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Smart Passive Income + The Third Door - Monthly Favourites #11

2019-08-06 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:24 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing (also: Books and reading, Business and entrepreneurship, Tools, apps and tech) · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Lesson from a book, Family

In Monthly Favourites for July 2019, Ali recommends Alex Banayan's The Third Door, Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income podcast, a shiatsu back massager and the blogger Tynan, whose idea of co-owning houses with ten friends he calls a really interesting philosophy to live by.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Monthly Favourites for July 2019: a book, a podcast, a physical product and a new blogger

  • ★★ In the eleventh Monthly Favourites video Ali talks about a book, a podcast, a physical product and a new blogger and author he has discovered. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali names Katerina Stoisavljevic (as heard) as the winner of the copy of Phil Knight's Shoe Dog from last month's (July 2019) giveaway; he will ask for her address on Instagram and post the book within a few months. — 00:00:00 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali gives away a copy of The Third Door: viewers who want it leave a comment with their Instagram username, and he will message the winner. — 00:00:00 · Instagram

00:00:22 — Winner of the Shoe Dog giveaway and a new giveaway of The Third Door

00:00:39 — Book: The Third Door by Alex Banayan

  • ★★★ Ali recommends Alex Banayan's The Third Door, a self-help book in disguise: the story of a college student who sets out to ask the world's most successful people, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, what they did at his age. — 00:00:39
  • ★★ Ali thinks he first heard of The Third Door on Matt D'Avella's podcast, The Ground Up Show, in a really good episode with Alex Banayan that he says viewers should listen to. (hedged) — 00:01:20 · Matt D'Avella
  • ★★ Ali expected The Third Door to be a compilation of life advice like Tim Ferriss's Tribe of Mentors, which he calls a good book, but found it more of a storybook. — 00:01:20 · Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ Ali's personal rating for books goes up to "really, really, really good", which a book earns only by keeping him up until 4 a.m. before a 7 a.m. start at work; The Third Door did. — 00:01:49
  • ★★ Ali finished The Third Door in about two days, reading until 3 a.m. one night and 4 a.m. the next before work, which he calls probably a bit irresponsible, and loaded up on Costa coffee. — 00:01:49

  • ★★ Alex Banayan (quoted): The Third Door's title compares life and business to a nightclub with three ways in: the main entrance where 99% wait in line, the VIP entrance for billionaires and celebrities, and the third door, sneaking in round the side. — 00:02:23

    “Life and business, it's just like a nightclub. There are always three ways in.”

  • ★★ Alex Banayan (quoted): According to The Third Door, Bill Gates selling his first piece of software and Steven Spielberg becoming the youngest studio director in Hollywood history both took the third door. — 00:02:51

  • ★★ Ali would love The Third Door even without its life advice because it is so well written; he cried at the end, at a part where Alex Banayan asks Lady Gaga for life advice. — 00:02:51
  • ★★★ Ali recommends Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income podcast: he long avoided it because it sounded a bit scammy, like Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich or Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek, but it is really good. — 00:03:28 · Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek, passive income
  • ★ Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income podcast has been running for ages and has about 350 episodes. (hedged) — 00:03:28 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali describes passive income as creating books, processes and businesses that make you money without your having to put more time into them. — 00:03:28 · passive income

00:03:31 — Podcast: Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn, and books as passive income

  • ★★ In the last month Ali listened to about 25 Smart Passive Income episodes and queued about 20 more in Castro, his podcast app; lately he has been listening to a lot of interviews with self-published authors. — 00:04:11 · passive income
  • ★★★ Books are a great way of making passive income, Ali says: you put a ton of effort into researching and writing a book once, and it then sells many copies without much extra time or effort. — 00:04:41 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali has been vaguely thinking it would be cool to write a book at some point, and is soaking up what the Smart Passive Income guests say about it. (hedged) — 00:04:41 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali values the Smart Passive Income podcast for actionable advice from people who have built the passive-income lifestyle he aspires to. — 00:04:41 · passive income
  • ★★★ Ali highly recommends a shiatsu back massager he found on Amazon to anyone who gets back pain or enjoys massages; he has recommended it to all his friends. — 00:05:08 · Amazon

