Elsewhere

Most people are far more capable than they’ve been led to believe. Elsewhere exists for ordinary people exploring quieter ways to build more freedom, income, flexibility and options in life. No fake gurus. No hustle culture. No “10x” nonsense. Just practical observations, honest experiences and real-world ideas. Over the last year, I accidentally discovered AI-assisted software building (“vibe coding”) through a random YouTube advert. Since then, I’ve: • built tools used daily inside a traditional industry • created recurring income from software without being a developer • realised most industries are still full of overlooked problems waiting to be solved And I’ve learned something important: The future won’t only belong to programmers and tech founders. It will increasingly belong to: • mechanics • plumbers • teachers • drivers • tradespeople • operators • observant people with real-world experience People who deeply understand problems. Elsewhere is a growing archive of observations, case studies and practical ideas from that perspective. Free to read. No technical background needed. → elsewhere.codes

@ugo_builds Congratulations! Is it a US thing to use a comma instead of a decimal point?

Mom, I crossed $500 of internet money 🥹

Honestly Oliver, I totally understand this! Having a little oasis in your back garden is so great for your wellbeing, and as you described, your family time improves because of your facilities. The biggest ROI we can make as parents is through our kids. Teaching them what we wish we'd have known at their age. Teaching them to be responsible but the importance of enjoyment.

This is hands down the best $70,000 I've ever spent. Not my house. Not a car. Not a holiday. Not a watch. I was recently asked on a podcast: "What's the best money you've ever spent?" And without hesitation, this was my answer. $68,361 to be exact. For anyone interested, I have the full breakdown of every cost, labour item, material and fixture. And if you gave me the choice tomorrow between keeping this or keeping almost any luxury purchase I've ever made, I'd choose this every single time. Here's why. Just over a year ago, we built a fully bespoke cedar garden pod. It was custom designed from scratch and includes: • A 3.5m x 4.5m gym • A custom-built two-person sauna • A six-person hot tub under a covered canopy • Sonos throughout • TV • Apple Home integration • Smart lighting • Full WiFi On paper, it sounds excessive. In reality, it's become the most valuable thing we own. Not because of what it is. Because of what it enables. Every morning my alarm goes off at 6:30am. At 7am I'm training. No commute. No excuses. No traffic. No waiting for equipment. No "I'll go later." I walk 30 seconds from my back door and I'm in the gym. As I've got older, fitness has become less about aesthetics and more about my mental health. Training clears my head. It makes me a better husband. A better dad. A better leader. And removing every possible barrier to exercising has been life changing. Then there's the sauna. I try to use it 2–3 times a week. Improved recovery. Reduced stress. Better sleep. A forced opportunity to sit still for 20 minutes in a world that's constantly demanding your attention. I really love looking at the birds who visit the garden also. And then there's the hot tub. Which has ended up being the biggest surprise of all. Every Friday, after picking the girls up from school, we have a family tradition. We make cocktails together. (Non alcoholic for the girls of course before you ask!) Then the four of us jump in the hot tub. No phones. No TV. No distractions. Just conversation. We talk about school. Our week. Upcoming holidays. Things we're grateful for. Things we're excited about. Sometimes we do quizzes. Sometimes we just sit and chat. Those moments are priceless. The girls are now interested in fitness too. At four and six they'll often come into the gym and ask to join in. Sometimes they'll put on a Danny Go workout. Sometimes they'll copy what we're doing. They're growing up seeing exercise as something fun rather than something you "have to do." And that's probably the biggest return on investment of all. People often assume the best purchases are the flashy ones. The bigger house. The faster car. The first-class travel. But if I'm honest... I'd take a smaller house with this in the garden. I'd hand back the Aston Martin tomorrow. I'd happily drive something boring from A to B if it meant keeping this. Question: What's the best money you've ever spent? (Non work related) And why?

@rowansail @marclou @jessethanley @Bento Indeed, I need to learn his ways 🤣🤣

@marclou @jessethanley @Bento Really interested in how being a dad made him more productive!

