What I'm Working On

My old website was not bad, but just a basic WordPress theme. I’m getting better at HTML/CSS/Java/PHP/JS so wanted to try and integrate some fanciness.

• What: Rebuilding my site with Bricks Builder, some HTML/CSS/Java focusing on performance, modern design, conversions, and user experience.
• Why: My old site was slow and didn’t reflect who I am now. I want a clean, fast platform that showcases my work and makes it easy for people to find what they need. I also wanted to share my work a lot more. It was 80% trying to help the reader (you) get to stuff that can help them more quickly, but 20% me playing with fun stuff (the homepage particle animation took about 20 hours…)
• Status: Live, your looking at it!! But, I still want to add a few things:
  • Mega Menu
  • Fun Animations and Good Design (I’ll likely never finish this)
  • Quizzes and Calculators
  • Pop-ups and Sidebars (to help not sell)
  • Web Speed (Thomas Frank is teaching me a lot)
• Resources:
  • Hosting Platform/Server: WP Engine → GridPane + Vultr
  • Site Design/Software: WordPress with Bricks Builder
  • Domain Registration, Safety, Speed: Cloudflare
  • Design principles: Refactoring UI + Atomic Design
  • AI Helpers: Claude and Cursor
• What I’m Learning:
  • Technical Debt is real
  • What I thought would take 1 week has taken 2 months
  • Build your website like a professional, in order:
    • Strategy & Planning (notebook and pen: establish what your customer/business needs)
    • Pick a tech stack (Wordpress? Frameworks? Just HTML/CSS? stackshare.io is helpful)
    • Wireframing and UX design (I looked at a bunch of sites for inspiration and then used Figma or notebook and pen again)
    • Visual Design (I liked to look at a bunch of sites again on Dribble and 21st dev and then checked Refactoring UI and Atomic Designs constantly to make sure it all looked good)
    • Content (I started here… woof, what will be the copy? The meat of the site. People use Jasper/Claude/Unsplash/Pexels but I like to use my own writing and images)
    • Development (now you know what it’s meant to look like, how to you go from design → code? Too many options here. I like simple Wordpress with Bricks Builder or static HTML pages built with Claude Code/Cursor)
    • Testing (is it fast or slow? How’s the SEO?)
    • Launch
  • Listen to your gut, what would you want to see on a website?
  • Get to making a LIVE MVP ASAP because then you’ll be that much more motivated to work on it when people on the internet are telling you it’s broken
• Results
  • Will update this soon! Excited to post graphs of numbers and conversion changes.
    • Current Stats (old website): ~10k views per month, ~100 newsletter subs per month, ~4 product purchases per month.

Why create a Full-Stack Web App? What is “full-stack” and what is “web-app?” To my knowledge the breakdown is front-end are usually in languages like HTML, CSS, and Java Script for what people see (like what you are looking at right now), back end is Server languages like Python, JavaScript (Node.js), Ruby, or Java, plus databases like PostgreSQL or MongoDB that help everything stay tracked in the background (like username, email, data), and DevOps/Infrastructure is deployment, hosting, version control (Git), and sometimes cloud services for what runs it all. So, when you learn it all, you can manage a website on the top (front-end), back (back-end), and “?base” (DevOps).

• What: My plan is to learn full-stack in the context of making something. Specifically I want to make an app around USA Residency (more on that later). This will likely require a little understanding of all of the above.
• Why: It’s fun! It will help me learn! It will help me build more stuff
• Status: Planned, here’s my overall gameplan to learn to code over 4 months in regards to building web apps.

• What I’m Learning:
  • Technical Debt is real (again)…
  • AI is great but learning and checking what it actually does is much more helpful in the long run than just prompting → shipping
• Results
  • Will update here with my projects/sales numbers
• My full plan is embedded below or you can go to it linked here.

Once I learn the basics of coding from above, and potentially have a little more work experience, by 2028 I would like to launch a business using my background in medicine, VC, and pharma to help patients more widely. Not exactly sure what that is yet, but I feel I am in a unique position to help people.

Coming soon…

As of now, I’ll be working a normal job. But the most successful “other” things financially for me have been YouTube, SA-OS, and SoloTuber (in that order).

