The Week Of DMs and Infinity Pool Photos

This Week:

A peek into my mind behind the scenes of sending outreach DMs.
What I changed in my last YouTube video and how it went.
Where I moved to this week and my honest thoughts.

March 2025

Su	M	T	W	Th	F	S
23	24	25	26	27	28	3/1
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	4/1	2	3	4	5

Where In The World Was I?

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Metrics From The Week

Third week in a row 5x weight training per week!

Business Update

Delivered first report

Got another report request from someone who came across the blog posts I wrote back 2.5 years ago summarizing Hamza’s guides (I wrote about them in What Do Fish Have To Do With Mental Health?, October 9th, 2022). Pretty wild how that happens.

This content is not ready to be made public yet.

(Re)Starting Outreach

Also sent my first (three) outreach DMs this week. But now in retrospect, it’s kind of embarrassing to admit the journey it took me to get here.

I’ve been fearing sending DMs and reaching out, so I’ve been procrastinating and delaying, delaying, and delaying.

I had accumulated a decent list from those channels I’ve been engaging with, but I didn’t have good quality leads, the ones I’m looking for. So I took about 1,000 and filtered them by my criteria (with code) down to about 250. But this was still too overwhelming to deal with. So I went through their channel descriptions coarsely filtering them. Then, I did another pass opening up their channels and filtering by what I’m looking for.

I ended up finding a guy who has an agency doing YouTube growth and posts super valuable and raw content on his channel. I ended up getting a bit side-tracked watching some of his videos and taking notes

I finally got to a list of about 15 and thought okay this is enough to actually start sending some DMs. The limiting factor is no longer having a list of quality leads I can start with.

But I realized my Instagram profile had no content explaining what I’m actually offering, aside from my bio. So, I put together 2 posts and pinned them just to give anyone who opens my profile some context rather than only seeing personal pictures.

Finally, I went to the phone booth room, opened up my phone and thought, “hmmm, what do I actually say?“

So instead, I scripted a little template first.

I was finally ready to go… But I ran out of time in the afternoon and went to go workout instead.

I left thinking, “hmmm I’m sensing a pattern here ”

The next morning I finally sent my first message. It just took me… 2 hours, watching some of his videos, looking for an actionable and valuable insight, scripting, then practicing the message out loud about 12 times.

The first one’s the hardest.

… except for the second one, which actually took me longer He didn’t have voice messages enabled so I pivoted to making a Loom video instead.

But the third one only took me 1 hour and 45 minutes so, progress!

The Perfectionism Battle

If I’ve learned one thing from the last couple of years, it’s that I’ve learned a hell of a lot from 1. time and 2. trying to actually do things.

The more time that passes, the more it’s clear what comes easy, what I gravitate towards, and what is painfully difficult.

It makes moments like these very obvious what I struggle with.

The question remains, what do you do about it?

Mentally I’ve struggled the most with putting out something that isn’t at least my best-effort foot forward.

My DailyVs were intentionally designed to help me with this, but it’s hard when you actually try.

So this gets me to these moments like spending 2 hours on a DM. Part of it is paying the ignorance tax of “I’ve never done this before and I have no idea what I’m doing” but part of it is learning when and how much “imperfection” to just accept.

I’ve realized that I actually want to provide value to people and actually help them. I don’t want to just mass send DMs and hope for the beloved whatever 1% reply rate. But actually caring about people means actually giving them unique and helpful insights which actually takes some thought.

So my biggest upside is also my biggest downside

I’ve started implementing more ChatGPT as an accountability coach, feeding it my 12-week year goals, weekly plans, and daily plans and asking for feedback. I spend a good chunk of time diving deeper into actual strategies to balance this value-first approach while limiting the downside of taking too long analyzing.

I talked about this perfectionism struggle and the takeaways I had in this week’s video The “Perfect Information” Paradox No One Talks About

Which, speaking of…

Incremental Progress

I’ve been a bit “in between” things so I just went for a quick video this week. I ended up going to KLCC park and tried to bang it all out in one go but ended up scripting on this park bench. I didn’t quite have a core idea formulated yet (back to that perfectionism).

Quite a nice change of pace and pleasant experience! Fresh air, surrounded by greenery, birds chirping, and getting bitten by mosquitos ().

I went back to record the next morning.

The main thing I changed or worked on this video was my intro hook. I’ve been learning a ton about video scripting, intros, hooks, etc. and this video I actually tried to implement what I learned.

