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I Asked 15 Experts For Life Advice. Here's What I Learned.

2022-10-26 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 15:26 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: Health, sleep and habits, Relationships and personal life, Work and career) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Lesson from a book, Family, Sponsor segment present

Ali shares nine lessons from a week of recording about 15 Deep Dive podcast interviews: Francesca Specter's alonement, the Eight Sleep founders' fixed sleep schedule and sleep fitness, learning business at a small company, Cliff Weitzman's nice messages and cold DMs, deep breaths against stress, Alex Hormozi's investing in the "S&Me", and Daniel Priestley's webinar and scorecard tests of a business idea.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Nine life lessons from a week of about 15 podcast interviews

  • ★★ In the week of this video Ali recorded about 15 interviews for his Deep Dive podcast. — 00:00:00 · Deep Dive
  • ★★★ Francesca Specter, who wrote a book during the pandemic on how to spend time alone, coined the word alonement; Ali says giving a name to a thing makes you more intentional about it. — 00:00:47

00:00:48 — Lesson 1: the concept of alonement

  • ★★ The evening after interviewing Francesca Specter, Ali had a four-hour block called alonement in his calendar and went to a restaurant by himself to journal, which he found really nice. — 00:01:17
  • ★★ Ali says he struggles with spending time by himself: with a free evening he frantically messages people to see who he can hang out with. — 00:01:17
  • ★★★ Having alonement as a calendar block gave Ali something to look forward to all day; anticipation is free happiness, he says, as much of a holiday's value is looking forward to it. — 00:01:42
  • ★★ At the time of filming Ali is in the process of moving house, with a big day of packing. — 00:02:09
  • ★★ Ali interviewed Matteo and Alex, co-founders of Eight Sleep, which he describes as a $500 million sleep fitness company. — 00:02:09

00:02:10 — Lesson 2: a fixed sleeping schedule and dinner with friends at 6.30

  • ★★★ Among the essentials for good sleep, the Eight Sleep co-founders sleep and wake at the same time every day, weekends included: in bed by 10.30 pm, up at 6.30 am. — 00:02:31
  • ★★ Ali has dinner with friends many times a week; with dinners at 8 pm he would end up missing sleep or waking super late the next day. — 00:02:56
  • ★★★ Following the Eight Sleep co-founders, who eat with friends at 6 or 6.30 pm, Ali says dinner with friends need not be at 8 pm: at 6.30 he is done by about 8.30 and in bed by 10.30. — 00:03:19

00:03:28 — Emma sponsor read

00:04:44 — Lesson 3: learn the skills of entrepreneurship at a small business or startup

  • ★★ Ali says entrepreneurs Alex Hormozi, Daniel Priestley and Tim Armoo have had exits in the range of tens of millions of dollars. — 00:04:45
  • ★★★ Ali says Alex Hormozi, Daniel Priestley and Tim Armoo unanimously advise someone with a normal job who wants to start a business one day to learn business skills by working at a small business or startup for a year or two. — 00:05:13
  • ★★ Ali says the problem with a corporate job, for someone who wants to learn business, is that you are a cog in a machine and do not see how the wider machine works. — 00:05:13
  • ★★ Ali says the UK has about 5 million businesses with fewer than 10 employees, and joining one, in almost any industry, shows you how sales, marketing, operations, finance, legal and HR all work. — 00:05:43 · United Kingdom

00:06:07 — Lesson 4: send a nice message

  • ★★★ Ali calls it a great rule for life that his friend Cliff Weitzman follows: whenever he thinks something nice of someone, he messages or voice-notes it to them. — 00:06:07
  • ★ Ali's conversation with his friend Cliff Weitzman, founder and CEO of Speechify, was half about business and speed listening and half about being more intentional with relationships. — 00:06:07
  • ★★ Cliff Weitzman (quoted): Cliff Weitzman says voice-noting someone you are thinking of is a worthwhile 10 seconds of your day that makes their day and adds good vibes to the world. — 00:06:31
  • ★★ Ali spoke with neurosurgery professor Jim Doty and neuroscientist and psychiatrist Tara Swart about the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-recharge part, as against the sympathetic fight, flight or freeze mode. — 00:06:31
  • ★★ Tara Swart (quoted): Tara Swart cites American studies finding that around 75% of US office workers spend most of their workday in a sympathetic, high-stress state of the nervous system. — 00:06:31 · United States

00:06:48 — Lesson 5: take a deep breath to reset the nervous system

  • ★★★ Ali says you can reset your nervous system by taking deep breaths, as in the Apple Watch breathing exercise of breathing in and out for a minute, which activates the parasympathetic system and makes you less stressed at work. — 00:07:15 · Apple Watch

00:07:47 — Lesson 6: invest in your ability to make money, the S&Me

  • ★ Partway through filming Ali has moved into the new place. — 00:07:47

  • ★★★ Alex Hormozi (quoted): Alex Hormozi says many people make the mistake of investing in the S&P when they should be investing in the "S&Me", in themselves. — 00:08:16 · S&P 500

    “trying to invest in the S&P when they should be investing in the S&Me”

  • ★★★ With spare money such as $200, Ali advises levelling up your own skills, through a course on sales, marketing, finance, operations or camera confidence, or your industry's certifications, to raise your floor of earning capability. — 00:08:45

