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Answering Uncomfortable Questions With My Personal Assistant

2021-07-18 · Q&A video · Ali, Elizabeth · recording, 24:44 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Relationships and personal life (also: Business and entrepreneurship, Work and career, YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: Answering questions · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past

Ali and his former personal assistant Elizabeth answer viewers' Instagram questions: how he hired her after an Instagram message in March 2020, why he thinks anyone busy could use a part-time PA, his most annoying traits including constant changes of plan, how to leave a nine-to-five job, and why she found his marriage inbox frustrating.

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 with Elizabeth, her channel and the Part-Time YouTuber Academy

  • ★★ Elizabeth introduces herself as Ali's ex-personal assistant, a fourth-year medical student with her own YouTube channel. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ 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) — 00:00:34
  • ★★ Ali says Elizabeth started her YouTube channel during the first cohort of his Part-Time YouTuber Academy. — 00:01:03 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali calls Elizabeth a shining example of the success that comes from consistency and putting in the work. — 00:01:03

00:01:51 — Is Ali worried Elizabeth will become a better YouTuber

  • ★★ Ali says it took him six months and 52 videos to reach his first thousand subscribers, painfully slow next to Elizabeth's growth. — 00:01:51

00:02:36 — How they met: an Instagram DM, an email and a call the same evening

  • ★★ Elizabeth had just left her job at Selfridges because of the lockdown and was looking for work, so she sent Ali an Instagram message at about 3 a.m. — 00:03:05 · Instagram
  • ★★★ Elizabeth says that a few hours after her message and email Ali replied, called her and hired her on the spot as his personal assistant. — 00:03:34
  • ★★ 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

00:05:20 — Why you need an assistant, and a planned course on personal assistants

  • ★★ Elizabeth says an assistant handles small admin tasks; for Ali that is mostly emails, fan mail, organising and getting him to the right places on time, as he can be forgetful. — 00:05:33
  • ★★ Elizabeth wants a PA herself because a social media presence brings many emails, sponsor requests and invitations to channels and podcasts. — 00:05:33
  • ★★★ Ali thinks anyone busy with email and admin, not only creators or entrepreneurs, would benefit from a part-time PA paid for even four hours a week to sort the inbox; he calls it incredibly high ROI. — 00:06:41

00:07:06 — What Elizabeth learned, Ali's most annoying traits and his changes of mind

  • ★★ Ali's team is working on a course, probably called The Life-Changing Magic of a Personal Assistant, on how and why everyone should have a part-time PA for about four hours a week to begin with. (hedged) — 00:07:06
  • ★★ Elizabeth says working with Ali taught her not to care what people think and, one of the most life-changing lessons for her, to ship things before she is ready. — 00:07:06
  • ★ Elizabeth names Ali's fidgeting first among his most annoying traits: he never sits straight. — 00:07:52
  • ★★ Elizabeth says another of Ali's annoying traits is agreeing to arrangements very quickly without thinking them through. — 00:08:26
  • ★★★ Elizabeth: The trait that most kills Elizabeth is Ali changing his mind: when he decided to move to the US she wrote countless emails and arranged calls about the USMLE and where he would live. — 00:08:56 · USMLE, United States
  • ★★ Elizabeth says that two weeks after the US plan Ali decided to move to Australia, with hospitals, training, visas and lawyers to research, then to travel the world, then to move to Dubai. — 00:09:24 · United States
  • ★★ Elizabeth says Ali's planned move to Dubai was cancelled and he is now supposedly moving to London. — 00:09:50 · London
  • ★★ Elizabeth: When Ali gives her a big project, Elizabeth asks whether it is really happening and then waits 48 hours before investing her time. — 00:10:20

00:10:45 — What Ali learned from his assistant and what he is like as a boss

  • ★★ Ali says Australia closed its borders because of COVID and his plan to go to America became a myth because of COVID, although that was not really the main reason. — 00:10:45 · United States, COVID-19
  • ★★ Ali admires how Elizabeth makes people feel at ease and relates to students' struggles on an emotional level in Part-Time YouTuber Academy sessions, something he struggles with. — 00:11:10 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Elizabeth says that at the start, with a team of four, Ali was more open as a boss and communicated better than he does now. — 00:12:01
  • ★★ Elizabeth says working for Ali has become more hierarchical, more corporate and less fun than at the start. — 00:12:27
  • ★★ 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

00:12:55 — Top three tips for leaving the nine to five

  • ★★★ Ali says starting a YouTube channel is absolutely not the path he would take to leave a nine-to-five job. — 00:13:30
  • ★★ Ali says Elizabeth and a few others they know made YouTube work through a combination of luck, work and unfair advantages, so it is not advice for everyone. — 00:14:01
  • ★★ Ali says the average YouTube channel takes 152 videos to reach a thousand subscribers. — 00:14:01
  • ★★★ Ali says the way to leave a nine-to-five job is to make money outside it that sustains your living. — 00:14:31
  • ★★ Ali suggests learning a skill such as video editing and selling it, for example to YouTubers, until freelancing earns enough to leave the nine-to-five. — 00:15:00
  • ★★ For leaving a nine-to-five job Ali recommends Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek and its DEAL approach, which he gives as delegate, eliminate, automate and leverage. — 00:15:00 · The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ Ali also recommends Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You: get really good at your job to build career capital, then cash it in for remote work or a different job. — 00:15:21

  • ★★★ Ali advises running a side hustle while keeping the full-time job, using evenings and weekends to learn skills, sell them and make products, rather than quitting first and then working out how to make money. — 00:15:51

    “You shouldn't quit the job and then figure out how to make money.”

