POV: you locked in for 6 years… now you make $3,287/day

0:00[Music] To make $1 million in profit, you need $1.2 million in revenue with the digital product. And you need 20 million in revenue with the restaurant. This is where I'm going to lock in gym code. Gym code review. We should have used typescript. There has never been a better time in history to build digital products. Let's shoot. This ad is so good. Time for serious business. What if I die? Just

0:25shoot it. Meet Mark Lou, a millionaire who owns exactly zero pairs of shoes and way more startups than you'd think is reasonable. He sits here in this disgustingly beautiful tropical paradise to show you how to turn ideas into brands, strangers into clients, and your boring job into a distant memory. 5 4 3 2 1. So, we're on the way to the next Airbnb and we're sad to leave especially. Yeah, it was such a beautiful place. Oh, wow. The bridge is

1:11built. That's unreal color. Which direction are we going? Are we going this way or or that way? I'm I'm not so sure which way we're going. Baboo. [Music] So healthy. We bought the salmon from the mom cook. 500 g. Lots of protein. Feels so muscle. [Music] All right, so we just landed in a new place in New Zealand. We're lost in the middle of absolutely nowhere, which I guess is good because there's no other distraction than this as I have a brand new feature I need to ship for data fast. So I guess this is where I'm going to lock in gym code gym code repeat. So this is what we're going to

2:16do. You're the coach today. There's no surf in New Zealand where we are. So, this is the first time doing a crossfit session with a

2:29wife. Go. There's no legacy if I drop this. Oh, no. [Music] Oh, it's hard. It's just a momentum and skill. Yeah, I didn't get it. Time to code.

2:57We are going to take a killer thumbnail for the New Zealand vlog and we are going to move this swing to the middle of the road. It's not a bad office. I just wish I could see something on my screen. I'm going to get cancelled. Okay, look at that. Wow. 200 g grass-fed beef from New Zealand. They have the best life until they got

3:24eaten by him. So good. [Music] Oh, we catch this little bird. She came through the window. It's like a little indie hiker just starting the journey and we want to wish him good luck. Just ship it. Ah, she stays here. Maybe she loved us. Bye-bye, pretty bird. It's 1000 p.m. There's absolutely no one around and we can see all the stars. It is so beautiful. Time to go to

4:08bed. Good morning. It is Sunday morning and there's nothing I like better than a coffee and a book. This is what I am reading at the moment. The breakthrough experience. Usually I have this approach for hopefully almost everything where it's either a hell yeah or no. So if I uh really like the book then I'm going to keep reading. If it's meh then I'm just going to go for another book. This one I don't know. I still really don't know. But at the same time I'm like just keep digging. I guess if it makes it in another video then it's probably a hell yeah book. Good Good Good

4:46[Applause] [Music] Breakfast time. The point when you move airplanes too often you find so much time opening 2 hours straight. [Music] You're dirty. Daily workout with the wife. Let's go. Do you think anyone? [Music]

5:19[Music] 30 minutes of workout per day, 30 minutes of coding, 30 minutes of marketing. Do this every single day of the year in 2025 will be freaking amazing.

5:36New Zealand is so beautiful. [Music] A man, this ad is so it's so good. I was bored today and I didn't want to code. So instead, I made an ad and I used AI for that. So here's the thing. A couple days ago, I saw this ad on Instagram. Like literally, it was in my feed. It's a it's a French dude who is promoting his restaurants and I was like, "This is a really good ad." And it's also extremely simple to make. You just need an iPhone to record that. And so I try to make the same thing for my ad. Let me show you what I come up with. People

6:14always ask me, "Hey Jordan, how do you invest your money?" I don't know. My name is not even Jordan, it's Mark. But what I know is this. The best investment you can make is learn how to code and build your own tiny internet business. And now with AI, it's easier than ever. So check out codefast.no and start

6:31coding today. This literally took 45 minutes to make because I already know like this ad format works. It's a very simple script. I use AI to rewrite the initial script. So I I took the script from that Instagram ad. I put it to AI. I describe the product I'm selling. And then I asked the AI to keep the same short

6:50format and write it for my own product. Then I asked my wife to shoot me and do my weird stuff. And I use this little u website here um Sub Magic. You just upload your video and then they add those uh like sexy thumbnails onto your video which make it more dynamic. I think this is for Instagram so it needs to move a little bit. And now I'm I'm lucky that I have a good friend of mine, Nico. You might have seen him in some of my previous videos. He's also an indie hacker. He used to manage um high budget, not like mine, like really high

