Side projects as the key to the good life By Marty Bell • 31 Jul 2025

When I was 13, I created a chat room for teenagers to talk about art and photography (the tagline was, if I remember, “The future of art but we don’t give a fuck”). I think that was the first self-made project I put out into the world, and it taught me one of the most important lessons of my life at a formative time: if you start things of your own, your life gets dramatically more exciting.

I was living in the Highlands of Scotland, but through the chat room, I built really close friendships with people my age in Colombia, Chile, the US, and various other far-flung corners of the world. We traded stories about growing up in these very different cultures - but also realised we were mostly facing a bunch of the same teenage bullshit as each other. It gave me a more worldly view, and I learnt that I could get along with, and find common interests with pretty much anyone from anywhere. I've met multiple of those people in real life since, including my main man Theo, who I ended up starting my first business with; I was best man at his wedding; and we've organised parties all over the world together. All from a stupid little chat room when I was 13. It was the same story with Poolsuite: years ago I launched a lil silly music site to amuse myself, and from that humble starting point, my friends and I now somehow run a sunscreen brand that's in 13,000 stores across the USA.

So this is the one piece of advice I give everyone who will listen: Start something just to make your life more exciting. It doesn’t matter how small it starts (or stays). Personal projects are a vehicle to explore the things that interest you. I've always seen brands as a kind of wrapper for all the things I love in life. Sometimes they never graduate from side project status, sometimes they become a full-blown lifestyle business.

Opening doors

Side projects give you the opportunity to meet interesting people, and they also make you more interesting to people. When someone asks you what you do, which of these sounds more like someone you’d want to hang out with?

a) "I work in marketing"
b) "I run a monthly Martinis & Magazines meetup in the park - you should come! Oh, and I do marketing too"

(I also know which of these people I'd want to work in my marketing department...)

I've met A-list celebrities and people I have absolutely no business mingling with because of side projects they thought were interesting and exciting; despite those same projects making approx $0 profit per year. You'd be surprised by how many doors open when you run something others think is cool - whether it's commercially successful or not, it doesn't really matter.

The greatest projects come from genuine passion

There's something special about projects that are built without money being the primary objective or motivator. There's a certain level of soul and love that pours out of them, which can ironically often lead them to being more commercially successful than something built to make cold hard cash. When I was trying to raise investment for two of my more 'normal' companies, I'd always get responses or emails after meetings like 'Hey great to meet you, this business isn't a great fit for us, but when can we meet up to talk about Poolsuite?!'. They could feel the difference in how the projects were being built. If your thing starts to do well, and does indeed become a business, you have to be incredibly diligent in making sure you don't stop having fun with it - people can tell when you do.

Take the pressure off

Most people feel completely overwhelmed by the idea of starting something, so let me make it easy for you:

Your thing could literally just start as a WhatsApp group with a few people who are into the same thing as you.
You don't need a trademark
You probably don't need to register a company
But most importantly: To completely rid yourself of any fear of failing you may have, call whatever you're doing an experiment. Put it out online like 'ok I've no idea if this will work but lets see what happens'. If it fails? Move to experiment 2. Be scrappy, post about the fails, celebrate the wins, share it all with your people.

Create the things you wish existed

You don’t have to wait for someone else to orchestrate the experiences you wish you could have. Instead, you can use your side project to build them yourself. If you’ve always wanted to go to a monthly dinner for people who love vintage cars, or have watch parties for fashion shows, there’s no reason why you can’t be the one to make it happen.

Maybe you’re not Actually Trying