Ali builds a team for his online business
project history · status: running · last event: milestone (2021-12-24) · owner: Ali
Told alongside: Ali's first book, which a publisher asked him to write (2020)
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-12-28 (said on 2020-12-15, implied) | milestone | Later in 2020 Ali hired a team: two full-timers and a part-time assistant now work with him to keep the channel running. | How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber 00:16:48 |
| 2021-07-14 | milestone | Ali's team of 12, including him, is nowhere near enough for what the business wants to do, so it is looking to hire around five more people in the next few months. | How much I spend in a month… 00:07:48 |
| 2021-07-18 | milestone | Elizabeth was Ali's personal assistant for a bit over a year; her role changed and for the last few months she has not done that job. (hedged) | Answering Uncomfortable Questions With My Personal Assistant 00:00:34 |
| 2021-07-18 (happened 2020-03) | looked back | In March 2020, during lockdown, Ali hired Elizabeth as his personal assistant on the spot, the same evening she messaged and emailed him. | Answering Uncomfortable Questions With My Personal Assistant 00:03:34 |
| 2021-07-28 (happened 2019-10) | looked back | Around October 2019, two and a bit years into the channel, Ali hired Christian as head of content and video editor, his first full-time team member; at first he could barely afford Christian's salary. | How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time 00:08:27 |
| 2021-07-28 | milestone | Over the last year Ali's team has grown from four people to 10 or 11; it hired one new person the week before this video. | How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time 00:11:03 |
| 2021-08-04 | milestone | Ali's team is hiring about 10 new people and may get a real office in London with studios. | The Greatest Enemy of Success - Ego is the Enemy 00:06:01 |
| 2021-08-08 | milestone | Ali's team is looking to hire another eight to ten people, most of the roles based in London, plus a remote graphic designer and an open position for anyone in the world. | Dating, Regrets and Boxing - 2 Million Subscriber Q&A 00:05:02 |
| 2021-08-15 | milestone | With a lot of cash sitting in the company account, Ali's business is hiring around eight or ten people, and he invites people based in London to apply. | Revealing ALL My Investments at 27 00:20:09 |
| 2021-09-12 | milestone | Ali's team has doubled in size. | My Journey of Self-Acceptance 00:00:06 |
| 2021-10-20 | milestone | After hiring for about eight positions, Ali's team has around 18 or 19 people besides him, about four of them part-time, and is still recruiting the final positions. | Everything's Changing - Life Update 00:03:43 |
| 2021-11-30 | milestone | Ali now has a studio and a team of 17 people. | Why I Left Medicine... Forever 00:34:25 |
| 2021-12-24 | milestone | Ali's business spent $501,987 on salaries in 2021; the team grew from four people in January to seven or eight around June and now has 17 full-time staff. | How Much Money I Spend as a YouTuber (2021) 00:13:05 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).
