Hey there. Happy Saturday! Today, I want to share some thoughts on what it really means to be a designer at the edge of the AI revolution.

The Panic is Real.

Every designer I know is quietly asking the same question right now: will I still have a job? We watch AI generate ads in seconds, produce entire websites from a prompt, and mimic UI styles that took years to develop. The fear is understandable. But, I think it's pointing in the wrong direction.

The real question is: who will AI replace; and which ones will AI make ten times more powerful? These are not the same question. And the answer changes everything about how you should be preparing right now.

The people who are most afraid of AI and competing with AI are the ones most likely to be replaced by it. The ones who run toward it become something AI can never be, its most powerful user. To understand why, we need to stop looking forward for a moment. We need to look back.

Every revolution leaves something behind. And makes something priceless. When the printing press arrived, painters panicked. When photography was invented, illustrators panicked. When computers arrived, graphic designers who built posters by hand, cutting, pasting, composing physically, panicked. 

Every revolution in tools has been met with the same existential fear from the people whose craft it touched. But here's what actually happened each time: the revolution created mass adoption of the new, and simultaneously created a rising premium on the old.

Books didn't die when the Kindle arrived. They became objects. Things people chose deliberately, held with intention, collected and displayed. Hand-drawn illustrations didn't disappear when Photoshop arrived. It became luxury, something clients paid more for precisely because it was harder to produce. The newspaper didn't vanish when the internet arrived. In many cities it became an identity, a statement about how someone chooses to engage with the world.

The pattern is always the same. When something becomes infinitely reproducible, what was already rare becomes precious. When printing flooded the world with images, every visible brushstroke became proof that a human being was present: struggling, deciding, doubting. That evidence of a human hand didn't lose value. It became a value.

When everything becomes infinitely reproducible, what was already rare becomes precious.

AI is following the same pattern. Right now, we are in the adoption phase — the chaotic, exciting, slightly ugly phase where everyone is racing to use the new tool regardless of quality. Founders are cutting out designers entirely. Products are shipping that look AI-generated because they are. And nobody minds yet, because the speed feels miraculous.

But give it two years. When every startup looks identical, when every landing page shares the same AI-polished aesthetic, when every brand voice sounds like it was written by the same invisible hand — something will happen. People will start looking for the thing that feels different. Intentional. Human. And they will pay for it.

The question is whether designers will be ready when that moment arrives. Or whether they spent the transition hiding from the tool that could have made them extraordinary.

AI can design now, so what’s next?

Let me be honest about something most designers don't want to say out loud: AI can already do a lot of what designers do. Color theory, typographic hierarchy, layout rules, white space, visual balance — these are learnable principles. They are, in fact, the things we teach in the first year of design school. If it can be taught to a junior designer in a semester, it can be learned by a model trained on millions of examples.

Web design, in its most structural sense, is already largely replaceable. Combine readability with layout with typography with hierarchy and you get something AI handles with ease. The rules are knowable. The patterns are consistent. The output is predictable.

But there is a different kind of design work that AI cannot replicate — not because of any mystical human quality, but because of something more specific and more interesting.

AI cannot hold the whole picture. Not yet. Not in the way a designer who has worked across strategy, product, and brand simultaneously can feel when one decision has thrown an entire system out of balance. Founders who remove designers from their process discover this slowly and painfully. They start with good structure. Then developers respond to user feedback — one piece at a time, linearly, fixing what's broken without evaluating what the fix does to everything else. Six months later, the product is functional but incoherent. It looks like what it is: a series of isolated solutions that forgot they were part of a whole.

A developer sees a broken piece and fixes it. A designer walks in and sees what the product was trying to become and whether it's still on that path. That capacity — to walk into a messy product and feel the original intention underneath the accumulated decisions — is not a style skill. It is not aesthetic judgment. It is something closer to a narrative sense. Designers read products the way editors read manuscripts: not word by word, but as a living argument that is either holding together or quietly falling apart.

And there is something else. Something more fundamental to what designers actually are.

The Orbiting Designer: Doubt is the differentiator

Design, unlike most professional disciplines, has no finish line. This is not a weakness in the process. It is the process. A developer solves a problem and moves on. A strategist makes a decision and implements it. But a designer, a real one, never fully lands. They circle. They return to decisions already made and re-examine them. 

They sit in a meeting where everyone agrees on a solution and feel something is wrong before they can articulate why. They push back not because they have a better answer ready, but because their relationship with the product demands constant re-evaluation.

Most people call this indecision. I've come to believe it's the highest form of critical thinking available in creative work.

Because here's what that endless orbit actually produces: it produces products that remain coherent across time. It produces brands that feel intentional rather than accumulated. It produces the experience — rare and increasingly valuable — of encountering something that someone clearly cared about all the way through.

AI produces certainty. Clean outputs. Finished things. Design, at its core, is an act of sincere uncertainty. And sincerity is the one thing that cannot be generated.

When AI generates a design, it produces the most statistically likely version of good. It optimizes. It averages across everything it has learned. What it cannot do is doubt that output. It cannot feel the gap between what was made and what was meant. It cannot stand in a room of people who are satisfied and say: wait.

That capacity to wait, to hold quality to a standard that isn't finished yet, is what I now think of as the sincere hand. Not nostalgia for analog craft. Something more urgent: the only signal in a world of AI-generated output that proves a human being was genuinely present, accountable, and unsatisfied until it was right.

The last gate — And why designers must own it

Here is how I have restructured my own relationship with AI, and why I think it points toward the right model for designers who want to be relevant in five years.

I use AI extensively. For research, for pattern recognition across industries, for brainstorming at the beginning of a problem when I need to expand the possibility space fast. I use it to generate initial directions I might not have reached on my own, and to produce output that becomes raw material for the real work.

But nothing leaves my hands without passing through my judgment. Not because I distrust AI's output, sometimes it's remarkable. But because the moment something reaches a founder, a team, a user, it carries authorship. It makes a claim. And that claim has to be mine.

This is not a quality control step. It is the definition of what a designer is in the age of AI: the last gate. The person who is accountable for the result, not just the process.

Most designers are so afraid of AI replacing their execution that they haven't noticed the more important shift happening: the role of the designer is moving from maker to decision-maker. From the person who produces the work to the person responsible for whether the work is right.

Founders who cut designers out control the output. Designers who own the last gate control the outcome — forever, even after they've left the room.

This is actually a promotion. If designers can claim it.

The founders who are running entirely AI-generated processes right now are, in many cases, producing faster and cheaper. But they are also producing something that looks like everyone else. They are the last gate, but they don't know how to judge what's passing through it. They know it when something is broken. They cannot feel when something is merely adequate.

That gap, between broken and merely adequate, between adequate and genuinely right, is where the designer lives. And in a world where AI eliminates the broken, the distance between adequate and right becomes the entire competitive landscape.

Taste Infrastructure can become a thing now

For most of design history, taste has been considered personal. Uncopyable. Something you either had or you didn't, and even if you had it, you couldn't hand it to anyone else. The best you could do was produce work that demonstrated it, and hope clients recognized what they were getting.

AI changes this. And I think it changes it in a way that is genuinely new in the history of creative work. If you can explain why something works — not just feel that it does — then your taste can become a system. It can be encoded into rules, hierarchies, guardrails, component decisions, and voice principles that guide output even when you are not in the room. Your judgment can be made legible. And anything that can be made legible can, eventually, be made scalable.

This is what I mean by Taste Infrastructure. Not a style guide. Not a brand manual. Something more dynamic: a designed system that produces outputs consistent with a specific aesthetic philosophy, regardless of who or what is generating them.

Think about what this means practically. A company running entirely on AI-generated content still needs their output to feel like them, not like everyone else using the same models. The designer who can build the system that makes that possible is not selling hours of execution. They are selling something far more valuable: the ability for a company to be self-sufficient without losing coherence.

Taste was always considered personal, uncopyable. Now it can become a product — something built, sold, and scaled. The designer who can manufacture taste wins everything.

Every company that wants to differentiate in an AI-saturated market will eventually face the same problem: their tools are the same as everyone else's tools. The output will converge toward sameness. The only way out is to encode something distinctive upstream — before generation, not after.

That upstream encoding is a design problem. And it requires exactly the skills that survived every previous technological revolution: the ability to perceive a whole, hold it in mind, evaluate it against an intention, and articulate why it works or doesn't.

My perspective in the picture

I spent six years studying art, taste and visual craft. Then I spent five years teaching design to students who had never done it before. After that, I spent 9 years practicing product design in Silicon Valley. 

When you teach design, when you sit across from someone who has made something and you have to explain not just that it isn't working but why, and how, and what specifically to change,  you are forced to develop something most practicing designers never build: a verbal language for aesthetic judgment.

Most designers with great taste are mute about it. They feel it. They produce from it. But they cannot reliably explain it to someone who doesn't already share it. This is why designers have historically struggled to lead organizations — not because their judgment is poor, but because their judgment is illegible to people who think in language, logic, and strategy.

Teaching forced me to make my judgment legible. To find the words for why this composition creates tension and that one creates resolution. Why this hierarchy guides the eye and that one abandons it. Why this color palette signals trust and that one signals noise. Year after year, student after student, I built a vocabulary for something that most designers leave unspoken.

You spent years teaching others to see. That is exactly what qualifies you to teach machines to see.

That vocabulary is, I now realize, the foundation of everything that matters in the AI transition. Because AI doesn't respond to feelings. It responds to articulation. The designer who can tell AI exactly why something isn't right yet, and keep pushing until it is, will produce work that no one else can produce with the same tools.

And the designer who can encode that articulation into a system, who can build the infrastructure through which a company's entire creative output flows, is not competing with AI at all. They are becoming the intelligence that AI learns from.

What Comes Next

The designers who will matter most in five years are not the ones who learn the most AI tools. They are the ones who use AI to think bigger while using themselves to think better. Who treat AI as a way to expand their inputs infinitely while taking complete ownership of every output. Who understands that the value they carry is not in their hands,  it's in their judgment, their orbit, their sincere uncertainty, their ability to feel the whole.

The world right now is in its adoption phase. Everything is fast and cheap and slightly unfinished. Founders are cutting designers out and feeling smart about it. In two years, maybe three, the market will have its answer about what was lost.

I don't want to wait for that moment. I want to be already building the systems, the infrastructure, the encoded taste, so that when companies realize they need a designer who can do more than execute, there is something real to offer. Not just presence in the room. Not just a seat at the table. An architecture of judgment that scales.

That is what I am thinking now. And I think it is the only answer worth building toward. The Taste Architect doesn't design things. They design the conditions under which good design is always possible.

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Over the past few months, we analyzed 150 deep tech landing pages across industries including AI infrastructure, semiconductors, aerospace, defense, robotics, energy, and climate technology.

The goal was simple: How do companies selling extremely complex technology explain what they do clearly—and credibly—on their websites?

Deep tech products present a very different communication challenge than typical SaaS products. They are harder to understand, the buying cycles are longer, and the stakes are significantly higher. Decisions often involve engineers, executives, procurement teams, and sometimes governments.

Because of this, deep tech websites follow very different design and messaging patterns than most startup websites.

The homepage isn’t a funnel

Most SaaS websites are designed around conversion. The homepage tries to push visitors quickly toward a free trial, demo, or signup.

Deep tech websites work differently. Their primary job is to answer a deeper question: “Should this company exist?”

When technologies are unfamiliar and investments are large, credibility matters more than speed. As a result, deep tech homepages frequently emphasize signals of legitimacy: press coverage, institutional partnerships, government relationships, origin stories, and large-scale manufacturing or deployment environments.

The site is less about capturing leads and more about establishing trust and seriousness.

Deep tech messaging is built around long time horizons

Another consistent theme across deep tech websites is the way companies talk about time.

Instead of emphasizing speed and rapid iteration, messaging tends to highlight durability and operational reliability. Many companies frame their products as infrastructure, not software.

Language across these sites often references mission readiness, sovereign capabilities, operational resilience, and systems designed to operate for decades.

The visual storytelling reinforces this idea. Large facilities, utility-scale infrastructure, manufacturing environments, and deployed hardware appear frequently throughout these websites.

The underlying message is simple: This technology isn’t a prototype. It’s built to operate at scale.

The five hero messaging archetypes

Despite the diversity of industries in deep tech, hero sections tend to follow a few recurring messaging patterns.

Some companies lead with a bold performance claim, highlighting speed, efficiency, or cost advantages. Others take a mission-driven approach, positioning their technology as essential for national security, climate progress, or advancing humanity.

A third approach emphasizes category leadership, using language like “the first,” “the only,” or “the world’s most advanced.” These companies are often defining entirely new technological categories.

