Side Projects. Big Impact.

How shipping small (and big) ideas transformed my career as a designer.

Hey welcome back, the playbook is still very young but so far I’ve been loving it. I’ll share some metrics soon.

Keep the feedback coming, it means a lot 🫰🫂

Thanks for reading!

My most impactful work came from projects that made no money, or close to no money.

They are also one of my best career memories. By far.

Not client work. Not startup jobs. But late-night side projects with friends.

Embracing the process rather than the results, weirdly.

I’m pretty sure this resonates with some of you.

In my How I Went From Jail to Building a Design Career post, I mentioned being courted by some Big Tech companies when my career was ramping up.

Here’s the kicker: none of them cared about my client work.

Every single one asked about my side projects. Not client work.

They wanted to know how I built those products—challenges, setbacks, and sneak peeks included. They didn’t care about the financial outcome, they just wanted a sneak peak on how those projects initiated and how they were executed.

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