“柚智夫妻” was a content account jointly run by Raymond Hou and his wife, Song Zhiyou (Yuzu), on the WeChat public-account platform. It operated from around August 2018 through the end of 2020. It was a warm-up project the couple undertook before their marriage in preparation for “moving to Beijing in 2019,” and a predecessor to Raymond’s later “Raymond Thirty” brand and the couple’s joint business model. In Raymond’s career, the account was more of a publicly documented business experiment than a mature product line.
Origins: A Warm-Up Project for Moving North
The account launched on August 15, 2018. Its first post was titled “365-Day Countdown,” setting August 15 of the following year—the planned date of their move to Beijing—as the end of a one-year countdown. The launch post described them as “remote workers from non-metropolitan areas of Taiwan” and explained why they chose a WeChat public account: since they planned to develop their careers in mainland China, they needed to build readership and local understanding on a platform there; “learning by doing suits us best.” At the time, Raymond described himself as a lecturer, content writer, and marketer for international brands, while Yuzu was moving from a drama-school background into new-media marketing. Beijing became the target after Raymond visited local content companies in 2017. He concluded that he “wasn’t as strong as he had imagined, but was even less willing to admit defeat than he had imagined.” For related context, see Why Beijing and Beijing Eve: 柚智夫妻 Public Account and ‘365-Day Countdown’ (2018–2020).
Operating Model: Daily Publishing and Public Retrospectives
The account adopted a high-frequency daily publishing schedule, posting illustrated articles or audio at 8:15 a.m. and publishing a weekly summary on Sundays. The couple used Shimo Docs, Trello, and mind-mapping tools to create their collaboration workflow, treating the account as a “one-year job search plan.” Content covered analysis of the knowledge-services industry, perspectives on multiple careers, and personal growth. One distinctive feature was writing openly about the business process itself: during the first week, they published a breakdown of follower count, gender ratio, and article readership. The account grew from 73 followers to about 160 in its first week, then to about 300 in the second. They also acknowledged that WeChat public accounts had “low organic spread and a closed ecosystem,” making growth difficult for beginners. 1 Turning numbers, obstacles, and adjustments into content was an early version of the practices later seen in Wearing Many Hats and Launching Projects from Zero to One and Retrospectives (retrospectives).
Repositioning and Division of Labor: Manager and Creator
About 50 days after launch, in early October 2018, the account underwent a repositioning and clearly divided the couple’s roles. Yuzu became the “manager,” focusing on brand promotion and commercial partnerships. Raymond focused on producing deeper original content and distributing articles to platforms such as Zhihu, Weibo, and Sohu. They summarized the reason for the change as “choosing the right position matters more than effort,” putting each person’s strengths where they could be amplified. This division was an early version of the Couple Cofounders: Raymond and Yuzu (spouses as co-founders) model and foreshadowed the later structure of the Raymond Thirty brand, with a public-facing person and behind-the-scenes operator.
From Content to Community
By late 2019, when Raymond had started working in Beijing, the account’s focus had clearly shifted from personal-growth articles to community-management methodology. Raymond proposed that “creating content is not about pleasing a target audience, but about attracting people with a similar disposition,” and distinguished “people seeking short-term peaks” from “genuine fans who stay for the long term.” After one community article was reposted, about 40 readers proactively contacted him through the WeChat ID at the bottom of the article in two days. He used this as an example while launching a “learning community for community operators,” modeled on the American CMX, with the idea of creating a localized version in Beijing. 2 This thinking seeded Three Essentials of Community Operations: Human Nature, Marketing, and Business and The Niche Business: Build a Reachable List, Make Friends, and Play the Long Game, and echoed his view that “a brand is what people still know you for after the product and service are removed.”
Ending and Transformation
In early 2020, Raymond returned to Taiwan after a knowledge-industry New Year event in Shenzhen. The pandemic then prevented him from returning to Beijing, interrupting the original five-year Beijing plan (see The 2020 Retreat from Beijing to Taiwan and the Birth of Raymond Thirty). In December, his article “Goodbye Beijing, See You Next Year” reviewed his 2020 in Taiwan month by month: consulting for a brand group’s digital transformation in March, starting the Raymond Thirty podcast in April, moving his content hub to his own self-hosted website in May, holding a live podcast event in November, and beginning to test paid subscriptions in December. 3 The WeChat account then became a record of the past. Raymond shifted his business base to his own website and podcast, changing his career path from “working in Beijing” to a company of one and Super Individual (Super Individual) (see From Raymond Hou to Raymond Thirty).
Significance
In the history of Raymond’s work, the 柚智夫妻 account is a documented testing ground. It validated the couple’s division of labor, public retrospectives, output-driven learning, and attracting people with shared interests. These methods were retained and recombined during the Raymond Thirty era. The account itself did not grow into a long-term business, but it recorded a period of preparing intensely for a goal that external events redirected. It was also an early setting in which Raymond internalized the belief that “even when circumstances change, an individual can keep taking action.”
Sources
Footnotes
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Raymond Hou, “Day 354 of the Countdown: What Did We Learn From Our First Week Running a Public Account?” WeChat public account, 2018-08-26. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “A Learning Community for Community Operators: We Look Forward to Your Participation,” WeChat public account, 2019-12-04. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “Goodbye Beijing, See You Next Year: Where to Find Us?” WeChat public account, 2020-12-08. View original ↩