Yeah, I have no clue how effective it is compared to other advertising methods, but it's worked well enough to keep me steadily employed.
I don't really know what I'm doing here. I don't have any self-employed friends or anyone to copy business practices from, so I'm just winging it - trying to build the kind of service I'd personally want to hire.
My flyer is designed by me and it shows. It's immediately obvious to anyone who sees it that this is just one guy working out of the back of a van, not some big corporation. Plenty of people have told me that's the main reason they reached out.
Yeah, I always ask if it's a household I haven't dropped a flyer to yet. In these cases, the answer to "where'd you hear about me?" is almost always that they saw someone else asking about it on Facebook and someone recommended me in the comments.
Interestingly, it's never the original poster who ends up contacting me - it's usually some third party just scrolling through the comments.
A few have gotten direct recommendations from previous customers, but that's pretty rare overall. Most saw my flyer, and the rest mostly found me through local Facebook groups.
Edit: I don't do targeted advertising though. Just physical flyers and I occasionally post pictures of my work to Facebook and Instagram.
I don't think fashion is just one thing. You're not going to find anyone promoting the way I'm dressing but I dress that way for a reason and it's still a fashion choice. You could say I'm counter-signaling for intentionally not following current trends but that's still just a different version of the same thing.
I'd say that a more accurate statement would be: "Following current fashion is wearing what you think others expect you to wear"
I don't think it matters what I think. Like everyone else chiming in on this thread, I have zero expertise on the subject - so whatever I say is just my personal preferred outcome, not a realistic one.
I'm never intentionally mean to anyone - not online, not in real life. I'm not overly polite either, and I don't hold back just to spare your feelings, but hurting people is never my goal.
I apply the same rule to people who aren't even in the room. You'll be hard-pressed to catch me talking shit about anyone, even the ones I don't like.
The material doesn't really matter there - that's what the waterproofing membrane is for. My bathroom has a plywood subfloor with a 5 cm concrete slab cast on top, floor heating cables embedded inside it. Then there's a waterproofing membrane painted over that, followed by the tiles. There's even this rubber "funnel" over the floor drain that's fully embedded in the waterproofing layer, making it virtually impossible for water to go anywhere but down the drain.
The downside is that it enables you to ignore every real problem in the world by just telling yourself that it is what it is. It might be good for your own sanity on the short run but it's bad for everyone on the long run.
I don't think AI means what you think it does. What you're thinking is probably more akin to AGI.
Logic Theorist is broadly considered to be the first ever AI system. It was written by Allen Newell in 1956.