2023 Recap - Looking back and looking forward

At 32 years old the year of 2023 is coming to an end. Let me put everything together for my own sake and to share my experiences.

  • I visited South-Korea together with my partner and child to see her best friend.
  • I worked fully remote for a couple of weeks in Seoul, South-Korea
  • I visited Tokyo for the first time with my own family and met up with an old friend of mine.
  • I visited the family of my partner in Hong Kong.
  • Bought my first car ever.
  • Had child #2
  • During my 4 month parental leave I did not touched my laptop.
  • I decided to focus on building projects in my spare time with the intention of building multiple income streams.

I first built www.HireAITool.com in the first week of November

I then started out building ChatInfluencers in the last week of November

Took a big break in December from building as it was time to connect with friends and family

HireAITool

I wrote a blog post about this which you can read here.

First let me explain what HireAITool.com is. HireAITool is a tool that calculates the best salary and provides employers with the right employment package to attract talent that they have in the pipeline. The target group: recruiters, hiring managers, HR managers & directors.

An example: you want to hire the best talent for your company and want to know what the current salary and compensation standards are for a senior front-end developer in Amsterdam with 6-8 years of working experience and with a computer science degree. The tool analyzes the market data and returns the salary range that is desired for this position in the current market along with the secondary benefits in the form of a dashboard.

I did not launched this project yet as I have not fully finished building this one out.

The main reason for that was because I had an idea in my head that did not disappear from mind and I then right away began building it - this was for www.ChatInfluencers.com

ChatInfluencers

ChatInfluencers is a database of curated TikTok influencers for different niches. The idea behind this is to eliminate the time you would spent on doing influencers research so that you can focus on just building and getting in touch with the right influencers so that you can put your product in front of an audience of millions.

I wrote a blog post on my own blog which you can read.

Target group: solopreneurs, indie hackers and business owners.

There is a trend of solopreneurs on X who are beginning to market their products on TikTok.

I wanted to build upon this fast so that I could use this database for my first project: HireAITool

I have not launched this as well as I think the landing page needs a couple of tweaks.

The moral of the two projects above is that I need to launch faster and iterate faster.

My goals for 2024

  • Launch at least 10 startups in 2024.
  • Achieve at least 25k MRR by the end of 2024.
  • Write at least three blog posts a week on my personal blog: andrewtjong.com.
  • Write and launch my own ebook on how to become a developer based on my own story.
  • Start building an email list.
  • Go to the gym at least two times a week.
  • Stay active on X.com and engage with the #buildinpublic community and make friends.

With the above in my mind, the following two occupy most of my time and are still most important priorities:

  • My full-time job
  • My partner and two children, I want to spend as much time with them as I can. Which means that before and after my work, I will be with them apart from cooking dinner, walking the dogs and cleaning this house.

So I need to have everything balanced out to make this work.

How will I do this?

Simple, I only have time to work on my startups when my children are sound asleep.

2 hours a day.

Building 10 Startups in 2024 on just 2 hours every day.

I will be building 10 startups in 2024 on just 2 hours a day.

That is all I can afford from my own personal time.

This means, I will be getting up earlier in the morning so that I can have 2 hours of deep focus work on my startups before one of my kids wakes up.

Waking up early is still a habit that I am trying to master. I know that my body is good with 6 a 7 hours of sleep and that I can fully function with this amount of sleep. Anything less than 6 hours is counterproductive.

This means that in the evening after my children are asleep I do not have time for activities that most would say is leisure i.e. watching Netflix, reading books or scrolling mindlessly on Instagram, Reddit or X.com. Instead I have a bit of time to think and work on my startups before going to bed early.

I will be sacrificing my sleep and "leisure" activities in order to get more deep focus time for my startups.

I will not be working continously on this. That for sure is a recipe for a burnout.

From time to time, I'll be taking breaks whenever required so that I can start re-energized on my next idea.

What I will do to maximize this:

I will delete the Instagram app for the third time in my life from my smartphone. It will put me out of touch with my social world. But I think this is better. Otherwise I’ll just mindlessly and endlessly scroll through IG.

What this boils down to is that instead of being a consumer, I am turning myself into becoming a creator.

So I need to think and act like a creator. Which would mean I do not have time for watching tv or playing games.

You want to be a player, not a spectator.

Players get paid, spectators pay.

I’ll leave Reddit on my phone as I put “reddit” behind most of my search queries on Google to filter out all the niche sites with biased advice e.g. best hotels in Brugge reddit.

Since I started on this 12 projects in 12 months, I already stopped watching Netflix. And I think that I unconsciously already started to think like a creator as ideas flew through my mind continuously.

I also need to listen less to music and more to podcasts and motivational recordings. In 2023 I listened to a lot of music and in a long time I switched from mainly listening to Reggaeton to Western songs.

But I think that I am leaving a lot of money on the table and still waste a bit of my time by listening to music.

I really missed listening to the Joe Rogan Experience in 2023 and I think I should do this more and to podcasts like Indiehackers etc.

So I am thinking of getting Youtube premium as I think that YT is still better than Spotify. YT only misses JRE. But apart from that it has a lot of gold. Tons of good motivational videos from Tony Robbins and other motivational speakers.

Every time I get an idea in my mind, I note it down in a Notion file. After that I have plenty of time to research the idea in my head and think about it. If I like it and it excites me, I’ll start building it out.

What it boils down to in 2024 is as follows: I can not quit. You can’t stop me.

I need to be obsessed with launching startups and finding product market fit.

To make this reality I need to show up on a daily basis. I need to win every single day. That’s how bad I need this.

It is destined to happen.

I will succeed.

← Back to home
;