Cross-Border E-commerce × AI × Social Media — Building Again, One Step at a Time

I'm about to turn 30.

And somehow, as this milestone gets closer, I feel like I'm finally starting to understand a few things about life.

Over the past decade, I've been through family conflicts, unrequited love, meaningless socializing, career changes, failed investments, self-doubt, and far too much time spent overthinking things that probably didn't deserve that much energy.

I spent years moving from one job to another, always busy, always trying to figure out what came next.

But being busy doesn't necessarily mean you're moving forward.

So, at 30, I've decided to start over.

I'm going back to something I know well:

Cross-border e-commerce.

But this time, I'm doing things differently.

I'm combining what I've learned from years in e-commerce with the AI tools that are becoming increasingly powerful.

The goal is simple:

Build an online business as a solo entrepreneur, use AI wherever it genuinely makes sense, and document the journey along the way.

I don't know exactly where this road will lead.

And that's part of the reason I'm starting.

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01 — Where It All Started

I graduated from university in 2019 with a degree in Business English.

At the time, Southeast Asian e-commerce was growing rapidly. Almost by accident, I found myself entering the world of cross-border e-commerce.

My first job was in Guangzhou, China.

I worked with several brands, helping them operate and market their businesses in Southeast Asian markets.

That was where I started building my foundation in e-commerce.

I learned about platform operations, product selection, marketing, advertising, logistics, customers, and everything else that comes with selling products across borders.

Some of the brands I worked with eventually became fairly well known.

Then the pandemic happened.

I returned to Dongguan and joined a small company as an e-commerce operator.

The timing happened to be good. E-commerce platforms were growing quickly, and the company already had some experience and resources behind it.

We achieved some results.

Eventually, I even found myself standing on a stage at a platform's annual event receiving an award.

I was young.

And, looking back, probably a little too proud of myself.

When you're young and something goes well, it's easy to think:

"Maybe I'm actually pretty good at this."

That confidence can be useful.

But too much of it can also become a problem.

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02 — My First Startup

Partly because of that confidence, and partly because of an invitation from a relative, I decided to try entrepreneurship for the first time.

There were three of us.

A relative, one of his friends who had experience operating Amazon businesses, and me.

We were young, ambitious, and ready to get started.

At least, that's how I remember it.

We started from almost nothing.

Company registration.

Accounting and taxes.

Finding an office.

Renovating the office.

Opening platform accounts.

Finding suppliers.

Figuring out logistics.

Running the stores.

Marketing.

Shipping orders.

We handled almost everything ourselves.

At the time, I believed that if we worked hard enough, eventually things would work out.

But reality doesn't always work that way.

Our Amazon business never really got off the ground.

The main business eventually shifted toward Southeast Asia, which I was responsible for.

But even then, we were mostly around break-even.

Every day required time and energy, while the business continued to consume money through rent and operating costs.

After about ten months, we reached the same conclusion:

It was time to stop.

So we did.

Our first startup ended.

It wasn't a dramatic failure.

There was no movie-style collapse.

We simply looked at the numbers, looked at the situation, and decided that continuing to put resources into something that wasn't working didn't make sense.

Looking back, I don't consider those ten months wasted.

I learned what it actually feels like to build a business from zero.

And I learned an important lesson:

Hard work matters, but hard work alone doesn't guarantee a successful business.

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03 — A Few More Wrong Turns

After that first startup, I went through two more job changes.

I also experienced two unsuccessful investments.

There were plenty of moments when I questioned myself.

Maybe I wasn't good enough.

Maybe I had made the wrong choices.

Maybe entrepreneurship simply wasn't for me.

But over time, I started seeing those experiences differently.

Sometimes failure isn't telling you:

"You can't do it."

Sometimes it's telling you:

"This direction, this timing, or this approach wasn't right."

The distinction matters.

Because if you treat every failure as proof that you're incapable, eventually you'll stop trying.

I don't want to do that.

So I'm giving entrepreneurship another shot.

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04 — Why Build an Independent Online Business?

This time, I'm focusing on an independent online store combined with social media and AI.

Why an independent store?

Because I believe the real value isn't simply having your own website.

It's having more control over your business.

On a marketplace, you're operating inside someone else's ecosystem.

The rules can change.

The algorithms can change.

Fees can change.

Visibility can change.

Your relationship with customers is also partly mediated by the platform.

With an independent store, you have more control over things such as:

Your customer relationships

You can gradually build your own customer base and first-party data through orders, email subscriptions, purchase history and customer interactions.

Your brand experience

You decide how the website looks, how products are presented, how customers move through the site and how the story is told.

Your marketing

You can combine different traffic sources — search, social media, content, email, influencers, paid advertising and other channels.

