I want to be honest about what this actually looked like, because most “I built X while working full-time” posts skip the part where it was difficult and unglamorous.
I’m 22. I work a full-time job at Deutsche Post in Germany. I live in Paderborn, a mid-size city in North Rhine-Westphalia that has nothing to do with e-commerce or startups. And over the past year I’ve launched VALO Gallery, NeoEssentials, ListingBoost, and the Meta Ads Report tool under the Louvr Labs umbrella.
Here’s how it actually happened.
The Honest Starting Point
I didn’t have a strategy. I had a problem.
I was running NeoEssentials — a men’s skincare brand I built on Etsy and Shopify — and I couldn’t figure out why my listings weren’t getting found organically. I spent weeks on keyword research, rewrote titles, tested different tag combinations. The process worked, eventually, but it was slow and repetitive and felt like it should be automatable.
So I learned Make.com. Then I learned how to call OpenAI’s API. Then I built a tool that did the Etsy SEO research and copywriting for me. That became ListingBoost.
VALO Gallery started because I was drawing circuit layouts on my iPad Mini as a creative break from work — I’ve always illustrated, and Formula 1 circuits have a particular geometry that I find satisfying to render. One day I looked at what I’d drawn and thought it might sell as a print. It did.
The Meta Ads Report tool came from the same place as ListingBoost — I was doing something manually every week that seemed like it should run itself.
None of this was planned. Each thing grew out of a problem I was actually having.
What “While Working Full-Time” Actually Means
My work schedule is fixed. Monday to Friday, specific hours, no flexibility. That means everything else happens in the evenings and on weekends.
I’m not going to pretend this is easy. There are weekends where I’d rather do nothing and instead I’m building a landing page or writing blog posts or debugging a Make.com scenario. There are Monday mornings where I’ve been up until 1am the night before publishing something and I have to be at work at 8.
What makes it sustainable is that I genuinely find the building interesting. I’m not forcing myself through something I hate in pursuit of some future version of my life. The process of making something — a brand, a tool, a design — is what I want to be doing. The constraint of having a day job just means I have to be more deliberate about when and how I use the time I have.
The other thing that helps: I’m single, I live in a city where I don’t have a strong social network, and I’m 22. My opportunity cost for spending Saturday afternoon building something is low. That’s a genuine advantage I have right now that I’m aware won’t last forever.
What I’ve Learned About Building Multiple Things
The instinct when you have multiple projects is to split your attention proportionally — spend some time on each one every day. That doesn’t work. You end up with shallow progress on everything and deep progress on nothing.
What works better is sequencing. I spend focused periods on one project until it reaches a stable state, then shift attention to another. VALO Gallery gets a dedicated week of new products, then runs largely on autopilot for a month while I focus on ListingBoost content. The Meta Ads Report tool gets a sprint of development, then I let it run while I focus on VALO’s launch preparation.
Most of the infrastructure is shared. The same Make.com account runs automations for all four projects. The same design sensibility — editorial, black and white, bold typography — runs through all of them. The skills I developed for one (Shopify setup, Meta Ads, Etsy SEO) transfer directly to the others. The returns compound.
What I’d Tell Someone Starting Out
Build one thing first. Actually build it — not plan it, not research it, build it and ship it. The learning that comes from a real product with real users is worth more than any amount of preparation.
Don’t wait for the perfect moment to start. I started NeoEssentials with almost no capital and no formal training in e-commerce, skincare formulation, or marketing. I figured it out by doing it wrong and then fixing it.
Document what you’re building. I’ve started publishing on LinkedIn and in blog posts, and the accountability of putting things in writing is useful — it forces clarity about what you’ve actually done versus what you’ve been busy with.
The constraint of having a job isn’t necessarily a disadvantage. It gives you a financial floor that lets you take risks with your projects without betting rent money on them. Use that floor while you have it.
Where This Is Going
I’m moving back to Spain in June 2026. Deutsche Post ends, the day job ends, and the next chapter starts properly.
The goal isn’t to have four brands running simultaneously forever. It’s to get each one to a point where it generates consistent revenue with minimal daily attention — which is what “building” is actually for. ListingBoost needs proper payment infrastructure and marketing. VALO needs to launch paid ads and hit its first 50 sales. The Meta Ads Report tool needs its first external customers.
June is the deadline I’ve set for myself. Whether everything is where I want it to be by then is less important than the fact that I have a deadline at all.