Saad Khan's EXECUTION THREAD

[Absar]

Bought a PC with a good GPU and it runs super fast! (I'll admit I did play some games that I dreamt of playing since childhood). I did spend a pretty penny on it and although it was a sidewalker decision, I'm still loving it. I'm aware that its a double edged sword.

congratulations! Tell me the specs?

I'm planning to build one too. my laptop is now on the edge of dying

 

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[Saad Khan]

Tell me the specs?

Core i7 4770k @ 4.2 Ghz
RX 6600
16 gigs RAM

Its a well rounded 1080p machine

 

[Saad Khan]

I disappeared off the face of the forum, and I'm back here again. Here's what happened these past few months.

Played a shit ton of counter strike (I got addicted again) and was ranked among the 10% of the top players in SEA region. (LEM or for those who know).
Quit online gaming, deleted counter strike and all other multiplayer games 2 weeks ago. Now I only play offline games which helped me regain my lost time. No longer addicted to games. F*ck online gaming.
Made massive progress in quitting porn. Been months since I've succumbed to that filth.
Recorded a couple more podcasts with industry figures in Amazon Ads space. Editing them as we speak.
Revamped my LinkedIn profile
Built profitymedia.com

What's funny is as soon as I quit online gaming, I found myself with so much time.

I might even write a forum post on how to quit your gaming addiction (at least the first step of quitting it).

More updates in the upcoming weeks. Tomorrow's the last paper for my 3rd semester.

P.S. I didn't come up on the forum because I had nothing worthy (in my perception) to share. I spent all my time grinding in counter strike. But I will say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[Saad Khan]

Started posting content in attempt to rebuild momentum and morale of the team, seems like its working. All three of us are in motion now. I need to learn how to edit so I can make the content myself for Profity Media.

 

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[Saad Khan]

Update 10th March 2024:

- Picked up video editing. I recorded 6 podcasts for Profity Media which I'm going to chop down into 1 minute shorts. Already done with 1 podcast and extracted 6 shorts out of it. I observed that in a 30-minute podcast, I can extract an average of 6 shorts. My plan with this is to share them on LinkedIn, build Profity Media's presence, and then onboard some popular industry experts to come and record an episode with us. This way, I'm getting a pass to have a meaningful connection with them rather than just dry texting them.

- Started working on actively building AI/ML projects. After doing the first project by copying everything from a random YouTube video (the guy's name was Dataprofessor), I stumbled upon Google Machine Learning courses. It's been 2 weeks since I've been learning bit by bit about models, loss functions, hyperparameter tuning, feature engineering, and all other cool stuff. Also got my hands on Coursera Plus, which is about $399/year. I didn't even pay $30 for it lol and if someone wants it, I can help them do the same haha! And could you believe, I also got my hands on a 100 TB lifetime of Google Drive cloud storage. It sounded too good to be true, but it's the best $100 I've spent. What I've done is I've synced my PC and laptops to my cloud and now I can seamlessly import files from my laptops. Pretty good quality of life upgrade if you ask me.

Anyway, I'm gonna use that to specialize in a certain aspect of AI that has humongous scope and demand. My preference is to work in online advertising and do something in it. I don't have a clue what I'll do but it will be one hell of an adventure.

- My partner who's responsible for sales just graduated and got his Business degree. He'll revamp the sales team and the brand research teams he built. I don't concern myself with the sales side since I'm confident in him but I talked to him about using loom videos to get the foot in the door when messaging prospects. For now I'm gonna focus on networking, hosting podcasts and content marketing, and fulfilling client work that is independent of the agency. As of now, we have 0 clients onboarded since we started in August 2023. My heart wants to blame him but my brain understands that it was also the time I got addicted to online gaming again so I'm in no position to point fingers at him while I was also doing the same.

- My gaming addiction is cured, sleep is normal, and I feel content. It's cured now because I have a gaming PC in front of me and I choose not to play games more than 2 hours daily.

Plans moving forward

- Learn video editing for shorts and speed up the process. Right now, the most time-consuming thing is captions. If it could be automated for free (I'm using the free version of DaVinci Resolve, that would leave me a lot of time to add some other visual effects.

- Keep myself updated with Amazon Ads. The agency's core service is Amazon Advertising, so I've been keeping myself updated with best practices. I also spent like $70 on a PPC + Business Management course recently and I've yet to go through it. So far it's been game-changing in my workflow. Since 2024, I've spent a sizable portion of my savings learning new stuff.

- Keep learning and building small but steadily improving ML models. I really fancy this stuff, not gonna lie. Except for the maths part. I'll also use ML as an excuse to get myself a 4090 haha!

- I do have my eyes on learning web development, but right now I better focus on the above three things first

- Hit the gym again after Ramadan, and make sure I don't get wrist injuries anymore. Wrist injury really put a stop to my gym momentum previous year...