I met OG indie hacker @jessethanley in Japan 🇯🇵 He's living such a crazy life, and I don't know where to start, so here are random facts: - He's running his SaaS @Bento solo and makes a ridiculous amount of money - Unlike most founders, he knows how much is enough and works 4 hours/day - He started indie hacking in 2015 - He ran a marketing agency for 5 years before building a product - His SaaS was profitable from day 0 because he built it for his agency. - He designed his SaaS with a real human touch, and it feels like you're entering his world when you sign up - He taught himself how to code (pre-AI) - He speaks Japanese and has lived in Japan for 7 years - Being a dad made him more productive, not less - He bench presses 135kg - He's happy, positive, kind, and a great conversationalist Thanks for showing us around, Jesse 🙇❤️

@kyanbuilds @zach_yadegari It's worth $1m

@zach_yadegari Buy ToneAdapt

I'm looking to spend up to $1M to acquire or partner with an app, saas, or ecom store. I care about the product being high quality and something people actual want. You can have done $0 in revenue so far. Dm me your project.

@sflorimm You don't need 50k a month to do that. 10-20k is enough for most people. Then you just earmark a portion of each to to progress your apps, businesses or to build new ones

i want to spend more time with family and hit $50k/mo any tips?

It's only worth £310k if he sells it and decides to live in a box. House values are the biggest financial fallacy passed down through generations. Yeh sure, you might inherit a property from your parents when they pass away, if that hasn't been used to fund their care home. But even if you do find yourself in that situation, you're probably old enough to have built your own nest egg anyway.

I was chatting with my Uber driver today and he told me how he bought his first house in Manchester back in 2019 for £140k. He spent another £50k fixing it up, so his total investment was around £190k. Today? The property is worth about £310k. I don’t know but imma just stick to the stock market. This is the kind of conversation that makes you stop and think. And I’m not saying real estate isn’t good but with stocks, no repairs, no surprise maintenance bills. Just me, my portfolio, and a few market-induced heart attacks every now and then. 😂 Different paths, same goal: building wealth.

@JonBuildsHQ Fugajsnkdllabhhjksnn

say one thing only a real person would say

@Starmist_ @MartinSLewis Where have I mentioned earnings? Also, NHS app, very easy to request repeat prescriptions.

@ElsewhereNotes @MartinSLewis Listen twerp. Been there done that, content with what I earned over 67 years. So butt out!

Today's Poll: Do you have a current valid passport? If so is it just a UK one, or do you have current valid passports for other countries too (eg dual nationality)

@Starmist_ @MartinSLewis Who doesn't have a passport? Travelling the world is one of the greatest gifts of modern life. I pity those who live inside such a bubble they can't see what they're missing.

@MartinSLewis No passport, no NHS app , no gov.uk. Suits me fine.

@kyanbuilds Yeh, this particular app creates personalised viral content, so i can use some of the content I've been generating from the testing, to create the marketing content. I'm just crap at tiktok and insta, so that'll be the hurdle for me personally 🤣

@ElsewhereNotes thats good man, you literally need to design ur app/product around a feature you can literally record and show off in tiktoks and reels lol. thanks bro!

guys it's so easy 1. built my first website ever in a week 2. posted tiktoks 3. talked to all my users went from $0 --> $10K/mo in 50 days.

@sweepsfinalboss Case study

The reason I was able to hit $10k a month with organic tiktok slideshows starting from 0 with a $5 domain and no audience was because I stopped treating it like a lottery and built it like a system There's a reason the people quietly printing with affiliate aren't the ones with the biggest following it's the ones who learned to actually stop the scroll and turn attention into clicks that one skill is the whole game Learning to go viral organically and convert it, before you ever spend a dollar on ads is honestly the most underrated path in this entire space I put together a full case study for the people who want to start organic from scratch and go from 0 > 10k a month Including >The offers that actually convert >How to target USA traffic >The warmup that keeps your accounts alive >The bridge page that doubles your earnings Comment "CASE STUDY" and I'll send it to you (must be following so I can DM)

@sflorimm Being able to use it productively. I don't think even 0.01% of the world are doing that yet. I doubt more than 1% ever will.