Some companies choose the opposite strategy and rely on plain-language product explanations, clearly describing what the technology does without dramatic claims.

And in cases where companies serve multiple sectors, the hero sometimes functions as a navigation layer, allowing visitors to immediately choose the industry most relevant to them.

Different approaches, but the same objective: helping visitors quickly understand what problem the company solves and why it matters.

What actually works in deep tech hero sections

Beyond messaging style, successful hero sections tend to follow a similar structure.

The strongest examples typically include a short, confident headline focused on an outcome rather than a feature. A supporting subheadline then adds constraints such as power efficiency, cost advantages, or scalability.

Visuals also play a critical role. Instead of abstract graphics, deep tech companies frequently show real systems, hardware, facilities, or credible simulations of how their technology operates.

Finally, the hero usually contains one primary action, keeping the interaction simple and focused.

The most important moment on the page

Across nearly every deep tech website we studied, there is a moment where the page transitions from storytelling to evidence.

We call this the credibility pivot.

After introducing the idea or vision, the page quickly shifts toward proof: system diagrams, architecture illustrations, benchmark charts, manufacturing facilities, institutional partnerships, and deployed-at-scale metrics.

This moment is critical because belief in deep tech rarely comes from marketing language alone.

It comes from evidence that the technology works in the real world.

Visual design carries much of the explanation

Deep tech products often involve systems that are difficult to explain through text alone. As a result, visual design plays a major role in helping audiences understand the technology.

Across the websites we analyzed, three dominant visual styles appeared repeatedly.

Some industries—especially AI infrastructure, aerospace, and defense—use dark, cinematic aesthetics that communicate ambition and technological power.

Other sectors, particularly manufacturing and energy, lean toward clean, institutional design systems that signal safety, reliability, and operational trust.

A third group blends these two approaches, combining darker innovation-focused elements with cleaner industrial presentation.

Design techniques that reduce complexity

The most effective deep tech websites consistently use design to simplify complicated systems.

Instead of dense paragraphs, they rely on large typography with generous spacing and modular card layouts that make information easier to scan. Many sites also feature a single “signature” system diagram that visually explains how the technology works.

Full-width imagery is often used to separate sections and maintain rhythm across the page, while real hardware photography is typically favored over abstract renders.

In many cases, visual clarity builds more trust than copy alone.

Calls to action are designed for exploration

Another interesting difference from SaaS websites is how deep tech companies handle calls to action.

Instead of pushing immediate conversions, the primary actions often encourage visitors to learn more about the technology. Buttons frequently invite users to explore the product, read documentation, or discover more about the system.

Direct contact actions—such as booking a demo or requesting information—are typically positioned as secondary steps later in the journey.

This approach reflects the reality that deep tech sales cycles are long and decisions require significant technical evaluation.

The core value promises of deep tech

Across industries, deep tech companies tend to communicate value in a few consistent ways.

Performance is often framed around throughput, latency, or computational capability. Efficiency is communicated through reductions in power consumption, cost, or physical footprint. Scale appears frequently in the form of utility-scale systems or infrastructure designed for national or global deployment.

Reliability is another common theme, especially in industries where systems must operate continuously under demanding conditions. Control and flexibility also appear often, emphasizing the ability to deploy, reconfigure, or manage complex systems.

Finally, many companies emphasize economic advantages such as lower total cost of ownership or improved operational efficiency.

How messaging changes across deep tech industries

While many communication patterns are shared across deep tech, the messaging and visual language vary by sector.

Space and aerospace companies often frame their technology as sovereign infrastructure built to survive extreme environments. Their visuals frequently emphasize isolation, orbital environments, and the physics of space systems.

Space & aerospace

Defense and security companies tend to focus on control, protection, and mission dominance in hostile environments. Visually, these sites often use darker scenes, operational environments, and high-contrast imagery.

Defense & security

AI infrastructure and semiconductor companies typically highlight performance under strict constraints such as power consumption, manufacturing complexity, and scalability. Their visuals frequently include chip diagrams, system layers, and technical architecture.

AI Infra & Semiconductors

Energy, robotics, and manufacturing companies focus more on productivity and reliability. Their websites tend to show real environments, real machines, and real people working alongside technology.

Energy, Robotics & Manufacturing

What this research means for deep tech design

Across all the companies we studied, a few principles consistently appeared.

Deep tech websites are designed first and foremost to earn belief. Credibility must come before conversion, and clarity consistently outperforms clever marketing language.

Proof matters far more than persuasion. Visitors want to see real systems, real deployments, and real operational environments.

And perhaps most importantly, design is not simply decoration.

In deep tech, design functions as infrastructure for understanding—the layer that makes complex systems legible to the people evaluating them.

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Hi there — happy Saturday ☀️ 2026 has started, but I haven’t set any goals yet. This year, I want to go with the flow and see what kind of magic can happen.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this newsletter and its direction. It reminded me of something from years ago (before I had kids) when I launched a podcast about kids entrepreneurship. I published 55 episodes, interviewing parents, teachers, and kids building amazing businesses.

But I made one big mistake: I didn’t really talk with my listeners. I kept creating content, without truly understanding their needs. Eventually, I stopped—there wasn’t clear value or momentum, and I didn’t know who I was building it for.

I don’t want to repeat that mistake.

Today, I’m running a design studio and writing this newsletter to share what I’m learning while solving real design problems for early-stage startups. And I’ve realized something important: I don’t actually know you that well yet.

Are you a founder? A designer? A developer? A PM?
What are you trying to learn, build, or figure out right now?

Fill out some questions to have a 1:1 chat with me :)

Instead of writing only from my own perspective, I want to understand what you care about—and how this newsletter can bring real value to your career or life.

If you’re open to it, I’d love for you to fill out a short survey. I’ll personally pick around 30 people to chat with 1:1, just to listen, learn, and see how I can help.

No agenda. No sales pitch. Just a real conversation.

That’s it for this week—no tips or essays today. Just an honest note to say: I care about making this newsletter useful for you, and that starts with getting to know you better.

If that sounds good, I’d truly love to chat 💛

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Happy holidays everyone! Cannot believe 2025 is almost ending.

If you've noticed I've been quiet lately, there's a reason: I've been busy! It's the same excuse every time, I know. But this year-end brought more than the usual chaos—we were moving, packing, loading, cleaning, hunting for new schools and daycare, juggling holiday parties and year-end dinners. Most of my newsletters are born from morning walks, but I haven't taken one in almost two months.

Now, as 2025 draws to a close, I can't help but reflect on what I've learned—not the polished lessons you see in "how I built a 7-figure agency" posts, but the messy, contradictory truths nobody warns you about.

If you're an early-stage founder, solo bootstrapper, or building something of your own, these lessons might resonate with you too.

Lesson 1: scaling isn't just hiring more—especially in the AI age

I hired my second full-time designer this summer. Since then, I haven't hired another full-timer. And it's not for lack of trying. I've posted job descriptions, conducted interviews, hired part-time help, and run trial projects—not just for design roles, but admin and social media management too.

Initially, I wanted a virtual assistant. But in the two months we worked together, she made so many mistakes that I had to let her go. Meanwhile, I've worked with exceptional brand designers who wanted to join full-time, but our branding work is too infrequent to justify the hire. Eventually, I decided to let my current designers scale their speed and skillsets with AI and reliable part-time freelancers.

This year taught me something crucial about creative service businesses: our work fluctuates wildly. Some months are heavy on branding and web design. Other months, it's exclusively UX design. Here's the painful truth service founders face: more work leads to more workers, but more workers doesn't lead to more work.

I used to think scaling meant hiring, but hiring can actually trap a business. You end up managing people who aren't always busy, scrambling to find work to justify their hours.

That's the question I constantly ask myself while building a business in the AI age: How can I scale with the leanest team possible when we can leverage AI throughout the entire workflow?

Lesson 2: a founder's role evolves faster than their brand

Here's something nobody told me: as you build a business, you stop being the person doing the work and become the person thinking about the work.

In my second year, I'm no longer the main designer executing in Figma, solving specific interface problems. My role has evolved into running the business, building a team, critiquing work, and thinking strategically about each project's direction.

Because of that shift, when I finally have thinking space, my mind naturally gravitates toward life, business, and writing—things that move the business forward.

But here's the tension: I still position myself and my business in the design space. My audience expects design content. Designers and developers follow me hoping for design insights, and when I post about business or life instead, it's probably somewhat disappointing.

From a personal development perspective, it's necessary for someone with a design background to think beyond their original role. But from a marketing standpoint, consistency matters. People need to remember you for ONE thing. Only now do I finally understand the dilemma successful founders talk about: outgrowing your own brand. (I'm not there yet, but I see it coming.)

As a result of this thinking, I intend to focus more on design content in 2026, removing noise and unrelated content types. I still want to position myself in the design space—at least until I absolutely hate it.

Lesson 3: the privacy trade-off

Early on, when I first kickstarted the business, I shared everything: revenue numbers, client wins, each sale, mom struggles. It drove tremendous traction.

But it also attracted the wrong people.

When I posted revenue, I got dozens of messages from people asking, "How did you do it? Where do you get leads? How do you market?" They wanted the exact playbook. The problem is, the playbook on design roasting is probably outdated, and "referral & personal network" isn't replicable for everyone. To be honest, since I still haven't figured it out myself, I feel inadequate answering such questions without misleading people.

The more I think about it, I was attracting followers, but not customers.

There's also a practical issue: many clients we've worked with this year have NDAs. We can't show work before they launch. So the whole "build in public" playbook doesn't fit our current stage anymore.

And honestly, I've lost interest in showing revenue numbers. I also have zero desire to show off material items. I'd rather focus on design and startup insights—that's what I'll continue doing next year.

Lesson 4: Marketing is about staying top of mind

Many founders feel uncomfortable expressing themselves. Sometimes it's not about not knowing what to write—it's that they don't have time to think about it. I've been there this year. When I don't have time, I don't have the right mindset to share, then I lose momentum with marketing.

A few days ago, I caught up with a colleague in the accounting service sector. He reached out after seeing one of my LinkedIn posts. I told him I really can't find time for marketing, and sometimes I don't know if it actually converts. What he shared was eye-opening: Marketing isn't about converting—it's about staying top of mind.

The need won't be there immediately, but when people have the need and can't think of anyone else but you, your marketing is working.

As a first-time founder, I'm too eager to convert. Not just from marketing channels, but from anyone I meet at conferences or events. That's probably why I don't find some in-person events worth my time—my goal isn't about staying top of mind, it's about converting immediately. In 2026, I'll try to be more active about staying top of mind.

Lesson 5: Trust the invisible pipeline (A.K.A. Luck)

I often tell mentors and people I trust that even though my business grew 100% this year, it feels like pure luck. Why? Because I haven't figured out my pipeline or sales system, and I haven't hired anyone to replace me in doing sales. One month, a friend introduces someone looking for design. Another month, a previous PM from a startup we worked with transitions to a new company and hires us again. These referrals keep coming—it's great, but it's really out of my control. I call it luck.

When I talked to someone who runs a 200+ person dev agency with $10+ million in revenue, they told me they don't have a consistent sales system either. One time, their biggest client got acquired by another company, and all vendors were let go—including them. That was 40% of their revenue, and there was huge panic throughout the entire company. What surprised me was this: within three months, all the headcount was relocated to other projects. Their advice? Simply trust that when you do good work, people will remember you and refer you.

Building a business is tough because we can't predict what will happen. We can only do so much with limited resources at a certain stage. But if we continue to output great work for our customers, trust that luck will be on your side too.

Put it all together

After 1.5 years of building this business, here's what I've learned: scaling isn't about headcount—it's about leveraging AI and staying lean. Your role as a founder evolves faster than your brand can keep up, and that's okay. Sharing everything attracts the wrong audience; privacy has value. Marketing isn't about immediate conversions—it's about being memorable when the moment matters. And finally, when you can't control the pipeline, trust in doing excellent work. What looks like luck is often just deferred reputation paying dividends.

The messy truth? I still haven't figured it all out. But maybe that's the point. We're all just building, learning, and trusting the process.

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The most successful designers I know have one thing in common: they see beyond the immediate design request and into the bigger picture.

Here’s what I mean. Recently, a client mentioned in passing that they had just closed a funding round while requesting a simple social media graphic. Two different designers responded in very different ways:

• Designer A jumped straight into logistics: “What dimensions do you need? Any brand guidelines I should follow?”

• Designer B began with recognition: “Congratulations! That must be such an exciting milestone for the team.”

