Why I Decided To Pick Up The Camera And Document My Journey

What's up guys? Welcome back to The Art of Crypto. Now, as you may have realized, some things look a bit different this time around. For starters, I have decided to show my face, and if you don't know who I am, my name is Xuan, and I've been the voice you've been listening to for the past three years here at The Art of Crypto. Now in this video, I'm just making a quick introduction and also telling you the reason behind why I've decided to show my face and to pick up the camera. So guys, let's begin with the introductions first. So as previously mentioned, my name is Shwen, and I'm 23 years old this year, and that means I started The Art of Crypto when I was about 20, and I'm originally from a country called Malaysia. I'm from the capital called Kuala Lumpur, and for pretty much the past, I'd say, 12 months at this point, I've been traveling almost full-time. I'm currently in Australia. As you can see behind me, they have some pretty beautiful coastlines, a great place to live. I might make a video in the future just raving about how good Australia is, but for now, let's get back into the introductions. Now, I started trading crypto when I was pretty much 18. In fact, I came in right at the peak of the bull market back in 2018. And I pretty much spent the first couple of years of my trading journey just seeing things go downhill for like a year straight. And obviously because of those conditions, like most other beginners, I quit back then. But I did come back, you know, right around, you know, mid-2019 to late 2019. That was after I had started and failed multiple businesses, and I just sort of used my life savings at the time to just sort of get back into crypto. And looking back in hindsight, it was one of the best decisions that I've ever made in my career. Now, obviously there are a lot of ups and downs that I can talk about. I've lost all my money and blew up my account about 5 times, and it wasn't just my money, but it was also my parents', my grandparents', even my friends' money. And ever since that happened, I decided to just go all in. I just decided, like, you know, I see the potential in crypto, and I see the potential that trading has to give me the freedom that I prioritize in my life. But, you know, due to my ignorance and my lack of skill, I I lost a lot of money and I knew that could be fixed. And so in around the start of 2020, I decided to go all in on crypto and just get really serious about making trading work. And since then, you know, you see, you know, a view like this. And all in all, I'm doing pretty well thanks to the decision that I made 4 years ago to go all in. And ever since I started The Art Of Crypto, I've been on a mission to create the best trading education suite in the world by simply making trading easy for everyone. And this actually brings me on to, you know, the biggest reason why I've decided to start showing my face on this channel, and that has to do with the overall mission. If I want to make trading easy for everyone, I need more people to look at the content that I'm posting, and I just have a feeling That for the past, I'd say 2 years, for the past 2 years, the growth of the channel has just stayed steady. In fact, you can even say it's plateaued and just going down. And so I reckon a big reason why that is the case is the fact that it's really hard to connect with someone when all you can see is like a chart on the screen. And I've been told this multiple times, but I do feel the same. Which is that people tend to connect to people. And in order to achieve the mission that I've set out for myself and for the rest of the team here at The Art Of Crypto, I've decided that the best move would be to share a bit more about life in the sense that, you know, in crypto, it's not always an easy decision to decide that, you know, you want to get doxxed. And also just in this world, you know, I've never been much of an internet personality sort of guy. Like I've never wanted to be famous or anything. So in fact, I've quite enjoyed the privacy that I've had for, you know, the last 2, 3 years while running The Art of Crypto. And to suddenly put myself out on the internet is, you know, it can be said that it's a price to pay. But one of the things that really helped me overcome that, you know, mental barrier was a quote shared by Alex Hormozi, if you guys know who that is. And it's basically when he was talking to this guy called Dean Graziosi, One of the arguably scam, but also really successful like marketers, course guru guy on the internet. Like I've never watched this stuff before, but you cannot deny that his face has been plastered all over the internet at some point. And Alex Hormozi basically asked Dean at the time, like, hey, you know, you seem to be getting harassed by all these people in real life multiple times a day. And You know, don't you ever get annoyed of that? Like, why did you, you know, decide to show your face when you could just run a business and, you know, potentially, potentially still make the same amount of money that you make at the moment? And Dean's reply was, if getting harassed a couple of times a day by people in real life is the price that he needs to pay in order to make the impact that he wants to make, then it's a