  • ★★★ Ali says investing in your own skills generally pays far more dividends over the long term than investing in stocks and shares. — 00:09:15
  • ★ Ali filmed the rest of the video a few days later, having gone to a Hasan Minhaj comedy show with his mum. — 00:09:15 · Ali Abdaal's mother
  • ★★ Ali loves Daniel Priestley's series of books, Entrepreneur Revolution and Oversubscribed; Priestley has a new one, Scorecard Marketing. — 00:09:15

00:09:21 — Lesson 7: a minimum viable product by free webinar or scorecard

  • ★★★ Anyone with a business idea, Ali says, should create a minimum viable product to test it without sinking lots of time and money into it. — 00:09:50
  • ★★★ Ali calls the belief that you must quit your job to work on a business idea a mistake: a minimum viable product can be built on the side in the evenings or at weekends. — 00:09:50
  • ★★ For an idea such as web design for private-practice doctors, Ali says, making the websites and brochures first would be a total waste of time while you do not know whether there is any demand. — 00:10:19
  • ★★★ Ali's first kind of minimum viable product for a service business: host a totally free webinar or event and see how many people turn up; if they do, that is your lead generation and shows at least some demand. — 00:10:48
  • ★★★ Ali's second kind of minimum viable product, from Daniel Priestley's Scorecard Marketing: a scorecard, a glorified quiz made on Google Forms, ScoreApp or similar software. — 00:10:48
  • ★★ Ali says the job is then to send traffic to the scorecard quiz through your network, Facebook or social media: if you cannot get people to fill out a free quiz, the business is probably going to fail. (hedged) — 00:11:18 · Facebook
  • ★★ Ali calls testing a service-business idea with a free webinar or a scorecard quiz absolutely game-changing, because it is accessible to anyone. — 00:11:18
  • ★★★ Every business stems from lead generation, Ali says: you have to be able to get leads before you can do anything with them. — 00:11:47
  • ★★ Ali says he will release his episode with Daniel Priestley in an upcoming season of his Deep Dive podcast. — 00:11:47 · Deep Dive

00:12:16 — Lesson 8: the concept of sleep fitness

  • ★★★ From the Eight Sleep founders Ali takes the concept of sleep fitness: just as with physical fitness, you can treat your sleep as something to optimise. — 00:12:16
  • ★★★ After a few bad nights of sleep, Ali says, treat it as you would a week or two without workouts: just get back on it. — 00:12:45
  • ★★ Ali says a mistake he has made in the past is thinking that, with his sleep schedule really bad, there was no point in trying to fix it. — 00:12:45
  • ★★ Ali passes on the Eight Sleep founders' view that sleeping appropriately is the best performance-enhancing drug we know. — 00:13:15
  • ★★★ Good sleep takes a few simple tweaks, Ali says: sleep at the same time every day, ideally, and aim for roughly eight hours a night. — 00:13:15
  • ★★ Ali advises sleeping in a slightly cool room: around 19 degrees Celsius seems a reasonable average, though it varies from person to person. (hedged) — 00:13:44
  • ★★ Ali says Cliff Weitzman has made many friends and contacts through cold emails and messages: that is how he hung out with MrBeast and met his heroes, people he hired and his current girlfriend. — 00:13:44

00:14:03 — Lesson 9: the power of sending cold messages; sign-off

  • ★★★ Ali calls sending cold emails and DMs very positive expected value: at worst they do not reply, at best you build a relationship with someone you admire; he has always been glad he sent one. — 00:14:32
  • ★★ Ali is trying to become more comfortable sending cold DMs to people he vibes with, asking to hop on a call or grab dinner. — 00:14:32

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Mentioned

Central: Alex Hormozi · alonement · Cliff Weitzman · Daniel Priestley · Francesca Specter · lead generation · minimum viable product · parasympathetic nervous system · Scorecard Marketing · sleep fitness

Also: People: Alexandra Zatarain · Ali Abdaal's mother · Andrew Huberman · Hasan Minhaj · Jim Doty · Matteo Franceschetti · MrBeast · Tara Swart · Tim Armoo

Projects: Deep Dive

Works: Entrepreneur Revolution · Oversubscribed

Organizations: Eight Sleep · Facebook · Instagram · LinkedIn · ScoreApp · Twitter

Concepts: expected value · speed listening

Places: United Kingdom · United States

Products: Apple Watch · Google Forms · S&P 500 · Speechify

Also centred on Alex Hormozi: $100m CEO Alex Hormozi's advice for entrepreneurs #shorts · Which business would Alex Hormozi start today? #shorts · I Asked 5 Millionaires for Their Best Financial Advice · 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You

Also centred on Cliff Weitzman: 7 Surprising Habits to Be a Millionaire by 30

Also centred on Daniel Priestley: A Multi-Millionaire's Advice on Starting a Business #shorts · I Asked 5 Millionaires for Their Best Financial Advice · 5 Steps to Start Your First Business · 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You

Also centred on lead generation: I Asked 5 Millionaires for Their Best Financial Advice · 5 Steps to Start Your First Business

Also centred on minimum viable product: 5 Steps to Start Your First Business

Also centred on parasympathetic nervous system: The Science of Stress & How to Reduce It #shorts

Also centred on Scorecard Marketing: 15 Incredible Books to Read in 2026

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