Ali Abdaal: Earn more but work less?

In short

Podcast Episode Notes: Ali Abdaal - Earn More but Work Less?

Podcast Overview Title: Making Money Hosts: Damien Jordan and Timeyin Akerele Episode Title: Ali Abdaal: Earn More but Work Less? Description: Ali Abdaal, a productivity expert and successful YouTuber, discusses his journey from medical student to entrepreneur, sharing insights on productivity, side hustles, and the psychology of money.

Key Points from the Episode

Introduction to Ali Abdaal

Ali Abdaal started his YouTube channel as a side hustle while studying medicine.
He now has over 5 million subscribers and earns around £5 million a year.
Abdaal authored the New York Times bestseller "Feel Good Productivity."

Importance of Productivity

Productivity can be hindered by fear, procrastination, and boredom.
Finding ways to enhance productivity can lead to more time for personal projects and enjoyment.

The Concept of the "Business of You"

Everyone operates their personal brand or "business of you," but often with just one client (their employer).
To enhance personal earning potential, one must consider what skills or side hustles to pursue.

Entrepreneurship vs Employment

Ali suggests that people often overcomplicate entrepreneurship.
He argues that many skills from employment transfer to entrepreneurship, which may even simplify some aspects of working.

The Journey of Growth

Ali's path to success involved consistent learning and adapting through various roles and businesses.
He emphasizes that entrepreneurship can be exhilarating when approached as a game rather than a grind.

Fear of Selling and Pricing Products

Ali discusses his initial fear around pricing and selling his courses, which stemmed from an aversion to sales.
After engaging with other entrepreneurs, he learned the importance of value and began to see selling as a form of education.

The Shift in Mindset

The journey shifted from needing money for survival to viewing earnings as a scoreboard in the game of entrepreneurship.
Ali's business now also focuses on philanthropy, with plans to donate 10% of revenue to effective charities.

Lessons on Procrastination

The discussion highlights strategies for overcoming procrastination, such as setting time blocks for tasks and recognizing the need for emotional support in pursuing goals.
Ali encourages taking small actions and associating them with future rewards to help overcome barriers.

Concluding Thoughts

Ali’s approach to work and life is about finding joy in the process and maintaining a sense of play in productivity.
He emphasizes the significance of learning from experiences, viewing them as data points rather than failures.

Key Takeaways

Productivity is key: Use tools and strategies to enhance productivity while balancing enjoyment.
Shift your mindset: Consider your personal brand as a business and explore ways to enhance your value.
Embrace the game of entrepreneurship: Focus on growth and learning rather than fear of failure.
Philanthropy is important: Consider the societal impact of your success by incorporating charitable actions into your business model.

Recommended Resources

Ali Abdaal's Book: [Feel Good Productivity](https://amzn.to/3URBIvg)
Financial Advice: Consider personal financial advisement for tailored advice.
Productivity Tools: Engage with productivity resources and communities for support in entrepreneurial journeys.

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Transcript

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0:01You know what I love, Damo? Things that save me time. You don't have YouTube Premium, mate, so I just don't believe that. Granted, I'll give you that one. However, I've got one for you. A great time saver in personal finance is Money Week magazine. They spend a lot of time distilling the biggest stories in personal finance down into consumable chunks, so you don't have to scroll and scroll. They give practical tips on savings, investments, pensions, the UK economy, the global economy. It's like your five a day, but for finance. If you want to give Money Week a try, you can get six issues in print and the app absolutely free by visiting moneyweek.com forward slash money.

0:34After your trial, you'll save an extra£5 a quarter on the subscription, which is exclusive to Making Money listeners. And that's moneyweek.com forward slash money. But there's a link in the description if you just want to click that.

0:50Everyone is already a business owner. It's just that you own the business of you. What would it take to level yourself up so that the business of you has a higher earning potential? Ali Abdul started his YouTube channel as a side hustle when he was a medical student. He now has over 5 million subscribers and makes 5 million pounds a year from his business. An expert in productivity, he's literally written a book on it, and it's a New York Times bestseller called Feel Good Productivity. So many things prevent us from being productive. Fear, procrastination, boredom, just to name the ones that I struggle with.

1:23If you could do more with your time, what could you accomplish? Get more money, start that side hustle, maybe just enjoy your life more. The goal I think with entrepreneurship is to get it to a point that you're exhilarated by it rather than that you feel like it's a grind that you really should be doing. So how do you get your work to feel like that? One thing your book does really well is show that you've struggled with it. You know, there's almost like a delicious irony of the book of like, you had to find a way to be productive to write a book on productivity. It was like painful at points, it seems.

1:58It was very painful at points. yeah similarly I had to find a way to be productive to get through med school while building a business had to find a way to be productive to work full-time as a doctor while building a youtube channel so my whole life well a lot of my life has been about juggling multiple things and I sort of accidentally stumbled into this world of productivity I never I never set out to be a productivity expert but I was just like reading loads of articles on life hacker and trying to do whatever Tim Ferriss would write about because I would find that wow this gives me time to work full time and also have a business sick perfect and then people just started asking me how you're so productive and so eventually now i guess i'm a productivity expert because yeah are you just a productive guy though like you know someone at home okay accolades 12 years old you were a freelance web designer was that right was that how you would describe it or at 12 you were doing something that wasn't playing in the mud like i mean at 12 i was i was just desperate to make money on the internet you could call that productivity you know while other people were playing PlayStation, I was trying to make money on the internet.

2:57And so if you just focus yourself on really trying hard to make money on the internet, it's not not going to happen. Like eventually things are going to happen. I'm 29 now. I've been doing this shit for 17 years, trying to make money on the internet. And the numbers have gone up over time. But like, fundamentally, I'm still doing the same thing of like sitting on my computer, figuring out how do I make money right now? And just kind of doing stuff that feels fun in pursuit of that. I love this because say through Instagram, I might show people a certain aspect of my creator journey, which is me at number 10, me sitting with you, me with Deborah Meaden.

3:29Actually, all I do every day is stare at a blank Google doc, read a few academic papers and bash the keyboard and try and figure out a way to link all this together in a funny way. And that produces this outsized return of 10 times what I used to earn in the professional world. What I do is not complicated. I just do it over and over and over. and I think most people would be surprised at how simple the inputs are to creating the videos, if that makes sense. Yeah, I know what you mean. I think it's the same thing around building a business. So when I was 13 and trying to learn to code for the first time and trying to build a website, I pirated Photoshop CS2 back in the day and I'd be kind of making banner designs on Photoshop CS2.

4:04Fast forward six years later and I'm being paid a hundred quid an hour as a UX design guy for medical tech companies while I was at university. And now it's a hundred pounds an hour. Now I'm using Sketch, which is an app for the Mac. Fast forward to like yesterday, And I'm working on this new productivity product we're trying to build. And I'm on Figma doing the same stuff, just trying to design a banner and making it look good. I was kind of like, huh, this is basically what I've been doing since the age of 13. Just trying to make, at least on the design front, trying to make stuff look good on Photoshop or Sketch or Figma.

4:31And it's just, you know, now I pay for the software. And now we pay loads of money to Adobe because, like, I have a big team. But it's all the same kind of stuff. And it's just over time, you learn the skills, you realize what works, what doesn't. And it's an exhilarating process, this whole making money entrepreneurship thing. Do you think people overcomplicate what an entrepreneur is? You know, in terms of there's no formal education. There's no, this is how to be an entrepreneur. So it almost appears like entrepreneurs are innate, that they've got this kind of special juju that other people don't have.

5:04Yeah. You know, I was giving a talk at Cambridge a couple of days ago to a bunch of medical students. And I asked in the audience, about a hundred something people in the audience. And I asked who here wants to start their own business? and like five hands went up. It's like almost no one in the group wanted to start their own business. They've not worked in medicine long enough. Exactly, yeah. They're all still like - Doing five years in the NHS. That's the one, mate. But what I found myself saying that like, everyone is already a business owner. It's just that you own the business of you. And that business has, is usually when you have a job, your business of you has one client, which is your employer.

5:37Now, if your employer is the NHS and you work as a foundation year doctor, you are contracting yourself out to your employer for 14 pounds an hour. You have a business. It's just that you have one client. And so framing it like that, it's like, okay, so what would you, what would it take to increase your personal stock price? What would it take to level yourself up so that the business of you has a higher earning potential? In medicine is very hard unless you start something else on the side or unless you have skills like tech or statistics or like coding or design stuff rather than skills about being a good doctor.

