She Failed 3 Times. Then Helped a Grandma Use Zoom.
From failed launches to $116K helping people with tech. This is what happens when you stop chasing trends.
A friend messaged me after one of my newsletters.
We’ll call her Kris.
What she said hit me hard.
Because honestly? I’ve been through some of it too.
Here’s what she told me.
Fail #1: The digital planner dream
This one stings.
Kris spent 6 months! Six whole months designing digital planners.
Not just any planners. These were aesthetic masterpieces.
Neutral tones, Pinterest vibes, motivational quotes on every page.
Clickable tabs. Hyperlinked indexes. Mood-boosting fonts.
The works.
She stayed up late perfecting layouts. Watched 23 tutorials on how to add page-flip animations.
Even bought an iPad so she could “test the user experience.”
It felt like she was building something meaningful.
Like this would be the thing that made her money while she slept.
But here’s the thing:
They were pretty… and completely useless.
Nobody was asking for them.
Nobody needed them.
They didn’t fix a pain point.
They just looked good.
When she finally launched, she was proud. Posted about it on Instagram. Emailed her list.
Nothing.
One sale came through: her mom.
Second one? Her cousin. (Trying to be supportive)
That was it.
Six months of effort, two sales, $14 in Stripe.
She told me,
“I felt like the internet lied to me. Everyone said planners were the thing. But I didn’t ask myself why I was making them. I just wanted to sell something.”
And man, I felt that.
So many of us start there.
We create what looks like it’ll sell.
What other people say is hot.
But if there’s no real need behind it, no real problem being solved…
It’s just digital confetti.
Fail #2: The guru trap
After the planner flop, Kris did what a lot of us do when we’re discouraged and desperate for a win.
She enrolled in a “six-figure course creator” course. You know the type.
The promise?
Follow the template, launch your course, sit back while Stripe notifications roll in.
It sounded perfect. She was sold.
The guru said, “Pick something you’re semi-good at. Package it. Market it hard.”
So she picked photography.
Even though she’d only ever used her camera in Auto mode.
Even though her best photo was still a fluke.
But the course told her to push through the discomfort.
“Imposter syndrome is normal,” they said.
So she did it anyway.
Wrote the scripts.
Recorded videos with a ring light she borrowed from a friend.
Paid $5,000 in Facebook ads because the course said that’s what it takes to “scale.”
And after all that?
She made… $147.
Not even enough to cover the mic she bought.
“I cried for two weeks,” she told me.
And honestly? That’s not just a Kris thing.
That’s what happens when you follow someone else’s map for a destination that isn’t even yours.
Fail #3: The fitness attempt
By this point, Kris was in hustle survival mode.
She saw creators selling workout plans. Tons of them.
It seemed like easy money.
So she figured, why not try?
Never mind that she hates working out.
Never mind that she’d skip her own workouts half the time.
Everyone is killing to look fit, there’s surely enough of the pie she can bite!
She Googled how to build a fitness funnel.
Watched influencers on YouTube.
Bought a logo on Fiverr.
Even spent hours coming up with challenge names like “The 14-Day Reset.”
But her heart wasn’t in it.
And her audience could feel it.
She couldn’t even fake excitement about the content.
She said,
“I felt like a fraud writing about burpees when I couldn’t do five in a row.”
There were no sales. No engagement.
Just silence.
And for once, Kris didn’t cry.
She just felt… done.
Done pretending.
Done copying what looked successful.
The weird idea that worked
After all those flops, Kris didn’t pivot because of another course.
She didn’t sit down to map out her “zone of genius.”
She didn’t even know she was starting a business.
It started with a phone call from her aunt.
“My laptop keeps dying. Can you look at it?”
Kris said yes.
Then her aunt’s friend asked if she could help set up Zoom.
Then another one wanted to know how to download pictures from her phone without deleting half her contacts.
It snowballed from there.
Soon, Kris was going house to house, showing older folks how to use tech without fear.
No jargon. No pressure. Just real help.
It wasn’t glamorous.
She wasn’t “building a brand.”
She was helping people stop accidentally printing 74 copies of the same email.
She taught them how to:
Spot a phishing scam before clicking the scary link
Keep their laptops from sounding like jet engines
Back up their iPad photos without crying
Actually see their grandkids’ faces on FaceTime
And here’s the wild part:
They loved her for it.
Because to them?
This wasn’t basic stuff.
It was freedom.
They didn’t care about fonts or funnels or funnels with fonts.
They just wanted to feel less lost.
Kris charged a small fee. Nothing fancy.
But word spread.
She didn’t even have a website.
Just trust. Referrals. Good work.
And slowly, quietly, the money started to follow.
No viral moments.
No pitch decks.
Just solving a real problem.
The numbers
Let’s talk numbers, but not in the braggy, #bossbabe way.
In the quiet, real-life-progress kind of way.
Her first 6 months?
$427.
That’s it.
Not enough to cover the gear she bought for the failed photography course.
Not enough to replace the time lost chasing templates and trends.
Barely enough to feel like this was working.
But she kept showing up.
Helping one person at a time.
Charging what felt fair.
Saying yes when someone said, “Do you know how to fix this?”
Then came year one:
$21,000.
It still felt weird.
No storefront. No audience. No content calendar.
Just word of mouth and people who felt safer with her around.
Year two?
$69,000.
That’s when it started to feel real.
She could finally stop freelancing on the side.
She wasn’t rich, but she was finally free.
And by year three?
$116,000.
No fancy funnel.
No viral moment.
Just solving a real problem, for real people, over and over again.
But the money wasn’t what lit her up.
It was messages like:
“Now I can call my grandkids without asking for help.”
“I finally FaceTimed my daughter. She cried.”
“You have no idea how much this means to me.”
That’s what made it worth it.
Not the income.
The impact.
And the wildest part?
It all came from something she almost overlooked, because it wasn’t shiny, scalable, or sexy.
So what’s the real lesson here?
Kris didn’t go viral.
She didn’t hack the algorithm.
She didn’t “manifest” six figures in a niche she wasn’t qualified for.
She just paid attention.
To what people were actually struggling with.
To what she already knew how to do.
To where her help made someone’s life a little easier.
And that was enough.
It didn’t look like success on Instagram.
But in real life?
It gave her freedom, purpose, and peace.
If you’ve been spinning in circles, second-guessing your ideas, chasing trends, wondering why nothing sticks...
Maybe it’s not about doing more.
Maybe it’s about spotting the right gap.
The kind that’s quiet.
Unsexy.
But real.
That’s what the Gap Spotter is for.
It’s a simple tool that helps you find real-world problems you can actually solve—using what you already know, in a way people are willing to pay for.
Because you don’t need a perfect plan.
You just need a real one.