00:05:17 — Physical product: a shiatsu back massager

  • ★★ The shiatsu back massager lets you set the pressure by pushing forward, can warm you, and is very portable and plugs in anywhere, Ali says. — 00:05:36
  • ★ A friend Ali recommended the shiatsu back massager to bought it on Amazon Prime at once and says it has changed his life too. — 00:06:05 · Amazon
  • ★★ Ali recommends Tynan, a blogger and author he recently discovered who goes by one name, self-publishes books on Amazon and blogs at tynan.com. — 00:06:40 · Amazon
  • ★★ Tynan used to be a pickup artist and is one of those featured in Neil Strauss's The Game, which Ali calls quite a good storybook. — 00:06:40

00:07:00 — Blogger: Tynan, his island and his houses co-owned with friends

  • ★★ Tynan left pickup behind to travel the world running side businesses, such as a blogging platform and a way to find cruise-ship deals, and wrote a few books. — 00:07:31
  • ★★ Ali has recently become very into travelling after listening to Rolf Potts's podcast Deviate and reading his book Vagabonding. — 00:07:56
  • ★★ About six or seven years ago Tynan went viral in the tech community for buying an island off the coast of Canada with about ten friends, which apparently cost them around ten thousand dollars each. (hedged) — 00:07:56
  • ★★ Tynan (quoted): Tynan says the island he co-owns with his friends is the best thing he has ever bought. — 00:08:25
  • ★ Ali and his brother have both entertained fantasies of buying an island one day. — 00:08:25 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ The island has added so much value to the lives of Tynan and his friends, Ali says, because it is fun and interesting, time with friends and physical labour all in one. — 00:08:54
  • ★★★ Tynan (quoted): Tynan's theory is that it is more fun and better to own a tenth of ten houses around the world, each bought with ten friends in a city they enjoy, than a single house in one place. — 00:09:23
  • ★★ Ali thinks Tynan has co-owned properties in Budapest, Tokyo and Las Vegas. (hedged) — 00:09:23
  • ★★ Ali supposes that owning your own home does make sense, at least at first, given the numbers; for second and further homes and investments, Tynan's idea is that you might as well club in with ten friends. (hedged) — 00:09:23
  • ★★ Tynan and his friends do not rent out their co-owned houses on Airbnb, since that would defeat the purpose: a home base in a city they like that they can visit at a moment's notice. — 00:09:59 · Airbnb
  • ★★ Ali calls Tynan's co-owning of houses with friends a really interesting philosophy to live by. — 00:09:59
  • ★★ Tynan (quoted): Having travelled the world, become successful and tried to get rich, Tynan has realised that it is not about the money but about freedom, time with friends and family, and experiences. — 00:10:28
  • ★★ Ali has started floating to his friends the idea of all pitching in, in a few years' time, for a house in a city they like to share as a holiday home. — 00:10:28

00:10:55 — Sign-off and the Monthly Favourites playlist

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: passive income · shiatsu back massager · Smart Passive Income · The Third Door (book) · the third door (concept) · Tynan

Also: People: Alex Banayan · Bill Gates · Lady Gaga · Matt D'Avella · Neil Strauss · Pat Flynn · Phil Knight · Ramit Sethi · Rolf Potts · Steven Spielberg · Taimur Abdaal · Tim Ferriss · Warren Buffett

Works: Deviate · I Will Teach You To Be Rich · Shoe Dog · The 4-Hour Workweek · The Game · The Ground Up Show · Tribe of Mentors · Vagabonding

Organizations: Airbnb · Amazon · Costa Coffee · Instagram

Places: Budapest · Canada · Las Vegas · Tokyo

Products: Castro

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