Both responses led to the graphic being created, but only one led to a deeper conversation about the strategic projects the funding would enable—and ultimately to significantly more work.

The difference? Designer B understood that behind every design request is a business and a human moment worth acknowledging.

This mindset shift—from task executor to business partner—is what separates good designers from indispensable ones.

The growth opportunity hiding in plain sight

A design founder I know spent 10 years helping his second hire develop confidence in sales meetings.

Ten years.

This wasn’t about talent—both designers were incredibly skilled. It was about recognizing the opportunity to expand beyond pure craft into business partnership.

Many designers excel at the creative and technical aspects of their work. They’re detail-oriented, user-focused, and produce beautiful solutions. But often there’s untapped potential in the relationship and business strategy side of design.

The traditional path emphasizes:

• Building technical expertise to establish credibility

• Developing a strong portfolio to win projects

• Learning business vocabulary to sound professional

• Speaking up more to demonstrate leadership

• Having answers ready for every question

While these skills matter, they are just the foundation. The real growth opportunity lies elsewhere.

I discovered this while teaching design. A student presented her midterm work and couldn’t stop talking—nervous, filling every silence with words. Despite her talent, everyone could sense her discomfort.

That’s when it clicked: silence is also presence. The most confident people are comfortable with quiet moments. A designer who asks one thoughtful, well-timed question often creates more impact than someone who talks nonstop.

The insight that transforms everything

Service business is relationship business.

When that client shared their funding news, Designer B’s response was simple: “Congratulations! That must be such an exciting milestone for the team.”

That single moment of genuine recognition unlocked a conversation about bigger opportunities—and ultimately led to a project worth ten times the original request.

This is the transformation: from solving design problems to nurturing human connections. Clients aren’t just buying pixels—they’re investing in the experience of working with you.

5 ways to develop business partnership thinking

1. Recognize business moments, not just design requests

Every client interaction carries emotional and business context that extends beyond the immediate ask.

When someone says, “We need a graphic for our funding announcement,” they’re sharing a significant milestone in their company’s journey. They may feel excited, nervous about increased expectations, or proud of what they’ve accomplished. How you respond shapes whether you are seen as a vendor executing tasks or as a partner who understands their world.

The traditional approach treats every request as a design problem: requirements get gathered, specs clarified, and timelines established. Efficient, yes—but it can miss opportunities to deepen the relationship.

The business-partner approach adds one step: pause and consider what kind of moment this is for them. Are they celebrating a win? Navigating a challenge? Launching something they’ve worked toward for months?

This perspective shift transforms the interaction. Instead of diving into project details, you acknowledge the context: “Congratulations on the funding—that must be such an exciting milestone for the team,” or “This sounds like an important launch—what does success look like for you?”

Acknowledging victories, challenges, and milestones demonstrates that you care about more than the transaction. You show emotional investment in their outcomes and understanding of their business.

2. Host the room, don’t just present to it

The second development opportunity is learning to facilitate conversations, not just deliver presentations. As one mentor told me: “Walk into any room, grab a marker, stand at the whiteboard, and guide the discussion.”

Leadership for designers isn’t about being the loudest voice. It’s about being an excellent facilitator—creating an environment where the best ideas can emerge.

Many designers treat meetings as one-way presentations: show the work, walk through slides, wait for feedback. That keeps them in a reactive position.

Business partners think differently. They take ownership of the meeting’s success, not just their part of it.

Hosting means making sure everyone feels heard. It’s noticing when someone hasn’t spoken and inviting them in: “Sarah, I’d love to hear your perspective,” or “Michael, what do you think?” These small acts build trust.

It also means guiding conversations toward outcomes. When discussions circle endlessly, a good facilitator summarizes: “It sounds like we’ve identified three main concerns. Should we tackle them one by one?”

This mindset extends to the whole client relationship. You’re not just delivering design work—you’re orchestrating an experience that makes everyone feel valued and heard.

3. Master sequence and information flow

The third area is mastering sequence and flow of information—something designers already understand from visual hierarchy but often overlook in conversations.

Your design instincts give you an advantage: you know that order affects perception. Applied to client discussions, this means guiding them through a logical progression instead of overwhelming them.

Beautiful work sometimes gets dismissed simply because it was presented in the wrong order or without context.

Business partners think like storytellers. They consider what clients need to hear first to be open to what comes next. That might mean starting with business impact before showing visuals, or sharing research insights before presenting designs.

This sequencing also applies to managing expectations. Share small previews along the way, not just polished work at milestones. Build confidence gradually with sketches, strategic options, and progress updates.

The key insight: clients don’t just buy the final deliverable—they buy into your process. Thoughtful sequencing builds trust because they feel informed, not blindsided.

4. Think relationship timeline, not project timeline

The fourth opportunity is expanding your time horizon from project delivery to relationship continuity. Ask yourself: “How can I make this experience so positive that they’ll want to work with me again?”

As an individual contributor, success often means delivering quality work on time. But as a partner, success includes creating such a strong collaborative experience that clients become advocates.

This mindset affects how you handle challenges. When a client requests changes that could weaken the work, instead of pushing back immediately, you ask: “What’s driving this request? Are there user needs or business constraints I should understand?”

Often, this reveals new information and leads to better solutions.

It also changes how you communicate. Regular check-ins become less about status updates and more about alignment: “How are you feeling about the direction?” or “What questions are coming up from your team?”

And when the project ends, you don’t just hand off files. You follow up: “How did the launch go? What feedback are you getting?” This shows ongoing care and keeps you top of mind.

5. Show authentic authority, not performative expertise

Finally, balance confidence with honesty. Authentic authority builds more trust than pretending to know everything.

It looks like saying: “That’s a great question—I’ll research it and get back to you,” or “I haven’t worked in that industry before, but here’s how I’d approach learning about your users.”

The key is pairing transparency about limitations with confidence in your core strengths. You may not know their exact industry, but you know how to research, test, and translate insights into design.

Authenticity also means letting your personality come through. Many designers hide behind formality, but clients prefer working with humans, not robots. Your unique perspective and approach differentiate you.

The skill is calibrating. In early meetings, you may be reserved while learning their style. As trust grows, you can bring more of yourself. Some clients appreciate humor; others prefer formality. Adapt while staying true to who you are.

This authenticity should also shape how you present your work. Instead of framing every decision as the “right” one, explain your process: “I explored three directions. One was safer, but I chose this because it better addresses the user problem you described.”

That honesty shows judgment, not insecurity—and clients respect it.

Your natural advantages as a designer

You already have the foundation for business-partner thinking.

Designers are natural facilitators, editors, and empaths. You know how to create experiences, listen deeply, and iterate based on feedback. The opportunity isn’t to become “more business-y” but to apply these same strengths to relationships as well as pixels.

The most successful designers I know didn’t transform into something they weren’t. They became more intentionally human in their professional interactions. Clients worth working with recognize this difference. Sustainable design businesses grow from the relationships you build—not just the work you produce.

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Hey there. Happy Saturday! Today, I want to share some thoughts on building trust as a service business.

Most advice about building trust sounds the same: be consistent, give value, show up regularly, be authentic. Build relationships slowly over time.

I spent years following this advice. And you know what? It is only part of the picture.

Then I started noticing something strange in my own experience. Some professional relationships took years to develop. Others happened in weeks. A few locked in after a single conversation.

The difference wasn't how much value I provided or how consistent I was. It was about timing - and recognizing that trust operates in three completely different modes depending on someone's emotional and mental state.

Here's what I discovered.

The problem with "building" trust

The word "building" suggests a linear process. Do A, then B, then C, and trust gradually forms. Stay visible. Give consistently. Be patient.

But that's not exactly how it actually works.

When I just started my design career, I once spent months trying to connect with a founder at a design studio. We had coffee and I had an idea of joining his company just for a summer. I know it’s not wise to continue to ask for more after our first meeting, so I waited. 

Then I get to connected with a mutual connection who knew the previous founder well. I asked for an introduction/recommendation 2nd time - even though I'd already met the previous founder once. This time, with borrowed credibility, we connected again. I didn't pitch anything. I asked if this founder can speak to my students and share his firm’s work.

He said yes. That led to another conversation. Then it became a fellowship to spend a summer working with their team. Eventually, this founder became a mentor who I still talk to years later.

I didn't "build" that trust through consistency. Instead, tested for it, then borrowed it, then amplified it at specific moments. So here’s what I call my exact “trust building” formula. 

Phase 1: Test at their high points

The biggest breakthrough came when I realized: people are most receptive to new connections during inflection points.

Promotions. Funding announcements. Speaking engagements. Product launches. These are moments when someone is in a heightened emotional state - energized, open, proud. Their guard is down, and they expect people reach out to them.

A founder I wanted to work with announced their Series B funding. Instead of just congratulating them (which 50 other people probably did), I reached out with a question: "I'm curious how you're thinking about team structure now that you're scaling. I'm researching how AI-era startups approach design resources differently."

Not a pitch. A question that lets them be the expert.

We talked for 30 minutes. Turns out we knew tons of people in common, we even grew up in the same city. We both had similar views on how early-stage companies should operate.

I didn't sell anything. Even after the call, I just shared some research I'd done and writing about design leadership and thoughts I have about design problems at startups. Basically said: if you ever want feedback on your product or need someone to think through design challenges, I'm here.

A few weeks later, the founder reached out. They needed urgent design help and didn't have an in-house team. That’s the result I wanted, but we didn’t get there right away.

I didn't approach them at a random time. I showed up at an inflection point with something specific (not just "let's connect"), then tested for receptivity.

The 3 entry strategies to build initial trust

Once you've identified an inflection point, you have three moves:

1. The direct shot

Use this when it's your only chance - conferences, one-time meetings, someone traveling through town.

I once attended a conference where a female leader I admired gave a talk. After she finished, I walked straight up: "I teach in the design field and have three months every summer. I'd love to contribute to your organization with my design skills in any capacity that's helpful."

She handed me her business card. Told me to reach out through email. We emailed back and forth. I did a summer fellowship with her team.

Direct worked because: (1) it was surprising - nobody else was making an ask like that, and (2) there was no next time. She was traveling through. It was now or never.

2. The strategic question

Use this when you need something but can't ask directly yet. You position yourself through curiosity that lets them shine.

The Series B founder question about team structure wasn't really about research. It was designed to: (1) let him talk about his expertise, and (2) reveal mine without pitching.

People want to feel valuable. Sometimes asking them to give (insights, advice, their story) builds more trust than offering your services.

3. Borrowed trust

Yes, it’s like a warm intro. Use this when a direct approach won't work. Engineer an introduction through someone who already has their trust. Even if you have connected with the person, and you need a reason to re-connect again.

This is what I did with the mentor. I waited until a mutual connection mentioned his name, then asked for a second introduction. I was essentially arbitraging trust - borrowing credibility from an existing relationship.

Reading the signals (and knowing when to walk away)

Here's what most networking advice gets wrong: it assumes every connection is worth pursuing if you're just consistent enough.

That's not true.

After you make your move - whether it's a direct ask, a strategic question, or a borrowed intro - you need to read mid-conversation signals to decide if this is worth investing in.

Green signals mean keep going:

• They ask follow-up questions

• They share more than necessary

• They extend the conversation naturally

• They offer things unprompted

• Their energy shows up

Red signals mean walk away completely:

• Short, closed answers

• No emotional response

• Checking the time, trying to escape

• Not engaging with your questions

• The whole thing feels forced

I once scheduled a call with someone after weeks of trying to coordinate. I was excited - we had mutual connections, and seemed aligned on paper.

Fifteen minutes in, I realized: this wasn't going anywhere. No matter what I asked, she sat there with minimal response. No energy. She kept glancing away. In exactly 13 minutes, she said she had another meeting.

We're in the same community. Lots of mutual connections. I never approached her again. The rule: Test once. Read the signals. If it's red, let it die - even if you're in the same circles.

Not everyone is your person. And that's okay.

The initial stage to start that trust building process is the hardest, and it’s also why most people fail to connect. Once passing that stage, it’s important to realize that deepening trust through every small interation.

Phase 2: Deepen at their normal moments

Once we passes the signal trust test, you don't stay in touch through "regular check-ins" or "just touching base."

You deepen trust by over-delivering on every single small ask.

An engineer leader I worked with briefly started his own company recently. Initially bootstrapped, no funding. Every few weeks, he'd ask something very small:

"Hey Li, can you look at my logo concept with GPT?"

I didn't just say "looks good/bad." I told him what could be better and offered to create him 3 new logos. For free.

"Just launched the product. Can you give feedback?"

I didn't just click around and say nice things. I recorded a full video walkthrough - went through every screen, explained my thinking, suggested improvements.

