Welcome back 👋
Last week, you met Tim Stoddart, the carpenter-turned-investor who built a portfolio of “boring” businesses that generates $6M+ in revenue.
This week, a story that might feel close to home for a lot of us.
Meet Charlie Clark, a solo founder who built Liinks (a link-in-bio tool) into $27K MRR—all while working a day job and raising a toddler.
This one’s less about the millions and more about boring ol’ steady growth for those of us who are already leading busy lives.
In the next 6 minutes, you’ll learn:
How to grow a side hustle without torching your 9–5
Simple ways to land your first paying customers
Why crowded markets still have room if you carve a niche
Let’s dive in.
Quit smart, not fast
Let’s be real: a lot of us have day jobs and need incomes (go figure).
Charlie quit his job once and worked on two products for about a year. When neither of them took off, he went back to that same job to get a steady paycheck. But he kept building on the side. After ~4 years of nights/weekends, Liinks hit $27K MRR. Finally, he could quit for good.
Charlie’s not-so-linear path to $27K MRR.
Some pro tips
Keep your salary until it’s holding you back. Charlie didn’t romanticize “burning the boats.” (That’s when you quit your job cold turkey and force yourself to succeed because there’s no fallback.) Instead, he kept his stable income from work so he didn’t have to panic about rent, bills, or taking short-term gigs just to stay afloat.
Follow your curiosity. At one point, Charlie was running a print-on-demand art marketplace and talking to artists every day. The idea for Liinks came when he noticed many of them using the link-in-bio tool, Linktree, to share their work. The demand was already there. But Charlie saw two gaps he could improve on: customization (people wanted more control over the look of their pages) and onboarding (most artists weren’t technical, so setup had to be simple).
Ship, then validate with behavior. Charlie launched Liinks for free, manually onboarded users, then flipped to a payment model 2–3 months later. Early adopters were grandfathered into features, while new signups had to pay for advanced tools.
Want to quit your job to start the next big thing?
Wedge into a crowded market
There are close to 100 link-in-bio tools. Meaning, Liinks was hardly the only option.
So how did Charlie still grow Liinks steadily to $27K MRR (with no staff)?
Started with users he already knew. Artists from his earlier marketplace were his first Liinks customers. Charlie did “white-glove” onboarding: literally setting up their pages to learn fast and create quick wins.
Launched publicly, but kept it simple. A free Product Hunt drop + social posts seeded usage before he spent money on ads.
Flipped to paid within months. Advanced features moved behind a subscription. Existing users kept those features for free, so there was no backlash.
Listened aggressively. In the early days, Charlie built most of the requests people had asked for. One small feature (multi-profile management) took a day to code and now drives ~25% of revenue.
Scaled with high-intent channels. From $1–5K MRR onward, he leaned on Google Search ads for “link-in-bio”-style terms: high intent, high ROI. These targeted Google searches crushed broad spray-and-pray campaigns.
Added a Pro tier when a segment emerged. Agencies/creators managing multiple profiles got their own plan. This drove more revenue without bloating the core.
Instead of guessing, Charlie kept things simple.
Talk to users, charge fairly, and put your product exactly where people are already searching. It ain’t flashy, but it’s exactly how you carve out traction in a crowded market.
👉 Check out the full video here.
Balancing act
Let’s take a meditation minute.
We talk all the time about making bank (cool, exciting, money!) and not enough about balance (boooo, lame, not money!).
But hear us out.
Product designer Hussain Almossawi posed an age-old question right in the title of his essay, “Work-Life Balance: Can It Exist For Entrepreneurs?”
TL;DR: Yes, but it looks different for entrepreneurs than it does for everyone else.
Hussain talks about ways to preserve your sanity:
Thinking of balance across time, not every single day. Some weeks you’ll pour more into work, other weeks into family or rest. Just make sure you check in with yourself so things don’t stay lopsided.
Holding onto personal routines. Workouts, dinners, or hobbies are anchors that keep you grounded when everything else feels chaotic.
Making rest intentional. Getting outside, unplugging, or spending time with people who recharge you actually keeps you sharp. Don't think of it as wasted time.
So now we’re curious: how do you balance entrepreneurship with the rest of your life?
Hit reply and you might show up in a future issue.
❤️ & 🌮,
The AppSumo Team
P.S. If you’ve got a friend who’s also juggling a side hustle, work, family, friends, and just being a person, forward them this newsletter. (Consider it your good deed for the day.)