A Letter From Leonard Chin

Hey!

Be it you’re one of my email subscribers, a huge fan of RelationshipOps of the Week, or just a random passerby on the internet, I thank you for being here, reading this short biography of mine. This letter hopes to give you a better understanding of where I come from and how my life is shaped by some of the most pivotal moments. So here we go…

A Humble Beginning.

My parents grew up in Perak, Malaysia, and have a strong attachment to their hometowns. So, leaving their comfort zones and moving to Singapore in their 20s wasn’t easy.

But they still did it.

Eventually gave birth to three kids, me being the youngest. And when I was ten, we decided to call Singapore our new home as we received our citizenship.

Two Conflicting Dreams.

I had a dream to become a pilot. So I studied hard in secondary (high) school, which landed me a placement in a Diploma in Aerospace Engineering.

During my first year, I was super pumped and was slotting three part-time jobs into my curriculum, so I could save enough for my tuition fees, necessities, and… my second dream.

Yes, a second one.

To become a millionaire by 27… so my parents can retire early.

But the thing is… based on my calculation, I was pretty sure I won’t get to a million dollars by 27 if I pursue the pilot path.

So I decided to just focus on the second one.

That’s when I became extremely curious about things around me and started digging into many different opportunities. Real estate. Stocks. Forex. Amazon FBA. Self-help.

Eventually, I bought a course and learned how to sell E-commerce products with sales funnels.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as well. So I had to shut down my business after four months, and I was back to square one. I took a step back and thought hard about the way forward…

“What can I do with my current skill sets?”

My New Focus.

“Media buying?” … I asked myself with “confidence”.

My pessimistic self quickly reminded me… “Remember how you burnt your own money on Facebook ads?”

“Oh yes, damn it” … as I realized the harsh reality.

So I tried again… “How about building sales funnels?”

“Seriously, those plain designs you built with Clickfunnels templates?” … my “artistic” self countered.

So I took another bold attempt… “Okay, okay, how about… bout… copywriting?”

“Sure, but your English sucks… and remember how hard you struggled to even write a 100-word essay back in school?”

I agreed… but because that was the easiest and cheapest path for me to keep going in my entrepreneurial journey… I took up the challenge.

Then I narrowed my focus down to two things:

1. Get good at writing, and

2. Get clients who need my writing.

The next day…

I created an UpWork account and started submitting proposals. Finally, after submitting the 118th, I closed my first website copywriting project with Vaival Technologies.

I then took the money and reinvested it in a community… Copy Chief, which has training on copywriting and getting clients, as well as a job board to actually get deals.

100% aligned with my focus.

30-Day Story-Based Email Breakdown Challenge.

I later specialized my craft in email copywriting and joined the authority content challenge and started something called the “30-Day Story-Based Email Breakdown Challenge”, inspired by Chris Orzechowski’s “Email of the Week” series.

I dissect 30 different emails within 30 weekdays straight and publish them on YouTube.

Four months later, I received a text from a friend…

“CONGRATS BRO!”

“What?” … I was confused.

“READ ROB’S EMAIL. NOW.” … he quickly added.

The late copywriter, Robert Allen, saw my challenge and the breakdown of his email and decided to share it with his email audience.

Not sure how huge his list was…

All I knew was…

Within 2 weeks, my channel went from less than 200 views to more than 5,000 views, and the words spread across multiple copywriting communities.

My Best Month.

Soon, I landed GuitarZoom (sourced from UpWork too) and hit my best month.

I felt so proud of myself.

Because as a 21-year-old, I was making more money than my 54-year-old dad. And I get to stay at home. And I get to sleep more. And I get to do what I like. And I get to learn more than in school.

Not long later, that pride turned into overconfidence.

Which led me to stop sourcing for deals. Because I thought if all I did was just focus on getting good at writing for GuitarZoom, I’d be on par to becoming a millionaire by 27.

But things took a turn in April 2022…

I received a letter from the Government, peeled off the sides, and saw the line…

“June 2022 National Service Enlistment”.

I thought I’d get to stay with GuitarZoom for two more months and make another few grand, but unexpectedly, they decided to let me off early and wished me luck. Which left me desperate and lost.