6:10The better doctor you are does not translate to increasing your personal worth to the market, at least in the UK. But if you can combine I'm a good doctor with all this other stuff, now you become worth a lot of money to like hospital management or to like pharmaceutical companies or to med tech companies, which is sort of explodes people's minds outside of the realm of like, I'm being contracted by the NHS to just do this thing for 14 pounds an hour. And I think that's a cool way of thinking about it because otherwise business and entrepreneurship can seem very intimidating. Yeah. But we are already entrepreneurs.

6:40We already solve problems for our employer and we get paid an hourly rate. As a business, you can solve problems for a client and get paid an hourly rate, or you can progress beyond that. You can get to a point where you're like, actually, I don't want to charge hourly for my web design. I want to charge per project for my web design. I don't want me to be the one doing the work. I want to hire someone to do the work. I don't want to charge it. I don't want to get a client who's paying me three grand and quibbling about monthly payments. I want to get a client who's paying me 300 grand. So who do I have to talk to to get paid 300 grand for doing the same stuff as someone who's going to pay me three grand?

7:15And it's all the same kind of thing. It's still fundamentally, you're a business of you and you realize you can hire other people. And it's all like a bit of a continuum. The junior doctor working in the NHS of 14 pounds an hour is also running a business. It's just in a different kind of way than what we normally think. Pretty complicated business as well. So the things I did when I worked in finance were far more complicated than the things I do now. But I had this internal narrative of like, I'm not smart enough to be an entrepreneur, even though, like I say, the inputs I do now are super simple in comparison.

7:42Yeah, that's the thing. I think entrepreneurship, yeah, you're right. Entrepreneurship is actually often a lot easier than actually doing a job. Yeah. Because as an entrepreneur, all you have to do is just solve someone's problem and do it well and charge money for it. Whereas in a job, you have to do that, but you also have to play the politics. You've got to play the game. You've got to think about your career progression. You've got to think about schmoozing up to the person above. you've got to think about like not being too much of a dick to the people below and all all of this sort of stuff and eventually that sort of start that stuff starts to come about when you hire a team but actually yeah the life of an entrepreneur the life of a freelance web designer can be quite simple compared to the life of an investment banker that's so weird because i would have thought it's the opposite because in the last 10 years maybe not to like five years ago everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur and like lots of people were trying to be entrepreneurs i don't know whether it was just my network but i felt like everyone was putting on instagram entrepreneur and that was it.

8:29But then - You were. But I feel like it's harder to be an entrepreneur because you have to be more productive and you have to be, you kind of have to be more driven. You have to have better, like if you've got a job, you can just kind of do the bare minimum, you know, like not get your head above the crowd, just kind of plod along, not get fired, not do anything egregious. But if you're an entrepreneur, you have to wake up every day, driven, motivate yourself, like deal with the issues, find the clients, not just go in and collect a paycheck. That's true. In that sense, it's a lot more complicated in that you have to have a higher drive and you have to have a higher appetite for risk.

9:03Yeah. But in some ways, like the workplace is also just as complicated. It's just lower risk. Although you might argue it's not even that low risk because you could just get fired at any point if the company is downsizing or whatever. So like, I don't know, I think as an entrepreneur, your fate is in your hands. Yeah. Whereas as an employee, you know, I've got a team of 13 people. Their fate is kind of in my hands and that's kind of scary. and if they're really really good then i don't want to get rid of them but like fundamentally i could decide at any point you know what i don't want a team anymore i'm very unlikely to because i love having a team but i could decide that at any point and so their entire livelihood is sort of connected to the whim of their employer it's just a scary place to be and so the thing i encourage all my team is like look guys you know this is a good job that we've got here but like it's unlikely to be a job for life i we are unlikely to be the same team of people when we're all 65 So it's worth having interest on the side.

9:56And about half my team are building side hustles and doing consulting on the side and trying to build their own products. And they love that as well. You've had members of your team go on to like be creators. I know, was it your PA, the medical student? She's now a pretty big creator. She's got like millions of subscribers on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. So I think the one thing that separates an entrepreneur from, for me, the big difference, the thing that you need to wrap your head around is you need like a propensity to fix problems. You need to be able to jump hurdles. There needs to be like a dogged determination of whatever gets put in front of me.

10:26I'm just going to jump over that and keep going. Because I think that's what separates owning a business to having a job is that kind of level of determination. I don't know. Like I've got friends who are lawyers and management consultants. They also have to have that same level of determination. They just get paid less than entrepreneurs do. So yeah. Like, you know, one of my friends, Chris, he's a lawyer. I mean, he owns a lot of money as a lawyer. But he's like, you know, if the client wants something, he has to move heaven and earth to get the thing done. if he's working at one in the morning, it's like, who cares?

10:53The client wants the thing. So I think people in jobs actually work just as hard, maybe if not harder, depending on the job, depending on the industry, than a lot of entrepreneurs. These days I'm kind of chilling. Like in my YouTube journey, I've maybe spent 10 hours a week on my YouTube channel. I don't often work beyond that. Jesus, I'm so jealous of that. Yeah, just like systems processes team, the whole shebang. And my life is way more chill than the life of, for example, my friends working in law or working at McKinsey or things like that. Yeah. But you spoke the other day. I can't remember who you were having the conversation with, but you made a point around, maybe it was Hamza or someone.

11:27You said there's a point where you know you're onto something where you really got to pedal. It isn't just, oh, part-time outsource. There's like an inflection point where it's like, yeah, I've got something here that I can scale and I need to go all in. You did that with your channel. Agreed. Yeah. I think in the early stages of any business, there is a grind period where you're, you are sacrificing work-life balance quite a lot. And if work-life balance is your absolute North star in life, then probably entrepreneurship is not, it's not the one. Um, and at least for those few years when you, it's really hard getting something from zero to one, but once it's sort of, once it's in orbit, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot easier to keep it there.

12:07I think it's sort of like and fitness. You guys might know. This is just what I've heard. I know Tito. Stop it. I'm the fit one here. I was in the gym this morning, 6.30. I was in the gym at 8 a.m. The personal trainer. But it's really hard to build muscle, but it's a lot easier to maintain it. It's really hard to build a business. It's way easier to maintain it once it's there. That's why the way you're talking, it sounds like, I think some of our listeners might be like, 10 hours a week on YouTube, like that sounds very easy. But the journey, were there times when you put in a lot more hours on YouTube?

12:36Or was it always, did you always find it easy? Because normally there's, like you said, there's a transition. Please tell me you've worked like 100 hour weeks at some point. Because I just cry. I think there's been almost no periods in my life where I've spent more than maybe 15 hours a week on my YouTube channel. And that was, so 15 hours would have been in the early days. These days it's like five-ish, if not less. Because the thing is, like I started my YouTube channel while I was preparing for my final year medical school exams. And so I had to find ways to just be as efficient as possible with YouTube video production.

13:05Back in the day, in my first six months of videos, I realized, hang on, I'm giving advice to medical students on how to get into med school. Why don't I just interview all of my friends, get them to answer the same series of 20 questions and then just cut them together. And I've got 20 different videos. And so that was like three months of content sorted in like two days of interviewing. Cause I was just trying to desperately find whatever way I could. And I realized, okay, I need to, because my whole goal was like one video a week. I was like, how do I get one video a week? I was like, okay, I can, I can do vlogs.

13:33I can film myself while I'm studying because I'll be studying anyway. so I might as well just film myself while I'm studying. And then I can do book reviews because I read books anyway. And so it's not that hard talking about books. So all of it was just like, how do I make it as friction-free as possible to just get that one video? Limitation like supports creativity in that way. Like you kind of find a way. I think if I hadn't had a job or hadn't been in uni, I would have overthought like every single video because I'd have been, because you could spend 100 hours on a video if you want to, or you can spend one hour on a video if you want to.

13:59And I found for me spending 100 hours on video doesn't necessarily make it that much better than spending three once you've outsourced the editing. obviously. Yeah. But that's a very strange approach for like from someone from the medical field because medicine is like study as much as possible, learn and like make sure - Take seven years before you can - Before you can even look after a patient. So what, did you find that completely different to YouTube? Like did you enjoy being a doctor more than, or do you enjoy doing making YouTube videos more? Yeah. Is that completely different? I definitely enjoyed making YouTube videos more.

14:29That's why you do it. I think it's interesting you say that because medicine is, the default is that you just work as much as possible. It's a very maximalist approach to medicine. But I realized in my second year, in my first year, I had that approach, maximalist approach, late nights, working overnight, submit an essay and stuff. And I didn't even do that well. I got like a 2-1. I was like, I was going for a first, but I only got a 2-1, even though 2-1 is fine. And so in my second year, that was when we had a lecture in psychology about how to study effectively. And all of a sudden I realized, oh shit, like all of the crap that I've been doing has just been a total waste of time.