"Posted this on social media. Mind sharing it?"

I shared it immediately with thoughtful quotes.

None of these were big asks. But each one was a trust test. Will you respond fast? Will you do the minimum or go further? Will you act like this matters even when there's no money involved?

I've worked with many contractors and vendors where I have to chase them for responses. Wait days for simple answers. Constantly manage them even on small things. That kills trust.

The opposite - responding timely, going 10x further than requested - compounds trust faster than any amount of "consistent networking."

Small asks are trust tests in disguise. Treat them like they're the most important request of the day.

Phase 3: Lock in at their low points

Here's the most counterintuitive part: Real trust isn't built when everything is smooth. It's forged during a crisis.

I had a client with a regular stream of projects. Professional relationship, good communication, solid trust. Then one week: "We have a conference in three days. We need materials designed in the next 48 hours. Can you make it happen?"

We made it happen. Stayed up late. Delivered on time. They looked amazing in front of their team and leadership.

That's when the relationship changed. I wasn't just a good vendor anymore. We were the team they could count on when things got chaotic.

Another time, there was a miscommunication. A client thought we were delivering both design and development, but I thought we are only delivering designs. We only had design capacity at that time, and the deadline was in two days.

He panicked. Scrambled to find a developer. I'd already finished my part - technically, I was done.

But I didn't disappear. I stayed available the entire time. Answered questions immediately. Offered to adjust designs and also help him look for a developer. Basically said: I'm always here until everything is resolved, even though my piece is done.

When it was over, he told me that my availability meant more than the design work.

The crisis playbook

When things go wrong - deadlines compress, mistakes happen, priorities shift wildly - most vendors protect their boundaries: "I need more time." "This wasn't in the original scope." "Let me check my calendar."

All reasonable responses. All trust killers in a crisis.

During a crisis, normal rules don't apply.

When someone is drowning, they don't need you to explain why something isn't your fault or set appropriate boundaries. They need you to not become another problem.

Your job in a crisis:

• Be constantly available (even if it means staying up late)

• Over-communicate (so they don't have to chase you)

• Absorb their stress without breaking (even if they're short or rude)

• Remove yourself from their list of problems

Here's the hard truth: when founders or leaders are in fire mode, they get sharp. They say things that don't sound nice. They're not thinking about your feelings - they're trying to survive the deadline, save the launch, fix the disaster.

If you take it personally, push back, or require emotional management during chaos, trust breaks. If you stay calm, keep delivering, and don't add drama to their crisis, you earn lifetime trust.You build the most trust when they're at their worst.

The three-state system

Here's what nobody tells you about trust: most people try to build trust the same way regardless of context. They're consistently authentic, they network regularly, they give value steadily.

But I've learned that trust works differently when you meet the other side at a different state:

At high points, people want to be approached (but strategically, with something specific).

At normal points, people want you to exceed expectations (quietly, consistently, without needing management).

At low points, people want you to be unbreakable (absorbing chaos without adding more).

The 4 trust principles I live by

The asking: Sometimes asking them to give (insights, advice, expertise) can build trust more than you think - especially when you don’t have much to offer.

The speed: Trust can happen in a month or take years. It's not about how long you invest - it's about catching the right moment with the right move.

The crisis: You earn the most trust when they're at their worst. Everyone thinks trust is built during good times. It's actually locked in during bad times.

The walking away: Building trust means knowing when NOT to build trust. Test once, read signals, walk away if it's red. You're not trying to build trust with everyone.

The real formula

Trust isn't built. It's tested, then borrowed or amplified at inflection points.

You're not creating trust through force of will or consistency. You're finding the moments where trust can form naturally (inflection points), widening those openings through extreme responsiveness (over-delivery), then cementing them permanently when pressure hits (crisis).

Thinking about this framework has transformed how I approach relationships in service businesses—where trust isn't just nice to have, it's the currency that closes deals.

I'm curious: Which of these three phases resonates most with your experience? Have you noticed trust locking in during a crisis you handled well?

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You've probably noticed it—some people seem to stumble into amazing opportunities while others, equally talented and hardworking, struggle to catch a break. We call it luck, but what if luck isn't actually random? What if the people who seem "lucky" are doing something specific that attracts opportunities to them?

The secret isn't what you might think. It's not about networking better, having the right connections, or being in the right place at the right time. It's about something much simpler and more profound: taking action before you feel ready, and doing it in a way that makes others want to help you succeed.

The readiness trap

Most people approach big decisions by trying to calculate their way to certainty. They make pro and con lists, research every possible outcome, seek advice from everyone they know, and wait for the "right" moment with perfect conditions and guaranteed success. But here's what they miss: opportunities don't come to people waiting on the sidelines. They come to people who are already in motion.

When was the last time someone offered you an amazing opportunity while you were sitting at home, perfectly prepared but not doing anything? Opportunities find people who are already committed, already taking action, already proving their dedication through behavior rather than intentions.

This insight reveals why waiting for readiness actually kills opportunity. While you're perfecting your plan, someone else with a decent plan and strong execution is already building relationships, gaining experience, and positioning themselves for the breaks that seem to fall from the sky.

The 99-1 principle

When I graduated from undergrad, I had a dream that seemed financially impossible: studying abroad in the US. My family was never financially ready for such an undertaking. I could have waited years for perfect conditions, but instead, I decided to do everything within my control and leave only the final piece to chance.

I prepared my portfolio, took the TOEFL test, and applied to schools. When acceptance letters arrived from different universities, suddenly everyone could see I was just one step away from accomplishing my goal. That's when something remarkable happened. My parents, seeing how far I had come on my own, found a way to borrow money from relatives to cover my first year of tuition.

But here's the crucial part—I had no idea how I would afford the second year. No financial plan, no family support lined up, no guarantees. I was jumping into the water without knowing if I could swim the full distance.

Once I was in the US, actually living the challenge instead of imagining it, opportunities began appearing that I never could have predicted or planned for. I searched relentlessly for paid internships and visited every office on campus asking about additional scholarships. Eventually, the university president himself created a special scholarship specifically for me to complete my second year.

None of this would have happened if I had stayed home waiting until I could afford both years upfront. The opportunities only revealed themselves because I had already committed to the path. I had done 99% of the work—the preparation, the applications, the leap itself—and that's when others were willing to help with that final 1%.

This taught me something crucial about how luck actually works: people want to help, but they're not going to carry you 90% of the way while you contribute 10%. They want to see that you've already done the hard work, that you're committed, that you've taken all the steps you possibly can on your own. Then, and only then, will they step in to help with that final crucial step.

Problems become stepping stones

Here's something counterintuitive about opportunity attraction: the challenges that seem insurmountable from the outside become manageable stepping stones once you're actually facing them. When you're contemplating a big leap from the sidelines, your mind conjures up every possible difficulty simultaneously. You imagine juggling all the potential problems at once, and it feels impossible.

But when you actually take the leap, those same challenges don't hit you all at once. They come one at a time, in the order you need to solve them, at the pace you can handle them. More importantly, each challenge you solve creates new connections, new skills, and new opportunities that wouldn't have existed if you'd stayed safe.

Standing in my home country, the second year tuition felt like an insurmountable obstacle. But once I was actually in the US, facing that challenge in real time, it broke down into manageable pieces: research scholarship opportunities, apply for work-study programs, meet with financial aid officers, demonstrate my value to the university. Each step was doable, and each step opened up the next possibility.

This pattern repeats across every major life decision. Starting a business seems overwhelming until you're actually solving real customer problems one day at a time. Becoming a parent feels impossible until you're actually learning to care for your child through daily practice. Moving to a new city seems scary until you're actually building a new life through small daily actions.

You don't attract opportunities by avoiding challenges—you attract them by willingly entering challenging situations and proving you can handle them. People notice competence in action much more than competence in theory.

Action as research

One of the most powerful principles of opportunity attraction is understanding that action creates data that thinking alone never could. When you're stuck in planning mode, you're operating on assumptions and hypotheses. When you start taking action, you get real feedback from the real world, and that feedback often leads to opportunities you never could have planned for.

In my design business evolution, I attracted different types of customers at each stage, and each stage taught me something valuable about what I actually wanted to build. Initially, I attracted designers going through transitions. Then indie hackers who needed design but had limited budgets. Then funded startups who could invest in strategic design work.

I couldn't have planned this progression, but each stage created the foundation for the next stage. The indie hackers taught me about business constraints and helped me realize I wanted to work with clients who could implement bigger visions. The funded startups taught me about strategic thinking and showed me I enjoyed solving confidence problems as much as design problems. Each "mistake" or "wrong turn" was actually gathering data that led to better opportunities.

This is "doing as research"—using action as your primary method for discovering what's possible. People who wait for perfect information never get it because perfect information only comes through experience. But people who act on good-enough information create experiences that generate better information, which leads to better opportunities.

The truth about timing

What we call "lucky timing" follows this same pattern. The entrepreneur who lands the perfect investor wasn't just lucky—they had been building relationships and proving their concept for months or years. The writer who gets the perfect book deal wasn't just in the right place at the right time—they had been developing their craft and building an audience consistently.

Good timing is usually the visible result of invisible preparation and action. The luck comes to those who are ready to recognize and act on opportunities because they've been actively engaged with their field, their goals, and their growth.

Start swimming

The truth about attracting luck is that it's not really about luck at all. It's about understanding how opportunities actually work and aligning your behavior with those principles. Opportunities come to people who are already in motion, already committed, already doing the work. They come to people who are clear about their direction but flexible about their methods. They come to people who are willing to be vulnerable about what they don't know while taking full responsibility for what they can control.

Most importantly, opportunities come to people who understand the 99-1 principle: do everything within your power, and others will help with the rest. Don't wait for someone else to do 90% while you contribute 10%. Show up fully, commit completely, and take action before you feel ready.

Whether you're pursuing education, starting a career, building relationships, or making any major life change, the path forward reveals itself through walking, not through planning. Jump into the water and start learning to swim. The opportunities you seek are looking for someone exactly like you—someone who's willing to act despite uncertainty, learn through doing, and persist through challenges.

They're just waiting for you to show them you're serious. Not through your words or your plans, but through your actions. Start moving, and watch how the world begins to move with you.

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I need to tell you about something I struggled for so long, and I’m wondering if you’ve felt this too.

I am obsessed with learning how to write and build an online presence. I bought courses from Justin Welsh, Matt Gray, and subscribed to Dan Koe’s paid newsletter. They are all amazing writers and creators that built a massive amount of followers online.

For the past months, I’ve been trying to write content like them. I love Dan's content - the brilliant content creator who delivers these sharp, no-nonsense insights that cut straight to the truth. His voice is so authoritative, so clear about what people need to do to stop wasting time and start building something meaningful.

I admire his deep thoughts so much. His content makes me want to immediately fix everything wrong with my approach to business and life.

So naturally, I thought: if I could just write like him, I’d build the same kind of engaged, loyal audience.

Here’s what’s been happening: I sit down to write, and I try to channel that same sharp, direct energy. I craft posts about productivity. I write tough-love advice about what successful entrepreneurs do differently. I try to poke at the pain points that keep people stuck.

But every time I hit publish, something feels… wrong.

The words don’t feel like mine. The engagement is terrible - like, embarrassingly bad. And the worst part?

I’m starting to dread content creation, something that used to bring me joy when I sit down to journal.

I keep telling myself I just need more practice, that maybe I’m not disciplined enough to stick with it. But deep down, I’m starting to wonder if I’m missing something fundamental.

The voice that's trying to break through

The thing is, Dan’s approach works brilliantly for him. But the more I try to replicate it, the more I realize how different our stories are.

Dan grew up in the US, had his party phase in his twenties, then found purpose and clarity. His sharp, authoritative voice comes from that specific journey - the journey of someone who learned to cut through distractions and get serious about his goals.

But my story is completely different.

I grew up in China, where achievement was the only path to success and recognition. After immigrating to the US, I thrive to achieve all the major things: school, visa, green card, jobs, marriage, kids, and building a business. I’ve been so goal-driven my entire life that I couldn’t even watch a movie at normal speed without feeling guilty. I was the person who forgot to eat lunch because I was too busy optimizing my productivity. I literally criticized myself for every moment that wasn’t “productive.”

Here’s what I’m beginning to understand: when I try to write in Dan’s voice, I’m essentially trying to give advice from his experience while living in my completely different reality.

When he talks about getting focused, stop wasting time and take actions, it resonates because his audience needed that push. But when I think about my past self - that woman who was so driven she couldn’t relax - she didn’t need someone poking her pain points about productivity. She needed someone to tell her it was okay to slow down. She needed permission to rest. She needed comfort, not criticism.