7:19budget uh ads for like software and stuff. So he's really good at it and he's going to help me like with the targeting on Facebook and Instagram to make sure that you know the ad is seen by the right people. If that works, I will just report in those videos what I get from those ads. I really had no idea that today would be an ad day. I really don't like marketing. But when it becomes fun like this where it's like a very short tiny thing, I make a video that is hopefully fun. I come up with like weird ideas. One point here is if you ever see an ad that looks fun and

7:48it's quite easy to make, try to replicate that ad. Use the format they use because if you're seeing the ad, it means they're spending decent money. So it means that the ad somehow is working. take that ad, ask the AI to make the copyrightiting and the part that you you don't know and try to sell it somewhere on Instagram, Facebook, or just post the video on your own Instagram and see how that goes. A nice uh time for serious business. Today is a little bit of a special day. Not only because this is probably one of the most beautiful place I've ever stayed, but also because what

8:14if I die? Like I'm French and my company is in Singapore. I have a local director and there's a little over a million dollar in cash in the company. How do I make sure that my wife gets everything if something happened to me? So, I'm doing some boring legal stuff, but uh now I have my friend Chajipy who is going to I guess make my life much

8:33easier. [Music] In Singapore, company shares do not automatically transfer to a spouse upon death. Instead, they're handled through succession, laws, a will, and legal documents. I get some paperworks, I guess. [Music] Okay, I guess I uh I found this um this lawyer company or whatever this is. They have a little button to message them on WhatsApp, which is something I love about Asia. You can do everything on WhatsApp. I send them a a WhatsApp and uh I mentioned the fact that I want my wife to own everything if something happens to me. I know this is kind of an awkward question, but I was thinking I've been working hard for six years to

9:24create this thing and my wife has been my co-founder somehow. Like mentally, she's been here all the time. And I think she deserves to get every single beats that's left if I were to disappear. And I want to make sure that there's no friction for her to get it like having to fight in court or something like this. That took me 5 minutes. Uh maybe that will take me another 30 minutes later and probably cost me $1,000 worth of lawy lawyer things, but at least I know that if anything happens, she has some sort of peace and will get all the rewards of, you know, all the things she's been

9:58she's been through because I would have never be able to make any of this without my wife. Um a No, but actually I'm a bit emotional at the moment. Oh, I think that's so good. It almost looks like it's a bye-bye, you know, like no, you're not going to die tomorrow. No, we'll sign a contract with a lawyer that says, you know, if anything happens, you will get everything of the company. Doesn't

10:24happen. Oh, no. Thank you for doing it just in case. You know, we never know, man. I'm just walking down the street and then there is one of those seagull who on me. He goes into my eyes, he gets infected. Boom. Death. All right. I don't really feel like working at the moment. So, why not taking a day off and enjoy this beautiful view? It's going up now. Woke up in a

10:51country lane. Don't know what happened. I don't know how I came to be at the end of my world with going up in smoke. Just watch your bra. Hey, you say all things don't go my way. Get [Music]

11:23me. All I have to do today is to build a bunch of features user requested. Life doesn't get any better than that. [Music] Yes, this is the best time of the day. I think I shipped around six features all requested by my customers. That's very important. Let me show you this. This is it. Those like this little card here is where I display all the new features that I've shipped on the app. And um most of them come from this one. So, I collect feedback from my customers. And one of the most requested feedback was I want to exclude renewal revenue from uh my metrics. So first thing what I did is

12:05I now split the revenue into two categories. The new revenue and the recurring revenue usually coming from subscriptions or recurring customers. And so it's quite subtle but the color like there's different shades of orange here to uh differentiate which is new which is renewal. And then I've created a little setting where people can turn off these like renewal uh revenue included into their KPIs. And so this revenue per visitor will include or not include the recurring revenue. And because shipping is fun, I also include in refunds. So um now in gray color, uh if like a payment was refunded, then it's going to be shown in gray. And the

12:40revenue will of course not be included in the revenue per visitor. And finally, the last update I made, I think this one is more for me. Um I was really curious what happens when people visit my site but don't purchase on the first day. For instance, for this person, I know that they found my website through Beehive, so likely my newsletter, and they did not make a purchase on the day they viewed the site. And I was really curious like when they make a purchase or the next days, where do they find my site? Do they click a tweet? Do they

13:07click do they go on Google? Whatever. And now I can see I added like this little line where I can see the new referral. And so now I know that this person found through my newsletter on the first day. And then when he they came back by typing codefast on Google. If you're a user of datafast, I hope

13:21you'll like this new update. We're going from Christ Church to Timaru. In Christ Church, we're so busy we couldn't make much YouTube video. Instead, you made like masterpiece. Is it a masterpiece? I hope so. So, what is that video? It's one of the questions people ask me the most often is like, how would you learn to code again now that there is AI? This is kind of like the road map I had for codefast. It's like I highlight to you all the steps you need to go from zero to coding a SAS and coding faster with AI. And uh it's about 3 hours long, but the comments people who watch this

