Back to the roots

I can’t remember the last time I actually sat down and wrote a blog post.

Gotta admit, I’m a bit rusty now.

We live in a world that is moving so fast and becoming increasingly filled with AI content, sitting down and taking the time to journal is somewhat of a luxury these days.

I’m currently sitting in VCR, a hipster coffee in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia is the place where it all started for me, when it comes to living the nomadic lifestyle.

Here I am, 6 years later and still living abroad doing my regular visa runs…

To be fair, I’m not really nomadic these days. I love my base in Da Nang. This is city very different now. Lot’s of development going on and increasingly getting on the radar for many.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been building my life in Vietnam. It was just until recently, that I fully committed to staying.

Da Nang has treated me well. Having Vietnamese roots definitely made my life much easier. The visa runs are still a necessity though. Nevertheless, it is good getting out of the bubble every once in a while.

Looking back at my old blog posts, I miss these days of exploration and wandering. So I thought, why not getting back into it and document my journey in photos.

I don’t really have a clear vision for this blog post. It’s just gonna be a snapshot of my life so I can look back in 40 years and be proud of myself that this is not AI generated 😅

Since my last video…

…lot’s has changed.

The biggest change for me was that Andrea and I decided to go separate ways.

After 5 years of traveling together and living in so many countries together, it was still hard for us to find a long term base together. Additionally, all the time being away from family, was starting to weigh on her.

So Andrea moved back to the States and I stayed in Vietnam.

Initially, I thought Thailand was going to be my next destination due to the DTV visa, but after careful consideration, I decided to make Vietnam, my long term base. It only made sense for me.

Time has flown by so fast since then.

I had to go back and rewatch what I said in January 2025. This is why it’s so interesting doing snapshots to go back a later and see the progress. In my last video I mentioned how I just started incorporating AI into my business after doing everything manually for so long.

When I started using AI last year, I only used Midjourney lot to create art. This was already a huge time saving but since then, I’ve been digging much deeper into AI automations with n8n and it has been changing my business entirely.

This allowed me to work more ON the business instead of IN the business. There’s is still a lot to do and automate, but so far, I managed to:

• Publish products automatically simultaneously = no more manually clicking, uploading images, writing descriptions for Etsy or WooCommerce. Everything is fully automated.
• Create social media post on auto-pilot using Nano Banana
• Build a complete blog post generation pipeline with SEO keyword research, analyzing and writing blog post with specialized agents.

There are so many moving parts in e-commerce and it’s impossible to manage everything efficiently as a one man show.

Towards the end of last year, I was a bit frustrated about the slow progress. After leaving my freelance gigs at the start of 2024 to fully commit to ecom, it was discouraging to see that nothing has really moved the needle after almost a year.

But the frustration has led me to rethink my business and forced me to make adjustments. Sometimes adversity can open new paths even if it means going through short term pain. Without the struggles, I wouldn’t have been able to pivot and learn new skills.

With these changes, I’ve managed to grow my business by ~100% YoY so far and streamline so many small process that took so much time in the past.

While the visible growth of my business is amazing to see, what’s more important for me right now is the skill to build complex system that has real impact. This knowledge can be applied to any business from here on. With AI models increasingly becoming better, I’m so excited to see what 2026 has to offer and how I can grow my business even further with more powerful AI automations.

Finding new hobbies

Besides focusing on ecom, another skill I’ve acquired is Pickleball 😀

I never had any interest in racket sports, but since I started playing Pickleball in April, I’ve been completely into it, The gym was increasingly becoming mundane. Day in and out just lifting weights was becoming super boring. I also noticed how my body was getting more stiff, so I needed some cardio as a balance. In addition, I also started with Yoga to regain some flexibility that got lost since I stopped with Martial arts.

Pickleball in Vietnam has been blowing up since last year and is probably the second biggest pickleball country after the US.

There are so many courts now being built in Vietnam and the socializing aspect is great (compared to weight lifting at the gym)

Why is it so popular? I guess these factors contribute to it’s growth:

• extremely easy to learn
• doesn’t require strong cardio level at first (great for all generations)
• very affordable equipment (compared to tennis or padel)
• progress can be made very fast (can get good within months)

I predict it’s only a matter of time until pickleball get’s more popular in Europe as well.

Upgrading my office

I also finally upgraded my office setup. Over all these years of working from coffee places with a NEXT stand and an iPad as the second screen, I decided to get a standing desk and decent office chair. This seems like a huge step that officially marks the end of my Nomad mindset.

Daily Life & Routine

My daily routine looks pretty much the same every day:

1. Wake up around 8:00
2. Fulfill orders and do customer support
3. Play pickleball in the morning for 2-3h.
4. Go home shower, cook lunch
5. Work until 17:00
6. Sometimes go to yoga at 18:00
7. Cook dinner
8. Work until 23:00
9. Sleep

Which is why I didn’t feel the urge to make any YouTube videos although it pains me to see my Pocket 3 just accumulating dust. However, as my business progress and unlocks more freedom over time, I plan to get back into documenting my life on YouTube again.

Impressions from Malaysia

As I mentioned at the start, I don’t really have a clear structure for this update so I’m just gonna drop some impressions of my current trip to Kuala Lumpur. Finishing off this one from the O Coffee Club in Suria KLCC ✌️

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