ALI ABDAAL: HOW TO START LOVING YOUR JOB

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1:51Hello everyone, my name is Jamie Lang and this is Great Company.

2:01Hello Jemima Hello Jamie Leng How are you? I'm well and yourself? I'm good What do you say when people, sorry I'm well, I'm good Aggressive from me I'm okay, I'm fine, I'm happy Are you happy? Yeah, I'm good, I'm good It's summer I know, the weather's not great It's bad, it's been bad Hello everyone, welcome back to Great Company Podcast My name is Jamie Leng, I'm the host And I'm the producer, Jemima This is my wonderful producer who makes all the magic happen on the podcast. I always say this, but Jemima researchers. She hands me the research. She edits. She does all the magic behind the camera.

2:35And you do the magic in front of the camera. Correct. But it's a teamwork thing. And that's why you like this show. Okay. And you do the magic behind the ears. There we go. That was good. If you didn't listen to last week's episode, you would find out that Jemima and her brother created the music for Great Company Podcast. Whenever you sing it and I sing along, I actually can't remember it. Oh, excuse me, an email. I'm very important. Okay, today's guest, we have Ali Abdo. Ali Abdo. Ali Abdo is a YouTuber. he is very famous for online for giving his online courses on how to make a YouTube channel work.

3:22I sat down with him because he's released his new book and he's just a fascinating individual very thoughtful very smart very driven. What's interesting about Ali is that he's very open about money and that's what I find kind of interesting that if we get into that that I want to discuss that because most people don't talk about it but he online his sort of persona is he does talk about these kind of things. Yeah. And I think I admire that because I think I'm more traditional where I probably don't talk about People are weird about that. And I feel like knowledge is power in those things. Well, the reason for I'm always nervous about it is because there's this perception that I'm some billionaire.

3:59And unfortunately, I'm not. My favourite thing is that you are the heir to the McVitties. But you've got an older brother. And I remember your brother once being like, who am I? Like, how is it? Why would it go to the middle side? Why does he not get it? Yeah. No, my family helped build McVitie's many years ago, but due to many divorces and things like that that happen in life, there is no money left. We, you know, so... Yeah, you're not a McVitie's child anymore. I'm not a McVitie's child heir anymore. However... Were you once in your lifetime as your family owned it? Yeah, but years ago, maybe in the 80s.

4:33But you were born at the end of the 80s. My family used to own Wimpy Burger as well. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. the air you should more be known as the air to wimpy the wimpy I'm not air to anything wimpy air but anyway listen we're very excited to have back to Ali back to Ali we're very excited to have Ali on it's going to be a great episode John knows something really fun yeah is so Jamie has a confectionery business Candykins correct and there is a member of that team who is a huge Ali fan oh and he has asked to sit in on the recording so Priyank we've got an audience Priyank will be listening to this right now is a big fan of Ali and he's going to come and watch the show so that's very exciting I know I had a little chat with him beforehand just for some extra tips before we go in of things I love when we have a super fan come in yeah it's amazing and I like that as well I really like that Priyank was the person who told me about Ali as well I was sort of aware of him but then Priyank said you should definitely get him on because he's a great he'll be a great guest so okay if you haven't subscribed to the show already please do because it really helps us in the most amount of ways that you would not possibly know.

5:39And I know it sounds a bit desperate. It's not desperate. But if you do like this show... Can you make it sound more desperate? If you really like this show and you haven't subscribed yet, it takes one second and it does the world of difference for us. So please could you do that. And we're also on social media. We are. At NewlyWords Podcast. Who isn't these days? That's true. Okay, you ready for this? Yes. Enjoy the episode with Ali Abdaal on Great Company.

6:05i heard that you you started a pyramid scheme that's good research i did start a pyramid scheme this was when i was like can you explain explain what a pyramid scheme is so a pyramid scheme is it's basically where you try and sell something to someone uh but you tell them that they have to sell the thing to two other people if they want the thing and then they have to tell those two other people that they have to sell it to two other people if they want the thing and eventually in theory the person at the top gets rich. I did not realize this at the time that this was a pyramid scheme but I had an idea for making money which was that, you know, at the time I think the Xbox 360 had come out.

6:42So I was like 14 or 15 and there were all these websites promising that, you know, these ads like shoot the duck and get a free games console. And I was like, how does that work? And then I started looking into this and I realized that, oh, these are all based on this thing called affiliate marketing. So like you could make a website where, So like on these websites, you would shoot the duck and then it would say, okay, you need to sign up for a free trial of Blockbuster Video or like Love Film. These were like the pre-Netflix kind of streaming sites. You need to sign up to a free trial and then you need to get 25 of your friends to sign up for free trials.

7:12And if you just do that, you'll get a free Xbox 360. I was like, huh, okay. So I tried this out and I was like, well, I don't have 25 friends to sign up to a free trial of this because it needed a credit card. And, you know, at the time, very few of my friends had actual credit cards. But I thought this is an interesting concept. What if I just built the website and just made it look less scammy than, you know, the ones that were out there? So basically the idea was, you know, I built a website, got these affiliate partnerships. I got my friends to sign up for free accounts, free trials for Blockbuster.

7:39And then the idea was they would refer 25 other people. In reality, this did not work. One of my friends, Godwin, he had four sisters who were older than him. So he got four of their credit cards, signed up to four free trials for Love Film at the time. And I remember I was on a school trip and my mom randomly rang me and she was like, you've got this weird looking check in the mail. And I was like, what's weird about it? She was like, it's a check for 50 pounds. And I was like, okay. But it's like an electronic check where it sort of like says zero millions, zero hundred thousands, zero ten thousands.

8:07And it's sort of at the end, it's like tens times five. So it was like an automated printed check. And I was like, whoa, that's the 50 quid that I got from four times 12 pound 50 signups. Because Godwin signed up to a free trial of the love film thing and got his sister to sign up for it. And that was the moment that I realized I could make money without it being tied to my time. Because before, like age of 12 to 15, I had to make a website for someone for them to pay me. But this, I made the website already and it was just sort of ticking along the background. And then my mate did something and then I got paid for it.

8:43And I was like, whoa, you can build a website where you don't, it's not, I realized that this sort of time and money wasn't correlated. And that was like a big like unlock to be like, hang on, this pyramid scheme thing isn't really going to work, but like This is a cool concept. It's so strange that you followed that road into medicine because it's just not what you were doing. You know, in my spare time, I was going to do plays and acting and that's what I was doing. And so therefore I want to go into entertainment. In your spare time, you're doing, you were coding, making period schemes and creating businesses, creating money.

9:12But then you still go down the road of being, becoming a doctor. There must have been pressure from the family for you to do that. There must have been this idea of you need to go and get a normal job because the jobs that you were doing on the side, they weren't normal. They had no security behind them. And you must have had that typically like nervous aspect, which we all have, which is where we need security. And if we don't have security, then it's too much for us. Did you have that? Because you're a risk taker, but also you're not at the same time. You're a huge risk taker. Yeah, I think I'm pretty risk-avert.

9:44It didn't even occur to me that I could choose to not go to university. That wouldn't have been an option. I mean, I guess I wanted to go to university. I That was always the aspiration. And so the only real choice was, do I do computer science or do I do medicine? Because this stuff all vibed with computer science because it was building software, building websites. But like around age 16, where I had to pick GCSEs, I decided it's more interesting to be a doctor who knows how to code than it is to be a random guy who knows how to code. Why? Because it gives you a different edge? Yeah, it gives you a different edge.

10:12I thought, okay, what if I get really good at medicine and become a surgeon or something? But I also know how to build tech products on the side. Now, maybe that's an intersection where in the future, I'll be able to make some sort medical device or invent some sort of surgical instrument or something like that. That was in the back of my mind. I love talking about naivety because I always think if I knew now what it takes to build a sweet company, I wouldn't do it. Because you know the margins, what it takes, you know how many years it's going to take to even build a brand, especially a product based on, especially something in FMCG, fast moving consumer goods, right um do you think do you think that you're now that you're not that naive you take less risks because you know how long it takes to build something oh that's a great question yeah i think that's that's that's very true now that you know our business has been going going for the last like seven seven years now with the youtube channel so now for me to do something a it feels like there's pressure on it because it will be a public failure if i don't do the thing well but why does that matter uh i don't know i feel like i think back when no one knew who i was it felt like oh i could just try stuff now it feels like if i'm putting my name to it the thing has to actually be good and so it it it becomes a lot a much slower process to launch anything whereas before i was i was like yeah i was shooting from the hip but now i like don't like shooting from the hip because i am i'm always like hmm we've got a good thing going I don't want to screw things up.

