Why you won't find Monocle founder Tyler Brule on Twitter

Taking a bullet in Afghanistan taught design maven Tyler Brule to trust his gut and fly solo.

While chasing a news lead in Kabul in the 1990s, the then war correspondent followed the "bureaucratic directive" instead of his instincts. As a result, he ended up in hospital.

"I'm normally very persuasive and quite stubborn and tend to do what I want to do and in this case, I knew it was wrong but I didn't stick to my guns. Big life lesson," said the 44-year-old editor-in-chief of influential lifestyle magazine Monocle while in Singapore last Thursday.

Deciding he needed to do things his way, he founded cult design magazine Wallpaper* in 1996, staying with it until 2002. Monocle was started in 2007.