15:03And I could work a lot less and get better results. And so in my second year, I worked less and got a first. And then in my third year, I was like, in my third year, that was when I, you know, you take a year out of medicine to do like another degree. So I did psychology. And there was only 100 people in the year group compared to 300. And so my goal in third year was, I reckon I can, I can, I'm going to aim for rank one. I want to get top of the year. I've got no chance of getting top of the year in actual medicine because there's people way, way, way smarter than me. But like, I reckon in psychology, when there's only 100 people, I think I've got a chance.

15:33and I, again, used the principles of productivity and entrepreneurship to sort of begin with the end in mind and reverse engineer the process. So how do you get top of the year in psychology? Well, you've got to get at least like 75 % in the exams. How do you do that? Well, if you look at the examination mark scheme and really break it down, there's like a few key things that you need to do. And one of the key things to get a first to get over 70 % is you need to have sort of material outside of the lectures. Well, material outside of the lectures. What if I don't show up to the lectures? If I don't show up to the lectures and I don't even read the lecture notes, now every single thing that I'll be writing about will by definition be material outside.

16:08All the other 99 people who will have showed up to the lectures are going to be parroting the same shit that the examiner's already talked about. But if I'm the one who has prepared for these specific essays and then read outside the subject, okay, that's interesting. Then I analyzed the last 20 years worth of exam papers to figure out what is the, in each exam paper, there's like 20 different questions and you only have to pick three. And so I was like, okay, how do we categorize these? Like, what is the patterns that are showing up in the last 20 years of exam papers? What is the minimum amount of stuff that I can get really good at to be able to answer any exam question with external material?

16:40And I reverse engineered the whole process to realize, hang on, if I just did that topic, that topic, and that topic, and I only did those three essays, you know, people in my year group were like, oh, you know, I should really prepare for like 10 essays. So then I can pick my three favorite ones. I was like, fuck that. I'm going to prepare for three essays, knowing that in those three topics, I can throw me anything and I can answer it. So I went really deep on those topics. and I reverse engineered the process. And while I was doing that year, alongside I was building like a software application with my brother to help people get into med school.

17:07And I was reverse engineering the process and ended up getting rank two in the year group. But me and Steph were so far ahead of the curve that they just gave us the joint prize, which meant that five years later, I could make a video called how I ranked first at Cambridge University. Because technically we like jointly won first prize. But my whole point is that when I speak to medical students now, they have this approach that you just said, you know, by default, you would think medicine is really hard and you have to work really, really hard. But if you figure out what the goal is and you reverse engineer it, like the exams do not help you become a better doctor.

17:40So doing well in the exams is a game. It's about how to do well in the exams. Being a good doctor is about a whole bunch of other different things, communication skills, how you talk to the nurses, how nice you are to the patients, whole shebang. There's a little bit of overlap. If you know what the goal is and you reverse engineer, then you can figure out the minimum effective path to get there. and that's productivity. And that means you have way more spare time to build a YouTube channel, to build a business. And I think that same ethos of what is, how do I just 80-20 the shit out of this was how I approached YouTube as well.

18:08Because again, there are people spending hours and hours and hours on their YouTube videos. I don't spend very long on my YouTube videos because I found a way to do YouTube in a way that doesn't take too much time. Yeah, so there is a point though in the book where you're face down on the sofa on Christmas Eve and it doesn't sound like you were doing that well with the work thing. Can you talk about what happened there? Yeah, so weirdly, the time in my life where I was the closest to burnout was once I'd quit the job. Once I no longer had 60 hours a week given to the NHS and I had 100 % of all my time in the pandemic given to my business, that was when I no longer did this.

18:43That was when I decided, you know what? I have all the time in the world. So now I have all the time in the world to make a YouTube video rather than just two hours on a weekend. And when you give yourself 12 hours to make a video, it takes 12 hours to film the video. When you give yourself 20 minutes to film the video, it takes 20 minutes to film the video. And I'd be finding, I'd wake up, I'd like, you know, try and go for a, you know, the daily walk that you're allowed to go on. I'd get back home on my computer, it'd be 9am. And I just procrastinate until like 8pm where I was like, I literally had all day to film this video and I haven't done it yet.

19:12Like what the fuck's wrong with me? There was something about the forcing function of having a job that made making YouTube videos way more effective and efficient and fun compared to when it was all I had to do. and I realized oh okay if you work really hard and really long on something it does a it doesn't actually translate to better results and b you end up getting burned out and so it was funny that the only time I really got close to burnout was when I didn't have a full-time job you see that with um editing in terms of like editing's one a rare skill that the better you get out of it the longer it can take in terms of there's just layers you can go and you can keep um and you realize that actually it's a very diminishing return.

19:50There's certain editors, James Jani, who I know you know, he spent like eight months editing a video. I would argue that maybe he could dial that back and make one a month and probably get much better returns for his business. I've told him this many times. Yeah. But that's his stuff. He loves the craft. Yeah. And as someone who edits myself, I can see why he enjoys that process and all of that stuff. But it is interesting to hear you say that you spend so little time on the channel and you continue to do that and you've always done it that way? The thing is, I spend a lot of time thinking about it.

20:21So, you know, when I'm in the shower, I'd be thinking about video ideas. When I was at work in between seeing patients, I'd be like jotting down notes on like, you know, first a notebook, then an iPad, then on Notion, on the Windows computers at work of like, okay, what's this next video I'm working on? So that, because I knew that like, you know, two weeks from now, I've gotten two night shifts in a row, which means I get a day off. So I've got a random Wednesday day off. On that Wednesday, I need to film four videos or five videos. So then all of my brain for the next two weeks is figuring out what are those five videos and what are the talking points.

20:51And when I have time on the toilet or in my lunch breaks at work, I'll just sort of tinker away and on my phone, just sort of write down a few bullet points. And when I'd get to Wednesday, that like tiny little bits of work that were done in the little bits and bobs of time here and there, where I could have been scrolling Instagram, but instead I decided to go on Notion, and work on my videos, those minutes added up, which meant that on the Wednesday, I was able to just bang out four videos in eight hours. And now I've got content sorted for the next month. And so it was this sort of like recognizing that the only aspect of YouTube video production that requires you to actually sit there and do the work is filming.

21:26Everything else, like idea generation titles, thumbnails, figuring out like what you're going to talk about, all of that, you can actually just do sitting in the car, recording a voice note. You can do it in a conversation with a friend. You can do it when you're having lunch and you just got a notebook in front of you. You can just sort of write a few things down. And if someone's listening to this and is a YouTuber, like honestly, right now you could pause the podcast. And if you gave yourself just one minute to answer the question, I don't know, five tips for beginner YouTubers, you could probably come up with a pretty good video in just one minute.

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21:56You love a listicle. Yeah, exactly. Let's just counter that with, so did you watch Jeff Bezos talk to Lex Friedman? I've seen aspects of that. Yeah. Not the whole thing. Great chat. He's a guy that I wish I heard more of. Less of Elon, more of him. Because he's really like, he's really thought about his process. But the one striking thing is like his morning routine, which is like, oh, I just get up in a potter for two hours. And he gives large expanses of time for like meandering thought with no purpose. How much of the creative process do you think there needs to be that allowance to just like think and it not really have a purpose, not have a plan?

22:34Yeah, I think it depends on what stage of the process you're at. So if you're just starting out a business, the meandering thoughts are actually completely pointless. Because like, what are you thinking about? Like some big high level business strategy that's going to cause world domination? No, you just need to find a problem, find people who are willing to pay for it and then get on the sales calls and close the clients and get to 10K a month or 50K a month or whatever your proximal goal is. As your business grows and as you become more senior and as you have a team, the role of the founder or the CEO becomes increasingly more abstract.

23:02It's more about like meandering thoughts and like, okay, what is that? What's that one chess move that's gonna be the difference between a million and 10 million? Yeah, like Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime, for example. Yeah, or like the Kindle or things like that. And your role as a CEO is to come up with, then with those ideas. And in that sense, meandering thoughts are amazing. So I found that since finishing this book and once it came out, suddenly I had way more headspace and I had way more meandering thoughts. And my team doesn't like it when I have meandering thoughts because then I'm like, guys, we should do this and this and this and all this sort of stuff.

