This Week:
- My final days in Porto.
- Flying to Istanbul, Turkey! Sharing my first impressions.
- What it’s like behind the scenes of this lifestyle.
January 2025
Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
29 | 30 | 31 | 1/1 | 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 | 2/1 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🇵🇹 Porto, Portugal
- 🇹🇷 Istanbul, Turkey
Metrics From The Week
Business Update
This week I finished the transition of all the users that had free access to requiring subscriptions. I sent out an email early in the week on the 3 new features I added last week, viewer insights, improved video idea algorithm, and new recommendation algorithm. Then a final reminder email the day before sharing next steps and where I’m headed.
...
📈 The Future of VideoHawk.co?
I'm not building another generic YouTube "outlier tool."
I'm building VideoHawk.co to be your personalized assistant that actually understands you and your niche, saves you hours on research, and helps you grow your channel authentically.
I'm building VideoHawk.co to help you capitalize on this next meta of YouTube.
Short Term:
- ✅ (Done) Deeper insights into why videos outperformed, the thing no other YouTube tool is addressing.
- ✅ (Done) Smarter personalized video idea recommendations: even better quality ideas for your channel. Simple.
- 🔜 Improved niche algorithm, giving you more personalized insights on topics, trends, and your competitors that already have your viewers' attention.
- 🔜 Better channel exploration, helping you steal inspiration from great and authentic videos outside your niche.
- 🔜 Smarter idea recommender to synthesize opportunities from all the comments in your niche, videos across YouTube, and find the topics that you can uniquely capitalize on.
Long Term:
- 🚀 Expand the collection of data, questions, inspiration, and trends outside of YouTube videos (think forums, Google trends, YouTube search, etc.) to help your videos resonate more with your viewers.
- 🚀 In-depth past video analysis, giving you actionable and authentic recommendations to your hooks and content based on your past video performance (click through rates, watch time, retention, etc.).
- 🚀 Predictive topic and title performance, to help you fine-tune your confidence when you finally hit Publish.
Thanks for believing in the vision and growing with VideoHawk.co. I'll see you inside.
...
I also fixed a couple small bugs and updated my landing page – tweaked the hero section, moved around the social proof sections, and added some details/sections for the new features I’ve added.
Personal Brand Update
This week I posted my 9 tips I use to ACTUALLY get work done from anywhere video and edited+scheduled next week’s.
I realized as I was editing this past week’s video that there was a lot of background noise especially in my intro clips, so I learned some audio tips in Davinci Resolve this week – using the equalizer, high pass filter, checking loudness LUFS, and more. It’s been cool to learn something concrete!
I also decided it’d be worth picking up a better wireless mic instead of using my shotgun mic, hopefully that’ll bump up the audio quality in the videos.
Adjusting
My videos have continually been getting longer. This week’s is even longer, but I felt like it was pretty in depth. That said, I have a hypothesis that it might be better quality/value to make the videos more concise, shorter, and potentially go 2 per week instead of one right now. I’m thinking more volume will help get more traction in these early days.
I’ve also been starting to look at getting into recording shorts as well.
I’ll update if/as I make any of these changes.
That said, I’ve been satisfied so far with how the videos have been performing! It’s nice to see traction and results for the effort that I’ve been putting in.
Final Days In Porto Honest Greens
Working in the hostel(s)
… and at Honest Greens
Final sunset run
From walking around
Porto Thoughts
Was it worth it?
It took a couple days to get into the swing of things, but I thought it was actually pretty good once I got into the routine.
- I found two hostels that were good to work from, inexpensive, and central
- I had a pretty good rotation of restaurants, food was generally pretty reasonably priced, and there was a good supermarket that was central.
- Runs were good and I found a decent gym for 2 weeks in there.
- Never ended up going to a co-working space because the hostels and cafes to work from did the job.
And honestly, Honest Greens absolutely carried this trip. I love this restaurant.
I was in Porto for 24 days and I ate there 16 times 😂
It does it all:
- Fantastic quality healthy food, reasonably priced
- Wifi (but no outlets)
- Massive restaurant, tons of seats
- Open pretty much all day, has coffee in the morning
If I could take them around with me everywhere I would. Literally the only thing I would want to change is add some outlets. And if the prices dropped just a little it would enter into that “unbelievable deal” or “legendary” category.
So at the end of the day I’d say it was a good trip.
Food From Porto
I found two new restaurants this week and discovered the pre-noon breakfast menu at Honest Greens. You mean I went somewhere different this week? I know I know, I’m shocked too.