11:41But then also it's like, you know, back in the day, if I could make an extra two grand a month, I'd be over the moon because that would have allowed me to go part-time in medicine. Now, you know, candidly, unless it's making at least a hundred K a month, it's just not worth anyone in my team's time because our business is big enough that we just don't bother with things that are going to make less money than that. And so then we're like doing all these calculations to be like, okay, we've got this cool idea, but is the idea at least a hundred K a month or at least a million a month or something, you know, something like that for it to be even worth considering.

12:08And there's a fun quote that I came across, which is that there are so many million dollar businesses that are just waiting to be started that people who run$10 million businesses or$100 million businesses just are not going to bother with. And so if you're someone who's an aspiring entrepreneur, there's so much opportunity in those kinds of spaces where someone who's already got a big business is just not going to bother because it's just not worth their time. But it's worth your time if you've got a job and you want to be an entrepreneur, for example. I find it so interesting how you're really open about what money the company's making.

12:41Why are you so open with that? With some typically with, especially with money, people are very silent about it. Yeah, I think in my early days when I was getting into this stuff, I really benefited from other people being open about it. So a guy called Pat Flynn, a guy called Graham Stephan, you know, these guys would do like monthly or annual income reports. I'd be like, wait a minute, this guy's making$450 ,000 a year from an affiliate partnership with this random software. What the hell is going on there? Or like, bloody hell, this guy, Graham Stephan, he makes videos about finance, and he's making seven grand a day from YouTube AdSense.

13:14What the fuck? That's so cool. And so it was seeing things like that that made me realize, I should really take this YouTube thing a lot more seriously, or I should look into affiliate partnerships. When the numbers for my stuff started to be interesting, when I started to make more money from YouTube than I it for medicine i thought you know what why don't i make this the why don't i turn this into like an annual video series where every year i'll just do a bit of an income report so i did that for about five years i stopped now because the numbers are a kind of insane and b i'm sort of looking to get married and have kids and this starts to have issues of like security and stuff and there are people that are way richer than i am but like it it's like a level of risk that i kind of don't want to deal with anymore to be so public at least on my youtube channel about like revenues and stuff but okay but okay but this is for the business but is it 10 plus million oh no we're five million last year you were five million last year we're going for 10 million this year or next year it's amazing we are our target for this year is like seven but i really want to go for 10 because i think it's just how many employees 13 13 full-time employees yeah do you feel pressure now that because before it was just you you were just doing it you you could you didn't have to worried about anyone else whatsoever, but now you have 30 other lives to look after.

14:29And I think a lot of the time young entrepreneurs don't realize that. You know, there's a very exciting thing about going into business because, oh my God, we're going to build this. We're going to build, I'm going to build this YouTube channel, build this brand or build this sweet company, whatever it is. But you forget about everyone else who you take on that journey with you. First, you have to make them believe in your passion, your dream and your desire. And how do you do that? Because that's creating culture. But secondly, it's a huge responsibility. Yeah. I do feel the pressure, especially in january where our accounts go to zero again because we have no recurring revenue and so it's like crap we're going to spend two million this year on like team salaries and expenses and stuff so we better make at least two million but like a january the scoreboard starts at zero and the expenses are going to be two million and so it sort of feels as if we're in the red for a long time and then like last year around i don't know may or something we crossed the two million threshold and i was like oh phew at least we're profitable this year and then all the rest is profit.

15:21But it does feel like a bit of a pressure. It's a nice pressure. You know, it's a great pressure. It's a, you know, certainly. You enjoy pressure though as well. Yeah, I do in a way. I think it's just really fun working with people as well. Like I know some entrepreneurs and YouTubers and stuff who will hire only freelancers in the Philippines because it's cheaper and it's like less of a personal connection. You can just fire them whenever you want. But it's like, that's not really the business I want to run. I love having a team. I love working with people in person. And the whole point of a business is that it helps you make money while having fun and helping people.

15:53And if working with people in person means having more fun, then I'm happy to sacrifice some additional profit for that.

16:04If someone wants to go and pick up your book, what would you say to them they will get out of it? Yeah. So I think what they'll get out of it is two things. One is like a general philosophy of productivity, which is that the secret to productivity is to make your work more fun, essentially, to make it feel good. How do you do that? That's the rest of the book. So yeah, the whole book is basically about answering that question. How do you do that? How do you make work that is otherwise boring, more fun? And so the first three chapters are three Ps, play, power, and people. Because this plays into culture, right, as well.

16:33And so I had a statistic in America, right, that apparently one, three, 13 % of Americans like their job. And actually people in the workplace want to be congratulated and have a good time moreover being given a pay rise, I think. And you're so right. I think when people are having a good time, then everything else follows that way. But how do you encourage that in the workplace? Yeah. So yeah, the book is basically like how can you as an individual apply to your own life? And then I guess managers reading the book have also found a way to incorporate that. So play, power, and people. Play is the first one.

17:08I think play is the most underrated productivity hack out there. If you can just find a way to approach your work in the spirit of play, then it makes you more productive. So what does play mean? Play means when we're fully engaged in the task, but the stakes are low enough for it to feel playful. So for example, when Roger Federer is playing, sort of defending his Wimbledon championship title, he's playing tennis, but he's not really playing. It's like the stakes are way too high for him to really feel feel playful about it and and so like with with our work if we can find a way to just like lower the stakes like a lot of us have this thing we take our work very seriously and are you sure that's fine but there's a nice quote from alan watts the philosopher which is you want to be sincere rather than serious like no one wants to play a board game with someone who takes it too seriously because they sort of suck the fun out of it they suck the joy out of it it's like they're too much of a stickler for the rules but we love to play games with people who play sincerely we don't want to play with someone who's just like completely not asked about the whole thing because that's kind of boring as well you want to play with someone who's like giving it their all but who recognizes at the end of the day that it's just a game but if you don't like your job if you really aren't enjoying then how do you make it playful yeah so there's a a guy i interviewed for the book his name's matthew and he used to work at mcdonald's and he didn't like his job at mcdonald's and i did an interview with him and he came up with like some really cool stuff.

18:28So he found a way to make his job fun. So how does someone working at McDonald's who doesn't like their job make it more fun? So the way he incorporated play was that he was working at the drive-thru and every day, every day of the week would be a different sauce. Monday was barbecue sauce day. Tuesday was sweet and sour sauce, you know, that kind of thing. And his challenge to himself, the way he made it fun was that he was like, my mission on every Monday is to upsell every customer on barbecue sauce. On Tuesday, I'm going to upsell every customer on sweet and sour. And so when he'd have the conversations at the drive-thru, he'd be like, you know, would you like fries with that?

18:59They'd be like, yes, please. No, thank you. And he'd be like, what about some barbecue sauce? I'd be like, oh, no, I'm good. Thanks. Then he'd be like, hey, are you sure? You know, my last customer said, you know, no thanks to the barbecue sauce. And then I talked her into it and she was really happy. Are you sure you don't want the barbecue sauce? They'd be like, oh, fuck it. You know, just give me the barbecue sauce. Why not? And so you have a little achievement. He had a little achievement. He's turning it into a bit of a game. He's adding a challenge to make this thing that's otherwise boring and miserable, just a little bit more fun.

19:23and it was great for him because he enjoyed the job more it's great for the customers because now they have like a fun energizing interaction because it's a bit unusual to be upsold barbecue sauce in the mcdonald's drive-thru and it's great for the franchise and the manager because the franchise is literally more productive and so one way of incorporating play is a just ask yourself the question what would this look like if it were actually fun and you can just ask yourself that with anything i literally have that on my phone it's like a wallpaper it's like a little post-it note that says, what would this look like if it were fun?

