The Journal

Notes on building
a business that's yours

Real lessons on e-commerce, marketplaces, mindset and AI — written from ten years of building stores, losing money, and starting again.

Jun 28, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

The salary is what they pay you. The cost is what you give up - in time, identity, and optionality. Honest accounting.

Jun 28, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

Alibaba is not the only door. The 4 sourcing channels I use for small-batch China, with red flags and minimums.

Jun 27, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

The wall is data, not a verdict. Three diagnostic questions that tell you whether to push, rest, or change direction.

Jun 27, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

AI prompts that scrape, summarize, and rank competitor listings - including the one trick that finds their PPC keywords.

Jun 26, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

A full FB Ads ramp from $5/day to first scaled product - pixel, audiences, creative, the only metric that matters early.

Jun 26, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

The "I will start when X" line is the most expensive sentence in English. What actually qualifies as enough.

Jun 25, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

Willpower loses to environment every time. The physical, digital, and social environment design that runs my output.

Jun 25, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

Returns kill margin twice - shipping plus refund. The five interventions that cut my return rate from 12% to 4%.

Jun 24, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

I ran a 30-day experiment - pure AI posts vs human-edited AI vs human-written. Here are the rank and traffic numbers.

Jun 24, 2026 Dmytro Lavryniuk

One thinking move shows up in every self-made person I have ever sat down with - and almost never in everyone else.

Notes on buildinga business that's yours