The voice that’s trying to emerge when I write isn’t sharp and critical. It’s gentle and encouraging. It’s the voice that wants to tell over-achievers that their worth isn’t measured by their output. It’s the voice that says “everything will be fine” to people who are burning themselves out chasing success.

What resistance is really telling you

I’m starting to realize that my inability to stick with Dan’s style isn’t a failure of discipline. It’s amazing insights. It’s my authentic voice trying to break through.

Maybe the resistance I feel when I try to copy his approach isn’t something to overcome - maybe it’s something to listen to.

Maybe the fact that his sharp, critical tone feels forced when I use it isn’t because I need more practice. Maybe it’s because my natural voice is fundamentally different, and that difference is exactly what the world needs from me.

This makes me wonder: how many of us first-time founders are trying to squeeze our voices into successful people’s molds?

We see someone crushing it with their content, their business model, their approach to marketing, and we think: “If I just do exactly what they did, I’ll get the same results.”

But what if that’s backwards? What if their success came not from following a formula, but from being authentically themselves? And what if our success requires us to be authentically ourselves too - even if that looks completely different?

Permission to be exactly who you are

Here’s what I’m starting to understand: my voice matters exactly as it is.

The gentle encouragement that wants to come through my content isn’t a weakness - it’s my strength. The desire to comfort rather than criticize isn’t less valuable - it’s differently valuable.

There are people out there who need exactly what I have to offer, exactly the way I naturally offer it. People who are burned out from too much tough love and need someone to say “it’s okay to rest.” People who are over-achieving themselves into anxiety and need permission to slow down.

If you’re struggling to find your authentic voice as a founder, maybe the struggle itself is the guidance.

Pay attention to what feels hard to stick to. Notice what feels forced when you try to copy others. Listen to the resistance that comes up when you try to be someone you’re not.

That resistance isn’t telling you to try harder - it’s telling you to try differently.

Your voice is trying to emerge. Your unique perspective is trying to break through. Your authentic message is waiting to be heard.

What the world needs from you

I want you to know something as you navigate this journey of finding your voice: you can still copy and try because that means you are taking the action but know that you don’t have to sound like anyone else to be successful.

Your gentle approach or your analytical mind or your quirky perspective - it all matters. The experiences that shaped you, the struggles you’ve overcome, the wisdom you’ve gained - it’s all valuable exactly as it is.

There are people waiting to hear from the real you, not the version of you that’s trying to be someone else.

Stop trying to be the founder you think you should be. Start being the founder your past self needed. Trust that your voice, your timing, your unique path is exactly what this world needs.

You were designed with your specific voice and perspective for a reason. There’s room for you exactly as you are.

Everything will be fine.

With love and growing clarity,

Li Zeng

P.S. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” (Jeremiah 1:5) - You were created with your unique voice for a purpose. Stop trying to be someone else and start trusting who you were made to.

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Do you feel like you can never escape mindless scrolling, even when you set app time limits? You know how it goes: you set a 15-minute limit, the timer goes off while you are in the middle of a video, and you think, “Just 15 more minutes.” Then you take another fifteen.

Before you know it, three hours have vanished into short videos and random stories you do not even care about.

The worst part is that you feel physically terrible afterward. You feel dizzy from staring at your phone. You get dark circles from scrolling until midnight. The next morning, your brain feels foggy, as if you have eaten junk food for your mind.

You know the frustration of realizing social media is not serving you yet still getting pulled back in. You try app blockers, screen time limits, or even deleting apps entirely, only to reinstall them a week later.

Here is what I discovered when I was stuck in this exact cycle: the problem was not willpower or the apps themselves. The real issue was not knowing what mental state I was in when I opened my phone.

The mental state that changes everything

You are probably approaching social media in two completely different ways, and you may not even realize which one you are choosing.

Browsing mode: You open Instagram or TikTok without a purpose, simply seeking a dopamine hit or something to fill empty space. The algorithm takes control, and you get sucked into an endless loop of content that entertains you but leaves you feeling empty.

Searching mode: Sometimes you open the same apps with a specific question or topic in mind. For example, when you are figuring out how to name your business, you might search for “how to create a business name.” Everything you consume is focused on solving that one problem. After five minutes you find what you need and naturally close the app.

Although you use the same apps in both cases, the experiences are completely different. The key difference is your intention before opening the phone.

This idea connects to what psychologists call the flow state: when you have a clear goal, distractions naturally become invisible and your brain filters out everything that does not serve your purpose. Buddhist mindfulness teaches the same principle: awareness of your mental state is the first step to changing it.

Why good content feels irritating when you are in browsing mode

Here is something you might recognize: when you are in browsing mode to relax, you often avoid content that aligns with your values and goals.

Maybe you are naturally ambitious and disciplined and you work hard all day. When you open social media to decompress, your brain can actively reject productivity tips or success stories—even though that content normally interests you. It feels irritating because you have already worked hard and just want to shut your brain off for a few minutes.

Your relaxation self is protecting itself from your ambitious self. When you truly want downtime, your brain does not want more optimization advice; it wants permission to be mindless for a moment.

This is cognitive-load theory in action. When your brain is already tired from mental effort, it protects itself from more cognitive work, even if that work would be beneficial. It is like avoiding exercise when you are physically exhausted, even though gentle movement might actually help you feel better.

The problem arises when that “moment” stretches into hours because you never set an intention in the first place.

The four modes of social media consumption

After observing this pattern in myself and others, I realized that most people move through four distinct modes:

1. Browsing mode — Mindless consumption, seeking entertainment and dopamine hits. Most people spend most of their time here.

2. Avoiding mode — Conscious abstinence. You recognize browsing is problematic, so you delete apps or stay away entirely. Many people cycle between avoiding and browsing.

3. Searching mode — Purposeful consumption. You open apps with a specific goal or question. Very few people reach this consistently because it requires clarity.

4. Flow mode — Integrated consumption. Social media becomes part of your larger purpose, and everything you encounter is processed through that mission. Almost nobody sustains this level.

The reality is that most people get stuck cycling between browsing and avoiding. They browse mindlessly, feel guilty, avoid social media for a while, and then gradually drift back to browsing. Very few reach searching mode because that mode requires a clear sense of direction about what you want to accomplish in life.

The real problem is not social media — it is life clarity

This is not primarily a technology problem; it is a purpose problem. You cannot have purposeful consumption without knowing what you are consuming for. Mindless scrolling is often a symptom of deeper confusion about what you want to achieve.

Psychologist Viktor Frankl demonstrated that people can endure almost anything if they have a clear sense of meaning. When we lack that purpose, we default to seeking pleasure rather than meaning—exactly what happens when we reach for our phones to fill every quiet moment.

This idea connects to what the philosopher Blaise Pascal called divertissement: we distract ourselves from life’s bigger questions because they make us uncomfortable. Social media becomes our modern way of avoiding the anxiety that comes with asking, “What am I really doing with my life?”

When you finally gain clarity about what you want to create or accomplish, everything shifts. Social media can transform from an entertainment trap into a research tool: you open apps looking for specific inspiration, find what you need, and close them. The same apps that used to drain your energy can become useful once you know what you are looking for.

What to do if you are stuck in browsing mode

If you are cycling between mindless consumption and total avoidance, start here:

• Write through your confusion. The struggles you try to escape through scrolling might contain the seeds of your future purpose. Capture your feelings of frustration and uncertainty without trying to solve everything at once.

• Pause before opening. Before you reach for your phone, ask yourself, “What am I hoping to get from this?” If you do not have an answer, consider whether you really need to open anything at all.

• Honor your need for rest. Sometimes you genuinely need mindless downtime. That is human. The goal is not to be productive every second; the goal is to be conscious about your choice.

I know how frustrating it feels to lose control of your attention when you are trying to build something meaningful. The problem is not that you lack discipline; the problem is that you are trying to use tools designed for mindless consumption in a mindful, productive way.

Once you clearly separate browsing from searching, you can use social media strategically for your work without getting lost in the endless scroll. You are not weak for getting distracted; you are human, and you are up against billion-dollar algorithms designed to capture your attention.

You can learn to work with these platforms instead of being controlled by them. Give yourself grace as you figure this out. Your business matters, your time matters, and you deserve systems that actually support your goals rather than sabotage them.

Everything will be fine.

With love and intentional scrolling,

Li Zeng

P.S. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23). What we consume shapes what we create, so be intentional about what you let into your mind and heart each day.

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Picture this: You're a new mom with a baby under one, a toddler under four, working a demanding 9–5 job, and dreaming of building your own business. Your only free time? Sunday afternoons, when the in-laws can help with the kids.

Sound impossible? That's exactly where I found myself early last year. Today, my business has crossed $750K in total revenue, and I want to share the five crucial lessons that made this transformation possible.

When I started on X (Twitter) with just 200 followers, I had no idea what I was doing. I posted thoughtful content to my 200 inactive followers, cold DMed people I found interesting, and followed every large account I could find. Nothing worked. Literally nothing.

My first earnings? A modest $35. But that small win—as tiny as it was—sparked something bigger. It was proof that strangers would actually pay me for my work. That $35 became the foundation for a journey that took me from struggling side hustles to a thriving business earning over $300K in 2024 and crossing $500K in 2025.

The path wasn't linear, and it certainly wasn't easy. I failed more times than I care to count. But the lessons I learned along the way—often through painful mistakes and late-night realizations—changed everything. Here's what I wish I had known from the beginning.

Lesson 1: Try Before You're Ready—Don't Wait

I used to think I needed everything perfectly aligned before I could start: the perfect business plan, the perfect schedule, the perfect amount of savings. I was waiting for that mythical moment when I'd have enough time, enough knowledge, and enough confidence.

But here's the thing about being a mom with an impossible schedule: that perfect moment never comes. Your baby will always need you at inconvenient times. Your toddler will always have a meltdown right when you're about to have a breakthrough idea. There will always be another excuse.

So I started anyway. While working my 9–5 for the past ten years, I spent nights and weekends trying different side projects—hand-drawn greeting cards, kids' drawings, YouTube tutorials, design teaching. Most failed spectacularly. I remember spending weeks creating an entire course that exactly three people bought. I launched greeting card designs that I didn’t even want to deliver when people ordered online—the profit margin was too low to motivate me.

But here's what I didn't realize at the time: each "failure" was actually building my skill stack. When I finally went full-time, I wasn't starting from zero. I had already learned what didn't work, which messages fell flat, and which pricing models were too aggressive or too timid. I had worked through the beginner mistakes on nights and weekends instead of making them when my family's financial security depended on my business.

The entrepreneur you'll become isn't the person you are today. You become that person by trying things before you're ready.

Pick one small business experiment you can start this week. Don't aim for perfection; aim for learning.

Lesson 2: Try Things You're Not Good At

Everyone told me to "follow my passion" and "do what you're good at." It sounds inspiring, doesn’t it? Stick to your strengths, lean into your natural talents, stay in your lane.

But here's the problem with that advice: I was already good at the creative side. I could design beautiful things, I understood color theory and composition, and I had an eye for aesthetics. Those skills felt safe and comfortable, like a warm blanket I could wrap myself in whenever things got tough.

The problem was, I could create the most stunning designs in the world, but if no one knew they existed, I'd still be broke.

My real weakness—the thing that kept me awake at night—was everything that came after creation. How do you find customers? How do you convince them to buy? How do you build systems that bring in revenue while you sleep? These felt like foreign languages I'd never learned to speak.

So I made a counterintuitive decision: after I became a full-time entrepreneur, I spent 80% of my learning time on the things I was terrible at. Distribution. Online marketing. Sales conversations. Building funnels. Understanding customer psychology. Writing copy that actually converted.

It was uncomfortable. I felt like a fraud posting on social media when I had no idea what I was doing. I cringed sending my first sales emails. I stumbled through pricing conversations, often charging too little because I was afraid of rejection.

But something magical happens when you deliberately practice your weak spots: you start to see the business puzzle differently. Instead of thinking, "I need to make something beautiful," I started thinking, "I need to solve someone's specific problem in a way they're willing to pay for."

As they say: "First-time founders build; second-time founders distribute." I learned to distribute before I even had something worth distributing.

Lesson 3: Build Your Team Before You Need Them

This lesson came out of pure desperation. My schedule was impossible—mornings and nights belonged to my babies, days belonged to my employer, and I had maybe one Sunday afternoon per week to work on my dreams.

I knew I couldn't do everything alone, but I also couldn't afford to hire anyone. So I got creative.

