After 15+ years of building services based businesses, I might or might not build in public my first products. Nomad, Podcaster, tech nerd.
Don't click ➤
Joined July 2010
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For 25 years, I've never left Romania.
I was earning around $200 a month.
Thought that was my ceiling.
Then I built my first website in 2010.
It failed. So did the next few.
But one eventually attracted 200,000 visitors each day.
That website enabled me to leave my job a year later.
Life was good, bought a home, began travelling, and gave back.
But Google, as usual, decided to alter its algorithm.
My main source of income vanished overnight.
I had virtually no money in the bank.
Started freelancing using the skills I honed.
The early years were brutal.
I worked 15+ hours a day.
My health crashed.
Those setbacks taught me a lot.
But I won't bore you with "15 lessons" I learned.
What I would say, though, is that I didn't give up.
Instead, I reinvented myself, but in a different way this time.
I focused on sustainable systems instead of long hours.
I started building a business instead of freelancing.
Still, I felt there was more out there than "work".
In 2019, I sold everything and bought a one-way ticket to Asia.
Since then, I've lived in 11 countries and visited 25+.
All while helping clients in more than 15 countries.
Just over 2 years ago.
I reinvent myself again.
Without a huge business plan or goal.
Without prior experience in interviewing.
But leveraging my business and life experience.
The podcast was born.
And a dream was formed:
➤ to guide 10,000 to freedom through entrepreneurship.
Freedom to build your path, the way you choose, where you choose.
If a guy born in a small Romanian city, earning $200 a month, could do it, so can you.
What does freedom mean to you?
Pura Vida!
Gabe Marusca
ALT Selfie of Gabe Marusca in Bali, Indonesia
Dre Baldwin AKA @DreAllDay was cut from his high school basketball team 3 years in a row, played 9 years as a pro anyway, and now works with companies on execution. I asked him what he checks first when someone says "I know what to do, but I'm not doing it."
When I used my own to-do list as the example, he started with the calendar. Are the items in it, are they set as the first things you do, and did you make them easy to start? He says for most people the answer to the first two is already no. I'll let you guess mine.
Priority is singular. Give him a list of 17 things and he asks one question: "If I only got one of these done today, which one would move me forward the most?" That one goes first. The rest fit where they fit.
The thing between you and the work is usually friction: the blank page, or the gym bag you still have to pack in the morning. His fix is structural. Pack the bag the night before.
Every habit hits what he calls the third day, when the new car smell is gone and only the work is left. Get past it and you reach the fourth day: "fourth day is when the work has not gotten easier, but it feels easier, and you make it look easy."
On AI, from a man with 43 books: he says AI already has most of what's in them. The difference now is judgment and asking good questions. "AI can diagnose, but you have to ask the right questions to give it the right information."
His one thing for this week is to eliminate the decision lag. You will never have all the information, so decide what enough looks like. "Once you have enough information, make a decision."
Full episode out now: youtube.com/watch?v=u6mg7KVq…
He burned 500,000 euros of VC money and spent 4 years on ideas that never generated revenue.
Then @tibo_maker rebuilt from zero, sold Tweet Hunter and Taplio to Lempire for millions and now runs multiple bootstrapped SaaS products that makes over $1 million per month.
Not one of those products started as an original idea. Every single one entered a market that was already crowded and won anyway.
In this episode Tibo shares his full playbook:
- how he picks what to build
- how he validates it before it eats a year of your life
- how a copied product beats the companies it copied
- how he prices
- how he turns strangers into his sales force.
Halfway through, I pitch him a product I have not announced anywhere and let him take it apart on air.
If you are sitting on an idea and cannot tell whether it deserves more time or need to start fresh, this one is for you.
Watch on YouTube:
youtu.be/nJlseXk5mck
What is going with Open AI models? Can't do anything. Trying on Sol Medium currently.
cc @thsottiaux
@Magali_DeReu walked out of a startup that owed her close to 100,000 EUR.
She had no agency behind her, no funding, just a LinkedIn account and a decision to write the way she actually talks. Seven days after her first post, she had a Netflix client.
Her explanation for how that is possible is uncomfortable for anyone who built a career on credentials. Expertise became table stakes around 2022 and today people buy who you are before they ever check what you do.
In this conversation she walks through the personality first system behind that result, piece by piece, so you can apply it to your own content.
Watch @AuthorityitWild full conversation now:
youtube.com/watch?v=sRzETdIV…
ALT 1st Post
I just listed gabemarusca.com on outliked by @tibo_maker the leaderboard where you participate by posting and win based on likes.
every like on this tweet pushes it closer to #1.
do your thing 💗
outlike.lol/?via=gabemarusca…
Just got the #1 spot on thebiggestad.com by @ecomchasedimond with Digital Finest.
Yeah, you read that right. We (humans) are still being involved in the process of website building. No wonder that our clients get results ;)
How to grow your personal brand as a solo founder, when you have no content team, no crazy budget and just few minutes to learn?
I challenge @calebralston on that exact scenario, to break down his 6 hours course into a 20 minutes session, specifically for solopreneurs.
Who's Caleb? Seriously?!
If you still asked that question... he was an integral part of the team behind Gary V's TikTok growth from 300,000 to over 3.5 million followers in just 3 months and part of the team that helped take Alex and Leila Hormozi from about 1 million to over 11 million followers.
In 20 minutes episode of Authority in the Wild he shared the steps you cannot skip if you're serious about building a personal brand
Available now on your favorite podcast station and YouTube:
youtube.com/watch?v=ce7Z_WVm…
Posting good content stopped working.
Everyone can do it now with AI.
@KateBour knows both sides of that shift: Forbes hyped her startup as the next LinkedIn for women entrepreneurs, it went bankrupt anyway and she rebuilt from zero into a one-woman business built on a single Ownable Idea: buyer psychology.
Now read by more than 63,000 marketers.
I recored with her an episode is about the part that made the difference: becoming known for one idea instead of chasing visibility everywhere.
In this conversation, we get into:
- The real reason @thejustinwelsh owns the word "solopreneur" when someone else coined it years earlier
- Why your most valuable idea feels too obvious for you to notice and how outsiders spot it in minutes
- A live teardown where Katelyn runs her framework on my own idea in real time
- The one-week assignment that surfaces the idea you could become known for
If you are an expert whose reputation is smaller than your skill, this conversation shows what to build instead of another content calendar.
Gabe Marusca retweeted
Full episode out now: youtube.com/watch?v=cnf-gmtp…
How do you tell whether you love your work or you need it?
@paulolteanu gave me the clearest test I've heard: pay attention to how you feel on the days you produce nothing.
If you found this clip insightful, you will love the full conversation: youtube.com/watch?v=cnf-gmtp…
