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What Does My Mum Think of Me? 4M Subscriber Q&A

2023-05-14 · Q&A video · Ali · recording, 19:56 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Business and entrepreneurship, Work and career, Goals, purpose and life design, Relationships and personal life) · mode: Answering questions · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, Family, His medical past, Lesson from a book

In a 4-million-subscriber Q&A filmed at the Ice Hotel in Kiruna, Ali names his biggest mistake (too little learning about marketing), walks through his video process, dates his book for 28 December 2023, says Shorts build awareness rather than subscribers, explains why he started Deep Dive, and advises short, personal cold emails with an easy ask and follow-ups.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Thanks for 4 million subscribers; Q&A on an Epidemic Sound trip to the Ice Hotel in Kiruna

  • ★ Ali films his 4 million subscriber Q&A on a trip with Epidemic Sound to the Ice Hotel in Kiruna, Sweden, taking questions from Twitter and Instagram. — 00:00:00 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali's channel reaches 4 million subscribers after six years; he thanks viewers, whose support lets him do it as a full-time job. — 00:00:00

00:00:36 — Biggest mistake: not paying off the ignorance tax in marketing

  • ★★ Alex Hormozi (quoted): Alex Hormozi's ignorance tax: in your first years of doing anything, much of what you do is inefficient, wrong or wasted because of what you do not know, often without knowing it. — 00:00:36
  • ★★ Ali names as one of his main mistakes that, while he usually learns alongside doing, in some areas he has defaulted to too much action and not enough learning. — 00:01:24
  • ★★★ Ali never took marketing particularly seriously until, in the last six months, his CEO coach told him to read marketing books (DotCom Secrets, Copywriting Secrets, $100M Offers); he wishes he had found them ten years earlier. — 00:01:53
  • ★★★ Ali's lesson from his marketing mistake: balance doing things with learning about what you are doing, so you level up and waste less time. — 00:02:23
  • ★★ In Ali's video process an idea goes into a Kanban board column where it needs a title, a thumbnail and a hook, because titles and thumbnails matter so much. — 00:02:23 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:02:42 — How he plans and makes his videos

  • ★★ Ali tests a video's title in a YouTube community poll before the video moves on to research or writing. — 00:03:13
  • ★ When a video needs research, Ali gives a brief to a researcher on his team or a freelancer; usually it needs none and goes straight to writing. — 00:03:13
  • ★★ Ali now writes almost all his videos himself and rarely uses a word-for-word script: he draws a spider diagram of the topic on an A3 pad, then films. — 00:03:13
  • ★★ Ali usually films a video himself at his desk, uploads the footage to Google Drive, and his editors take it from there. — 00:03:46 · Google Drive

00:04:24 — 4 million subscriber giveaway

00:05:32 — When the book is getting published: editing and release date

  • ★★★ Ali's book, two and a half years in the writing, is deep in editing with editors from Penguin and Macmillan and Rachel from his team, cutting the 110,000-word first draft to about 70,000 words. — 00:05:43 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ The tentative release date of Ali's book is 28 December 2023; he hopes it will be done by the end of the year. (hedged) — 00:05:43 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Editing his book, Ali found that cutting a chunk of chapter three broke references in chapters two and four, so putting it back together takes a lot of surgery. — 00:06:13 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Every author Ali has spoken to says a first draft is supposed to be bad but at least exists; you then chisel and refine it, like an ice sculpture. — 00:06:42
  • ★★ Ali could write a book in two months and publish it on Amazon, but thinks that would be a disservice to the audience. — 00:07:11 · Amazon
  • ★★★ Ali and his team would rather delay his book by a few months if it makes the book better, since it will stay with them for about ten years. — 00:07:11 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ For Ali, the most rewarding thing about reaching 4 million subscribers is feeling that his daily work can genuinely help at least one person, as viewers' messages tell him. — 00:07:40

00:07:55 — The most rewarding thing about 4 million subscribers

  • ★★★ Ali says the money, fame and freedom of being a large YouTuber would feel quite meaningless if he did not feel his content was helping at least one person. — 00:08:39
  • ★★ As a doctor Ali felt he made an impact only on occasional days; now the emails and comments he gets make him feel he has some impact every day. — 00:08:39

00:09:22 — Did Shorts help reach 4 million subscribers

  • ★★ Ali's channel started doing YouTube Shorts properly around November or December 2022. — 00:09:22
  • ★★★ Ali says short-form content drives far fewer subscribers than long-form content. — 00:09:22
  • ★★ Ali calls subscriber count a bit of a vanity metric and says YouTube cares less about it. — 00:09:51
  • ★★ Viewers scroll through Shorts, many in one session, whereas watching a long-form video is intentional: people click it and watch more of it. — 00:09:51
  • ★★★ Ali sees short-form content as good for broad, top-of-market awareness rather than for subscribers; his team makes Shorts anyway because people like consuming short-form content. — 00:09:51
  • ★★ Ali is fairly platform agnostic; a plus of Shorts is that the same piece goes onto Instagram and TikTok with no extra work. — 00:10:21 · Instagram, TikTok