I started using my limited Sunday afternoons to help two designers with their portfolios and careers. Not because I had some grand strategy, but because I genuinely wanted to help. I'd review their work, share opportunities I found, and connect them with people in my network. Small gestures that took maybe an hour of my time but made a real difference in their lives.

In return—and this wasn’t explicitly negotiated, it just happened naturally—they started helping me with my personal projects. When I needed a logo, one of them would draft ideas. When I was stuck on a design concept, they'd brainstorm with me.

What started as two people became five, then eight. At our peak, we had twelve designers in this informal collective. We weren’t a company. We weren’t even a formal group. We were just people helping each other get better at what we loved.

I tried to formalize this into a mentorship program at one point, but my mom schedule made deep, one-on-one relationships impossible to scale. What I didn't realize was that this loose, collaborative approach was actually more powerful than any formal structure I could have created.

When my business finally took off and I needed to scale quickly, two of these designers didn’t hesitate to join me full-time. They already knew how I worked, understood my standards, and believed in what we were building together. I didn’t have to start from scratch with strangers—I had a team that had been growing alongside me for months.

This taught me something crucial: networking isn’t about collecting contacts or trading business cards. It's about creating genuine value for others long before you need anything in return.

Lesson 4: Prioritize Creativity Over Busy Work

For months, I thought being a good entrepreneur meant being busy all the time. The moment I sat down at my computer, I'd dive straight into the "urgent" stuff: responding to social media comments, answering emails, updating spreadsheets, posting content, managing my team’s questions.

My heart would race with the satisfaction of checking things off my list. Look how productive I am! Look how quickly I'm getting through these tasks!

Then, around mid-afternoon, when I had finally cleared most of the immediate fires, I'd try to sit down and work on the big-picture stuff: strategy, writing, planning future products, thinking deeply about where the business should go next.

But by then, something strange would happen. I'd stare at a blank page and nothing would come. My brain felt like a wrung-out sponge. The creative spark that had been there in the morning—before I'd checked my phone, before I'd seen all the notifications, before I'd put out all the little fires—was completely gone.

So I'd give up and go back to the busy work. More emails to answer. More posts to schedule. More tasks that felt productive but weren’t moving the needle forward.

I thought this was just how business worked: you do the urgent stuff first, then tackle the important stuff with whatever energy is left over.

But here's what I learned: creativity doesn't wait for you. Inspiration doesn't stick around while you clear your inbox. Strategic thinking requires your freshest, most focused mental energy—not the scraps left over after you've spent your best hours on other people's priorities.

Now I protect my morning hours like a mama bear protects her cubs. No social media. No email. No Slack messages. No exceptions. That’s when I write, plan, and think deeply about the future of my business.

The paradox? Since I started prioritizing the "non-urgent" creative work, my business has grown faster than ever. It turns out that one hour of clear strategic thinking is worth more than six hours of reactive busy work.

Block out your most productive hours for high-impact thinking work. Everything else is secondary.

Lesson 5: Your Health Is Your Business Foundation

After giving birth to my second baby, my body rebelled against me. I developed severe lower back problems that made everything painful—sitting, standing, even lying down. Some days, I couldn't get comfortable no matter what position I tried.

But I was terrified of slowing down. I had just started my business, I was trying to prove myself, and I was convinced that every minute not spent grinding was a minute that could cost me everything. I thought taking care of myself was a luxury I couldn't afford.

So I pushed through. I worked hunched over my laptop for hours, ignoring the shooting pain. I spent weekends getting massages and acupuncture treatments, treating my body like a broken machine that just needed quick fixes to keep running.

The stress was overwhelming. My body was constantly tense, my mind was always racing, and I felt like I was barely holding it all together. I told myself this was just the price of building something meaningful.

Then, at the beginning of 2025, I made a decision that felt scary at the time: I was going to prioritize taking care of myself, and everything else would be secondary.

I found a physical therapist and committed to seeing her three times a week. Not when it was convenient, not when I had extra time, but as a non-negotiable appointment that everything else had to work around. I was terrified my business would suffer. I worried that stepping away for a few hours each week would cause everything to fall apart.

The opposite happened.

Three weeks into physical therapy, my back pain disappeared. More importantly, my business didn’t just survive my absence—it thrived. In the first four months of 2025, I earned more than I had in all of 2024 combined.

Here's what I learned: when you step back and focus on building systems instead of grinding yourself into the ground, your business actually grows faster. When you're healthy and energized, you make better decisions. When you're not constantly in survival mode, you can think strategically about the future.

Taking care of yourself isn't selfish—it's the foundation everything else is built on.

Putting It Together

Today, my business generates consistent revenue while giving me the flexibility to be present for my family. But more than that, I've learned that building a business as a mom isn't about having more time—it's about being more strategic with the time you have.

The impossible schedule that once seemed like my biggest obstacle became my greatest teacher. When you only have a few hours a week to work on your dreams, you get really good at figuring out what actually matters. You stop wasting time on busy work that makes you feel productive but doesn’t move the needle. You start building systems that work without your constant oversight.

You learn to be ruthless about priorities because you have to be.

I used to think successful entrepreneurs were people who could work 80-hour weeks, who had unlimited energy and no other responsibilities. Now I know that some of the most effective entrepreneurs are the ones with the most constraints—because constraints force you to be creative, strategic, and efficient in ways that unlimited time and resources never could.

Your constraints aren't holding you back—they're teaching you how to build something sustainable.

You don't need perfect conditions to start building something meaningful. You don't need unlimited time, unlimited resources, or unlimited energy. You need to start before you're ready, focus on your weaknesses, build genuine relationships, protect your creative time, and take care of yourself along the way.

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When you’re just starting out as a founder—whether you’ve only had an idea or just launched your first product—there’s a big question: should you build your business brand or your personal brand on social media?

Most founders default to business brands, thinking it’s the “professional” choice. The logic makes sense: one day, you’ll scale, exit, and sell the entire business, including its social media presence.

But is that really the best way to build?

A conversation that changed my perspective

Before I launched my business, I spoke with a founder who had a small team, more than a million users and subscribers, and several published books. His focus was on system design—both his personal brand and his business brand revolved around it.

Despite his success, he admitted something striking: “I’ve outgrown this topic, but my personal brand hasn’t evolved with me.”

That stuck with me. As I researched further, I noticed a pattern. Many successful founders—Dan Koe, Justin Welsh, Matt Gray—lean into personal branding first. Why?

The lifetime asset insight

Here's what most founders don't realize: personal brands are portable lifetime assets, while business brands become cages you eventually outgrow. A business brand must stay niche and specific to maintain credibility - but what happens when you pivot, exit, or start new ventures? Those followers don't transfer with you because they followed the company, not the person behind it.

Personal brands work differently. They evolve with you across multiple businesses because people are following YOU - your thinking, your journey, your growth in real time. When you build your next company, or your third, or when you become a multi-exit founder, that audience comes with you.

It's the difference between building a business asset that you'll eventually sell and building a lifetime asset that appreciates with every experience you gain.

Why do people trust personal brands?

When I first started building my design business, I did what everyone does - shared the polished work, the revenue updates, the before-and-after transformations. Standard playbook stuff.

But I was hiding something that felt shameful for 10 years: I was building businesses on the side while working 9-5, now with a one-year-old and a three-year-old as a mom. While I was proud of myself trying so hard, at the same time I was terrified others would find out. Afraid coworkers would think I wasn't committed to my job. Scared that people would ask why I didn't just quit and go all-in if I was serious about entrepreneurship.

When I finally opened up to my life coach about these fears, she reframed everything: "Exploring something while having a full-time job is actually lucky. Most people want to build businesses but don't know the path. You're modeling what's possible for parents who can't just quit everything and chase a dream."

So I started sharing the real story - the shame, the fear, the 5 AM work sessions before the kids woke up, the constant worry about being a side hustler.

What happened next surprised me: people didn't unfollow me for being weak. They resonated deeply. My story became sticky and memorable because it sounded like a real person trying to figure out life and business, not another guru with a perfect success story.

Here's what I discovered: struggles don't just make you relatable - they become your credentials. When I shared that I'd failed Meta's interview process twice before finally passing, people didn't see incompetence. They saw someone who understood both sides of failure and success. When I talked about struggling to transition from visual design to product design, overwhelmed by trying to handle both aspects, potential clients saw proof that I truly understood their challenges. My failures became evidence that I could guide others through the same journey.

The mechanism is counterintuitive but powerful: in a world where everyone shows highlight reels, vulnerability becomes a competitive advantage. People trust you more when you've been in the trenches they're currently struggling through. Your struggles become proof of expertise, not evidence of weakness.

Selling becomes so easy when buyers know you “personally”

Here's what I love most about building a personal brand on X: when potential clients schedule calls with me, they don't start with "Tell me about your services" or "What's your pricing?" Instead, they begin with "I love your story! How are your kiddos doing?" It's as if they've known me for decades, even though we've never spoken before.

Trust is built instantly because they've been watching my journey unfold in real-time.

This asymmetric relationship is the secret weapon of personal branding. They know me - my struggles with balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship, my design philosophy, my values around family-first business building. But I don't know them. Yet somehow, we skip straight past the awkward getting-to-know-you phase and dive into meaningful conversations about how I can help them.

In this AI era, when fake and AI-curated content is flooding every platform, this kind of authentic connection becomes a massive differentiator. Anyone can generate perfect-looking content now. But you can't AI-generate three years of real struggles, real wins, and real growth that people have witnessed firsthand. The algorithms might be able to create content, but they can't create the emotional investment that comes from watching someone's actual journey.

What I discovered is that people don't actually buy design services from me - they invest in narratives they want to see succeed. Multiple clients have literally told me, "I want to buy from you to support you." They're not just purchasing design work; they're investing in my story of proving that you can build a successful business without sacrificing family time. They want to be part of making that vision real.

This is story investment theory: when people follow your journey long enough, they become emotionally invested in your success. They've watched you struggle, pivot, grow, and overcome challenges. By the time they're ready to buy, they're not evaluating you against competitors - they're rooting for you to win.

In a world where AI can replicate almost everything, it can't replicate the emotional investment that comes from authentic human storytelling over time.

The real barriers holding you back

Let's be honest about what you're probably thinking right now: "Well, I don't have two kids. I'm not a mom juggling business and family. I don't have these dramatic struggles that make people care about my story."

But here's the thing - that's not actually what's stopping you. That's just the surface-level excuse covering up deeper fears that every founder faces when they consider sharing authentically online.

The real barriers are much more universal.

First, there's the credibility fear: "If I show my struggles, will people still trust me with their money?" We've been conditioned to believe that professional competence requires a perfect facade. Admitting you don't have everything figured out feels like admitting you're not qualified to solve other people's problems.

Then there's the weakness perception: "If I share that I'm struggling with imposter syndrome, or that I almost gave up last month, or that I have no idea what I'm doing half the time, people will think I'm weak." We equate vulnerability with incompetence, even though the most successful people we admire are usually the ones who are honest about their challenges.

The judgment fear runs even deeper: "What will people think when they see this side of me?" Maybe you're worried about former colleagues seeing that you're struggling. Maybe you're concerned that sharing your real story will reveal how unconventional your path has been. Maybe you think your struggles aren't "worthy" enough compared to others.

And finally, there's the relevance doubt: "My story is too specific, too narrow. I'm a B2B SaaS founder in Minneapolis - who's going to relate to that?" We convince ourselves that our particular combination of challenges, background, and circumstances is too niche to matter to anyone else.

But here's what I've learned: these fears are actually backwards. The very thing you think will disqualify you is exactly what qualifies you. When you can openly talk about a struggle publicly, it means you've already overcome it. The sharing itself IS the overcoming. You're not revealing weakness - you're demonstrating mastery over your challenges.

Public storytelling becomes a tool for personal transformation. Each time you articulate a struggle you've worked through, you're proving to yourself and others that you can navigate complexity, learn from failure, and emerge stronger. Your willingness to be vulnerable becomes evidence of your emotional intelligence and resilience - exactly the qualities people want in someone they're going to trust with their business.

The founders who break through aren't the ones with the most dramatic stories. They're the ones brave enough to share their real ones.

Growth in real time vs. after-success stories

Here's what most people get wrong about personal branding: they think you should wait until you've "made it" to share your story. They craft these polished narratives about how they overcame challenges, always told from the perspective of someone who has already reached the mountaintop looking back down.

But here's why I'm such a fan of personal branding - and it's not because I like attention or just want to make selling easier. I'm obsessed with growth in life, and personal brand is the only way to capture that entire journey without feeling like all your past branding efforts have been wasted.

