The real meaning of ‘side’ in ‘side hustle’
Almost a year ago I wrote about my experience keeping up with parallel SaaS adventures. What’s happened since then?
- At Made Tech (my day job) a lot of work has been done, but we’re still on the quest for product-market fit in our R&D teams
- With Of Many Minds (my “side hustle” *) I’ve made very slow progress. A lot of doubt. A lot of stop and go.
Trying to pursue a business idea on the side of a full time, and full on, job might be safe but it sure isn’t efficient.
Do I wish I had more time outside of work to focus on my own thing? Sure, but I don’t think it would greatly improve the situation.
I don’t want 48 hours in a day. I want a second brain.
What I lack is not time, it’s headspace. Brain power. My day job tends to win the fight over that limited resource, despite my best efforts to keep some healthy distance from work outside of office hours.
Here’s the issue: the problems I need to solve to move my business idea forward are the same as the ones that are waiting for me on my desk at Made Tech: forming and validating go-to-market strategies, understanding target audiences, finding product-market fit, refining value propositions, etc. When I try to focus on tackling these problems for my own products during my free time, their Made Tech cousins sneakily creep out of their timeout box and gleefully steal a fair share of the ideas that my brain has the capacity to generate.
Here’s the latest example of this annoying phenomenon:
This Sunday afternoon I sat in a coffee shop for an hour, reading Go-To-Market Strategist by Maja Voje (excellent so far) and taking notes of actionable ideas. When I came back home, I went through the ideas I had noted down: 4 out of 9 were about GTM for the products we’re developing in Made Tech R&D. Come on!!!
I do get time when my brain is fully dedicated to my own business idea, but it’s too little and too fractured in the week to maintain a focus and progress at speed. Quick maths estimation: Made Tech products get about 45–50 hours of my brain per week, including a solid continuous 8 hours 5 days a week, while Of Many Minds gets 20 hours absolute max, and that’s if I’m REALLY disciplined, in 1 or 2 hours increments.
*sigh*
Okay, I’ll stop complaining now, because there’s no solution to this. Or rather, there is, but I’m choosing not to take it. I could make the jump and work full time on Of Many Minds for a while, to give it a real chance, but I’m not doing it. I’m still not ready to leave my job, for a few reasons that are more complicated than just safety.
If the price of that is slow progress on my side hustle, I’ll take it.
For now.
Curious to hear more about my journey? You can follow me on LinkedIn and watch the evolution of Of Many Minds.
