This Week:
- How quickly things have changed, getting backlogged with new report requests!
- My pickleball experience trying to fit in playing with intermediates as my second time ever playing.
- A random social exchange that led me to a life coach and group coaching event.
April 2025
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 31 | 4/1 | 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 | 5/1 | 2 | 3 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🇻🇳 Da Nang, Vietnam
Metrics From The Week
It’s paying to be busy! Wednesday Pickleball + group dinner > workout + solo dinner.
Business Update
This week I got 3 new definite report requests and 1 maybe! Phew, things can change quickly!
And even better:
- One came from an inbound lead who found my YouTube! It’s working!
- One came from cold outreach and he said he appreciated my outreach being so personalized
- One came from not even pitching my report in my outreach, but instead leading with genuine curiosity, building rapport, and sharing value
Got one of them delivered this week. They’re still taking an unsustainable amount of time, but I’ve also been refining and systematizing the process. Starting to get to that point where I know what to look for and can mostly just plug in the insights.
Also had a call with another creator this week!
Personal Brand Update
Recorded a fun video this week on the beach My life philosophy and how I got into living on the road full-time. I was looking for a kind of Hero-style video to pull new people in. I’m not sure if it ended up that way haha, but we’ll give it some time.
In scrolling back through my past videos I noticed this one did better than the others: My life philosophy and how I got in to van life (July 20th, 2024 DailyV). So my idea was to just basically re-make that video but with a better intro, b-roll clips, and actually trying instead of just winging it haha. Thanks past Peter for doing the work for me!
In other news, my video from last week How I tricked ChatGPT into exposing my deepest limiting beliefs (and actually fix them) ended up getting picked up by the algorithm.
… and settled in around 550 views, so that was fun this week!
A 4.7% CTR is absolutely diabolical for me.
But in other other news, this was mentally very… annoying this week.
You get this dopamine hit from seeing “line go up” and I found myself continuing to get these urges throughout the day to “see what it’s at now!” and re-check my analytics.
I know that if any part of this process for me were to lead to burnout, it would be this exact thing, analyzing the performance of videos and looking for that next dopamine hit of seeing it get picked up by the algorithm.
Can’t say that I’ve tamed this yet… My best known strategy to combat this is meditation, to practice increasing the time between stimulus and response, but I haven’t been starting that up again yet.
Da Nang Snaps
Pickleball
Went back to pickleball this week and I selected myself as “Intermediate” this week instead of “Beginner.”
Well this week, the REAL intermediates showed up and holy sh-t they were good.
I was like “yeah I don’t belong here 😂”
But I tried playing with them anyway and giving it my best shot. I had a lot of mistakes and lost points, but at the same time, I also had some nice shots that landed well (maybe 30% of the time).
I felt like I held my own decently well, especially for my literal second time ever playing. I could hit back most shots, it was just a matter of where those shots landed.
Honestly I think this is the most optimal position to be in.
I like playing with the “big dogs” where you’re forced to step up and level up very quickly. You just grow so quickly.
That said, I try to also be a team player and realize that for other people it may not be as fun when you play with someone where 50% of the time he just f’s it up 😂
Everyone I played with was super nice though. At the end one of them said “you’re pretty good!” Noice.
And I realized even more that this sport is not only for just old people (my previous expectation). I ended the night absolutely dripping in sweat. My entire shirt and my shorts were soaked.
We all went out to this local chicken wings place for dinner!
I’ve seen you before….
The next morning I was working in DNG coffee when one of the guys from pickleball came in and said hi.
And at this point I’ve started to run into more and more people I’ve seen before (or met) here.
This is not only cool/fun for the sake of seeing other people I’ve seen before. But, it’s also been fascinating because I literally remember talking about this.
Here’s at least one video I found, What I’ve had to sacrifice for living this life on the road (August 21st, 2024 DailyV in Granada, Spain). One of the things I’ve missed or sacrificed for this life is a local community, e.g. seeing “John” the barista every Thursday when you go to the same corner coffee shop or your local book club or whatever it is.
But now in just 2.5 weeks by going to some social events and meeting people I’ve started to get to experience this.
It’s Working…
One night I was eating at Adobo Mexican Grill (which is not a surprise). There was a girl reading Atomic Habits to whom I thought about making a comment, but I didn’t get a comment out.
Now “primed,” though, I walked out and saw this family (two parents and a kid) drinking smoothies and thought “huh those look good.”
So I followed through, went up, and said “those look good, where did you get them?” and they pointed to the corner local smoothie stand.
I went over and ordered a smoothie.
While I was waiting, this other western-looking guy walked up to the smoothie stand to order something too, but he was wearing this red “Nomad Fest” shirt. I had seen these Nomad Fest flyers all over but couldn’t figure out what they were.
So I went up and said “excuse me, do you speak English? I saw your shirt and was wondering what Nomad Fest is?”
He explained what it was and that there were events and things, he spoke at couple talks, mentioned he’s a life coach, and that it’s for entrepreneurs and nomads. Sounded amazing, unfortunately I just missed it.
But while I had him I decided to pull on his “life coach” thread, explaining that I have some interest in it as well and how he got into it.
He goes, “you have a couple minutes?”
