The recent Openclaw updates totally broke my setup and only half of it was working
Felt like a Frankenstein setup so I decided to kill it, download a Qwen local model and use it with Hermes
With all of these token usage complaints with Astra lately, having a decent local model hits different
Thinking about things differently now that I can run with no usage limits
Why can eBay pay out almost instantly but Amazon takes DD + 7 days + 3-5 working days for “bank” processing
That’s half a month of my money sat there doing NOTHING.
Just slowing me down massively
Becoming an Amazon seller gave me something I never expected: time.
I'm raising 2 kids, with our 3rd on the way, and instead of missing the moments that matter because I'm stuck in an office, I get to be there.
School drop-offs.
Doctor appointments.
Random Tuesday lunches.
Playing in the backyard.
Building an e-commerce business hasn't always been easy. There were plenty of long nights, mistakes, and risks.
But the freedom it's created for my family has made every bit of it worth it.
Money is great.
Time with your kids is priceless.
That's the real ROI.
If you're building something today, keep going. The sacrifices can pay you back in ways that aren't measured in dollars.
What's the biggest benefit Amazon has given you outside of income?
Amazon sellers / Resellers here is how I’d use this same tech for Retail Arbitrage.
May surprise you.
When sourcing either you or your staff:
1. Take a photo of the UPC on the product you’re buying.
2. Have it auto upload to some cloud. Google, iCloud, etc
3. Run this extraction on that folder every hour automatically.
4. Have a simple dashboard created with Claude that:
Stores every UPC and matches them to product names.
Here’s the big one. Extract the location meta data from the photo.
Map them to physical stores on your dashboard using Google Maps.
Bucket them by sourcer automatically.
Now you have a live map of where every item was sourced down to the exact location / store / who sourced it / what it was / when it was sourced.
5. Run reports on this data to know not only your best stores but your best locations.
6. Go further and notice trends on best time of day. Brands per locations, etc.
All of this for $2-5 a month in overhead.
I knew a guy who ran a marketing agency.
Was pulling in around $90K/month with a team of 8, and he'd left his corporate job about 3 years before to build it.
But he came from that world. Still had friends there, and he still wanted them to see he made it.
Then he linked up with a circle of entrepreneurs who were levels above him. Private events, exclusive dinners, the type of guys who talked about deals in the millions.
He wanted in.
So he started spending like them.
The $7,500/month penthouse, the $2,800 Porsche lease, flying to Miami, Dubai, LA just to be in the room.
Picking up tabs at dinners just to feel like he was on their level.
He even threw money into a crypto play one of them recommended. Some presale only their circle knew about.
He wasn't saving. Wasn't even thinking about it. The money was coming in every month, so why would it stop?
One of his biggest clients made up about 35% of his revenue and owed him $340K in unpaid invoices. Then they filed bankruptcy.
He filed a claim and waited months, only to get $41K back.
Around the same time, the crypto play crashed as well and he got nothing from that either.
But the lifestyle didn't pause. Rent was due, lease was signed, and the circle was still watching.
He then started covering the gap with credit cards and a business line of credit. Couldn't make payroll one month, then two.
Told himself he'd make it back.
He didn't.
6 months later he sold the agency for $380K. It was worth over $900K a year before. But when you have to sell, buyers smell blood.
Paid off the debts and had nothing left. Went back to near zero.
People think being a slave to the system ends when you leave your job.
But there are entrepreneurs making 6 figures a month who are just as stuck, chained to a lifestyle they built to impress people who don't matter
Spent a couple hours and started building my own version of an agent network.
Prebuilt agents and three LLMs all working together on tasks.
Passing information back and fourth, better memory systems and token usages.
It’s not there yet to replace my current flows but it’s also only been 3 hours 😅
Would love to make this my default workstation.