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My Honest Advice to Anyone Starting YouTube in 2026

2025-01-10 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 29:45 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past, Family

Ali's honest advice to aspiring YouTubers: use his money-versus-fun motivation matrix to see whether you are business-first or creator-first, never do YouTube for money without a business, make your first seven videos, then choose a committed relationship with YouTube and build his five Cs: courage, consistency, clarity, content and cash.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Welcome to Creator Club; Ali's YouTube journey and the Part-Time YouTuber Academy

  • ★★ Ali has made YouTube videos since 2017, from broke medical student to doctor to seven-figure entrepreneur and best-selling author; since 2020 over 20,000 students have taken the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's courses. — 00:00:29 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:01:27 — Part one: understanding your motivation with the motivation matrix, business-first and creator-first approaches

  • ★★★ Ali's first advice to anyone considering a YouTube channel is to do it: starting and growing one is a personal, spiritual and skills-based growth journey, whether or not it ever makes money. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali says making YouTube videos builds skills valuable in any business or walk of life: handling the emotions of putting yourself out in public, mean comments, imposter syndrome and overthinking, and learning cameras, lights, editing and presenting. — 00:01:27 · imposter syndrome
  • ★★★ To advise someone starting YouTube, Ali uses his motivation matrix: how far is their primary motivation for doing YouTube money, and how far is it fun? — 00:02:13
  • ★★ In Ali's motivation matrix, making lots of money while having lots of fun is a destination to work towards, not a starting point: nobody starts YouTube making lots of money, and generally not having lots of fun. — 00:03:11
  • ★★★ Ali calls money-motivated YouTube the business-first approach: you start with a business, then start or grow a YouTube channel to generate leads and drive traffic to it. — 00:03:11
  • ★★ For the business-first approach to YouTube you already need a product to sell; YouTube is purely a marketing vehicle, and the approach suits existing business owners most. — 00:03:55
  • ★★★ Ali says that if your goal is to make money and you have no product, there are far more efficient ways to make money than YouTube, which is a gamble. — 00:04:24
  • ★ Ali has been doing YouTube for seven years and has made over a thousand videos. — 00:04:24
  • ★★★ If money were his goal, Ali would first get a product to a few thousand or maybe $10,000 a month and only then use YouTube as an organic content-marketing engine for the business. — 00:04:53
  • ★★ To those who point to AdSense and brand deals, Ali answers that making money directly from YouTube takes a lot of time, people motivated by money will not stick with it long enough, and there is no guarantee. — 00:04:53 · YouTube AdSense
  • ★★★ Ali's litmus test for someone who wants to start YouTube: would you do YouTube if you knew you were never going to make money from it? — 00:05:38
  • ★ Ali says people learn the guitar out of intrinsic motivation, for its own sake, while becoming an investment banker is instrumentally motivated by money. — 00:06:07
  • ★ Ali wants to learn Mandarin, which his wife speaks, partly to impress her parents, and Japanese because he likes anime and wants to connect with the culture. — 00:06:07 · Izzy Sealey
  • ★★★ Ali calls YouTube driven mainly by fun the creator-first approach: be a creator first, and monetise and build a business second. — 00:07:05
  • ★★ Most successful YouTubers Ali knows with thriving businesses started as creators first, making videos for joy, fulfilment and impact; as they stayed consistent and grew, YouTube ads and brand deals followed. — 00:07:35
  • ★★★ The key to the creator-first approach, Ali says, is wanting to do it even without money; he guarantees that one video every week for the next two years will change your life, though not how much money you make. — 00:08:04
  • ★★★ Ali says what makes a YouTube channel sustainable is enjoying the process of making it. — 00:08:33
  • ★★ Ali warns that the first one to five years of YouTube without income suck the motivation and joy out of you, and if you do not enjoy the process it will never happen. — 00:08:58
  • ★★ Ali calls being both an entrepreneur and a creator the dream life of a "creatorpreneur", and says that is roughly where he is now. — 00:08:58