- Aguacate Tex-Mex – burrito (tried going back here multiple times but their Google Maps hours lists them as open from 12pm-12am but they were closed when I showed up twice, oof, it was a good burrito too)
- Cult Of Pita – pita sandwich and hummus bowl
- Honest Greens – mushroom something bowl, and tofu scramble breakfast burrito and acai bowl (both insanely good, so good I got it twice in 3 days, I can’t believe I just found out about these my final days here)
- Esquires Coffee – omelette and acai bowl (not pictured)
✈️ Off to Istanbul
After I flew through Istanbul airport (IST) on my way to Budapest in November (The Week I Flew To Budapest, Hungary, November 10th, 2024) I did some more research and heard some good things.
Since it’s more or less on the way to my next destination (👀) I thought I’d stop by and see what it’s like. (I also thought it’d be good content 😂)
I never thought in a million years I’d find myself in Turkey (or Türkiye) but here we are!
Getting off the metro from the airport to change to a bus 🔊🔊:
I checked into my hostel then hit the streets to find a place to eat.
I was walking down the main touristy road, packed with people at 8pm. I was just wearing my light 1/4 zip jacket.
All of a sudden I turn to hear to my left “you must not be cold!” from what looked like a local guy walking along side me.
I laughed and said “nah it’s not too bad”
He asked where I was from and I thought “oh boy here we go I’m about to get scammed by this guy.”
I kept the small talk light and kept my hands in my pockets, but he just kept his distance and kept walking and talking with me.
Turns out he does real estate and lives in Dubai, but he’s from Azerbaijan originally and just here on a layover. We talked about travel and work, I told him I’m building a software business, traveling, and was just looking for a place to grab some food tonight.
We talked for a good 10 minutes as we walked along the street.
He introduced himself, gave me some recommendations on where to go in Istanbul, then invited me to grab a drink with him.
I declined, but we shook hands and he wished me a great trip.
Walking away I thought… “huh that was kinda weird, what a nice guy!”
I ended up at a pad thai place because I couldn’t find anything else that I recognized and just needed something 😂😂😂
First Impressions Of Istanbul
Here are my notes from my first 3 days in Istanbul:
- The driving reminds me of the chaos in SE Asia countries. The bus driver kept honking when cars were parked in the road with their flashers to get out of the way. And he’d open the doors as the bus was still coming to a stop.
- People honk a lot more frequently here, like a “move” honk.
- And double check crossing intersections because sometimes people just keep driving through red lights like it’s nothing 😅 Apparently traffic laws are more flexible here I guess 😂
- There’s a LOT of people here, wow (15.6 million population) I didn’t realize it was this big.
- So many stray cats on the street.
- Mosques. Mosques everywhere. And beautiful ones.
- Bro, the NPC pathfinding of people here is ridiculous 😂 On my runs through the streets people would just walk in weird unexpected ways and cut me off without realizing. Expect the unexpected 😂
Istanbul Snaps 📸
Resetting The Routine
Restaurants
I’m staying in the Pera area and while there are a LOT of restaurants, there aren’t as many restaurants where I recognize the food 😅
For context, if you’re new here, I like to stick to a certain type of food/strategy because the majority of my day revolves around working and focusing on my laptop.
Ever since The Week I Watched A Man Get Knocked Out In Thailand, October 22nd, 2023, where I noticed my hair thinning and attributed it to my crappy diet, I’ve been very focused on eating well, especially when I’m working.
I do intermittent fasting (skip breakfast, only black coffee), generally try to eat a low-carb lunch so I can continue to focus in the afternoon, then eat a big dinner.
So anyways, this ends up taking me to many modern western cafes (think buddha bowls, salads, omlettes, acai bowls) which is generally what I stick to. But there doesn’t seem to be as many here in Istanbul, or at least on first impression.
I’ve seen a LOT of modern turkish restaurants, which, I’m not opposed to, I just don’t know what I’d order. And adding more decisions is not what I want right now.
My first afternoon I spent a whole hour scouring Google Maps for something healthy/clean. I ended up finding a place, it was just a little overpriced for my preferences.
It was here when I got frustrated that I think I’m going to lose weight here in Istanbul, when bulking and gaining weight is one of my goals. Losing progress is not fun, especially when I’ve now been at this for a couple years. If I can’t find good places to eat then I probably won’t be here very long.
