I had my birthday a few days ago and just got a lovely present – my YouTube channel reached 400,000 subscribers. It feels a bit surreal, but starting this project 4 years ago was the best decision of my life.

Although these four years have had their share of ups and downs.

On my phone, I keep a folder called Feedback on YouTube. It’s full of screenshots of comments people have left. Whenever I feel burned out, I open it, read them, and remind myself I’m not doing this for nothing – it really brings value to people.

Why is this important?

My firm belief is that everything in life comes through other people. When I look back at my biggest breakthroughs, they all happened because of others – friends, my team, customers, or even random people I met by chance.

Overall, I genuinely believe the stronger the people around you and your community, the further you go.

This project didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It was built together with the support, feedback, and reactions of people who followed the journey.

I’ll never forget when I got hit with a wave of hate on one interview. That was rough. But then I posted a short video explaining it, and hundreds of people defended me in the comments. That really touched me.

When I started 4 years ago, I couldn’t imagine building such a fantastic community – or that this channel would change how the world sees Singapore, and Asia in general.

I’ve received countless messages from people who thought Singapore was just a boring little island near China. After watching my videos, they came here, were amazed, and fell in love with the place. I’ve also heard from thousands of locals in Singapore, India, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines thanking me for showing their countries honestly, without Western media bias.

And yes, sometimes we use clickbait thumbnails or catchy titles – sorry – but that’s YouTube. We’re competing for viewers’ attention in a crowded space. At the same time, we strive to never create shallow content, unlike some travel vloggers. We even stopped doing YouTube Shorts to focus on deep, long-form videos. And I always try to make them as honest and unbiased as possible.

I have a big goal for this project:

First, to show the world that Asia is a modern, exciting, and inspiring region of the world.

Second, to introduce people to the most interesting individuals across the region, so they can grow, expand their minds, and discover new things.

Honestly, having this channel gives me so much purpose in life. I don’t think I would have it without YouTube.

And I know many people are struggling to find that same passion and purpose – something that can also become both an active and passive income stream.

If you want to discover how to start your own channel, find your niche, create videos that the YouTube algorithm promotes, and ultimately start earning money from it, you may want to join my free 3-day online workshop.

To book your spot, click here: https://www.shym.sg/workshop

P.S. I’m not promising you’ll become a pro YouTuber in 3 days, but you’ll definitely get all the fundamentals and understand what you can do on YouTube – and how much you can make from it.

Formula 1 in Singapore

Spent three evenings hanging around the event. I'm not really into F1, but it's a curious thing for Singapore. Visitor spending hit around S$130 million (not much compared to Taylor Swift, haha). This year there were many more people than last year, and it felt a bit crowded. Though the organization was almost perfect, with no major traffic jams or bottlenecks.

I went mainly to feel the vibe, see friends, and go to the concerts. The highlights for me were Foo Fighters (to see the Nirvana drummer irl!) and Elton John (just a legend!).

I'll probably go again next year, but let's see the concert lineup first, haha.

We just posted a documentary from China where we show 18 of the most high-tech things there. I’m personally fascinated by what’s going on in China right now and it was very cool to spend almost a week in Shenzhen filming it.

On top of that, this video was the most difficult, advanced, and time-consuming piece we’ve ever made. It started back in early August with research and brainstorming on what would be a very popular China topic for the audience.

Then we spent several weeks preparing, finding the right people and companies, and finally I flew there to shoot.

Hope you like it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CD0LKkoMzE

P.S. Here are three thumbnails that we are testing now on YouTube for this video. For the first time we decided to hire three different thumbnail designers and test their work for the same video.

I was super worried about this video (still am). It was supposed to be big due to the topic, video idea, and execution, but reality on YouTube is not always what you want haha.

The video started very slow. Though viewer retention is amazing (2.5x vs the average on the channel). So the problem is CTR (how many people click on a thumbnail). We’ve done a series of changes to titles and thumbnails over the last 4 days. CTR started to improve but still not the best. So it means the YouTube algorithm is struggling to find the right segment of the audience for us.

But we already see quite a lot of hate comments from the US so we’re on the right track lol.

Today I’m meeting with the team to discuss what else can be done to help this video fly. Tough job to be a YouTuber.