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Dating, Regrets and Boxing - 2 Million Subscriber Q&A

2021-08-08 · Q&A video · Ali · recording, 26:27 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Productivity and time, Goals, purpose and life design, Medicine and his doctor years, Business and entrepreneurship, Work and career, Relationships and personal life) · mode: Answering questions · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, His medical past

In a 2-million-subscriber Q&A Ali answers 50 viewer questions: YouTube is still worth starting in 2021 if the content is good, AdSense is only 10-15% of his revenue, he would give up medicine for YouTube on counterfactual impact, and he announces a podcast, a move to London, hiring and a slow book.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Cold open and intro to the 2 million subscriber Q&A

00:00:29 — Biggest lesson, starting YouTube in 2021, AdSense revenue, his dream at 15, favourite video, hardest part, vlogs

  • ★★ Ali's biggest lesson on the way to 2 million subscribers is that the journey matters more than the destination: finding ways to enjoy the work makes life more fun and makes you much more likely to stick to it. — 00:00:29 · journey before destination
  • ★★ Ali would still recommend starting a YouTube channel in 2021, 100%. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali says it is easier than ever to grow on YouTube in 2021 because the algorithm is refined, but the content has to be good: good content rises to the top much quicker than it used to. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ Ali says YouTube AdSense makes his channel about $30,000-40,000 a month at 2 million subscribers, only about 10-15% of the business's revenue; most revenue comes from Skillshare classes and his online courses. (hedged) — 00:01:27 · Skillshare classes
  • ★★ At 15 Ali was addicted to World of Warcraft and dreamed of joining a high-end raiding guild without his mum calling him down for food every half hour; into web design, he also dreamed of making a living online. — 00:01:56 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★ Ali's favourite of his own videos is still his science of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone review, though hardly anyone watched it; he also enjoyed making his video on spinning an Apple Pencil. — 00:02:23 · Apple Pencil
  • ★★ Ali says the hardest thing about being a YouTuber is sticking to it consistently, which is much harder in the early stages without immediate feedback or return on investment. — 00:02:23
  • ★★ For Ali now the hardest parts of YouTube are coming up with ideas consistently and dealing with hate comments; beginners must keep going without much growth long enough to experience its compounding effects. — 00:03:02
  • ★★ Ali makes casual vlogs, such as day-in-the-life vlogs, about every other week on his second channel, Ali's Appendix; his team is hiring a videographer to follow him so that some vlogs about his life can go on the main channel. — 00:03:02

00:03:31 — New health and wellness content; being called a productivity guru; moving to London

  • ★★ Ali wants to make more health and wellness content (taking care of ourselves and our brains, meditation, spirituality, mindfulness, meaningful work), an area where he has little personal experience so far. — 00:03:31
  • ★★★ Ali treats being called a productivity guru as a bit of a joke: to him productivity is not just efficiency but a combination of meaning and fulfilment, efficiency, and enjoyment or fun. — 00:03:59

  • ★★★ Ali's core message is to optimise for enjoyment, journey before destination: if you have fun doing what you do, you become more productive as a side effect and will not need productivity videos. — 00:04:28 · journey before destination

    “optimize for enjoyment, journey before destination”

  • ★★★ Ali is moving to London in about two weeks and plans to take boxing or kickboxing lessons there. — 00:04:28 · London

00:05:02 — Boxing, hiring more team members, meeting YouTubers in real life, authenticity and persona

  • ★ Once he has got good at boxing or kickboxing, Ali might challenge a fellow YouTuber to a boxing match. (playful, hedged) — 00:05:02
  • ★★★ 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. — 00:05:02 · London
  • ★★ Ali's favourite moments since starting YouTube are meeting in real life YouTubers he got to know online, such as Jack Edwards, Kharma Medic, Simon Clark and Ibz Mo, and to an extent Elizabeth Phillips, though they did not first meet because she was a YouTuber. — 00:05:32
  • ★★ Ali thinks anyone putting themselves out on the internet puts on a persona, and that this is fine. — 00:05:57
  • ★★ Ali says the authentic him often works from 8 a.m. to midnight without a break because the work is fun, but showing that online annoys people as promoting toxic productivity. — 00:06:42

00:07:27 — The coming podcast and Ben Francis, a Dyson hair dryer, typing, the Harvard rejection, dream collab