13:55videos like they it's extremely helpful and man that's that's it goes straight to my heart because I spent so much time making this video. I'm very happy that it's helpful and some people watch it and you know learn how to cook with it. This is the video Mark was working on for how long? 3 weeks. 3 weeks. So basically the video is it walks you through the first step which is like understanding how the the internet works the fundamentals. Then we go through

14:21building an entire software from zero. So complete beginner teaching the basics of like what is an API, what is front end, what is a back end, how do you make a landing page, how to create a dashboard, what is a database and then the end of the video is mostly how I use AI to code faster. Definitely if you want to learn code just check it out like in 3 hour you can learn everything what you need to learn. I'll put it in

14:42the card.

14:49This is a really beautiful place. I think I want this in our house. So, does it make you creative? This makes me creative. What did you find? This I was stuck. I think I found something. I want to know what you think. The thumbnail for the video like I use the movie split different personality like seven versions of me. When you click, there's like 5 to 10 seconds of play and you're like playing the movie Split and then after a little glitch and be like, "All right." And then explain the video like intro. Like maybe there could be like a programmer that is worried that AI is

15:14going to replace them and there's another programmer who's like uh not at all like you know that doesn't make any sense. I want to play those two characters. I think I found it. I found it. This will be the background. Okay. We have to make sure we leave this Airbnb and publish this video after the host reviewed us. Otherwise they will be like who the are those weirdos? All right. So I I uh ditched the previous book. Sorry Mr. de Martin, but I just I don't know. I didn't connect and I started this new book, The Expectation Effect. This is a book that was recommended on Twitter from Alex, a

15:48really good guy. His entire Twitter account is dedicated to recommending books that he loves. And uh this is excellent. It's fun because I've read just one page and I knew instantly that this was a book for me. It's hard to explain why, but it was like a clear yes. This is probably we are this house

16:06we have been everything is super old. You have this like savana animal. I need to show other weird stuff. This I mean it's not weird in itself. It's just weird as a part of this Airbnb where you have like spiritual stuff, old stuff, new stuff. Like inside you have this thing. I mean to be honest, yeah, there I want to remember those moments. Oh wow. Oh wow. So beautiful. I want to take a photo. Okay, we have to take a

16:31photo of this. So over the rain. This is the thumbnail I was working on yesterday. I hope it was worth it. And today is a video recording day. This uh video should be on YouTube a week before or after this vlog. I hope you like the video, too. Let's shoot. Bro, stop coding. What? AI is getting so good. They they they say it's going to replace us. Replace us. We've

16:59built an entire company just using AI. Customer support for Startup 13. How can I help you today? Why does everything has to be blue? And someone delete the fishing email. We are so screwed here. We don't offer refunds. I'm sorry. We need to change the border radius here. We We should have used TypeScript. Hello. Boom. Oh no, guys. We need a meeting right now. Did

17:22AI just turned me into a manager?

17:33Let there be guitar. All right, boy. Let there be rock. Let there be coffee. New Zealand is so beautiful. It's crazy. It's really beautiful. Like even the sunrise, this just the sun itself is is beautiful. This is very interesting. It's a study about the effect on placeos on relieving Parkinson disease. And it's really fun to see that the price of the drug people will pay to be healed will impact how they will be healed. It basically says that the higher they pay for the the peel, the higher the results they will get, which is really fun cuz it's super tied to what we do. I think I see a lots

18:15of developers often making this mistakes of pricing their products too cheap. Um, when you're getting started, I know it's tricky to ask for people money on the internet, but it's very important to price accurately because just the price itself without even seeing the product reflects on how good people will think the product is. It's called perceived value and unlike the actual product where it needs a lot of work, you can just, you know, increase just a little bit your pricing to make it seems like it's a better product. Of course, the product after has to deliver the value, but uh it's usually a mistake that I see

18:45developers make by pressing a little too cheap when they're getting started. And if you have no idea how to start with your pricing, the best is to look at what competitors are doing and price just a little higher or look at other industries and applies what they do for yours. Back to this masterpiece. What are you reading? The same book as you. Do you like it so far? I absolutely loved it because life is all about dealing with expectation to yourself to the other. Same as atomic habit. If you make the identity that you believe who you are, then you will behave in certain way to do so. Even though you're not the

19:21person yet, if you believe like you're a good entpreneur, you're a good runner, you're a good, you know, friend, then you will do your best to, you know, be become like that. If you're not inspired after this pep talk. All right, that's enough for today. Uh, this is a really good book. Now, time for workout luggage packing and we are going to a new place where there some workout is the second best legal drug on the planet after sleep. Take one dose daily. Side effect might include