• YouTube: Started 5 years ago and changed my life. My monthly income ranges between about ~$1-10K per month from it. This varies dramatically based on views and sponsorships. Recently (2025), my views have been down so I am much closer to that ~$1k monthly.
• SA-OS: My studying courses initially generated quite a bit of money for me. I have torn most of them off the internet with the goal of redoing it. We will see if this was a big mistake (or not). In the past, those sales averaged about ~$1k per month for me but were through other platforms.
• SoloTuber:  I have a book, a couple downloadable products, and my flagship SoloTuber PRO course. All together, those average about $0.5k per month for me. I was making closer to $5k per month when I just sold my Production and Video editing course (which I’ve now bundled into this course). So maybe I have blundered with this course which took me about 3 months of full-time work and I’m nowhere near even 3 digits in number of sales. Maybe it’s too long? Not specific enough? Too expensive? I’m not sure. My book actually sells quite well but because it is cheap I don’t get much on the back end through Kindle Direct Publishing.
• Resources:
  • Course Hosting Platforms and Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Kajabi
  • YouTube Editing and Production Gear
  •  Book Writing: Word (writing), Vellum (formatting), KDP (publishing/manufacturing/delivery)
• What I’m Learning:
  • Dont’ make something because you “think” it will sell well, make something because you are solving a personal problem that you can’t find solved easily elsewhere on the internet. I come back to “How to do Great Work” by Paul Graham and 10x Better often (I need to actually listen to them… and get MVPs up faster)
• Results
  • I’ll update this with mainly revenue, currently averaging $2-3k / month from all of the above as of June 2025

If you take a look at the “Coding” section above you can see what I hope will be the “big” business. But, this might not mean coding. I find the idea of trying things and changing the world with 2-3 friends somewhere super exciting. I would likely try this around 2028-2030 (crazy how I’m saying this, who the F*** knows what I’ll be doing then???)

Ok, but what do I do with all the money once I’ve earned it? Do I stick it under a matress? or index funds? Or day trade? Or Bitcoin? I feel like there is so much information out there. Which is why I mainly stick to things that obey Lindy’s Law and stand the test of time.

