The 柚智夫妻 WeChat public account (a joint content brand run by Raymond Hou (Raymond) and his wife Yuzu / Song Zhiyou) before and around their move to work in mainland China. It was active from around August 2018 to December 2020. The period spanned their marriage, Raymond’s employment at Keep in Beijing, his forced stay in Taiwan after the pandemic began, and the formation of the “Raymond Thirty” brand. It was a gestation period before Raymond moved from being a freelance lecturer and writer in Taiwan toward the Super Individual path centered on a personal brand and paid content subscriptions. Although the public account stopped updating after 2020, it documented the early forms of many methods Raymond would later develop.
Origin: 365 days of preparation before moving to mainland China
The public account was launched on August 15, 2018. Its first article, “365-Day Countdown,” counted down to their planned move to Beijing one year later, on August 15, 2019. Their plan was to spend a year building an initial readership in the Chinese-language internet and learning how content operations worked in the local market before entering an unfamiliar, faster-paced one. Raymond’s self-introduction said, “I’m not as strong as I imagined, but I’ve also realized I’m less willing to give up than I imagined.” This positioning of “not giving up, but not being arrogant” ran through the entire period.1 They deliberately did not make the account a couple’s account. Instead, each ran a separate “career and personal growth” channel: Raymond covered internet operations analysis, time management, and thinking skills; Yuzu covered community building, women’s careers, and travel observations.
Content experiments driven by discipline
The public account followed a fixed schedule: publish an article or audio each morning at 08:15, then summarize the week on Sundays. A countdown number in each title turned the abstract idea of “one year of preparation” into a visible progress bar. Within this rhythm, Raymond repeatedly tested two things: using frequent output to make himself keep producing (“action and rapid iteration”), and laying out weekly data for Retrospectives. The review of their first week listed growth from 73 to 160 followers, the proportion of readers in Taiwan and mainland China, open rates for text and images, and other metrics. Based on these observations, they decided that readers were often consuming content in spare moments, on small screens, and while tired, so they dropped long reflective essays in favor of concise, shareable content.2 This habit of “publicly recording data and adjusting practice through observation” became the same underlying logic Raymond later used to run his newsletter and online courses.
Early forms of reflection and time management
This period also preserved early versions of Raymond’s personal methods. In “Six Questions for My Journal,” he broke daily reflection into six regular prompts (storytelling ability, win-win thinking, keeping one’s word, positive conduct, time with family, and basic assumptions). He emphasized “writing reflections about events and stories about feelings,” and distinguished “me” from “my views and actions,” so outside criticism would not become a rejection of the self. He described the mechanism of habit formation as “behavior being held captive by positive feedback” and set aside 30 minutes every night at 10:30 to journal.3 These concrete practices around Time Management, habits, and Retrospectives later appeared repeatedly in Raymond’s courses and content.
From WeChat groups to real communities
After moving to Beijing, Raymond’s focus shifted from personal content output toward community and branding issues within Business Thinking. From late 2019 to early 2020, he published a series of long essays arguing that “a WeChat group is not a community” and that private-domain traffic treats people as traffic. A real community depends on connection, empowerment, and a sense of shared identity. He used Lululemon’s brand beliefs and the rituals of older women dancing in public squares as examples to break down what makes a community. He argued that content must first serve as a medium connecting the group to its audience, and defined a brand as “what people still know you are after your products and services are taken away.” Inspired by the US-based CMX community for community professionals, he briefly planned a localized learning community in Beijing where people working in the field could meet and exchange ideas. These ideas—“similar people attract one another” and “bring people together through content”—became conceptual precursors to Raymond’s later membership community and newsletter strategies.
Turning point and conclusion
Early in 2020, Raymond returned to Taiwan after a Knowledge Spring Festival Gala event in Shenzhen. The outbreak prevented him from returning to Beijing, forcing an end to the five-year plan he had originally made. That year, he began a one-person business in Taiwan: in March he accepted a digital transformation consulting project for a brand group; after completing it six months later, he became more certain that “his value lay in helping individuals accelerate, not organizations.” In April he launched the Raymond Thirty podcast. In May he set up his own website to move content off platforms and take control of his audience list and data. In the second half of the year, he built a listener community, held book clubs and live podcasts, and began a gray-release test of a paid content subscription service at year’s end. “Goodbye Beijing, See You Next Year,” published on December 8, 2020, became the public account’s final article and the bridge from the 柚智夫妻 content project to the “Raymond Thirty” brand.4 The plan to develop in mainland China did not unfold as intended, but the two years of frequent publishing, data review, and thinking about communities and brands formed the origin volume of Raymond’s Super Individual business.
Further reading
- For the brand that developed afterward, see the related entries “Raymond Thirty” and “柚智夫妻” (to be created).
- Related concepts: Remote Work, Writing, Career Development.
Sources cited
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “【365-Day Countdown】About Us: How Much More Can We Imagine?” WeChat public-account article, 2018-08-15. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “【354 Days to Go】What Did We Learn from a Week of Running a Public Account?” WeChat public-account article, 2018-08-26. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “【322 Days to Go】My Six Journal Questions: How to Make Time Your Friend,” WeChat public-account article, 2018-09-27. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “【Goodbye Beijing, See You Next Year】Where Can You Find Us?” WeChat public-account article, 2020-12-08. View original ↩