When your business evolves, when your interests shift, when you start new ventures, your personal brand evolves with you. Your business brand has to stay laser-focused on one thing, but you? You're human. You can have multiple interests, run different businesses, pivot in unexpected directions. We all understand that growth isn't linear.

The magic happens when you share the mess while you're still in it, not after you've cleaned it up. When I was struggling to balance two kids and a side business, I didn't wait until I had it all figured out to share that story. I was posting about the 5 AM work sessions, the guilt, the fear- all while I was living it. That real-time vulnerability created a connection that no polished success story could match.

But here's what's crucial: when you share personal stories and challenges publicly, you're not asking people to help you solve your problems or save you from your situation. You're inviting your audience to witness the transformation you're having as a human being.

There's a massive difference between "please rescue me" and "watch me figure this out."

The platform strategy matters enormously here. Twitter rewards real-time authenticity and raw struggle - people want to see the unfiltered journey as it happens. But LinkedIn wants "processed" struggle stories with clear lessons learned. On LinkedIn, you can share the same challenges, but frame them as past experiences you've now overcome, complete with the insights you gained along the way.

This is why personal brands can be human and flawed while business brands must appear perfect. When you share your real-time growth, people aren't evaluating your company's competence - they're connecting with your human journey. They're investing in the person who's brave enough to grow in public, knowing that someone with that level of self-awareness and resilience will likely figure out whatever challenges come next.

The choice that determines your entrepreneurial future

So here we are, back to that fundamental question: business brand or personal brand as a founder?

After everything we've explored - the lifetime asset potential, the struggle-as-strength paradox, the story investment theory, the power of real-time growth - the answer becomes clear.

You're not just choosing a marketing strategy. You're choosing between building an asset or building a cage.

The business brand cage looks safe and professional on the surface. But it constrains you to one identity, one niche, one story. When you grow beyond it - and you will grow - you'll have to start over.

The personal brand asset grows with you. Every struggle shared, every lesson learned, every pivot and evolution becomes part of a larger narrative that appreciates in value. Your audience doesn't just follow your current business; they invest in your journey as a human being who figures things out.

In an AI-saturated world where perfect content floods every platform, authenticity becomes your ultimate differentiator. Your real struggles, shared in real-time, create connections that no algorithm can replicate. Your willingness to be human that shares stories becomes proof of the very qualities people want in someone they'll trust with their business.

The founders breaking through aren't the ones waiting for perfect stories to tell. They're the ones brave enough to share their real ones - while they're still figuring it out.

Your turn to start growing in public

Pick one platform. Pick one real challenge you're facing right now as a founder. Not something you overcame years ago, but something you're wrestling with today. Share it honestly, without asking for rescue, simply inviting people to witness your process of figuring it out.

Watch what happens when you choose vulnerability over perfection, real-time growth over polished success stories, personal connection over business positioning.

Your future self - the one running multiple successful ventures with an audience that follows you everywhere - will thank you for starting today.

The question isn't whether you have a story worth sharing. The question is whether you're brave enough to let people watch you write it.That’s it! Creatives often fail in business because they focus too much on perfecting their projects, stick rigidly to their rates, lack a clear focus, and get stuck in unscalable models. I hope you learned something through this newsletter and let me know what topics I can cover next!

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"Junior designers are out of jobs, seriously!"

Last year, two founders who raised friends & family funding came to me. We worked together for 7-8 months on their product before they burned through their budget on talent. They struggled to raise their seed round - investors couldn't see how they'd compete with the giants in their space.

Early this year, they paused working with my studio due to funding issues. Not just us - their entire team left except the two co-founders and one volunteer.

I caught up with them last month to check how they were doing. What they told me changed how I see the entire design industry.

"This would take me a week or two. I did it with Claude in 6 hours."

"A lot of back and forth, of course, but the time I saved is insane. I no longer write PRDs - AI crafts them for me. I can see the prototype the same day."

"Oh this one - I fed it the idea, and it came up with another direction I would have never thought of!"

And then the line that stopped me cold:

"Junior PM and junior designers are out of jobs, seriously!"

This isn't an isolated story.

There’s another founder I talked to says the same thing: they won't rush to hire any full-time designer, not even a freelancer, until they've explored everything AI can do. Only when AI can't handle the level of quality they need for customers do they consider human help.

Junior designers are panicking. I've heard stories of designers with 2-3 years of experience still hunting for their first full-time role.

Hearing this hit me personally.

After a decade in the design industry, was I about to become irrelevant?

I can't predict how fast AI will evolve or how long it takes to replace what even senior designers do. But I have strong beliefs about how to become irreplaceable.

And it started with understanding why I named my studio "Salt."

After years of studying and practicing design, I still find myself struggling to create a thriving business that just runs. There are so many moving pieces in a business, design seems like 10-20% of the puzzle that doesn't matter that much.

That led me to often doubt the role and impact of design in the real world. But at the same time, I cannot help but question:

Everyone just needs shelter and clothes, but why do architecture, interior design and fashion design industries exist?

Before Apple, everyone used Windows for years. We could have said people don't care about design at all. But was it really that users didn't care? Or had they just never experienced what good design could do?

After working in design for over 10 years, I've accepted a hard truth: design often just solves "surface" problems - the look and feel layer. Using food as an analogy, design is never the main dish. It's the ingredient that transforms everything else.

That's why I named my studio Salt.

You don't need salt to make a dish, just like you don't need design to launch your MVP. But add the right amount at the right time, and it drastically changes the entire flavor.

The same is true for design - adding it to your product can shift how people think and use your offering dramatically. Not because it's essential for function, but because it's essential for memory.

The steak fills you up. The salt makes you crave it again.

And that realization changed everything about how I see the AI threat.

Because if design has survived every technological revolution by being the ingredient that transforms utility into desire, then the current AI panic is missing the point entirely.

The founders who told me "junior designers are out of jobs" aren't wrong about the immediate threat. But they're missing what's actually happening beneath the surface.

They see AI replacing the execution - the pixels, the prototypes, the PRDs. But they don't see what AI can't touch: the invisible intelligence that decides why something feels right before users can explain it. The ability to sense that a progress indicator creates anxiety instead of confidence. The intuition that knows when cognitive load will cause unconscious resistance.

While everyone panics about AI replacing designers, what's really happening is a great separation. The designers who only knew how to execute are getting displaced. But the designers who understand human psychology, who can orchestrate experiences, who bridge business objectives with user desires - they're becoming more valuable than ever.

The salt shaker is being replaced. The master chef is being promoted.

But here's what I think designers can do to make them irreplaceable:

1. Master unconscious empathy 

Master the ability to see what users need before they can articulate it. When you instantly know a landing page will perform well or bomb, you're recognizing unconscious human drives: the need for effortless understanding, maximum value with minimum effort, and the desire to act fast and save cognitive energy. This isn't something you find in user interviews - it's something you feel. Design has trained you to bridge the gap between intention and reception.

This skill traditionally took years of job experience to develop. But in the AI era, you can accelerate this by rapidly processing examples of good and bad design. Study what makes interfaces feel effortless versus frustrating. Analyze why certain layouts create trust while others trigger doubt. Train yourself to feel with instinct beyond what AI can optimize at the conscious level - focus on the subconscious responses that drive real human behavior.

2. Adopt AI asap, and become an orchestrator, not executor

AI can shake the salt now, probably more precisely than you when following a recipe. But you decide what flavor the experience should have, which ingredients create the right emotional response, and how much seasoning transforms utility into desire. Don't abandon your taste, judgment, or craft - use AI to execute while you control the quality, nuances, and details that make people remember the experience.

Developing this orchestration skill means pushing beyond AI's first draft. Never accept AI output as final - question the quality, refine the details, and demand the subtle effects that AI overlooks. While AI optimizes for function, you're responsible for the magic that happens in the margins: the micro-interactions that build trust, the spacing that creates calm, the transitions that feel effortless. This level of care requires human judgment that goes deeper than any algorithm.

3. Stack skills beyond design 

The most irreplaceable designers are becoming "Value Orchestrators." They understand markets, they write, they know crypto or fintech or healthcare so deeply that their design decisions come from industry insight, not just aesthetic preference. When you combine unconscious empathy with niche expertise, you can design solutions that both feel right to users AND work within complex business realities.

Starting a business is like paddling a small kayak in the ocean - it requires countless skills to stay afloat. While big boats (large companies) can replace crew members with machines, you need to understand how everything works: acquiring customers, serving them, and monetizing the relationship.

The good news? With AI, you can learn almost anything incredibly fast now. But here's the warning: don't be satisfied mastering just one function in this AI era. Single-skill designers get replaced easily. When you can connect the dots beyond design - understanding markets, psychology, technology, business - you become antifragile. You can survive any market condition and earn a living whether or not you find a traditional job. That's the skill stack to target for your future.

4. Master a specific industry or domain 

Pick one area - crypto, fintech, healthcare, SaaS, e-commerce, or any area you are currently working on, but go really deep to understand the patterns, terms, practices, theory and more. When you know the regulatory constraints of fintech, the user behaviors in crypto, or the compliance requirements in healthcare, your design decisions carry weight that generic designers (and generic AI too) can't match. You're not just making things look good - you're solving problems that only someone with deep domain knowledge would even recognize. This specialization makes you irreplaceable because AI can generate interfaces, but it can't understand the nuanced business realities that shape how those interfaces should actually work.

These four capabilities create a powerful combination: you can feel deeper than AI (through unconscious empathy), move faster with AI (through orchestration), think wider than design (through skill stacking), and go deeper than generalists (through domain expertise). With this foundation, you're not just surviving the AI revolution - you're building something valuable for the world, whether you have a traditional job or not.

The AI era isn't killing design.

It's finally revealing what design really was: the invisible intelligence that makes everything else worth remembering.

The question isn't whether you'll be replaced. It's what type of evolution you'll continue to develop as a human and a designer with the help of AI.

Final note

Those two founders who burned through their budget and turned to AI? They called me last week. Not because AI failed them, but because they hit the exact limit I predicted: AI could execute their ideas, but it couldn't feel what their users needed.

They need someone who can sense the unconscious friction, predict the emotional responses, orchestrate experiences that feel effortless. They will need the salt.

Summary

That’s it! Creatives often fail in business because they focus too much on perfecting their projects, stick rigidly to their rates, lack a clear focus, and get stuck in unscalable models. I hope you learned something through this newsletter and let me know what topics I can cover next!

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Why most founders fail on X (and how to avoid their mistakes)

When I started my X journey in late 2023, I made every rookie mistake in the book. I followed Twitter’s recommended accounts, tried to mimic successful creators’ writing styles, and posted into the void with only 200 followers.

Sound familiar? Here’s what I learned the hard way: growing on X isn’t about posting great content from day one.

It’s about building relationships first, then leveraging those connections to amplify your voice.

If you intend to build an audience, let’s get one thing right: are you building a founders brand or business brand?

Why founder brands outperform business brands on X

Before diving into tactics, here’s a crucial insight: your personal founder brand will always connect more deeply than your company’s corporate account, especially in this Ai era. Here’s why:

Humans relate to humans, not logos. When you share your struggles building a product at 2 AM, people see themselves in that moment. When your company account posts the same struggle as a “behind-the-scenes” story, it feels manufactured.

Vulnerability creates trust faster than polish. Your personal failures, pivots, and small wins generate genuine engagement because they’re relatable. Corporate accounts can’t authentically share the founder’s imposter syndrome or the anxiety of running out of runway.

People invest in the person, then the product. Your audience follows your founder journey first—they want to see you succeed as a person. Your product becomes an extension of that relationship, not a separate transaction.

Authenticity can’t be faked at scale. Your personal account can admit mistakes, change opinions, and show growth. Corporate accounts have to maintain consistent messaging and can’t pivot as naturally.

Your personal brand follows you: Imagine you built and sold your first company, with a founder brand, you can easily start another company with an established audience group. It’s no longer starting from scratch any more.

This is why the most successful founder-led companies on X blur the lines between personal and business content. People don’t just buy products—they buy into the founder’s vision and story.

The village analogy that changed everything

Kevon Cheung’s book “Find Joy in Chaos” contains a brilliant analogy: joining X is like moving to a new village where nobody knows you. If you start yelling in the streets, people will ignore you. But if you make friends first, those relationships become the foundation of your influence.

The way how I think of X is a massive conference center where everyone has their own stage.

Some stages are packed, others barely have an audience. As a newcomer, your job isn’t to grab the microphone immediately—it’s to sit in the audience, ask thoughtful questions, and contribute meaningful responses that make both speakers and other attendees notice you.

