This Week:
- Final days in Harrisonburg and deciding where to head next.
- Drone shots and mountain layer views from Tennessee and North Carolina.
- My first impressions of Asheville, North Carolina!
July 2024
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 | 7/1 | 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 | 8/1 | 2 | 3 |
Where In The World Was I?
- Harrisonburg, Virginia
- ☕️ Blacksburg, Virginia
- Asheville, North Carolina
Metrics From The Week
Going from 69ºF every night with beautiful consistent air conditioning (shoutout to my VA fam ❤️) to… 91ºF inside my van when I’m trying to go to sleep has been… a bit of an adjustment to say the least 😅 I’m having to sacrifice the privilege of optimizing my last 90% to 100% of sleep for this lifestyle of urban van life. I wouldn’t call it ideal, but life is never ideal. Adaptability is the name of the game here.
Business Progress Update
This week I made some final tweaks to the UI, then pivoted a bit. I updated my backend processing to more accurate in updating the loading progress bar, and tweaked some things for mobile.
I’ll share why I’m not putting a picture of it here in just a sec.
At this point I had more or less “finished” the UI. The next thing I wanted to do was take a step back and analyze how I could substantially increase the value of my site.
I went back through Alex Hormozi’s $100m Offers book steps on crafting your offer and did all the steps for my current site/offer. This was an interesting process because after, I felt substantially more confident in what I had to offer because I had identified multiple problems and thought about how I could address all of them. But the problem was, actually getting to that place in the real world would take me a while because I had to build out all the solution ideas that addressed the problems I identified.
So I tried to figure out how I balance this “ideal” offer with building an MVP, valuing speed, and iterating quickly. I decided to re-double down on JUST the problem I’m tackling here, generating quality video titles, do it well, then based on feedback I get, decide what else to implement.
In doing this, I realized that the UI I had just put together was trying to do too much. It’s giving you channels, detailed data on channels in your niche, outperforming videos from your niche, AND new titles. Information overload. So I realized I need to take a step back and revamp with the core focus of titles, titles, titles. I wanted everything in the page of the UI to answer the question of “how does this element help the creator generate quality video titles.”
It was a bit disappointing realizing that the time I had just spent working on this UI I’d have to mostly scrap, but as I talked about in this video Learning why having to scrap work isn’t wasted effort (among other learnings), this work was the precursor, the prerequisite, the stepping stone to the higher value solution.
So back to the drawing board. And in 2 days I came up with this new design, focused on the core value of providing new personalized video titles. (again, results are placeholders but UI is accurate)
One of the other things I talked about in Learning why having to scrap work isn’t wasted effort was that it doesn’t really feel like I’m building a scrappy pieced-together MVP anymore. That’s partially due to my own perfectionism here getting in the way, but I wondered if this is okay. After all, I realized I don’t really need to validate that creators have the problem of coming up with video titles and ideas. It appears that what I’m actually validating is that my new opportunity vehicle solves that problem well enough and is what people want.
Last thing I’ll say is that I’ve continued to have wavering confidence about whether or not I’m providing enough value for people to want to pay for what I have to offer here. One thing that’s gotten me through these waves is that I’m solving my own problem. If I just forget about the hypothetical “other people” for a second and solve this problem well enough for myself (and projecting forward, use it to build my own YouTube channel), the question becomes how transferrable is my problem to other people, which doesn’t seem far fetched.
Final Days In Harrisonburg
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
🚐 What’s Next?
With about 3 weeks left until leaving for a trip to Spain, I wanted to do some exploring of the area. But, there was a bit of a problem.
I’ve been focused on business, business, business, so I wanted to put that as my top priority instead of hopping around and exploring places. That said, I didn’t want zero exploring.
I searched for some national forest, really anywhere, that had some good clearings for camping so that I could charge solar and use my starlink. But, I searched and search and barely found any. Yes, there were some, but I’m talking a handful amongst this whole Appalachian mountain range, hundreds and hundreds of miles long.
I just envisioned finding a spot, driving 200 miles down to the site, then finding someone already camping there… Oof. Then what?
So, I pivoted to finding a city for urban van life.
[hours of searching later]
Think I'm going to Richmond, VA. Others: Asheville, NC, Chattanooga, TN. I searched and search for camping spots with clearings and found a VERY small number of places...
[45 minutes later]
Okay just kidding, I'm gonna drive down to Asheville, NC. I'm interested in the great smoky mountains and potential for long-term interest in this area. I have no real interest in the nature around Richmond. Richmond looks fantastic for van life and would be strictly for urban van life working, which is fine. Richmond is easy to go to (2hrs) with family, but Asheville and Chattanooga, no. Probably gonna try my best to just do urban camping, but maybe I'll check out the surrounding national forest, it just doesn't look like I'll be able to get any good solar or starlink.
Let's just go for it. I'll never know the alternative, just decide and go.🚐 Driving South
Overnight and coffee stop in Blacksburg, VA.
I’m gonna be honest with you, the mountain layering in this part of the country may be the best I’ve ever seen. One of my absolute top favorite views and they’re just everywhere you look.
Entering Asheville, North Carolina
Population: 93,776 (2022)
I’ve been impressed with Asheville so far! It’s got great vibes, great mixed-use commercial areas, lots of trees and greenery, the parks have lots of trees and shade, the coffee shops have been great so far, great espressos, lots of breweries and nice restaurants, and I’ve seen a handful of big new construction housing projects.
Every day there’s been a bunch of people out and about walking around, going to shops, running along the river, biking, it feels like there’s an energy here. It makes me think the urban planners are doing something well here.
I also like how the mountainous/hilly region makes the layout of the city dynamic and not just a simple grid. It reminds me of Seattle a bit in that way.
On the flip side, I’ve seen quite a lot of homeless people here. I feel sad to say this, but honestly, from all the places I’ve been in the U.S., it feels like this has just become normal across all U.S. cities. I’ve never seen homelessness this bad across a country. I don’t claim to have the answer or any power to make a change, but I wanted to document that Asheville is not all rainbows and butterflies.
Starting to notice the back is coming along nicely 💪 Also the lighting in this Anytime Fitness is absolutely 🔥
Thoughts From The Week
I’ve been leaning into the routine lately, as expected. I tried to capturing this feeling one afternoon in When life aligns, what do you do?. I feel like I’m getting some macro flow with work and making progress that I’m trying to take advantage of. As a result some of my administrative things have taken a back seat, like buying a new bar of soap and doing my laundry, among other things… 😂 Hey, nothing a little deodorant perfume mist can’t fix.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about my travel plans after my trip to Spain in August… No decisions yet, but there’s been a lot to think about.
On the YouTube front, despite my feelings of not having as concise things to talk in my videos, I feel like I’m getting good consistent feedback. What used to be a floor of 5-10 views in Bali/KL is now 25-30 views.
It’s kind of been a weird feeling because I don’t see these videos as even close to the best videos I could make. In fact, many of them I think aren’t even very good and sometimes I worry that I waste people’s time 😅😬 So with that context, it’s been an interesting situation to see the market tell me that I’m doing something right just by even showing up.
If you’re in the growing number following along, thank you.
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https://www.youtube.com/@petermeglis
Food From The Week
What’s Next?
Addicted to progress.