We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Francesca Delisle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Francesca, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

The story behind your mission-

“Connecting Gig Workers to Customers and Customers to Gig Workers one community at a time.” This is our Mission Statement. It’s simple and to the point. The story of how we got here is slightly more complicated.

In 2008, my family and I lost everything to bankruptcy. We had to reconfigure our lives. As a mom, I had been home with our three young children until that point. With the substantial drop in our income, we had to figure out how to make extra money just to make ends meat. While the kids were at school, I knew I had time to do something. It was at this point that I began to explore many different types of Gig Work. I babysat, I answered phones, I spoke at events, I cooked… I did what I could to bring in the extra money we needed. During that time is when I found my niche as a personal chef. After some formal training and a bit of marketing, I secured my first clients.

This is where the vision of MySyde came from. My personal journey and struggle in the gig economy is what bore our mission. I have created the life I desire through my hustle and grit. And my life is amazing! I am living out my dreams!

Having been through this journey, I thought to myself: How can I help other gig workers succeed? How can I support gig workers in their desire to achieve their dreams? That led to… How can I build a business that connects Gig Workers with their local community? My mission, my passion, is purely about how I can connect people together, to build community, and bring neighbors together!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

MySyde is a labor of love! As a long term Gig Worker, I found a need in the community for everyone. The problem is simple: Gig Workers cannot effectively market themselves in their local community using existing tools; and consumers cannot easily find Gig Workers in their local community. This is a result of the fact that as a society, we have grown further and further disconnected. We don’t know our neighbors and we don’t know what is going on in our backyard. MySyde is here to change that.

MySyde is a social media type application for Gig Workers to share their genius and expertise with their community and to market themselves easily in their community. The search capability of the app will allow consumers to easily find services. You can filter the search by distance, keywords, hashtags, reviews, and, most importantly, by the recommendations of your network.

MySyde is putting a spin on word of mouth by creating a network of your own contacts. You will be able to search for Gig Workers based on the recommendations and endorsements of people you know, similar to LinkedIn.

Reviews at times can be useful, but they can also be bought, or faked, or dependent on a reviewer’s mood. Consumers are not trusting reviews and ratings. There needs to be another effective way for consumers to adequately measure whether a Gig Worker provides excellent service or not. Reviews and ratings are no longer that effective tool. We all trust our own Network more than any review or rating from a stranger. In the process of having an effective tool for Gig Workers and consumers to connect, we are also building in a layer of community.

In short, for many in the professional 9-5 office job, the American Dream is slowly slipping away. As we always see during economic downturns like 2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic, people have shifted away from traditional jobs and moved more towards betting on themselves. By 2028, there will be over 90 million Gig Workers in the United States alone! As Gig Workers ourselves, we want to help Gig Workers succeed. This is our drive. This is our passion. Helping Gig Workers achieve their dreams without the need to have a lot of tech skills, marketing skills, or capital to get started. In the process, we’ll help people who need the skills of these Gig Workers easily find them.

How’d you meet your business partner?

My Cofounders

1. Ricky Delisle

He is my amazing husband! We met when we were 14 at church. We then went to high school together. We were friends in high school; we spent our Prom and our Grad Night together dancing the night a-way, even though we had other dates. However, we didn’t start dating until our 20’s. I started teaching Confirmation classes at our church in the fall after my high school graduation. I had a co-teacher who couldn’t teach any longer and that night Rick walked back into the office. He was picking up his mother, who was another teacher at the time. He ran into me, his mother, and our leader, and we all volun-told him he would be teaching with us. He was cornered and couldn’t say no. We became best friends pretty quickly. The rest is history! He is my guy and I absolutely love him.

2. John Rinaldo

John and his wife, Rosie, are one of our best friends. We share similar beliefs. We met over a decade ago through mutual friends. However, we did not hit it off right away because we had false impressions of each other. We took our time getting to know one another. This really gave us the opportunity to build a stronger relationship. John and Ricky started a Men’s group together. They both saw a need for men to come together and converse. They built a space for men to share, be open, and be vulnerable with each other. This space allowed these two men to build an incredible bond. Today, Ricky and John are more like brothers than friends.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In the summer of 2016, we were on vacation in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, enjoying the lake. Our friends and kids were in the lake enjoying themselves. I was relaxing on the beach, thinking I was getting a bit hungry. I checked the time on my phone to see if I should pull out our picnic lunch. I had several missed calls and emergency text messages. I was shocked. A call came through at that moment from my sister. I answered and through tears and a ragged voice my sister told me our brother was dead. Our brother, at the time of his death, was 36 years old. He died of an aneurysm. He was dead before he even hit the ground. We were all sufficiently shocked and overwhelmed. A death of this magnitude completely changes your life and flips you inside out. Walking through this grief gave me time to re-evaluate what I was doing in my life. Up until then I knew I had been living a mediocre existence. It was easy and comfortable. I also had plenty of time to really learn how fleeting life is…My brother was not sick, he was not obese, he was pretty normal in comparison to others his age. Life is precious and we are all on a time limit.

So the question I had for myself was ‘What was I going to do with the time I had on this planet?’ That is when I started pouring into what I was going to do. I knew I had to do something, and that I had to go BIG. I really knew that I needed to help people on a much grander scale.

I am a Chef by trade. So that’s where I started. I expanded into meal prep and more clients. I ran down every idea, every intuitive thought. One thought and idea would lead to another. I would research, check validity and need. But, as an entrepreneurial Gig Workers, I began to shift my thinking again.

In 2021, my idea centered on teen/young adult banking. So I did market research. While I know parents would want it, teens were not interested. So, we went back to the drawing board. Another idea was thrown in that we could start an App for local in-home chefs that would allow them to market themselves. Tracking that idea down and researching it we knew it wasn’t the way to go. It was too narrow, too limited. It was from that single idea where we centered on Gig Workers as a whole, building community, and how we tie those two things together. All of this was borne out of the knowledge that we had to go bigger, that we had to do something that would help more people on a grander scale. Life is too short! Our time is now!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mysyde.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mysydeapp/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100081978665222&is_tour_dismissed=true
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesca-delisle/

Image Credits
We own all of these photos