Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Software Engineer Built an 8000 Monthly Side Hustle in Notion Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: You know how a lot of side hustle stories start with someone who had a skill they didn't realize was marketable? Well, today's guest—Maya, a senior software engineer—took a tool she used internally at her day job and turned it into an eight-thousand-dollar-a-month side hustle. Luna: A tool we've all probably heard of: Notion. But Notion consulting? Specifically she's building databases and workflows for small businesses. Lucas: Exactly. Maya's story is interesting because she didn't start out trying to build a business. She was a software engineer at a mid-size tech company in Austin. She used Notion to organize her own tasks, and then a friend who owned a small marketing agency asked if she could set up a client tracker. She did it for free over a weekend. Luna: That free project became her first portfolio piece. How did she go from there to charging clients? Lucas: She posted a few screenshots of the tracker on LinkedIn, just casually, and got a direct message from a real estate broker who wanted something similar. That first paid project was five hundred dollars for about ten hours of work. She charged seventy-five dollars an hour initially. Luna: And she had zero marketing budget—just LinkedIn and referrals. That's a pretty common starting point. Lucas: Right. Within three months, she had four recurring clients. Each one needed a custom Notion workspace—some were CRM dashboards, others were project management hubs or automated invoice trackers. She used Zapier and Make to connect Notion to their other tools, like Google Calendar or Slack. Luna: So she's essentially a low-code consultant. She automates workflows that would otherwise take people hours of manual data entry. I can see the value there. Lucas: Her big break came when a local real estate agency hired her to build a full lead management system. That project alone paid three thousand dollars. She started raising her rates to a hundred and fifty dollars per hour after she had three strong testimonials. Luna: What kind of time commitment are we talking? Eighteen-hour days? Lucas: She said it was about fifteen hours a week, mostly evenings and weekends. She kept her full-time job throughout. She told me the hardest part was learning to say no to low-paying gigs—people who wanted a whole CRM set up for two hundred dollars. Once she had a clear portfolio, she could point to her work and justify the rate. Luna: That's a key lesson: you have to be willing to walk away from bad clients. Did she do any formal marketing beyond LinkedIn? Lucas: She created a simple landing page using Carrd, listing her services and showing before and after examples of her workspaces. She also started a small Notion template shop on Gumroad—sells basic templates for ten to twenty dollars each. That brings in an extra four hundred a month passively. Luna: So she's got two revenue streams: custom consulting and digital products. That's smart. Lucas: She now has a waitlist for new clients. And she's hiring a part-time virtual assistant to handle client onboarding, which frees her up to focus on the complex builds. In the next six months, she wants to hit twelve thousand a month. Luna: That's a big jump. How does she plan to get there? Lucas: She's launching a small group coaching program for other professionals who want to start Notion consulting. That would be a higher-margin offering—four hundred dollars per person for a four-week cohort. She tested the idea with three friends and they all landed clients within a month. Luna: So she's moving from pure service to a mix of service and education. That's a classic scaling path. Lucas: And it builds on the same core skill set. For anyone listening, Maya's story isn't just about Notion—it's about taking a tool you already know deeply and packaging that expertise for businesses that don't have the time to learn it themselves. Luna: If you're a software engineer or even a power user of any productivity tool, the opportunity is there. You just need one free project to start. Lucas: She actually told me that her first free project led to three paid referrals within two months. So the return on that initial investment was huge. Now, I will say—the technical part is only half the battle. You also have to be good at understanding the client's business process. Luna: That's where the consulting part comes in. It's not just building a database; it's figuring out what data matters and how people should interact with it. Maya's engineering background helps her think in systems. Lucas: Exactly. And she recommends starting with a niche. She focused on real estate and small marketing agencies because those were the clients she knew from her network. Now she's expanding into nonprofits and local service businesses like plumbers and electricians. Luna: That's a good reminder: don't try to serve everyone at once. Pick a vertical where you have some familiarity. Lucas: One more detail—she uses a simple contract that specifies exactly what she'll deliver and a thirty-day support period after launch. That prevents scope creep. And she requires a fifty percent deposit upfront. Luna: So she's made the process repeatable. That's probably why she can scale. Lucas: Absolutely. And if listeners want to dig deeper, Maya has shared her exact workflow on her LinkedIn. I'll put a link in the show notes—there's no paywall, just a detailed walkthrough. Luna: Before we wrap, I want to echo something you said earlier: this show wouldn't exist without listener support. If these episodes have helped you think about your career or side hustle, please consider supporting us. Lucas: Yeah, we keep the show ad-free because of people like you. You can support at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Even a small contribution helps us keep producing these detailed case studies. Luna: And you can send us ideas for future episodes too. We love hearing what side hustles you're curious about. Lucas: Alright, back to Maya. The takeaway here is that you don't need to reinvent the wheel. Find a tool you love, build something small for a friend, and then charge for the next one. It's that simple and that hard. Luna: And if you're a software engineer, you already have a massive head start. The technical skills are transferable; the consulting skills you build over time. Lucas: Next week we'll talk to a former nurse who built a twelve thousand dollar side hustle in health tech sales. Until then, good luck building your side hustle.