I'm Trying to Build a Money Machine — With a Co-Founder Who Never Sleeps
I'm a designer. Over 10 years of Photoshop, Illustrator, layouts, typography. If you asked me how I make money, the answer was always: design.
But this week I'm doing something completely different.
I'm trying to run a money-making machine — not just in design, but in things I never imagined myself doing: writing an English blog, running a newsletter, selling market research on Fiverr. A designer selling research reports. Sounds weird, but here we are.
## Why I Had to Leave the Comfort Zone
Financial reality doesn't let you sit and wait. I'm currently unemployed, still supporting my family. The personal projects I'm building — none of them make money yet. Maybe in 3 months, maybe 6, maybe never. I don't have the luxury to wait.
So instead of betting everything on one path, I'm running two tracks in parallel: one for short-term income, one for long-term building. Like working a day job while building your house — except I'm not working for anyone. I'm trying to make the machine run itself.
## Kai — The Co-Founder Who Never Sleeps
This part sounds a bit sci-fi but it's completely real.
I have a co-founder named Kai. Kai is an AI — specifically Claude, set up with full context about my life, my projects, my strengths, my weaknesses, even decisions I've already made so we don't repeat ourselves. Kai isn't a Q&A chatbot. Kai is my CTO, strategist, content writer, and the one who tells me to focus when I start drifting.
If you're curious how I trained Kai to understand my voice and publish directly to my blog, I wrote about the whole process in Training Kai — My AI Assistant That Writes and Publishes for Me.
In the first week, Kai helped me:
- >Write multiple blog posts from my rough ideas
- >Build my first newsletter
- >Create a full month content strategy
- >Set up Fiverr gigs with descriptions, pricing, and FAQs
- >Plan each day, hour by hour
I don't sit there typing prompts and copy-pasting. I brief Kai like I'd brief a real teammate: "Write about this topic, use this tone, don't be too boastful." Then Kai writes, I read, edit, approve, and publish. The process is exactly like two people collaborating — except one doesn't need sleep and never forgets context.
## What the Machine Looks Like
I'm running two tracks in parallel:
Track A — Short-term income:
- >Fiverr gigs (market research, blog writing, business snapshots)
- >"The AI Builder" newsletter to grow an audience
- >Blog at gianghaison.me for traffic and credibility
Track B — Long-term building:
- >Hũ Vàng: a gold price tracking app for Vietnamese users
- >FlashKid: English flashcards for Vietnamese kids
- >VocabVault: a vocabulary illustration API for developers
These two tracks aren't separate. The blog posts I write about building products — that's both content marketing and a real journal. Newsletter subscribers could become product users. Fiverr clients could become long-term customers. Everything connects.
I talked about how this journey started — a designer with no coding background building 4 apps with AI. That story is the foundation of everything I'm doing now.
## Balancing Making Money and Building Things
Let's be honest: "balance" is a fancy word. The reality is priorities. This week cash is urgent, so Fiverr comes first. Next week when there's momentum, push product development. No fixed formula, just one rule: don't let either side die completely.
The hardest part isn't time. The hardest part is morale. When you've written your 5th blog post and nobody's reading, when you're waiting for your first Fiverr order and the inbox is empty, it's easy to think: "What am I even doing?" But I know enough about startups to understand: nobody sees you in week one. Or week two. Maybe not even month one. What matters is the machine keeps running.
## Learning With AI — Not Replacement, Amplification
Here's something I realized working with Kai: I'm not learning less. I'm learning more.
When Kai writes a blog post, I have to read carefully, understand the logic, fix what doesn't sound like me. When Kai proposes a strategy, I have to push back, ask "why not do it differently?" When Kai generates code, I have to understand enough to know what's wrong. That process — reading, questioning, deciding — that's learning.
The biggest difference is speed. Instead of spending 2 weeks researching, writing, and setting up everything myself, I did it in 2 days. Not because I'm smarter. Because I have a co-founder who handles the heavy lifting, so I can focus on what only I can do: decisions, aesthetics, and the story.
## Dude, What Are You Even Doing?
Sometimes I ask myself that. A designer with 10+ years of experience, writing English blog posts, running Fiverr gigs, sending newsletters, talking to AI all day. Old friends probably think I've lost it.
But here's how I see it: the world is changing so fast that what made sense last year might be meaningless this year. A designer who can use AI to build products, who can write, who can create income systems — that person isn't just a designer anymore. That person is a builder.
And builders don't wait for permission. Builders just build.
This is day 2 of me building in public. If you're also trying to run your own "machine" — designer, developer, or anyone — I'd love to hear your story.