Get to Know Me
Last updated Oct 5th, 2022
Timeline of my life
I recognize ages might seem off by a year but given my birthday’s end of the year this always made more sense to me.
1993 at 0
Born in Guam and grew up in Hong Kong
2008 at 14:
Decided I wanted to play football professionally
2010 at 16:
Represented Hong Kong U17 National Team.
2011 at 17:
Ended the professional footballer dream
Started Altanx, a sports teamwear supplier
2012 at 18:
Graduated high school and stayed in Hong Kong for college.
Expanded Altanx to Guam and Saipan and broke $100k run rate.
2013 at 19:
Hated college but tripled Altanx to ~$300k
Did a semester abroad at NYU and put on 30 lbs weightlifting.
2014 at 20:
Took spring semester off and lived in Cambodia interning at my family’s factory.
Altanx's factory shut down so reinvented as a wholesale shirt supplier.
Took my degree online, moved to Guam and spent 600+ hours teaching myself French.
2015 at 21:
Spent two months in France.
Learned about the horrors of cashflow and inventory with Altanx payables peaking at $700k with only ~$350k annual revenue.
Started IdHikeThat to make extra cash and learned about FB ads and the dropshipping world.
2016 at 22:
Was broken up with after a 6 year relationship and spent rest of the year learning about grief, emotions and healing.
Moved back to Hong Kong. Started a Facebook Ads agency for local businesses.
2017 at 23:
Sold I'd Hike That
Got agency to ~$6k a month at 10 hours of work a week.
2018 at 24:
Started Video Husky, grew to $15k MRR by end of the year.
Stopped doing agency stuff.
Nomaded for 6 months in Chiang Mai.
Invested 400 hours into learning Japanese.
Learned to salsa. Both the most embarrassing and fun thing I've done in my life.
2019 at 25:
Spent 10 weeks in Bali.
Moved to Cambodia for 5 months.
Supposed to move to Japan but didn't after meeting Lyss. Best decision ever.
Video Husky hit $1M run rate and promptly lost all drive, motivation and happiness for a while after that.
2020 at 26:
Moved to Melbourne because of covid with Lyss and did 180 days of lockdown.
Lost 30% of VH clients overnight with 15 days of cash in bank. Grew back and now know importance of a good cash balance.
Sold Altanx to my family and made final repayment on payables.
2021 at 27:
Spent six months in Aus and six months in Hong Kong so Lyss and I could spent time with each other's family.
Burned out from Video Husky and hired a General Manager.
Aspired to be an Age of Empires 2 pro player, after 1000+ hours safe to say I don't have the talent.
2022 at 28:
Lyss and I both fully remote and back to nomading. So far Thailand, Mexico and now Barcelona.
Values
My current set of values are:
Wellbeing: Ensuring physical, emotional and mental wellbeing for a good present and future
Growth: To strive for improvement without sacrificing self-esteem
Autonomy: Attaining financial and time freedom while appreciating the risks that threaten said freedoms
Craft: To find joy in working on things I care about.
Contribution: To share what I know so I can clarify my thinking and others can benefit.
Connection: Spending time and attention on those whom I care about
Typically I focus on one value over a specific period of time, for example between 2018-2021, I focused a lot on autonomy through growing Video Husky whereas 2021-2022 is more about connection, spending time with family back in Hong Kong and with Lyss as we nomad.
My previous values included:
Breadth: to build and experience a wide range of skills and places.
Legacy: to accept my own mortality and work leave something valuable behind.
I've since replaced these with Craft and Contribution since I've started preferring depth over breadth in terms of skills and experiences for the former, while I've also realized I don't care much about my legacy, but I do get some enjoyment out of creating things and as a byproduct of that, others benefitting from them.
What I’m not interested in
It's easier to get to know a person by understanding what they don't do as opposed to what they spend their time or attention on, so here are a few of the things I don't enjoy:
Hanging out, socializing or making friends
Hanging out with most people for the sake of it beyond an hour or two drains me in the same way that a social person might find an entire day to themselves boring.
Given my limited social energy and the time it takes to develop true friendship, I'm not interested in just "hanging out", or more controversially, making more friends. The reality is good relationships comes with responsibility and emotional investment, so it wouldn't be right to add new relationships since it would at the cost of the existing ones I have.
Contradictorily though, I'm open to meeting new people, especially when there's potential for low input but large outcomes for either side whether that's because we share similar ideas, interests or perspectives.
While I can near guarantee that I won't be the best man at your wedding, I do enjoy good conversation in small doses and so if anything on the site resonates - feel free to reach out!
Big cities
I grew up in Hong Kong, but as I get older find metropolitan areas too loud and anxious.
The places that Lyss and I tend to enjoy more are either small towns, coastal or in the outskirts of cities, so will likely spend more time in these types of areas in the future.
Altered states
I don't drink, smoke or do anything that involves altered states.
