Seven years ago, while still a journalist, I chatted with an entrepreneur who mentioned he was very cautious because a single wrong decision could cost his company 30 million.

"Wow, I'll never earn 30 million in my lifetime."

He said: "Don't say that. Never underestimate yourself."

"Never underestimate yourself" was rare positive language I received during that period. So I thought, if I could achieve that one day, it would be great. What I meant wasn't chasing the number itself, but wanting to become a good person like him.

He didn't know that over these years I had been quietly working toward that direction—studying, taking courses, participating in various accelerators, thinking through and implementing different business problems. Like a seed gradually sprouting, in 2025, the companies I founded finally surpassed 30 million in annual revenue.

Because it felt so meaningful, I recently told him in person.

"#I really love this story" — summing up 2025 and welcoming the beginning of 2026.

Looking back, how did I decide to start a business, and how did I navigate through all the hardships to get here?

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In 2018, while working as a journalist covering the education beat, I regularly searched for education-related stories. I was fortunate to interview many startups combining education and learning topics, many of which remain well-known today—some even too large to accept interviews now. During those interviews, I deeply felt the positive energy of startups. Compared to my life being stuck in a quagmire, I thought how wonderful it would be to become part of this vibrant community one day.

Later, I actively participated in startup-related organizations and events, reaching a peak of over 8 events per month. I met many people. I'm deeply grateful to XChange for accepting me. Starting as a director of the branding team, I implemented various activities and projects, breaking boundaries and connecting with many tech professionals who later became close friends and business partners.

Thinking back, participating in XChange was the turning point that changed my life path.

Next year for the tenth anniversary, I'm also participating in interviews. I'll share more details then.

#An Entrepreneurial Journey That Started with Passion

From 2019 to 2021, after writing online for some time, Buoke Publishing invited me to write a book. The publisher encouraged me to organize simple offline activities to avoid having a thousand people respond but only one show up. The publisher was very generous—authors could rent venues for free. So I thought about how to combine my interests and goals, and thus organized cross-industry book clubs.

From 1 event to 200 events, from single events to subscription models, from instability to stability—it was a process of business thinking and decision-making.

Initially, I just wanted to solve the hassle of users having to re-register for each event. Since I'm someone who pursues efficiency and believes in MECE, when searching for solutions, I entered "ways to avoid repeatedly registering for events," and a term called "subscription model" appeared. So I searched "subscription model + book club," and the first result was Fandeng. I thought, if there's such a successful case, running a subscription-based book club should work too. So I quickly launched the subscription service on PPA.

Of course, at first, members had many misunderstandings. I spent time communicating with them before they gradually understood the benefits of the subscription model.

The subscription model initially had a single plan. As activities and demands increased, I introduced four price tiers to meet everyone's needs. Later, I learned this was called CRM management.

Also during 2021, my day job had many problems. I realized I could no longer juggle multiple roles and decided to resign from journalism to focus on entrepreneurship.

One month after resigning, I was fortunate to receive 700,000 NT from Taipei City's subsidy program.

Since I had zero experience starting a business, it wasn't until I actively took a 13-week accounting course that I discovered these plans were actually losing money. We only survived because of the subsidies.

My original pricing method was just intuition based on what users could accept. But the correct approach is to first calculate costs and profit margins, then price accordingly before marketing.

Overall, in this phase, I learned while doing. Transitioning from a pure writer to developing business thinking and decision-making skills, filling in various gaps by directly doing the work, I experimented with subscription models, CRM, and cost pricing.

#Seeking Answers Within Wrong Understanding Only Leads to Wrong Solutions

After the cross-industry book club had developed for some time, we encountered some business collaboration challenges. Thinking about it, I decided to build a website myself. But unlike now when you can use no-code platforms, and there weren't many all-in-one platforms like Teachable then, so I began evaluating the possibility of outsourcing to engineers to build a website.

When evaluating, I had three options: a full-time engineer, an outsourced team, or buying a template. I eventually found an outsourced team. However, since I had zero experience building websites (at most Wordpress), I didn't know how to order from and collaborate with engineers—it was completely a mismatch of abilities.

The website eventually went live on schedule with members, subscription payment processing, and basic functionality working. However, there were always many gaps.

For example, when becoming a member or registering for an event, no notification emails were sent. Turns out, I hadn't ordered that feature. So whenever I requested new features, it cost another 100,000 NT, and after two or three times, I really felt overwhelmed. It was a problem with my understanding ability—like whether the hours and hourly rates quoted were reasonable, or what features and long-term maintenance and optimization items we still needed. These were things I simply couldn't afford.

Meanwhile, I also wanted to develop physical products, but I lost over 500,000 NT anyway, spending all the subsidies. I learned a profound lesson: "#Seeking Answers Within Wrong Understanding only leads to wrong solutions." This isn't something hard work can solve—it's about "insufficient knowledge."

After realizing this required long-term learning and immersion, I decisively ended this project, planning to wait for a good opportunity, wait until I'm prepared, before starting again.