Everyone has AI now. That advantage expired fast. What's the new advantage?

If you believe the mainstream media, AI is here to take all our jobs and make the little people unemployed and broke. Fact is, if you harness AI like I did, you can build income generating assets that will improve your life, increase your net worth & develop your skills in the process. I have no tech background. I built an app for myself that evolved into something bigger for a client whi serves my industry. I could probably sell it right now for $250,000 but I'm in this one for the long haul. I've built a great business relationship and the company I work with are keen to expand my product across their network. In the meantime I keep building, keep learning, keep living! That's the endgame for me; a life without limits. Anyone can do it, you just need perseverance, willingness to learn, be unafraid to fail many times. Eventually something will click and it'll be all worth while. Finally, happy Fathers Day to all the dads in the UK, and if it's the same around the world, likewise to all the dads globally!

You don't need to rush with kids mate. Make sure you're comfortable financially, with some level of autonomy on the income side. That way you can see your kids grow up. My son was born when I was 37 and I wouldn't change the decision to start late. He sees the world with us, he has a fantastic life, and I get to spend as much time as I like with him!

GM everyone ☕️ Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there 👊 25 years old and no kids, which feels rare these days 😅 Spent my Sunday being productive, tidying up the portfolio and sorting out my finances. I’ve worked out that for the next 2 months I’ll be investing £2,000 per month: 📈 ETFs - £800 💻 Semiconductors - £400 🤖 AI - £400 ₿ Crypto - £400 After that, I’ll drop back a bit but still keep investing a minimum of £1,000 per month.

@_frederickjames Passive is the dream. Selling time for money, whether at Maccy D's or Apple Mac, it just seems criminal to me now. Even though I still do sell my time for money now and again, knowing that I don't have to is one of the greatest feelings I've ever felt.

@ElsewhereNotes thank u dude, yeh it's a very difficult thing to make internet money. sure i could have worked maccys and made way more in the same time - but it doesn't compound the same, im looking for passive AND exponential

My app hit $769/m in 21 days. This is what I did: 1. Made a habit tracker. 2. Exploited a deep human need. 3. Had one viral, shareable, feature. 4. Obsessed over design, feel & ui. 5. iOS only, native swift. 6. 13 step onboarding. 7. Pricing: 7.99/w & 49.99/y. 8. Adding 14.99/m boosted conversion. 9. Hard paywall in RevenueCat. 10. No notifications: this 2x’d my retention. 11. Measured onboarding with PostHog. 12. Iterated till 85%+ onboarding. 13. Tweaked paywall till 3-4% conversion. 14. Ratings during onboarding (patched). 15. Invested in tools: Mobbin, Claude etc. 16. Burnt $200 on ads to find winners. 17. $20-£50/day in Apple Store Ads. 18. Did not localise pricing or screenshots. 19. For ads: niche locations & popular keywords. 20. Figma for store screenshots: contrast & depth. More importantly: 1. Got 8+ hours of good sleep / night. 2. Ate super clean diet & gym 3x a week. 3. Had special time with wife 2x a week. 4. Blocked noise & negativity. 5. Had a positive abundance mindset. 6. Followed The Law of Attraction. 7. Failed for 3 years, and 13 different ideas. This was just my playbook: there are infinite ways to win.

@pcshipp Hav over 20 domains on namecheap, never had any issues.

Hey devs I have $15. Which is the best place to buy a domain? - Cloudflare - Hostinger - GoDaddy - Namecheap

Question for #seedance users, trying to preserve audio in a 2.0 reference to video generation. The references are 1 image and 1 piece of audio that needs to be preserved as is. Sometimes it works, other times it's an "inspired" take on the audio file. Are there any tricks to getting seedance to totally preserve the input audio?

@aryanlabde Still building on Base44 - quite frankly, it gets better and better every single day.

vibe coders, you don’t need fable 5 to build a $5k MRR SaaS. you need 100 users paying $50/mo.