19:50You know, back when I was, you know, before traveling, I had a computer monitor on my desk. I had a post-it note underneath that, literally saying, what would this look like if it were fun? And whenever I would feel, oh, I'm going to do this taxes or whatever this thing is admin, I'd ask, what would this look like if it were fun? Okay. Well, if it were fun, I wouldn't be sitting at my desk. I'd be going to the coffee shop downstairs. If it were fun, I'd be listening to music while I was doing it. If it was fun, I'd be like, you know what? I'll say to my housemate, hey, do you want to come and work in this coffee shop with me, like we've both got admin to do.

20:19We can just sort of do it together. If it was fun, I don't know, maybe I'll make a list. Every time I take it off, I'll like, I don't know, do a little dance in my seat or things like that. No matter how grim someone's job is, you can always ask yourself, what would this look like if it were fun? And with a bit of creativity, every single thing we do can be made just a little bit more fun. And that's one way of incorporating play. And people are like, well, fuck you, sometimes my job is really serious. And it's like, yeah, sure. You know, I've been in plenty of operating theaters where there's life and death operations literally happening on the table.

20:49Patient is bleeding out and needs to be saved. The best surgeons in those contexts are the ones who can maintain lightness in the atmosphere. When the atmosphere is heavy and serious and stuff like people make mistakes, like, you know, the juniors and the nurses don't feel comfortable to speak up if the surgeon is operating on the wrong leg, for example. You know, bad things happen when the environment is too serious. But the best surgeons are the ones who can crack a joke every now and then. There's soft background music playing. You know, maybe their scrub cap is not just default blue, but it's like a funky color and it's got the name on it.

21:19And, you know, just there's something about creating an atmosphere of lightness and ease, even when life and death is at stake, that makes everyone perform a little bit better. Yeah, it is. No one does their best work when it's like super serious. Everyone does their best work when it's like you're engaged, but there's a little bit of lightness. That's where creativity really, really, really flourishes. What are the other P's? The two other P's are power and people. Talk about that. So power is what we talked about earlier, the sense of control. When we feel powerful in our jobs, when we feel like we have ownership, responsibility, and we're leveling up, that fuels something called intrinsic motivation.

21:55Intrinsic motivation is the sort of motivation when you want to do something for its own sake. Like I want to play football with my friends because it's fun. Like that's intrinsic motivation. I want to play football with my friends because I might win a cash prize at the end of it is extrinsic motivation. That's the bad form of motivation. We tend not to enjoy being motivated by external things, but if we can find a way to motivate ourselves intrinsically, internally, that's generally a lot better. And so power is partly, how can I take more ownership and how can I level up? So the ownership piece, for example, you know, this was in the book in my first draft, but we cut it out because it was too complicated.

22:32But essentially what I realized was like, again, back when I had a real job, weirdly, weirdly like there were most days i would get home from the from the end of work and i would feel like completely drained i wouldn't have any energy to like do my videos or like see my friends or whatever i just sit on the couch and watch uh watch netflix or scroll instagram but there were some days where i would get home from work and i'd feel really energized and i'd feel like oh i've got you know a weird amount of energy today let me just do do a video work on the business or whatever i try to figure out what's the difference between a draining day and an energizing day.

23:06And I realized after a while that when I was working on the weekends, that was weirdly energizing, which is kind of weird because weekend shifts, you know, it's on a weekend. I can't see my friends because I'm working on a weekend. There's less staff around. So it's like, I've got to do more work. There's more emergency. So it's more stressful. But why was it that the weekends were more energizing? I also realized that the other days that were energizing was when the senior doctors were off sick or if they were away on teaching or something. I was like, why is that? Like there's less support. I'm having to do more work, but I'm more energized.

23:36What the hell's going on? And I realized it was because when it was a weekend, when they were off sick, I was taking more responsibility. On a normal, normal weekday shift, there's enough doctors around. I was a little bit disengaged. I'm not proud to say it, but I was like, you know what? You know, everyone complains about the NHS. It's a bit boring. It's a bit shit. Like I'm just, I'm just an admin monkey. I'm just doing my job. But when the senior doctor wasn't there, I was stepping up. I was the one who was like following the blood results and like speaking to the patient and making sure the family was updated.

24:05And I had all this stuff in my head because then I felt more responsible. And even though I was working harder and taking more responsibility, I got way more energy out of it. I got that sense of power that drove intrinsic motivation. And that led me to realize, wait a minute, I don't need to wait for the weekends for this. I can just approach my work like this. And I had this realization about like six months in, and then all of a sudden life became much more fun at work because I was just choosing to take responsibility. And the seniors loved it because they had less work to do and they were already stressed the consultants loved it because now there's this junior doctor who's like actually knows stuff and can reel off the patients blood results off the top of their head patients loved it because they're getting better care and i loved it because i'm getting more energy and having more fun at work i do you know i had this in my gcc maths exam i'm not even kidding you like i i went into my gcc year with maths and i i was just didn't care about it couldn't be bothered with it and my mom said I'll give you a bet.

24:55I'll bet you that you'll get a C in maths. I'll bet you I'll get an A. And she bet me like£100 or something like that. So firstly, that became a game. So exciting. And secondly, I realised that actually, so in every single class, I would then take the power almost. So the teacher said, right, someone's going to lead the class today. And I'd always put my hand and say, right, I'm going to lead it today. And that gave me a sense of power as well. So not only did I have a sense of competition and power, that meant I then did really well. I got an A at the end of the year in my GCSEs because I added those elements to it.

25:23Nice. That's so good. what's the last P? The last P is people generally everything is more energizing and fun when you do it with other people around you because you know we're social creatures and stuff and you know there's two ways to get the people element in your work. The first one is like I think I said you know if you're doing something boring try and do it in like a communal environment try and sort of get your friends together or your colleagues together to do the thing as like a bit of a group you know at uni I realised that studying on my own in my room was just depressing but studying in the library with some friends around me we're all doing different subjects, we're all doing different things but we would all like do this, like the Pomodoro technique together.

25:56We would work for 25 minutes and we'd take a five minute break and we work for 25 minutes, five minute break and we'd go for a lunch and then we'd come back to the library. Just doing that made it way more enjoyable and energizing because you tap into the energy of the people around you. But the other way of doing it is to try and connect whatever you're doing to a sense of this might help someone else in some way. So if you feel like, oh, why am I doing this like boring admin thing? It's like, oh, my job sucks. It's like, if you can try to really connect that to who is the person this will help?

26:24How will you make the customer smile? How is this going to make someone's life easier? That also weirdly gives us the sense of purpose, the sense that we're getting more energy out of the thing. Have you had burnout? I think I've come close at various points. What do you mean you came close though? Because you're such a positive person and actually burnout manifests itself in different ways, but typically the one is where, and you see it a lot in medicine actually, loads of doctors and therapists, a psychotherapist get it where they just stop caring about the patients they just lose all interest in it you you're the type of person i don't think would ever lose interest so what did your burnout nearly feel like yeah that's so for me it it's that feeling it's it's when i lose interest in my work because for me like making videos and doing podcasts and shit it's really fun i love tinkering of products on the weekends but i know that i'm approaching burnout or or at at burnout when i feel like oh what's the point oh it's just another podcast oh it's just another video who gives a who gives a fuck you know that kind of thing that's when i'm like hold up that is a classic sign of burnout let's take a break and I've started to recognise that a lot now it's happened like a handful of times in the last like three years and I'm always like okay no more videos for the rest of the week we just need to take a break we need to realign need to like do some like vision planning and some journaling to really like sort of feel the sense of service and purpose and stuff and then after about a week you have that great discipline I don't have that sometimes yeah I definitely feel it how do you you know the final chapter of your book is you talk about overcoming burnout how do you overcome burnout?