Nothing against it and can appreciate why others may choose to but between my Asian genes and tendency to daydream and not be present anyway, I quite enjoy sobriety.
Hustle culture
Working for the sake of working is stupid, and something that while I naturally avoid because of my inherent ability to only sit still a couples hours at a time, is still something that I subconsciously guilt myself over.
The problem with hustle culture is the need to invest 12+ hours means the has to be a huge return on said investment ASAP since you're emotionally sacrificing so much to put in said time or effort.
The reality though is anything worth achieving takes time, years if not decades and so the thing that matters is your ability to stay the course which hustle culture does NOT help with given the propensity for most people to burn out.
I struggled with this a lot when growing Video Husky but going forward am committed to doing things more sustainably.
Endless moneymaking
Money's important and can solve a lot of problems, but there is something to be said about the diminishing returns on money.
Part of this is because I'm the third generation of wealthy family who is destined by most statisticians to lose my family's wealth, but having seen firsthand what money can do and what its limits are - the endless accumulation of money, especially if it comes at the cost of other sources of meaning or joy, is just not worth it in my book.
In that sense, I suspect how you make your money matters more than how much money you make after a certain extent. The challenge with money compared to other sources of meaning is that it's just much more legible, so most days I try my best to spend more time and attention on the intangible, illegible things in life to remind me of that.
What I'm into
With all that said, here are a few things that I enjoy immensely.
Spending time alone
Unsurprisingly, I enjoy being alone and have previously gone days at a time without talking to anyone besides a barista.
The time's almost always spent on some form of craft whether it's writing for reflecting, exercising for fitness or gaming for fun, each pursuit offers it's own kind of contentedness that I find fulfilling. This manifests as five and a half days a week of 7-10 hours by myself and outside of sleep, the other time spent with Lyss who is the exception to the social rule.
As such the best times in my life were when I had full control over my life and schedule, while my least favorite times were when my schedule grew dependent on others (like towards the end of my time at Video Husky).
Fantasy and the future
Since being a kid I always loved fantastical series and worlds ranging from Harry Potter to Pokemon to Brandon Sanderson.
I think that's because life for me is lived in my head rather than in "real life". And this gets reflected in my work and what I'm excited by typically revolves around hypothetical futures and "what-ifs".
The combination of this and my preference for being alone makes me well suited to thinking about how to do things in new ways and doing them if I'm the only party, but badly suited to coordinating the execution of said ideas if they involve other people.
Applying good ideas to improve life
Given the above, one of my favorite things is hearing or reading about good ideas and then committing to manifest them in your own life.
Three such occasions that this happened to me were:
Learning to weightlift (Muscle for Life)
Learning French (Fluent Forever)
Building Video Husky (inspired by Design Pickle)
Each was a journey that while hard, was thoroughly enjoyable. There's something to be said about making that commitment over a long stretch of time and so I appreciate when quality content is able to guide you from point A to point B as succinctly as possible.
Systemization and automation
At the same time, all improvement requires repetition and so I love finding ways to systemize so that you can get the same or better results with less or no effort.
This applies to business, life and learning since systematization of workflow provides opportunity for leverage, either through the system itself or providing you with more bandwidth to identify the actual leverage point which can make the true difference in your endeavors.
Small scale entrepreneurship
At my core I don't think I'm a natural entrepreneur, if I were I would have started a second business immediately after exiting Video Husky. Instead, I'm more of a reluctant entrepreneur who didn't see any other option except for starting a business to get the life I wanted.
Given how the world is changing through deglobalization, climate change and the fraying of political and social institutions that we take for granted, I suspect that traditionally "safe" jobs aren't and the best way to prepare yourself for the future is to become more entrepreneurial. Taylor Pearson's "The End of Jobs" was great at explaining this.
Being an outsider
I've always felt most comfortable being outside an "in" group, whether that's being an expat living in a different country or literally always sitting on the edge of a group dinner. Part of this is because I'm a third-culture kid who went through Western education in a traditional Chinese household, but I suspect it's also a personality thing.
I love the "This is Water" speech by David Foster Wallace and unless you're "outside the water", you can't appreciate it nor more importantly, gain perspective on it so that you can plan your life accordingly.
Structured Days but Serendipitous Years
Having nomaded in a bunch of different countries, I've realized most of my days are the same:
Working in a 3rd wave coffee shop in the mornings
Calls or lazing around if the afternoon
Working out or cooking in the evenings
...all of which points to asking what's the point of nomading if I'm just going to do the same thing everywhere.
But I guess doing the same thing in different places enables you to get a "feel" for that place because things don't just fall into place, compromises have to be made, and it's in those moments that I realize what I take for granted and as such appreciate what I take for granted.
Other random things I'm interested in include
Third wave coffee
Age of Empires II (1700 games and counting!)
Manutd (it's been an awful last decade) and football
Personal Knowledge Management (Tiago Forte's Build a Second Brain course completely changed how I read books and processed information)