The Journey Toward Becoming the Me Inc.
My journey of setting up an online business officially started in 2024. Though progress has been slow, I have learned so much along the way nevertheless.
I started the process since 2022. I was experiencing some personal stuff and became less sure about my career path - a path where I intended to advance step by step on a career ladder in the sports industry.
So how did I set out to make a change?
I first changed my information digest. Before I only read news and stuff about the sports industry, then I decided to give something else a try.
My first change was to listen to lectures at the Startup School by YC. You know, Sam Altman, Paul Graham.
Then I went down the rabbit hole of online, tech, etc.
The result has been nothing short of surprises.
My closest friend started to notice changes in the things I talked about. From sports to tech, investing, finance, and entrepreneurship.
And I started to understand more on businesses, especially starting businesses.
Starting (or building) a business is categorically different from managing a business. Though I was in charge of management and operations for my day job, I never had to come up with product ideas.
During this journey, I made long lists of what I wanted to work on:
- MBA application consultant but in a chat-box with AI
- MBA community platform
- Productivity APP
- Visualized annual report database
- MBA qualified scholarship resource
- Midlife experiment podcast
- How to learn podcast or Youtube channel
- Time Budgeter APP
- A local APP that helps manage knowledge
- An interactive way of business case study
- Mental Model collections
- A channel detailing each and every single one of Y Combinator launched company
- Data-driven decision making for everyday life issues
- Subscription based t shirt e commerce
- Mini brand souvenir
- A skyscraper/ skyline destination
- Education + Entertainment = Edutainment
- Career management tool for young professionals
- Eco-friendly hotel shampoo recycle
- A Decision documentation and analysis Personal AI Assistant
- Google search question analytics products
- AI-based content funnel
- Customized Instagram background photo of your favorite city/team/university using AI
These are all random thoughts that came to me every day, not something I sat down and wrote in one sitting. Whenever I had an idea popping up in my head, I just put it in my note-taking app.
Most of them are horrible. A lot already existed. Several are related to MBA or MBA application, because I initially wanted to go back to business school. (But later I dropped the idea even though I got in.)
My natural inclination was to conduct a full-blown analysis on the market, and write up a business plan. This was my thing. However, I decided to go against my nature. You know, the nature of a manager, not a maker.
I decided to "just do it".
I first jumped into the business school topic, since I already knew a lot about MBA and business schools during the application process. I bought a domain, set up my digital home, and started writing. Since beginning of this year I've written 14 articles, distributed some of those via Twitter, Medium, Pinterest, and some other MBA community. I got banned from a Twitter community and my Reddit is still broke.
The results are horrible. As of now all my posts have generated 263 total impressions on Google, and 6 clicks. Many of them were from me. And my Google Analytics was broken by some spam traffic from Poland so the number there was invalid. Sad me.
Yet I'm still grateful to myself, specifically the self who decided to start this journey in 2024. I've become much more comfortable with software and tools, though still unwillingly for the most part. Solving software related problems became at least possible for me - somebody who finds no satisfaction from fixing stuff.
And what took a couple days to figure out could be done in a matter of hours or minutes.
Yet I still haven't figured out the big thing - what I want to write about. I'm not passionate about writing the MBA stuff, and whatever I thought about writing, somebody else has already created a better version of it.
Part of my struggle can be solved by this little snippet of conversation from the My First Million podcast, a conversation between Sam Parr and Shaan Puri that regularly discusses interesting business ideas.
- Shaan: If you are 21 years old again, what would you work on?
- Sam: try to get a quick win asap. Start a business, own 100% of it, make 100,000 dollars per month, and then try to sell it.
- Shaan: be more specific.
- Sam: start blogging - learn one new thing each week and then blog about it. Do that consistently per day, per week, for a year, and try to have 2000-3000 people per day to your site through search. Find out what interests people through any search tool, and start ranking on those keywords. After that you create a newsletter, and then a course, and start marketing the course toward your newsletter subscribers.
- Shaan: there are really two ways to teach, or to create content. One way is to be the expert. The other way is to be the curious novice.
- Sam: The second one 100% works.
- Shaan: A lot of people count themselves out, assuming they are not the expert..
- Sam: You just need to be a step above, or one step in front of your audience. That one step could be just you read a book during the weekend.
Learning is my thing. I constantly reinvent myself by diving deep into new areas, learning new skills, etc. It is a skill that might be difficult for someone else, but natural to me.
What if I just follow Sam's suggestions and share my learnings each week?
My Why
For the majority of my professional life, I've been playing the status game.