27:51Yeah, so there's three types. There's a overexertion, depletion and misalignment burnout. I think step one is to figure out which one is it. And just quickly, I want to explain this. A lot of people just say, oh, I've got burnout. Until you have burnout, you don't know what burnout really is. Yeah, I've got some friends who've really been through it. I'm like, oh, shit. Okay. You literally couldn't get out of bed for like a whole two years. Fuck. Damn. Okay, fine. Dude, that is, I experienced burnout. So I had, so beginning of lockdown, I had burnout. And the way that mine was, is that I lost all interest in everything.

28:27Didn't have any interest in anything. I didn't want to do podcasting, didn't care about sweets, didn't care about the thought of playing any sport, like you say squash or whatever it was, or golf. I just didn't have any interest in anything. And it took me, yeah, eight months. six to eight months to get yeah and coming from someone who was so so excited about life and then all of that had gone so the three burnouts so you have to what were they again the three burnouts over exertion depletion and misalignment i wish i had simpler names of these but like so over exertion is when you're just trying to do too much yeah um depletion is when you've been doing a lot and you haven't found time to recharge and misalignment is where the thing that you're doing is just fundamentally not aligned with what you actually want and however fun the thing is when you feel misaligned, that's always a recipe for burnout eventually.

29:16So we can go into each of these in turn. So over-exertion. Basically, one of the reasons I don't like to-do lists is because you can just put an infinite number of things on there. And there's a really cool, there's a fun story I came across when I was in, when I was working, actually. It was my, it was like my first week working in A &E, in the emergency department. And I was like, you know, I'd done a previous placement in cardiology and in elderly medicine, but this was my first week in emergency medicine, you know, where the real stuff is, where the lives are saved. And so I walked in with a bit of a swagger.

29:48I was like, yeah, I'm going to save the lives. And I looked in the waiting room and the waiting room was completely full of patients. I was like, whoa, shit, there's a lot of people here. I was like, yeah, I'm going to save the lives. So I went through the list. I saw like eight patients that day. It took me about an hour to see each patient. And then on the way home, I looked in the waiting room. I was like, shit, it's still full. There's still too many patients in the waiting room. What the hell happened? And so the next day I was like, cool, going to save some more lives. I'm going to be more efficient with it.

30:12I'm going to like see two patients at once. I'm going to batch my calls to radiology. I'm going to do the bloods like very efficiently and stuff. And I saw maybe like 12 patients. So like on average, a patient every 45 minutes or something. It's a lot. That's a lot. And then I, on the way home, I looked in the waiting room and it was still freaking full. It was still full of patients. I was like, what the hell? And this happened for a couple of days. And I mentioned this to one of the consultants. I was like, why, why does it seem as if the waiting room is always full? And he was like, oh, it's your first week, isn't it?

30:38And I was like, yeah. And he was like, so one thing that emergency medics realize very quickly is that the waiting room will never be empty. There will always be patients to see. I'm like, okay, so what do you do about that? He was like, the goal is not to think that you can get through all the patients. The goal is to triage. The goal is to show up every day as your best self and just see patients in order of priority. And as long as you and everyone else are doing that, everything will work out in the end. all we need to do is show up as our best selves and tackle the patients in order of priority like a surgeon would on the battlefield you triage and that was really helpful advice for emergency medicine but i think it's also helpful advice for life because we all have a endless waiting room of projects and tasks and responsibilities and chores and things that you could be doing if you had more time the waiting room will never be empty and all we can do is show up as our best selves every day and just tackle things in order of priority And so I think a lot of overexertion burnout is when people are just trying to do too much because there's always more to do.

31:36And there's this sense of you can have it all. You can just get, oh, if only I worked a bit harder, I could get through everything. But what I find personally is that if you accept that you will never get through everything, it's something Oliver Berkman talks about in his book, 4 ,000 Weeks. You're just never going to get through everything. Great. That's actually a liberating insight. That means every day you just focus on the one or two most important things. And then you take a break and then you finish work and then you start again. one or two most important things, one or two most important things.

32:00And if every single day, you only did the one or two most important things and actually did them, you'd be making enormous amounts of progress and you wouldn't be burned out. So a lot of it is just about recognizing, like not taking on too much stuff, being better at saying no, something I struggle with, you know, being better at taking breaks, all of that stuff.

32:18It's amazing because what you have done, and I want to get into your whole story because, you know you grew up with a in a with a single mom you go to cambridge you study medicine um you also do psychology you it's that's all kind of helping people oh that's some good research i am all over it buddy i am all over it you then leave and you decide to put all of that behind you and you become a youtuber but the youtube is also about helping people you have this innate desire to help people, it feels like. Yeah, it was. So while I was working full time, when I had a real job, this was like 2019, I was in my sort of second year of being a doctor.

32:59And I started feeling a bit like lost and a bit like, I don't really know what I'm doing with my life. And as one does, I went on YouTube to find videos of like how to figure out what to do with your life. And I came across a really cool exercise called the Odyssey plan, where, you know, I did this in 2019, where basically you sort of imagine your life five years from now, if you continue down your current path and you sort of write it out, and then you take a step back and then you imagine life five years from now, if you took a completely different path, and then you take a step back and then you imagine life five years from now, if you took a different path, but you didn't care about making money and you didn't care about what other people thought of you.

33:35And when I did that exercise in 2019, the current path that I was on, I realized, oh, this is actually not what I want anymore. and that current path was continuing in medicine. You know, I would have been training in anesthetics or in emergency medicine. I'd have been teaching physiology on the side at Cambridge. And that was what I'd been working towards. But I had just never really questioned that because it was just sort of the path that I was on. And that was this first realization of, hmm, maybe this path that I'm on is not actually what I want. And so then I worked with this like life coach guy.

34:08and he basically got me to go through my life and sort of write out all of the most meaningful moments. And there was a theme that emerged across all the meaningful moments, which was the theme of teaching. Like I always enjoyed teaching people. I would always give seminars in med school to younger students just for free because it was fun. I built a business teaching medical students how to get into med school and I did private tutoring and stuff. And I found that stuff really meaningful. And what this life coach guy said to me, he was like, huh, it sounds like teaching is really your thing. I was like, yeah, teaching is my thing.

34:41I think I want to be a teacher rather than a doctor. It's interesting, right? That idea of a blueprint, right? It's kind of a scary, we had this blueprint in life, whatever it is, I want to be an actor, musician, a doctor, whatever it is. And then suddenly, when you either don't achieve your blueprint, or you realize that your blueprint wasn't what you want it to be, and you want to be something different, that's a really kind of scary moment. Because you're kind of like, you spent your whole life searching or going for this thing. And then you don't feel rewarded or satisfied when you get it.

35:06And I think social media now does that to people where, I know you talk about this a lot, where social media force, it tells you that you need to be a millionaire before you're 20. You need to be an entrepreneur at 15. You need to be a tech bro, whatever it is, by the time you're 12, you need to be doing ice. You're constantly comparing yourselves to one another. So it kind of pushes that sense of we got to find our purpose now. And it's really hard to understand what we want to do in life. Yeah, it's really hard. Until you start testing the waters. You tested it out. You had the ability to test it out and find out what you didn't really want to do.

35:40That's a great place to sort of find yourself, I think. Yeah, I think also like a lot of us have this question of, I don't really know what I want to do, but then the next step of let me Google it and find out or read some books where people have figured this out and do the journaling prompts to get some clarity on this. That's a step that I didn't take before 2019, even though I'd sort of been feeling the sense of, I feel a bit lost. And, you know, a lot of my kind of friends from med school and stuff, we were also, we were all talking about this feeling of like, yeah, we're not like, we're not really sure what we want to do.

36:12But I don't know, there was something, something about that year where I just decided to search on YouTube for it and realized, oh, people have come up with answers to this. And how did you have the courage? What do you mean you felt lost? I felt lost as in, that's a good question. What do I mean by feeling lost? Because you're young.

36:30you're succeeding, you're doing what you want to do. How do you know you're kind of going, well, hang on, are you not satisfied? What is it? It was that when you're doing medicine or any kind of traditional career, there's like a yellow brick road laid in front of you. Like, okay, you just do this next thing. You do your two years of foundation and then you apply to specialist training. Then you do that for seven years. And then at some point you get married and have kids and then you become a consultant. Then you do that for 40 years and then you die. Like this is the yellow brick road that's laid out in front of medics and I know that lawyers and like, you know, a lot of different careers have that track laid out.

