The Week I Drove Down To Phoenix, Arizona

This Week:

My final days in Budapest, Hungary.
The connecting flight story in Istanbul.
Why I drove down to Phoenix, Arizona.

November 2024

Su	M	T	W	Th	F	S
27	28	29	30	31	11/1	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

Where In The World Was I?

🇭🇺 Budapest, Hungary
🇺🇸 Denver, Colorado, U.S.
🚐 Colorado Springs, Colorado
🚐 Santa Fe, New Mexico
🚐 Phoenix, Arizona
🇺🇸 Scottsdale, Arizona

Metrics From The Week

I can’t describe how incredible those 3 100% sleeps felt as I got back in the U.S. It’s actually amazing what good sleep can do. To be able to wake up and just immediately pop out of bed, fired up and ready to go 👨‍🍳😘

Business Progress Update

This week was a lot of travel, but I managed to continue chugging along.

I did about 8 new reach outs on Skool, some community comments, onboarded one new user, and got my first two testimonials!

And in some downtime fixed a couple bugs.

Final Days in Budapest

After the last week with the guys, I stuck around another ~2 days to collect myself before heading back to the States.

I got a sore throat and bit of a cold on my way out. I’ve been getting Pho whenever I get a cold and it’s the best.

✈️ Back To The States

It was unbelievably foggy the morning. I thought for SURE they would delay but somehow my inbound flight landed just fine without being able to see 20ft in front of the plane 😳 Autopilot is incredible. The fog cleared by the time we left.

There was ONE big question mark in this whole trip to Budapest and back. The flight over was fine, but my flight back, I only had a 60 minute layover in Istanbul airport. I knew it would be tight, but I didn’t know it would be THIS tight…

We push back from the gate in Budapest to leave and a couple minutes later get to this plane “parking” area.

The captain says over the loudspeaker “there was an issue with the computer system that we need to get a second check on, we’ll be taking off in about 10-15 minutes, apologies for the delay.”

With everything, we ended up taking off about 45 minutes AFTER the scheduled departure time.

I had a plan for when we landed, but I knew most of this was just out of my control. I would do the best I could.

15 minutes until landing… still in the air, next flight has already started boarding:

My grand plan was that when we would land, I’d look up the real-time gate number for my next flight, search for the Istanbul airport terminal map to see where it is, then use Google Maps to check what gate we arrive at. I’d know exactly where and how far to run.

But we land and… my cell service doesn’t work 😂 It says 4 bars of Turkcell signal but every time I do a search it says “No Internet” and my Google Maps won’t load.

I ended up asking the guy next to me if he could search for the terminal map on his phone. He spoke english but didn’t really understand what I was looking for.

So it’s time to do it the good ‘ol fashion way.

We finally pull in to the gate, my flight departs at 14:30 and the ticket says “boarding closes 20 minutes prior to departure.”

GGs as they say, but I wouldn’t give up without a fight.

I exit the plane and there’s a ground crew guy with a wheelchair standing there. I go “Denver? Denver?” and show him my ticket.

He looks at it and goes “that way sir…” and points down the hall.

Then goes… “RUN!” 😅

I exit that plane boarding hallway thing and pop back into the airport expecting some other ground crew to get a speedy connection. Nope.

I check the screens, find my flight and see a flashing red message in Turkish, and gate number F1.

Since I didn’t get to look up the map I had no idea where F1 was but I just started sprinting as fast as I could looking for those “A, B, C, … Gates” signs.

Istanbul airport is massive and the plane I was on was basically the entire other side of the airport to F1.

My Whoop picked up on my “Activity” 😂

I think it was about a 12 minute run and I basically made it to the other side wheezing.

I get to the gate and I’m waving my boarding pass “Denver! Denver!” and there’s a woman there waving me in.

“Oh my god… *breathes*… thank you… *breathes*… for waiting… *breathes*” I say and she goes “no problem, haha, you made it, you can relax now.”

I get into the boarding hallway and there’s still a line of people getting on the plane.

I find my seat, sit down, take this photo:

And then hear over the loud speaker “… boarding complete.”

Unreal. I think I saw when I was boarding that this flight was delayed by 20 minutes. I don’t know if that was intentionally for me and how many other people were late (no one came in behind me as I was boarding), but holy SMOKES I was grateful to be on that plane.

There’s this weird feeling I had, which I’ve had only a few other times, where it feels like I’m not supposed to be there.

It’s this mix between gratitude and feeling like you’re in a dream.

The rest of the ~14 hour flight was thankfully very uneventful 😄

🚐 Road Trip

Colorado

My van was still there! Lovely.

I worked at Frank & Roze, got groceries, then hit the open road heading south.

My morning view from the parking lot I slept in:

I stopped at a coffee shop in Colorado Springs to get some work done, then continued south.

New Mexico

A Morning In Santa Fe

Santa Fe is such an iconic place, I decided to stop a bit longer since I was literally driving through.

Coffee and work:

Got a food truck burrito and walked canyon road stopping in some art galleries:

Strolled around downtown:

Then continued on my way:

And stopped in Gallup, NM for coffee the next morning (I SWEAR I’m not addicted 😅☕️)

Arizona

I drove down through Payson, AZ instead of going through Flagstaff and was shocked at how many trees and mountains were here!

I thought Arizona was just dry desert and cacti! What the heck. It reminded me a bit of driving through Tahoe.

The drive was so incredibly beautiful. Such a cool and unique part of the country.

Made it to Phoenix!

Thoughts From The Week

Why did I drive to Phoenix?

No words necessary.

Denver:

Phoenix:

I think I’m officially a snowbird.

Reinventing Myself

In my 2 weeks off of posting on YouTube, my trip to Budapest, and my road trip down to Phoenix, I’ve done a lot of thinking.

Budapest forced me to grow being around the other guys. It was mindset shifts being around everyone, but also having my limiting beliefs destroyed about getting back on Instagram. Coincidentally, reading this new book Psycho-Cybernetics, the message has been the same and I’ve already been feeling the changes.

I want to change.

I want to keep this motivation moving and tackle more of my limiting beliefs.

I want to stop feeling limited by my own mind.

I thought about what I feel constrained by while driving down here and it seems to come down to a few things: socializing (fear of rejection) and my current lifestyle/finances (lack of self-confidence).

So I’m seeing this trip not just as warmer weather, but an opportunity to form a new identity and smash out more of my insecurities and limiting beliefs.

… like a phoenix being reborn, if you will (heh 😉)

The Marathon Mindset

Kris, the guy behind 1stMan (now 1M) on YouTube and the group that I’m in who I met in Granada and Budapest, has a concept called the Marathon Mindset. It basically comes down to increasing your social connections and network by just having casual conversations with everyone, trusting the longer game.

I’ve struggled with starting small talk and little conversations in the past (I think they’re documented on here somewhere). This is one of the things I’m tackling and I can already feel the difference just in choosing to change.

I was waiting for my burrito at the food truck in Santa Fe and got into this little conversation with another guy waiting.

Walking along Canyon Road in Santa Fe, I had a number of conversations with artists, throwing out more “social hooks” (as I call them) than I would’ve previously.

Then this morning at this coffee shop I’m writing this post from, I shared that it’s my first time in Phoenix to strike up a conversation with the barista instead of just the normal “I’ll have an espresso.” “That’ll be $3.50” “Thanks.”

These are moments that feel so small and simple when I look back and when I write them here, but for someone who hasn’t practiced this sort of stuff at all since before COVID, they’re the type of wins I want to just keep stacking and stacking until it’s part of my image of my self.

What’s Next?

SUNSHINE AND WARMTH ☀️☀️ The weather here is incredible.