When Your Side Project Outshines Your Day Job

🗞️ This Week’s Thought

The other day, I was working on a side project while sitting in another “This could have been an email” meeting.

You know that feeling?

The moment when your creative work becomes more interesting than your day job.

That spark of excitement that makes your hair stand up?

That’s your signal to go full bore, as my dad would say.

I know this feeling all too well.

Last year, I was writing a sci-fi screenplay with my writing partner.

It was the most exciting I had ever felt about a project.

The story, characters, and world were special, at least to us.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it, to the point that it started trickling into my work.

I’d sit at my desk, staring blankly at another progress report, while my mind wandered to new alien species or the discovery of an interdimensional wormhole.

It didn’t stop there.

After work, I would rush home, shower, have a quick bite to eat, and stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning making tweaks.

I never put that much thought and care into my day job (sorry, boss).

Here’s how to turn that signal into something real.

🔗 The Stack

You should be using your head to come up with ideas, not to store them.

With these tools, you can capture and fully utilize all those great ideas that are floating around in your noggin.

When I tell you I have a million and one ideas, I mean it.

Before using some of these apps, I would have sticky notes plastered everywhere in my apartment to the point where my girlfriend started finding notes taped to her favorite coffee mug.

What’s worse is that I had no way to organize them.

I can’t tell you how many great ideas I’ve lost over the years.

Don’t be like the old me.

Download one or two of these apps today.

You won’t regret it.

🧠 Elephas Super Brain

The best AI-powered second brain you can build right now.

It simplifies Tiago Forte’s C.O.D.E. framework.

If you need help sorting through the mess in your mind, this is perfect, as it uses AI to do the organizing for you.

🪨 Obsidian

A powerhouse for linked thinking and knowledge management with real-time bi-directional links.

Think of it like Wikipedia, but for your thoughts.

📝 Notion

The Swiss Army knife of productivity apps.

Perfect for keeping documents, tasks, and notes all in one place and organized seamlessly.

💽 Qatalog

The lazy person’s second brain.

Instead of asking you to build and maintain a separate knowledge repository, it connects directly to your existing digital tools, such as Google Drive and Slack.

🖼️ Milanote

Great for visual thinkers and learners, this makes it perfect for anyone who prefers to save visual notes and ideas rather than endless pages of text documents.

💡 One Way Forward

Build Your First Tiny Product in a Weekend

You ever overthink projects to the point that you never finish them?

You spend time coming up with detailed plans, conducting eye-gouging market research about competitors, and creating the perfect solution that never sees the light of day.

It’s a frustrating way to live, especially if you’re a multipotentialite who balances many interests.

The good news?

You can bring not just one, but many of your ideas to life in a single weekend by building a tiny product.

What’s a tiny product, you ask?

It’s anything that can be built, shipped, and validated within two days.

We’re not talking about a unicorn startup here.

We’re talking about a real thing that solves a real problem for real people.

I remember spending nine months and thousands of dollars developing a writing course.

I pored over every detail, ensuring that customers got the most bang for their buck.

I became so enamored with perfection that I never launched it.

Crazy, right?

Maybe I’ll revisit it someday, but with so many writing courses out there for a fraction of the price—some even free—I often wonder, why bother?

Fast forward to three months ago when I launched a half-baked writing template over a weekend and sold twenty copies.

Go figure!

Here’s the framework:

Friday Night (2 hours max):

• Pick ONE idea (the one that won’t leave you alone)

• Choose your tools

• Set up your workspace

Saturday (6-8 hours):

• Build core functionality

• Focus on industry-leading no-code platforms like Bubble (web apps), Glide (mobile apps), Zapier (automation), and Airtable (databases)

• Remember: functional beats pretty much every time

Sunday (4-6 hours):

• Polish the essentials

• Write copy that doesn’t suck

• Launch and share (yes, even if it feels scary)

Real Examples That Work:

• Simple course landing page for your expertise

• Email course teaching something you know cold

• Basic calculator tool for your industry

• Curated resource list that saves people time

What matters most is being fast rather than getting everything right.

Just figure out whether people want it.

Many creator-entrepreneurs have validated ideas with nothing more than a landing page and a Typeform.

I have a client who made her first $500 from pre-orders for a productivity dashboard she hadn’t built yet.

Your weekend project might not change the world.

But it can change the way you think about creating, and that’s where the real magic happens.

💬 Creative Capital

Monetize Your First Ten Subscribers

Stop stressing over needless metrics.

Email marketing persuades the purchasing decisions of nearly six out of every ten email subscribers, and it all begins with the first subscriber.

Let’s talk about why your first ten subscribers greatly outweigh ten thousand random followers:

They are your focus group.

These folks care enough to share their email, so they are invested in telling you what’s working and what isn’t before you waste months going in the wrong direction.

They are your amplifiers.

Personalized emails deliver six times higher transaction rates, and knowing your audience makes personalizing much easier.

Plus, good content gets shared, increasing its reach.

They’re your revenue stream.

Email marketing delivers an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.

Those first ten subscribers may seem small, but they bring plenty of value and revenue.

The Power Move:

Send a personalized email thanking them for subscribing and asking what they are working on.

This will put you on the fast track to understanding your audience more quickly than most creators.

I know someone who grew a $50k/year email list business from serving only 200 people!

I was never that lucky, but I won’t discredit my first six subscribers.

You see, I was following a brand-building course at the time, and the instructor strongly pushed me to sell a digital product within the first week.

Here I was with only five subscribers, thinking I might lose all of them if I pitched this early.

Still, I’ve always been a teacher’s pet.

So, I sent out an email advertising a ten-page PDF on how to book an agent, and to my shock, I made a quick fifty bucks!

This shows that quality beats numbers every day.

📣 Try This

Make $1,000 in 30 Days

Here’s your mission:

Build and launch something that could generate $1,000 using only free or inexpensive tools.

You’ve got 30 days.

Examples that work:

• Mini-course teaching your expertise

• Template pack for something you’ve mastered

• Consulting package for a specific problem

• Digital product solving a pain point

The rules:

• Keep tool costs under $100

• Ship something real (not just plan it)

• Tell someone about it (scary but necessary)

Send me your results.

I’ll feature the best ones in next month’s issue.

Even if you don’t hit $1k, you’ll have something real to point to.

That’s worth more than another month of “someday” planning.

📊 Your Turn

Many Paths Weekly is for creative, curious minds who want to explore multiple interests and turn them into a source of income.

Each week, we dive into tools, systems, and strategies for multipotentialites who refuse to pick just one lane.

Enjoying this? Hit reply and tell me what you’re working on. I read every email.

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