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I Asked 5 Millionaires for Their Best Financial Advice

2023-01-31 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Arun Maini · recording, 14:01 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: Money and investing, YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present, His own products discussed

Ali shares five money lessons from his Deep Dive guests: invest in your own skills before the S&P 500 (Alex Hormozi), work at a small startup first (Daniel Priestley), find the third door (Tim Armoo), everything is downstream of lead generation (Daniel Priestley), and extraordinary results need extraordinary inputs (Arun Maini).

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Five principles of financial success from millionaire podcast guests

  • ★ Ali says many things in life matter more than money, but for many people financial independence is a goal because it unlocks autonomy and freedom. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Ali describes Alex Hormozi as a $100 million plus entrepreneur. — 00:00:29

00:00:37 — Invest in yourself first (Alex Hormozi)

  • ★★ Ali says the S&P 500 as an index fund returns about 7% a year: $100 put in this year (2023) becomes $107 next year (2024). (hedged) — 00:00:58 · S&P 500

  • ★★★ Alex Hormozi (quoted): Alex Hormozi's principle, as Ali relays it: a far better use of money than the S&P 500 is the "S and me": you get a significantly higher return investing in your own ability to make money than in any market. — 00:01:27 · S&P 500 · also in: 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You

    “You will get a significantly higher return investing in your own ability to make money”

  • ★★★ Ali says Alex Hormozi's point changed how he approaches investing: where he, like most people, would have said the S&P 500, he now tells people with spare money to invest first in their own skills and ability to make money, especially early in their career. — 00:01:56 · S&P 500

  • ★★ Ali's example of investing in yourself: spend $100 on a copywriting course, land a copywriting client for $500, and you have made a 500% return that keeps compounding as your skills grow. (hypothetical) — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali's practical takeaway: since skills stay with you for life, ask what you can invest in to improve your skills and ability to make money, rather than a passive stock market index fund you have no control over. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Ali says Daniel Priestley became a multimillionaire at 23 by starting his own marketing agency, after two years from age 19 to 21 working at a small startup. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley (quoted): Asked by Ali whether someone who wants to get rich should work for someone else's startup, Daniel Priestley says anyone trying to become an entrepreneur gains incredible value from working at a small business or startup for at least a year or two. — 00:02:55

00:02:58 — Find work at a startup (Daniel Priestley)

  • ★★ Ali says that as one cog in a corporate machine of thousands, the kind of company that advertised at his university careers fairs, you learn a very narrow skill set, such as Excel or PowerPoint, and have no idea how the business works. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Ali says the UK has a few hundred to a few thousand businesses with over 250 employees, but about 5 million with fewer than 10. (hedged) — 00:03:53 · United Kingdom
  • ★★★ Ali highly recommends to anyone joining someone else's startup: in a business of two to four people you are an integral part of the team, see the revenue, profits and costs, and sit in on negotiations. — 00:04:22 · also in: 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley (quoted): Daniel Priestley says the skills he learned in two years at a small startup directly translated into his becoming a multimillionaire at 23. — 00:04:22
  • ★★ Ali says Tim Armoo started his company at 21 and sold it at 27 for somewhere between 20 and 50 million dollars; Tim was not allowed to give the exact figure. — 00:04:22

00:04:44 — Take the third door (Tim Armoo)

  • ★★ As a teenager running an entrepreneurship magazine for his school, Tim Armoo could not afford a ticket to a London entrepreneurship conference, so he repeatedly emailed its organiser offering to set out the chairs the day before and clear them after, in return for a free ticket. — 00:05:21 · London
  • ★★ By stacking chairs for the conference, Tim Armoo got backstage access and an interview with Richard Branson, which Ali says propelled his entrepreneurship journey. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Ali says Tim Armoo's willingness to spend a whole day stacking chairs to get into a conference shows a level of tenacity Ali has not shown himself and rarely sees in others. — 00:05:50
  • ★★★ Alex Banayan (quoted): In Alex Banayan's analogy, life is a nightclub with three doors: the queue, the door for celebrities and the privileged, and always a third door through the alley and the kitchen, which many successful people used. — 00:06:19 · first in: 2022-06-14, I Read 2,216 Resumes. Here’s How You Stand Out 🚀

00:07:10 — Deep Dive reaches 150,000 subscribers; a giveaway

  • ★★ Ali calls Tim Armoo's chair-stacking story very much third-door thinking, which reminded him of Alex Banayan's book The Third Door. — 00:07:10
  • ★★ Ali's podcast Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal has recently reached 150,000 subscribers on YouTube. — 00:07:10 · Deep Dive