00:09:57 — Ali started YouTube business-first to bring leads to SixMed

  • ★★★ Ali says a big part of building a YouTube channel you enjoy is doing what you want in it and aligning it with your business goals, rather than chasing views, engagement or retention. — 00:09:57
  • ★★ Ali's first business, SixMed, helped people get into medical school: he travelled around the UK and taught courses in Singapore and the Netherlands on the BMAT, then an entrance exam for medical schools such as Oxford and Cambridge. — 00:10:46 · 6med, BMAT, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge
  • ★★ At medical school Ali made about £40,000 ($50,000) a year in profit from SixMed, which funded his entire university experience. — 00:11:15 · 6med
  • ★★★ Around 2017, as SixMed's growth stalled, Ali started a YouTube channel with educational content on getting into medical school so that viewers would sign up to his course: his primary motivation was money. — 00:11:15 · 6med
  • ★★★ YouTube did bring SixMed more leads, but Ali soon found YouTube more fun than running the business; he sold SixMed in 2019 and is still very slightly involved with it. — 00:11:56 · 6med
  • ★★ Ali lost money over his first year and first 90 videos on YouTube. — 00:11:56
  • ★★ Ali says he kept his motivation through that first year only because each view of his medical school videos slightly raised the chance of someone signing up to one of his courses. — 00:12:23 · 6med
  • ★★ Ali says neither the creator-first nor the business-first approach is wrong, but his channel did not succeed by randomly talking until it blew up: starting it was a strategic decision. — 00:12:23

00:12:52 — Against his commercial interest: do not do YouTube just for the money

  • ★★ For a business owner, Ali says, a YouTube channel is a much more guaranteed path to success: you can be super niche, target your ideal customer profile and use calls to action that drive traffic to your offer. — 00:12:52
  • ★★ Ali makes millions every year from teaching people how to start and grow YouTube channels. — 00:13:20
  • ★★ Ali says it is against his commercial interest to warn people off: he could probably double his income by telling them a YouTube channel will let them quit their job and make money. (hedged) — 00:13:20
  • ★ Ali spends a lot of time talking would-be YouTubers out of seeing YouTube as a get-rich-quick scheme, unless they already have a business. — 00:14:13

  • ★★★ Ali's one takeaway for anyone thinking of a YouTube channel with money in mind: do not do YouTube if the primary goal is money. — 00:14:37

    “do not try and do youtube if the primary goal is money”

  • ★★★ Doing YouTube for money without a business, Ali says, leaves you struggling with consistency and relying on discipline, because extrinsic motivation is far less powerful than the intrinsic motivation of the joy of creation and of helping people. — 00:15:06 · identified motivation

00:15:38 — The YouTuber Academy for business owners

00:15:59 — Part two: the seven video challenge, his first videos and the CPR story

  • ★★★ Ali wanted to start a YouTube channel from 2010 but took about seven years to make his first video, overthinking and believing he needed the right camera and microphone; he only started once it meant driving leads to his business. — 00:15:59
  • ★★ Too shy to appear on camera, Ali first filmed his friend Duranka singing; around his sixth or seventh video he was on camera playing guitar while his friend Katherine sang. — 00:16:28
  • ★★★ Ali's first video singing to camera got five views and three dislikes, so he unlisted it; a couple of months ago he remembered it and made it public again because it is now fun. — 00:16:53

  • ★★★ Ali's seven video challenge: stop watching videos and overthinking and just make your first seven videos; no one starts off perfect, and after seven you understand far better how the process works. — 00:18:05

    “Seven is the magic number.”