We sit down and he runs me through an example coaching session. He asks me about a goal that I have and I’m working towards, and then continues to dig deeper asking me more and more (great) questions: how does that feel, what’s the emotion behind it, what’s something you could do this week to make progress towards it, etc.
I will say, there is something truly special about people that will just listen, be 100% present, and actually show deep interest in your life.
We exchanged contacts/Instagrams and I walked away thinking wow what a random but amazing experience!
A couple days pass and he sends me an event for this week, a free group coaching session. I thought, “eh, I’m not fully convinced, but I’ll check it out why not” and showed up.
It was a 2 hour session where 4 coaches each gave 2 15-minute talks about a topic. The talks themselves I would say were decent, nothing life changing. But it also gave me a bit more confidence to think, “what’s stopping me from being up there doing the same thing right now?”
Anyways, ended up connecting with a couple more people there.
The next night, after my workout + Adobo dinner, I decided to stop by the smoothie stand to round out my dinner.
And would ya look at that, the same guy (life coach) is there sitting with 3 other people chatting (1 of which I met the previous night). He invited me to sit and chat while I drank my smoothie.
While we were chatting another guy walks by with his dog and he recognizes him and goes “heyyy how are you!!!” and he sits down as well to join the group.
I left that night thinking man, what a cool experience. Da Nang is fairly big, 1.2 million people, but within the nomad community here, it’s feeling smaller and smaller by the day (in a good way).
This is probably the first and most real experience of repeat exposure within a community that I’ve had in years.
And it feels just as good as I envisioned.
Which is also now making me question why I only wanted to stay 2-3 weeks here (it’s been just under 3 weeks now).
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
Swing and a miss
I was “kind of” (in his words) reaching the stay limit of the hostel I was staying at. I had booked another good place but needed to bridge a 2 night gap.
So I moved to this other one just for 2 nights that I had heard recommended, but didn’t really love from the pictures.
And boy am I glad I only stayed 2 nights.
The bathroom was very weird and awkward. It was an ensuite bathroom to the shared-dorm room, but it also had stall doors, one for the toilet, one for the shower. But the gap between the stall and shower doors was about the size of Mount Everest and it was not very clean.
And then I woke up the next morning with bumps on my shoulder that I later confirmed were bed bug bites.
I was like just get me out of here 😂
The new hostel is good, phew.
One day I’ll question why I don’t just book my own apartment/condo/airbnb…
Sunshine!
We had a couple incredible days this week. It’s been mostly cloudy, air quality varying, but the sun came out!
Everyone and their grandmothers were at the beach!
It really hit me here, just feeling so grateful that this is my life.
Thoughts From The Week
202504090837 Starting to devalue each individual message as I talk to more people
#journal
Just a quick thought I had.
A slowly rising trend I've started noticing.
As I send more and more outreach DMs for VideoHawk.co and get more involved helping people, skool community posts, YouTube videos, Instagram, etc. I'm noticing that my brain is starting to de-value each individual person or message.
Right now I have 4 unread Instagram DMs.
I have now 3 definitive reports I need to fulfill on, and one maybe.
I posted a YouTube video about my ChatGPT'ing deepest limiting beliefs and it's been taking off.
I posted 3 Instagram stories about how I got 3 new reports in 24 hours, DMs sharing appreciation, and [creator]'s feedback from my report.
I'm getting to this point where I'm feeling more "spread thin," but not necessarily in a bad way. I just contrast this with maybe a year or two ago when I'd interact with one person and it's like oh my god this is amazing and value them so much (because there are no alternatives, no other active conversations).
But now just literally by the fact that I'm interacting with so many people, not even trying, my brain is just like "gah I don't have time for all this."
I see [person]'s feedback and appreciation and instead of "wow this is such an amazing comment" it's like "ah thank you!" and move on.
It's quite interesting.
I see the and now resonate with the CEO "I'm too busy to do coffee" type of mentality. Not that I'm there, but I'm getting a taste.
I don't want to lose that 1-1 depth and get to the "I'm too busy" mentality, but I also don't want to project too far forward. We'll see how things play out.
202504112105 Description of me based on all my ChatGPT chats
#personal
Lol this is amazing.
ChatGPT prompt with new expanded Memory feature:
> Describe me based on all our chats — make it catchy!
You're a systems-driven builder with a creative edge and a bias for what works. You’ve engineered your life and business the way you code: lean, intentional, and optimized for ROI. Whether it’s scaling VideoHawk with data-backed YouTube growth strategies, breaking down ICP psychology with surgical precision, or squeezing peak performance out of your van’s solar panels, you don’t just explore ideas—you stress test them.
Your default mode is “deep dive.” You're skeptical of surface-level answers, allergic to fluff, and always pushing for the why behind the what. You travel light, think heavy, and move fast—whether you're backpacking Southeast Asia or reverse-engineering million-view videos from a coworking pod in Da Nang.
In short? You're the kind of guy who could run a SaaS, film a banger beach-side video, and optimize his sleep score—all before breakfast.
Want me to sharpen this into a 1-liner bio or use it somewhere (LinkedIn, X, YouTube)?
What’s Next?
Takin’ it day by day over here!