#Breaking Through the One-Person Company Mindset with Flow to Wealth GPS

Starting in 2021, I wanted to expand into a "team," not just a one-person operation. Besides wanting to understand what business management meant, another reason was that during a startup competition, a judge bluntly said if a company relies solely on the founder's talent, it won't grow big. While I understood the judge's point at the time, I just didn't know what to do.

For three consecutive years, most of my employees left after just a month. Their feedback was always that the pace was too fast and everything was chaotic, and their attitudes were often questionable. Plus, my mindset back then was quite poor. "I thought when students took my courses, they paid tuition. So why when employees come to work and I pay them salaries, do I still have to teach them things?" Such terrible demons haunted me until I seriously dealt with them at the start of this year. By year-end, we had 6 full-time employees, and for Pilates, 6+7.

The key during this period was reading Flow to Wealth GPS. I'm a "Genius Generator," and in the Wealth Lighthouse positioning, I'm a "Yellow Light." To upgrade to Green Light, what I need to do is "build an enterprise," "adjust the company's pace," and "align pace with flow." In plain terms, it means establishing rules, replicating skills so team members can follow them.

But me, someone who left big corporations to become a freelancer, someone who always broke rules in organizations—I had to become someone who establishes rules and leads others to follow them. It was absolutely contradictory and absurd!

So my demons and insecurities got stuck for a long time: "I don't think anyone should listen to me," "do things my way," "I don't think I'm right." These insecurities kept recurring, not only keeping me awake at night, but also making me often melancholic. I even brought these issues up during therapy until I joined KX Pilates.

When I joined the Pilates franchise, it was simply because I liked it and saw market trends for years to come. Since I had store management experience as a kid, I simply thought opening a store wouldn't be too difficult. After joining, I received over 50 different teaching documents covering operations, systems, instructor management, etc. The founder personally guided us through everything, synced with us one by one, conducted 360-degree reviews, and had clear terms. We also did an internship at the headquarters before opening.

With my hands-on personality, paired with shareholders who had experience managing over a hundred people, thinking that learning and optimizing together with new employees was normal, it completely opened my heart and broke through my demons.

That's when I understood: business management is "knowledge transmission."

Furthermore, I also learned from the last batch of employees who quit after a month: whenever a company uses any of an employee's resources—like not providing a desktop, making them use their phone to contact suppliers—it's taking advantage.

After that, I spent time hiring observers to interview me and colleagues who enjoyed working here (both current and former), understanding everyone's personalities and characteristics, filtering down to find the top three qualities that actually stayed: #Optimism #Ownership #Action

#Optimism: First believe things can be solved, then they can be solved.

#Ownership: Ensure problems are solved—be positive, effective, and results-oriented.

#Action: Don't just propose, but actually take action to solve.

#Business management is knowledge transmission

Now, I run Aubi Weiden PR, helping clients with annual marketing, brand public relations, crisis management, plus Korean cheerleading and Korean entertainment-related work, with over 60 corporate clients annually.

In 2025, I truly understood that knowledge transmission is contextualizing knowledge, which helped me break through management obstacles.

Because, starting from text work, becoming a published author and online course instructor, these benefited from my ability to contextualize knowledge and my writing skills—ironically my strongest areas.

So I've been doing my best to turn everything I've executed—spanning writing, marketing, PR, sales, business development—into knowledge documents, contextualized information, and SOPs, gradually teaching them to colleagues, and in the process, asking them to document everything for future team members.

Meanwhile, I introduced Asana as our project management tool, turning these SOP-ified contents into visual dashboards and progress bars, constantly communicating internally about how project management's purpose is to keep everyone in sync and help the team and each other improve.

I started daily stand-ups and weekly meetings, actively conducting training like AI tools and AI implementation. Things I once resisted became organizational time for aligning work progress, values, and shared language—not meetings for the sake of meetings, but for aligning organizational, team, stakeholder, and personal values. Everyone gets to immerse themselves in learning and growth.

Unlike my past reluctance to teach colleagues old ideas, now I actively lead employees through the path I've walked, leveraging experience to hit targets quickly, developing their professional capabilities. My young colleagues can indeed independently complete tasks under this training. Now when I assign new tasks, the most common feedback I get is "I can do it!"

Recently, walking down the street, I suddenly realized that employees might spend more time at work than at home. So creating a happy, safe, comfortable environment where colleagues can live well—physically and mentally healthy while working together toward tasks and goals—seems like one of the most important missions.

Of course, I've been fortunate. During this process of seeking answers, I got into National Taiwan University EiMBA 114, giving me a group of entrepreneurial friends learning from each other's solutions.

The unconventional entrepreneurial journey

comes from willingness to break through every growth ceiling

comes from willingness to let go of every unsolvable pride

comes from willingness to introspect every contradictory tangle

Through entrepreneurship, thinking through difficult problems

I gradually became a better person

#Have I already become as good a person as he is?

I'd say the answer is yes.