Please don’t read this if you don’t like stories about how companies grow from $0 in revenue to $60k in revenue, or if you don’t like to hear about perspectives towards long-form content today.
Firstly, thank you for taking time to read us over the past few months. It means a lot to us that you’re spending this amount of time, and we want you to know where we are headed to as a company.
But first off, let’s start with where we are at. This letter is meant to be a reflection on our year in business, and how you’ve been a part of that.
Thank you for reminding us about why we write
Yesterday I had a 40-minute call with someone who read an article about my experiences with therapy, and wanted to get some help for her loved one.
It reminded me about why we write the way we do (first-person content about how we grow as humans).
But how did we get here?
It all started with a jobless man
In October 2021, I decided not to renew my contract as a social worker. The organisation wasn’t a good cultural fit, and after being served with a Performance Improvement Plan (a get better or get sacked plan), I thought there might be a better place for me elsewhere.
But no one wanted to employ me. For the next 2.5 years, I applied for 306 jobs, and went for 41 interviews, but got nothing.
I needed some way to survive. Fortunately, months before, in September 2021, Singapore Kindness Movement and Facilitators Network Singapore gave me the first chance to write, and with it, the first dollars I earned as a writer.
Whilst it was a paltry $150, it was money.
And at that time, we didn’t really know what we were doing.
But now, we have a clearer grasp on what it is we do, and why we matter. I want to use this piece to share:
- How you don’t always need a great business idea to start, but how the desire to stay in business matters more
- Why you can land in the worst business model, and still thrive
It starts with intention
In April 2022, 6 months after trying to find a job, I went to a social work mentor, and told her that I was sick and tired of people rejecting me. She heard what I said, and gently told me that it didn’t sound like I really wanted a job.
And that was the aha moment for me, when I finally realised it was true. I wanted to go all-in with business, and that changed how I did business.
Recently I found Jim Collins’ “Beyond Entrepreneurship” book, where he writes,
yes, it’s risky to throw everything into the pursuit of a low-odds dream, but if at the critical moment you don’t go all in, the odds of achieving the dream go from low to zero.
That was the point I went all in.
The turning point started with how far we would go for a story
In July 2022, I pitched an idea to my editor at Stacked Homes, an online editorial reviewing houses and helping Singaporeans to make better decisions around property.
Why not I go stay with construction workers to help Singaporeans to better understand them, instead of complaining about how slow their apartments were taking to build?
Sure, go ahead, he said.
That evening, I went to observe life at the dormitories. And it was the first time I peeled beneath the layer of Singapore, and captured what it felt like for them to work in Singapore.
Contrary to expectations, they never complained. I thought they would talk about how bad the dormitories were, how they had little private space, and how they found it tough to live. Instead, they shared how grateful they were for being able to stay in Singapore.
That evening, when the story went out, I was amazed at the outpouring of sentiment towards migrant workers, and what it felt like to understand what their lives were like.
That’s when I first realised the power of emotionally resonant stories, and the effort required to build such a story.
For the next few months, we desperately tried to get more and more clients. We got lucky. Two clients came to us to build 3 websites, and we earned $6000 between October and December of 2022 for building those 3.
There was a bright spark. We did public relations marketing and website copy for Love On Ukraine, a ground up initiative rebuilding homes in war-torn Ukraine. Between October and February 2023 we suddenly saw them raise $2.5 million for 500 homes.
How powerful story galvanises ownership and investment
Again, we saw the power of a good story, made relevant to readers. Simply shifting that story from ‘give to Ukraine’ to ‘giving to Singaporeans helping Ukraine’ made the story relevant to Singaporeans, encouraging them to give. Now, I still had no idea what we did, but we clearly did something magical here.
We convinced people to give to a far off cause.
What was the magic we created? Not knowing the answers, I desperately continued pitching for random pieces of work, trying to get enough money to survive.
But still we struggled
By February 2023, I was now with the second team I’d formed. It was looking more and more like a digital marketing agency, with another writer, 2 IT engineers, and a toy designer.
We hustled and tried to get more business, but you know the drill by now.
We failed. No, more specifically, I failed.
I failed to bring in more business, and focus on areas that we could add genuine value. Instead, I followed my interests like a little boy.
