The study

Four moves

Hanoi, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, San Francisco.

• 2002. Hanoi to Singapore, to study. A friend showed me Google AdWords in my third year, and after graduation I joined a search marketing agency.
• 2009. Back to Vietnam. I co-founded an agency in Ho Chi Minh City and built it to 35 full-time staff in three years.
• 2014. Back to Singapore, in January, as employee number 12 in the whole of Asia-Pacific. By 2020, more than $1B a year in paid media for Google: 65 people, 11 offices. Growth through paid media: 5X for G Suite and Google Cloud Platform, 30X for Google Play.
• November 2021. Singapore to San Francisco, with the same company.

Read the 2013 note

26 national parks

Not all of them were worth the trip.

• Yosemite: "Iconic granite, waterfalls, valley magic"
• Zion: "Red rock canyons, paved family trails"
• Yellowstone: "Geysers, wildlife, truly unique"
• Bryce Canyon: "Hoodoos, otherworldly, manageable size"
• Grand Canyon: "Awe-inspiring, South Rim family-friendly"
• North Cascades: "Dramatic alpine scenery, uncrowded"
• Death Valley: "Otherworldly desert, surprising beauty"
• Arches: "Iconic formations, short hikes"
• Joshua Tree: "Beautiful desert scenery"
• Pinnacles: "An underrated gem near the Bay Area"
• Redwood: "The tallest trees on earth"
• Canyonlands: "Grand in scale, less crowded"
• Capitol Reef: "The most underrated Utah park"
• Mount Rainier: "Stunning volcano with wildflower meadows"
• Crater Lake: "water so blue it looks unreal"
• Petrified Forest: "surprisingly colorful"
• Saguaro: "Not a destination park"
• Lassen Volcanic: "probably our least favorite"
• Hawaiʻi Volcanoes: "unlike anything on the mainland"
• Haleakalā: "The sunrise from the summit is famous"
• Great Smoky Mountains: "The landscape was... fine."
• Acadia: "Too small and too commercial for our taste."
• Dry Tortugas: "our family was not enjoying that ride"
• Mammoth Cave: "the one eastern park that stands on its own"
• Everglades: "So-so for our family."
• Shenandoah: "nothing we hadn't seen before"

Read the full guide

A name

Ten seasons in one week. It fixed my English and gave me my name.

I watched all ten seasons of Friends in one week, from about 6am to midnight, ordering takeaway to save the walk to the canteen. Over the next few years I rewatched the whole thing about ten more times, until I could turn the sound off and still know every line. It fixed my English. It also gave me the name I have used ever since.

I started using the English name "Chandler" because I love that character so much!

Read the 2013 note

397 voices

DIALØGUE, across 7 languages

DIALØGUE turns a topic or PDF into a research-backed podcast, and you review the outline and script before any audio is generated. A person stays in the loop on purpose.

The same thinking runs this site. Six long guides in 4 days came from one pipeline: outline, write with search built in, generate the image, publish, and Sydney knows about it straight away.

• DIALØGUE, first version: about 6 months.
• STRAŦUM, since retired: 75 days.
• DIALØGUE rebuilt, January 2026: 14 days, 119 commits.

The whole episodeDIALØGUEBuilding it from scratchThe 14-day rebuild

Prova

Guided sprints, real submissions, and honest review for marketers and agency operators.

It shipped in April 2026. After that, I rewrote the curriculum two more times.

ProvaWhat it took to ship

$200 a month to $45

I shipped more, not less.

I track what AI costs. My bill went from $200 a month to $45, and I shipped more, not less.

The AI bill

2,724 lines

One AI audio change broke production.

I once rolled back 2,724 lines after one AI audio change broke production.

• 40 real podcast episodes in 7 languages, graded: six fixes in my own pipeline.
• Ask Sydney hit rate: 30% to 81.2%, once I measured it.

The rollbackThe evaluationHow I measured Sydney

The fundamentals

B.Eng Electrical & Electronics, then formal software courses alongside the day job.

Once you know the overall picture, it is much easier and better to ask AI to do the work for you, but you need to know the different lego blocks and how they fit together. Otherwise you don't know what you don't know.

• Nanyang Technological University, 2002 to 2006. B.Eng Electrical & Electronics. Merit Scholarship (4 years).
• Machine Learning Specialization
• ChatGPT Prompt Engineering
• Generative AI for Everyone
• Building Systems with the ChatGPT API
• Neural Networks
• LangChain
• Vector Databases
• Google IT Automation with Python, 2023
• Google Cybersecurity, 2023
• React Basics, Meta
• React Advanced, Meta
• Django Web Framework
• The Full Stack

How I actually learnedIT Automation certificateCybersecurity certificate

Written down

I also wrote four books along the way.

In 2007 I started writing down what I was learning, as a digital marketing blog. I never stopped. Every other book on these shelves is one of those posts, and you can click any of them. I also wrote four books along the way.

• 2010. Get Going with Google AdWords
• 2013. Vietnam Digital Marketing Fundamentals
• 2015. Search Engine Marketing in the Mobile Age
• 2018. Learn to Lead

Read the archive

The Korean shelf

72% came back as summaries, not translations. So I redid the whole language.

I set thirty agents to translate the whole archive: 3.9 million words in 4 days. Then the Korean shelf came back wrong. 72% were not translations. They were summaries. A 4,000-word analysis had become 200 words.

So I redid the whole language. Parallel execution amplifies mistakes, and the checklist is what catches them.

Read how it went

Recommendations

Rocky Fu, 2009: "a young, smart, quick learner"

• 2009. Rocky Fu, on the same team: "a young, smart, quick learner"
• 2010. Kristian Bowry, on another team: "the ability to translate the commercial aspects of what clients require and what we're trying to deliver for them"
• 2015. John Sargent, who reported to me: "taking the time to understand the perspectives of his entire team when making directional decisions"
• 2016. Howard Wu, a client: "I worked very closely with Chandler and his team to help launch and build the Google Cloud Platform business online across all the APAC markets."
• 2026. Ed Tsue, on another team: "By the time I’ve spotted a problem, he’s usually already thought about it and has a fix ready."
• 2026. Ketan Goyani, on the same team: "He doesn't just keep up with the pace of change; he actively applies new tools to solve real problems."

All of them, on LinkedIn

Back to school

Used TextEdit on Mac to write code!

Sixteen years into advertising, in early 2022, I started learning to code through a lot of formal courses alongside the day job. My first chatbot came in June 2023, with ChatGPT as my guide.

Built at work since then:

Used TextEdit on Mac to write code!

• A guided briefing and planning flow that replaced a manual, multi-step one.
• A campaign rules engine that catches wrong dates and overbooked weekends before launch.
• Analytics tools that turn messy research spreadsheets into charts, with an AI assistant and a backup model.
• A scenario planner for budget allocation, with a data pipeline underneath.

How I actually learned

On the screen: A whole campaign

Brief to report. One whole campaign, worked in the open

GreenLeaf is a made-up company, so nothing is confidential. You can read a whole campaign from the brief through planning, creative and launch to the report, with the actual files to download.

The course teaches the operating model behind it: what to automate, what to protect, what to deepen and what to change. Before that I built nine marketing agents in STRAŦUM. It is retired now, and its first version is open source.

Read the GreenLeaf campaignThe courseSTRAŦUM, retired and open source