Back in 2017 I read Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. The book hit me so hard that I got eager to try myself and build a money flow from scratch. The idea: produce and sell a PHP mascot — an elephant. Such toys weren't available on the market for some reason, and I was sure we could sell them. My future wife was helping and supporting me through the whole thing, so we worked on it together and had a lot of fun.

We found a local sewing studio with the right machinery to stitch a proper PHP logo, sourced the materials from another local shop, and put together the first prototype — plain black.

Then we produced the first batch, and gradually started adding new colors.

Later we even added a second product: a mug with the elephant logo.

The whole experiment went surprisingly well. We managed to produce and sell around a hundred elephants, a handful of mugs, and eventually sold off the storefront on a local social network along with the leftover stock.

We didn't become millionaires, of course — but we managed to start from nothing and turn it into a real, positive cash flow. For us it wasn't just an experiment; it was more of a proof to ourselves that business isn't something mystical, and that even we could create money literally out of nothing. A really inspiring experience.