Have you ever thought about starting a toy company? How hard would it be? I've seen a handful of Chinese anime figure companies popping up lately which made me wonder about it. Though they probably have a huge advantage being local to factories.

But if you are artistically inclined, I think you could do a lot of the work yourself and save on hiring cost. Like I could
>learn zbrush and do the sculpting myself
>print prototypes because I already have a resin printer
>can paint the prototypes since I have experience making customs
>can take marketing photos since I have experience with toy photography
>do marketing on social media which isn't that hard

That's already a good chunk of it I feel I could hypothetically do myself. But still I know there is a lot more involved. Deco, packaging, connecting with a factory and distributors, legal stuff, etc. But maybe it's not THAT high of a mountain to climb? I'm not considering it or anything but it's fascinating to think about and I wonder with how small of a team you could accomplish it with.