Your stage-by-stage growth roadmap

Recently I have encountered this piece by George Ten, who shares a very similar strategy when he gets started before 1K followers.

https://x.com/GrammarHippy/status/1436054146021564417

Not a lot of successful influencers talk about the starting phase which 95% people give up. I want to focus just for the initial phase because it has been the most difficult part of my journey too.

Stage 1: 0-500 followers (focus: relationship building)

Timeline: 2-4 months with consistent effort

Core strategy: Give value to others, not yourself

At this stage, don’t worry about creating original content. Instead:

• Spend 80% of your time commenting thoughtfully on others’ posts

• Identify 10-20 creators in your niche and engage consistently with their content

• Ask insightful questions that spark discussion

• Share genuine reactions and add unique perspectives

• Build relationships through authentic conversations

This is the hardest phase. It feels lonely and progress seems slow. I spent two months stuck between 100-500 followers, mostly commenting and occasionally “roasting” designs. But this groundwork is essential—it’s where you make your first genuine connections.

Your first paying customer or meaningful business opportunity validates that people value what you offer and marks your transition from unknown to recognized community member.

The attention economy secret: Everyone wants others’ attention—you can give them yours. While everybody else is posting, you don’t need to follow the crowd. Join conversations as if you’re at an offline event. Your comments should be valuable enough to catch others’ attention and convert them into followers. Focus entirely on this before reaching 500 followers.

Offer expertise for free: If you’re skilled in SEO, writing, marketing, or design, search for relevant keywords and provide value by answering questions. Make sure your profile showcases your expertise so when people visit, they think “I may need this person’s help” and hit follow.

Choose the right crowd: Befriend people who are also small. Everyone wants to connect with large accounts, but they don’t care about you yet—they’re chasing even bigger accounts. Be patient, find your tribe of small creators, and build genuine relationships with people who can grow alongside you.

Embrace harder tasks: Commenting thoughtfully is harder than hitting “like.” Crafting valuable perspectives is harder than using AI responses. Creating well-structured posts is harder than random updates. But harder tasks yield better results—they’re not scalable initially, but they work and help you scale later.

Stage 2: 500-1,000 followers (focus: strategic content)

Timeline: 1-2 months

Core strategy: Share wins and build momentum

Once you hit 500+ followers, you have enough of an audience to make content creation worthwhile. This is where I sold my first landing page review for $35—a small win that Nick retweeted, pushing me to 900+ followers overnight.

Key tactics:

• Share your emotional wins authentically (people love celebrating with you)

• Continue engaging with your established network

• Post 1-2 pieces of valuable content weekly

• Respond promptly to all comments on your posts

• Leverage any viral moments by staying active in the conversation

Keep focusing on others: Even as you start posting, maintain your helpful mindset. I regularly help indie founders with design for free, asking “How can I help you?” and offering to follow, retweet, or assist with design requests. While follow-for-follow doesn’t create genuine followers, early supporters still provide valuable momentum.

Care about newcomers: Make a point to follow people with 0, 1, or 2 followers. I often post “Proud to be one of your first three followers!” These individuals can be incredibly smart and capable—follower count shouldn’t determine our interest in getting to know them.

Stage 3: 1,000-2,000 followers (focus: unique storytelling)

Timeline: 2-3 months

Core strategy: Share your unique founder journey

This is where your personal story becomes your superpower. I borrowed a viral tweet template and shared my story as “a full-time working mom with two young kids building a side business.” That single post generated 26K impressions, 150+ likes, and 200+ new followers.

Winning approach:

• Identify what makes your founder journey unique

• Use proven viral templates but make them authentically yours

• Share behind-the-scenes insights about your startup

• Post longer-form content with clear takeaways

• Focus on responding to comments on your own posts (this becomes your main time investment)

Share timely, valuable content: When ready to share thoughts with the world, timely lessons, progress, and results serve as the best hooks. Share how you achieved something, and people will follow if they find it helpful. I manually craft long posts rather than scheduling—write what your audience wants to hear when they want to hear it.

Stage 4: 2,000+ followers (focus: strategic influence)

Core strategy: Create targeted ripple effects

At this level, you gain real control over your growth direction. Every post creates a ripple effect, and you can steer these ripples strategically:

• Post about X growth → attracts more followers

• Post design insights → brings prospect calls

• Share startup lessons → builds thought leadership

Essential dos and don’ts for founder growth

Do:

• Be genuinely interested in others before promoting yourself

• Celebrate small wins publicly and authentically

• Engage consistently, even when growth feels slow

• Use weekends for posting (engagement is often higher)

• Maintain your unique voice as you grow

• Let sales happen through public conversations—99% of my sales came from inbound interest after public discussions

Don’t:

• Post original content before you have an engaged community

• Copy successful accounts’ styles without finding your own voice

• Give up during the crucial 100-500 follower phase

• Post on Friday nights (engagement typically drops)

• Change your username frequently (it hurts post performance)

• Rely on cold DMs for sales—public conversations work much better and require less effort

The compound effect of consistent engagement

The most counterintuitive insight? Your follower count matters less than your engagement rate in the early stages.

A highly engaged audience of 500 people who know and trust you is more valuable than 2,000 passive followers who barely notice your content.

Focus on building real relationships first. The followers, customers, and opportunities will naturally follow.

Your 30-day action plan

Week 1-2: Identify and follow 20 creators in your space. Spend 30 minutes daily engaging with their content.

Week 3-4: Continue engaging while sharing 1-2 personal insights or experiences. Don’t worry about likes or retweets.

Week 5-8: Maintain engagement while increasing to 2-3 posts weekly. Share small wins and lessons learned.

Month 2+: Start developing your unique storytelling angle while maintaining the relationship-building habits that got you here.

The long-term founder advantage

As a founder, you have built-in content advantages: product updates, customer wins, failure lessons, and industry insights. But these only work once you’ve built the relationships to amplify them.

Start with genuine engagement, build authentic connections, and let your founder journey unfold naturally. The audience will follow—and so will the business opportunities.

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Hey there. Happy Saturday! Today, I want to share some thoughts on lessons from working with early-stage startups—starting with why I walked away from $5,000/month and 1% equity.

"It's all about money, isn't it? How much more do you want to work on my deck this weekend?"

I'll never forget those words from a founder who was paying me $5,000 per month plus 1% equity. In that moment, he revealed why our partnership was doomed—and why so many founder-designer relationships fail.

As a founder, you’re probably thinking: "Wait, you fired a paying client? That seems crazy." But here’s what that experience taught me about what founders really need to know when hiring designers, agencies, or creative partners.

How we met: the perfect partnership (or so it seemed)

I met this founder at a tech conference. Impressive guy—funded startup, growing team, big vision. His frustration? The design quality from his in-house team wasn’t matching his ambitions.

Sound familiar? If you’re a founder reading this, you’ve probably been there. You have a crystal-clear vision in your head, but somehow it gets lost in translation when your team executes.

After reviewing his brand and product, I saw exactly what he meant. We started simple—just a logo redesign, one-time project, clear scope. The work exceeded his expectations, and trust was established quickly.

"Let’s do a monthly partnership," he suggested. "I cannot go with $7K, but $4,000 per month to start."

As someone who understood the founder journey, I was determined to be the creative partner he’d been searching for. My team and I didn’t just deliver—we completely transformed his brand: product revamp, comprehensive brand redesign, marketing assets, illustration style. Everything.

He was thrilled. Our work didn’t just meet his vision—it elevated it beyond what he’d imagined. Based on the value we delivered, I asked for $5,000 monthly. He agreed instantly.

Here’s where most founders think the story ends: "Great designer found, problem solved, let’s scale."

But that’s where our real story begins.

When founder urgency meets creative process

Here’s what happened: his excitement about our work created unrealistic expectations.

Because we’d delivered so much value in month one, he began treating us like his internal design team (not fractional, but full-time). Suddenly, he expected all three of us dedicated to his project 9-5, nights, and weekends. Every founder deadline became our emergency.

I get it. As a founder, everything feels urgent. Your runway is limited, investors are watching, competitors are moving. When you find a designer who "gets it," the temptation is to monopolize their time.

But here’s what was really happening:

• Scope creep disguised as "partnership": Our contract specified handling one request at a time. But he’d send 3-4 different projects simultaneously, expecting parallel execution.

• Micromanagement through collaboration tools: He checked our Figma files multiple times daily, treating design software like a time-tracking system. "I enter Figma more often than you do," he told me. "I know exactly how much you worked on my project."

• Founder stress becoming team stress: His investor pressures, deadline anxiety, and product-market fit concerns got transferred directly to my designers. He expected us to share his 24/7 mindset.

• Availability expectations that ignored boundaries: Weekend meetings to sync with offshore developers. Late-night calls for "quick feedback." As he put it: "If you're really committed to our success, you'll make time."

The breaking point came when I declined to work on his investor deck over a weekend because I have a newborn and a toddler at home. His response: "It's all about money, isn't it? How much more do you want to work on my deck this weekend?"

That question revealed everything. He saw our professional boundaries as greed, not self-preservation.

The decision that taught me about founder psychology

I ended our partnership the next day when he treated my other designers the same way during a meeting.

Walking away from $5,000 monthly revenue plus equity felt insane. But staying would have destroyed something more valuable: the ability to do great work for founders who understand how creative partnerships actually work.

Here’s what I learned about founder behavior: When you're under pressure, it's easy to treat service providers like employees you can control rather than partners you collaborate with.

Looking back, I’m grateful for that difficult experience. It forced me to develop boundary-setting skills that now protect both my team and my work quality—and ultimately attract better founder partnerships.

What founders need to know about working with designers

The psychology of creative work

• Your urgency isn't always their urgency. I get it—as a founder, you're probably working nights and weekends because everything feels critical. I did the same thing. But here’s what I learned: when you constantly compress creative timelines, you don’t get faster results—you get worse results. Great design needs breathing room for ideas to develop, iteration to happen, and inspiration to strike.

• Micromanagement kills creativity. Checking design files obsessively doesn’t increase output—it increases anxiety. When my designers started dreading every notification from this founder, something fundamental shifted. The work became purely reactive instead of creative. Instead of thinking "How can we make this amazing?" they started thinking "How do we avoid another critical message?"

• Stress is contagious. When you transfer your deadline anxiety or "my engineers are sitting idle" panic to creative partners, you fundamentally change how they approach problems. Instead of asking "What's the best solution?" they start asking "What's the fastest way to get this founder off my back?" Innovation dies when survival mode kicks in.

How to be the founder designers want to work with

• Respect the expertise you're paying for:

  • Hire designers for their judgment, then trust it.

  • Ask questions to understand their process, don’t dictate it.

  • Give feedback on outcomes, not methods.

• Create sustainable working rhythms:

  • Agree on communication windows and respect them.

  • Batch requests instead of sending one-off tasks constantly.

  • Plan design sprints around your real deadlines, not artificial ones.

• Understand the difference between employees and partners:

  • Employees work your hours; fractional partners work their optimal hours.

  • Employees follow your process; fractional partners bring their own proven process.

  • Employees are available 24/7; fractional partners have boundaries that protect quality.

Red flags that you're becoming "that founder"

• You check design files more than the designers.

• You expect immediate responses to non-urgent requests.

• You use phrases like "if you're really committed to our success."

• You schedule creative work around your anxiety, not actual deadlines.

• You compare your dedication to theirs instead of evaluating work quality.

How the best founder-designer relationships actually work

Two years later, I work with founders who've figured this out. Here’s what they do differently:

• They hire for outcomes, not hours. They care about the final product, not how many hours appeared in Figma.

• They plan design work strategically. Instead of constant requests, they batch creative work into focused sprints with clear objectives.

• They respect professional boundaries. They understand that well-rested, respected designers produce better work than burned-out, resentful ones.

• They treat designers as strategic partners. They involve them in product decisions and give them context for why design matters to the business.

The result? These founders get better work, faster turnarounds, and long-term creative partnerships that scale with their companies.

The bottom line for founders

That $5,000 monthly partnership taught me something crucial: the best creative work happens when founders understand that respecting boundaries isn't about limiting collaboration—it's about creating space for the best collaboration to happen.

When you treat designers as strategic partners rather than on-demand resources, you don’t just get better design. You get a creative partner who’s invested in your success because they feel respected and valued.

The founders who understand this build incredible design teams. The ones who don’t wonder why they keep cycling through designers and agencies.

Your next hire isn’t just about finding someone with the right skills. It’s about becoming the kind of founder that great creative talent wants to work with.

Ready to build better creative partnerships? Hit reply and tell me about your current design challenges. I’ll send you my founder’s guide to working with designers—the same framework I share with my best clients to ensure our partnerships succeed from day one.

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