37:00And as I was on that path, I started feeling that sense of, hmm, is this really meaningful? Am I fulfilled by this? Is this really what I want to do? But at that point, I'd spent seven years of sort of six years of med school and two years of work working towards this identity and like three years in school before then doing the right GCSEs and A-levels. and so it's like I think it was a feeling of lost because it's like you're at that point and you've worked so hard to get here and now you're here and you're like is this really what I want and that that feels quite destabilizing yeah I don't know if you've had that at all in your oh my god I've had that a lot I've had that a huge amount because also I've had a lot because I did a reality show and that was and I did that for reasons because I thought I've spoken this before but I thought it was gonna thought some sort of fame would bring me all the riches and all the things that I wanted and then it doesn't and then you're stuck.

37:50I think that we in life feel like you want to find shortcuts to the success. And the problem is you can find those shortcuts. But when you take a shortcut, there's a repayment somewhere. My shortcut was a shortcut through reality TV into the entertainment industry. But then to get some sort of respect within the industry took another 10 years. Yeah. So it's a long process, right? And I now just believe that taking a shortcut on anything is the wrong idea. I think you have to take the long road in order to make a success. One thing that I've, one idea I've been playing with recently is that like, every time I speak to like a successful entrepreneur, someone who's like running a big business or sold a big business, I ask like, how long, how long has the journey been?

38:35It's always at least seven to 10 years. And I'm always like, wow, that's actually kind of nice. Like I've now been doing YouTube for seven years. I did medicine for eight years. It's like, okay, you know, this is actually a fairly long-term game. This is your give up period though. It feels like you did medicine, you're like, am I writing the right thing? That's the thing. And actually a bunch of YouTubers are recently like quitting YouTube for various reasons. And a lot of them have been doing it for seven years. There seems to be this like seven year burnout period. I think one problem that people have is that they don't stick for anything, stick at the same thing long enough to experience the real success of the thing.

39:08And they just sort of jump from one thing to another to another because they expect instantaneous results. But if you can get through that and just stick at something for long enough, then you get to the problem of like, oh, I'm kind of successful in this one niche thing, but I've been doing it for a long time and I wonder if there's more to life. Yeah, but you have to stick it out and you have to be persistent. One thing that I would say, you know, there's an interesting thing about the NHS, you see a lot of, especially with Brexit, right? A lot of people are leaving it, not working for it. Was there any part of you that felt a little bit guilty that you were going to leave.

39:40Yeah, I still do to an extent. Because the NHS is really good. Like having now traveled to America and stuff and other places, we've got it really good with the NHS. Really, do we? Yeah, obviously it's got its issues. But, you know, anyone can just like rock up to a hospital and just get like a really good standard of care, arguably, for free. You have to pay for it. I really realized this when I was in med school. You know, we did a placement in Papworth, which is this like specialist cardiothoracic center. And there's like incredibly intense, like 14 hour operation that involved like 15 specialists for this guy to fit like a fancy valve in his heart.

40:22And I asked like, you know, who's paying for this? And I'm like, well, the NHS. I was like, whoa, this operation would have cost like several million in the US. And it was completely free for the dude under the NHS. That's absolutely sick. so I do still feel a bit guilty about that one thing that a lot of doctors say is that the NHS runs on goodwill you know we will work longer hours and stuff and like accept worse working conditions than our friends working in the city because it's the NHS because it's state funded because there's this like mission behind it which is really cool but as we're seeing with all the junior doctor strikes and stuff you know goodwill doesn't pay the bills and so I still do feel a bit guilty about it.

41:02What needs to happen to make the NHS a place people don't want to leave? Yeah, it's really hard to imagine in the context of a state-funded healthcare system. So I've had a couple of friends who've moved from the NHS to the US and are working in US hospitals and seem to enjoy it a lot more. And so a lot of the conversation we have is like, what are actually the differences between what the working conditions are like in the US compared to here? Assuming you're in a nice hospital in a nice city rather than a random hospital in a random city. And for example, in the US, they really care a lot about training.

41:35Like every day, there's like a breakfast teaching session where the hospital will just provide free breakfast and some expert will be giving a talk about something that will help the doctors level up in their jobs. The doctors feel great about it because the whole point of the training program is that you get trained up. Whereas in the NHS, your training is one hour a week on a Wednesday afternoon with some sandwiches from Tesco. And one hour a week, it doesn't really feel as if you're really learning stuff. It feels like you're doing the job and you're sort of expected to learn on your own time.

42:02Whereas in the US, they really take training very seriously. In the US, you know, they give you subsidized hospital accommodation in like a really nice apartment building in New York, which you otherwise would not be able to afford. And so that makes people feel like, oh, wow, I'm actually living like a really comfortable life. Whereas here, it's like hospital accommodation is kind of grim. It's like you've got to find, you've got to rent someplace nearby, you don't earn enough to rent a really nice place and stuff like it's i think it's things like that um i've got a friend who works in singapore he moved from the nhs to singapore and in singapore like they give you cash bonuses if you get really good feedback so this friend of mine got like amazing feedback from all the nurses and stuff and got like a 15 grand cash bonus at the end of the year and like you know it's things like that just for positive feedback yeah just positive feedback i mean he's really good but like it's and they ended up like being having like the best positive feedback of the cohort.

42:51But like, it's things like that, that it's hard to imagine the NHS ever doing because all of this stuff is tied to money. The more money the system has, the more you can invest in training, invest in like nice accommodation, invest in nicer doctor's offices, invest in free coffee rather than paid coffee, invest in a cafeteria that gives you free food rather than having to pay for it. It's all these things that unfortunately require money. And money is one thing that the NHS doesn't really have. So it's really hard to imagine how it can continue to, how it can really be attractive to people without more money going into the system, which is why all these doctors are striking.

43:21Do you think there's a chance that the NHS may die? So people have been like doom saying about the NHS since like 1948. So yeah, it's hard to say.

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45:15So the business turned over, did 5 million last year. That's YouTube. You're the face of it. Yes. Yeah. So one would argue with you, right? Someone looking at you would say, well, why don't you just become really lean, cut loads of the employees so your overheads are much lower and just take all the income yourself and not really build it. Just keep it. And then you could have a great passive income. You could take home a million, two million quid a year to yourself. Yeah. Why wouldn't you do that? A million, two million pounds a year. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I already do take up a million, two million pounds a year because our margins are 60%.

45:47So, you know, five million revenue, we did about 2.6 million, 2.8 million profit. But you want to build. I do want to build. I think for me, I've realized that entrepreneurship is kind of like a really cool video game. So like a few days ago, it was like, it was Saturday and I just happened to be in London and I was thinking, okay, I've got a whole day free. You know, I'm having lunch with a friend, but other than that, I've got a whole day free. What do I want to do? I can do anything I want. I was like, well, I could play some video games. I could, you know, read a book, or I could try and figure out how to get a business from five to 10 million.

46:17I was like, you know what? I'm just going to go to a WeWork and just sit there all day, tinkering away on like Figma and Photoshop and like trying to do some journaling and sketching out to see like, what's the cool, what's a cool product we can make to go from five to 10. And it was just really fun. And I realized it's kind of like a video game where you get to use your creativity. You get to work with people you like, you get to build cool stuff, kind of like Fortnite, but in real life. And the scoreboard is like real money that you can buy shit with. and like the more points you get in this video game, the more you can like, I don't know, go on fancy vacations or fly business class instead of economy or like, you know, take the fiance out for a nice date night on Valentine's Day at the Michelin Star restaurant.