price that he would pay anytime. And that really hit Hormozi. Which is why Hormozi actually started his entire brand. And ever since then, he's now become arguably the biggest business YouTuber out there, or at least the most respected. And at this point you might ask, like, if the impact and the mission is so important, why didn't I just start a personal brand before? Well, just like you, I am human as well. And, you know, besides the fact about how I value my privacy. I'm not really much of an internet celebrity personality kind of guy. You know, I also have my insecurities just like you do. For starters, I'm not at the level that I want to be yet. In fact, the whole reason why I started the channel without putting on my face was that, you know, I was dealing with a lot of imposter syndrome where, you know, I didn't feel qualified to be giving you guys advice. But of course, ever since then, I've had Hundreds of people reach out to me saying that, you know, they've made money using the content that I've shared. And, you know, that builds a lot of your confidence over time, right? Like starting a channel with my face on it right from the get-go was not something I was, it's not something I'd be able to do. Let's just put it that way, especially at the start. But now that we've gotten to this point, you know, I feel at least somewhat confident in my ability, but still, I'm not at the level that, you know, I want to be. I look at all of my friends around me, they're making 100, like 6 figures a month, 7 figures a month. And, you know, I'm nowhere close to that. Like, sure, I might be better off than a lot of people, but it's, you know, that saying that comparison is the thief of joy. You know, when I look at the people around me, you know, I don't feel enough. And in a way, that insecurity has always, you know, prevented me from You know, creating a channel with my face on it. But then at the same time, you might wonder like, okay, if I have these insecurities, then, you know, why did I decide to start a personal brand now? And, you know, it has to do with something that, you know, I did recently, which was actually flip open my journal. Now, For those of you who has, you know, followed me before, you do know that I advocate a lot for, you know, just journaling with pen and paper. And I flipped through one of my journals, I think about a couple months ago, and the thought has been in my head where they, I basically moved out of the place, of the permanent place that I had in Malaysia because I'm going to be traveling pretty much like 10 months out of the next 12 months. Or even I'll pretty much be traveling over the course of the next 2 years. And it didn't make sense for me to have a house. So as I was moving out of the house, I, you know, saw some of my old journals that I used to have. And when I flipped them open, I was like, whoa, you know, the wave of memories just came rushing back. Like I was able to see that, for example, back in 2018, I saw the struggles, the ups and downs that I had running a copywriting agency. And then, you know, in 2019, I wanted, like, I don't know what went through my head at the time, but I literally wanted to be like a nutrition guru, like teaching people, you know, gut health and, you know, all this stuff. And the funny thing was at the time I wasn't even in like good shape. I just knew a lot of information. I didn't implement it. But then I was, yeah, I was trying to sell a course for like $99 or something. And I thought, wow, that was stupid. best idea ever. And, you know, in 2020, I also looked back at the journal and I saw all the notes that I have been taking on, you know, potentially starting a coffee business. This was during the lockdown. Like, I had just started my trading journey and, you know, I still needed some kind of, um, like side hustle business to, you know, pay the bills pretty much. And back then I wanted to start this brand called Loafing Bunny. Bunnies are my favorite animal and decided it'd be cute to start like a cold brew coffee delivery service where I live. Yeah, it's just funny. And then I was like calculating the profit margins for each one of the, like for each coffee that I sold. You know, it's a long story, but what I'm trying to get at here is that if I look back in my last, you know, 3, 4 years of running The Art Of Crypto, And going from pretty much zero to where I am now, my biggest regret in general is that it's not the fact that, you know, I didn't make more money or that, you know, I didn't take certain business decisions that, you know, would allow me to make more money or that I've lost pretty much half a million dollars on crypto by investing into NFTs and investing into things that I didn't understand, like DeFi and a lot of the new tokens, like small shitcoin tokens. It wasn't any of that. Like, I'm really happy where I am now. Like, sure, I could be a lot better off in terms of money, but when I look back at the last 3 to 4 years, the biggest regret that I have is simply that I didn't document my journey enough. I didn't put myself out there. I wasn't sharing any snippets of my daily life. Like, basically, I don't have much to look back at between the years of like 2021 till now. And you know, that's a big regret because I look back at the journals of the past and it'll