10 years of business

It’s the time of the year again to renew my business registration, and I realised I first registered it in 2014!

It’s been a decade of running my own thing… TEN fking years.

Wow.

I started when I left government back then. The goal was to create public good products, kinda like, an indie hacker but for social good. I was passionate about the intersection of social impact and tech. But I fell into consulting because I needed income, and I didn’t know how to code (yet).

The first few years was just pure play consulting, building up a business, my reputation. Those years were good, financially. I could pay for a lot of things and fulfil some dreams, like bringing my parents to travel in Japan.

But I wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t creating products. Despite the consulting being in government, the work being meaningful and for common good, I was helping other people create their products, not mine.

Then catching the indie hacker bug in 2018, reading about levelsio and his 12 startups in 12 months challenge, and yongfook’s building a SaaS by the beach slideshow, got me all fired up again. I was like, you mean it can be more than just a career? It’s also a lifestyle? That includes travelling which I absolutely love?? Sign me up!

I started hacking products, using WordPress, then later nocode tools like Sheet2Site. But soon enough, I hit the constraints of nocode. Slowly but surely, over the course of dropping in and out of coding, it finally stuck after four years, around 2020. Lifelog was born. And then my Carrd plugins, and then the rest is history.

It’s been 10 fking years.

I can’t say I am where I want to be. Still far off from the mythical $10k/month revenue… and $10k is only just the start!

BUT but. I stuck to this for a decade.

I can’t say I spent ten years on many pursuits tbh.

That’s something.