Something we see often in DiscoLink Club is the following chain of events:

1. Member has a side hustle start to gain traction and grow fast.
2. Member puts their head down and does the work.
3. Member gets scolded (lovingly) by Coach Ryan, our Growth and Accountability Coach, to outsource.
4. Member says they can’t afford that.
5. Ryan walks them through the fact that in a side hustle, the math is different from a traditional business on when you need to outsource. 

Let’s break this down - what does Ryan mean? How is the math different in a side hustle? 

Because it’s exactly that: a side hustle. It’s not your main source of income (though maybe one day it will be!)

But in the meantime, while it’s in side hustle status, your job is to keep the fire kindling and keep it growing. It doesn’t have to be ultra profitable, as long as it’s not costing you money, and you’re keeping at least a little off the top, it’s totally ok. 

Focus on keeping it alive and growing it. Don’t kill it because you burn yourself out trying to do it all.  

The former Creative Director at ConvertKit, Charli Marie, lays it out perfectly. She not only had a demanding day job at ConvertKit, she also had side hustles that she had been building for years, and while her job was important to her, so were the side hustles she had been building.

Her income from her side projects was £1,666 per month, and she was spending over £1,000 on contractors to keep it going. 

If this was her only source of income, this wouldn’t have made sense. But as a side hustle, it absolutely does.

In her own words: “I believe that the expense of hiring help is actually an investment into the potential of earning more income from these projects in the future. A bet which seems to be paying off as only 6 months into my accounting year I’m at over £19k for side hustle income already. Hiring help has freed up my time to focus on the big picture, but also to just do things purely for the fun of it too (like streaming on Twitch!). I’m confident the investment is worth it for me.”

Side hustles are a long term play that should ideally be the throughline in your career; don’t burn yourself out by going too hard and focusing too much on doing it all yourself – outsource so you can focus on the bigger picture, grow it, and also enjoy the journey while you’re at it by leaning into the elements of the side hustle that you genuinely find fun.

Where are you with your outsourcing journey? Is there anything you can take off your plate? Something to think about ❤️

— Irina, Saron, and the team behind DiscoLink

Coming up: Masterclass with Nadia Odunayo: Let’s bootstrap a startup from 0-1 – The playbook on picking and developing a good idea.​

Next Thursday, September 26 at 11 AM PT/2 PM ET/6 PM UTC, Nadia Odunayo will be diving into her playbook on picking and developing a good idea into a fully bootstrapped start-up. ​

​​>> RSVP HERE << ​​

​​Nadia Odunayo​ took her reading side project and turned it into ​The StoryGraph​, a thriving, growing startup with almost 3M registered users. But perhaps more impressive is the fact that she did it fully bootstrapped, using her personal savings to fund her runway, and built it to be a profitable company. She’s learned a ton along the way about how to build fast, lean, and with a practical perspective on money. 

And now, she wants to break down that process with you.

​Join us for a journey of bootstrapping a startup idea. We’ll start with a basic app idea and we’ll go through the multi-step process that teaches you how to research and validate that idea, talk to users and gather real data, and synthesize and turn that information into features so you know exactly what to build.

​In this workshop, we’ll cover:

• ​Ideation

• ​Research

• ​Rubric for evaluating startup ideas

• ​How to find users to talk to

• ​How to conduct a helpful user interview

• ​A script you can use when talking to users

• ​Synthesis of user interviews

• ​Turning your synthesis into features

• ​The costs that come into play when bootstrapping

• ​How to allocate your time, especially as a side project

• ​and more

​Nadia Odunayo is the founder of The StoryGraph, a book tracking app that reaches millions of people per month. She’s also a developer, speaker and avid reader herself.

>> RSVP HERE << ​​

​This Masterclass is produced by DiscoLink and is free for members of DiscoLink Club. 

Membership is free, apply today.​​

Hot off the press from DiscoLink 🪩

In case you missed last month’s AMA session with Cassidy on how to navigate getting paid for your side projects, it’s officially live on our DiscoLink Youtube channel! 

Be sure to check it out here, and let us know what you think 🪩🧡

Don’t Miss Out

Our bookmarks from the week - good reads, listens, and general inspo from all around.

Live from DiscoLink Club

DiscoLink Club is a community of professionals in tech who are building side hustles.

Want to join DiscoLink Club? Membership is free and we review applications on a rolling basis. Apply here.

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