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How to Build a Business Part-Time

2024-11-29 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 36:16 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, His own products discussed, AI, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Sponsor segment present

In a Business Class episode, Ali gives a four-step system for building a business alongside a full-time job: count your free hours in a 168-hour calendar and find your golden hours; spend only the time you want to, since enjoyment beats discipline; create time by cutting entertainment and using weekend mornings and micro moments; and time-stack learning and drafting onto commutes and walks.

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: finding the time to build a business while holding a job

  • ★★ Ali built and sold his first six-figure business while at medical school at Cambridge University, and grew his next business to six figures while working full time as a doctor in the UK. — 00:00:29 · University of Cambridge
  • ★ This video is an episode of Business Class, Ali's ongoing series on starting and growing an online business so as to reach what he calls the three Fs: fun, fulfilment and financial freedom. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ A few years ago Ali quit his day job to focus on his business, which now generates seven figures a year in profit. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali presents a four-step system for finding the time to build any business alongside a full-time job, the system he used when he worked as a doctor. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — Step one, the reality check: the 168-hour calendar, golden hours, and why not to quit the day job

  • ★★ Everyone has the same 168 hours a week, Ali says; the only difference between you, him, Elon Musk or Beyoncé is how that time is used. — 00:02:29
  • ★★ In Ali's example week of eight hours' sleep a night, a nine-to-five job with a one-hour commute each way and three hours a day of chores, 41 hours of flexible time remain. — 00:03:57
  • ★★★ Ali advises blocking your non-negotiables, such as sleep, work, commute, chores and family dinners, into an ideal-week calendar to see where your time currently goes and where the spare time is. — 00:04:26 · Trident calendar system
  • ★★★ People Ali has seen build a successful business on the side within a couple of years generally spent 10 to 15 hours a week on it, though it can be done with less or more. — 00:04:56
  • ★★ The less time you have for a business, Ali says, the more strategic you must be in prioritising; the quality of the time you spend on it matters far more than the quantity. — 00:04:56

  • ★★★ Ali's next step is to find your golden hours: the quality time blocks that suit your personality, energy levels and chronotype; for a groggy non-morning person, 7 a.m. is not one. — 00:05:30

    “By golden hours, I mean the actual quality time blocks.”

  • ★★ Once he applied feel-good productivity to make his job energising, Ali came home from work as a doctor full of energy, and 6 to 9 p.m. most days became his golden hours for the YouTube channel. — 00:06:00 · Feel-Good Productivity (book), feel-good productivity (concept)

  • ★ Those three evening hours were Ali's editing time, when he was focused, creative and energised. — 00:06:29
  • ★★ Ali, who did not like filming in the evenings as a doctor, batched his filming on weekends or days off when he had no social events. — 00:06:29
  • ★★ Tintin, a friend on Ali's team, works on his business every Monday and Tuesday evening from about 6 to 10 p.m., writing his YouTube newsletter or building his course: his non-negotiable time. — 00:06:58
  • ★★★ Ali has never met anyone who succeeded at building a business while holding a job without specific time windows for working on it. — 00:06:58 · time-blocking
  • ★★★ Ali's general advice is not to quit your job before your business is off the ground. — 00:07:57
  • ★★ After medical school and two years working as a doctor, Ali was not going to throw that away on a gamble; he wanted his business to be working and able to support him first. — 00:07:57
  • ★★ Ali's first reason to keep a job while building a business: it removes financial insecurity, and financial insecurity and fear generally lead to bad business decisions. — 00:08:26
  • ★★★ Ali's second reason: a day job forces you to use your time strategically; with ten times the hours a business does not grow ten times, because people screw around and take on needless projects, as Parkinson's law says work expands to fill the time. — 00:08:55
  • ★★★ Working 60 hours a week as a doctor, Ali made three videos a week; once he quit and had the whole week free, he made about half a video a week and procrastinated all day. — 00:08:55
  • ★★ Ali's third reason: a job lets you test and iterate on business ideas without risking your livelihood, because business is probabilistic and most businesses fail. — 00:09:43

00:10:13 — Sponsor read for HubSpot's copywriting crash course

  • ★★ With 10 to 15 hours a week, Ali suggests using them well to build the business while keeping the day job, and quitting only once the business makes plenty of money. — 00:10:13

00:11:11 — Step two, the want factor: how much time you want to spend, and why discipline isn't enough

