T-Shaped Hustle: Running Two Side Projects and a Full-Time Job

This month we were joined by guest speaker Seymur Rasulov, a sales leader, community builder, and founder who shared his personal framework for managing two side projects alongside a demanding 9-to-5. The “T” in T-Shaped Hustle represents the shape of his life: two horizontal arms for each side project and one vertical center for his full-time job.

Seymur’s story started in 2017 in Dubai — married, financially comfortable, living what looked like a dream life on social media. By 2018, that picture had shattered. Divorce, relocation, and uncertainty pushed him to start his first side hustle: paid speaking. That journey led to two TED Talks, a sold fintech startup called Smile Pay, and eventually to Houston in 2023, where he now runs the Houston Sales Community and is building an AI-native CRM targeting the food supply industry.

His current “T”:

• Left arm: An AI-native, privacy-first CRM — born out of frustration with Zoho at work. Pitched as “Anti-CRM” to prospects burned by Salesforce, the product is onboarding its fourth client (800 seats at $99/month) and approaching $85k MRR.
• Right arm: Speaking engagements and community workshops.
• Vertical center: Full-time sales manager at an oil and gas company — for now. Seymur’s goal is to leave by end of 2026.

Key takeaways:

1. Your day job is a funding source, not a prison: financial stability removes desperation and lets you build from a position of strength rather than panic.

2. Each lane feeds the others: skills from your corporate role (office dynamics, multicultural teamwork, meeting management) translate directly into your startup. Seymur noticed his pain with Zoho became the seed idea for his own CRM.

3. T-shaped hustling is a season, not a sentence: the framework only works as a temporary bridge. Define a clear exit milestone, then reverse-engineer the steps to get there. Chasing too many rabbits indefinitely leads to exhaustion and half-finished work everywhere.

4. Listen more than you defend: Seymur shared a story about a South Korean investor who called his product “a piece of crap,” then rolled up his sleeves and gave $60k worth of feedback for free — before investing $60,000. Opening your ears beats defending your idea every time.

5. Community is the secret weapon: showing up consistently to places like SPS combats the loneliness of building solo, surfaces real feedback, and opens unexpected doors

Seymur also offered to share his personal library of 550 bestselling books and Techstars startup resources with anyone who connects with him on LinkedIn. Techstars (America’s second-best accelerator after Y Combinator) invests $220k for 7% equity — and applications are currently open.

Thank you Seymur for the honest, energizing talk — and for reminding us that the messy middle is part of everyone’s story 🚀

Thanks to community member He Zhu, you can view a full recording of this session below: