About

Cofounder of Wolo Yoga | ex AppSumo | Writer & Speaker

Contact

Hey! Feel free to reach me via X, formerly 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.
• Ran the Sumo.com blog, and later built AppSumo blog from scratch to over 120,000 monthly organic pageviews.
• Managed growth initiatives covering lead generation, website analytics, and SEO as a Growth Product Manager.

Along the way, I also started Wolo Yoga with my wife—bootstrapping the business from scratch to 6-figure revenue in less than 2 years.

After 7 long years of working with Noah, I moved on from the AppSumo team at the end of 2024. Today, I help SaaS and ecommerce businesses grow through workshops and consulting.

Now

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

• Consulting SaaS and ecommerce brands on growth.
• 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: November 2024 (inspired by Derek Sivers)