This Week:
- The feedback I got on my second YouTube report I delivered this week.
- The process it took updating my wardrobe while abroad.
- My second Padel class!
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
Business Update
Report Delivery
Got my second in-depth report delivered ✅
This content is not ready to be made public yet.
And the feedback I got was fantastic.
For maybe years I’ve always known about this idea, giving value until people say “take my money,” but it was always just an idea. I didn’t quite get that reaction with my software. So, I had never experienced it.
Until I got this response from the report I delivered this week (edited for brevity/clarity):
Im not expecting THAT kind of work. You really dive in very deep.
…
Now as a entrepreneur (ım actually new) ım thinking… How can it be free?
As I customer Im now considering buying something from you or not. If you reveal any product probably I will buy it.
…
Your work is amazing. Really thank you brother. Please let me know when you create a product which is same quality as your this work
Finally, FINALLY, the response I’ve been looking for. Overdeliver so much that they feel like they owe you.
I also made a post in one of the Skool communities I’m in with some YouTube strategy insights I’ve been finding from this process. Nothing too strong, but I’ve received some nice compliments which I’m taking as just leads that what I’m doing is at least interesting enough that I should share more of it.
So that’s what I did this week.
YouTube Strategy Video
I’ve been trying to move more towards simple/easy to put together YouTube videos, but then I had this idea to synthesize the learnings from all the creators I’ve been watching and learning from. So what started out as a quick and easy raw video turned into…
- Plan: 6 hr 22 min
- Record: 2 hr
- Edit+Upload: 7 hr 33 min
And better yet, I’ve been a little bit behind, so I waited until Wednesday to record and edit the whole thing. Went to KLCC park and found a chess table. Banged it out. Then spent from 12:30-9:30pm editing it, thumbnail, and uploading. I skipped dinner 😅
I usually post at noon eastern time on Wednesdays which is midnight at the end of Wednesday/early Thursday, so it had to get done, BUT we got it done.
9:29PM photo, finally done:
I worried a bit about copyright claims using other people’s content but so far so good. I tried to fall within fair use.
And somewhat expectedly How These 7 Creators Use Low Views to Make $10M+ on YouTube, it did NOT perform well 😅, it’s a bit of a deviation further into the YouTube strategy realm from my existing content. At least at the start. Looks like it’s JUST starting to get picked up a bit.
These are the moments when the perfectionism stings. To sink 16 hours into a video and not get the energy back out, to have it not “do well.”
But, if you watched the first ~3 minutes of the video, I can pull straight from it: it’s not about views, it’s about value, an engaged audience, and conversions. And for me specifically in this scenario, I think it’s about starting to lay down the bricks for the long term brand.
Raw Insights Video
For the last maybe 3-4 weeks (well actually, it’s been on my Q1 12-week year goal the whole quarter) I’ve wanted to get to a place where I could post twice a week. Once a week just isn’t enough to get where I want to go, it’s too slow.
But with each video (and each video taking 10+ hours), it kept getting pushed back.
However, last week, my AI “accountability coach” (I’ve been uploading my 12-week year note, weekly notes, and daily notes, and more context + asking for feedback on my goals/work) suggested I do a “60 min Insight Video.”
The idea being, you do zero planning, sit down, set a timer for 60 minutes and in that time:
- Quick bullet outline for an idea
- Record it
- Edit out the pauses and gaps
- Upload
… all within 60 minutes.
Since I love systems and felt like the bottleneck here is coming up with an idea I can riff on for a 5-10 minute video, I added a new nightly reflection item after I journal and before going to sleep.
- What’s one story-worthy moment from today?
- What’s a problem I had or saw today?
- (New) What’s something I learned or discovered today? And why does it matter?
It got to Friday afternoon and I almost tapped out, but I gritted my teeth and gave it a whirl. Took 2 hours (20m prep, 40m record, 45m edit, 20m upload), but I did it!
How I find “deep audience resonance” in YouTube comments for outperforming topics
I like the idea of doing edited videos on Wednesdays and raw style videos on Saturdays, but the last couple weeks I’ve realized my new biggest enemy is perfectionism and analysis paralysis.
So, ideas are pretty worthless. I have to actually figure out how to do it and sustain it.
This is one of those “thinking about scaling before starting” thought patterns I can’t tell you how many times I’ve noticed over the last I dunno, 5 years. It’s gotten to a point where I’m at least able to identify them. The question is how do you actually change your behavior.
Letting Off The Gas
With this being my 12th week of this first quarter 12-week year, it was partially a race to the finish, but I also started letting off the gas to prep for the 13th week rest+recovery week.
Last day at the co-living hotel. I moved back to the other hostel this week.
Went to a new coffee shop the morning after the 8hr afternoon video edit and took it more slowly. Not sure why I never went here last year, it’s close and pretty great!
The Wardrobe Update
However, most of this week was a LOT of this wardrobe update planning.
I’ve been wanting to “up” my wardrobe style one notch, from the current “functional SF tech-bro smart casual” to something like a “soft sophisticated” style.
This is currently as “dressed up” as I can look (second is from Budapest, The Week In Budapest With The Boys, November 17th, 2024):
But as a reminder, my entire life right now fits in this image:
So for anything that comes in, something has to go out 😂
And the other constraint was that I couldn’t order anything online.