We did random pieces of work, like digitalising board director nomination forms for a charity.
The worst part was in June 2023, when our software engineer told us that he wasn’t planning to continue, and that he would go onto find a fulltime job.
For me, that was a damning assessment of my skills as a salesman. I hadn’t just failed myself, I had failed him and his dreams of making a livable wage with his skills.
I always remember this image of me in May 2023, taken by my writer at that time. It was a gala dinner for charity, which I didn’t pay any money for. It reminded me how desperate I was for money, because I had not had a good meal for close to two years. There were times when I would eat 4 bananas a day, and bring along a tuna can for lunch, as that was the cheapest way to avoid eating out.
But God rescued in a miraculous way. July 2023, when we were down and out, he sent a saviour in the form of a client asking for ghostwriting, and we closed our first ever 5-figure deal.
Then the book Take Heart was finally published in September 2023.
And in November 2023, we won a piece of work with MINDS to do their yearbook. We weren’t making tons of money, but we were getting by.
Then again in January 2024, I got blessed by a piece of work making a children’s book for PPIS, about step families.
And then again in January 2024, making a website for Maitri School.
I share these because I want to say that whilst we did get projects over the year, and we were proud of every single thing that we did, it didn’t start from as much intentionality as we’d hoped for.
Until April 2024.
On 3 April 2024, I found myself suddenly having a full time job, after 2.5 years of applying. I saw that I had to find some way to focus the business or risk dying.
Right people, right time
First off, I needed to hire a personal assistant to take on the admin work, and on 1 April 2024, I took on my first ever assistant. Not that there was much to do, but the work needed to classify my finances was already crazy.
Then another writer came along. He was the best ever creative I worked with, despite him always saying that he never had the experience.
He helped me in the ghostwriting book project, and through it, we saw the power of super long-form content.
The power of super-long form content
It got us thinking…
What if we could push the boundaries of what could be done with a traditionally boring piece of content? Could we make content read better?
Could we actually make things people wanted to read?
Personally, this matters a lot.
Growing up in a world without social media, I spent much of my early years in the library, playing with books. Books gave me the lens to view the world.
And I saw how other titans people looked up to saw the world.
All that is being lost today to the shallow reading people do over social media. Not that TikTok videos are bad, but there’s a limit to how much wisdom one can take from a content piece designed to provoke anger, fear, and frustration.
Find this type of content
But this also becomes personal, because I remember the first ever time I met Daniel Wong in February 2016. He passed me his book ‘The Happy Student’, and with that, he changed my life.
At that time, I was binge-eating, suicidal, and lost.
Great content has the power to inspire hope.
Good content inspires hope
How do we do this?
Over the past few months, we’ve focused a lot on building content for charities. We’ve done things like:
- Mental wellness
- Anticipatory grief
- Encouraging stepfamilies to build closer bonds
And we focus on how to help people to not just think and do differently, but to feel different.
Because that emotional resonance is what you remember. Far above the wisdom you got.
Good content is wisdom made clear
In an age where we are drowning in seas of information, we want to be the beacon that communicates wisdom clearly.
In doing the book for stepfamilies, we kept thinking,
how do we build in the emotional beats at the really insightful parts,
so that people can use the information?
I think we got some parts right with the book.
Things well made
The last part we do care about is the craft of what we do.
The writing. Design. Putting things together.
You would have no idea how much we think about the fonts, where to put each piece of information, and how to draw in certain parts.
It’s all part of our desire to make something beautiful, which people won’t just throw away.
Growing up, you would probably remember certain things that you didn’t throw away easily. That leather satchel bag, the engraved key ring, even that iPhone in your hands now.
Content is wisdom
And yes, we aren’t perhaps the biggest company, but we have big dreams about where we can take the future of our codified wisdom.
Think about it.
Today, humans as a species have survived because we’ve constantly built upon the shoulders of giants, on the wisdom that others have left behind.
We’re slowly shifting towards the idea that we no longer need to think, remember, or even create new things. All you need to do is ask ChatGPT. Why bother learning anything if all you need to do is be able to write a prompt, and use language?
We, as a company, are focused on helping humans start thinking, and thinking more clearly again.
Thank you for being part of this.