  • ★★★ Step two of Ali's system is to ask how much time you want to spend on your business, not how much time you should spend on it. — 00:11:11
  • ★★ A doctor friend of Ali's disciplined himself to work evenings and weekends on a business he didn't really want to do, burned out after about three months and quit; he still works as a doctor and looks for side hustles. — 00:11:50
  • ★★ Ali says his doctor friend's problem is wanting to get rich quick with a business that involves no work; he has seen the pattern in many people, and you need to enjoy what you are doing. — 00:12:19
  • ★★ Ali thinks of business as the game of entrepreneurship, like a video game: after more than ten years, with money no longer the issue, on weekends he sometimes plays World of Warcraft but mostly enjoys working on the business. — 00:12:19 · World of Warcraft

  • ★★★ Guilting yourself into a business as a "should" will probably fail and burn you out, Ali says: enjoyment is a far more efficient way of getting something done than discipline. — 00:13:37

    “enjoyment is a far more efficient way of getting something done than discipline”

  • ★★★ People who succeed in business enjoy working on it, Ali says; anyone using a business, channel, book or art mainly as a vehicle for money, without enjoying the journey, will burn out. — 00:14:04

  • ★★ Ali calls building a business a massive emotional, spiritual and personal-development journey: if you don't enjoy it, you will quit. — 00:14:33
  • ★★★ Ali advises being conservative: even with 15 golden hours free, start with the two to five hours a week you want to spend on a business, then flex up, since early success fuels motivation and enjoyment. — 00:15:15
  • ★★★ If the time you want to spend on a business of your own is zero, Ali says, probably don't start one: it is not for everyone. — 00:15:46
  • ★★ Whatever the world says about quitting your job, starting a business and passive income, Ali says a business you don't enjoy is just a second prison on top of your day job. — 00:15:46 · passive income
  • ★★ Business owners mostly trade a nine-to-five for a 24/7, Ali says: he works far more hours than as a doctor, but can do what he wants from wherever he wants and makes far more money. — 00:16:54
  • ★★ Without enjoying the process, Ali says, a business is just another job: more stressful, a gamble on pay, more emotionally taxing and far more hours. — 00:17:32
  • ★★ Try a business before ruling it out, Ali says, as he only found he enjoyed dance lessons when preparing for his wedding dance; but be honest whether it is something you want or something you tell yourself you should do. — 00:17:59

00:18:27 — A new filming day; the bonus skill of shortening transitions between activities

  • ★ Ali ran out of time to film the whole video in one day, so he filmed the second half the following day. — 00:18:27
  • ★★ When a golden hour runs out mid-task, Ali says, you can just stop the task and resume it the next day, as he did by filming this video over two days. — 00:18:27
  • ★★ Ali retells a story from his friend Nat Eliason's newsletter: in Tough Mudder-style obstacle races, the best competitors are not faster runners but cut the time it takes to switch between activities. — 00:18:57
  • ★★★ Building a business alongside a job is less about efficiency within your golden hours than about shortening the transition into them, Ali says. — 00:20:12

00:21:10 — Step three, the time creation formula: entertainment audit, the work versus chill-o-meter, weekends and micro moments

