What My Day Looks Like Side Hustling An Online Store

Starter Story

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Published: July 26th, 2018

Hey there!

My name is Julian Samarjiev, originally from Bulgaria, currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I am the co-founder of DULO, where we make dress shirts from performance fabrics. I am also a full-time web developer by day and spend the rest of my free time building DULO.

I’ve also already did an interview with Starter Story about DULO here, so if you’re interested you can take a closer look. :)

This is a day in my life:

6am

Wake up, hydrate.

7am

Working out. My routine is the following:

I train full-body twice a week with an intensity day (heavy weight/low reps) and a volume day (lighter weight/higher reps). Usually the intensity day is a Wednesday and the volume day is Saturday. The third time I go to the gym I train legs and do some accessory work, such as forearms, usually the Sunday.

The other days I do recovery workouts at home with bands, where I would traction my lower back after heavy pulls and train my neck, rear delts + some work to strengthen/condition the tendons, ligaments and joints. Foam rolling is also part of the routine 2x a week, usually the day before a gym session.

I find working out in the morning to be a great anchor to start the day off, charging me positively both mentally and physically. I’ve also found great health benefits when working with heavy weights. It has strengthened my back, improved my posture, as well as increased bone density and cardio endurance.

I also use the fact that most people don’t think you could build a great physique on a plant based diet as motivation to exceed all expectations what such an athlete can look like and how he can perform to promote a more conscious food choice lifestyle.

8:30am

Shower. Breakfast. Prepare/Drop off any orders from the previous day in the post office.

For breakfast I usually have oats with pea protein (mixed with hot water), peanut butter, as well as some Spirulina, Flax oil and Vitamin D MCT oil as supplementation.

Off to the office of my day job.

9am - 5:30pm

I work as a developer at a fashion label and am solely in charge of the e-commerce shop based on Shopify.

I am very grateful to be able to have a full-time job in the same industry that I am currently entering with my own company. It has enabled me to look at the industry from different angles and also cross-transfer knowledge from both positions, making me feel more valuable to the team.

It has also made me feel more content to be an employee in the short-term, while having a clear vision and a goal for independence in the long-term.

6pm

Back at home for dinner and then my second shift starts for DULO (the one I prefer ;)

I don’t consume animal products, so dinner is usually a combination of rice and tofu in different variations. This meal is high in protein and rice is a complex carb that my body responds to very well.

7pm

Work for DULO usually involves a scheduled piece of content that needs to be created and another one posted (that was previously created).

We (me and my co-founder) have a whiteboard with the schedule of what needs to be done that day and it goes little something like this:

Old schedule and naming conventions/content, but the process is the same :) The most important aspect of it - sticking to it ;)

Monday

Record vlog and post a short summary clip on Instagram

Tuesday

Record our sound log and post it. That’s another piece of content that goes up on our podcast.

Wednesday

Another sound log record/post and a product image post on Instagram

Thursday

Recording a podcast with a guest, fellow entrepreneur in his early days.

Our podcast (The Early Days Podcast) has two segments. One is the sound log that we do a nearly daily update on what we are working on and any updates/milestones on the business. The second one is the interviews with other entrepreneurs.

Friday

Sound log. We post our Founder’s Newsletter (we take turns with my co-founder every week and post any interesting or useful business, and not only, content that we think is worth sharing with our audience). And a post on Instagram with a quote from the recent interview with a founder.

Saturday

Origins blog post (our blog, where we document building the business from day 1 + a quote from it on Instagram

Sunday

We post the vlog that we’ve recorded the previous Monday.

10-11pm

Normally call it a day around this time.

The evenings are also the times that I’ll work on any changes to the website and/or networking calls (just talking to people about DULO and sharing anything worth sharing).

I guess that’s about it, but given the amount of content we try to create on many platforms, I am sure I am missing out on a LinkedIn article (usually an edited version of the latest Origins post), or something else every now and then.

The weekends are the same except those 8 hours that I’d spend in the office of my full-time day job, I usually invest in catching up on work for the DULO website, some reading/vlogs (@garyvee) and some relaxation time, even though working for myself is always an enormous energy source.

I’m not a big fan of laying around, so staying active is my relaxation, but I do squeeze in a Dwayne Johnson movie on some weekends. ;)

Walking around the Amsterdam’s canals is also a great way to think and clear the mind.

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