  • ★★★ Ali is launching a podcast soon, with its own YouTube channel, interviewing entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people about their journeys and how they find fulfilment in work and life. — 00:07:27
  • ★★ Ben Francis will probably be the first episode of Ali's coming interview podcast. (hedged) — 00:07:27
  • ★ The tech device Ali wants but does not have is a fancy Dyson hair dryer; he has only recently started blow-drying his hair. — 00:07:27
  • ★★ Ali applied for an exchange programme to spend a year at Harvard and was rejected, while some of his friends got in and had a great time. — 00:08:45

00:09:10 — Best advice from Anything You Want, legacy, doing things differently, managing 11 people, life goals

  • ★★ Ali's dream collaboration would be with Peter McKinnon, the person who has most inspired his YouTube channel. — 00:09:10 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Derek Sivers (quoted): Derek Sivers, in Anything You Want: never forget why you are really doing what you are doing; are you helping people, are they happy, are you happy, are you profitable? Isn't that enough? — 00:09:10 · Derek Sivers · first in: 2019-02-11, 3 Books that Changed my Life
  • ★★★ Calling Derek Sivers's advice the best he has received, Ali says it is easy to chase the next rung of the ladder hoping it brings happiness, but we do things to make ourselves happy and to help other people. — 00:09:39 · Derek Sivers
  • ★★ Ali does not care about leaving a legacy, since we will all be forgotten within a few years of dying; he wants to have on others the impact that Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, had on him through his books, podcasts and videos. — 00:10:08 · Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
  • ★★ If he could start again, Ali would pay more attention to YouTube titles and thumbnails. — 00:10:50
  • ★★ Ali wishes he had journaled more: he has been journaling daily for a couple of weeks and finds it really cool to look back at his earlier phases of regular journaling. — 00:10:50
  • ★★ 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
  • ★★ A solopreneur can move fast and change direction at will, Ali says, while a team of 11 is slower to change direction, which has been a challenge for him. — 00:11:49
  • ★★ Ali's biggest goal in life is to help people while having fun, mainly through teaching: being a teacher forever while enjoying it. — 00:12:21
  • ★★ One of Ali's current goals is to become a Gymshark athlete with six-pack abs, which very sugary bubble tea is not helping. (playful, hedged) — 00:12:21 · Gymshark
  • ★★ Another of Ali's current goals is writing a book, which has been ongoing for a while and is hard. — 00:12:21

00:12:59 — Biggest growth factor, changing course, worst moment, passive income, starting again from zero, first video

  • ★★★ Ali says consistency gives a YouTube channel its background growth, but accelerated growth comes from viral videos: putting out so many videos means one to three go viral each year, mostly by chance. — 00:13:07
  • ★★ 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
  • ★★ Ali changes his channel's course when it feels stale: medical content ran its course, then study videos, and now productivity is close to stale, especially as many people take productivity at face value. — 00:13:44
  • ★★ Ali wants to shift his channel towards a healthy, mindful way of living. — 00:14:13
  • ★★★ Ali's worst moment as a YouTuber: about to board a train, he got an email from his hospital's medical staffing department about a complaint to the hospital over his YouTube channel and had to see the deputy medical director; after days of anxiety they talked and sorted it out. — 00:14:41
  • ★★ At medical school Ali and his brother coded the question banks UCAT Ninja and BMAT Ninja, software that made passive income; if he were not a YouTuber he would be a doctor with a software startup on the side. — 00:15:20 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★★ Starting YouTube again from zero, Ali would go really specific and niche, since med-school admissions is now saturated: pick an area he really enjoys researching and make the best videos in the world on it, with James Jani levels of editing. — 00:15:50
  • ★★ At around 5,000 subscribers Ali felt he would never run out of content, because he could always do a Q&A. — 00:16:14
  • ★★ Ali wishes he had made YouTube videos around 2008-2010 as a teenager, talking about his feelings and struggles and documenting what being a teenager in 2009 was like. — 00:17:04
  • ★★★ If he had to choose, Ali would give up medicine for YouTube. — 00:17:04

00:17:19 — Giving up medicine for YouTube and counterfactual impact

  • ★★ Dr. Mike (quoted): Asked the same question in a Q&A, Dr. Mike said he would never leave medicine because he genuinely enjoys it and feels it can really help people. — 00:17:30
  • ★★★ Ali enjoys medicine but finds it not as fun as running his own business, and always knew it: he went into medical school wanting to be a part-time doctor with a tech startup on the side. — 00:17:30
  • ★★★ Ali judges impact in utilitarian, counterfactual terms: as a doctor his impact is fairly minimal, because without him the next person on the list would have got into medical school and become a doctor in his place. — 00:18:14
  • ★★★ Ali says his counterfactual impact as a YouTuber is much higher than as a doctor, since no one else would have done the same thing, judging from the messages he gets saying he changed people's lives. — 00:18:37
  • ★★ Asked how many more years he sees himself doing YouTube, Ali says forever, pointing to Seth Godin, who has blogged every day since about 1990. — 00:19:07

