How often do “fun” personal projects become your job?

So you know how you sometimes start doing something on the side because you have things to say and experiences to share? Like a blog or something?

This is how my baby Pollo Digital started at the beginning of the year.

I shared about layoffs in Germany and how asymmetry in knowledge puts immigrants at a disadvantage – and I shared on YouTube what every immigrant should know. The other stuff I was sharing was about cultural fit in Germany if you are coming from post-Soviet space.

Four months later, this personal side project replaced my “real” work, which was my Deepfake startup. Why? The Deepfake startup brought challenges, immense leadership growth, tons of learnings – and gave me very little back.

Pollo Digital’s content however brought inbound requests and engagement I never expected, which later turned into mentorship and clarity sessions around layoffs.

Honestly, I never thought my “personal” offering would be worth anything, really. And I am so happy it is.

Since last week I’ve been working on Pollo Digital full time, which means I get to share the “building in public.”

So now I get to make it a sustainable business. I get to revamp the offering pages and pretty much everything else – and it is hard. My positioning is all over the place because I didn’t quite think it through. My website looks like it was built by someone who built a website for the first time in their life without support – which it was.

My sales process is weird – because I truly want to help people in need of clarity, and I used to do it for free, and damn it is hard to monetize something that started off as a personal passion project.

Sales convos are weird, but honestly as long as you don’t treat them as awkward sales convos, they really are not that bad.

Tons to do. Tons to share about my work on layoffs. I’ll be making another post about how to define the problem and do proper validation in a space as tabooed as layoffs.

First thing I did today after looking at my calendar – I put a paywall on the layoff in Germany guide and added more required questions to my calendly, because jumping on clarity calls with people going through layoffs was starting to disrupt my day. I’m going to start charging to keep it sustainable. 😊

To everyone who has been following and supporting me – thank you. I will share everything I learn here. Like, subscribe, share, ask me out for Kaffee & Kuchen ❣️