Yvanela Publishing: Custom Puzzle Generator

I work a full-time job. I have two daughters. One moved out few year ago to live on her own but wants to go back to school. The other is a high school senior heading to college full-time this fall, and she’ll be living on campus. I want to pay for both of their education.

Two businesses, zero employees, one desktop, chromebook and smartphone

I run two businesses under the trade name Yvanela — a name I created by combining my initials with my daughters’ names. Everything I build carries them in it.

The first business is Yvanela Publishing. I create cognitive health puzzle books — 3-in-1 hybrid collections that combine cryptograms, word searches, and scrambles into a single book designed for brain stimulation and entertainment. The series is called Brain Boost, and the titles span everything from Sports Brain Boost: 3-in-1 Trivia Puzzle Collection and Hollywood Brain Boost: Movie Night Puzzles for Seniors to Nostalgia TV Brain Boost, America The Beautiful: 250 Years of Freedom, Faith-Based Brain Games for Seniors, Humorous Cryptograms for Seniors, and more. They’re available as paperbacks on Amazon through KDP and as downloadable PDFs on Etsy. I use Claude AI to help me build the books — generating puzzles, formatting layouts, and managing the entire publishing workflow. I’m designing covers using Amazon’s KDP Cover Creator. What used to take a team now takes me and an AI assistant. Just short 3 weeks and I have 18 puzzle books published.

Now over last couple of weeks I was able to create my own store at Yvanela.com — A digital publishing store selling puzzle books, plus what I believe is the first consumer Custom Puzzle Generator ( https://yvanela.com/create-your-custom-puzzle ). You pick any of 200+ topics — Italian cooking, Golden Retrievers, Ancient Rome, anything — and AI creates a unique puzzle book for you in minutes.

And now I'm "fighting" with Claude because I want to create 5- in- 1 puzzle book with Arrow Puzzle and it's been rough for Claude to get it done well. But sooner or later it will get it and I will publish first 2 books on Amazon KDP and add to my store.

The second business is TailChapter .com — a web platform for pet parents. This is the bigger bet. TailChapter lets pet owners create digital profiles for their pets with photos, health records, AI-generated personality reports, care reminders, expense tracking, caregiver sharing tools, memorial pages, and custom keepsakes like canvas prints and mugs. It supports every kind of pet — dogs, cats, horses, reptiles, birds, rabbits, fish, and more. I built the entire platform from scratch with no coding experience. Zero. I’m not a developer. I never learned to code. But in 2026, you don’t need to be a developer to build a product. You need to be a problem solver who knows how to work with AI tools.

How I actually built it

TailChapter was built using Lovable, an AI-powered app builder, with Supabase for the database and backend. I designed the user experience, defined every feature, and wrote detailed specifications. The AI built the code. When something broke, I described the problem and the AI fixed it. When I needed a new feature, I described what I wanted and iterated until it worked.

I used Claude AI — the same tool I use for my puzzle books — as my strategic advisor, copywriter, SEO planner, and technical architect. Claude helped me write every product description, every blog article, every email template. It analyzed my pricing strategy, designed my referral program, and helped me think through edge cases I would have missed. It argues with me sometimes and sometimes tells me I have brilliant ideas. I have to supervise it closely though because it can make mistakes but it is getting better every day since I constantly remind it to “think” like chess player few moves ahead and th”think” out of the box.

The entire platform — dozens of features, Stripe payment integration, Printify product fulfillment, AI-generated content, an admin dashboard — was built by one person working nights and weekends with AI tools.

I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying this because three years ago, this would have been impossible for someone like me. The barrier to entry for building a tech product used to be a team of developers and six figures in funding. Now the barrier is an idea, persistence, and a willingness to learn. I did try to start businesses before and failed ( and lost good amount of money once). But I still want to get up after the fall.

Why multiple businesses?

Because I don’t believe in putting all eggs in one basket, and because both businesses serve different timelines. Yvanela Publishing generates content that compounds. Every book I publish on Amazon sits there forever, and I hope will earn royalties month after month. The catalog grows. Eleven books are live now with more in the pipeline. There is no revenue today since i just started, but the library is building. Each book is another asset that could work for me while I sleep.

TailChapter is the swing for the fences. The pet industry is massive — over $150 billion in the US alone. Pet parents spend more on their pets every year. And most pet tech is either enterprise software that costs hundreds per month or basic apps that do one thing. TailChapter sits in the middle — very affordable, comprehensive, personal. If it works, it changes everything for my family.

What I’ve learned

AI doesn’t replace thinking — it amplifies it. I still make every strategic decision. I still define every feature. I still write the vision. I still do a lot of work to keep it moving. AI makes it possible for me to execute at a scale that used to require a team. It became true collaboration between me and machine. It is a tool that I actually can use. It doesn't matter that I'm 56 or if I started 3 businesses in the last 24 years and they failed. I just gotta give another shot, that's all.