The Week I Considered Changing My Entire Career Path (Again)

This Week:

• I got my first blogger to agree to my free engagement report offer!
• Why I considered becoming a therapist.
• The biggest constraints in my life right now.

December 2023

Where In The World Was I?

• Canggu, Bali, Indonesia

The Week At A Glance

^ I’ve pretty much felt as good as this looks.

^ YouTube use is still pretty typical. I’ve noticed I’ve been skipping through a lot more videos though, stuff that’s like marginally interesting but I’m still subscribed to — the stuff I’d ACTUALLY watch like when I had endless hours in my day in Interlaken, Switzerland (that first image in The Week Of E-Mountain Biking And Refusing Medical Treatment)

^ This morning’s (Sunday) 8am view. Most of those tables are now filled (1pm)

Not pictured:

• Still doing morning meditations after my walk (15min)
• I haven’t been tracking reading time, but generally reading after lunch/dinner (although it’s not been very focused lately). Finished The Lean Startup by Eric Ries this week.

Business Progress Update

Last week I worked on putting together the analytics MVP. It’s less an MVP and more just a very niche’d and small solution.

This week I made the switch from continuing to incrementally improve the analytics and reports (which is fun and procrastinates on the actual hard part). I moved to crafting my offer and crafting my email to send to bloggers.

I sent out 28 emails offering to give bloggers a free engagement report about how their readers are interacting with their maps.

I got 2 already (hot leads I had already spoken with) that said they’re interested.

And I implemented the analytics on my first blogger!

As I’ve spoken about, this specific offer doesn’t fit the criteria of business model I’m looking for. That said, I’m mostly looking for 2 things:

• What does the actual data say behind users interacting with embedded maps? Is there a substantial amount of interest there?
• Does offering this free engagement report lead to any new more valuable problems that can be solved?

My theory is that actually offering something of value will give more information that just asking for questions or researching the web.

One last quick story…

I’ve felt like I’ve been losing some confidence in the viability of this niche. It seems like the available problems aren’t as frustrating as I had hoped and that generally, bloggers don’t spend as much on existing products as I wished.

But the very next morning after thinking about that, I got an email response completely out of the blue from a blogger who uses Proxi (competitor interactive mapping tool). I had sent her an email a whole month ago…

I have been MOST curious to hear from them because I want to know what they think of the existing leader in the space.

The timing was just SO weird and I couldn’t help but think, is this a sign??

The Walks

^ um, maybe don’t buy your rice from this farm… 😬 Can’t imagine how much of that plastic is leeching into the plants… The USDA apparently doesn’t oversee this far out 😅

The Workouts

Finally at the point where my body (i.e. my heart) is recovering well after workout sessions (see recovery scores above). And also starting to see my weight tick up ever so slightly. Progress!

So, Should I Become A Therapist?

Rewind 1 week — last Sunday was wild. I had just finished writing about my thoughts on business coaching as well as the value I can provide through conversations (The Week I Got Sick With The Infamous ‘Bali Belly’).

That night I was eating dinner, watching some YouTube. The girl from my room I’ve been talking with about her business came by and sat down. She had gone out the night prior for a birthday party, something she normally doesn’t do, and she was talking about how tired she was.

After lots of conversations and many questions asked, we got into talking about her struggles with prioritization and time management. And at some point I asked a simple “why?” question and she went… “*pauses* do we really want to get into my childhood? 😄” That was a big moment for me, knowing that she felt comfortable enough to share something vulnerable that she’s only shared with a select few of people (particularly, her therapist 😄).

It was hard, but it was such a rewarding conversation.

Then the next day was that day I went on a long walk and listened to this podcast from The Diary Of A CEO talking to Jordan Peterson.

