About

Contact

Hey! Feel free to reach me via Twitter @deanyeong or email at dean@deanyeong.com. Due to limited bandwidth, I respond to tweets, DMs, and emails in batches (in case you don't hear back from me immediately).

Writing

In July 2015, I published the first article on this blog. It was my journey of self-education to answer questions I had on work, money, and life. Every week, I posted an article with lessons I learned from the books I read. After a few months, I stumbled across Quora and started answering questions there.

Since then, I've published over 150 articles and book notes, answered over 500 Quora questions, and grown an email list of over 7,000 subscribers. I became a 2x Quora Top Writer and my work got featured in Inc., HuffPost, Observer, and many other major publications—leading to over 30 million organic views.

Past

Before that, I studied culinary arts in college and later worked in kitchens and bars. While I was good at cooking and making coffee, I didn't enjoy working in the F&B industry. Along the way, I also started a catering business and a coffee shop. Both of them failed big time and got me into crazy debts when I was 21. That was when I started to find a way out.

Growing up in a native Chinese family, I hated English in school and didn't know how to read and write in English until my early 20s. To improve my English, I started reading English books alongside a dictionary. I also got friends to help me with speaking—and then I started this blog to practice writing.

With that foundation, I self-taught myself different skills such as graphic design, front-end development, and digital marketing. These skills helped me land clients and jobs transitioning away from the F&B industry and paying debts from failed businesses.

Career

While I was growing this blog, I cold-emailed one of my favorite content creators and entrepreneurs, Noah Kagan, to thank him for his work. Coincidentally, he was looking for an assistant for his blog. I grabbed the opportunity by offering to work for free. After a few work assignments, I was hired part-time (later turned full-time) for a content marketing role.

In the years of working with Noah Kagan and the amazing team at AppSumo, I:

• Got Noah Kagan nominated as a Quora Top Writer and featured in publications like Forbes and Business Insider.
• Grew Sumo on the Shopify app store and later ran the Sumo.com blog.
• Built AppSumo blog from scratch to over 120,000 monthly organic pageviews.

Today, I'm responsible for SEO and growth in the Product team of AppSumo.

Now

I’m currently living in Malaysia, focusing on these things:

• Managing SEO and growth at AppSumo.
• Writing Work Less newsletter and building products (Notion templates, masterclasses, and online courses) that help creative professionals and knowledge workers accomplish more by doing less.
• Growing Wolo Yoga (an ecommerce brand my wife and I started in 2021).
• Reading, strength training, meditating, eating mostly healthy food.
• Spending time with people who matter to me.

Last Update: May 2023 (inspired by Derek Sivers)