Aspiring shaolin monk to designer, founder and investor

Hey there! I’m the kid who sold his position in the school canteen line for $1, ran Cost-per-action (CPA) campaigns with viral Facebook Apps generating $300,000 by 18 and over the next 15 years became a UX Designer, founded a 10 person UX agency and now teaches UX design on YouTube and through online UX design courses.

Here's a snippet of my journey that's a little less "resume"...

So, it all began with Jackie Chan movies making me think I could become a Shaolin Monk. Spoiler alert: that didn't happen. Instead, my sis got me hooked on 2 online games, Gunbound and Neopets, in 2004. What started as fun turned into a full-blown obsession with the internet. I launched my first ever website which was a gaming forum in 2005, learned a bit about servers, dabbled with Photoshop and even played around with AdWords that made me a couple hundred dollars a day around the ages of 16-18.

In 2006, I took my new found skills and I ventured into the affiliate marketing world, selling and promoting products from ClickBank and offers from CPA Lead. This taught me a lot about how to design websites, apps and offers that actually get people buying and converting; these learnings still play a critical role in my day to day work. I hit the jackpot with a viral Facebook app that netted me $300,000 which I immediately used to buy 'only Apple products', help my parents pay down some bills and also invest into real estate.

Fast forward a bit, and I’m in my early twenties, flipping websites and mastering the affiliate marketing game. It taught me a lot about UX/UI design, development, marketing, business and entrepreneurship.

By 20, I realized even though affiliate marketing made a decent amount of money, it wasn't everything. I craved more—like a challenge. I noticed job ads always wanted 3 years of experience, so I figured I'd collect those years just in case my entrepreneurial plans needed a Plan B.

I landed a gig at Freelancer.com, which was the big-league play for me. Surrounded by genius minds, and solving problems for millions of Daily Active Users (DaU) taught me insights that would have taken me decades to learn on my own.

After my role at Freelancer.com, I joined Hipages, where I stepped up my tech game and led some cool projects that really changed how things were done there. Hipages was another online marketplace, but instead of finding freelancers, it was Australia's largest marketplace to find tradespeople.

Six years flew by, and then it was time to get back to my roots: building my own thing. I decided to freelance and launch my little agency called Mizko Media, but very quickly the demand exceeded our capacity so I hired 10+ full-time employees over the course of a few years to continue servicing our clients.

During this time I caught the attention of companies like Microsoft and Adobe and we collaborated on a few partnerships. I also experimented in a joint-venture called Laddr, which was a fun but short lived experience. Ultimately I feel so lucky to have worked with some highly reputable startups and companies that raised a total $350M in venture capital, which includes Spaceship, Snappr, Archistar and many more. The success of my clients also extended into acquisitions, like when eBay bought AutoTrader and CallRails snatched up PhoneWagon. You can see what all my clients have said here as well.

But the biggest highlight? Michael Gough Former CPO / VP of Design @ Microsoft, Adobe and Uber reached out to my directly on LinkedIn, asking me to join his team. Talk about confidence.

After 5 years of helping many companies reach their success, In 2020, I decided to take a step back to reflect. Growing up in a Chinese-migrant family, financial independence has always been my biggest challenge. After grinding and hustling it out, I was very lucky to have done $10M+ worth of work which meant that money is no longer a real motivation. Now, I wanted my work to mean more.

Enter the Designership era: my own slice of the internet where I can make a direct impact of anyone around the world, teaching them the skills that has helped me become a highly-demanded UX/UI designer and entrepreneur.

I'm now on a mission to create more success stories, just like mine.

Nowadays, you'll find me teaching UX/UI on YouTube and Instagram, creating online design courses, and investing in cool startups like ScreenApp and RightPaw. It's all about passing on the skills and watching others grow. That's the stuff I love.

If you want to learn more about how I might be able to help you, or you just want to say hi you can always get in touch.

PS. Please keep in mind, my email is generally quite full with requests so sometimes I might take a little longer to get back to you.