Greetings from India,
If you ever get the chance to visit, Coimbatore is a city down south in India. I just wrapped up the last dinner and speaking engagements, and it was absolutely mind-blowing. The hospitality of the people was so nice, the food was excellent, and to be honest, after a month in northern Vietnam, the tastes felt so out of this world.

On Friday I gave a talk and I’ll share a little about that. One thing that struck me was that while we tested everything over and over again, I was the last speaker and my first slide came on, but the second—dedicated to my dear friend Eden—didn’t come on screen. We stopped and tried to fix it. I made a joke about my book, but the following morning I thought, maybe it was her playing one of her funny games, laughing at me while I stand there on stage saying, “that’s what I call, F*ck the Slides.”

In today's storyletter:

• Resilience is a skill

• The personal poll

• Building in public

• From the web
  

  Let’s go!
  
  

THOUGHTS

Resilience requires small changes

I was invited to speak at an event titled Bounce Back Champions. Seven speakers came to share their stories about resilience, and I thought I’d share about the time I needed a couch. I wanted to tell them about all the times I started my life over and over again, but the interesting story I shared was when I realized how important having a home is, what happened with my book launch, the war, and how I needed to find my soul again.

Telling the story of how I got to Vietnam—the journey, losing weight, writing a new book about what I’m going through—felt great, but it led me to show them a few things I’m doing to help me:

1. Writing – It has helped me find my passion again. Writing meant I could be intentional again about everything I do. Write a few minutes a day about the things you are going through.

2. Talk to myself – In the best possible way, myself and I started talking about everything through writing. Not happy? Great, why? Want to go drink? Great, why? As long as myself and I came to agreements, I could continue or stop.

3. Do less – A key factor for my change this year has been finding things I do not want to—or should cut down on—and slowly doing less. When that went well, I started to find new things to fill my time, but better things: running again, cooking, better clients, etc.

I really enjoyed seeing the audience smile, laugh, and nod their heads; but more than that, I felt so lucky when people came up to me telling me the things they would change.

It’s up to you.

A challenge for you:

1. Write one thing you want to start doing – a small thing.

2. Write one thing you want to stop doing – could be stopping scrolling on Instagram.

Great. Define how and when, send me a mail with what you stopped, and what you started.

Building in public

How do you know what to work on?

The plan was simple: move to a cheap country, research, write a new book, license the methodology. I wanted to practice a no-code tool named Bubble. I figured an hour a day would be nice. Maybe a client or two—nothing major, just focus.
Since then, I didn’t do any no-code; I signed more clients than in the previous six months, didn’t write a single word in the book this month, and have been struggling to get on track with most of my plans, but…
I upload twice a week on YouTube, I write my weekly newsletter, and I did online workshops, talks, and consultations.

While I felt my focus shifted when I moved to working on my resilience keynote, it helped me find some clarity about other things and sell two seats in my upcoming mastermind. I got to validate that India would be a huge market for my content and, in general, it brought back some great vibes that Vietnam—or at least northern Vietnam—lacks.
This week, I made a small change to my YouTube channel, which saw an increase in subscribers—over 60 new subscribers in 24 hours and a total of 1,000 watch hours—which is so exciting: a tiny milestone but hey, I’m getting better.

My newsletter subscribers didn’t grow, but that makes sense; I haven’t done anything this week, and last week was a sad one. But I’m going to build a new concept for the newsletter soon.

All in all, I’m focused and ready to head back to Vietnam, this time to go write more in Hoi An—sit in front of rice fields and write like crazy.

A Quick Note About Work

🚀 Mastermind Launch – I've been asked to launch a mastermind group focused on marketing, sales, and brand growth. While it wasn’t originally in my plans, the demand is there, and I know my knowledge can help businesses make a real impact. If this sounds interesting, feel free to reply.

📅 Office Hours – I’ve been wanting to start this for a while, and now it’s happening! If you have questions about marketing, branding, or sales—send them in. Video submissions are best, but I’ll take anything. The plan is to start answering more of these publicly and turn them into useful content for everyone.

Final Thoughts

Feeling very grateful for this community and this journey. Let’s keep learning, building, and improving together. 💡
My YouTube channel. Subscribe and support.

About Building in Public

Sharing the journey in an open, unfiltered way, the good, the bad, and the behind-the-scenes of scaling my next idea.

Just for Fun

Enjoy these nuggets

🎵 Music: This week’s newsletter was created while listening to the Jamiroquai playlist. Perfect background music for focus and creativity. Listen here.

🎥 Video: Fun, dark zombie comedy – a great web series. Watch here.

🎬 A Trailer: Seth Rogan’s upcoming Holywood-set comedy series on Apple TV+
Watch here.