00:07:39 — Everything's downstream of lead generation (Daniel Priestley)

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley's original business generated leads for other businesses, for example free introductory events on investing and budgeting for a financial planning firm, whose attendees might then want its services. — 00:07:39

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley (quoted): Daniel Priestley's principle: everything is downstream of lead generation; you could be the best business in the world at what you do, but without leads it will fail. — 00:08:37

    “the principle that Daniel taught me in this interview is that everything is downstream of lead generation”

  • ★★ Ali cites a classic startup saying: first-time founders focus on product, second-time founders on distribution. — 00:08:37

  • ★★★ Ali's business used to spend ages making a course before asking whether it was useful; now it first runs a scorecard quiz and asks on social media (for example about camera confidence) and makes a course only on market signals. — 00:09:07
  • ★★★ With a business idea, Ali advises asking first how to validate it, what the minimum viable product will be and how to generate leads, before worrying about making the product. — 00:09:36

00:10:05 — Shopify sponsor read

  • ★★ Ali says Arun Maini's YouTube channel Mrwhosetheboss has about 13 million subscribers. — 00:11:03

00:11:07 — Extraordinary results require extraordinary inputs (Arun Maini)

  • ★★ Ali says Arun Maini has been on YouTube since about 2007 and for his first several years did not show his face, too scared of being bullied at school, making hundreds of tech reviews with just his hands and voice. (hedged) — 00:11:33
  • ★★ Arun Maini says one of his recent scripts took about eight days, about a hundred hours of scripting. (hedged) — 00:12:02
  • ★★ Ali says Arun Maini spends 40 to 100 hours scripting a video. — 00:12:02
  • ★★ Ali spends maybe an hour writing some of his scripts, which he thinks is quite a lot, because he works from bullet points and riffs. (hedged) — 00:12:02
  • ★★★ Ali says the effort Arun Maini puts into his scripts seems to translate directly into the success of his YouTube channel. — 00:12:02
  • ★★ Teller (quoted): Teller of the magician duo Penn and Teller says magic is often just putting more time and effort into something than anyone else thinks remotely reasonable. — 00:12:36
  • ★★ Ali says Arun Maini uses Teller's formula, putting more time and effort into his videos than is remotely reasonable while seeming to enjoy it, which makes him very hard to compete with. — 00:12:36

  • ★★★ Ali says, as several of his podcast guests have, that extraordinary results need extraordinary inputs: it is really hard to get disproportionate success without putting in a ton of work. — 00:12:36

    “if you want extraordinary results, you need to have extraordinary inputs.”

  • ★★★ Though it is fashionable to call hustle culture bad, Ali says none of his successful guests had work-life balance in the early days of their channels or businesses; their work got them ahead, and now they may have the luxury of balance. — 00:13:05

  • ★★ Ali asks himself whether he wants an extraordinary outcome and, if so, whether he is putting in the extraordinary effort it needs, since doing the same work as everyone else cannot get him beyond everyone else's level. — 00:13:34
  • ★★ Ali's interview with Daniel Priestley, one of his favourite episodes of all time, is out on the Deep Dive podcast YouTube channel and on Spotify, iTunes and other podcast apps. — 00:13:34 · Deep Dive

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Alex Hormozi · Arun Maini · Daniel Priestley · lead generation · S&P 500 · the third door (concept) · Tim Armoo

Also: People: Alex Banayan · Gary Vaynerchuk · Richard Branson · Teller

Projects: Camera Confidence · Deep Dive

Works: The Third Door (book)

Organizations: Shopify

Concepts: index fund · minimum viable product

Places: London · United Kingdom

Also centred on Alex Hormozi: I Asked 15 Experts For Life Advice. Here's What I Learned. · $100m CEO Alex Hormozi's advice for entrepreneurs #shorts · Which business would Alex Hormozi start today? #shorts · 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You

Also centred on Arun Maini: I Asked MKBHD and Mrwhosetheboss How to Grow on YouTube

Also centred on Daniel Priestley: I Asked 15 Experts For Life Advice. Here's What I Learned. · A Multi-Millionaire's Advice on Starting a Business #shorts · 5 Steps to Start Your First Business · 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You

Also centred on lead generation: I Asked 15 Experts For Life Advice. Here's What I Learned. · 5 Steps to Start Your First Business

Also centred on the third door (concept): Smart Passive Income + The Third Door - Monthly Favourites #11 · I Read 2,216 Resumes. Here’s How You Stand Out 🚀

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