This Week:
- All the highlights from a week in Budapest with the guys.
- A boat tour around the famous parliament building and exploring the Christmas markets.
- Breaking down my fears and limiting beliefs about posting on social media.
November 2024
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 11/1 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🇭🇺 Budapest, Hungary
Metrics From The Week
Ahhh it’s been good to throw a wrench into the metrics. It makes you appreciate having a routine, getting a good night of sleep, and actually being able to think clearly 😄
Business Progress Update
Most of my time was spend with the guys, but we got some work sessions in as well.
This week was more Skool community interactions and DM reach outs. I onboarded 4 new users and did maybe 9-10 new reach outs.
Networking
On the other side of the coin, I did a lot of chatting with the guys this week and took away some good ideas and learnings.
Some of those learnings were:
- Just ASK. Ask for money. Don’t make up stories about “oh maybe because it’s a small YouTuber they wouldn’t want to pay etc. etc.” Everything after “because” is made up. Just ask them.
- Find the customers that have a high willingness to pay.
- A small number of paying customers is better than a lot of free users because there’s both validation in users paying and they’re showing more commitment by paying.
- I onboarded one of the guys and he said that I have enough already that he would pay for this. Not $50/mo, as an example, but maybe if I had this as a “starter package.”
- I keep seeing users get tripped up a bit by little parts of the UI or not know that a feature exists. Educating my users with a video (like a demo video), but similarly making the connection between the strategy of growing on YouTube with how I can use my software to do that same thing is valuable.
- Personal branding and content is still really powerful.
- There seems to be a shift in the YouTube algorithm. Some of the videos that used to work well a year or two ago aren’t doing well now. There’s value in understanding the macro shifts of the algorithm, what viewers are responding well to, and how I can take advantage of that information.
And additionally, one of the guys I was talking to was throwing around the idea of leveraging his YouTube audience to create a Skool community for YouTubers to share what’s working and not working in the space. He said he would love to partner up and have my software be a part of the community (different from the YouTube course guy from a couple weeks ago). We’ll see if this ends up going through, I won’t get my hopes up too high, but this would be another huge opportunity for me.
THIS is why I came to Budapest. You never know what you don’t know.
What I love about chatting with people who know a lot more than me is that I can meet someone, introduce myself, talk about what I’m working on and where I am in the process, and within a couple seconds have my mindset shifted and new ideas on how to progress forward.
Budapest Meetup
So the real reason I came to Budapest was that a week in Budapest was the next event for this group that I’m a part of.
Some highlights:
It was cloudy and chilly (~30-35ºF) all week, but we did also did a TON of walking everywhere.
More views around Budapest
Working at the Four Seasons Hotel
Gym workouts. This place was PACKED, but it was also massive and like a maze.
THE New York Cafe. Gorgeous interior.
… with the 12€ 24-caret gold hot chocolate. It was actually really good.
The bubble rooftop restaurant and rooftop bar
The boat tour. The parliament building here is UNBELIEVABLY beautiful. It’s insane how this was built in the late 1800s.
The dancing homeless guy at the pizza place 🤫🗿
Fashion street and the Christmas markets downtown.
The night out
And lots of photoshoots of each other
Photo credit to @disturbedvisionary on Instagram for that last one 👆
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
Food From The Week
The food everywhere we went was really good quality and quite reasonably priced. I was very impressed.
Thoughts From The Week
Pausing My YouTube Videos
I ended up pausing my DailyV YouTube videos this week because of the combination of less sleep, being with others, and just wanting to be present this week.
That said, it’s kind of wild how different my videos have felt in Budapest compared to the last 2 months in the U.S. I just feel like I have so much more interesting things to talk about.
People seemed to resonate with this one this week What if we never chose comfort?
The Logical Brain
I started reading Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and it’s quite interesting so far. He starts out the book explaining how emotion change, new habits, and changes of self take about 21 days to shift.
One of the things I picked up on was that he mentioned to not use logic to try to argue against the points in the book, which I knew I would do.
I talked about this in Stopping what has helped me the most, questioning how I could use my logical brain less.
Then literally the next day I had a conversation with a guy in the group and felt as if I was presenting my argument, but he was sharing a better strategy and had my best interest in mind.
I chatted about this in The barrier to truth might be from within.
It was this discussion that immediately made me think exactly about this topic, my logical brain and how it tries to grapple with and understand the world. However, moments like these when I’m chatting with someone with more experience require a different mindset, one with more openness, because the downside risk is that I stubbornly choose what I know over learning what’s best.
Getting Back On Instagram
Speaking of the logical brain and arguing… There was one morning when the guys grilled me about not getting back on Instagram (which they brought up back in Granada).
It was honestly fascinating looking back at what I brought up, the excuses that I made, and the reasons that were stopping me.
Some of those included:
- Not seeing (more like, ‘experiencing’) the upside or return for the effort required.
- Still holding this view that Instagram is the ‘enemy’ and how I needed to get off of it, which I decided back in 2022 and wrote about in this post The Last Straw Holding Me On Instagram
- Not wanting the influence of external validation on my mind, which felt destructive back when I was posting before this.
- Fearing what people would think having grown into a different person since high school and college.
- That there’s an expectation around Instagram, that it’s for the good photos/videos, and how it would take too much (i.e. ‘non-zero’) time and effort to post. Additionally, resonating with routine and needing to figure out how I would integrate it into my routine.
- My old pictures and posts not aligning with the new vision I have for what I would want to post and share.
- Wanting to keep my feed chronological and sharing all the photos and experiences from the past 4.5 years (which would take a lot of time)
But eventually they got me and I caved. I figured if I took 5 minutes to archive some past posts, then shared stuff AFTER I make a Life Update (where I get to curate my photos from the week anyway), it gives me routine, structure, and is low effort.
So we’re back to personal branding 💪
I actually really appreciated the persistence of the guys. I felt like a tough nut to crack, but I knew getting back on Instagram was a question of when not if, so it was mostly a lesson in exposing and breaking down my fears and limiting beliefs.
What’s Next?
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