Strategy Update 2024

It’s like writing a strategy as if I’m starting afresh again. This ensures my strategy stays fresh. Past strategies are available for reference and inspiration to my future self.

• What is my mission that will motivate and inspire me to make more videos about?

  • Who do I want to engage:

    • My audience is mostly from USA (28%) and Australia (12%) based on the last 90 days analytics. Singapore is 3rd at 10%, while the rest are mostly English speaking countries and major countries of South East Asia (~20%). So I think it makes sense to continue targeting an international audience that likes cooking content and resonates with Asian food. Viewers also mostly fall in the age range of 28 - 34 (38%) so this is my generation of friends, peers, and people I know in my age group.

  • What do people want:

    • Most of my viewers probably don’t cook, given a top comment on the “28 Hours Hainanese Chicken Rice” that “This is the kind of tryhard sweaty high effort cooking that I love to watch other people do; think about doing myself; and ultimately never end up doing…”. The top comment was “The level of effort and detail that went into this is next level.” For the minority of people who actually cook, they say “As an avid cook, this video singlehandedly answers most queries we fellow cooks have … This is not covered anywhere”

    • So basically, people want to see big effort, deep level of detail into cooking, covering things they’ve never seen before. This means I should continue to work at this level of detail, not going any deeper because that could slow down video production. I should also continue to add my own input after studying the recipes out there, using my sense of curiosity so that I could give viewers some new tips and discoveries.

  • What do I want

    • I want to learn how to cook delicious Asian food at home to feed myself and my wife, and also bless our friends with food for their company while I learn from them too about what they like about my videos and what they want to see more.

  • Why do I want to do this

    • On a deeper level, I really hope to make a living out of this, exploring the world of food, particularly in Asia where I’m from because I feel there’s a lack of research in Asian food on YouTube, so I answer that call in my mission to document Asian food recipes after discovering what makes them taste good and how to make them.

    • I feel like I should use my strengths as an analytical analyst and I also have my own home and kitchen to do my experiments. I also know how to do voiceovers so I voiceover my own videos to add my own touch of originality.

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  So I think overall, my mission is to help my international friends and also personally discover what makes Asian food taste good, by putting in deep effort to analyse the components of a recipe, try out different ways to optimise it for flavour using my own curiosity, and have fun making these videos to build my brand.

• What type of videos should I make over the next few months?

  • What value do I bring to my audience

    • I have gotten a lot of video suggestions from viewers and friends who came up to me and said they saw my video and would like to see more on X dish. One suggestion was outside of Asian food though, so I wrote a detailed comment to summarise my thoughts on it, almost like a mini script. I think these live signals are something I should prioritise in my backlog to show others that I care about their desires and I also benefit from learning more about it eventually. I’ve captured those dishes in this page here Long X hour dishes

    • What I should do is to also put in my own comment in my video “What food should I explore next?” and let others upvote them so I know what people really want to see next. It can change after one dish is fulfilled, so let others tell me then what to do with it.

    • Some people also requested further research into chicken rice, such as using a pressure cooker to speed up the stock making process, or what type of chicken is worth using (is it worth spending $$$ on a chicken for chicken rice)

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  Overall, I want to produce viewers-requested videos using my analytical approach to satisfy their curiosity of what a good X dish would be like.

• How should my videos look and sound?

  • Thumbnails

    • Based on a review of top cooking channels that I like and follow, most thumbnails have all caps text on them to draw curiosity about the food. On Netflix, most titles also have big texts in all caps to appeal to an international audience, but the text is more customised, designed and personalised for the movie. I think this is an opportunity for me to add all caps text into the food pictures by hiring a graphic designer on Fiverr to do the job. I’ve found a guy who is popular on Fiverr and recent works have a Netflix vibe to it.

    • I believe closeup shot of food continues to be the meta for cooking channels as it entices viewers and gives people an expectation of what they can get from watching the video.

    • Occasionally I would add arrows and text to draw out curious features of the food

    • I will continue to take numerous pictures of the food and take various angles to choose the top ones on Bridge, then use the auto enhancer on Photoshop, and distort it slightly to make the food pop out a little more for a 3D effect and stretch the truth.

    • Since the A/B thumbnail testing tool is now available on YouTube, I should try to come up with 3 best concepts of a thumbnail and commit to making all 3 of them, and let my audience choose the best one for me.

    • Other favourite pictures will go into my instagram memory journal.

  • Titles

    • I’ve recently captured some viral titles from the videos I’ve watched and they can be used to package the other videos I make before making the ultimate version of it in a X Hour Dish. Can I just make the X Hour Dish straight away? I think it’s possible, but it won’t be as good as if I had made several videos first analysing each component. Generally I learn and discover something while making a video and these learnings will influence the final dish. Second, the video might be too long as I would be biased to include as much learnings as I can for each component of the dish, so it would be better to carve it out as a separate video eg. chicken oil, chopping up a chicken. Third, I can also practice packaging my video ideas in a title for these individual components videos. Though they may not bring as much views as the ultimate version, but I feel it’s really necessary for me to learn and research every component closely, before I feel comfortable to make and call it the ultimate version.

