How Making 1,000 Mistakes Turned Me Into a Builder
I still remember the exact feeling. Standing on a stage at my university in China, hundreds of students staring at me, and my voice stuck in my throat. I couldn't speak loud enough. I couldn't get the words out. All I wanted to do was run.
That was the version of me who was terrified of making mistakes.
A few weeks ago, I pressed send on a launch campaign for the first digital product I've ever built — an AI-powered public speaking coaching app — and sent it to 4,500 people. The product wasn't perfect. The onboarding was minimal. I had $20 of API credits. And I was weirdly calm about it.
The journey between those two moments is the whole story.
The Kid Who Learned English From Books
I grew up in a small city in China. Nobody in my family had lived in a big city, let alone moved abroad. I studied Optical Information & Technology — fibre optics and physics — but what I actually spent my time on was teaching myself English.
I found these strange, beautiful ways to learn. I'd read out loud for hours. I'd listen to audiobooks obsessively, cracking every word. I finished Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and Gone with the Wind by ear. Got an IELTS score of 7.5.
I discovered a profession called simultaneous interpreter — someone who translates in real-time. It paid well and it involved language. I was in.
I applied to the University of Westminster in London for an MA in Translation & Interpreting. Got accepted. Moved to London.
And within a week, I realised how terrible my English actually was.
All my English had come from books. I could read Bryson but I couldn't understand a casual conversation at a pub. My confidence was destroyed. I spent my first year mostly hanging out with Chinese friends, avoiding situations where I'd have to speak and reveal how limited I really was.
I was afraid of making mistakes. So I stopped trying.
The Book That Changed Everything
At some point during that first difficult year, I fell into self-help books. I was searching for something — permission, maybe, to stop being so afraid.
I found it in Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning.
The core idea hit me like a brick: making mistakes isn't a sign of failure. It's the most important part of learning anything. The people who improve fastest are the ones who put themselves in positions where they'll mess up, over and over, and learn from each rep.
Growing up in a traditional Asian household, I'd been conditioned to believe the opposite. You get told off for making mistakes. You learn to avoid them. You learn to stay quiet, stay safe, stay small.
I decided to stop staying small.
I started pushing myself to speak more English, even badly. I started volunteering for things that scared me. And I found Toastmasters.
Walking Into the Room Terrified
My first Toastmasters meeting was exactly as terrifying as I expected. A room full of confident speakers, and me — the guy who couldn't order a coffee without rehearsing the sentence in his head first.
I volunteered for a Table Topic anyway. It went badly. But I survived.
I kept showing up. Once every two weeks, I'd go to a meeting, give an occasional speech when I felt brave enough, and slowly — very slowly — get a little less scared.
My English improved. My confidence crept up. But the progress was gradual, almost invisible. Three years of showing up and I was better, but I wasn't transformed.
Then everything fell apart, and everything changed.
Heartbreak, Hyper-Focus, and 100 Repetitions
In 2017, I was in the middle of a painful breakup. The kind that strips everything away and leaves you with a simple question: what do I actually want to work on?
I chose myself. And I chose to compete.
I set a goal to enter the Toastmasters International Speech Contest — a global competition where speakers compete from club level all the way to the world championship. I wrote a speech about the thing I knew most intimately: being afraid of making mistakes and learning to embrace them.
The speech was personal. It was about growing up being told off for errors, coming to London and hiding because my English wasn't perfect, and the moment I realised that the mistakes were the whole point.
And then I did something I'd never done before. Instead of practising casually — one meeting every couple of weeks, the odd rehearsal when I felt like it — I went all in.
I went on a mini tour across London. I presented at an art gallery near Hoxton. Inside Accenture's Toastmasters club. In a church near Croydon on a weekend. At TFL's "Tube Speak" group. Every time, I'd perform the same seven-minute speech, get feedback, adjust, and do it again.
I probably delivered that speech a hundred times.
In the Area final, I came second. I thought I was out. But both first and second place advance to the Division final. I was still in — and I went even harder.
My friend Andy (who'd later become my business partner) helped me with countless one-on-one video reviews. Jill, another friend, coached me on voice projection and relaxation techniques. On the Saturday before the Division final, I went to my office alone, set up chairs in the empty room, and rehearsed my movement, my eye contact, my timing, my pauses. Everything.
I was going to leave it all on that stage.
The Zone
The Division B final was held at the University of Law. About a hundred people in the audience. Eight speakers, including the guy who'd beaten me in the Area contest.
Before my turn, I stepped outside into the corridor. Just me and the quiet. Taking slow breaths.
Then they called my name.
I walked on stage, delivered my opening line, and got a few laughs. And something clicked. I wasn't performing anymore. I wasn't reciting. I was there — fully present, connected to every person in that room.
I could feel the audience feeling what I felt. The frustration of being held back by fear. The relief of letting it go. The applause, the laughter — it wasn't polite. It was real. They got it. They got me.
Halfway through, I knew I'd won. Not in an arrogant way. I could just feel it in the room. The connection was too strong.
Third place — not me. Second place — not me. First place — Brian.
I knew it. And it was still unbelievable.
The Identity Shift
Looking back, I know it was "just" a Toastmasters contest. A few hundred people in the London speaking community. Not the World Championship. Not a TED talk.
But it changed everything.
Not because of the trophy. Because of what I proved to myself: if I got hyper-focused on one thing, put myself in uncomfortable situations over and over, embraced every mistake as a lesson, and asked for help — I could do things I never thought possible.
A non-native English speaker, from a small city in China, standing on a stage in London and winning a speech contest against native speakers. Speaking about the very fear that had silenced me for years.
