I’m not failing, but I’m not breaking out either. So I’m changing how I work!

I’ve been building small internet businesses for about 5-6 years now; long enough to know I’m not a beginner, but not far enough to feel like I’ve cracked it.

Some things worked. Many didn’t.
A few worked out financially in totally unintended ways. In some cases, I’ve made more money from link insertions and sponsored mentions than from actual product sales. Not exactly the plan and not very proud of it, but hey! money is money :)

Overall, I’ve just managed to cross into six figures USD in annual revenue across products, side projects, and freelancing. So far so good. But nothing has really broken out.

I’m busy most days. I’m rarely idle.
But very little feels like it’s compounding.

Over the last few years, I’ve also been a heavy ChatGPT (and AI) user. Compared to where I was three years ago, I am better now. I move faster. I explore ideas more efficiently. I articulate things more clearly.

That progress is real.

But here’s the uncomfortable realization I’ve been sitting with lately:
if I keep working the same way, even with better tools, I’ll probably keep growing, just only incrementally/marginally.

The limitation isn’t AI.
I guess it’s the way I’ve been trying to use it.

I tried to make ChatGPT do too many jobs at once. A thinking partner. Long-term memory. A pseudo-employee that could retain brand and organizational context across time. The idea was simple: offload more, move faster.

The pattern was always the same.
More thinking. More organizing. More refinement.
A lot of activity, and still not enough clean, compounding output.

Context drifted. I re-explained the same things across different threads. Decisions felt heavier than they should. I felt productive, but not decisive.

None of this means ChatGPT doesn’t work.
It means this mode of working isn’t taking me where I want to go next.

So I’ve decided to try something different, and more deliberate.

To ground this experiment, I’m picking one existing project and committing to working on it differently.

That project is https://onehour.digital :- a product that’s been live for about 1.5 years, never formally launched, and has quietly gathered just under 500 users through organic SEO with very inconsistent effort. It’s been gathering dust, but my gut says it still has some juice left in a few specific niche pockets.

I’m going to grow it by using ChatGPT purely as an operator.

By operator, I mean:

deciding what to ship today
breaking it into a small, shippable unit
executing
distributing
and moving on

Not as a brain.
Not as long-term memory.
Not as an always-on collaborator holding everything together.

The goal isn’t explosive growth.
It’s to see whether this way of working leads to:

more things shipped
clearer decisions
less mess
and steadier momentum over time

If this works, this becomes my default way of building.
If it doesn’t, I’ll change how I work again.

I’ll try to share what I ship, what breaks, and what I stop doing along the way.

If you’ve been building for years and feel like you’re doing fine but not breaking out, what are your challenges? what's your analyses? how to get to the next level?