Starting a site hustle with two kids and a full-time job

Embarking on a new journey is never easy, especially when it involves venturing into unfamiliar territory. Today, I find myself stepping out of my comfort zone as I dive into the world of site hustles after nearly 15 years. It's a leap of faith, and while I may not have all the answers yet, I'm determined to make it work. Join me as I share my motivations, aspirations, and the challenges that come with pursuing financial freedom, reclaiming my time, and embracing a location-independent lifestyle. This is not my usual style of writing, but I believe in taking risks and exploring new possibilities. So, let's begin this adventure together.

I always struggled to find a company that suits me, where I and the company is a perfect match. The last year (2022) I realized: „Maybe there isn’t“. One day I wrote down, what I want to achieve in life: “What are the long term goals for me? How would the perfect day look like?“. I came up with the most important ones and wrote them on the piece of paper.

Of course I want to earn more money. I am the family father of two and until my wife works again, I am the bread winner in this household. I don’t want to complain, but it is not easy and kids can cost a lot of money.

Why does this matter to me? I think with the ability to have money comes with many freedoms you can choose from. I don’t care for fast cars or big houses. What I want is to not to think about money too much and that is why I need to earn more money.

I want to create a day by myself. What projects do I work on, when do I do sports, when buy groceries etc.. The day should be planned by me and my family, but not my bosses.

I just hate to go into an office. COVID made it better, but I will get never into an office without a fight. Privileged? Absolutely. But there are also restriction here: I can’t work from anywhere. I need to be located in Germany and in my dedicated home office. Currently, I can’t drive to Italy and work from there, while my wife and kids swim at the beach. I want to get there, not Italy exactly, but to work from anywhere and don’t be restricted to a certain location.

There are more points on my list but these were my biggest points I want to resolve the following years. I wrote down how the perfect day would look like and no, it does not involve day drinking and party at night. My perfect day is pretty boring, with work, time for my family and a bit of free time. But involves more freedom what I want to work on and when I want to work on it. Same goes for the family time.

I realized that no full-time position in any company can give me. My plan is not to get rich and stop to work. I believe that a human needs a purpose and for most of us (like me) that can be found in the work we do.

I have also written to you that I have a family and a full-time job. So how do I fulfill my wishes. Well, I first need to find some time in a day.

I have two kids and every parent knows what that means. There is not much free time left at the end of the day (not even talk about the energy left). I also have a full time job where I work 40 hours a week. So how do I solve this problem. Well, simple as that I get up 30 minutes earlier to just work on my business. I don’t know if this is a sustainable solution, but it is the best I could come up with. These 30 minutes are absolute focus time. I program, write or sketch out what I want to do.

If you are a parent you know what I mean. The little free time is precious and we can be super effective in these few minutes.

There is a very famous article out there about Pieter Levels who tried to create 12 startups in 12 months, you should check it out: 12 startups in 12 months . In this article Pieter began to create 12 startups in a year, so he forces himself to learn new skills, but most important: to validate these ideas early on the market.

But I’m not that young anymore and have more responsibilities than Pieter had to that time. I don’t want to shame him, but this is just my reality and he was smarter than me, when I was that young. But I have another advantage, I know to write code, to deploy and how to create some robust backend services. My design skills are not the best, but I maybe I’ll get there.

I can’t create 12 startups in 12 months, but at least I can try to create some products and maybe I can earn some money with them.

For the first year I want to create 3-4 products that may interest some people. I’ve some ideas that may be a good fit for a niche market. The most important thing is that I create something that I need and want.

The last year I thought about several ideas that I thought about to realize. But after thinking about them, they weren’t often good enough or I just forget about them, because life can be a busy place.

What I already learned is to write every idea down. There are no bad ideas until I wrote them down and evaluated them.

Don’t get me wrong I already had bad or not good enough ideas, but writing theme down helps me to consider these ideas carefully.

I read a lot of blog posts about, how beneficial it is to work in public: Getting potential customers, spreading the word or people just know you and your product. But what I like most about that idea is: I like stories. Is it Pieter or Sumit who bootstrapped their business. I love a good story even if it is less glamorous than mine.

I want to take every one that is interested on my journey and let you see what happens next.

You can always follow me on Twitter: @legionth or just write me a nice mail.