What is said about it
27 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2021-07-14 · How much I spend in a month… — Ali: Seven of Ali's team members work full time, two about four days a week, one three days and one two days; the work is fairly remote and flexible. — 00:07:19
- 2021-07-18 · Answering Uncomfortable Questions With My Personal Assistant — Ali reads out his offer to Elizabeth: £100 a day, what "the other guy" on his team started on, and a one-month trial of one day a week. — 00:04:33
- 2021-07-18 · Answering Uncomfortable Questions With My Personal Assistant — Ali says his team has grown from three or four people figuring things out to 12 full-time staff whose payroll relies on the business going well. — 00:12:27
- 2021-07-28 · How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time — Ali's business has grown to a team of 10 full-time staff and around $3 million in annual revenue, and his channel to nearly 2 million subscribers. — 00:00:00
- 2021-07-28 · How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time — Ali: In June 2019, after two years as a solo creator, Ali decided to outsource the editing of his videos to a freelancer. — 00:05:36
- 2021-07-28 · How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time — Ali found a freelance video editor on People Per Hour; this was game-changing, as the roughly 20 hours a week he had spent editing his own videos were gone. — 00:06:05
- 2021-07-28 · How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time — Ali: A few months after reading The E-Myth Revisited, Ali's business made enough money to afford a full-time employee, and he was really scared about hiring his first one. — 00:07:11
- 2021-07-28 · How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time — Ali: From October 2019 to August 2020 Ali's team grew by two; Angus joined as a writer researching scripts and moved into a more managerial role. — 00:09:33
- 2021-07-28 · How I Created a $3 Million Business Part Time — Ali: Elizabeth joined as Ali's personal assistant, but her role soon moved into management, leading projects and helping with the Part-Time YouTuber Academy; she also started her own YouTube channel. — 00:10:05
- 2021-08-04 · The Greatest Enemy of Success - Ego is the Enemy — Ali has a team of about 12 people and is hiring another eight. — 00:02:38
- 2021-08-04 · The Greatest Enemy of Success - Ego is the Enemy — announcement: Ali promises more in a future video on hiring about 10 new people for his team. — 00:06:01
- 2021-08-08 · Dating, Regrets and Boxing - 2 Million Subscriber Q&A — Ali's main challenge in managing 11 people instead of working solo is getting everyone aligned on the same goal, with clarity on exactly what their job is. — 00:11:19
- 2021-08-08 · Dating, Regrets and Boxing - 2 Million Subscriber Q&A — Ali: Hiring people and freeing his own time marked an inflection point in Ali's channel growth: he no longer spent 20 hours a week editing or 30 hours writing his videos. — 00:13:07
- 2021-09-03 · We broke up… — Ali says he offered Sheen a job in his business and offered to sponsor her visa. — 00:05:52
- 2021-09-03 · We broke up… — Ali says that when he drove home from work for the last time he meant to travel the world, but the pandemic kept him in Cambridge for a whole year, where he launched the YouTuber Academy, wrote the book and built a team, none of which he had expected. — 00:11:26
- 2021-10-10 · In Conversation with Charlie from Charisma on Command #ptya — Ali has realised he needs to be more involved in the art side of his business, which he enjoys and is uniquely good at; he says he kind of sucks as a manager, so someone else could manage the team. — 00:36:26
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — Ali: On Mondays Ali's team gets together in the studio for a content brainstorm with the writers, the YouTube producer, Ali and Angus. — 00:03:19
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — Ali: As the business grew with its courses, especially the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Ali found holes of expertise in his team and much of it overstretched, with Angus doing seven people's jobs and Jacob four. — 00:04:12
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — Ali's team now has four or five people working full time on the Part-Time YouTuber Academy and four or five writers who help brainstorm content ideas and do research. — 00:04:56
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — announcement: Ali's team is still hiring a videographer and will probably look for another editor fairly soon. (hedged) — 00:05:19
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — Ali's business is spending about a million pounds a year on team salaries, a thought that keeps him up at night. — 00:05:19
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — announcement: Ali: Since running the business has taken Ali's time from content, his team is moving Angus and others to handle the business side so he can focus on content and his book. — 00:13:28
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — announcement: Ali: Having grown so fast to just under 20 people, Ali's business will spend the next few months getting its house in order. — 00:14:34
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — Ali: In one way of structuring Ali's business he is the visionary and Angus the integrator, with sales and marketing, operations and production beneath them. — 00:22:28
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — Ali has handed Elizabeth, in effect the YouTuber Academy's chief strategy officer, the job of making sure its students have an amazing time. — 00:26:24
- 2021-10-20 · Everything's Changing - Life Update — Ali's team has hired a YouTube producer to keep track of the content schedules for the main channel, the second channel, a third channel it is going to launch and the podcast channels. — 00:26:24
- 2021-12-24 · How Much Money I Spend as a YouTuber (2021) — recommendation: Ali: In 2022 Ali wants to spend more on coaching, so that every team member with significant responsibility, such as managers of other staff, has a coach weekly or every two weeks; he thinks the return is astronomical. — 00:18:36