BUT after, I ended up finding this cafe that’s been an absolute gem, called Federal Galata. It’s got coffee, lots of seats, outlets, wifi, and a full food menu with actually good meals. That made up for everything. And while I’ve already been there twice already, when I find places like this I get tempted to just go there every day so I don’t have to think about it 😂
Coffee Shops
First off, I found a hostel with a co-working space on the second floor, which is absolutely CLUTCH.
That said, I like to explore too and spend lunch/afternoon/dinner from coffee shops/cafes.
On the flip side to the restaurants, there are SO MANY coffee shops here, my lord. I’m still finding out how many are good to work from, but there are absolutely everywhere, it’s amazing.
So the next morning/afternoon, despite my temptation to just go back to Federal Galata the next morning/afternoon 😂 I resisted the urge and checked out this other one called EspressoLab.
This place was insane. Good espresso, massive place with tons of seats, and the entire second floor was this huge co-working space with tons of seats, outlets, and even some meeting rooms.
I thought I had died and went to heaven 😂
But just after I ordered, I confirmed if I could work on my laptop here and the guy affirmed. Then I hear from this big middle eastern guy behind me “the wifi is shit” and he turns to the barista guy “fix your shit wifi.”
😅 I kinda chuckled not sure if he was joking or not.
I went upstairs to set up and connected to the wifi.
It gave you 5 options:
- Username and password
- Log in with Facebook or Twitter
- Turkish Citizen number
- SMS
- Phone call
So I clicked SMS to connect, it said to enter your Turkish cell number, I entered my phone number, nothing.
I clicked phone call, nothing.
I tried log in with Twitter, it wouldn’t load.
I tried log in with Facebook, it said error this app is disabled.
At this point this guy’s comment started to resurface in my head.
I called over a staff, he entered his Turkish Citizenship number and it said he had already connected 2 devices and that’s the maximum. He told me to put in the non-Turkish Citizen field and put my passport number in. Error invalid.
So I went downstairs and asked a different staff. He put in his citizenship number, invalid.
He put in his phone number, text never showed up.
He got another guy to come over, put his phone number in, text never showed up.
He goes “sorry I think the system is not working” and just kinda turned away.
So I went back upstairs and spent the next hour looking for a DIFFERENT coffee shop to work from… from this coffee shop 😡
It was like getting to heaven and seeing a “we’re closed” sign on the gate 😂😢
I ended up finding another place that worked. I got lunch there, worked for a bit, then went back to Federal Galata 😂
Wading In
I’m slowly starting to get a collection of coffee shops that hit both: lunch menu and good to work from.
That said, this takes up a LOT of time searching.
I hope I don’t come off as ungrateful, because that’s not my intention, but this type of travel planning is kind of a huge pain in the a**. It just takes a lot of time, there’s a lot of uncertainty, and the downside is wasted time and/or money all while my top priority is working.
My next app that I build may very well be solving this problem. And if I don’t build something and have a lot of money I would absolutely pay someone to just plan everything for me: which area to stay, find the inexpensive hostels I can work from, give me a shortlist of restaurants to eat from, coffee shops to work from, gym to go to, etc.
In fact, I just wrote about this same problem when I landed in Porto, The Week I Flew To Porto, Portugal, January 5th, 2025.
And I can hear the first pushback to this, “well if everything’s planned for you then there’s no spontaneity or exploration.” I don’t see it as one or zero. If I had a list of like 5 each – restaurants and coffee shops that were SOLID recommendations, then say “if you want to find something else that’s on you,” even that would be good.
The hardest part is getting that initial baseline of solid places I know are good.
The reason I don’t right now is that my perception of the likelihood of success is low. I’m looking for VERY specific things (which maybe makes it easier?).
I started messing around with a travel and restaurant “profile” back when I was in Singapore (The Week I Let ChatGPT Plan My Travels Inside Singapore, December 31st, 2023). It worked pretty well for traveling, but for restaurants and coffee shops, it’s like ~40% of the recommendations are just not accurate – either permanently closed or not a good match to what I asked.
Anyways, I write all this to hopefully provide perspective and context to what you may see on the “outside” – the pictures of beautiful places and beautiful food dishes. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes, especially when being dropped into a new place I’ve never been to.
If this is the price I pay to live this life, I’ll take it.
Exploration Runs
First one across the bridge:
Second one down to Galataport. It seems to be this outdoor mall, but it’s all fenced off and you have to go through a security screening checkpoint and metal detector to get into the whole area. Weird but cool and beautiful!
Food From Istanbul
What’s Next?
Finding restaurants to eat at and coffee shops to work from 😂