23:32And I was coming up with so many more ideas because I gave myself more time to think. But I think in the early days of a business, giving yourself time to think is completely counterproductive because most people overthink and then don't take action. There's like a good middle ground where like as the business grows, you start taking action less and thinking a lot more because you've got people to do the work for you. In your book, you mentioned about happiness and productivity. when it's going crazy and you've got your full-time job and you've got your entrepreneur thing going on the side and you're just thinking all that and your brain's crazy.

24:03How do you get the happiness out of that? I think for a certain kind of person, it just is. So when I was 14, I discovered World of Warcraft. You want to play World of Warcraft? You guys are maybe too cool for that. I'm too cool for it, but I'm very familiar with it. Nice, okay. I played like that. I was into Moonscape. Oh, okay. And 40k, like Warhammer. Yeah, a bit of chaos movie. Love it. So similar vibe to World of Warcraft. I was into Counter-Strike. So when I discovered World of Warcraft, I could not wait to get home from school to like, you know, explore Ghostlands and level up my war from eight to 12.

24:35I'd be like in school and in the computer rooms at lunchtime, I'd be going on IGN or like whatever these game sites were, reading walkthroughs. I got, you know, someone like my dad gave me as a birthday present, the collector's edition. So I had this like guidebook for World of Warcraft and I would take it into school and I'd be reading it, be reading in the car on the way there. my mind was obsessed with world of warcraft and it was exhilarating it's not like i was in school and i was like oh fuck like i've got this world of warcraft to play in the evenings shit like i'm feel i feel so drained it was like man it's so exhilarating that every moment every fiber of my being is focused on how do i level up my warlock and it's like that with the business i think like when you're in that stage it's like it's not like oh god fuck i gotta go home and grind on the business it's like oh my god i cannot wait to get home to work on the business because I was thinking about this the other day.

25:21It's like, you know, I've got enough money. I don't need to work. I've just finished the book. People keep asking me what's next. And what I'm so excited about now is to grow the business. I'm like, why is that? I can just, I've got New York Times bestselling author on my Instagram bio for the rest of my life. I could just put my feet up and play Baldur's Gate 3 or play Tears of the Kingdom on Switch or whatever. But on the weekends, I'm tinkering away on Figma and I'm trying to build our next product. I'm trying to have calls with people to be like, how do you think we can get to 10 million? And it's just way more, it's like a video game, but in real life where you get to work with cool people that you like, you get to work on creative stuff.

25:53And the scoreboard is real life money, which you can cash in for real life stuff if you want real life stuff. And it's like, that's the coolest video game in the world. So the goal I think with entrepreneurship is to get it to a point that you're exhilarated by it rather than that you feel like it's a grime that you really should be doing. So how do you get your work to feel like that? And after doing a bunch of research and experimenting with this a lot in my life and interviewing a load of people boils it down to basically three things, three things to start with the letter P, and that is play, power, and people.

26:24So play is this idea of, can you find a way to approach your work in the spirit of play? Can you find a way to just make it a little bit more fun? There've been a bunch of like Nobel prize winners and entrepreneurs and athletes over the years who have landed on this conclusion that actually the way to do your best work is to honestly approach it with a sense of lightness and ease, a sense of play. So there's a bunch of different prompts in the book about how you can do that. Power is sort of like this thing we've been talking about in video games. You feel like you're leveling up. Leveling up is a big aspect of power, becoming more confident, taking responsibility and taking ownership.

26:57I think if anyone is listening to this, who's like a corporate employee or a student, it's like, I think the default way we think about energy is actually wrong. The default way we think about energy is that I have a certain amount of energy in the day. And then that energy gets depleted over time with my work. And then in the evenings, I need to like chill out and stuff. But that is a very like bad way to think about energy. We all went to the gym this morning. It actually recharged our energy, I suspect, rather than depleted it. We're doing a lot of work, burning a lot of calories, but weirdly you feel more energized afterwards than when you got there.

27:32Now with work, you would think that if you just like did the bare minimum, just coasted, just were fully disengaged, you would think that that would conserve energy. But actually, anyone who's had that experience of like doing work that they're fully disengaged by, it is the most draining thing in the world. The day goes so slowly. It goes so slowly. At the end of it, you feel like shit. You're like, what the hell? But when you're working on a project you're excited about and you're engaged with it, you're doing more work, but you're getting more energy out of it. And so that's the society of power.

27:59Can you, you know, even if you're like, even if you have a boss who's telling you what to do, can you find a way to do it on your own terms? Can you find a way to enjoy the process? Can you find a way to improve the process? Can you take ownership of the different aspects of the thing that you're doing, even though you can't control what you're doing? And the more ownership you take, the more responsibility you feel like you have. That profoundly boosts our sense of intrinsic motivation. And so it makes you feel powerful, makes you feel good, generates energy. And the final one is people. Everything is more fun when you do it with friends.

28:25Podcasting is more fun when you do it in person. Co-working with people, like going to a coffee shop, going to a co-working space, going to a library. All of that just generates way more energy than just sitting in your room and grinding away on your tasks. I thought it was really interesting that, I was like what if your job sucks and you work at McDonald's but then in your book you're like oh there's a guy that works at McDonald's and he's like I'm going to make it into a game upselling barbecue sauce and say oh trust me you're going to love this sauce and just things to make your day a bit more fun and to yeah find and play in the mundane it doesn't need to be like glamorous you can make anything playful almost and shout out Mary Poppins oh man a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down and dishoom shout out dishoom oh dishoom as well yeah when you hit the dishoom I was like yes they always have a queue outside i need yeah always but like so uh in so in the book there's a story of of a guy who i interviewed who i has become a friend now who used to work at mcdonald's and as you guys talked about he the way he found to make it more fun is by upselling like barbecue sauce or like sweet and sour sauce so when customers would go through the drive-thru maybe he'd be like you know do you want fries with that and they'd be like yes or no and he'd be like what about some barbecue sauce i'll be like what yeah barbecue sauce you know it's really good and they'd be like no i'm good thanks he'd be like really give me because that's what my last customer said but then i i convinced them to get the barbecue sauce and it's only an extra 10 cents and actually they had a really good time and then they're like okay fine then why not and it just makes it a more interesting interaction for him the guy working at the drive-thru for the customer and also improved the profitability of the mcdonald's like drive-thru that he was working at and it made him have way more fun so each different day was a different sauce the same guy like we had a bunch of these stories in the book we had to cut them for space but the other thing he would do is that like he this takes so many boxes of feel-good productivity he found that their like ice cream machine would always break and they would always get the engineer to come in and fix the ice cream machine.

30:05So one time he was like, like what, what a normal person does is like, Oh, the ice cream machine's broken. Let me just call the engineer, whatever. But what this guy did was like, huh, I wonder why it keeps on breaking. Let me see what the engineer is actually doing. Let me read the manual that the engineer is bringing with him. Could I try and learn how to fix the ice cream machine myself? Has nothing to do with his job. He was working in the drive-thru, but he found a way to, he, he followed his curiosity and he took ownership and he was like, you know what? I'm going to make in my mission to fix this ice cream machine before the engineer even even rocks up and the manager loved that they're like oh wow we can sell more ice cream now this guy is like interested in the ice cream machine um the same guy also built a leaderboard where they they they created a game with their drive-thru employees where they were trying to the goal was put the bag out of the window before the car gets there so the car doesn't have to wait and they timed every interaction to see like who were the who were the people working in the drive-thru who would get like the quickest bag out of window times and they had a leaderboard and all of their jobs became more fun.

31:01They improved their customer service. The manager fricking loved it because now customer service is improved and the franchise is more profitable. And this guy, Matthew ended up being promoted to manager like a couple of years later. And he was like the youngest ever manager in McDonald's franchise history or something. And I just, when he was telling me all this stuff, I was like, man, this is so good because this is literally like the most boring ass mundane job imaginable working at McDonald's. And you found a way to enjoy the process, to improve the profitability of the franchise and also to get promoted as a manager while having fun by just doing these simple things that involve taking ownership, finding a way to make it fun, bringing the people along with you.

31:34I love that guy. You had a quote in there that kind of summed it up where you say it helps us reclaim some of the adventure that defined our childhood. A time when feeling good was the norm, not the exception. And that hit me hard because I got a kid and it's like all he wants to do is have fun and life is about having a great time. Whereas in adult life, it almost feels like if you're having a good time, that's not productive. You know, there's like that kind of - Definitely. So, but - So just to follow on to that point, you know, they say children smile and laugh like on average 50 to a hundred, I don't know, 50 to a hundred times a day, whereas adults, we like smile like three times a day.

