This Week:
- How it feels getting back into living in a hostel.
- Photos from exploring the streets of Granada, Spain.
- Thoughts on the growth of my YouTube channel.
August 2024
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 8/1 | 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 | 31 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🇪🇸 Granada, Spain
Metrics From The Week
Pulling it back together, boys! 😄
Quick note on the YouTube use this week: I’ve found it to be down significantly from what’s typical. It does feel like there’s been a mental tide shifting in me, but I can’t quite pinpoint the full ‘why’ behind it yet. This hostel lifestyle has definitely helped though. I’ve been watching a couple videos during lunch, but not too many (similar to Bali at the end of 2023, it kind of feels weird to be in a social space in the hostel watching YouTube), it helps to have a coworking space just downstairs, and most dinners I’ve eaten out which also makes it harder/better.
Business Progress Update
This week I finally finished and submitted my audit & quota increase application to the YouTube API team. They had me send in a demo video midweek. Aside from that, I’m still waiting to hear back from them. No violations YET 😉
Since that’s really the next big domino to enable reaching out to find early adopters, I’ve been trying to make myself useful in the meantime.
This week I added weekly email summaries! I created an account with Twilio’s SendGrid, popped an email signup form on my site, and added a script that would pull just the last 7 days of videos, comments, etc. and created a personalized email summary. Though I need to work on the outperforming video algorithm a bit for recent videos (the calculations are different), I’m happy with the add value and value exchange for an email here. Is it perfect? Nope. But it’s good enough to validate.
In other news, I also added a second GPT prompt for generating new titles. This one looks more at the core structure of the title and spins it using the user’s keywords/topics. I’ve been trying to figure out how to reverse engineer this example that I found a couple weeks ago from Jeff Nippard (big fitness channel) what looks like taking direct inspiration from this Kurzgesagt that outperformed well above average.
This new prompt gets me at least closer. Taking inspiration from “Smoking is Awesome,” I ran it a couple times for Jeff Nippard and it output these:
- Building Muscle is Awesome
- Cheat Meals Are Awesome For Muscle Growth
- Skipping Cardio Is Awesome
Not quite, but closer! This can and will be endlessly tweaked, but closer is better.
Lastly, I started a new “Hot Videos” page to see directly the videos that are outperforming from the user’s watchlist (rather than them being hidden within each new personalized video title).
The next thing is really waiting for the “OK” from the YouTube API team and then starting to fire out emails and messages to get feedback. I’ve built enough to at least validate to get feedback. While this is useful for me as a creator, I ain’t building all this just for me 😉
Back to Hostel Life
This week I said my farewells to everyone I met last weekend, heaved my backpacks on my shoulders, and strolled over to the hostel I picked out in Granada.
Ahhh back to hostel life.
It took me a couple days to reset my expectations living out of backpacks, but I’m starting to get settled back into it.
Honestly, this place has vastly exceeded my expectations. It’s got a dedicated coworking space, cafe, kitchen with fridges and lots of cookware, the beds are comfortable, each room has its own bathroom attached, the area is super walkable – cafes and groceries everywhere, bus stops right on the street, good food nearby… all for the price of… 18€/night!? Whaaaat come’on now
I’ve been making my own lunches lately from groceries (pics at the end of the post) which has helped with the endless struggle of eating well (and enough) while traveling.
The hostel also has free sangria every night and cheap family dinners (5-10€)! The free sangria reminds me of Sevilla and Lisbon, BOTH in this week last year The Week I Questioned Everything About My Travels (August 13th, 2023).
I’ve ended up having a good handful of conversations here with people from the hostel. I met this girl who teaches Spanish in Germany and she was describing how much she just loves teaching and working with kids. It was such a big perspective shift from last weekend, being surrounded by guys making thousands a month from businesses, marketing, coaching, feeling the motivation in the room, talking about optimizing ads and offers. To go from that to hearing someone just passionate about teaching, traveling, and their life.
On a similar vein of hearing new perspectives, I met this other girl who works at a well-known company in silicon valley but was describing how she doesn’t like what she does and wants to find something she feels more fulfilled by. I got into more detail in the video I made this week about this (The thing that holds us back the most…), but the way she described her situation, I got the impression that she was limiting herself based on beliefs she had accumulated and assumed were true. It was another moment of contrast, coming from last weekend where the vibe in the room was “anything and everything are possible,” to hearing how someone can’t do this because of X, Y, and Z reasons.
Taking a step back, I’ve appreciated the varying perspectives honestly. It’s nice to speak to people who value different things and hear their perspectives and why’s.
Back To The Routine
The coworking space here has been so clutch. I’ve heard and gotten the impression that working on your laptop from coffee shops isn’t really a thing in Granada… And if you’ve been following along, you know that I basically live in coffee shops… (I’m up to 270 places documented! Nomad Workspaces)
Also! There’s an Anytime Fitness in Granada! Legendary.