• What: As someone in their early 30s (who hopes to live for a long time) I want investments that are mostly safe but offer higher returns than savings accounts or bonds. I want a diversified portfolio so if a sector or market or country blows up I am safe. Here is my investing strategy that I think I will keep for probably the next 30 years. With 20% going to crazy things courtesy of Nassim Taleb’s Barbell strategy. Now, I have no debt, can cover food, rent, and fun, have a 6-12 month emergency fund, and max out my 401k and roth IRA every year. Beyond that, is where things get fun:
  • Learning/Myself: When I was 20 years old, I had about $10,000 dollars saved. Now, this could have been saved and maybe in 10 years if I was lucky it would be $20,000, but I decided to risk 100% of it on YouTube once I saw some traction. I would have been OK if I lost it all, really, because I knew it was going to help me learn and grow. I spend money without thinking on books, courses, and anything that can help me learn or grow.
  • Index Funds: 80% – You can read more about a three-fund portfolio here. There are mutliple books and posts about this (from people like Warren Buffet betting against hedge funds), but, essentially, it’s extremely difficult to beat certain index funds over a long period of time. Also, once you are in mutual funds and having your money managed the % those organizations and business takes make it even more difficult to have any chance at beating an index fund. So, I don’t plan to deviate. I put about 70% (of the 80%) in VTI, 20% in BND, and 10% in VXUS. 
  • Angel Moonshots: 10% – I don’t have the money to do this yet. But I plan to put about 10% of my funds, once I have a total of about $5M+ over 5 years into 30 $10-50k investments. Now, I will probably lose everything, but I’m sure I will learn a lot. I mainly will follow Tim Ferriss’s, Julia Dewahl’s, and top angel investors. I’ll be like a mini-VC in companies that interest and excite me. Hoping for a home run or unicorn (10-100+x return) while learning along the way.
  • Black Swan Put Options: 10% – Another crazy stratagy, but I have to even out my barbell (if one side is angel investing, the bar is index funds, and the other side is put options). But how do you do this? This is the most complicated. Nassim Taleb talks a little bit about in Antifragile as well as some guides and books. Now, I will very likely again lose all this money, but when I start investing at my point of this $5M money, I’ll have enough that losing 500k is tolerable for me. And, I am doing it to learn and have fun. So even if I lose it all I’m ok with it. I will be spreading it out among ~10 (probably) BIG black swan put options at around 50k each. These could be 20-200x returns. So maybe anywhere from 1M to 10M if something crashes. Again, I’m ok with losing all 500k at that point in my assets. I think it will be fun over 5 years to learn and pick my “big bets.”
• Status: I’m not going to reveal my assets and money online (completely) as I’m scared someone will kidnap me (plz don’t). Right now though it wouldn’t be that beneficial to kidnap me (trust me). What I will share though is % changes as they come.
  • Index Funds: Since 2018 have increased 22% for me
  • Learning/Myself: has increased infinity.
  • Angle Moonshots: Haven’t tried yet
  • Put options: haven’t tried yet
• Resources:
  • Investing Platforms: Vangaurd (index funds), Fidelity (401k, roth IRA, and occasional single stock buys)
  • Books:
    • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Amazon Link The groundbreaking exploration of rare, high-impact events that shape our world and how to navigate radical uncertainty.
    • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Amazon Link A revolutionary framework for understanding how some systems actually benefit from shocks, volatility, and chaos rather than merely surviving them.
    • The Simple Path to Wealth – JL Collins Amazon Link The straightforward guide to achieving financial independence through low-cost index fund investing and living below your means. *MUST READ*
    • The Millionaire Fastlane – MJ DeMarco Amazon Link A contrarian approach to wealth creation that rejects traditional “get rich slowly” advice in favor of entrepreneurial fast lanes. *MUST READ*
    • A Random Walk Down Wall Street – Burton Malkiel Amazon Link The classic academic case for passive index investing that proves why most investors can’t beat the market.
    • The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing – Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, Michael LeBoeuf Amazon Link A comprehensive guide to John Bogle’s investment philosophy, offering practical advice for building wealth through simple, low-cost portfolios.
    • Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups – Jason Calacanis Amazon Link Practical advice from a successful angel investor on how to turn $100,000 into $100,000,000 by investing in early-stage startups.
    • Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future – Peter Thiel Amazon Link A contrarian’s guide to creating breakthrough companies that move from zero to one by building monopolies rather than competing.
    • The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World – Mark Spitznagel Amazon Link Austrian economics meets investing strategy in this roundabout approach to achieving extraordinary returns through patient capital allocation.
    • Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms – Mark Spitznagel Amazon Link A mathematical framework for how risk-mitigating investments can paradoxically increase returns while protecting against market crashes.
    • Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Amazon Link The definitive technical guide to derivatives risk management from a practitioner’s perspective, focusing on real-world trading applications.
    • Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist – Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson Amazon Link An insider’s guide to understanding venture capital term sheets, negotiations, and the mechanics of startup financing.
    • The Intelligent Investor – Benjamin Graham Amazon Link The timeless value investing bible that teaches how to invest with a margin of safety and think like a business owner.
    • Poor Charlie’s Almanack – Charlie Munger Amazon Link One of the best books about overall investing (putting money in things with the expectation that their value will increase so you make money from that thing in the long run), I’ve ever read.
    • Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits – Philip A. Fisher Amazon Link The growth investing classic that focuses on finding outstanding companies through qualitative analysis and holding them for the long term.
• What I’m Learning:
  • Index funds beat everything pretty much always
  • Having a good chunk in savings and spending less than your earn is a good lifestyle to increase wealth and maintain mental sanity
  • Emotions (highs and lows) influence more than I thought. That’s why it’s nice to have most in a “set and forget” channel and only “play” with a small percentage.
  • I know pretty much nothing (but so do most investors).
• Results
  • Index funds returning about 8% after inflation consistently.
  • Investing in myself has the highest monetary and non-monetary returns

This is a very tough one! How do you figure out what you are meant to do with your life? What’s your purpose? Meaning? I’m not really sure. I quit medicine when I was 30 years old because I wasn’t happy and wasn’t sure what my impact on the world was (it was hard to overcome 10 years of sunk cost). What will I do with my life? I’m not sure. But here is my attempt to figure it out (it’s constantly changing). 