46:53But does that excite you though? Does that excite you? Being able to fly business class and things like that, does that go, oh, that feels you, but once you've done it, surely you then go, well, I've kind of done it now. So it doesn't really make a difference. I see lots of very successful entrepreneurs and business leaders, you know, fly, start flying business or first whatever it is, but then just start flying economy because they're like, well, if you get to the same place anyway, it doesn't really matter. and then it becomes confusing it's like well what are you building towards yeah i really like playing business it's very nice i love your honesty it's so good it's so nice but but also i've read a lot of books about like happiness and how to stay fulfilled and stuff and i i read a lot of studies around like money and happiness and all that stuff every every time i meet i meet a rich person i talk to them about you know this link between money and happiness so give me statistics give me statistics go on you know some people would say that like beyond 70k like uh per person in the household a year, money doesn't buy that much more happiness.

47:44Money does buy happiness if you use money to buy time, because time is very finite and money, you can always make more money. Explain that more. So if, for example, you don't like doing the cleaning in your house and you can just outsource it to a cleaner for two hours a week, now you've bought back two hours of your time. If you don't like doing admin in your life and you can hire an assistant, you've just bought back 10 hours a week of your life. You know, that sort of thing. If you fly business class, you buy back an hour in the queue because you get the VIP thing and maybe you buy back, I don't know, 20 minutes on the other end.

48:11And plus the experience of just doing it is just a bit nicer. So I can just get more work done. It sort of feels kind of nice. There's a guy called Ramit Sethi, who's written a really good book called I Will Teach You To Be Rich, which is a bit of a clickbaity title. But his whole thesis around money is that for different people, they have different kind of dials of what they want in their life. So there's like a luxury dial. There's like a convenience dial. There is a, fancy designer handbags dial. And for all of us, we have individual tastes in terms of like, what is the thing for us that actually does make us happier?

48:43So I've realized for me, convenience is a big one. If I could pay more to do something in a more convenient way, I'll take that any day because I can use that convenience. It'll save me time. I can use that time to read a book or like call my grandma or like basically do whatever I want. So I've realized for me, like spending money on convenience and on saving time is actually really helpful. Yeah. But it's less about the stuff you can buy. I think for me, it's more about just the game of entrepreneurship at this point. Completely. Yeah. But do you think people are just, if you're an entrepreneur, do you think it's within you?

49:15Do you think there are some people who just are and who aren't? I think there are some people who have more of an appetite for risk and less of an appetite for work-life balance. And for those people, that sort of fits this entrepreneur kind of ideal. And I talk about this with my team a lot. You know, there's like 13 of us and, you know, two or three other people in our team are very sort of, they aspire to be entrepreneurs, but everyone else, you know, the other 10, they're all like, you know what? I actually quite enjoy my nine to five and I just want to go home and chill and have a good work-life balance and spend time with friends and family on the weekend and go on holidays every now and then.

49:49And as long as I enjoy my job, that's totally fine with me. I don't understand that particular approach. Because for me, like the autonomy and the freedom of being able to do my own thing and like the fact that it's slightly risky also makes it more fun. Like that really drives me, the desire for freedom and being just the ability to do whatever I want. Whereas for a lot of my team, it doesn't and they're perfectly happy. So what do you think the benefits are? So if you had to write down on a piece of paper, say these are the benefits for all the positives that you see being an entrepreneur, what are the negatives as well?

50:21What would you line out on a piece of I think by far the main, the biggest positive is autonomy. Like when I, when I had a real job, I would have to wake up. Yeah. I had a real job. I would, I would have to wake up every Monday morning at seven o 'clock to commute to work. I'd have to be there until like 6 PM and then I'd commute back and then it'd be 7 PM. If I want to cook and eat something, it's like, I don't know, 8.30. If I want to maybe go gym, it's like 9.30 and then it's time to sleep and just repeat that cycle over and over again. So even though I quite enjoyed being a doctor, I was still sort of living for the weekend um but humans we love habit we love routine yeah so but you you don't really i mean i do enjoy a routine but i don't enjoy it see like routine i think routine is all well and good if you're choosing what the routine is like like these days i have full autonomy i can i can do whatever i want and i've chosen to have a routine where i wake up at 7 30 go to the gym have a personal trainer for an hour and then every tuesday is my filming day and every monday's meetings.

51:20But that feels nice because I've chosen that routine. But if the medical rota coordinator were to impose a routine on me to be like, okay, Ellie, you have to be here from nine till six, Monday to Friday. And then next week you're on nights. And then the week after you're on evening shifts and the week after you're on twilight shifts and you're working that weekend and that weekend. Oh, and by the way, you can't take time off for your friend's wedding because actually we don't have any cover for that weekend. And you're on call. Like that was the thing about having a quick real job that I enjoyed the least.

51:46And I think that's the biggest benefit of entrepreneurship. You're more in control of your own life if you're an entrepreneur. Whereas if you're an employee, as much as you might like your job, you are at the whim of your manager or at the whim of your boss. You could be fired at any moment. You could be asked to work extra hours. You could be told what to do. And there's not much you can do about it if you want to still have a job. So I think if you value that level of control, then entrepreneurship is great. But then the problem is not all of us can be entrepreneurs. We need people to help build companies.

52:14So then if we're constantly giving the narrative that it's great to be this because you have control over your life. Maybe that's, is that a positive thing? I don't know. I think not everyone wants that level of, because to have that level of control requires a certain level of risk. And, you know, for the 10 or so people in my team, they're like, actually, you know what? I don't want that amount of control. I'm very happy to be told where to turn up for a nine to five job. You know, it's nice that I have flexibility because it's a remote job. Honestly, I don't really mind it. I don't really mind it.

52:38I think the single-minded desire for control is like a weird thing that entrepreneurs have that a lot of other people don't. I think that to me is the biggest benefit. Do you think you're a control freak? I think I'm a control freak. Truthfully. I think I'm a control freak about my own time. I'm not really a control freak about anything else in my life, but just there's something about kind of being told what to do and having to do something. That to me just feels like unless I've chosen that for myself, that's not really the way I would want to live. I think now that I'm engaged, you know, I've been in a relationship for a while, there is a level of autonomy that that takes away.

53:18But it's a level of autonomy that I'm glad to trade. So I think, you know, I'm 29 now, my entire 20s has been about getting more fame, money, status, all that crap, getting more autonomy. But now I'm finding myself wanting to trade in the chips of autonomy for things like a family and kids and, you know, a physical office space with like physical team members rather than remote team members you know things things like that um yeah it's funny he says i've always heard it socrates was always spoke where he said socrates has two levels of happiness the lower level and the higher level the lower level is what you suggested fame wealth power all the things you would think you want to achieve and then actually when you achieve it you go well i'm not content here so you go and go for the higher level which is loyalty love trust friendship all those kind of things all the things but it's tricky right because it's, do you know what's funny?

54:06I always go back to this one thing that Matt Damon, Matt Damon, that philosopher, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck said, Matt Damon went on a show and said, he's so happy that he won an Oscar when he did, when he was 21 years old for Good Will Hunting, because it made him realise how unimportant it was. And otherwise he would have strived his entire life to get that. And then he would have got it and been like, hang on a second, this is not what it's meant to be. so how do you teach people that actually in life it's really about just I truly be having got married I think true happiness is really about connections and love and finding your passion whatever that may be, that might be mowing the lawn it might be painting, it might be running a business, whatever it is but I think those are the most important things but in our current world people don't realise that, people are just striving for the wrong things all the time yeah

55:01can I ask a personal question of course you've spoken about your mum was your dad around when you were younger no so my mum and dad divorced when I was like one so I never really knew my dad really yeah so then my mum moved us to Africa and so we grew up there for the first like from age one to seven and yeah it was just my mum my grandma and me and my brother and so I've never really known what it's like to have a dad so it's almost like I don't know like Like someone who's colorblind has never seen color. And so it was like the concept of color just seems kind of weird to them. Similarly for me, some people sometimes ask, you know, do you feel sort of the lack of father figure in your life?

55:39I'm like, maybe, but I've never consciously thought that because it's like you don't miss what you've never had. Really? If that makes sense. Yeah. That's really interesting because a lot of people would say that when you don't have a father figure in your life, perhaps that manifests into different things. but maybe it hasn't with you. Yeah. I think if anything, so I think me and my brother would not have had such an entrepreneurial spirit if we did have, you know, a dual income household, because my dad is also a doctor, he's, he's working in Pakistan. But if we had like two incomes from doctors in the UK, there would have been a lot less of that drive to like, we want to make money on the side because we'd have been like squarely middle-class at that point.

