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Gymshark, Inspirations & Pet Peeves - ONE MILLION Subscribers Q&A

2020-09-01 · Q&A video · Ali · recording, 15:46 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Relationships and personal life, Productivity and time, Medicine and his doctor years, Mindset, motivation and happiness, Health, sleep and habits, Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: Answering questions · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

In his one-million-subscriber Q&A Ali says he focuses on the process of making videos rather than on numbers, credits the coronavirus and his viral typing video for his recent growth, names Tim Ferriss and Peter McKinnon as his inspirations and calls "people care a lot less about us than we think" his most valuable lesson.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro: the commemorative 1 million subscribers Q&A

  • ★★★ Ali started his YouTube channel in June 2017 as content marketing for his business helping kids get into medical school. — 00:00:29 · 6med

00:00:36 — Expectations of the channel and whether he feels satisfied: process over numbers

  • ★★ When Ali started, a friend's 4,000 subscribers seemed just about manageable, another's 20,000 completely unattainable and another's 60,000 out of reach "in a million years". — 00:00:58

  • ★★★ Ali calls numerical goals a recipe for disappointment: views, subscribers and revenue are out of his control; only churning out one to three videos a week is, so he focuses on the process. — 00:01:45

    “If you set numerical goals, that's just a recipe for disappointment”

  • ★★ Ali tries not to ask whether his channel is successful or satisfying, because either feeling would make him think too much about the outcome. — 00:02:08

  • ★★ Starting again, Ali would focus much more on his website: once the research and the video are done, turning a video into a blog post is only a small step. — 00:02:33 · aliabdaal.com
  • ★ Ali would also have turned each video into a tweet storm, a series of Twitter threads. — 00:02:33 · Twitter

00:02:42 — What he would do differently: the website, Twitter threads, outsourcing editing sooner

  • ★★ Ali wishes he had outsourced the editing of his videos sooner, because it was a complete game changer when he did. — 00:03:02

00:03:27 — His favourite video and the system behind the channel

  • ★★ Ali's favourite video of his own is Harry Potter Medical Science Explained, on the medical science in scenes of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, though relatively few people cared about it. — 00:03:31
  • ★★ The underappreciated side of Ali's channel is its system: YouTubers and friends he shows behind the scenes are always surprised how much workflow goes into producing his videos. — 00:04:20
  • ★★★ Ali currently makes more from Skillshare than from YouTube, but only because he has an audience already built on YouTube. — 00:04:20

00:04:37 — YouTube or Skillshare

  • ★★★ If he could pick only YouTube or Skillshare, Ali would pick YouTube: building an audience there is relatively straightforward, and that audience can then be funnelled into paid things. — 00:04:49

00:05:11 — Why he mentions doing things while taking a poo

  • ★★ Ali mentions his poo habits on camera because he talks about them all the time in real life and tries to be as authentic on camera as he is off it. — 00:05:45
  • ★★ Ali's biggest pet peeve is people talking in a way that leaves others out, such as mentioning a WhatsApp group in front of friends who are not in it. — 00:05:45 · WhatsApp

00:05:58 — Pet peeves

00:06:26 — Favourite moments on YouTube and the video he regretted posting

  • ★★ Meeting fans and, by extension, other YouTubers has been the most satisfying part of being a YouTuber for Ali, because he automatically has so much in common with other people who make videos on the internet. — 00:06:42
  • ★★★ Ali took down a video on taking notes on his iPad at work after someone complained to his hospital that his flippant comments were blasé about data security. — 00:07:11 · iPad
  • ★★★ Thomas Frank changed Ali's life most directly: in October 2019 he introduced Ali to Standard, the agency Ali is now part of. — 00:07:37 · Thomas Frank
  • ★ Matt D'Avella has been a constant source of inspiration for Ali since he started following his channel. — 00:07:37 · Matt D'Avella

00:07:47 — Matt D'Avella or Thomas Frank

00:08:06 — What drove growth from 600K to 1 million

  • ★★ Ali's viral video on how he types really fast has accelerated the channel's growth in the past ten days or so. — 00:08:07
  • ★★ Ali says growth driven by the YouTube algorithm is in a way exponential: if you keep churning out content and occasionally produce a viral video, the channel grows. — 00:08:07
  • ★★★ Ali puts his channel's growth from 600,000 to 1 million subscribers down to the coronavirus keeping people at home and the occasional viral hit. (hedged) — 00:08:36 · COVID-19
  • ★★ Ali has no "after YouTube" in mind: YouTube is a platform to put himself out there, which he wants to do for the rest of his life. — 00:08:36