19:57occasional flexing in the mirror. It's 9:20 a.m. 22 minutes of a heavy workout, intense workout, and I'm set for the day. Airbnb check out is in 20 minutes. And uh on the road again. The best electronic backpack no one talks about. Getting dirty. This is so [Music] heavy. Making YouTube videos is a workout. Let's go. [Music] We're finally arrived. Finally. Here we

20:42go, mate. Let's see what color it is. Yes, sir. Surprise. [Music] Wow, we just entered the paradise. Welcome Denmark. Okay, I think this is the most unexpected like out of what we are normally used to Airbnb. Okay, are you ready? Just look around. Just look around. Wow, the view. Every morning we're going to have coffee while watching this amazing view. I feel like I'm in an old man's house. And this is such a dream. Imagine you have a little door that leads to the ocean. Yeah. So

21:25nice. There are seals everywhere. Yeah, exactly. This is so nice. Yeah, this one looks dead. There are like one that I freaking love nature. It's so beautiful. That's true. It makes me so happy to be next to them. I think we can also walk on the rings later when it's low tide. [Music] She was scratching her head. Yeah. With her weird like [Music] legs. Oh,

22:13actually they don't do Careful.

22:33breakfast. So good. [Music]

22:46[Music] All right. Oh, it's time to get some work done. And today I'm doing my favorite activity of the year, accounting. But I'm not doing the accounting myself. Uh I have an accountant doing it for me. I'm just reviewing the profit and loss statement, making sure that uh everything is right. My P&L should be somewhere around this video. It's in Singapore dollars. It's the total revenue for all of my sources of income. I think I have somewhere around like 10 sources of income in total. And when doing the P&L, I was surprised that the revenue is around I

23:20think $1.5 million in Singapore dollars. And the profit was 1.2 Singapore and Singapore dollars, which is around 80% profit margin. And I'm not the type of guy who cut corners. So I I am really easy peasy on the bills and stuff. I don't try to save money. I try to make more money instead. So I could optimize those profit margin. And I was still thinking 80% profit margin knowing that I have no meetups. I have uh no ownership. I don't owe anything to anyone. I'm not renting a place. I don't manage um employees. I don't have like payrolls at the end of the year or something. And that made me think of a

23:51little story back in 2016 when I was working as a waiter. I was earning around $10 per hour and I was working 10 hours a day. So, at the end of the day, I would be paid $100 and I would bring to the business around $2,000. I know that because at the end of the day, we had to count all the bills and tell the business owner how much money uh we made on the day. And back in that restaurant, there were around five waiters at a time. And so I was thinking like this business owner sells around $10,000 per day worth of food. Of course, there's

24:19ingredient, the rental, the cook to pay. But I was still thinking like that's around $300,000 per month or $3.6 million per year. This guy, the owner, might be freaking rich. I really wanted to know how much money he makes by the end of the year. But because we were in France, it's kind of like it's it's a bit of a taboo topic. You don't ask someone how much money you're making. So I tried to ask without asking and he told me it's not what do you think it is. I never really understood until today where I asked Chadip what is the average profit margin for a restaurant

24:51and I figured out that if he wants to make the similar amount of money that I made in 2024 with a restaurant you need to make $20 million. And here I am with my little $1.5 million in revenue. Those two businesses are making the same profit by the end of the year. And on top of that, there's no risk that one of my employee cuts his finger while cutting a piece of meat. I'm not going to injure typing on my keyboard. And this made me realize that for the same output, the input is completely different. To make $1 million in profit, you need $1.2 million in revenue with

25:23the digital product, and you need 20 million in revenue with the restaurant. For instance, this little product made $15,000 last year. It cost around $2 to $3 a month to send emails and it runs for like $10 a month. So that's roughly 95% profit margin. Or you can create a product with the name poop in it makes a couple hundred a month and this cost $0 a month to maintain. Or this little software that makes $2,000 a month and it cost less than $10,000 to run per month. So roughly all of my tiny software product have around 95% profit margin. And on top of this, I don't need

26:00to do much customer support. My products are running 24/7. The take away from this is profit is not revenue. And with a digital product, you don't need to hit crazy numbers in order to pay for your living. And now it has never been a better time in history to build something. With AI coming up with great marketing ideas, helping you coding and

26:17build those products. Now is the time. Or be like this guy and don't give a about life in whatsoever way. [Music] It's working. [Music] Oh, he's it like this. Is what a sea seal looks like. And this is a post face. Yes. Relieved. Yes. So relieved.