I’ve been taking the bus (~20-25min) to and from almost every day. I’m actually finding the ride not as bad as I had assumed. I clean up emails, publish my DailyV, respond to YouTube comments, catch up on some YouTube videos.
The first time I went, I got off the bus, started walking up to the door and literally remembered that I forgot my keyfob in the hostel 😂 Rather than going back or going on a run, I went up and rang the doorbell and tried to swoon my way in, and it worked! 😎 The staff were super nice.
Granada Views
Took a nice long photo walk this week, it’s been a minute since I did one of these! Still haven’t gotten around to editing my photos since… uh, last August… though 😂😅 oof
Thoughts From The Week
Uncertainty and Confidence
I still feel this lingering unknown and uncertainty with the YouTube audit/quota application since they have the power to basically shut down everything I’ve built. The anticipation is growing… However, I know I’ll be able to resolve anything that they push back on.
But aside from that, I’ve felt a general growing sense of confidence lately. I think a big part of that has to do with the software that I’ve built. It feels good to create something and create something that (I believe) is valuable. I made my first video this morning (Sunday, to be published Monday Eastern time) that was pretty directly based off a new title my software generated from a comment it picked up. That was a cool feeling and I want to continue to rely on my software because the more I do that the more I can make it incredibly valuable for other creators.
YouTube Growth
On the YouTube side of things, I’ve continued to be surprised at how many people have been choosing to subscribe to my channel and the positive feedback I’ve been getting. Many of the comments people have been leaving have been so incredibly supportive and wholesome.
With that I was doing some journaling this morning (Sunday) and thinking about how my channel has been growing faster than I imagined. I’m still in the previous mindset of seeing maybe 1 or 2 new subscribers every couple of days. Now every couple of days it just jumps up by multiple! For that, I’m grateful.
However, I’ve noticed this lingering sense of increased expectations, of pressure, or responsibility. I can’t just make these videos where I start off saying “well… I wasn’t sure what to talk about today…” anymore because… people are watching (it feels like that was how I started every video most of June 2024, lol)
I talked about this a bit at the end of the video that goes out tomorrow (Monday, August 12th, 2024). At the same time, I feel this increasing confidence that I can rise to this occasion. It feels like my identity is shifting more and more every day that passes.
Also, I’m trying to remind myself of WHY I started making these videos and why I continue to do them. That’s been helping.
A Lens Into The Past
On a similar note, in some morning note-gardening before I started work this week, I came across some Life Updates that transported me back in time. I ended up watching some videos I made from the past.
One was thinking about how in this video from this week (This feels like a new life cheat code I just found, August 4th, 2024) I captured this feeling of finally finding people who share the same values as me, of feeling like I’ve finally found people I resonate with. It reminded me of the video I made back in George Town, Malaysia (I miss being surrounded by high-level people, March 5th, 2024) where I documented this feeling of MISSING being surrounded by high level people in Bali and how much that impacted me. It was that night, after I got back to the hostel, when I decided to take the leap and buy into this networking group. I couldn’t help but just smile as I rewatched, seeing the lens into my past mindset.
The other came up because someone commented asking about my thoughts on religion, to which I pointed them to this video I made My thoughts on religion are… changing, (March 31st, 2024). Well, I ended up rewatching that video and man how do I describe this feeling… I’m proud of that video. I watched it with a smile on my face. I remember waking up that morning feeling a bit groggy and thinking, “um, am I really gonna try to articulate my thoughts on religion 15 minutes after I just woke up… and the POST IT?” 😂 but alas, I went for it.
I think it’s something like, seeing the lens into my mindset at the time, trying to really articulate my thoughts and tell the truth, and watching someone explore this line of chaos and order in real time. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Jordan Peterson in his lectures and speeches about the way he speaks and articulates his thoughts. I resonate with that exploration, generating the ideas in real time, rather than telling you the 1., 2., 3. steps that I discovered.
It’s in moments like these, rewatching videos, or rereading Life Update blog posts from the past when I feel incredibly grateful for my past self, for deciding to start these and for spending the time creating them. Sometimes I wonder how I was able to identify that I would value these… and actually get my hypothesis right. I guess we just get lucky sometimes.
Food From The Week
It ain’t “SE Asia-cheap,” but it’s better than the U.S. that’s for sure! 14-15€ for a poke bowl, 8-9€ for a smoothie bowl, 9€ for a grain bowl, 30-40€ for 3-4 days worth of fresh groceries for lunches.
Finding good quality healthy food (and enough food) while traveling is sooo difficult, so it feels good to find some good places.
What’s Next?
🇪🇸 It ain’t over yet