We're Back!!! - Week 1

We're Back baby

The summer break was exactly what I needed. Time to reset, reflect, and honestly just breathe for a bit. But it wasn't just rest. Some things happened over the break that quietly shifted how I think about the work I'm doing and why I'm doing it. More on that shortly. Week one is already moving fast, and I'm jumping back in with a clearer head than I expected.

What Burned Out, and What Didn't

I've been running NDLEMVRS for a while now, and for a long time I told myself that business was the thing. And it was, in the sense that I genuinely loved building something, figuring out how companies work, how traction gets built, how decisions get made. That part never got old.

But staring at Facebook Ads Manager all day? Working with clients in a domain that didn't excite me? That got old fast. There was a slow, creeping feeling that this specific corner of business wasn't mine. Not because I couldn't do it, but because it wasn't the thing that made me feel good at the end of a day's work.

The thing that did was video. Storytelling. The moment of taking something raw and shaping it into something that actually meant something to people. That realisation was the seed of The Next Something.

What Are My Interests?

When I sat down to map out my interests, the thread that kept coming up was the same one I keep coming back to in everything I do: building things and telling stories about them.

My world revolves around video, media, and creative production. I spend a lot of time thinking about how stories are told visually and emotionally, what makes something feel cinematic, what makes it actually land with people, and how the right narrative can make a company feel human and ambitious rather than just another brand. This shows up in the businesses I'm building, NDLEMVRS and The Next Something, where the focus is on helping founders and startups grow through high-quality media and strong storytelling.

Alongside that, I'm deeply fascinated by the startup ecosystem itself: founders, venture capital, communities like Y Combinator. I find myself constantly reaching out to founders, investors, and operators just to understand how they built what they built. I care about how companies scale, how traction gets built, and how the right story told in the right way can turn a good company into a well-known one.

The through-line across all of it is this: I'm most energised when I'm at the intersection of building companies, telling meaningful stories, and learning from people who are doing both at a high level.

A Trip That Reframed Everything

About a month before semester started, I came back from an exposure trip to Cebu. And in ways I didn't fully expect, it changed my perspective on a lot of things.

The trip was through my church. We were visiting children we support through a monthly sponsorship programme, kids and families whose lives are genuinely different because of what those contributions make possible. I always knew it mattered in theory. This trip was about seeing it in practice.

We visited their homes. Some of them reminded me of my grandmother's home growing up. And standing there, I felt something that was hard to sit with: the gap between their circumstances and mine wasn't something I earned. I didn't do anything that made me more deserving of the life I have. That's a humbling thing to actually feel, not just know intellectually.

One kid told me his dream was to be a CEO or a businessman. I smiled, because I saw something familiar in that. But the more his family shared about their daily reality, the more that smile faded into something heavier. His youngest sibling can't attend school because of a condition they can't afford to diagnose or treat. His mother has lived in the same 20 square metre home for decades and can't leave.

There's a quote I came back with that I keep thinking about:

"Sometimes I want to ask God why He allows poverty, famine, and injustice to happen when He could do something about it. But I'm afraid He might just ask me the same question."

I don't think Cebu changed my career direction. But it added a layer of seriousness to why I want to build things that matter. Gratitude isn't a passive feeling. It has to move you toward something.

What Can I Do For My Demo?

This is where I'm still figuring things out, and I think that's okay. I have two directions pulling at me, and I want to talk to more people, classmates, the lecturers, and people in my network, before I commit to one.

The first idea is exploring the art of storytelling, specifically how I approach narrative when working with startups and founders. What makes a story cinematic? What makes it land emotionally? There's a real craft behind it that I think could translate into something interesting to demonstrate and discuss.

The second idea is showing my editing process, how I work with my team at The Next Something to take raw footage and shape it into something that actually represents a brand well. The workflow, the decisions, the back and forth. It's a process that not many people see, and it might be genuinely interesting to pull back the curtain on.

Both feel connected to what I genuinely care about, which is a good sign. The Next Something sits at this intersection of startups, storytelling, and creative production. It's essentially a cinematic media studio helping venture-backed founders tell their story through launch films, product explainers, and founder narratives. Either demo direction taps into that world naturally.

I'll keep exploring and see which one feels like it has the most to show. More to come next week.