After that, everything accelerated. I started dating with actual confidence — went from having zero experience to meeting my wife within a year (happily married five years now with a one-year-old son). At Third Bridge, I started speaking up more, taking on bigger roles, and eventually doubled my salary between 2020 and 2022. I did an MBA at Imperial College London. I transitioned from data analyst to product manager.
The contest didn't teach me public speaking. It taught me what happens when you stop being afraid of mistakes and go all in.
Building a Business (And Hitting the Ceiling)
After the contest, I had a realisation about why I'd improved so dramatically.
It wasn't three years of casual Toastmasters meetings. It was two months of intense, focused practice — delivering the same speech to fifteen different audiences, iterating based on real feedback each time. The focused reps did more than years of showing up occasionally.
That insight became a business idea.
What if I created a more focused, intensive training than Toastmasters? Something that helped people overcome their fear of public speaking in months, not years? Same transformation I experienced, but faster and more structured?
My friend Andy and I started running our own workshops in London. Two sessions a week (most Toastmasters clubs meet twice a month). We charged £39/month at first, then gradually increased — £59, £99, £149, £199, £249, and eventually £299/month.
Covid nearly killed us. We migrated everything online from 2020 to 2022. When we returned to in-person training in 2023, we were doing about £70K a year in revenue. Not bad for a side business run alongside my full-time job.
But by 2024, something had shifted.
The model was stagnant. We were essentially our own employees — showing up twice a week, running the same sessions, doing a sales pitch at the end to convert free attendees into members. With a new baby and a full-time job, the twice-weekly commitment was crushing. And I noticed something uncomfortable: I wasn't passionate about public speaking coaching anymore.
What I actually enjoyed was building the systems around the business. Setting up Stripe automations. Creating the member database in Airtable. Building automated onboarding flows with Customer.io. Designing the course curriculum. Making the whole operation run smoother.
I wasn't a coach. I was a builder pretending to be a coach.
The Moment I Picked Up Claude Code
In May 2025, I told my business partner I needed a break. No more workshops for a while. I spent the summer learning piano, spending time with my son, and quietly feeling restless.
By October, the restlessness had a name: I needed to build something.
I'd been following indie hacker stories online — solo founders building small, profitable digital products. I was drawn to it, but I had no idea how to code properly. I'd started a JavaScript course months ago and never finished it.
Then I thought: what if I just tried Claude Code?
I'd used Claude before for small things — writing Google Apps Script for Airtable automations, setting up Customer.io workflows. It worked like magic for those tasks. But building a full web application? That felt like a different league.
I tried it anyway.
I described what I wanted: an app that replicated our coaching methodology. A place where users could record a two-minute speech, get AI-powered feedback based on the coaching framework I'd refined over six years, and work through structured courses on impromptu speaking.
Two weeks later, the prototype was working.
I was blown away. Not just by the technology — by what it meant. The barrier between "person with domain expertise and an idea" and "person who can ship software" had collapsed. I didn't need a technical co-founder. I didn't need to finish that JavaScript course. I needed a clear idea, deep domain knowledge, and the willingness to build.
Shipping Imperfectly (Embracing Mistakes, Again)
Here's the part that brings it all full circle.
The app wasn't perfect. The onboarding was bare-bones — you log in, and there's a practice section and a course. No tutorial, no walkthrough, no polish. I had $20 in API credits for the AI coaching feature. The landing page was functional, not beautiful.
And I shipped it anyway. To 4,500 people.
Because the same lesson I learned on that stage in 2018 applies here: the path to getting good runs directly through making mistakes. You don't get better by preparing endlessly. You get better by performing — in front of real people, with real stakes — and learning from what happens.
My first launch was messy. But that was fine. That was the point.
I wasn't launching a perfect product. I was launching a learning experience. Every email that got ignored, every user who dropped off, every piece of feedback — that's a rep. And I know from experience that focused reps, even imperfect ones, compound faster than you'd ever expect.
What I've Learned (So Far)
Here's what I know after going from a frozen voice in a Chinese university to pressing "send" on my first product launch:
The mistakes are the curriculum. My speech was about this. My business is about this. My life has been about this. Every time I tried to avoid mistakes, I stagnated. Every time I leaned into them, I grew.
Hyper-focus beats casual effort. Three years of monthly Toastmasters meetings did less than two months of daily focused practice. Two hours a night of building, with clear goals, will outperform years of "I'll get to it eventually."
Identity shifts are real. There's a version of me that would never post this. Would never ship an imperfect product. Would never put himself out there to be judged. That version died on a stage at the University of Law in 2018 when I realised the audience wasn't judging me — they were connecting with me.
You don't need permission. Nobody told me I could enter a speech contest as a non-native speaker. Nobody told me I could start a coaching business. Nobody told me I could build an app with AI in two weeks. I just did it, badly at first, and figured it out as I went.
Building is my thing. Not coaching, not product management, not entrepreneurship in the abstract. Building. Making things that work. Whether it's an Excel automation, a Stripe integration, or an AI-powered coaching app — the tools change, the instinct doesn't.
What Happens Next
The launch happened. The emails went out. I'll share the real numbers — opens, clicks, conversions, revenue, failures, everything — in a separate post.
I'm documenting this entire journey because I believe more people should build things. The tools have never been more accessible. The barrier has never been lower. And the feeling of shipping something you made with your own hands — even if it's imperfect, even if nobody buys it — is worth more than another year of thinking about it.
If you're reading this and you've been sitting on an idea, consider this your sign. You don't need to be ready. You don't need it to be perfect. You just need to be willing to make mistakes.
I should know. I've made about a thousand of them. And I'm just getting started.