  • ★★ Early in medical school Ali made a rule to watch TV only with friends, which freed about two hours a day that he no longer spent on random Netflix shows. — 00:21:39 · Netflix
  • ★★★ Without cutting out all entertainment, Ali suggests a strategic entertainment audit: check whether the hours on Netflix, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube are used efficiently and effectively. — 00:22:04 · Netflix, Instagram, TikTok
  • ★★ Approached intentionally, you need less entertainment than you think, Ali says: instead of three hours of scrolling Instagram, half an hour of a long documentary, a YouTube video or a book. — 00:22:55 · Instagram
  • ★★★ To critics who say he promotes toxic productivity and hustle culture, Ali answers that a business that lets you quit your job and earn six figures needs you to put in the work. — 00:24:12
  • ★★ Ali takes the "work versus chill-o-meter" from YouTuber Charlie Morgan: a spectrum of how much you want to work and how much you want to chill. — 00:24:12
  • ★★★ Wanting mostly to chill is fine, Ali says, but a business that lets you quit your job means going towards the work or hustle end of the spectrum, at least for a while. — 00:24:40
  • ★★ With a team and a general manager, Ali says he is now chilling: he can choose not to film a video and could probably work three days a month if he wanted. (hedged) — 00:24:40
  • ★★ A friend of Ali's works one day a month on a business with $10 million a year in revenue at a 50% margin, about $5 million in profit, because his team and processes are in place. — 00:25:16
  • ★★★ No one Ali has met who built a business that let them quit their job did it without a period of grind and hustle. — 00:25:16
  • ★★ Ali would rather have fun, fulfilment, financial freedom and flexibility than 15 hours a week of Netflix, and says his life took that sacrifice. — 00:25:56 · Netflix
  • ★★ Enjoying the business more than watching The Office alone, Ali cut his TV time and worked in his university library among friends doing their own work, which made it fun. — 00:26:54
  • ★★★ Ali suggests using weekend mornings: wake at 8 a.m., before your family, spend two to four concerted hours on your business and keep the rest of the day for family. — 00:27:23
  • ★★ Ali and most entrepreneurs he knows love working on their businesses so much that they choose to do it on some weekends. — 00:28:32
  • ★★ A rule against working on weekends is fine, Ali says, but then the time must come from elsewhere: without the currency of time invested, nothing happens in a business. — 00:29:02
  • ★★★ Ali advises using micro moments, such as ten minutes in a checkout queue or between meetings, for business strategy or planning your next YouTube video. — 00:29:31
  • ★★ With ChatGPT or Claude you can whip up a sales page on your phone in about ten minutes, Ali says. — 00:29:31 · landing page
  • ★★ As a doctor, in 10 to 15 minutes of dead time waiting for scan results, while colleagues scrolled Instagram, Ali planned his next YouTube video or added talking points for his next online course. — 00:30:18 · Instagram

00:30:48 — Step four, time stacking: repurposed time on commutes, chores and walks with VoicePal

  • ★★ Ali suggests keeping a menu of options: the highest-priority business tasks for your golden hours and a separate menu for micro moments. — 00:30:48
  • ★★★ Step four of Ali's system is time stacking: besides focused golden hours there is repurposed time, when you are doing something else that can be repurposed to work on your business. — 00:30:48
  • ★★ On a commute, Ali suggests listening to business audiobooks and podcasts to learn about the business you are growing. — 00:31:34
  • ★★ As a doctor, Ali spent about half his commutes on business podcasts and half on fantasy audiobooks: Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive, then The Wheel of Time, which he got addicted to. — 00:31:34 · Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive, The Wheel of Time
  • ★ While doing the dishes or cleaning, Ali watched YouTube videos from other business owners and online courses on growing a business. — 00:32:04
  • ★★ VoicePal, the app Ali and his team built, acts as a ghostwriter, he says: you talk, it asks sensible follow-up questions and turns what you said into a first draft that sounds like you. — 00:32:33
  • ★★ Ali planned this video on a walk of about 10,000 steps, talking it through in VoicePal, then pasted it into Notion and fleshed out the script. — 00:32:33 · Notion
  • ★★ Much business work is writing, such as emails, sales pages and email sequences, which Ali says can be done while walking with an app like VoicePal: one thing with your body, another with your brain. — 00:33:02
  • ★★★ Time-stacking every moment would be miserable and a recipe for burnout, Ali says: repurposed time is not deep-work focus time, so client calls and complex problem solving need dedicated time. — 00:33:35 · deep work (concept)
  • ★★ The goal is not to optimise every minute but to be intentional, Ali says: business audiobooks instead of BBC Radio 1 on a two-hour daily commute would mean 10 hours a week of learning. — 00:34:05

00:34:34 — The business email list and the time-stacking challenge

  • ★★ Ali plans to send many more emails over the next few months to a business segment of his email list, on how his team built its online education business and what he learns from mentors. — 00:34:34
  • ★★ Ali's challenge: this week (week of 25 November 2024), pick one activity you can time-stack with work on your business. — 00:35:34

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: golden hours · time stacking · VoicePal

Also: People: Brandon Sanderson · Charlie Morgan · Elon Musk · Nat Eliason · Tintin

Projects: Business Class

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Friends · Mistborn · The Office · The Stormlight Archive · The Wheel of Time

Organizations: Instagram · Netflix · TikTok · University of Cambridge

Concepts: chronotype · deep work (concept) · freedom profile · hustle culture · landing page · Parkinson's law · passive income · stacking the deck · time management · Trident calendar system

Places: Hong Kong

Products: Apple Calendar · ChatGPT · Claude · Google Calendar · Notion · Notion Calendar · World of Warcraft

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