This Week:
- My last days in Granada and Malaga, Spain.
- Spending a 20 hour layover in Lisbon, Portugal.
- Back in the States!
August 2024
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 8/1 | 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 |
Where In The World Was I?
- 🇪🇸 Granada, Spain
- 🇪🇸 Malaga, Spain
- 🇵🇹 Lisbon, Portugal
- 🇺🇸 Harrisonburg, Virginia, U.S.
Metrics From The Week
💪
Business Progress Update
Beta Users
Besides more engagement on Skool communities, I didn’t get many more NEW users this week as I was traveling a good bunch.
That said, I’ve had a handful of returning users and I even saw 2 new users that I haven’t talked to yet. Last week one of the guys I was messaging said “I have a friend who also would really like to try this. Can I share it?” so it must be from him.
I don’t know how else to describe this besides 😍. Word of mouth referrals tells me I’m doing something right. Just need to keep this up.
Looking Forward
I started accumulating all the feedback I got and outlined the next major improvements I can make to the software that’s based on real user feedback.
Towards the end of the week I started on the next feature, accumulating and recommending channels that are NOT in the user’s niche but that have good quality video ideas/titles that user’s can use for inspiration.
I got 2 cron jobs running now, one that’s making searches and accumulating a new global list of channels, and the second that’s analyzing channels and looking for outlier videos and well-performing channels. It’s all background work right now so I don’t have any UI updates to show yet.
This is the part of this software where things get a lot more complicated. Up until now, I built everything around just the user’s channel, which makes things a lot easier. But now, I’m starting to accumulate data that’s not tied to any user’s and instead basically analyzing the entire landscape of YouTube.
Increasing complexity = Increasing value. If anyone could do it, it’s not as valuable.
To call myself out a bit here, I do think I’m avoiding the discomfort of reaching out to more people and getting more user feedback. Coding is my comfort zone. I’ll happily wrestle through a new algorithm or add something valuable to the software. But, when it comes to user reach outs, DMs, conversations, that’s more uncomfortable for me right now.
I think I wrote in a previous blog post that ideally I’d get users until I hear repeat feedback. I’m sort of there, but I’m not at the scale of 20+ users. I’m more-so using the feedback I’ve gotten as a representation, or a sample, of the feedback I would get if I reached out to more users.
The other thing that’s definitely worth mentioning is that I STILL haven’t gotten my YouTube API quota application approved… That I submitted on August 6th…
They’ve seemingly audited my software and seemed to have no issues with it. When I reached out for an update they said they were working on getting it approved internally. I had created a bunch of API projects to temporarily increase my quota to compensate and they suspended all of those extra accounts, which would/will be fine once they bump up the quota on the main project. But for the meantime I can’t handle as much as previously… Which also plays into the pivot to going back to developing instead of reaching out to more users.
Final Days In Granada
I had some good lunch conversations with the guys talking about life, long-term goals, life setup, and had some great laughs.
The guys were also grilling me on why I should get back posting on Instagram again. I talked about my thoughts in this video: Why I’m debating getting back on Instagram
They did convince me, but I’m not ready to jump on it yet. Gimme a couple weeks.
Pit Stop In Malaga
WOW it was humid in Malaga. I actually got used to (and really liked) the weather in Granada. It was warm but in the shade it was nice, always a cool breeze, and never sweaty.
I got to Malaga and it was the same temperature, but my shirt was soaking wet and I was sweating sitting in the hostel I was in, inside…
Off To Lisbon
I found this return flight that had a 20 hour layover in Lisbon so I thought why not, sounds fun. I got in ~4pm, had dinner, got a haircut, slept, then grabbed a coffee on my way out the next morning.
Last year I was in Porto (Why You Should Go On The Pub Crawl Twice Instead Of Once, August 20th, 2023), I found this amazing restaurant called Honest Greens. Super high quality food, healthy, delicious, great vibes.
Turns out there was one 2 blocks away from the hostel I stayed in with a rooftop terrace.
MAN I would eat here every day. It reminded me of Bali actually quite a bit. It got me excited 👀
Vibes? Immaculate
Food? Out of this world good.
Views? Amazing.
Prices? Ehhhh (was about $36 all in). But the quality is insanely good.
Back In The States!
Quick story about immigration. I got Global Entry last year and this was the first opportunity I got to use it. When I flew from Japan to Denver in April this year the line for border protection/immigration wasn’t that long so I questioned if it was really that useful.
Well, I flew into Washington D.C. Dulles (IAD) and OH MY LORD the immigration line was ginormous. At least 30-45 minute wait. The Global Entry line was maybe 12 people long 😂
You go up to these machines and they take your photo, no questions, no passport scan needed, then you get in line for the actual border protection agents.
I waited maybe 3 or 4 minutes, walk up to the agent, try to hand my passport over, but can’t because of the glass divider. She goes “are you Meglis, Peter?”
“Yep”
“Anything to declare?”
“Nope”
“Have a great day”
And I walk off.
I was like “uhhhhh WOW that was easy” 😄
Back With Upgrades
The van started right up! Noice.
I bought 2 new (“house”) batteries for my van. Finally after 2 years I’m upgrading my capacity! It’s gonna be huge. I’m very excited for this upgrade.
The good news is that the batteries got here a lot sooner than I was expecting. The bad news is that I tried to go to Home Depot & Lowes to buy the materials needed to hook them up in parallel, but I couldn’t find what I needed. Here’s my video from the parking lot of Lowe’s, lol When you go to the store but walk out with nothing… 🥲
So, I have to order the things I need, but I don’t exactly want to wait, as I have a plan I’m excited about for the next 2-3mo 👀 So, looks like I’m gonna have to ship them and meet them somewhere 👀👀
I decided to just replace the 170ah battery I had with one of the 200ah batteries, then I’ll wire them in parallel later.
Dialed In
One of the things I was talking about in this video this week I finally feel like my life is dialed in was how nice it is to have checklists for my life. I talked about this when I re-packed my backpacks to leave for Spain last month. There was no questioning if I forgot anything because I just went down my checklist.
Well I did the same thing for both leaving and returning to my van.
This was my 2nd trip abroad and 2nd time coming back to the van. The process for unpacking/re-packing has been incredibly smooth.
I wanted to capture this feeling this week.
To be able to come back from Spain to basically a fully packed van ready to go anywhere is such a new and freeing feeling. I don’t have to pack all my things up, figure out what I need, renovate anything (heh), it’s just… ready to go. Throw the backpacks in the van and boom, where do we go next? There’s something light and freeing about that feeling that I was trying to express in that video and here.
I feel very grateful to be able to have this opportunity.
Back At It
The re-brand:
It looks too empty now 😄 I’m used to having no space between the stickers.
What’s Next?
Did someone say… road trip? 👀🚐