  • ★★ Ali recommends his friend Sean McCabe's book Overlap, about overlapping a nine-to-five job with making money online before leaving. — 00:15:51

  • ★ Elizabeth recalls a tweet by someone who left a nine-to-five to start a business and now works 100 hours a week. — 00:16:12
  • ★★★ Ali says he left the nine-to-five to work on things he cares about; that means he works more, but he cares more about the work. — 00:16:41
  • ★★★ Elizabeth thinks people romanticise the idea that work, or a nine-to-five job, is bad, and asks whether unhappiness really comes from the job before quitting it. — 00:17:10
  • ★★ Elizabeth says people who run their own businesses face the same long hours, stress and pressure that others dislike about a nine-to-five, so she would question why someone wants to leave. — 00:17:40

00:18:09 — Why Elizabeth wanted to work with Ali

  • ★★ Ali agrees that leaving is less about the nine-to-five itself than the feelings around it, which can be addressed in different ways. — 00:18:09
  • ★ Elizabeth wanted to work with Ali because he seemed genuine and honest and she loved his editing. — 00:18:09

00:19:02 — The most awkward requests: a Valentine's balloon and the marriage inbox

  • ★★ Elizabeth: An awkward request: Ali once asked Elizabeth to get him a heart balloon for Valentine's Day, from himself but meant to look as if from someone else, for his YouTube channel. — 00:19:02
  • ★★★ Elizabeth explains Ali's marriage inbox: he announced on his channel and every other social platform that he was looking to get married and that anyone interested could email him. — 00:19:41
  • ★★ Ali says the marriage email address is still open and people can still apply. (playful) — 00:20:10
  • ★★ Ali says he never said he would respond to people who wrote to the marriage inbox. — 00:20:34
  • ★★★ Elizabeth says the marriage inbox set false expectations: Ali did not make clear what would happen, and some women took it very seriously and sent videos of themselves. — 00:20:34
  • ★★ Elizabeth sees a power dynamic when a celebrity opens himself up to dating: people think they know him and know far more about him than he knows about them. — 00:21:31
  • ★★★ Elizabeth does not think social media is the way to find a wife: it is not impossible, but for the collateral damage it causes it is not an efficient way. — 00:22:26

00:22:54 — Why Elizabeth got the job and what made her stand out

  • ★★ Ali answers that knowing more about a date than they know about you is what you sign up for: most people Google their partner before a first date, so the risk is always there. — 00:22:54
  • ★★ Ali says Elizabeth got the job because she messaged him in a friendly way. — 00:22:54
  • ★★ Having been a medical student and worked with them, Ali knew a medical student brings a baseline level of trustworthiness and competence. — 00:23:20
  • ★★ Ali trusted Elizabeth with his email and card details from day one largely because she has a General Medical Council number. — 00:23:20
  • ★★ Ali, unsure about hiring a PA, was sold by Elizabeth's pitch: try her for a month and fire her with no questions asked if she is bad. — 00:23:57

00:24:27 — The other 20 questions on Elizabeth's channel and sign-off

Humor (significant)

  • Asked by a viewer whether he is gay since he has no wife, Ali turns the logic around — 00:00:34

    “I think I would be gay if I had a wife.”

  • Asked what he thinks of Elizabeth's channel, Ali performs an impression of her video intro — 00:01:03

    “Hi, my name is Elizabeth and I'm a medical student living in London. Oh, sorry, medical student and artist living in London.”

  • Asked why he needs an assistant, Ali puffs himself up — 00:05:02

    “Look, I'm kind of a big deal.”

  • Praising Elizabeth's empathy, Ali admits his own weakness — 00:11:10

    “Maybe, you know, one or two times a year, I struggle to relate to people on an emotional level.”

  • Elizabeth lists why she admired Ali, all in the past tense — 00:18:09

    “I love the past tense of all of these.”

  • After Elizabeth explains the marriage inbox, the address is plugged again — 00:20:10

    “Yes, it's still open. It's still open. You can still apply.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Elizabeth · virtual assistant

Also: People: Cal Newport · Dan (staff, mentioned from 2021) · Sean McCabe · Tim Ferriss

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy · The Life-Changing Magic of a Personal Assistant

Works: Overlap · So Good They Can't Ignore You · The 4-Hour Workweek · USMLE

Organizations: General Medical Council · Instagram

Concepts: career capital · COVID-19 · three levels of making money online · unfair advantage

Places: Australia · Dubai · London · United States

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