56:20I think also one area in which I do feel the absence of a father figure, I've realized this recently, is, for example, when my girlfriend is upset, I actually have no models of what it's like. Like, what does it look like for a man to comfort an upset woman? Like, I just have no idea what that looks like. Because you tend not to see it in films. You tend not to see in TV shows where like men are displayed as like bumbling idiots or something. And so I just have no idea what that looks like um and so with my with my girlfriend i've sometimes asked her being like what did it look like when your dad comforted you when you were upset when you were younger she says oh you know he would he would give me a little sandwich and he would like you know say nice things to me and he would be like oh you know don't worry honey it's okay i'm like oh okay that's that's interesting i just have no conception of what that what that looks like and so i'm having to sort of learn these by trying to find scripts you realize that's quite robotic right it's sort of In an interesting way, right?

57:16You're sort of an analyst. The good thing is that you're trying to, you're analyzing it from, you're trying to understand that emotion, right? It's almost like that side of the emotion has been sort of cut where you just don't really say, because I totally agree with you. How do you learn? Yeah, I think every new behavior feels robotic initially. It's like we had communication skills classes in medical school around how to break bad news. Now, obviously, if someone has got cancer or something and they're sitting in front of you, you feel the empathy for them. But there is a difference between feeling the empathy and having the appropriate communication skills to know how to respond.

57:47And, you know, going through role plays and going through scripts and recognizing, you know, the importance of giving them a warning shot, you know, ask them to sit down, you know, making sure there's a box of tissues. issues you know if they ask how long they've got to live being able to respond with a phrase like well it's probably weeks rather than days but weeks rather than months you know that's a nice it's a nice phrase it's like it gives some sense of like what the timeline is but also it's not so specific because you can never be so specific about it and it's like you learn those skills which initially when you're first talking to patients you're sort of running through a mental model in your head okay i need to ask them about this and then this and then this and now i need to do xyz but with enough practice it becomes second nature and you stop thinking about the structure anymore.

58:26I think similarly, when it comes to, you know, I really struggled with the, like, what does it mean to emotionally support a girlfriend? I don't know. But I asked her about it. I asked her what she would have liked in terms of emotional support, you know, after the upset has passed. And we're talking about it afterwards. I read some books about it. And I was like, okay, cool. There actually is a method here. And it, you know, initially I have to think about the method. And increasingly I have to think about it a lot less because it's become more natural over time. Do you think you're in touch with your emotional side?

58:58Not really. Yeah. Not really. What do you think you lack in terms of emotions? I think I very rarely experience negative emotions. I'm a very sort of tranquil kind of guy. But I think also what that means is that I very rarely experience very strong positive emotions. I'm sort of just in the middle. I'm just like, yeah, everything is just chill most of the time. I spoke to like a therapist about this for like a couple of months. because there are some specialists that, there are some therapists that specialize in helping men in particular unlock their emotions. And one of his theories was that, you know, if, if you don't feel an emotion in your body, it's because something is blocking that.

59:40And so there'll be moments where I'll be saying something and like my brother or a friend would say, Hey, are you okay? Cause you're sort of tearing up a bit. And I wouldn't realize that I'm tearing up a bit because internally I feel no different than I did a minute ago, but my eyes are watering. I'm like, whoa, that's kind of weird. I mentioned this to the therapist and he was like, yeah, you know, the body never lies, but sometimes the mind doesn't know what it's feeling because there's this disconnect. These people, there are people that feel almost cut off from the neck down. It's like you're, everything is happening in the head and nothing is happening in the body, but, but emotions will still bubble up and you just won't know what, Why did I just tear up at that?

1:00:19And so I've been kind of exploring that with a therapist to see, you know, this emotional unlock thing seems kind of cool. Like, I'd love to at least have the option of experiencing the full range of human emotions. So you don't really get sad? No, not really. But do you get euphoric? Euphoric? Not euphoric, that's an extreme word, but do you get extremely happy? Yeah, I mean, if I'm playing squash with some friends, or it's like hanging out with the boys, or, you know, cuddling the girlfriend, yeah, it's happy. But I think, I don't know, like laughing and giggling with glee and joy, like I maybe used to when I was a kid.

1:00:55I don't really do that anymore. I don't know if anyone does, but it's sort of hard to know what like euphoria feels like. They always say that being less in touch with your emotions is a great skill to have as a doctor because you do have to, or working in medicine, you have to deliver bad news. and you almost have to, dare I say, you have to have that sort of sociopathic sort of no empathy. You have to have empathy, but you have to separate yourself, as you said. But then is there sometimes a danger that when you've been taught for so long to separate empathy, so you go, right, put it in the box here, that actually sometimes you can't bring them back together again.

1:01:30You know how actors, I always sit with actors, actors talk about it, that when they've played so many characters for so long that they forget kind of who they are themselves. when you've been taught for so long that you have to, you know, when you're delivering bad news or delivering a diagnosis or whatever it is, you have to separate it. It's quite hard to then bring that back into your normal life sometimes. Yeah. Or am I completely wrong there? I don't know. Like, I mean, I was only a doctor for two years, so I don't think the training, like, I don't think I did it for long enough for it to bleed into my real life.

1:02:01Although, so my housemate when I was, when I, back when I had a real job, she was also a doctor and she was very in touch with her emotions. And she would find it incredibly difficult when a patient died. And I would find it difficult when a patient died, but it wouldn't like floor me. It wouldn't like, you know, it wouldn't cause the same level of upset for me as it did for her. What emotion do you sit most comfortably in then? It's a hard question. I don't know. Tranquility? Joy, maybe? I mean, I think most things I do, I find a way to make it fun. I find a way to enjoy the process. You're a bright person.

1:02:33You give off that energy. Oh, nice. I'm glad. No, you really do. In a great way. Yeah. So I try to bring that to everything because my whole thing is like, if I'm doing anything at all and I feel a sense of like, I'll always kind of remember that, no, I can choose how I approach the situation and just decide to brighten up a bit about it. Just, yeah, just choose to approach it with more optimism and more gratitude and more grace, which just makes it just feel way nicer.

1:03:03Ali, we end the podcast with eight questions. Are you ready for it? Let's go. What's a saying or phrase that always makes you smile or cheers you up? Something around everything will work out in the end. So there is never any reason to be worried. That's great. I love that. Okay. Best compliment anyone's ever given you? The best compliments I get are when people come up to me and they say that my videos on my book has changed their life in some way. So I was working in a coffee shop earlier today and two people spontaneously came up to me and they were like, oh my God, I can't believe it's you.

1:03:39Like, thank you so much. Your videos about studying helped me get through my exams or like your this thing video about this thing helped me start a business. It's like, if there's this random ass video that I could make in my bedroom that has genuinely helped someone get a first class degree or get through their GCSEs or start a business, that to me is like the best compliment because it's like, oh, my work actually had an impact. What scares you most about yourself? What scares me most about myself? Oh, what scares me most is that I think I enjoy my work so much that I'm always at risk of over-prioritizing work and under-prioritizing health and relationships.

1:04:12And when I look at other kind of successful entrepreneurs that I know like a lot of them have fucked up their personal lives for the sake of their professional life. And they didn't need to make more money. Like what the hell are you doing? So I need to keep on checking myself to make sure I'm not trying to make more money at the expense of my actual life. But do you think that's because they're on this constant search for something? Yeah, maybe. The ones I know, There are a few entrepreneurs I know who are very rich and successful and also happy. And they tend to be the ones with a wife and kids, for whatever that's worth.

1:04:43I think it's true. You're getting married as well, which is incredible. And I honestly, yeah, for me, who was someone completely obsessed with work and success in whatever ways it was, marriage has taught me balance. Nice. Massively. And I think, Ali, for you, it would do the same thing. you will we're on that path where and your drive you can feel it coming from you which is a great thing I admire it massively that's what inspires me I love connecting with people like that but I think when you get married you'll go ah okay yeah I can chill out a bit yeah I think so in a great way you'll become hugely passionate still and hugely driven but it you suddenly realise oh there are other things in life which are important and that for me is what I realised that's why I think marriage is a good thing nice yeah we don't become complete sociopaths.

