Broke, in debt, lots of skills. Need your advice

I’m long time lurker. I was working for the last 10 years on my own startups, every one of them failed miserably and I’m broke with huge debt (more than 100k). Of course I’m depressed and lonely and all that stuff and of course It’s awesome that I learned lots of stuff and I still want to start something new and that after lots of struggle I found my "real purpose in life" (= what I want to do for rest of my life and what makes me happy) but right know I’m realist.

I really need to fix all of my money issues and start from zero, debt is catching me. I can’t and don’t want to borrow money, I don’t have family to back me up. For know, I need to start making money as quickly as possible. I have my own family (and we have a 6yo child).

I have tons of experiences with PHP/MySQL/CSS/jQuery+Bootstrap, I can do rapid prototype of any website/business model, I can do frontend or backend, and even though I failed with all of my startups, I can do consulting of idea, business model or website (the reasons I failed was, you guess it, money management and stupid, stupid, stupid way of “poker" thinking - “Ok, I failed, I’m in some debt, but now i will double down on next company and it will be OK). I have many lean startup skills (programming, coding, marketing, bootstrapping, designing, UI/UX, idea development, idea brainstorming, etc). I’m completely aware of my strengths and weaknesses. I don’t have any portfolio of my work I can present, I was working for the last 3 years on huge startup which failed, our investor now owns it and we have NDA and everything i was working before starting that company is gone.

I need your advice guys, your opinion. What’s the best way to start making money in my situation quickly? By quickly I mean to be paid in next weeks, not months.

if I can help you with something, If you want to use my skills or knowledge, PM me, please.

Thank you, guys!

Tom

Despite the tough situation, it is great that you're facing it head on.

mooreds suggestions are great, I would start with those.

If you want to work as a dev, the thing that best worked for me is to open a github account and put some code of my own there. It doesn't have to be revolutionary or state of the art code, but if you have even a simple web site there, it will probably help you get either freelance gigs or a full-time job.

In your case, you might consider putting there a simple site (front and backend). If later down the road you pick a skill (like say, React) you can then tweak your project and include it.

Also, I suggest having a spreadsheet to track your assets/liabilities at the beginning and at the end of each month. It might be tough doing it at first, but knowing exactly how much you owe is the first step to get out of debt.

Best of luck!!

Reading your situation, my first thought was to consider the "Personal bankruptcy" [1]. I don't know what this would imply for you, if your country has such a system, or even if it is a good idea in general to go for this. Probably any other solution to get money would be better, but if you don't succeed or get into an even more difficult situation, this may be an option to consider.

Good luck!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_bankruptcy

Good luck.