  • Hooks

    • I have captured several hooks from Netflix documentaries I’ve watched that are really good and keep me hooked till the end. Write with curiosity gaps

    • I will try to use them at the start of each major section of a video to season and sprinkle these hooks throughout to keep people wanting to learn more.

    • I would always like to start every video with a verbal hooks “what makes X taste good?” and also use curiosity gaps as a topic sentence “wait but why?”

  • Scene

    • I will continue to cook in my kitchen where I have more control over what I eat and when I make my food. My manfrotto tripods will continue to be my best friends for the stationary shot of the food on the table and my body behind it, because the focus is on the food and I can focus on the food without fumbling with a camera. I don’t have a camera assistant so the tripod is the way to go. Coincidentally, it is also a sought after way of presenting cooking content like how Brian Lagerstrom or Babish does it. Technically, it’s 24mm, 1/50, F1.4, ISO125 with a 1.5 stops circular polariser

    • I also want to show food ingredients up close when the details matter, such as putting it on a white plate or on the table, depending on the item to create contrast. Technically, I shoot it at 35mm if the item is small, or 24mm if it is large, 1/50, F4 for better closeup quality, ISO 800 with a 1.5 stops circular polariser.

  • Graphics

    • One of the feedback Natasha gave on the cross comparisons is to give a meaningful title to call out what exactly am I comparing for. This is the simple typography and graphics for now, using the default text in final cut pro. Simplicity and standardisation are key to get the videos out faster and I haven’t really thought much about investing in a brand image, because I feel it doesn’t really matter at my level and it’s not the focus too. In fact I think these simple look and feel is suitable for this genre of analytical content. Even netflix shows don’t go over the top with text graphics. This is just still images and personally I find motion graphics too distracting and I prefer to learn more from simple graphics if it really has to move.

• How should my videos look and sound?

  • Voiceover

    • I will continue to use my voice as my voiceover to let people know it’s me behind the person people see in the video. I’m wondering if I should change my tone of voice because right now I just voice it in a semi formal way like presenting a dish to a group of friends, but I really hope I could add more energy and excitement like when presenting to a live audience. People say my voice sounds like Guga Foods which is great as people relate me to a well known food youtuber. But personally I don’t find my voice similar to Guga. I think his voice is deeper while mine is just nasal. Anyway I will continue to voice the way I did my chicken rice videos since nobody has complained about it.

  • Music

    • I’ve been thinking should I really add music to it? Will it make my videos better? I think I should ask my audience then. I am inspired by how Adam Ragusea does his videos with just his engaging voice and no music, so I aspire to be like that. However most videos on the internet have background music to them and it probably appeals more to a crowd. I hope that one day I would have the budget to pay a local composer Li Xiao'an to compose a background music just for my channel that loops in every video, like how Babish does his videos too. Xiao’an’s music is really good, world class standard and he’s local so I hope he could compose a track that I could loop for my entire video 10-20 minutes on average.

  • Sounds

    • I just keep the sounds to a minimum as I record my camera in a noisy environment that isn’t sound treated. Sometimes there are fighter jet planes flying past my home, others times it’s children playing at the playground or kids screaming after school. I let some audio creep in, such as sizzling sounds or the blender to make the video more realistic. Other than that, no sound effects whatsoever to keep editing simple and it fits the analytical style too. But Ethan Chlebowski doesn’t really use much music in his videos as he relies on his engaging narration to investigate food topics.

• What are the current challenges I’m facing to achieve all of the above?

  • I’m not sure if my videos are really fun to watch. Like there’s no music, hardly any sounds, just my boring voice. This ain’t no Mr Beast video with big sounds effects and big budget effects. I’m still trying to accept who I am versus changing myself to be who I want to be; how far can I stretch myself for growth sake?

    • My advice to myself is to focus on having fun making these videos. Put in my curious ideas and discover the answers in my kitchen. Share the results with my international friends.

  • I struggle at writing to engage my curiosity. I envy food writers who could describe food so vividly like a theatre in the mind. But I’m skeptical if it translates well in a video context. It might look good on paper when reading, but sound awfully bombastic and excessive in audio and video.

    • Again, my advice to myself is to inject my curiosity into each videos. What are the questions I have? Likely these are what people wonder too. Just don’t overthink it. Keep it child-like simple and it’s actually the simple questions that take a lot to answer.

  • With the channel gaining some traction and adsense dollars, I wonder if it is worth a capital investment to pay for an editor for my videos. On one hand, finding an editor is a journey and on the other, I also need to budget for it using my savings. I spend about 3-4 days or 20 to 30 hours of post production to get a video done from raw clips to upload, and if I value my time at $28 per hour which is my current rate at takehome pay or $40 including CPF, then I could budget up to $500 to $1200 to get a video done by someone.

    • I would say let’s give it a shot for a few videos and see how it feels. Currently I’m uploading like 1 video a month but with a remote editor, maybe I could do 2 videos a month, doubling my output. If the returns are exponential, then it could be worth it. So thats about $1000 a month for 2 videos… sounds like a lot honestly. But let’s try for this year onwards.