32:08Three times a day. So it shows like you do lose that, you do lose that joy and like adventure and everything's a game as you get older. Not me, I think everything's an adventure and everything's a game, but like - You're having a great time. I just want to be a Peter Pan forever, but yeah, you want to - That's great. You want to try and keep that joy in life. Last time we recorded, Tamein, you were having some real dramas with your accountant. So how's that been going, mate? They're sacked. So drama sorted. They're a big corporate firm. They didn't really reply to my emails very quickly, like took a week or two at times.

32:38And they charged me way too much. I mean, I've got pretty simple taxes and yeah, they were charging me thousands. They saved me some money, but yeah, I had to move on. Slow and expensive. Pretty much, yeah. This is one of the reasons that we're really happy to be partnering with TaxApp. It's a tech platform that makes self-assessment simple. Whether you're self-employed like me, a freelancer or a director like Damo, big dog. Instead of sending endless emails, bills and spreadsheets to your accountant, you just connect your bank, answer a few questions that are only relevant to you and your tax return can be ready in as little as 15 minutes.

33:07Tax app is really easy to use and it's HMRC recognised software. So it's safe, secure and legit. The price is also decent. So if you're self-employed with one income stream, it's just£89 as a one-off fee, no big accountancy fees and we also have a discount code of course if you need to file a self-assessment this year give tax app a try we've left a link in the description and use the code money10 for 10 % off your first tax filing that code is money m-o-n-e-y one zero so mr carolet i hear you are a salesman elite salesman yes one of the best they say i've got a little bit of experience in the game yeah i could say i've done a few deals uh a bill a bill what what would your compliance team say about you they will say that i am always nagging them and that um essentially i just have i have beef with compliance i love the team compliance slows down all my deals because every time i get to the finish line they've got to check documents kyc uh gdpr and it's just a nightmare it slows the deal down by like two three weeks it's always on both sides as well as sometimes it can be blocked on the other side exactly well that's where today's sponsor can help.

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34:50That's vanta.com forward slash making money. There's a link in the description though, so you can just click that. There's other parts of the book. So there's, there was bits that resonate with me around fear. And there's one thing that like I admire about your entrepreneurial journey within YouTube is that you constantly like, what's next? Reinvent. Here's a massive launch. Here's a massive risky thing. Here's a course that costs a load of money. And I know as a creator, like that is a battle to like put out a product in the world because I could just sit here, make videos, not charge anyone anything, slap in a sponsor and make good money.

35:27Right. But you've like one-upped like, how have you dealt with that fear of rolling out these things? Yeah, man. I had so much fear around selling. And now I find myself becoming a therapist by the YouTubers who have a fear. Colin and Samir, you gave them a good talking to. The way I like, I used to think selling is evil and selling is bad. And if I sell something, my audience will hate me. And if I sell something like it can't be worth that much money because I'm just, you know, little old me. Like, what do I have to say that's possibly valuable, et cetera, et cetera. and then I spoke to some people who had sold expensive courses and they basically gave me a bit of a talking to they were like you know a bit of tough love being like okay like let's say you charge two grand for this course instead of two hundred dollars which is what you were thinking about how would it change your approach to it if you were charging two grand I was like oh my god if I was charging two grand I would move heaven and earth to make this a fucking amazing experience for our students I was like okay cool and what if someone doesn't like it I was like oh if they don't like it we'll move heaven and earth to make them like it and what if they still don't like it we'll give them their money back great so what are you scared about oh fuck um i don't know will it be worth it i've only got 1.2 million subscribers like mr beast has 50 million and they were like bruv for someone a beginner youtuber watching someone with 1.2 million subscribers is a pretty big deal don't worry about it i was like okay why else is it scary it's scary because the kids in my audience who don't have any money and who are maybe in countries where like the exchange rate is a bit shit will hate me for the fact that I'm charging money for a product.

36:57Okay, cool. What do you want to do about that? I was like, okay, so we can do scholarships as a way of mitigating that. We can do money back guarantee as a way of mitigating that. And we can tweak our messaging so that we know that this is a thing aimed at like professionals or corporate employees or entrepreneurs rather than a thing aimed at students. So none of our stuff is aimed at students because I don't like charging money to students because also they don't have money to pay. And we also realized that let's not promote it too hard on the YouTube channel. Let's promote it through the email list.

37:2813 year old kids tend not to be part of email marketing funnels and check their email regularly. So what if we, like the main promotion of the course we did was when someone already opted in through an email list. Okay, cool. These are all the ways to mitigate against the fear of charging two grand for a thing that I was going to charge$200 for. But even with all of that, there was still this fear and there was still this sense of like, oh my God, this feels really, really scary. But what it was, was like speaking to other entrepreneurs who had done it, who had all said, yep, it's going to feel really scary.

37:54And then you're going to do it. And you're going to think, oh, you know, that wasn't that bad. And I've had that experience so many times, you know, starting a YouTube channel feels scary initially. And then you do it and you're like, okay, it's not too bad. Starting a blog felt so scary to me. I procrastinated from starting a website, a blog for six years. And then I read Austin Kleon's book, Show Your Work, which told me it was okay. And in 2016, I started a blog, aliabdahl.com. And I was so scared. I was like, oh fuck, all the kids in med school are going to I think Ali Abdaal is weird and a bit of a twat for having a blog called aliabdahl.com.

38:21No one cared. Like no one's out there searching my name and trying to figure out like whether, they're all too busy worrying about their own lives. So I've had this thing so many times where I'm scared of doing something. I do the thing, realize it's not that bad. And I realized that charging two grand for a course or writing a book is just, it's just another one of those things. Feels scary and then you do it. And then you're like, huh, what about five grand next time? And then that feels scary. And then what about like 10 grand next time? And then that feels scary. and then you do the thing.

38:47Yeah. How did you G yourself up for that? I mean, obviously you said you spoke to some people, but in your book, for example, you said when you were like worried about being a salesman, you turned into a, you put on a tuxedo and were a magician. Your glasses are a lie, we find out. Are they a lie? Yeah, they're a lie. I don't think. They're aggressive. And then you pretend to be a magician, you go up to groups of people and you would, I don't know, do your magic trick, which obviously takes a lot of courage to go, like a lot of people wouldn't want to go talk to a group of strangers and do some magic tricks.

39:16did you how did you talk yourself into that or where did that idea come from because most people won't be like let me get out of my comfort zone and go and meet some strangers yeah so i think one of the things that i do is that whenever i'm scared of doing something i try my best to figure out how other people solved that problem because if i feel the fear someone else would have felt the fear and back when i was into like amateur close-up magic i I would attend a lot of like magic conventions and watch a lot of magic videos on YouTube and listen, magic podcasts weren't a thing back then, but like pirate a bunch of magic DVDs and read a bunch of magic books.

39:52And I would be seeking out the stuff that I was struggling with, like the inner game stuff, the stuff around confidence and like showmanship and things. Cause I knew the tricks, the tricks weren't, and what every professional magician says is that it's not about the tricks. It's about the experience you leave the audience with. It's about the confidence with which you show up. and after all this soul searching i came across across a guy called james brown who had this really interesting theory about confidence which he was like you know people think that confidence is a thing that you have to get better at through practice but the thing is you can simply decide there is actually no difference between real confidence and fake confidence maybe your mom will know if you're trying to put on an act because she's your mom or like your friends from school will know if you're trying to put on an act because they've seen you from a little year seven onwards but like a stranger has no idea what you're like and so your fake confidence is no different to them than real confidence and so it's another way of saying fake it till you make it i did that until you come in when i first got to uni yeah i just reinvented myself became like an absolute like not a basically in terms of confidence really outgoing first day i bought everyone a drink in the bar i spent my whole student overdraft on the first night buying everyone a vk in the bar yeah yeah yeah that's how i met demy it was like we were both on stage Everyone met Damo.

41:04So he's like, all right, fella. You look cool, lad. Do you want to get a drink? I was like, all right. He's just like straight in. Yeah, just like false confidence. But then off the back of that, because we were at Durham, which is like collegiate, the college president was like, you should run for Freshers' Week director. So the next year I was out and then it was like, oh, this guy's the coolest guy because he's running Freshers' Week. So the false confidence led to that. Yeah. And if your friends playing Warhammer and RuneScape would have seen you, they'd have been like, who the fuck is this guy?