00:10:40 — Why he started podcasting: Not Overthinking and Deep Dive

  • ★★ Not Overthinking is a sporadic podcast Ali has made with his brother for the last four years: a chill podcast where they sit down and chat. — 00:10:43 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Deep Dive, Ali's main podcast, interviews entrepreneurs, authors, academics, creators and other inspiring people about how they got where they are. — 00:10:43 · Deep Dive
  • ★★★ Ali started Deep Dive somewhat selfishly, to learn from people who have done interesting things; inviting someone onto a podcast is a better offer than asking for a chat. — 00:11:12 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Ali enjoys the Deep Dive conversations so much that he gets energy from them and can do four podcast interviews in a single day without tiring. — 00:11:48 · Deep Dive
  • ★ Ali says the podcast's profit is probably not major next to the YouTube channel or the courses, but it is super fun to do. (hedged) — 00:12:18 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Ali says he and most people he knows are genuinely very easy to reach by email; he sometimes checks all his Instagram DM requests too. — 00:12:44 · Instagram

00:12:49 — Who reads his messages, and how to write a cold email

  • ★★ Email is the best way to reach Ali, because the entrepreneurs, authors and academics he knows all check their email. — 00:13:14
  • ★ A joke among people Ali knows who get a lot of email: an email gets a reply within two minutes or not at all. (playful) — 00:13:40
  • ★★★ Ali has hired a number of people on his team who sent him the right cold email. — 00:13:40
  • ★★★ To reach someone, Ali advises a cold email that makes it very easy to say yes: personal and genuine rather than a life story, with an obvious, easy ask at the bottom. — 00:13:40
  • ★★ People get to hang out with Ali by cold emailing that they will be in London on certain dates and asking for a 20-minute coffee wherever he is; he often says yes. — 00:14:09 · London
  • ★★ People like Ali and others he knows get probably 50 to 100 cold emails a day, so a cold email needs to stand out and be personalised. (hedged) — 00:15:00
  • ★★★ Ali advises following up on a cold email again and again, nicely, because he may see an email in the middle of something and forget to check it again. — 00:15:00

00:15:36 — His goals now: work, relationships, health and fun

  • ★★ Ali thinks of goals in a few domains: work, health, relationships, and other things such as hobbies and fun. — 00:15:36
  • ★★★ Ali's big work goal is to publish a book he is proud of, dissociating himself from its commercial success and focusing on enjoying the process and learning from it. — 00:15:36 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali's general work goal is to keep doing what he does now: reading, writing, learning, teaching, going on trips, documenting things and speaking to people. — 00:16:03
  • ★★ Ali wants to make more effort to keep in touch with friends and family, with a goal for 2023 of organising group adventures and inviting friends over. — 00:16:03
  • ★★ Ali is learning to cook: every fortnight he invites friends over for a dinner party and cooks for them. — 00:16:29
  • ★★ For health, Ali started kickboxing lessons in the last month or so, for flexibility, mobility, self-defence and cardio, alongside weight training to build muscle. — 00:16:29
  • ★★ Ali would love to release an album on Spotify at some point, perhaps a cover album, and a Christmas album with his brother and friends. — 00:16:29 · Spotify, Taimur Abdaal

  • ★★★ Ali treats goals less as specific things to strive for than as a compass direction: walk towards what you see on the horizon and enjoy the journey rather than fixate on the outcome. — 00:16:29

    “goals like as specific things to strive for, but more like a compass direction.”

  • ★★★ Ali's mother is very supportive of his success but much more worried than he is about how long this kind of career will last. — 00:17:18 · Ali Abdaal's mother

00:17:28 — What his mother thinks of his success

  • ★★ Ali's mother worries that YouTube is short-lived and that, if things do not work out, he may regret leaving medicine completely. — 00:17:47 · Ali Abdaal's mother
  • ★★★ Ali worries too about where his career will be years from now, but thinks he has developed the skills to adapt to whatever happens. (hedged) — 00:18:16
  • ★★ On the entrepreneurial path, Ali says, you are never quite as secure as in a career such as medicine or law. — 00:18:16
  • ★★ Ali is very open about his own personal life, but introducing his girlfriend depends on what she is comfortable with, given the weird comments and emails he gets. — 00:18:16

00:18:44 — Will he introduce his girlfriend

  • ★★ Ali has realised that his comfort with being transparent online about his private life is far beyond what most people consider normal. — 00:19:04
  • ★★ Ali and his girlfriend are still working out whether to reveal her on the channel; it might happen or might not. (unsure) — 00:19:28

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Ali Abdaal's mother · cold email · Deep Dive · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · ignorance debt · YouTube Shorts

Also: People: Alex Hormozi · Eric Partaker · Rachel (editor, mentioned from 2022) · Taimur Abdaal

Projects: Not Overthinking · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: $100M Offers · Copywriting Secrets · DotCom Secrets

Organizations: Amazon · Instagram · Macmillan Publishers · Penguin UK · TikTok

Concepts: spider diagram

Places: Kiruna · London

Products: Epidemic Sound · Google Drive · Spotify

Also centred on cold email: The Power of Cold Emails #shorts · 7 Surprising Habits to Be a Millionaire by 30

Also centred on ignorance debt: 9 Business Lessons - How I Made $1.6m in 30 Days · 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You

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