“Raymond Thirty” is a brand founded in 2020 by Raymond Hou (Raymond) and his wife Yuzu (Song Zhiyou). Raymond began recording the podcast of the same name in March 2020, at age 25. “Raymond” came from his English name; “Thirty” pointed toward the age of 30. The brand began as an interview show documenting people at the threshold of adulthood, and over five years grew into a newsletter, online courses, and a membership community. Its central theme gradually converged on “Super Individuals.” Raymond uses the podcast’s three seasons to mark this evolution: each season had a different role, corresponding to a different stage of his life and business.
Name and original intent: what can we do before 30?
The first season began with an observation: Taiwanese podcasts often discussed business, finance, and trends, but few were “about individuals.” Raymond took “at thirty, one stands firm” from the Analects as his cue, but deliberately interpreted “standing firm” as “having a clearer understanding of society and oneself,” rather than starting a family and a career. In the podcast’s launch statement, he called out his dislike of “credentialism”—advice like “you’re still a student, study first” or “you’re only 22, don’t start a business”—and argued that in a time of rapidly changing tools and technology, individuals have paths to achievement completely different from those of the past.1 The first season was positioned as learning while sharing and looking for new career coordinates together with listeners. Raymond and Yuzu were both still employed by other companies then, and the show was more like a record for himself and a long-term project. Related concepts are discussed in Super Individual and Career Development.
Season two: running yourself like a company
After Raymond left traditional employment and founded a company with Yuzu in 2020, the brand entered the “company of one” stage. With only two people handling everything, season two’s theme became “how to run yourself like a company.” The product line took shape quickly: the “Raymond Weekly” newsletter launched, Notion online courses were released, followed by Notion training camps and the Lifehacker Premium membership. During this period, Raymond clarified the idea of a “company of one.” He argued that its opposite is not “many people,” but “unlimited expansion”; it seeks stability, independence, and long-term flexibility. He also distinguished three often-confused terms: independent work is a “behavior,” a personal brand is a “result,” and a company of one is a “model.” Their shared goal is to “increase one’s control over life.”2 This logic is why he rarely promoted the phrase “personal brand”; he considered making it an end in itself and trying to build one quickly to be putting the cart before the horse. Business trade-offs are discussed in Business Thinking.
Choosing content formats and letting the field lie fallow
There was a nearly two-year podcast hiatus between the second and third seasons. Raymond explained it as a business decision: for him, podcasting was more like journaling and reflection, with no direct connection to revenue. After leaving employment and losing a regular salary, he had to focus his time and energy on products, services, and members. The “fallow period” was not stagnation; he had moved to another field. Several cohorts of the Notion training camp ran, membership services continued, and the smart-home project and YouTube channel advanced alongside corporate training, talks, and the newsletter.3 This decision showed a recurring pattern in the brand’s operations: use the strategic mindset of a personal business to allocate resources; test worthwhile ideas in the smallest possible way; cut them if they do not work; and avoid falling into sunk costs. Complementary work practices included documenting experience (turning a quality-control manual inspired by Dedao into a teaching-assistant manual) and setting “meetings are always the last option” as a collaboration principle. Remote and asynchronous collaboration is discussed in Remote Work.
Season three: returning to the original intent and digging through interviews
In August 2023, after a hiatus of about two years, the podcast returned for a third season. The company had then operated for about two and a half years, its products were more mature, and it had more breathing room. Raymond defined the significance of the return as “finding the original intent again.”4 Season three centered on interviews, but deliberately avoided questions such as “What successful things have you done?” or “What’s next?” Instead, it asked what tools guests used, what habits they had, and what workflows helped them solve problems in life, so listeners could take away ready-to-use approaches. The show set a biweekly interview as its regular format, interspersed with highlights from member livestreams or simple sharing. It also built on the earlier written interview series, “Atlas of Modern Digital Life,” and dug deeper.
Business beliefs that recur
Several themes ran through all three seasons. First was “share what we are doing,” the belief that one does not have to wait until becoming a certain kind of person to have permission to share; the present is the best time. Second was treating dissatisfaction as fuel—early on, dissatisfaction with one’s living conditions, later dissatisfaction with society and the environment, which led to new directions such as the smart home. Third was the brand’s assessment of its own strengths and weaknesses: it was good at cultivating trust and belonging within its inner circle, and paid membership was the right starting point for attracting people with shared values, but it was relatively weak at marketing to strangers on the outside. Others once described it as “well-regarded by word of mouth, but unclear about what it actually does.”
In season three, Raymond condensed the strategic mindset running through the brand into one sentence: “Be absolutely optimistic about the future and relatively pessimistic about the plan in front of you.” This brand evolution ultimately converged on the “Super Individual” theme and became the prehistory of the 2025 course The Super Individual’s Way of Working.
Related entries: The Super Individual: A Definition for Today’s Professionals, The Super Individual’s Way of Working (55-Unit Online Course), Yuzu (Song Zhiyou)
Sources cited
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “EP00: Raymond Thirty Season One Launch Statement (What Can We Do Before 30?),” Firstory podcast, 2020-02-27. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “What Is a Company of One? Why Do I Rarely Talk About ‘Personal Branding’? The Raymond Thirty Community for Independent Workers?” Firstory podcast, 2020-09-02. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “【August Issue】How to Handle Parents’ Expectations and Even Emotional Blackmail? Notion Training Camp Launches | Company of One Experiment Monthly Report,” Firstory podcast, 2021-08-29. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “S3EP01 Season Three Relaunch: What Kind of Podcast Do We Want to Build? / What Have We Done in These 30 Months?” Firstory podcast, 2023-08-10. View original ↩