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How to Start a Business from Nothing

2021-08-25 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 16:25 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: Work and career) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

After things are stolen from his car, Ali lays out how he would build a business from nothing: three principles (build in public, give value first without expecting a return, target a market of people you care about) and five steps (learn a monetisable skill such as video editing for YouTubers, work for them for free, charge for it, productise the service, hire).

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Stuff stolen from his car; how he would rebuild if he lost everything

  • ★★ Ali recently had a bunch of things stolen from his car, including his MacBook, iPad, cameras and microphones, which set him thinking about how he would rebuild from nothing. — 00:00:00 · MacBook, iPad

00:00:41 — Principle one: build in public

  • ★★★ Ali's first principle for starting from scratch is to build in public: document the journey of building your venture, an easy way to build the right sort of audience. — 00:00:58 · show your work
  • ★★ Building any new venture, Ali would summarise the key insights of every book that helps him, put them out for free on a blog and share the link on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. — 00:01:23 · show your work, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
  • ★★ Gary Vaynerchuk (quoted): Gary Vaynerchuk says giving and doing things in business without expecting a return from the other person is probably the greatest leverage you can deploy. (hedged) — 00:01:52 · Gary Vaynerchuk

00:01:54 — Principle two: provide value first, with Gary Vaynerchuk

  • ★★★ Ali's second principle is to provide value with no expectation of anything in return: building a business, he would not try to sell anything to his audience or push them onto his mailing list. — 00:02:21 · Gary Vaynerchuk
  • ★★★ Ali's third principle is to target a market of people you actually care about: for him YouTubers, creators and bloggers; he would not build a business for new mothers. — 00:02:51

00:03:01 — Principle three: target the market you care about, with Steve Jobs on passion

  • ★★ Steve Jobs (quoted): Steve Jobs says you need a lot of passion for what you do, because it is so hard that without it any rational person would give up. — 00:03:20
  • ★★ One way to raise the odds of enjoying a business you build from scratch, Ali says, is to target the right sort of audience for it. — 00:03:46
  • ★★★ Ali's first step is to learn a monetisable skill that helps the people you care about; for him those would be YouTubers. — 00:04:16

00:04:28 — Step one: learn a monetisable skill that helps YouTubers

  • ★★ Video editing is the first skill Ali names for serving YouTubers: every YouTuber beyond a certain size needs help with editing, and editing for one makes friends with them and their network. — 00:04:45
  • ★★ Every YouTuber needs thumbnails, Ali says, so someone into graphic design can become a thumbnail artist. — 00:04:45
  • ★★ Many YouTubers need their videos converted into blog posts, Ali says, something he does for his website, as does his friend Thomas Frank. — 00:04:45 · Thomas Frank
  • ★★ Many YouTubers want their videos written up as Twitter threads to grow on Twitter, Ali says, and no one really provides that service. — 00:05:14 · Twitter
  • ★★ Not knowing how to edit, Ali would get a part-time job, save about 700 pounds for a second-hand MacBook and learn iMovie from his Skillshare class or free YouTube tutorials, a few hours a day for a few weeks. — 00:05:43 · MacBook
  • ★★★ Ali's second step is to work for the people of your chosen market for free, without asking permission, while documenting the journey; he thinks the free part is crucial. — 00:05:43 · show your work

00:06:02 — Step two: offer your services for free, without permission, documenting the journey

  • ★★ Starting out as an editor, Ali would email YouTubers he likes, above all smaller ones with 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers, since most bigger ones already have editors. — 00:06:13
  • ★★ In a personal email rather than a copied message, Ali would offer to edit a YouTuber's next video in their style completely free from their raw files, and to talk about paid work later if they like it. — 00:06:42 · Google Drive
  • ★★ Offer free editing to enough YouTubers, Ali says, and there is almost no way someone will not reply and send their footage. — 00:06:42
  • ★★ Some free work needs no permission, Ali says: find YouTubers you like, redesign their thumbnails in their current style and email them, explaining why the new ones would work better. — 00:07:11
  • ★★ Two people in four years have sent Ali redesigned thumbnails; he A/B tested them with TubeBuddy and theirs did worse than his, but he respected the hustle of emailing with the work already done. — 00:07:55
  • ★★ A would-be writer, Ali says, can convert a favourite YouTuber's video into a tweet thread ready to paste onto Twitter and send it to them. — 00:08:45 · Twitter
  • ★★ While doing free work, Ali would document the journey on his own YouTube channel or, if a channel is too hard, through a blog and Twitter threads. — 00:09:14 · show your work, Twitter
  • ★★ Once the free work gives him a portfolio, Ali would build a personal website for it with something like Ghost or Squarespace. — 00:09:14 · Ghost, Squarespace
  • ★★★ Ali's third step is turning the free work into a paid gig, which he says is then pretty easy with decent samples of work and testimonials from the people you worked for free. — 00:09:43