• What: There are organized ways to do this, such as Stanford’s design your life strategy or Ikigai but these still leave me wanting more. The difficulty I have in life, nearly always, is separating genuine curiosity versus what I “should do” (I succumb to peer pressure and views more than I’d like to admit) and how much I should be optimizing for eating one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later?
• Why: What is the meaning of life? I’d like to know the answer! And I think… I actually have it: figure out what is important to you, figure out what is not important to you, and increase the amount of time spent on what’s important to you and decrease the amount of time spent on what’s not important to you, there, problem solved! 42! Ahh yes, but you have caught me, how do you figure out what’s important to you? We are stuck again.
• Status: 
  • Work & Career: YouTube, helping people, and working in a big company seem fun and impactful now? But I think it’s on the middle of the spectrum of should versus genuine curiosity
  • Relationships: I am doing mediocre on this one. I have a good relationship with my family, but no real romantic relationship, and only a few close friends that I don’t hang out with enough. I think it would be nice to cultivate more frequent social interactions with people I care about.
  • Health & Body: Killing it right now! I love exercising and my life is under control on this aspect. Yoga, lifting, rucking, running, taking no medications, Eosinophilic Esophagitis solved, no anxiety, no depression. 
  • Personal growth: again, curiosity versus should (such as fun books versus “books to read in a lifetime). 
  • Environment: this is where travel comes in! I’ve always dreamed of living somewhere else for a couple of years. Maybe somewhere like Italy, or Spain, or Portugal. Where I can surf, be around people my age, hit the gym, have AC, and speak another language.
  • Money and Resources: a very difficult one. By most standards I am “set for life,” however, based on the things I want to do in my life (travel constantly, support my family, host crazy events, live in crazy places, build a house that has a glass 3-4 story tall wall facing the mountains inside of a forest), I “desire” more money. Buddha would say I’m messing up. When will enough be enough? Why do I “want” more? Because I definitely don’t need more (if you have answers please let me know).
  • Fun and Recreation: surfing I like! Friends I like! Fun I like! But I also like working? Do we work to live or live to work? Hopefully work to live? Again, you can see I am clueless here.
  • Service & Legacy: there are studies that show those that help people weekly live longer and are healthier, so that, is selfish on its own if that’s why I do it right? Do I actually want to do it? Sometimes I do. What’s my contribution to the world? Will I be remembered in 300 years (probably not) so what should I do? Contribute something big to the world? Small that affects a lot of people? Start a family and hope to build people that help the world? Or be selfish and just do what I think is fun? Hmmm.
• Resources:
  • 12 Week Year
  • Ikigai
  • Life Design / Odyssey Plan
  • Various Religious/Spiritual books
• What I’m Learning:
  • It’s helpful to actually think about your life 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, and 50 years in advance as opposed to going on autopilot.
  • I want to develop my passion as opposed to decide on it.
  • I change over time and that’s ok.
• Results
  • I’m a monkey not sure what’s going on inside my head or if my hunting of bananas is worth it.

This has always seemed exciting to me! Imagine building your own dream office, company, and organization with your two or three best buds! No real plans at the moment. I just know this is something I want to do at some point.

I struggled for the past 10 years about whether I ever even wanted to be married, let alone have kids. I thought, “I like doing my own thing! What’s the point of marriage?” (I was and still am heavily influenced by my addiction to the Howard Stern radio show).

However, somewhere around 29 years old, and one particularly bad breakup, I realized that I do want kids and a family. I thought about the idea of being with someone who challenged me, while taking care of me, that I could laugh with and chat with and challenge and help grow and be silent with for days at a time, and thought, “if I found this person, and we added 1-3 people to the world, wouldn’t that make the world a better place? Wouldn’t that be fun? This is how much of the world finds meaning in there life?” And it changed from I “should” do this, to “I am genuinely excited and curios and want to do this.” Ok but step 1 is a long-term girlfriend at 30… I better pick up the pace here.

I’ll be doing an absolutely massive post on this sometime soon. But in April 2025 I ruptured my ACL tendon, accompanied by a MCL sprain and some popliteal issues. ACL injuries are extremely common. America does about 300,000 ACL repair surgeries every year. Luckily for me, only the ACL required surgery and not the MCL or meniscus or popliteal, so after extensive research I decided with the help of my surgeon on a quad tendon ACL reconstruction autograft (where they harvest a piece of my quad tendon, remove my old ACL from my knee, and drill my quad tendon through my Femur and Tibia to replace my defunct ACL). That surgery took place May 2025 and now I’m in the process of recovering from it. 