But luckily, I took up cold emailing within the lieu period.

Even though I didn’t land any deals out of those emails sent, I managed to start conversations with the co-founders of Kwik Brain and Jay Shetty Certification School.

I thought that wasn’t a big deal until it later influenced my decision to start an outbound agency.

22-Month Downtime.

In June 2022, I landed on a small island, east of Singapore, called Pulau Tekong, for my basic military training. With limited screen time, my practice didn’t grow at all… until three months later, I sent a reconnection text to the founder of Vaival Technologies and landed another website project.

That was a huge morale booster after six months of no deals.

The next week, I enrolled in a leadership school. Which put me on an even intense training schedule and limited my free time. So I had to completely halt my practice.

But the good thing was I learnt a lot about myself and my leadership style, and formed a handful of great friendships.

After nine months of training, I finally graduated as an army intelligence officer and was posted to an extremely fast-paced intelligence unit, specializing in counter terrorism.

Because of its operational needs, I sometimes had to stay up with my buddy to work on decks that often screwed us over the next day in the conference room.

Back to Business.

All in all, after close to 22 months of downtime, I left the army and went back to business.

This time, I want to get back on track… fast.

So I reconnected with the founder at GuitarZoom, asking for a 20% raise, considering that I was applying for a full-time job.

He countered my offer with $1,500 plus revenue share.

“WHATTT” … my mind was completely blown away for a second.

Later, I realized there was nothing to do with me. The fact is… AI has completely crashed the market for copywriters, and only the A-listers get paid at a premium price.

For us, newbies?

Pennies.

That’s where I reached out to an acquaintance, now a close friend of mine, for help as I reworked my positioning and service offerings.

And later I widened my offerings from just story-based emails to (are you ready?)... all kinds of emails, social posts, email automation, sales pages, advertorials, social ads, websites, blogs, cold messages, content design, and a lot more.

That wide range of services led me to work with cool brands like Engenesis, Homeopathy UK, Content Clinic, AmRelieve, and more.

A New Pursue.

In October 2024, I came to the realization that I was spending way too much time reaching out than actually doing client work, so I decided to pivot to outbound.

Coupled with my experience in starting conversations with the co-founders of Kwik Learning and Jay Shetty Coaching, it sounds like a fun venture.

So I started Onten Labs.

And ended up messing around with AI prompts, API keys, email deliverability, Clay tables, and many other tech-related stuff.

I was hopeful of my future, but not long later, something hit me really hard…

Close to Nothing.

… the subscription costs.

With three agencies (two of them from Barrel Holdings) on the roster, we were spending somewhere around $2,800/month on email inboxes, API calls, Clay subscription, AI requests, and many other expenses.

“This is not gonna work!”

… I told myself one day as I was staring at the bills, taking close to nothing home.

That’s when I thought about directing the costs back to my clients, and the best way to make it happen is to specialize in just building Clay tables and find clients who have the money to subscribe to the tools, or even better, already have them and just need an implementer.

Existing Relationships.

I shared that idea with Peter Kang (co-founder of Barrel Holdings).

“maybe” … he said and quickly added… “have you tried n8n?”

“Nope…?” I replied with much curiosity.

He then shared with me the pain of having to flip through thousands of pages in his 19-year-old inbox just to find contacts he’d talked to in the past.

But he understood the value of it.

Because back then, he knew of someone who was pursuing $1MM+ worth of opportunities just by digging out all the contacts, throwing the useless ones away, and reaching out to the important ones.

So he was invested in building a tool that does the revival automatically.

That’s how Relationship Digest was born.

This later became the backbone of VeraOps, a consulting firm that blends relationship-driven operations with AI and automation to help agencies identify and activate valuable relationships that drive new businesses.

We don’t focus on copywriting, outbound, or GTM engineering.

We only focus on…

Existing relationships with AI and automation.

And if I’m not helping agencies with that, high chance that I’m running along the sea, chilling at the park less than a mile away from home, reading non-fiction, having meals with my loved ones, or spending time at my parents’ hometown.

Best,
Leonard Chin