be so nice to look back 10 years from now and you know, whoa, what was Xuan like? What was 23-year-old Xuan thinking back then and how was life back then? And so that's a big reason why, you know, I'm deciding to show my face and actually document my journey. I might not be perfect. In fact, I am not perfect. I'm far from being perfect and I'm far from being at the level that I want to be. But if I can document this journey and share the lessons that I'm learning along the way with you guys, then, you know, I'd say that's a win. And for those of you who have, you know, not documented your life up to this point, and if you're thinking about starting, I highly recommend you do. Like, take more photos, take more videos, document your life more. You never know who's gonna be watching in the future. Perhaps you can show it to your kids or even your grandkids. And how amazing would it be to say like, hey, you know, this was what daddy's been doing, or like, this is how, you know, this is what daddy used to do or something. It's, yeah, if you've ever thought about documenting your journey, you know, take this video as a sign that, you know, you need to get started. And just one other thing that I'm going to share about the topic of documenting is that honestly, I am where I am at right now. Because of a couple of influential figures. Well, now they're considered influential figures, but back then they were, you know, just people sharing value online. And just to give you a quick backstory, I didn't grow up with my parents. In fact, they got divorced really, really early when I was a child, and I've always grown up with my grandparents. And one of the things that I learned after speaking to someone that specifically deals with like childhood trauma is that it turns out, you know, a big part of who you are has to do with your childhood, or rather the pains that you've experienced from childhood. And more specifically, what you, a lot of the ways that you act, the things that you seek out tend to be something that you missed as a child. And for me, when I was asked the question of like, what was something that I really wish I had in childhood, but I didn't have? And after thinking for a long time, I remember like I was with, I was standing face to face with the guy and took me about 5 minutes to think about it. 'Cause like, you know, specifically, in fact, I'll correct myself. Specifically, the question was, what did I wish I got from my dad? Because he was abusive, alcoholic, cheated on my mom, went bankrupt, you name it. Like everything bad he's probably done at some point. And so, you know, that was the reason why my mom divorced him and like I had to go back with my grandparents. And, you know, I don't have good memories or even good feelings towards my dad. And so, you know, I thought, you know, I was over it and no, like, why would I want anything from this guy? Like, you know, he's obviously a scumbag. And, but after 5 minutes of standing face to face with, you know, this guy, Yeah. An answer finally did come up to me, which was the fact that, you know, I really wished I'd gotten some guidance, right? Some kind of masculine direction as I was growing up. 'Cause my grandpa's like, I love him and all, but you know, grandpas don't replace dads. And so whatever I missed out in childhood, you know, I tend to seek out from the external world and I found almost like figurative father figures. From these people on the internet who are sharing value and sharing advice on, you know, how to build your life and, you know, what matters and stuff like that. And I just think that I wouldn't have been able to find them in the first place if these people didn't start picking up the camera and sharing, you know, and just putting themselves out there, right? And I hope to be that kind of person for other people moving forward. And so that's another, you know, very big reason why You know, I'm deciding to document my journey and to share my face and share my life. In fact, this even allows me quite a bit of freedom to just talk about, for example, Australia, or just share little bits of snippets from my life, like how I really enjoy cigars and it's probably my biggest hobby outside of basketball and stuff like that, you know? And guys, if you're still here so far, I just wanna say thank you for being with me for the last 3 years. This year it's going to be a lot of big things coming to The Art Of Crypto, and you know, I'm looking forward to sharing all that I have inside here and just be able to share all of that value and knowledge with you guys so that you guys can also achieve the freedom that I've been able to achieve through trading. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart, sincerely. Thank you for giving me your time and to watch this video. I truly hope you gained something out from it. I know it's been a little bit of a long rant, but I promise you the future videos are going to be jam-packed with value. And yeah, if you ever wanna gain more of a, you know, look into, I suppose, my personal life so that I can connect with you guys more, feel free to follow me on Instagram. I'm gonna put, you know, the handle on the screen. And yeah, you know, welcome to a new era of The Art Of Crypto, and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye-bye.