00:19:22 — Doing this forever, himself in five years, favourite employee, role model, favourite quote

  • ★★ Ali does not identify as a full-time YouTuber but as a part-time YouTuber doing many other things part-time; he cannot imagine moving away from video, a powerful medium for teaching, which is what he ultimately cares about. — 00:19:30
  • ★★ In five years, at 32, Ali would like to be married, maybe with a child and a second on the way, live a healthy, balanced life, do sport almost daily and host dinner parties once or twice a week. — 00:19:30
  • ★★ Professionally, in five years Ali sees himself doing medicine maybe one day a week, YouTube maybe one day a week, and spending the rest of his time reading and writing. — 00:20:12
  • ★★ Role model is too strong a word, Ali says, but Tim Ferriss comes closest, for building his brand on delivering large amounts of really good value over 15 years. — 00:20:34 · Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ The quote that has stuck with Ali is the First Ideal of the Knights Radiant from Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive: life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. — 00:21:18 · Brandon Sanderson, The Stormlight Archive, journey before destination
  • ★★★ Ali advises young entrepreneurs to find a way to enjoy the journey and make it fun: then they will enjoy it more, do more of it and have a happier life. — 00:21:18 · journey before destination
  • ★★ Ali also advises entrepreneurs to document their journey: he wishes he had shown his work more early on, as it would have been interesting to look back on. — 00:21:18 · show your work
  • ★★★ Ali's plans now are less about making money and more about teaching and inspiring people and having an impact. — 00:21:18

00:21:25 — Advice for entrepreneurs, next plans, stock portfolio, the book, friends and family

  • ★★ Ali says his stock portfolio is worth about $300K. (hedged) — 00:22:06
  • ★★ Ali says a video about his stock portfolio is coming out in a couple of weeks. — 00:22:06
  • ★★★ Ali's book is still at the book proposal stage: he struggles to write consistently, less from lack of motivation than lack of space in his calendar, since the book is important but not urgent. — 00:22:34
  • ★★ Ali says he is very bad at giving attention to important but not urgent things, since something urgent comes up every hour, and needs to get better at delegating that to his team so he can focus. — 00:22:34
  • ★★ Since his channel took off, Ali's friends and family have mostly stayed exactly the same; once or twice a friend he had not seen for months joked that he was too famous for them now. — 00:23:01

00:23:26 — Choosing a major: engineering or medicine

  • ★★★ On choosing a degree, Ali says creating your own job is much more doable with engineering than medicine, where the only real option is being a doctor; with engineering and coding you can build a startup from any country. Optimise for enjoyment and things will work out. — 00:23:52

00:24:07 — Starting YouTube despite family and friends' opinions

  • ★★★ To someone held back from YouTube by family and friends' opinions, Ali says no one actually cares: they may laugh for a week or so, then see you are serious, and being a YouTuber will not make you an outcast, so give it a go. — 00:24:19
  • ★★ Ali is sad to be leaving Cambridge in about ten days as he moves to London. — 00:24:19 · Cambridge, London

00:24:43 — Something sad, something anxious, something regretted

  • ★★★ Ali has been on a few dates with a girl he quite likes and is anxious about whether she likes him back. — 00:25:00
  • ★★ Ali's only real regrets are times he was mean to people, accidentally or on purpose, usually without realising it. — 00:25:00

00:25:42 — Giveaway and sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked in the comments whether Ali speeds up his videos, the channel says he does not. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: journey before destination

Also: People: Ben Francis · Brandon Sanderson · Derek Sivers · Dr. Mike · Elizabeth · Ibz Mo · Jack Edwards · James Jani · Kharma Medic · Peter McKinnon · Seth Godin · Simon Clark · Taimur Abdaal · Tim Ferriss

Projects: Appendix · BMAT Ninja (website) · Skillshare classes · UKCAT Ninja

Works: Anything You Want · Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone · The 4-Hour Workweek · The Stormlight Archive

Organizations: Gymshark · Harvard University

Concepts: show your work · Utilitarianism

Places: Cambridge · London

Products: Apple Pencil · World of Warcraft · YouTube AdSense

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