread, measuring tape etc
- Space for pattern-making, ironing and fitting
- Pattern-making kit; rulers, pencils, erasers, protractors, French curves etc.
- Mannequin for fitting and content
- Complimentary morning tea (pack a bite) and 1 water bottle

Tentative pricing (Mon-Fri)
Morning Session (8:00 AM – 1:00 PM): UGX 10,000
Afternoon Session (1:00 PM – 6:00 PM): UGX 10,000
Full Day (8:00 AM – 6:00 PM): UGX 18,000

Lunch, drinks and additional supplies can be purchased separately.

The idea is for a collaborative space where designers can access professional equipment, explore ideas and build their brands without excessive startup costs.

And the workshop is located in Bukoto, so you can access downtown easily when you need to.

What do y’all think? Would you book a session in a space like this?

The first time I managed to escape my parents’ house was a mix of sheer dumb luck, creativity and a lot of bullsh*tting. One might say I manifested it all - the Barbie dream house, a high-paying wfh job, etc.

There is nothing wrong with my parents’ house where I grew up and I have finally come to sort of love it, but back then the environment was so toxic that all I needed to do in life was to get out of there or die. So I threw all caution to the wind, started building a portfolio - making an artwork everyday - and managed to land a job with a kind but overly sexual Swedish man who hired me as his photographer for his online newspaper.
It was not a full-time job, simply project based but it paid well enough for me to finally get my own place.

Imagine living at the mercy of a part time job run by a horny man, and only hoping to God month after month that the projects would keep coming, while splashing money all over town on dumb sh*t (which I don’t regret) instead of saving money and trying to find or build other sources of income (which I do regret).
That was me.

I had tried out business (making w**d samosas) a while earlier before getting this job and had started making some money, but I guess the labor I was putting in and my severe lack of business knowledge got to me and I later abandoned the samosas, effectively developing some sort of ‘phobia’ for business.

I knew nothing about business development by then.

I also already had an aversion to ‘labor’ jobs for some reason because I was told from a young age that those were ‘demeaning’ and ‘not suitable for graduates’.

I’ve learnt a gazillion painful lessons since then and have taken it upon myself to learn the fundamentals of business and now I am OBSESSED with systems and strategy, now that I understand what they are, but I just can’t seem to crack the code of how people manage to communicate value to customers, especially when it’s not obvious like consumables.

I’ve done all the classes, I know about all the tactics, but I just can’t put it into practice. I don’t have the conviction. I don’t trust myself and it shows.

Of course, being an artist, I can’t say my field is exactly easy to market. But I see all sorts of people making sales everyday. Why can’t I? I’m hugely talented and I have the capability to serve people in a way they can really appreciate. I am good at so many things but can’t for the life of me understand how people manage to turn their talents into income. It’s my one dream. I’ve been at this for years. It’s honestly time.

I started to doubt myself again right at the peak of my career and my whole life came crashing down and taking me with it. There’s a certain sort of bravado I used to undertake to manifest what I wanted and it always worked but somewhere along the way I forgot how to embody it.

So I’m stuck here in my childhood bedroom for 2 years now, waking up everyday hopeful, then letting self-doubt destroy or sabotage each of my efforts, hopping around from business idea to business idea, never quite landing on the perfect path to take or the right market to focus on.

I get so discouraged every time I execute the first steps of a plan, for some reason. It’s as if I’m just chasing the high of planning the business, yet I honestly identify as and plan to be a real business mogul.

I’m unemployed and afraid and it’s f*cking with my business, which is f*cking up my chances of finally leaving my childhood home for real and building my real desired life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still doing my best here, staying positive and intentional, learning and unlearning, working on myself, my lifestyle and my mindset.

A business can only grow to the level which the founder has grown, right?

I’m tired of being immature about this. What am I missing? I am open to looking for jobs, but only if I’m sure there is nothing I can do using my creativity to make enough money in this Uganda to build my desired life.
I really wonder how other artists are doing it.

I want to give it two months, tops to move out of this house peacefully.

Any advice? All perspectives are welcome. Bambi be gentle