41:29Yeah, exactly. But they weren't seeing you, so that's all right. Yeah, and I'm still faking it all the way here. Now I'm sat in front of you. That's the one. How the hell it all started by buying him a VK. Here we are. What a small world. Yeah, yeah. So how is the business at the minute going? Pretty good, I think. It's kind of weird in January because January always feels like the score counter then resets to zero. And then, you know, like last year we were like, you know, as the year progresses, you have a pretty good idea of where you're going to end up. We're like, okay, we'll probably do about 5 million in revenue last year.

41:57This year we're like, okay, well, it's January. so we need to make up a number yeah we need to make up a number but like when we think we think we can do five again maybe six maybe seven but it's hard to know because it's january and you haven't got the data and it's only as sales come in and you start to see a pattern over time and as you launch new products and you see the pattern that your like prediction of what revenue you're going to do at the end of the year becomes like more and more accurate so right now i don't know could pluck a number out of thin air i i hope we'll do at least five million maybe six or seven but really in my mind i'm like how do we get to ten like ten million is like the number that i'm really kind of focused on right now.

42:31Not because I particularly care about making more money, but because it's just, it's fun. It's like the game of entrepreneurship. Like when you're at level 70 Warlock and you want to get to level 80, you're like, right, how do we get to level 80? Which area of the business do you think is going to drive that growth? There are three aspects of my 10 million master plan, which I have never said before out loud, because I came up with this like three days ago. On your meandering thoughts. Honestly, in my meandering thoughts and journaling and just drawing boxes on Figma. uh so we've got we we want to release some sort of recurring revenue productivity type thing which is maybe a sort of membership community for entrepreneurs or for aspiring entrepreneurs or maybe not like we're still trying to figure out the target audience for that but i think we could do five million a year with that and then i think our youtuber academy could do like two or three and then i think our content like sponsorships and all that jazz could do like one or two so i think if we play our cards right, if we play the right chess moves and execute well, then that aspect of the business could get to 10 million.

43:32There's another aspect of the business that we're we've been exploring for the last few months, which is software. So we released an app called VoicePal, which is like an AI voice transcriber thing that then helps you get into the creative zone. So you can just like be in the car, record random rambly thoughts, and it will turn it into like a YouTube video or an email newsletter. Actually, this is how I wrote my newsletter yesterday. I recorded some thoughts while walking, walking around, taking out the trash for my mom. and it transcribed it. And then, you know, it's AI enabled and stuff. We're trying to build like a few different like productivity apps where I'm working with a friend of mine who's a really, really good founder.

44:07I have distribution through my audience. And we think this sort of product design studio could be another 10 million a year in a few years. And then the third thing is that we're exploring, this is very exploratory because it's completely new for us. What would it look like to do feel good productivity in the workplace? Could we tap into the learning and development slash HR budgets that are sort of in this intersection of wellness and productivity, where if we can create like a really good training program for corporate employees that helps them genuinely boost their productivity, but also feel good at work?

44:37That's the stuff that executives and HR and L &D people that love these days also have heard. And so we're trying to, we're just exploring that. And I think that is an opportunity that could be more than 10 million a year in a few years. You obviously started at 12 and the motivation was money then. You wanted to earn money from the internet is what you said. If I took it all away from you, you know, the money is the motivator, the money is the driver. People do things every day they don't want to do because of money. How does that sit with you now and like your position?

45:07I think there are like a few levels here. Like level one is where you're trying to get to your freedom number, as Noah Kagan would call it in his book. Million Dollar Weekend, which is very good. your freedom number, the number, the amount of money, actually, no, there's a level before that. The level before that was when I was a kid and I was like, oh man, if I can make an extra hundred dollars on the internet, then I can buy myself a new computer monitor every two years. And then when I'm 16, I'll have a three monitor set up. It's like, that was a level of my thinking. My brother and I would be talking in terms of how many monitors can we buy for our desks.

45:40And we'd be looking on like Reddit battle stations and stuff like that to see like, whoa, that guy's got four monitors and like a Wacom tablet. That's really cool. so that's like kind of i want to make some pocket money kind of vibe because it because i want monitors for my desk um beyond that then it became a case of i want enough money coming in passively so that i have the option to go part-time in my job because the happiest doctors were the the happiest doctors i knew were either either the ones who'd left medicine or the ones who were part-time um and i reasoned okay if i if i imagine what i want how i want to design my life you know At the time I was in med school, I was still thinking, I still want to be a doctor.

46:18But I was like, no one likes being a doctor five days a week. People like being a doctor three days a week. And the thing that's stopping them from doing three days a week is because they don't have enough money. Okay, I need to make money on the side. And I think that number at the time for me was about two grand. I was like, if I could make an extra two grand a month from like passive income and stuff, now I can just cut down my hours. Now I'm living the dream. I work three days. I chill two days. I do tech or business stuff two days, all of that stuff. Then you get to that point. Then it becomes a case of like, cool, how much money do I need to come comfortably quit my job and just be able to do what I want.

46:48And then that was like, I only really quit my job when I was already doing like several hundreds of thousands a year, but it wasn't the money. It was the fact that it just happened to be a good time to leave the career path in medicine for various reasons. Like once you do it for two years, there's a natural like career break. So that was like the next level. Then there's a level beyond that, which is like, how much money do I need to never have to work again or to feel like financially secure or financially confident that like even if everything crumbles around me, I've got enough in savings or in real estate or in whatever to be able to pick myself back up and like not have to get another job again, essentially.

47:23And I'm probably at that point now, I suspect, but the level beyond that, which is kind of what a bunch of entrepreneurs that I've interviewed and stuff are at, which is just - FU money, basically. It's kind of FU money, but it's also more like now money is a scoreboard. It's just a game that we play. And, you know, a lot of people do some philanthropy type stuff. So it's also translated to helping more people. Like one thing we're doing in the business this year is we're going to donate 10 % of all of our top line revenue to effective charities. And actually that's what this meeting with the accountants now is about.

47:52It's about offshoring and about like, how do we, how do we donate 10 % of our revenue in the most effective way? Because now that gives a reason to go for 10 million. It's like, yeah, part of it is the game. I'm not really worried about like, oh crap, I need a few more properties to feel secure, which is what I was a few years ago. It's now the game of entrepreneurship. And it's now like, it's just kind of cool to get these numbers as big as possible. And also like, if we donate 10%, then that's a lot of life saved. Yeah, really good. How do you stretch your personal finances in now, if you don't mind me asking?

48:19Oh, sure. I don't think too hard about it. I probably should. Most of my net worth is in the company because we also invest from within the company to avoid having to pay the dividend tax. I have a bunch of money in crypto, which is like now just about Positive, thanks to the recent rally. Thank God for that. I've been in the red for years. Got like 90%, 80 % of my portfolio in the S &P 500 and like three or four like properties in Manchester that are cash flowing small amounts of rent each month. Do you ever like look at your life? You know, you said a minute ago, like two grand was your number and that was enough.

48:51Do you ever look at your life now and think, bloody hell, like two grand now is like nothing. And I was so sad. I was happy then with that little amount and my life has scaled to a point now where that's almost unrecognizable. I do think about that, but like, it's been kind of nice. So for the last few months, I've been like traveling the world, flying business class, doing podcasts, doing fancy things. And for January, I'm back at my mom's house because she's going to Pakistan tomorrow and we've got builders in doing the bathroom and she wants someone to be in the house to like oversee the builders.

