Every week I talk to founders who feel stuck between two bad options: go all-in on your business idea and burn through savings, or go back to a job and lose all momentum. Neither feels right because neither is.
Here's what nobody tells you: building a dream business and getting to meaningful take-home pay takes time. Much more time than you expect. And in that in-between period, you need to do what you need to do to keep your business alive.
Recently, Maggie Blackburn featured me in her Feeling Free newsletter on portfolio careers (highly recommend subscribing to it).
Maggie left corporate after a decade at places like Deloitte and Slack, and instead of betting everything on one thing, she built a portfolio that funds her life while she builds toward what she really wants. Fittingly, one of the ‘jobs’ in Maggie’s portfolio was at a startup called Noon, which she helped launch out of stealth alongside others also working part-time on it.
All this resonates with me deeply because it’s what I have done since I left corporate 4 years ago - I think of it like building Your Wealth Garden - an ecosystem of active and passive income streams including fractional CMO work, Happy Paying Customers™ System, real estate, and more, so our life and identity isn’t tied to one paycheck.
I thought, new founders need to hear more about Maggie’s approach to building and also this juicy waitlist story.
Here are the three things Maggie’s story shows us:
1. Anchor income buys you runway to keep building
2. Your dream business doesn't have to be the only thing you do.
3. How to start building momentum (before you're all-in)
Let’s get into it.
1. Anchor income buys you runway to keep building
Maggie knew she wanted to leave corporate for almost two years before she actually did. Two things finally pushed her out: she'd hit a ceiling (she tried to pivot into events internally and didn't get the roles). And, she had a manager she didn't work well with. That was the final straw.
When she left, she didn't have a plan. She posted on LinkedIn about what she was looking for, landed a 150-person retreat project in San Diego, and by month two or three, picked up a fractional product marketing role.
“That fractional role was the turning point. It was very freeing to have a retainer client and to know how much money was coming in each month.”
That retainer client became her anchor income. She shared, “I decided to take a fractional product marketing role. At that time, at least it could cover more of my basic expenses. It wasn't something that I necessarily wanted to do forever, but it was something that would provide me that anchor while I was building out.”
Consider building a “bridge business” just like Maggie for anchor income so you can have time to continue working on your big idea simultaneously.
As you think about how to identify your anchor: Maggie's framework is simple. Pay attention to what questions you're being asked over and over again. Answer those questions publicly before you ask anyone for money. The clients will follow.
2. Your dream business doesn't have to be the only thing you do.
Many founders believe that having other income streams means you're not really committed to your big idea.
Here's the counter-argument, and Maggie's life is the proof of it.
While running her fractional work and event projects, Maggie also launched a career experiment cohort, filled it with eight women, and started building what is now becoming a coaching practice. She was doing multiple things at once, intentionally, and none of them were fighting each other. Each one had a different job in the portfolio.
"As long as you are aware of why you're doing something, that matters more than what you choose.”
The question isn't whether you're committed enough to your business idea. It's whether your current setup gives you enough runway to actually build it.
If you can balance multiple things, then building an income stream alongside can give you more runway to work on your startup. There may need to be an end date to when that happens and when you want to go all in on the startup.
On the other hand, if you know that you are an all-or-nothing person and you have to go all in on your startup to really give it a chance, then you will find a way to do that.
“Just know yourself and what works best for you.”
Having another source of income is not a reflection on your commitment to your business idea.
In Your Wealth Garden I think of it like this: while you’re waiting for that mango tree to bear meaningful fruit, it’s smart to also plant basil that you can harvest from next week. Again, it’s not a compromise, it’s about giving your idea enough time to work.
3. How to start building momentum on your big idea (before you're all-in)
Once you have that runway, you can start making real progress on the thing you actually want to build which might take long. Maggie shared a great example of this: she worked with two other part-time marketers helping launch a startup called Noon out of stealth.
Two things that drove it:
First, activate your champions before anything goes public. Email your inner circle such as your investors, friends, early believers. Send them a calendar invite to engage the moment your posts go live. First-hour traction is what the algorithm rewards.
Second, make participation frictionless. For Noon, that meant one simple ask: comment "NOON" in the comments. Word of mouth did the rest.
This network activation is the secret sauce for why they were able to get so many waitlist signups. All from a website blog post and short video. The word of mouth did the work.
If you're sitting on a big idea and waiting until you're "ready" to start building momentum, this is your sign to start now. Your full-time job can be your anchor for now.
If your idea is taking longer than you had expected to gain traction, build an expertise-led high-margin business as your basil. I’ll write more about expertise-led businesses in the next newsletter. Email me any questions you have!
The founders who move fastest give themselves a real runway first.
This is what I see consistently in my work with 0-1 stage founders. The ones who get to their first Happy Paying Customers quickest are not the ones who burned everything and went all-in on day one. They're the ones who were strategic about the in-between: who built a floor, used it to move fast on the thing that mattered, and gave themselves the time to iterate without panic.
Maggie writes about portfolio careers, intentional work, and building a life beyond corporate in her Feeling Free newsletter here. It’s a must-read!
If you're a first-time founder trying to get your idea off the ground, that's exactly what the Happy Paying Customers™ System is built for. I’ve got an opening for 3 founders to start this month and make 2026 the year we turn your idea into the business of your dreams with paying customers. Email me for an honest take on, if this is a fit for you.
And if you want to build Your Wealth Garden, join the waitlist for more content around it.