00:09:59 — Step three: turn it into a paid gig

  • ★★ Ali would tell those he worked for free what he would charge per hour, which they would probably accept if reasonable, offer free work to others in the market, and make a page of prices and pricing plans. (hedged) — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Turning freelancer, Ali would read books about the psychology of pricing and everything he could find on how to price his services by the hour. — 00:10:13
  • ★★★ Ali's fourth step, after building up some money in the bank, is to productise the service. — 00:10:42
  • ★★ Take Your Shot, by Ali's friend Robin Waite, changed how Ali approaches pricing: an engaging story of a golf teacher charging by the hour whose new client happens to be a business coach. — 00:10:42

00:10:54 — Step four: productise the service, with Take Your Shot

  • ★★ Moving from hourly charging to productised pricing, such as a set of lessons for a fixed sum with a stated outcome and a money-back guarantee, can transform your income almost overnight, Ali says; as an editor he would sell a package such as four videos a month. — 00:11:11

  • ★★★ Ali does almost nothing charged by the hour: he turns what he offers into products such as his live online course, the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, and does no one-on-one coaching because he does not believe in charging by the hour. — 00:11:40 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

    “I don't do one-on-one coaching because I don't believe in charging by the hour.”

  • ★ Ali is working on his Productivity for Lazy People course, packaging a decade of his insights about productivity with his productivity system; a mailing list gives early-bird access. — 00:12:10

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth step, once productised services bring even more money into the bank, is to hire people. — 00:12:10
  • ★★ To learn how a profitable solo entrepreneur or freelancer brings other people on board, Ali would read business books such as The E-Myth Revisited and Traction. — 00:12:10

00:12:35 — Step five: hire people, with The E-Myth Revisited and Traction

  • ★★ Starting from scratch, Ali is pretty confident that within maybe two or three years an editing, writing or graphic design business for YouTubers would let him comfortably hire people and offload some of the work. (hypothetical) — 00:12:54
  • ★★ Following Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited, Ali would build the business so that its results are delivered by the system rather than by individuals. — 00:13:24
  • ★★ Through all five steps Ali would build a personal audience by documenting the build, by then probably a few thousand or even tens of thousands of subscribers on his email list or Twitter. (hedged) — 00:13:24 · show your work, Twitter

00:13:53 — Learning to code as a monetisable skill

  • ★★ Ali could later turn such a journey into a course, but by then, he says, he would have a successful, profitable business he enjoyed and would not really need to sell courses to his audience. (hypothetical) — 00:13:53
  • ★★ As a monetisable skill Ali always recommends learning to code, because it is such an in-demand skill, with a constant shortage of software engineers and developers. — 00:13:53
  • ★★ Learning to code at around 13, Ali says, was how he started on his whole journey of entrepreneurship, using free material on the internet and random books from charity shops. — 00:14:22

00:14:51 — Brilliant sponsor read

00:15:31 — Summary of the three principles and five steps; sign-off

  • ★ Ali's earlier video of nine passive-income ideas showed him making $27,000 a week at the time of recording; he says it is a little more now. — 00:15:50 · passive income

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): The channel says the things stolen from Ali's car were not insured. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: productised services · show your work · Take Your Shot

Also: People: Gary Vaynerchuk · Michael Gerber · Robin Waite · Steve Jobs · Thomas Frank

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Productivity for Lazy People

Works: The E-Myth · Traction

Organizations: Twitter

Concepts: passive income

Products: Ghost · iMovie · MacBook · Notion · Squarespace · TubeBuddy

Also centred on productised services: How I Built 9 Streams of Income By 23

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