49:18And it's a fairly small house. It's a bit of a mess because there's builders in the house. There's always drilling happening. And I'm trying to make videos while there's drilling going on in the background. I'm honestly just as happy. And it's kind of nice. it's like the glitz and the glam of like world travel and like meeting famous people in LA and stuff compared to just hanging out with my mom in the house in St. Albans where there's builders in the background honestly doesn't make a huge difference to my personal levels of happiness and so I think in the past I would have thought that like oh you know I'm worried that my lifestyle is creeping and blah blah blah now I'm just like hey we're making money let's enjoy it and if it if it goes away that's also fine I can just move back in with my mom and it's not a problem I want talk about change i want to talk about money you had a massive financial change i mean when when you launched the making money thing sorry that's us that's it when you when you launched a part-time youtuber academy you had a point where you went a load of cash yeah we call it the baking money thing internally yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that thing that makes all the money yeah so that they um you weren't like hundreds of thousands in like a few hours or whatever didn't you like how how was that that was a ridiculously insane moment it was like um we just launched this course we mentioned it on twitter and the cart had just opened and we were on a zoom call it was like me angus and elizabeth and like initially like nothing was happening and we're just like i mean we we didn't really expect anything to happen and then elizabeth was like oh my god guys you got to refresh the page and we've refreshed the page and it was like one minute past the hour there was like ten thousand six hundred dollars is in the account it's like what the fuck 10 600 and then we refreshed again it was 15 refreshed again it was like 30 refreshed again it was like 45 and we were all just like losing our minds because this is the most money any of us had ever seen in our lives uh and it was all made in the space of about five minutes and then i was like screenshotting posting instagram story being like omg like what the fuck's going on like 50 000 my medic friends were messaging me being like what the actual hell that's a whole salary of a year for a junior doctor and we made it in like five minutes with this with this course which we didn't even promote that hard we just mentioned it on twitter and i was sort of like screenshotting as we were building the website throughout and by the next then sort of by the end of the day i think we closed like 150 150k which is like three years of you know you're doing the big numbers what you call it 150 a little 150 yeah exactly all of that stuff um and then we just doubled the price overnight because you know i talk a big game about how i wanted to sell this course for two grand i started it at 400 because i was i was still so scared and i thought i said let's start it low and we can always increase the price how many did you sell in the first day like 150k worth whatever the number is yeah it's a lot of cool and then we were like okay cool let's just double the price and so we made it 800 1525 like we had a few different tiers and then um by the end of that week we'd done like 350 000 in sales and it was just like oh our life has just suddenly just changed my life has suddenly just changed and the bit the trajectory of the business has just changed because now we have this thing oh my god wow and then we were like it was a bit weird because in a way the youtuber course was a bit of a distraction from what we were actually trying to do which was personal development content um and it was a distraction that lasted for like three years and it was a good distraction because it made a lot of money but it certainly was a distraction and i think if i had my time again it's not that i wouldn't do it but i'd be i'd be thinking a lot more strategically about like okay just because this thing makes a lot of money doesn't mean we actually want to be devoting all these resources to it.

52:42Because you're selling a YouTuber course to a productivity audience, which is like, it's not a direct fit, right? It's not a direct fit. It was, there was maybe 10 % overlap. Like a lot of people who follow my stuff also want to start a YouTube channel. And you do that content on starting YouTube, right? Okay, well, yeah, every now and then. But one of the other things that was interesting about this course is that, and this speaks to the idea of market validation. So I initially thought, you know, who's going to pay a grand for a course? Well, it's going to be someone who's already a successful YouTuber.

53:09who's got 100 ,000 subscribers, who's making money and who wants to scale and systematize and outsource and delegate and all that jazz. But then we spoke to like this marketing guy called Billy who has written a book, which is really good. It's called Simple Marketing for Smart People, which is really, really good because I was scared of marketing. And then having calls and stuff with Billy, Billy Broass helped me realize that marketing and sales is just education. And it's like a nice thing rather than a mean thing. And what he said was like, okay, so your hypothesis is that this is a course that will appeal to people at 100 ,000 or above subscribers.

53:38is why don't you send an email to your mailing list and just ask a simple question in a Google form. That simple question is, when it comes to growing your YouTube channel, what is your biggest challenge? And so we sent an email out to the email list when it comes to growing, hey, anyone who has or is growing a YouTube channel, when it comes to growing your biggest challenge, what is the biggest, when it comes to growing your YouTube channel, what's the biggest challenge? And I thought people would say my biggest challenge is the fact that I don't have time and I need a team and I'm really struggling with scale.

54:0595 % of the people said my biggest challenge is starting the channel in the first place. 5 % of the people said my biggest challenge is procrastinating from making videos. Not one person of the thousands of people who's filled on that survey said anything about scale or delegation or systemizing or any of this shit that I thought we were gonna sell a course about. And we were doing an analysis of this. 70 % of the people came into that as complete beginners. They'd never even started a channel. They'd never started a channel. They paid five grand to help us get them started on YouTube. Zero to one is the biggest.

54:34Zero to one is so hard. And there's like enormous numbers of people there and it's super hard. And we have an amazing customer success team, you know, Alison and like Natalie, and I asked like, what percentage of support is emotional versus technical? And they were laughed and they were like 99 % of it is emotional. Emotional, 100%. Because there's so many, when you think about starting a YouTube channel, there's so many like fear factors. Are people going to hate me? Is it going to be successful? I'm going to waste my time and my money. Is someone going to be mean to me in the comments? Are they not going to like my voice?

55:04They're like, there's so many things. What am I going to talk about? How do I keep getting content? there's all these things and you guys just like, I'll just do it. And most people can't think like that. And especially with financial stuff like - Financial advisors are the same. They say that like 90 % of the calls they take are just talking people back from the edge of selling. So actually it's like, you know, yes, they're technically trained. They know complicated tax advice and probate and all this, but the calls they have every day are just, you don't need to sell, it's fine. It's okay. The line will go up long-term, blah, blah, blah.

55:30So it's that just emotional support. And that's what people pay for. They pay for access to emotional support. It was so bizarre. I mentioned this to one of our coaches, Dan Priestley. You should have him on the pod if you haven't already. He's amazing. He is like source of, fountain of knowledge about business. So we happened to call with him to be like, hey man, we've realized that we're selling this YouTube accelerator as a thing that helps people grow their YouTube channels. But like 70 % plus are using it as an emotional support crutch to start their YouTube channels. And I feel like we're not adding the value because like they're not seeing an ROI.

56:03Obviously you're not gonna see an ROI in five grand if you're just starting a YouTube channel. And he was like, well, are they happy? We're like, yeah. You're like, have you had any complaints? I'm like, no. How many positive reviews do you have? We have 133 like five-star testimonials where they're all like gushing about it. And he was like, what do they gush about? It was like, oh, the support and the accountability. And he was like, okay, imagine this. Imagine you're a pub and you're selling beer. And the pub is very popular. People love the pub. But then you realize, hang on, people are not coming here to drink beer.

56:31They're coming here to drink beer and talk about their problems. hmm it would be a terrible idea to rebrand your pub as a therapy service absolutely fucking terrible idea do not do that keep the pub it's working it's a good business it's really hard to make a good business yes people are using it for a use that you did not anticipate but that is okay you recently made a decision with your business to to basically travel yeah yeah was the how did you manage that and was the fear there of like letting go of the business in that way geographically oh um a little bit yeah because we previously had a team that was sort of hybrid and I had a studio in London and a podcast studio and stuff, which you guys came to.

57:07All of that stuff. And then I thought, actually, I really like the idea of doing like a digital nomad adventure type thing where I'm traveling around the world and stuff. And so it was a bit of like, oh, you know, I need to find a way to make sure my YouTube video filming schedule doesn't get affected. And we need to tweak the podcast so that we batch film in just one week rather than do multiple episodes, multiple weeks. It's tough, that. Yeah, it's really tough. and so once the logistical things were taken care of i was like all right let's just do it but i think another big part of it is that i think of everything as an experiment um in my mind i'm like okay i want i want to do a year of digital nomad travel but but actually what i was thinking is this is an experiment that i can always just cancel at any point whenever i want i can always just come back to london and get a house and build a podcast studio in the house so i have nothing to lose one way and two way doors to quote jeff again Exactly.

57:59It's a whole thing. This is a two-way door. Yeah, it's a two-way door. And I think most people would think, oh, uprooting is huge. In the same way, starting a YouTube channel is a two-way door. Starting any side hustle is not that big a deal. It's a two-way door. Yeah. And now my team have started saying this. Like anytime I feel like it was, if we come up with a cool idea for a video, which is a bit experimental, and I'm like, oh, but the numbers. Tintin, my producer, will be like, Ali, it's just an experiment. And I'll be like, yeah, you're right. It is just an experiment. Do it. Of course. Of course we can do it.

58:24I think that was one of my favorite bits in the book when you said you use like for productivity and for seeing if things work, you use every experience as like a data point. So if you're like, for me, I've done like seven, eight jobs I've worked in and now I've like found my niche in the venture capital. But you said every time you do a job, you go for an interview and you don't like the job, don't be like, oh, it's a failure. This wasn't my dream job. I wasted six months. You say, okay, use it as a data point and be like, okay, that wasn't what I want. So then you put that away, but then it helps you get towards what you are looking for.

58:56So then you use everything as an experiment rather than worrying about it. So you're like, oh, let's try a new YouTube video. It didn't work. Okay, we won't do that. That's a good bit of data I learned. Rather than be like, I'm a failure. I can't believe I did that. I'm used to this. I'm just going to quit. You're like, okay, that's not what, that's not, that didn't work, do something else. So that's a good way of - You won't break it. Like with, I mean, Stephen Bartlett, who's quotes you in the book, he says you're a master of productivity. So you best get used to wearing that. Exactly, master of productivity.