The timing was unreal. He talked about his experience being a clinical psychologist and the strategies behind helping people as a therapist. There was so much overlap of what I was hearing with what I experienced literally the night before. (You can hear my amazement and enthusiasm in this video People keep saying I ask good questions, this is what I do (+5 tips))

And then fast forward a couple more days when I had another conversation with this girl in the morning. After probably an hour of talking through her situation, I decided to ask her about coaching to see if what I could learn. Given all of our conversations, it feels like she’s my target customer. She was leaving the next day, so I wanted to see what I could learn.

And then at the end of that conversation, I finally went in for the “ask” and asked her for feedback on me. She told me that it’s interesting that I asked because she had thought (independently of me) the other day that I would make a good therapist.

I explained my situation about liking deep conversations, wanting to do this more (helping people through conversation), but where I’m struggling with it.

As a refresher, this is where I’m at prior to this conversation:

I feel like I have 2 main "paths" on my mind:
1. Build a concrete and scalable business that solves a niche problem - Goal: money, financial freedom
2. Mentor/Coach people that need help in their life/career - Goal: meaning/fulfillment

The coaching path is what I want to do long term, but I feel like I need 2-5 years to get there. It feels like I need experience building my own business to have the credibility and experience to effectively help people here.

And, I can't make it 2-5 years without making money. Pursuing the business path has a higher likelihood of success (making money) in that timeframe, so that's the route I decided to take.

In the meantime, I'd start very slowly building up my personal brand, putting my thoughts out into the world, all with the end goal that I'd build up an audience and connections to do what I feel the most meaning from: helping people navigate their struggles/priorities.

So, something like 2-5 years of building a business, then transition to coaching once I have the experience and financial runway.

(I talked about this in this video: Predicting My Future Career: What I Want To Do & How I'll Get There)

But I learned some interesting things from this conversation:

• She gave me evidence/validation (independently from me asking) that I have the skills AND in the right context. Not that I’m good to have a conversation with, but that “therapist” came to mind.
• She said that I don’t need to wait to start, that I could start right now. The business venture I’m working on didn’t make a difference to her. I already had value to provide (and did).
• That the fact that she could SEE my routine and how I stuck to it was the credibility behind what I said. There’s a negative connotation around these Instagram “life coaches” and she’s actually seen some of them here in Bali, noting that they don’t practice what they preach, which makes it feel more “scammy.”
• Word of mouth would be a really good business model here. This also removes the need for someone to identify that they have a problem and then choose to seek out finding a coach. A good friend can spot the problem FOR them.
• Mentorship has a better connotation than coach. Mentor = I genuinely want to help. Coach = I want to help as a business model. Therapist = I talk about my personal problems.
  • Quick clarification: I like talking about life, goals, and prioritization more than “personal problems” unless they are the root problem underneath the surface level struggles. My vision here aligns most with the idea of mentorship.

This broke my belief that I had to wait to “gain experience” before starting… And that made me start to think man, why don’t I actually prioritize this more?

“But I don’t know how to find my first clients” OH BOY WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT THERE’S A WHOLE BOOK CALLED $100M LEADS BY ALEX HORMOZI WITH THE ANSWER! 🤦‍♂️ It’s like I know the answer I’m just not prioritizing it.

But I did a lot of thinking about this and I came to an interesting conclusion.

There are a couple of assumptions I’ve made, with the biggest one being that monetizing mentorship would detract from 1. how genuinely helpful these conversations could be and 2. how much meaning I get from them.

I’m envisioning the monetization of this mentorship/coaching path as a barbell. Either I do it for free (or super low cost) because I just like to do it, or I do it as my highest ticket backend offer (e.g. $10,000 to work with me). The middle ground just feels uncomfortable to me.

So with the assumption that this is something I’ll do for free (at least at first), I still need to pay the bills somehow.

Which brings me back to path #1, building a business that solves a concrete problem.

And that was an interesting realization.

I’m essentially back at where I started, which, in some ways is a good thing. It means I’ve explored more of the options and the current path continues to be the best choice.

The biggest frame shift here was breaking the belief that I don’t need more experience to start. But, the thing still relevant is that IF I don’t monetize it, then I still need to make money somehow.

