👫 About us

Doina & Cristi

👋 Hi! We’re Cristian & Doina, commanders of the how-to guides, generals of the lifehack legions, and loyal servants to the curious minds out there. Parents to a mischievous son and a cat, guardians of countless houseplants. We’re here to share our knowledge, in this blog post and the next.

I’m an engineer & entrepreneur by profession, always leaning towards tech somehow. I founded 10+ companies over the last 20 years and I’m still at it. I might not be the most creative with words, but hey, I’m tryin’.

Doina, on the other hand, is an ENT doctor and an amazing wife & mom. She’s got my (/our) back. Or ears, nose, and throat at least 😁.

She’s a beautiful and smart creature and has all these amazing ideas on how we could do things or improve them. Like her take on how to create your perfect reading nook.

Ever found yourself thinking “there’s got to be a better way to do this”? Or just plain “I have no idea where to start doing this”? We’ve been there. As a kid, I was always that curious troublemaker, trying to dismantle everything and learn why it works. This didn’t always end well (sorry about messing up that 20W amplifier, Dad), but it taught me a lot.

I’ve always been someone who’s straight to the point and not a fan of small talk or intros. I want to make everything better, and faster. I’ve experimented a lot in my life and rarely read manuals for anything I’d buy or put together.

Doina’s the opposite of me. The first thing she does is read the manual and make it a fun trip, before diving into whatever. We complement each other and that’s so awesome.

Hence, we draw our post ideas from real life as well (like that time we ended up with the broken key in the ignition; that was a bummer tbh).

Fast forward to now, and that same curiosity gave birth to this blog, How2Tweaks (fun fact: it was almost named Howtoria; thoughts on that?). Think of it as our digital journal where we write to become better people.

While not every post is based on personal experience, writing is something that doesn’t come naturally to either of us, so we’re trying to improve the way we think and create.

I used to have a blog where I wrote digital marketing strategies, but that was 20 years ago (holy crap, how time flies; Google was just launching Adsense and Amazon looked like shite back then). I could barely write an article in a week. Stuff came really hard. It gets better with practice, so here I am.

When a cool how-to comes to mind, we write about it.

To complement our own life experience, we do research through a combination of good ol’ honest work: Googling in general, other how-to reputable sources (like WikiHow, Instructables, How Stuff Works, eHow and others we enjoy reading), cool Youtube guides and knowledge channels (like Destin from Smarter Every Day), tons of personal blogs, Reddit, Tiktok, reputable sources in general (may that be Mayo Clinic for health issues or Psychology Today for how we feel and act).

All this combined with, again, lots of life experience and most of all, common sense.

In our posts, we try to link to everything we find interesting or worth an extra jump to learn more.

Enjoying our content? Buy us a coffee ☕

Doing and Cristian - Thank you for the coffee

If our how-tos have saved you from a DIY disaster or two, how about buying us a ☕ coffee? Doina’s practically powered by it, and I’m just trying to keep up!

So, if you found some help from our posts, slide a coffee our way and fuel more fun guides from us. Cheers!

Got a How-To Idea? Share It!

Alison aka Ask a Manager was the inspiration behind our blog. While our content might differ, our goal is the same: we’ve always wanted to help and offer solutions. So, why not take this approach?

We love hearing from fellow curious souls. If you’ve got a “how-to” idea, a life hack you’d love to see explored, or just want to ask a question, don’t keep it to yourself! Drop a suggestion and your idea will most likely end up on the site.

Your name/info will be kept anonymous by default unless you specify something different.

📖💡 We constantly improve most of our how-tos

We go back and edit/rework, add, or improve every single post we have (Cristian spent 60h+ so far on how to learn SEO), based on ideas we have, or feedback from you folks. For example, just recently, we realized that for how to get a job in europe as an american we forgot to research and show folks some relevant job sites or ways on how to actually find jobs in Europe. So we’re working on that now (mainly with opinions from Reddit, from expats that actually went through this).

So please, if you ended up on our blog, read something, and thought we got some things wrong, or you haven’t found what you were looking for, get in touch and tell us. We’d really appreciate it. You can also rate our posts at the end and let us know if they helped (or not). 👇

Rate my how-tos

Let’s make life a tad bit better.

TL:DR FAQ

Who are you guys?

Well, we’re a cool couple who, besides everything we do in life, both personally and professionally, started this blog too. Cristian may not be MacGyver, but he’s a 40-year-old dinosaur, an entrepreneur for the last 20 years (having founded 10+ companies), a dad, an apprentice chef, and an overall curious tech guy. Doina is the mom and ENT medic who didn’t get away. She’s now in big pharma and leads a team of medical doctors who are developing innovative medicines that help us every day. This blog is our hobby and passion.

What do you write about?

Frankly, anything interesting or practical to us. From how to get out of a speeding ticket to how to learn SEO or how to find your startup CTO. We draw from our life experience and we also accept suggestions.

How do you research the how-tos?

We detailed most of our methods above. We’re trying to do a good job at explaining how to do a lot of things, in very practical steps. In general, we also research what people actually look for. No point in building a blog and writing good guides for things that nobody needs.

Where else can I follow you?

The main socials are already on the blog, quite visible. We also share stuff on these other networks: Mastodon, HowToTweaks subreddit, Medium, Tumblr and InstaPaper and Patreon.