59:20But he's like, you know, get good at quitting and saying no. And my younger brother is like 22. And it kind of pains me when he's like, oh, I don't really know what I'm doing in life. And I was like, I still don't know what I'm doing in life. Procrastination. Let's talk about procrastination because that's a problem that I've dealt with like my whole life. Your book, I ended up reading it over the weekend, but I've had it for two weeks, but I read it this weekend. So it's like things like that. It's like, why can't I just get the book, start it and do a chapter day instead of starting on Friday and doing it all over one weekend?

59:50Yeah. So what's some good tips for getting it done now? That's the thing. I don't think you need to get it done now. Okay. I think there - Great. I'm winning. Yeah, you're winning. You're doing well. I have been thinking about this a lot. Like the way I wrote the book was not through consistency. I thought I'd write the book through consistency. I thought, you know, I've read Atomic Habits multiple times. Good book. Something about consistency, something about systems, something about habits. Great. A few hours every day is devoted to the book. I type pretty fast. How hard can it be? A few hours every day.

1:00:17but I would find that when I was trying to make slow consistent progress those few hours every day I was getting nothing done for me I realized that the way I work best is in periods of intensity so when I gave myself a whole week I was on a team retreat we were in Wales and my god my job was every single day I'm not getting off the computer unless I've done a first draft of a chapter so I wrote like six chapters in six days it'd taken me two two years to write two chapters and then I wrote six chapters in six days I was like that was that was useful when it came to the editing of the book. It was like Christmas last year and it was a lot of intensity.

1:00:49It was like, okay, the team is off on the Christmas holidays. There was nothing to do. There are no podcasts. Like, okay, I've got these 14 days between the December the 16th and December the 30th, where I just need to completely finish the first draft. And so every day I would like set myself just half a chapter, nine chapters in the book, managed to get it done. And so I think for some people actually just doing things in an intense burst is super, super helpful. The problem is for things that just are not like that. Like, for example, health is not a thing you can just do in one intense burst.

1:01:19That's the thing where you're just shuffling yourself if you try and do it with intensity. So you need consistency for that. So I think that's step number one. Decide, is this a thing that requires intensity or is this a thing that actually benefits from consistency? And then if it is a thing that does benefit from consistency, there are basically three things. the most important one is um like for example if you were struggling with reading the book for example i'm and you were like oh man ali i'm struggling to read the book how do i beat my procrastination i'd be like okay like have you got a block in your calendar tomorrow to read the book and you'd be like probably not i mean okay do you want to put a block in your calendar to read the book and you'd be like oh i actually don't have any blocks in the calendar tomorrow because like you know picking up the sun okay cool what about the day after okay cool when can you put a three hour block in the calendar to read the book?

1:02:05Could you listen to the audiobook instead? Could it be while you're doing something else? We would start having those sorts of conversations. But what it boils down to is that you need to put a block in the calendar. And if there's not a block in the calendar for the thing, it's not going to get done. And that's the first step to making time. And I air quote that because, you know, it is genuinely about like carving out the time. And if you don't have the time, then great, don't read the book. Like it's probably not a high priority thing. If you'd rather spend time with the family or go to the gym or do your work or whatever but i think this is a thing that it's it's like the easiest step in pro in procrastination just put a block in the calendar where you are going to commit to doing the thing you might have solved it i think that solves 80 of it for a lot of people then the next problem is like it gets to the time let's say i've put a block in my calendar for gym an hour from now and i'm like all right cool at 1 p.m i'm gonna hit the gym and then it gets to 1 p.m and i'm like oh but i'm feeling a bit tired right now and i don't want to do it and it's a bit cold outside and all this stuff and that is when i have to employ a small dose of discipline i i think generally discipline is a bit of a scam but i think using a small dose of discipline to get started with something all i have to do is just get myself to the gym that's all i have to do all i have to do is just put on my gym outfit put a coat on and just get myself to the gym and then and then it's a win then i can celebrate it and then i can find a way to enjoy the process took me three alarm clocks this morning to get get there but i'm like i'm going nice yeah i slept through the first one the second one I was like third one okay I'm doing it now I'm doing it I think if you disassociate from the feeling now as well and try and think about the future self and be like I will feel better after it like you rather than the narrative of like I can't be asked right now to get out of bed you're like no actually I'll feel more energized from the gym like blah blah blah remind yourself of the long-term benefits absolutely I think it kind of helps me honestly like this is why I have a personal trainer because I don't want to let him accountability yeah I'm like oh man my board Junaid I can't let him down again that's true we made a little whatsapp gym group and then um no from all my basketball friends and who live in my area and we're like every day we're like I'm in the gym today oh you didn't go to gym yesterday so we like make fun of each other then today I was like first one in the gym all week come on guys get out of bed get your weight up and it was like 6 30 in the morning they're like oh my god he's already in the gym I'm like yeah yeah so that's good yeah getting accountability is a good idea it's like you know if you want your finances to improve have a kid because you will let yourself down you won't let them down I mean, in terms of like putting food on the table and things like, you know this.

1:04:22That's the number one thing that like sorted out my finances was having a kid, yeah, my life, having a kid. Like, okay, I can't just put it all in crypto. I need to like actually have some stability for my kid. But before I'm like, oh, it'll be fine. All right, I'll see what happens. I'll be fine. It's like forced accountability that kind of nudges you in the right, like your personal trainer. Having a kid's a bit extreme. What's it like having a kid? Would you recommend? I mean, yeah, like, so I think as people, we grow up and we have a lot of questions about like ourself from the past. And it's, you know, like there's a lot of confusion as a child and maybe like there's unanswered things about yourself.

1:04:57And I think once you have a kid, you get all the answers to those questions because what you have is essentially like a mirror of you as a child. So all of the, I didn't, my dad wasn't on the scene. So all of the aspects of not having a dad that I missed out on are now gained by being a dad. and it's the one true thing in life that like it's the only thing I do with my day where I'm like there's nothing else I should be doing right now than being with you which is a really freeing kind of thing I'm normally pulled in a million directions by a million people whereas when I'm with him it's like this time isn't wasted and we get to do crazy shit like go to like you know wacky warehouse kind of things and I'm just in there in the slides in the ball pit pinging them at like other kids and stuff and you know if I went and did that normally it's a bit weird Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:05:44I think the coolest bit about being a dad is you get to kind of try and improve on what your parents didn't do. So I'm really close to my mom. I'm kind of close to my dad, but he's like a traditional banker, corporate finance guy. So he's quite like traditional African dad. He's like very manly, very like stoic, doesn't really show that many emotions. You know, we don't hug and stuff. Whereas me and my mom were like cuddles, cuddles. Like, yeah, it's cool. So for me and my kid, I'm very close with him. like I'm very like affectionate with him. Yeah, no, I think I'm looking forward to that adventure.

1:06:13Like a lot of my friends now are starting to have like kids and now I'm like, oh, okay, I can see what this looks like. And it seems kind of cool. If I gave you a hundred million quid right now, what would you be doing? Oh, I can't imagine it'd be talking to me and T. No, it actually would. We'd show you a good time on Edgeware Road. In-person podcasts and like food are my love languages and positive reviews for my book in case anyone else has said it. I want to do with a hundred million dollars. Probably very little. Would I change anything about our current business? I probably would. I'd probably be shooting for like hundreds of millions in revenue rather than tens of millions in revenue.

1:06:52But I'd still broadly be doing the same stuff. I still make YouTube videos when I felt like it. I still do podcasts in person because it's super fun. I'd still write more books. I probably wouldn't make courses anymore because courses cap out at like a few tens of millions. Like no one doing courses is making hundreds of millions, for example. unless you count Tony Robbins, but he does that through like a bunch of other business ventures. So I'd want to continue playing the game of entrepreneurship and just make the numbers get bigger. If you want a bullet point summary of this episode, you can sign up to our newsletter using the link in the description.

1:07:20And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review. It really makes a difference and lets us know that we're doing a good job. I'm Damo. I'm T. This episode was recorded by Jack Hobbs. Music is by Felix Taylor. It was produced and edited by Ruth Edwards. Johnny Hunter is in charge of marketing. and it's all brought together by Will Stollerman.

From the publisher

If you could do more with your time, what could you accomplish? Ali Abdaal started his YouTube channel as a side hustle while he was a medical student. He now has over 5 million subscribers and makes 5 million pounds a year.. An expert in productivity, he’s literally written a book on it, the New York Times bestseller ‘Feel Good Productivity’.

You can order Ali’s book here: https://amzn.to/3URBIvg

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