Your long-term assets

A website, domain, content library, customer relationships and audience can continue to accumulate over time.

Your ability to experiment

You can test different products, content formats, offers and customer experiences without being limited to a single marketplace environment.

But there is an important reality here.

An independent store doesn't magically create traffic.

In fact, three of the biggest challenges are:

Traffic.

Trust.

Operations.

And for someone starting with limited resources, traffic can be particularly expensive.

That's where social media comes in.

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05 — Why Social Media?

I don't want to build a social media account that simply posts advertisements.

Instead, I want to document the journey.

My work.

My experiments.

Products I discover.

Things I learn.

Things that fail.

And, occasionally, ordinary parts of my life.

The idea is simple:

Let people get to know the person behind the business.

Instead of:

Product → Advertisement → Click → Purchase

I'm interested in something more organic:

Person → Content → Trust → Audience → Store → Customer

I'm not sure whether it will work.

And I'm not pretending that becoming a content creator is easy.

It isn't.

But during the early stages of a business, when paid traffic can be expensive, attention and trust are valuable resources.

So rather than spending all my money trying to buy attention, I want to see if I can earn some of it.

In other words:

I want to become part of the content instead of making every piece of content an advertisement.

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06 — Where Does AI Fit In?

AI is everywhere right now.

But I don't see AI as magic.

I see it as a productivity tool.

That's probably the most important distinction for me.

If something used to take one person three hours, and AI can help reduce that to thirty minutes, that's meaningful.

If AI can help turn an idea into a first draft, an image, a video, a piece of analysis, or a workflow, that's useful.

For an independent online business, there are plenty of areas where AI can potentially help:

• Writing and editing

• Product research

• Image generation

• Video creation

• Data analysis

• Customer support

• Content production

• Market research

• Workflow automation

• Social media management

But my goal isn't:

"Let AI run my business."

My goal is:

"Use AI to increase what one person can accomplish."

That's a much more interesting experiment to me.

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07 — Can One Person Really Build an AI Team?

This is probably the part I'm most curious about.

I've been experimenting with AI agents and tools that can connect different parts of my workflow.

I've also been working on a setup where my home computer can act as a remote workstation, connected to online business systems and mobile access.

The idea is simple.

If the systems work reliably, I should be able to use my phone to give instructions remotely and have AI handle certain tasks on my computer.

Writing.

Research.

Data processing.

Content preparation.

Business operations.

And potentially much more.

I'm still experimenting.

So I'm not going to make the usual claim that:

"AI can completely replace a team."

I don't know that yet.

I want to find out through actual use.

That's one of the reasons I'm documenting this journey.

I'd rather test these ideas in the real world than spend all day talking about how powerful AI might become.

If I can eventually build a business where the additional cost of AI tools is covered by the value and efficiency they create, then something interesting starts to happen.

One person could potentially operate with the leverage of a much larger team.

That leads to a concept I find increasingly interesting:

The solopreneur.

Not someone who does absolutely everything alone.

But one person who handles direction, judgment, creativity and decisions, while AI systems handle as much of the repetitive and process-driven work as possible.

In other words:

One human + one business system + an AI team.

That's the experiment.

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08 — Starting Over at 30

So why start again at 30?

Maybe because it took me almost ten years to stop being so afraid of other people's opinions.

To stop constantly comparing myself with other people.

To stop wasting energy on relationships that didn't matter.

To stop overthinking every decision.

And, most importantly, to start accepting myself.

For a long time, I cared too much about how other people saw me.

Now I'm becoming more interested in a different question:

What am I actually capable of?

That's why I don't want to create a story where I pretend I already know I'll succeed.

I don't.

I want to run an experiment.

I want to find out whether someone with years of cross-border e-commerce experience can build an independent online business from zero.

Whether social media can generate a real audience.

Whether AI can genuinely improve the way one person works.

Whether one person can build systems that once required a small team.

And whether all of this can eventually become a sustainable business.

I don't know the answer yet.

And I'm okay with that.

Because maybe the most interesting part isn't knowing whether I'll succeed.

Maybe it's finding out how far I can go before I fail.

If I fall, I want to know how close I was to the finish line.

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This Is Only the Beginning

This is my second attempt at entrepreneurship.

And this is the first entry in this journal.

It won't be the last.

I'll be documenting the journey as I go:

Building an independent online business from zero.

Finding and testing products.

Growing through social media.

Figuring out what AI can actually do.

Experimenting with AI agents and automation.

Tracking what works — and what doesn't.

I'll share the wins.

I'll share the failures.

I'll share the mistakes.

And I'll share what I learn along the way.

I don't know where this journey will end.

But I know where it starts.

Right here.

And maybe, years from now, I'll be able to look back at this first post and see exactly how far I went.

Let's find out.

— Dison