What I could’ve and maybe should’ve done is do this RIGHT when I got to KL and not in my last week (so that I could order stuff), but oh well haha. I can’t rely on waiting 3-5 days for something to arrive, maybe have to return it, etc. Instead, I opted for “everything has to be in-stock and pickup.”
I’ll try to not bore you with too many details but this was my strategy:
- (New addition) Long sleeve button down, light material, light color
- (Replace 1 wicking shirt) Short sleeve light button down/polo, light material, light color
- (Replace 1 casual shirt) Short sleeve polo
- Replace 1 old casual shirt
- (Replace my travel jeans) Travel chino pants
- (Replace old khaki shorts) Chino/khaki shorts
- (Replace 1 gym shorts) Hybrid casual-wear shorts
- Replace underwear (merino wool & wicking)
- Replace socks
- Replace hat
And I had some more things/ideas but more for colder climates.
To be honest I had/have no idea what I’m doing, so I spent one afternoon just finding all the possible stores and browsing to see even what’s out there. I went to: Uniqlo, H&M, Muji, Giordano, Lululemon, Massimo Dutti, Zara, and Cotton On.
And then realized that this would be more complicated because I have zero light colors in my current wardrobe so I have no idea what light colors (if any) actually look good.
The additional constraint here is that “everything has to go with everything.” Because I don’t have that many sets of clothes, I can’t afford to have a situation where “oooo I can’t wear this shirt with those shorts and my other shirts are all dirty.”
So, everything has to go with everything. But you have to kind of fit everything “into memory” at once which is very difficult to do.
After a LOT of GPT’ing and Grok’ing searching and planning, what helped me most was actually creating this compatibility table (I laugh because it’s so me 😂; “engineer takes on wardrobe styling”). It helped me visualize exactly what are all the possible outfits and so I could figure out exactly what colors need to go with what colors.
X = “yes”, M = “maybe”
| Bottoms / Tops | Nano puff | Sweater or 1/4 zip | Light Linen | Reg. Button | Dark Polo | Dark Grey Polo | Light Short Button | Black Casual | Blue Casual | Black Wicking |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dark navy travel chinos | X | X | X | X | X | X | M | |||
| Dark navy/grey Khul pants | X | X | M | M | M | X | M | X | X | X |
| Dark navy chino shorts | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||
| Light grey khaki shorts | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Active hybrid shorts | M | M | X | X | X | X | X | |||
| Black gym shorts | X |
Simultaneously I figured out that there actually are some light colors I can pull off. So I narrowed my options and went back with a targeted strike figuring out exactly what I need to try on at each place.
And finally started to find things that would actually work! (well, and some that still didn’t 😂)
This is what I ended up getting:
- Beige short sleeve cotton/poly-blend button down (Zara)
- Dark green cotton polo (Massimo Dutti)
- Sand color 100% linen button down (Massimo Dutti)
- Dark navy chino shorts (H&M)
- Dark navy chino pants (Uniqlo)
- Black active wear shorts (Uniqlo)
and replaced some other stuff. Props to my mom for the sand beige idea. I ran with it.
And ladies and gentlemen, I think we’ve done it. I won’t show all the permutations, but you get the idea.
My phone is absolutely full of these fitting room mirror selfies 😂😂
Also I haven’t packed everything up yet or donated my old clothes so the jury’s out if everything fits in my backpack 😅 Find out next week 😂
Honestly I wish this went as easy/well as I just described, but in reality, I literally went to stores every single day this week to figure out how the heck to pull this off. It was a LOT of planning, researching, and trying things on.
You can try on a pair of chino pants at 3 different places and they’re all just a little bit different. One’s color is a lighter shade, one is a shorter style, one is too tight, etc. It’s chaos. And on top of that I had to figure out what colors and shades to get. Everything in my current wardrobe is… black 😂
I just want to make it clear that I didn’t just go “ah yeah I’ll just get navy chino pants and shorts, and uh, how about a sand beige top, perfect found one, I’ll buy it, done.” 😅
A Day Off
Maybe my first proper day off in a while. I did a morning workout, which I also haven’t done in ages. Then went to a coffee shop in KLCC (before finishing the clothes shopping).
I booked another Padel class (beginner-intermediate lesson) in the afternoon. It was a 2 hour class on overhead shots.
It was a lot of fun! And a lot harder than I expected. I was like “phfff how sweaty could I get. It’s padel, you just stand there.” Hah, WRONG. I was absolutely drenched.
It was also fun because we jumped straight in. The extent of my padel experience is: one 60 minute 101 class. That’s it. I’ve never even watched a match or game or anything else.
We did a warm up and then went straight into him lobbing overhead balls and practicing hitting them.
And we finished with ~45 minutes actual 2×2 match gameplay.
I literally had to look up the rules during one of the water breaks 😂😂😂 I was like how do you even play this game 😂
But that like quick beginner’s learning curve I found was really fun. It’s fun to just jump into the deep end and be around other people who’ve played before because you have to step up to the plate. It pushes you really quickly.
I finished with a Japanese shaved ice and burger+fries+milkshake.
What’s Next?
See you in another country!
- It’s in Southeast Asia.
- I’ve been there before.