  • ★★ At medical school Ali spent ages reading, watching videos and talking about CPR, but nothing prepared him for being involved in a real cardiac arrest himself. — 00:19:08

  • ★★★ As with learning CPR, Ali says, you can read, overthink and watch every tutorial on making videos, but until you have made a few you miss a huge amount of context about the process. — 00:20:00
  • ★★ Ali tells viewers to pause the video and make their first YouTube video now: open the YouTube app on the phone, hit record and say they are starting a channel. — 00:20:22
  • ★★ Ali's first vlog was him lying on the bed holding up his iPhone, because he knew that if he did not act there and then he would overthink it. — 00:20:22 · iPhone
  • ★★★ Ali says it is really hard to sustain any habit unless you enjoy the process, and you will not know whether you enjoy making videos until you have made the first few. — 00:21:14

00:21:42 — The seven video challenge in the Part-Time YouTuber Foundations course

  • ★★ Ali's team runs a 7-Video Challenge in its Part-Time YouTuber Foundations course: you pay 297, get prompts for seven videos, and get every penny refunded if you make the seven videos. — 00:21:42 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali's framework for growing on YouTube has three levels: get going, get good and consistent, and get smart. — 00:22:12 · first in: 2023-02-04, How to overcome the fear of getting started.

00:22:37 — Part three: what is your relationship with YouTube, casual or committed

  • ★★★ Ali tells beginners not to worry about their niche: their first seven videos can be about whatever they want. — 00:22:54
  • ★★★ Ali says to choose between a casual relationship with YouTube, making videos whenever you feel like it, and a committed one, showing up even when you don't feel like it and uploading regularly. — 00:23:28
  • ★★ Ali recommends uploading once a week, or once every two weeks if you are really busy; publishing every three months is much harder because every video then has to be a banger. — 00:24:10
  • ★★★ Ali says that without a committed relationship with YouTube you cannot expect to build a business around it or make money from it, though a casual one can still be fun. — 00:24:10

00:25:00 — Part four: the five Cs of YouTube success; a guide rather than a guru

  • ★★★ The first of Ali's five Cs of YouTube success is courage: to start a channel, to keep showing up when you don't feel like it, and to face negative comments, imposter syndrome and overthinking. — 00:25:07 · imposter syndrome
  • ★★★ On consistency, the second of his five Cs, Ali says he can count on one hand the YouTubers he knows who succeeded without being consistent, against dozens who succeeded by being consistent. — 00:25:37
  • ★★ Ali names his wife, a former Part-Time YouTuber Academy student, as an exception: about 50 sporadic videos in three years, yet her channel on learning Mandarin blew up through the value she teaches and the quality of her videos. — 00:25:37 · Izzy Sealey, Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ The third C is clarity: who your target audience is, what your videos are about, your value proposition and competitive advantages; Ali says to think about it once you have made your first seven videos. — 00:26:09
  • ★★★ The fourth C is content: to grow, videos have to be good, through writing, scripting, filming, set and audio design, editing, proof of work, research and presence on camera. — 00:26:34
  • ★★★ On a bedrock of consistency, Ali says to improve one thing slightly with each video; the mistake many make is focusing on improvements and sacrificing consistency. — 00:27:03
  • ★ The fifth and final of Ali's five Cs of YouTube success is cash. — 00:27:32
  • ★★★ With his course and videos Ali sees himself as a guide rather than a guru, sharing what has worked for him, for people he knows and for his students. — 00:28:31 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali advises taking the bits of other people's frameworks that resonate with your values and what you want from your channel, and applying them to your own creative business. — 00:29:07

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Mentioned

Central: 6med · 7-Video Challenge · business-first approach · creator-first approach · five Cs of YouTube success · motivation matrix · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Also: People: Duranka Perera · Izzy Sealey · Katherine Macfarland

Projects: Creator Club

Works: BMAT · Grey's Anatomy

Organizations: University of Cambridge · University of Oxford

Concepts: content marketing · extrinsic motivation · freedom profile · get going, get good, get smart · guide, not guru · identified motivation · imposter syndrome · lead generation · proof of work · value proposition

Places: Netherlands · Singapore

Products: iPhone · YouTube AdSense

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