And here’s an interesting journal note I found…

# 202312041425 If I had infinite money, would I be doing this
#journal #money 

Ya know, I had this thought the other day. I thought, if I had infinite money, would I be doing this (trying to help travel bloggers)?

And I thought well, I want to do personal/business coaching, and I still need to learn the skills for that.

Money won't buy me the skills. I still have to do the work to learn them so I can help other people.

And that was a thought I wasn't expecting to have...

So my plan of action seems to be: continue with this business venture as the focus, but continue to just bump into people and network with people as I travel.

Maybe in 2-5 years I’ll be at the place where I want to start shifting my focus to doing more mentorship. At that point, the audience and network that I have will be incredibly valuable in getting that started.

And in the meantime, having something concrete to talk about (i.e. trying to actually build a business) HAS been incredibly useful. It gives a frame for learnings.

Lunch Experimentation Update

Been continuing to lean into this lunch:

• 4 or 6 scrambled eggs
• 2 portions grilled smoky tempeh
• Grilled mushrooms Charred broccoli
• Mashed Sliced avocado
• Fruit – either side mixed fruit, fruit salad dish, or a smoothie bowl
• Vitamin Sea juice (orange, carrot, ginger, tumeric)

But I had an important realization this week.

One morning I tried eating this for lunch, then basically immediately continuing to work. I made it 45 minutes before hitting a wall where I couldn’t actually think straight anymore.

It wasn’t a problem of a post-lunch energy dip, it was the problem that I couldn’t focus anymore. My brainpower had run out.

And that made me realize that regardless of what I eat, I think what I need is actually a break from concentrated focus for 1-2 hours at lunchtime. My afternoon focus actually comes back pretty well.

That late afternoon block from around 2pm to 4:30pm (plus or minus some) has actually been quite good in terms of being able to refocus. It’s not fasted-in-the-morning level of focus, but it’s better than staring at my screen forgetting what I was doing 3 seconds ago.

What Are My Current Constraints

I did one of these about a month ago and it was really helpful. Last night I spent ~30min dumping my thoughts out again in my notes. I also added the 80/20 for each (Pareto Principle, what are the 20% activities resulting in 80% of the results).

I broke it down into 5 areas of my life (credit goes to a guy I met at this hostel who goes by The French Guy™️ in my blog posts 😄):

• Health
• Business/Work
  • Short term (current business venture work)
  • Long term (mentorship)
• Learning/Knowledge
• Relationships/Socializing
• Money

I haven’t gone back through and organized it yet, but here’s most of it:

# 202312091934 What are my current constraints
#constraints 

Health
- I feel good here, been working out a ton and consistently, still eating really well.
- Sometimes I'll work a bit later than I want, like 4:30 or 4:45 and start to question if it's worth going to the gym. If I work late here, go to the gym, it pushes back dinner, I end up finishing at like 7:15, too close to bed time. Hasn't been a huge issue though.
- Been feeling my discipline slip a couple times more lately, feeling the desire to have a chocolate croissant, peanut butter and bread, pancake stack, etc.
- Starting to feel a little fatigue in the menu here.
- 80/20 - 95%+ sleep score, consistent sleep schedule, just showing up to the gym, meditation, eating well. The basics.

Work/Business
- Finding leads to send emails to.
- I don't think I'm sending enough volume of emails. Like how do I get to 500-1000 people reached out to, not 90 total. I'd need a list of qualified leads - travel bloggers, active on socials, actively posting, using maps, has high end offers.
- Then I think I need to reduce personalization and increase scale. I've now twice hit a ceiling at 14 emails, and yesterday I hit that while also trying to do personalization.
- the personalizing emails is 100% the constraint in sending more emails. It takes me like 20 min to figure out what 2-3 sentences to put at the front. The question is is it worth it though...
- I think I don't have enough feedback from bloggers. I'm working with something like 6-10 responses? It just feels like too small of a subset. I think I've lost direction by broadening my scope. This freebie offer is good, but why don't we get more bloggers on board, leading to higher chance of learning, higher chance of finding early adopters higher chance of finding a valuable problem to solve.
- 80/20 - sending emails outreach and having phone/video calls with bloggers.