Yes I wanted to do a great job at work, and have coined it with a name - professionalism. Well, I didn't, but I believed in it.
Doing a great job was satisfying, as I did get a sense of fulfillment from completing a project, but it would soon become frustrating when I didn't get rewarded, i.e. the promotion or the raise I was eyeing, etc. There was never an end.
It turned out that I was looking for the wrong thing.
For me, I didn't need somebody else to look over my shoulders to get things done. I'd get up at 4:30 in the morning joining virtual conferences all the time.
But getting a promotion requires some totally different skillset. Unfortunately, at least in most organizations, politics and fraternization are required. More than the work itself.
This is what I hate.
I hate having my fate left in the hands of others. I cannot take it. It feels like my freedom is being violated.
And that's when it dawns on me that it's freedom that I want.
Finite game vs. Infinite game
Chasing status is playing the rule of the finite game. A finite game is like a standardized test. It has a clear set of problems, waiting to be solved, and the result can be clearly measured within a finite timeline. Although difficult, the test can be prepared, and you can normally improve based on the results you get each time.
Similarly, a promotion feels like a test, and you get the same feeling once you achieve it.
This is why most people fall into the habit of playing the status game, not because we love it, but because we get accustomed to it. We are trained this way, by our education system.
Yet life is an infinite game, with a much more complex set of rules. Or you may say, there is no rule. The end of life is death, which renders everything in-between ... meaningless.
Winning in an infinite game feels very different from one in a finite game. Imagine you are playing a MOBA game but without the directions. You are sort of just wandering around. If you don't enjoy the game, you've already lost. Winning this game is all about finding enjoyment and purpose, even knowing all things will lead to the same destination.
I haven't figured it out yet. But I do know one thing for sure: I want to be useful in whatever I do. That's it.
Why everybody should live like a company
If you look at some of the greatest companies, they outlive their founders. Walt Disney passed away in 1966, but the Disney Corporation is still here. Thomas Edison died in 1931 but General Electric still operates today. A company can even outlive the administration of the country sometimes.
A company is designed to win the infinite game.
What's so unique about a great company is its ability to constantly reinvent itself. If a market is shrinking, a great company will manage to exit from it and enter into new, more promising ones.
It becomes new again.
This is different from human. A human can only grow older.
The reason we all love babies is their exuberant energy, but if we can run our lives like a company, we may replicate that feeling - being alive again.
At its minimal, a company has to have four functions: marketing, finance, production, and management. Marketing is how it sells the products. It's also the benchmark of whether there is reason for it to exist. Finance is deciding where to get capital and how that capital should be allocated. Production is what product or service the company manufactures. And management links the above three. It's also a leverage that magnifies all the resources put into the company.
There are many things to learn under each function, but I've identified these four things, which I believe will help me in both professional and personal lives:
- Marketing: Copywriting
- Finance: Financial analysis and decision making
- Production: Technology (including coding and using tools)
- Management: Productivity
Copywriting
Copywriting is not writing. It is the art of using words to get what you want.
It's getting others to subscribe to your newsletter. Or closing sales.
IMHO copywriting is the most important skill, among all.
I found a few great books on this, and will share my learnings after reading them.
I might find more things under each function in the future, but right now these areas are what I want to focus on. The important thing is to keep moving forward.
Financial Analysis and Decision Making
Imagine being able to decide quickly and not fretting about it. Or knowing exactly what you should (and should not) buy, with confidence.
That's what FADM is about. Master it, and you will master the language of the firm.
I will first learn in the business context, but will also apply the same concept in personal life.
You know, first, you have to become the company.
Technology
I'm ashamed to say this, but I was actually a CS major in college.
But I didn't know how to code. Yes I said it.
I wasn't interested, nor did I find it necessary to learn how to code.
Until now. I had to spend hours figuring out how to place a simple TOC on my blog. It was time-consuming (and embarrassing).
I want to learn how to code, and how to use a few important tools. The goal? Learn how to build.
Productivity
People tend to go to extremities on this; they either emphasize too much, or too little on productivity.
To me productivity is management, but for yourself.
Let's figure out the right amount of technology and framework, and start building processes. At a minimal level, of course. We don't want to over-complicate stuff.
Once it's figured out, we will get leverage, which will amplify all three things above.
P.S: some of the materials that have influenced me the most:
- YC Startup School
- Naval Ravikant
- How to get rich
- My First Million
- Doing Content Right
I share my learnings every now and then in the form of a newsletter. I call it the Me Inc. Newsletter. If you are serious about turning yourself into a company, you can subscribe here.