• What: I was playing soccer, my left foot got stuck in the ground, I turned left and my foot stayed where it was. I heard two pops and fell to the ground in pain. Got an MRI the next day and had a complete tear of my ACL at the femoral head.
• Why: I still want to surf and run and hike and potentially play soccer again one day so wanted the best and longest term solution. After speaking to 3 doctors and extensive research quad aclr autograft seemed best for me.
• Status:  Check out my overall plan below this section, again, this isn’t medical advice but my plan for me that has changed over time. The surgery was the beginning of May 2025 so you can see based off the excel sheet where I am from that.
• Resources:
  • Care team: orthopedic surgeon (Rothman), personal trainer, physical therapist, chiropractor, and massage therapist.
  • Online plans: Moon group and Mass General
  • Supplements (all daily): creatine 5g, omega-3 1g daily, vitamin c 100 mg, vitamin d 1,000 iu, collagen 15g. There is some encouraging data around vitamin C and collagen during ACLR.
• What I’m Learning:
  • Slow and steady is best, this is a tough injury, but with a growth mindset it helps
  • I am so lucky to have the time and freedom to dedicate to seeing PT 2x week, lifting 4x a week, and biking 6x a week as well as seeing a chiropractor and taking supplements.
• Results
  • Flexion progress: Week 1 (75°), Week 2 (90°), Week 3 (100°), week 4 (120°), week 5 (127°), week 6 (129°, seem to have hit a wall)
  • Brace: Week 1-2 (on 24/7), Week 2-4 (off at night, locked in extension), Week 4-6 (unlocked always), hopefully removing week 6
  • Strength: Week 3 (began step-ups and small exercises), week 4 (walking on treadmill), week 6 (resistance biking, 20% max weight leg press)

I have always struggled with weight gain. From being 5’10” 100 lbs in high school to ~145 lbs in college. I’ve usually fluctuated from 150 lbs – 160 lbs. I would like to be ~175 lbs but struggle to put on weight. The main reason is I simply don’t eat enough and I am very active. 

• What: Put on 10 pounds of lean mass and be functionally very fit.
• Why: Aesthetics, and the more lean muscle you have (to a point) the healthier you are and less likely to be injured. 
• Status: ~165 lbs – Doing the best I’ve done in a while. The ACL injury set me back but thanks to creatine and finally finding a protein powder that doesn’t make me feel yuck I’m able to eat more. 
• Resources:
  • This video is great. Otherwise Jeff Nippard, Stronger By Science, and Dr. Mike Israetel are where I learn pretty much everything about lifting. 
  • Exercise Plan:
    • Lifting: I have a personal trainer who is amazing that I work with once a week and he developed a plan for me for 2 other days a week for a total of three days a week. I have one additional “fun” day at the gym where I do whatever exercises I want (bicep curls, pull-ups, exercises that make me feel cool). 
    • I love yoga so do hot power yoga 2x a week.
    • I ruck or run 2x a week.
    • I surf 3-5 days a week in the summer.
  • Food Plan
    • 500 caloric surplus and 1g protein/lb weight goal. I need to be much better at tracking this.
    • Protein shake: scoop of grass-fed protein powder, 2 tablespoon cocoa powder, massive spoonful of greek yogurt, massive spoonful of almond butter, 5 ice cubes, 1 cup of almond milk, and half a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Experimenting with oats, olive oil, and some flax seeds.
    • Some of my favorite meals are: spaghetti bolognese, roast chicken thighs and potato and veg, greek yogurt and granola and fruit and honey in the morning, huge eggs and meat breakfast #2, fajitas, homemade ramen, t-bone steaks and homemade mac and cheese, veggie curry, chicken marsala, chicken tagine, thai coconut chicken curry, chicken stir fry, penne puttanesca, homemade breaded chicken, and homemade oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies.
  • Lifestyle plan
    • Low stress, lots of food, lots of sleep, and consistent exercise are paramount for my muscle gains.
• What I’m Learning:
  • Watch that video at the beginning. I learned so much. The most helpful thing has been what good exercises are meant to feel like and simply eating more.
• Results
  • Will update! I’m in some of the best shape of my life doing the above and I feel amazing.

Some days I am happy, some days I am sad—this is life! I’d like to increase the frequency of happy days and decrease the frequency of sad days. So far I’ve learned:

• Exercise, sleep, fun and caring friends, good food, good work, sunshine, nature, exciting adventures, new experiences, no alcohol, no drugs, and mindfulness make me happy. I plan to expand this section in-depth at a later time.