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3 Bad Habits Holding You Back from Financial Freedom

2024-08-20 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 14:28 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: Money and investing) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Sponsor segment present, Lesson from a book

Ali defines financial freedom, after Scott Galloway, as passive income above your burn rate, prefers MJ DeMarco's fast lane of building an asset or business, and names three bad habits that hold people back: ignorance of the skill, inaction and environmental inertia.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Introduction: three bad habits and Ali's own path to financial freedom

  • ★★ Ali says he has documented his journey on his channel for seven years, from medical student to building a business that made him financially free; he has pursued financial freedom for 15 years and it took him maybe 12. (hedged) — 00:00:00

  • ★★★ Ali uses Scott Galloway's definition of financial freedom, passive income that exceeds your burn rate, which leaves two levers: increase passive income or decrease spending, ideally both. — 00:00:29 · work optional, passive income

    “financial freedom is when your passive income exceeds your burn rate”

00:00:42 — The philosophy of financial freedom: passive income above the burn rate, the slow lane and the fast lane

  • ★★ The true value of financial freedom, Ali says, is the freedom to do what you want, when and with whom, including choosing your work, since you will probably still want to work. (hedged) — 00:01:13 · work optional
  • ★★ MJ DeMarco (quoted): In The Millionaire Fastlane, MJ DeMarco describes two paths to financial freedom, the slow lane and the fast lane, and defines even the fast lane as about 10 years long. — 00:01:38
  • ★★ In the slow lane, Ali explains, you invest income from a job, for example in an S&P 500 index fund, and use the 4% rule: from a million pounds you can safely withdraw 4%, £40K a year, without touching the principal. — 00:02:04 · S&P 500
  • ★★★ Ali focuses on the fast lane to financial freedom: building an asset or a business, faster than saving and investing from a job, though it still probably takes about 10 years. (hedged) — 00:03:01
  • ★★ Saving 20% of a salary for 20 years holds little appeal for Ali: he wants financial freedom as soon as possible, to spend his time, his most valuable non-renewable resource, on what he wants rather than a day job. — 00:03:30

00:04:15 — Habit 1, the habit of ignorance: building businesses and assets is a skill

  • ★★★ Building businesses and assets that give enough passive income for financial freedom is a skill, not luck, Ali says, though luck is involved as in everything in life. — 00:04:15 · passive income
  • ★★ If he lost all his money, fame and YouTube channel, Ali suspects he would be financially free again within a year, because of the skill he has built over 15 years; Elon Musk would manage it fairly quickly too. (hypothetical, hedged) — 00:04:38

  • ★★★ Ali's first bad habit holding people back from financial freedom is the habit of ignorance: not seeing that building assets and businesses is a learnable skill, or not putting in the time to learn the map. — 00:05:08

    “bad habit number one is the habit of ignorance”

00:05:31 — Sponsor read for Trading 212

00:06:36 — Learning the skill: books, podcasts and videos as a map of paths to financial freedom

  • ★★★ To learn the skill of building businesses, Ali says, carve out time in your day for books, audiobooks, podcasts and YouTube videos; on his podcast entrepreneurs break down how they grew multimillion-dollar businesses. — 00:06:38 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Ali's business books for learning to build businesses: Noah Kagan's Million Dollar Weekend, MJ DeMarco's The Millionaire Fastlane, Codie Sanchez's new book, which he calls very good, Ankur Warikoo's Make Epic Money, Russell Brunson's DotCom Secrets and anything by Alex Hormozi. — 00:06:50 · Noah Kagan, Alex Hormozi
  • ★★ Ali estimates that maybe about 80% of the people he speaks to about financial freedom do not read, listen to or watch enough about building businesses. (hedged) — 00:07:09

  • ★★★ Learning alone does not give you the skill of building businesses, Ali says, you must also act; but learning gives your mind a firmware update that shows the map, like a foggy forest whose destination is financial freedom. — 00:07:45

    “it gives you a firmware update in your own mind”

  • ★★★ Each entrepreneur's breakdown, such as building a ghostwriting agency to a million dollars a year or Ali's own YouTube channel, shows another path; Ali says it is useful to know about 10 paths to financial freedom before choosing one to act on. — 00:08:56

  • ★★★ Ali's second bad habit is the habit of inaction: even with a sense of the map to financial freedom, staying exactly where you are and not taking action. — 00:08:56

    “Bad habit number two is the habit of inaction.”

00:09:22 — Habit 2, the habit of inaction: carving out time to act

  • ★★ Many people who aspire to financial freedom, Ali says, are stuck consuming content without ever taking the first step towards making their first dollar on the internet. — 00:09:40
  • ★★ Ali says the probably hundreds of financially free people he has interviewed were all busy, with life, family and job commitments, and built their asset or business in their spare time. — 00:10:35
  • ★★ A friend of Ali's keeps Monday and Tuesday evenings after work, every week without fail, for his YouTube channel and course business, turning down invitations those nights and seeing friends on the other five days. — 00:10:35
  • ★★★ Ali suggests carving out fixed time, such as an hour every morning before work, to act on financial freedom; learning can happen while doing laundry or commuting, but action needs blocks of at least an hour. — 00:11:10
  • ★★ Many people aspire to financial freedom but very few put in the time, Ali says: for most of them, their calendar does not reflect that goal. — 00:11:41

  • ★★★ Ali's third bad habit is environmental inertia: operating on default instead of designing your environment to bring you into contact with people and inspiration that help on the way to financial freedom. — 00:11:41

    “a habit that i like to call environmental inertia”

00:11:57 — Habit 3, environmental inertia: surrounding yourself with people on the same journey

  • ★★★ One of the easiest ways to speed up reaching financial freedom, Ali says, is to surround yourself with people on the same journey, whether level with you, a few steps ahead or behind. — 00:12:20
  • ★★ Motivation on the way to financial freedom always dips, waxing and waning like a sine wave, Ali says, and people around you on the same journey understand and give you energy in those moments. — 00:12:20
  • ★★ If all your friends have normal jobs and do not aspire to financial freedom, Ali says, you will find that journey very difficult on your own; it is much easier with other people. — 00:13:08
  • ★★★ To build a network of entrepreneurs, Ali suggests going to events for aspiring entrepreneurs, classes and meetups, and cold-messaging local entrepreneurs on Twitter or Instagram to ask them for coffee or lunch. — 00:13:08 · Twitter, Instagram

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: environmental inertia · fast lane · passive income · work optional

Also: People: Alex Hormozi · Ankur Warikoo · Cody Sanchez · Elon Musk · MJ DeMarco · Noah Kagan · Russell Brunson · Scott Galloway

Projects: Deep Dive

Works: DotCom Secrets · Make Epic Money · Million Dollar Weekend · The Millionaire Fastlane

Organizations: Instagram · Trading 212 · Twitter

Concepts: four percent rule · ghostwriting · index fund

Products: S&P 500

Only in the description or credits: Main Street Millionaire

Also centred on fast lane: How to Invest for Beginners (2026)

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