 

[Saad Khan]

Update 14th March 2024:

While going through Google's Machine Learning crash course (more like a full course), I discovered that one of my professors is pursuing his research in Machine Learning. I shared what I have been doing and he gave me and my friend a dataset in which I have to basically cherrypick data that wi improve the Machine Learning model's judgement. As far as I know, I wrote like 2 ML programs so far so its something I have never done before. Anyway, I'm making slow and steady progress.

Batch-created and scheduled 1 month of content (shorts + podcast announcements) for Profity Media. I'll get more people to come onto our Podcast and share their insights. They make content for me now amd its a win win for everyone.

Amazon has been f*cking with sellers really badly. The recent surge in fees has hurt a lot of sellers and they're struggling.

 

[Saad Khan]

Idk how I ended up like this, but right now I'm helping one of my professors in his machine learning research along with my neighbor (we both study in the same semester)

I never thought in a million years that I'd even have a chance of doing something like this so soon. I have lots more to learn! Now in layman terms, we are training computers to detect when a person falls. This thing has commercial uses, and I'm excited about it.

For some reason in the past few days or so, I've felt like I've frozen in time. I'm not able to do anything. Anyway, I just probably feel that way temporarily, gotta be consistent!

Plus looked into Harvard's CS50 course. I am going to do that as well this year In Sha Allah

 

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[Mashal 7]

Link to the first progress thread:

HOT! - MINDSET - Progression of a 17 year old

Ahh not much to say here. I became familiar with "The Fastlane" at the start of March 2021 and I started to do something worthwhile instead of playing Counter-Strike mindlessly. I took online courses about email marketing and nowadays practicing copywriting (also studying for college cuz need to...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

A little info about me: At the time of writing, I'm a lazy teenager who turned 18 this month. The last year was full of learning experiences and gave me a reality check. I was left disappointed because I set my expectations too high. This time, they'll be realistic. I hope you'll learn something valuable from my experience. Please read the first progress thread for context.

My 2021 Planasy​

This is my 1/5/10 I made when I was starting out back in 2021. I will add the ones I failed to accomplish into my 2022 Planasy. The failed ones are marked "X" at the beginning of each goal.

The biggest mistake was that I didn't break it down to weekly goals. This caused my progress to be stagnant at times and I was action-faking more than taking real action.

2021
- Already started a freelance business (Doing it)
- Get a good PC (Got a mobile instead, so it counts as accomplished)
X Start YT and provide massive value (Deviated after realizing it was not the critical path)
- Get credible (Doing content marketing and helping others)
X Start going to gym (Failed)
X Already start working on creating income streams (Failed. Need to focus on one consistent channel for now)
- Deal with people effectively (Improved my communication skills)
- Do good in studies (Average results)
- Get ready for making an agency after years of experience (I still have more to learn and grow before getting others onboard).
- Read more books and all gold threads (Done)
- Start making enough money to support myself (Already making enough that fulfills my personal expenses)

Seems like I failed in three of my goals or 2021. Not bad. I will be making more specific goals because most of my goals for 2021 were vague and couldn't be measured.

2026
-2 businesses working
-Agency making $10k+ revenue
-300k USD net worth

2031
-Sell one biz for $5M
-Get back free time
-Location independent
-Independent and pull others out of the rat race

Milestones for Q1:

• Expand my skillset into e-commerce, marketing, copywriting. Produce some results in the form of $.
• Establish my profile on freelance platforms and build a personal brand.
• Get my hands dirty in as many things as I can (currently Amazon). I will want to shift to copywriting and marketing full time because that's where my passion lies and I will be able to establish a strong USP.

A tip for young grafters: Don't use Upwork until you're 18 and have a government ID. They will ban you upon signing a contract because you're underage. Take my advice and save yourself 3 months of struggle.

This is my second execution thread. Slow and inconsistent progress last year. From this year and onwards, I'm not going to be an action faker.

What's the BIGGEST reason behind the action faking and inconsistency?

Demotivating environment. No FTE and lack of motivation.

I'm surrounded by slowlaners, sidewalkers, and religious fanatics. This is why I'll be moving to cities with business incubators so I can grow in a thriving environment.

The feedback on my previous execution really helped me boost my morale. I think you might be able to give me unbiased feedback since everyone has an ego that is biased. Here are a few guys who really helped me keep pushing despite the odds.

If you're new to the forum, take a moment to read this. Make a progress thread. That will keep you accountable and also receive feedback from experienced folks, especially @Andy Black. I'd like to thank him and many more people that helped me in my process. Here are a few more.

@Speed112

There are many others who contributed to the progress thread. You should go and check them out.

Going to post my 2022 Planasy.

Bro, did Upwork suspend your profile? Cos They suspended my profile after I got my first client after months of struggle.

Still, I don't give a F**K and will continue to hustle. How was your experience in finding direct freelancing clients via Linkedin etc? I'm currently hustling on it.

And looking forward to establishing a profile on Fiverr, just to outsource cheaply.