How I Work: $77K/Month Solopreneur

Mark Lou

• Makes $77,000 per month as a solo entrepreneur.
• Has built 35 startups.
• Works almost every day of the year because making things is his fun.
• Lives nearly the same day every day and likes repeating that routine.
• Dislikes Sundays because he enjoys working on projects more than taking time off.
• Says he goes mad on holidays because he wants to make things.

Daily Routine

• Starts the day with coffee and breakfast with his wife.
• Goes to the gym with his wife after breakfast.
• Trains for Hyrox with exercises like sled pushes, squats, and running.
• Starts work mode after returning home.
• Avoids checking his phone, email, social media, and the internet at the beginning of the day.
• Protects a 4- to 6-hour deep work block for creating and coding.
• Opens his code editor and spends the block building things.
• Avoids customer support and email early because a bug report can derail the work that matters most to him.
• Goes online around 4:00 p.m. to check Twitter, email, and less creative work.
• Eats dinner around 5:30.
• Takes a walk and switches off work completely.
• Turns off his phone, goes offline, shuts the computer, and avoids work talk at night.
• Winds down for 30 minutes to 1 hour before bed by dimming the lights.
• Goes to bed at 9:00 p.m. every day.
• Does not set an alarm and usually wakes around 6:00 to 7:00 a.m.

Shipping Philosophy

• Says his hit rate is about 5% because about 30 of his 35 startups did not work.
• Believes founders need to keep rolling the dice by shipping repeatedly.
• Thinks one successful project can create happy users, revenue, freedom from a job, and more chances to build.
• Became attached to his routine after seeing users like his work and apps.
• Focuses less on expected output and more on what he wants to exist.
• Keeps a large list of things he wants to make, including features for existing apps and new ideas.
• Chooses the next thing by gut feeling around user impact and personal excitement.
• Believes fear of showing new creations is one of the biggest barriers to success.
• Says shipping once removes most of the fear, and more iterations make it easier.
• Believes the only way to validate an idea is to ship it with a buy button.

Recent Products And Examples

• Launched a MacOS app that uses the webcam to analyze posture and warn him when he is slouching.
• Built it because he spends a lot of time on the computer and wanted the app to exist.
• Did final checks on licensing, checkout, and customer emails before launch.
• Launched it around 3:00 p.m. with a tweet and also shared it on LinkedIn, Threads, and Reddit.
• Made about $1,000 in revenue on the Thursday launch day.
• Felt happy seeing users post the app on Twitter.
• Built TrustMR after seeing a tweet from Pieter Levels about people faking revenue.
• Turned TrustMR from a board of verified revenues into a marketplace.
• Says TrustMR makes more than $35,000 per month by itself.

AI And Productivity

• Thinks the key KPI has not changed in the AI era: the number of things shipped.
• Disagrees with obsessing over productivity setups and many background agents.
• Uses a simple setup with a code editor and a single-threaded AI chat.
• Talks to AI, gets a feature made, releases it, and moves to the next one.
• Says he shipped about 300 marketplace features in the last 3 months.
• Says he shipped six new apps in 2026 with this simple workflow.

Sleep And Focus

• Says good sleep makes him more emotionally stable.
• Says good sleep gives him locked-in focus for long tasks.
• Thinks sleep is underrated and very important.

Lessons And Advice

• Warns against becoming too emotionally attached to a small project after a few users or a little money.
• Says some projects may take years to grow enough, while a new idea could take off much faster.
• Believes every launch teaches something and grows an audience around the founder’s work.
• Says playing the game of launching repeatedly is the recipe for something eventually working.
• Advises founders to keep shipping and not give up.