00:08:45 — What he would do after YouTube

  • ★★ Ali expects to keep putting out content on YouTube as long as YouTube exists and people still care. (hedged) — 00:09:05
  • ★★★ Ali has been vaguely into productivity since reading Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek. — 00:09:05 · The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ At around 17 or 18, Ali read a lot of blog posts and discovered Evernote and productivity blogs like Lifehacker. — 00:09:05 · Evernote

00:09:17 — How he got into productivity and who inspired him

  • ★★ Ali stumbled into productivity on YouTube by accident: the word came in when people asked how he was so productive, and he realised "productivity tube" was a thing and leaned into it. — 00:09:39

00:10:02 — Does he miss being a doctor

  • ★★★ About a month into his break from medicine, Ali has not had a single day when he missed being a doctor. — 00:10:08

00:10:29 — The most valuable thing he has learned: people care less about us than we think

  • ★★★ One of the biggest lessons of Ali's life is that people care a lot less about us than we think they do, as in the quote often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: you would stop caring so much what others think of you when you realise how seldom they do. — 00:10:37

    “people care a lot less about us than we think they do”

  • ★★ Ali describes the spotlight effect: we act as if a spotlight were trained on us and others will notice every mistake, while everyone is worried about their own life. — 00:10:37

  • ★★★ Realising that people care much less about us than we think made Ali more confident and more willing to step outside his comfort zone and put himself out there. — 00:10:37
  • ★★ Ali's greatest inspiration is Tim Ferriss, whose book The 4-Hour Workweek and podcast have had the single biggest impact on him. — 00:11:27 · Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek, The Tim Ferriss Show
  • ★★ On YouTube Ali's inspiration is Peter McKinnon: starting the channel, he wanted to be the Peter McKinnon of medicine. — 00:11:27 · Peter McKinnon

00:11:31 — His greatest inspirations and what he has been afraid to try

  • ★ Ali has always wanted to be able to go up to a pretty girl on the street and talk to her, and has always been afraid to. — 00:11:56
  • ★★ Becoming a Gymshark athlete is probably not going to happen, Ali says, but working towards it is fun and encourages him to eat healthily and work out. (hedged) — 00:11:56 · Gymshark

00:12:12 — How long until he becomes a Gymshark athlete

  • ★★ Ali cares more about the journey of trying to become a Gymshark athlete than about achieving it. — 00:12:25 · Gymshark

00:12:40 — Where he sees himself in five years

  • ★★★ Asked where he sees himself in five years, Ali says all he can do is keep enjoying the journey: "journey before destination", or, as Miley Cyrus would say, it's the climb. — 00:12:55
  • ★★ Ali keeps his options open so that if an interesting opportunity comes along in five years' time he will be well placed to take it. — 00:12:55
  • ★ Ali would learn Japanese, which he has dabbled in for several years, and Spanish next. (hedged) — 00:12:55

00:13:18 — A new language and his favourite music artist

  • ★ Ali likes that John Mayer's voice is low like his own, so singing like him feels an attainable level. — 00:13:33

00:13:58 — The extended version on Nebula, the CuriosityStream sponsor read and thanks for 1 million subscribers

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked for a book on appreciating the journey rather than the destination, the channel recommends The Alchemist. — creator comment
  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked when he will do study-with-me streams on Twitch, the channel replies: soon. — creator comment · Twitch

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

People: Eleanor Roosevelt · John Mayer · Matt D'Avella · Miley Cyrus · Peter McKinnon · Thomas Frank · Tim Ferriss

Projects: aliabdaal.com

Works: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone · The 4-Hour Workweek · The Climb · The Tim Ferriss Show

Organizations: 6med · Gymshark · Lifehacker · Standard · Twitter

Concepts: COVID-19 · journey before destination · spotlight effect

Products: Evernote · iPad · WhatsApp

Only in the description or credits: The Alchemist

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