From my video script doc:

(hook and question) Isn’t it strange, we have more knowledge at our fingertips than any generation before us [b-roll chatgpt response, video of someone’s step by step framework video, etc]. So how do we still feel stuck? Most of us know what to do, but why don’t we do it?
(common belief) We convince ourselves that if we only had a little bit more information, do a little bit more research, then we could make the perfect decision.
(contrast, picque curiosity) Maybe it’s not the information but something else.
(proof/plan) See I spent the last week analyzing thousands of videos looking for hidden audience demand for one of my clients and it made me realize that more information isn’t the answer, it’s actually these 2 mindset shifts that I needed to understand.

And it actually kinda worked!

Still a bit early, but my retention graph as of mid Sunday March 16th (49 views).

It’s cool to see the output of improvements. I feel like I’m getting better. And the funny thing is, the more I improve, the more I start to cringe at the past videos that I made just a month ago

The main thing I’ve been wrestling with right now is how to balance content that attracts the ideal persona for my business offer, with content that I’m just genuinely interested in talking about, making, and sharing. These two don’t fully overlap and I really don’t like the idea of putting myself in a box of being the “YouTube growth” guy who only ever talks about YouTube and optimizing your videos and whatever. There are enough people out there and I hate the idea of losing the personal part of a personal brand.

I’ve already got some ideas of how to balance this, it’s just a matter of putting it in practice.

A Little Bit Of Novelty

To be honest I kind of felt like a hypocrite writing about my “the art of boredom” and not changing locations and then moving locations this week But I just went 15 minutes south to Komune Living, a co-living hotel. I went here last year when I was in KL (The Week I Settled Into A New Home In Kuala Lumpur, January 7th, 2024)

I figured I could squeeze a little more juice out of KL with a little bit of novelty, moving locations to a place I’ve been before.

If you watched this video 5 systems I use to ACTUALLY reduce decision fatigue every day, I’ve been using this new 12-week year goal-setting system. So I’ve got just one week left of this first 12-week year.

So, right now I’m in a “sprint to the finish and then rest” kind of mindset.

With this mindset, it was sort of funny (now in retrospect), I started to regret coming down here as I was searching for restaurants to go to for my routine. The healthy food restaurants aren’t as diverse as in KLCC. It’s kind of like a little bubble of buildings and restaurants rather than being in the city center where you can go in any direction to find a ton of options.

Lately I’ve been really valuing having a healthy food restaurant close for lunch, something I can walk to quickly, eat, grab a takeaway meal, and then come back to continue working.

But this regret subsided as I realized that Kubis & Kale’s portions were larger than I remembered.

I dunno I have trouble mentally with criticizing or saying negatives about things that when compared to other things, are objectively amazing. Surely there’s some better way to put this. The idea of comparison.

I think I paid around $34/night? (There’s a cheaper room that’s about $25/night but it was full) The views are insane, the infinity pool is amazing. In comparison, for $34/night in the U.S. you get a cardboard box in the back of the parking lot behind the dumpsters

It reminds me of this video I made when I landed in Malaga and stayed in that 5-star hotel My thoughts as a backpacker trying a fancy 5-star hotel with the other guys. There’s this big monetary buffer zone.

Are the views great? Yes.

Are they worth the extra? I mean

Is having my own room great? Yes.

Is it really worth the extra? I dunno.

Some things directly serve my goals. Others don’t.

Part of the struggle is also trying to divorce this from gratitude. I’m grateful for all of this, but at the same time I can choose to accept that some things may not be worth it.

The Routine

I’d spend the morning up on the 29th floor rooftop terrace and get some morning sunlight in while I waited for the co-working space to open (9am).

Then I literally just went to Kubis & Kale for lunch every day. I’d get a bowl to eat there and a second for takeaway (usually ~$15 total). I’d stop by Food City to get a bubble tea. Then go back and continue working. I’d work out around 5pm (there’s an Anytime Fitness 2 blocks away!) and then just run to Agrain (they have a second location here!) for dinner almost every night.

Look, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

I also made my own cold brew again, which I did last year. Last year the ground level Starbucks coffee machine was under maintenance. This year it worked! But it was mediocre at best so I went for the good ‘ol coffee grounds + apple juice bottle cold brew again

Midweek Slump

I hit a bit of a slump midweek, losing my focus and feeling pretty exhausted after my workout(s). Probably a combination of physical and mental exhaustion.

I took a morning a bit more chill and went swimming got some *in your best GaryVee voice* CONTENT. It actually did help.

This took me 12 attempts

This content is not ready to be made public yet.

Food From The Week

Genki Sushi – conveyor belt sushi place in Suria KLCC
Kubis & Kale – poke bowls (see above)
Food City – bubble tea drinks (see above)
Agrain – healthy food bowls (see above)
The Farm – western food. This place is amazing. “Expensive” (for KL standards, pizza+shake $15.28, burger+cauliflower bites+shake=$21.54) but very good quality and great vibes.