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8 Steps That Got Me Millions of Subscribers on YouTube

2023-09-01 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Productivity and time, Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His medical past, His own numbers, Lesson from a book

Six years after starting his channel in medical school, Ali lists eight habits behind his YouTube success: using spare minutes, levelling up skills, building systems like a franchise, treating YouTube as an infinite game, quantity over perfection, seeing ideas everywhere, patience with the flywheel, and journey before destination.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Who he is: six years on YouTube, from medical school and junior-doctor years to quitting his job in 2021

  • ★★★ Ali started his YouTube channel in 2017, in his final year of medical school, made one or two videos a week, and kept going while working full-time as a junior doctor in the NHS until the YouTube business let him quit his job in 2021. — 00:00:00 · NHS
  • ★★ Ali says six years of YouTube have taught him how to make it all work in only five to ten hours a week. — 00:00:00

00:00:37 — The McDonald's habit: use spare minutes for creative work instead of scrolling

  • ★★★ Ali's first habit, learned from the author Matthew Dicks: when you have a few spare minutes, such as seven minutes waiting for someone in a McDonald's, make progress on your creative project instead of scrolling social media. — 00:00:37 · McDonald's
  • ★★ At work as a doctor, Ali found spare minutes between seeing patients and waiting for blood results or scans, and mostly used them to note new video ideas in his notes app. — 00:01:02

00:01:28 — The Avatar habit: keep levelling up, like a character in a video game

  • ★★★ Ali's second habit, inspired by Aang levelling up in Avatar: consistently level up, treating yourself as a character in a video game and asking which skills you need to learn next. — 00:01:30
  • ★★ Ali's levelling up went from getting comfortable talking on camera, to editing transitions and animations, to sales, marketing, operations, delegation, hiring and leading a team as he built a business around his channel. — 00:02:17
  • ★★★ Ali says building a successful YouTube channel also means building a sustainable business to support it, so that you do not rely only on AdSense and brand deals for all your income. — 00:02:17

00:02:47 — The free YouTube growth scorecard

00:03:16 — The Starbucks habit: build systems as if creating a franchise

  • ★★★ Ali's third habit, adopted in 2019 after reading Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited: build systems as if creating a franchise like Starbucks, so that the results of the business and channel depend on the system rather than on individual people. — 00:03:45 · The E-Myth
  • ★★ Ali once would have found systems, operations and processes boring, but building them was one of the main habits that made his channel take off and made it far easier to stay consistent. — 00:04:14

00:04:43 — The infinite game habit: play YouTube to keep playing, not to win

  • ★★★ Ali's fourth habit: almost from day one he has treated YouTube as an infinite game, played to keep playing rather than to win, which he credits for lasting six years on YouTube. — 00:05:10
  • ★★ Ali's infinite-game test: he would keep making YouTube videos even if he won the lottery, because he enjoys sharing, so he asks which videos he would make even if he were not trying to make money from them. — 00:05:39
  • ★★ Treating YouTube as an infinite game means Ali does not take sponsorships he does not believe in, which he calls finite-game thinking that erodes his audience's trust. — 00:05:39
  • ★★ When planning videos, Ali does not pick them because he thinks they will do well; he asks what video he would make if he did not care about the numbers. — 00:06:09
  • ★★ Ali retells the pottery-class story he often returns to: of a class split between making one pot in 30 days and 30 pots in 30 days, all ten best pots came from the quantity group. — 00:06:09

00:06:20 — The pottery class habit: quantity over perfection

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth habit: when tempted to spend a whole month perfecting one video instead of making one or two a week, he remembers the pottery class and that magic often comes from doing a thing repeatedly. — 00:07:07

00:07:36 — The birdsong habit: a creator sees ideas everywhere

  • ★★ Ali compares becoming a creator to learning birdsong: a firmware update in your mind after which the books, shows and podcasts you consume stop being a mass of content and you start seeing ideas everywhere. — 00:08:19
  • ★★★ Ali's sixth habit: notice what you already listen to and consume day to day and use it as inspiration for ideas for your creative project, whether a business, a YouTube channel or your day job. — 00:08:48
  • ★★ Watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the story of Neville giving Harry Gillyweed sparked an idea for the book Ali is writing, which now includes it as a quick story. — 00:08:48 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:09:13 — The flywheel habit: micro speed, macro patience

  • ★★★ Ali's seventh habit: keep the image of a flywheel in mind; early in a channel or business you put in a lot of effort for few results, so be patient, and over time the same effort keeps the flywheel spinning. — 00:09:17
  • ★★★ Ali says he puts no more personal effort into his channel than five years ago, when his videos got a couple of hundred views; now they get a couple of hundred thousand, thanks to compounding. (hedged) — 00:09:47

  • ★★ Ali likes Gary Vaynerchuk's "micro speed, macro patience": work fast in the moment, using spare minutes, but expect results slowly and keep feeding the flywheel. — 00:09:47 · Gary Vaynerchuk

    “micro speed, macro patience”

00:10:25 — The Stormlight habit: journey before destination

  • ★★★ Ali's eighth habit, journey before destination: he has kept doing YouTube for six years by focusing on enjoying the journey and sharing things that help at least one person, not on subscriber or revenue targets or quitting a job. — 00:10:45 · journey before destination
  • ★★ Ali has a post-it note on his computer monitor that asks "What would this look like if it were fun?", which makes him step back when he gets too serious about making a video. — 00:10:45
  • ★★★ Ali says the point of doing YouTube is not to make money but to make videos that help people while having fun, and if it is not fun there is no point doing it. — 00:11:14

00:11:35 — Pointer to his three-part blueprint video and sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked what Ali's new microphone in this video is called, the channel answers that it is the Elgato Wave:3. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: infinite game · journey before destination

Also: People: Brandon Sanderson · Gary Vaynerchuk · Matthew Dicks · Michael Gerber

Works: Avatar: The Last Airbender · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire · The E-Myth · The Stormlight Archive

Organizations: McDonald's · NHS · Starbucks

Concepts: flywheel · parable of the pottery class

Characters: Aang · Neville

Products: YouTube AdSense

Only in the description or credits: Elgato Wave:3

Also centred on infinite game: How I Gained 1 MILLION Subscribers · Everything's Changing - Life Update · I Asked MKBHD and Mrwhosetheboss How to Grow on YouTube

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