1:05:33Okay. When was the last time you cried? I was at the British Library yesterday and they've got this great exhibition about fantasy books. And fantasy books have played a huge role in my life growing up, like Harry Potter and then later the Lord of the Rings stuff and Brandon Sanderson, favourite author of all time, amazing fantasy books. I see you've got some on the shelves here. And just walking through this exhibition in the British Library and seeing the history of how the fantasy genre evolved weirdly brought tears to my eyes. I was just like, what the hell is happening? Yeah, it was really cool.

1:06:06Because there was like this like old manuscript of like Harry Potter and there was like this, you know, like Beowulf translation or something. It was like just, it's so cool seeing like this genre of books that has had such an impact on me. Damn, I'm doing, I'm thinking about it, like talking about it now, where it's like, I can just walk through and see how it all came together. And that's just like really nice and heartwarming. And so I, yeah, I cried a bit then. That's amazing. I would recommend the fantasy exhibition of the British Library Why does it make you tear up? Because I can see you tearing up about it That's incredible I don't know, I think it's like Yeah, I think when I was young, Harry Potter in particular was such a big thing And increasingly, and recently since university It was like the Brandon Sanderson books And even whenever I study for my exams I've got the Lord of the Rings soundtrack playing in my headphones So I think at every major moment of my life From age 11 onwards There's been some sort of fantasy book or movie or series or soundtrack that's sort of been at its sort of base.

1:06:59And I don't know, it's nice to look back on. What is it about fantasy that you love? The thing I love most, I think, is the story of someone, maybe there's a parallel here, the story of like someone starting off like a total noob and then becoming really powerful over time. And there's something like really cool about that coming of age thing and just feeling that sense of, yeah, I love those sort of coming of age stories. anything is possible like you can start off small in like a little village and you can just get really powerful and like suddenly the world opens up i wonder if this if i feel like this parallels with with my own life there it feels like it right i think by the way i love that you got emotional about that yeah it's so cool this is what i get emotional about weirdly you don't get emotional about death you don't get emotional about harry paulson don't cancel me please it's so good I love it what do I get emotional by I get emotional when people are proud when you see when proudness when someone's proud of someone or they do something that makes themselves proud that for me is that makes me go every time especially do with father figures which again probably is saying something oh hello yeah probably when dads are proud of their sons.

1:08:19There's a great clip which gets me every single time. I don't know if you know who Tom Brady is. The American quarterback. He gets asked a question by a kid in the crowd. He says, who's your hero? And Tom Brady, it's going to make me go down. It's going to make me cry together. And Tom Brady says, Tom Brady, you don't even know him. And he says, who's my hero? My dad. And then he starts choking up and he's trying to say when he goes, my dad. And it's an amazing moment. Yeah, it's an incredible moment that for me everything um what's something you can't let go of okay i think i can't let go of my desire to want to teach people stuff and i wonder if i do sometimes wonder if what's beneath that is my desire to be liked by others and i think kind of being a good teacher is like a i mean a pretty reasonable way to be liked there's a quote which is uh i think it was from jp morgan of all people which is that you know a man always has two reasons for doing something a good reason and the real reason.

1:09:16And so my good reason for wanting to be a teacher is because it's nice to kind of share ideas and like help people and stuff. But is the real reason just because I want people to like me and sort of being sort of teaching them something is a way for them to like me? I don't know, maybe. What's something that you'd be embarrassed for people to know you like or want? It's hard for me to feel embarrassed about a lot of stuff because I just sort of own it. But one genre of books that I really like is paranormal romance. It's great. It's so good. So this is, think like Twilight, but like steamier. I maybe would have been embarrassed about it before, but like now I'm just like, yeah, it's just great.

1:09:52People should read it. I love that. You know, I want people to really, because we all have insecurities growing up. All of us, right? Doesn't matter how powerful, how strong or how confident we seem or whatever it is. We all have those insecurities. And, you know, when you're talking about it, you're talking about insecurities or your, yeah, your insecurities. How do you, what's good to know is that we get through those things and we start to love ourselves a little bit more as we get older. Being a kid is sometimes pretty hard. Yeah, absolutely. When did you stop being embarrassed, do you think?

1:10:25When did I stop being embarrassed? I think actually weirdly making YouTube videos helped with that. When I started making YouTube videos, I realized that, oh, when I sort of share things about myself that feel a bit embarrassing to me, weirdly that really connects with people. and they love that shit because then people are sending emails being like you know that story that you shared about how you were unconfident about this thing that really resonated with me and I'm like oh shit like everyone has these sorts of feelings and so I like kind of being open about things that sound slightly weirder or that I would have been embarrassed about maybe 10 years ago what turns you off?

1:11:00what turns me off is when people gossip about others like there's always something about that that really like makes my blood boil especially if it happens in my team I'm like fuck's sake Like, you know, have you told the other person? I was like, no, okay, cool. Who's going to tell them, me or you? You know, that kind of thing. That's great. Yeah. And if it's with friends, I try and like cut off that conversation ASAP. What turns you on? I really like it when people have like very passionate about something, whether it's like, I don't know, a certain genre of books or like a musical instrument or like a business or like literally anything.

1:11:34Like there's something about someone who's really passionate about something, especially if the thing is slightly weird. that I just feel is like that's really admirable that's really cool what do you like most about yourself what I like most about myself is that I am a generally tranquil guy like there's almost there's almost nothing that will sort of make me have a bad day as it were like it's hard for me to even imagine that concept of having a bad day because every day is a gift and all that stuff and I think I don't think it was always like that I think a lot of it has come through reading books about happiness and stoicism and stuff.

1:12:07And really recognizing that there are so much of our own emotions that we actually do have control over. A lot of our emotions is the story that we tell ourselves. And so maybe this speaks to kind of my lack of emotionality, but I just like, I'm really glad that I'm just generally chill and tranquil and joyful guy with most things that I do. Last question for a bonus one. What is your favorite swear word? Is twat a swear word? Yes. I really like twat because Americans don't get it. You're like, oh man. Ali, thank you so much. Thank you. This was so fun. It was fantastic. Thank you so much for coming to the podcast.

1:12:45I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That was amazing. Good stuff.

1:12:52That was great. What a great guy. Yeah. I love these conversations. I know. Productivity stuff. I'm not good at it, but maybe now I will be. Listen to that. Well, when you listen back and edit it, you're probably... I'm ready to fill up my cup. You're ready to fill up your cup. Yeah, I love that. It's such a good episode. Also, by the way, I do want to say this before I forget it. We are on YouTube and you not only edit this audio, but you also edit the YouTube video, which comes out on a Friday. So if you want to watch this visual as well, you can do that. Just wanted to put that out there. Yeah, put that out into the ether.

1:13:27I would, yeah. You asked about money and he answered. Very open with it. And he also, surprisingly, got a bit emotional about books. Yeah, but it's obviously got him through his life. Yeah. And so he got so incredibly emotional about it because it means so much to him. That is passion. And I love passion wherever I see it. It doesn't matter if passion is about a lawnmower, about a comic, or about your work or your family. Whenever I see passion, I love it. Yeah. That is passion. And I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, a great, great episode. Great interview, Jamie. Thank you so much, Jemima. Okay, everyone, we're going to be back next Wednesday for another episode, which I cannot wait for.

1:14:12So stay tuned for another episode of Great Company.

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1:15:06Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Shameless is the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff. I'm Mish and every Monday and Thursday I'm joined by my co-host Sarah. Hello, I am Sarah. Every Monday we go deep on a big culture story like why you love the summer I turn pretty so much or why you keep seeing so many celebrities announcing they have Lyme disease. On Thursdays, we welcome you to the Quick and Dirty, also known as the biggest sugary headlines of the week. Our episodes have been listened to over 100 million times. Search for Shameless in your favourite podcast platform to see why.