Long term - mentorship path (i.e. youtube)
- get my mind out of my own way. I'm feeling a sense of discouragement looking at 3, 6, 4 views on videos like aww dang. I wish I could get rid of the view count. I just need to put my head down and continue posting.
- I'd like to be able to do my 3 learnings episodes better, but doing so would require more scripting, i.e. spending more time, and remember this isn't my top priority. I think we just play the "long game" card here and just wait for volume to fix it.
- 80/20 - just showing up.

Learning/Knowledge
- Been really unfocused while reading the past week or two. The Lean startup has been kinda boring. A couple tips I pulled. Maybe a better book will help.
- I continue to place myself physically in places in the hostel where I get distracted by people playing pool, swimming, in bikinis, etc.
- 80/20 - rereading sections of books I've read in the past as a way to solve and apply a solution to a current problem.

Relationships/Socializing
- the girl from my room is leaving tomorrow so :'( Maybe I'll meet someone new to talk to.
- no clear constraints on existing relationships
- constraint on new relationships: succumbing to the discomfort of starting a conversation with a stranger.
- 80/20 - unfortunately (for my work and boundaries) prioritizing the conversations I get into with others. Leaning into them rather than saying actually I gotta work sorry. I learned valuable info this morning talking about my mentorship path with her

Money
- spent ~$1000 on food in November (99.9% at tribal), $33/day. Definitely high... However, I'm spending on high quality food, highly nutritious, and I'm bulking, and seeing results, and I feel amazing. I've also reduce decision fatigue because of this. But more complex of an answer, but I want to say its worth it.
- next highest, ~$450 on housing - seems reasonable
- 80/20 - tribal (housing) is cheap. Sticking to my routine is cheap. Bali is cheap.

Interesting YouTube Content This Week

Doctor Jordan Peterson: “The NUMBER ONE Reason For Divorce, Depression & Dark Thoughts!” (from The Diary Of A CEO)

• Listened to this podcast on a walk and I talked about it more in this video of mine People keep saying I ask good questions, this is what I do (+5 tips). It was timed so perfectly with the conversations I’ve been having this week. Jordan Peterson goes into the strategies behind how to effectively help people from his experience being a clinical psychologist.

Watch Me Beat Depression in 3 Days (Raw Un-edited & Real) (from 1M)

• This is the TYPE of video I am being drawn towards as a creator. It’s raw. It’s authentic. I think this kind of video, particularly in this type of circumstance (documenting his process of overcoming a down period), is way more valuable than something super edited like TOP 10 TIPS TO BEAT DEPRESSION.

World Leading Therapist Reveals How To Rewire Your Brain (from Leon Hendrix)

• I think what I got from this was validation that something like “business coaching” cannot be effective without digging into the root problems, which, oftentimes come back to childhood experiences and trauma, things that are personal. I was surprised at how quickly she went straight to “tell me about your childhood.”

How to Boost Your Growth Hormone with Sleep | Dr. Gina Poe & Dr. Andrew Huberman (from Huberman Lab Clips)

• SUPER interesting, valuable, and actionable. I learned that it’s crucially important to have a consistent BEDTIME routine here. Why? The first deep sleep cycle of the night produces the most amount of growth hormone. Our body’s have a clock that knows when it needs to do what (based on routine/circadian rythm). If your first deep sleep cycle is normally, say, between 10pm-11pm and you “miss” that one night by going to bed later at 11:30pm, your body does NOT “make it up” by producing all that growth hormone in your sleep’s first deep sleep cycle. You just miss it. Fascinating.

🚧 Be “Carefulbe Careful” Out There

Remember to “be carefulbe careful the work of the”…

Ya know, just in case you needed the reminder. 😄

Gosh I love all the English translations here 😂