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Getting Rich is a Game. Here’s How to Win.

2025-05-28 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 43:12 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: Money and investing, Work and career) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His medical past, AI, Sponsor segment present

Ali presents getting rich as a game: money comes only from creating market value and exchanging it voluntarily; every player does the work, sells it and administers it; the game has four levels (employee, self-employed, owner-operator, investor), and since selling is the hardest part, he advises getting close to the money, building a personal brand, starting a side hustle that teaches you to sell, and owning equity.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — What the video covers: getting rich as a game

  • ★★★ Ali says getting rich is ultimately a game, and shares his approach to winning it. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — The rules of the game, value creation and exchange, and why only market value matters

  • ★★★ Ali's three rules of the money game: only the government or central bank may print cash; for you to make money someone else must give it to you; and they must give it voluntarily. — 00:00:29

  • ★★★ Ali's strategy for making money is to create value, something someone else wants, and exchange it for money: the game is one of value creation and value exchange. — 00:01:21

    “The game of making money is fundamentally a game of value creation and value exchange.”

  • ★★★ Of human value, societal value and market value, Ali says only market value matters in the game of an individual getting rich. — 00:02:19

  • ★★ Ali cites Adam Smith's diamond-water paradox: water has enormous value to society yet is cheap, while diamonds have no societal value yet cost a lot. (hedged) — 00:02:44
  • ★★ In the capitalist world, Ali says, a person's intrinsic value as a human is annoyingly correlated with how much money they make, and status hierarchies are built around it. — 00:03:35
  • ★★ Ali agrees that pay by market value is unfair, thinks nurses, firefighters and teachers should be paid more, and supports campaigning for systemic change. — 00:04:04

00:05:06 — Three core actions: doing, selling and administering the work

  • ★★★ Every economic unit, individuals and businesses alike, does only three core actions, Ali says: doing the work, selling the work, and administering and maintaining the work. — 00:05:13
  • ★★ Ali's game of getting rich has four levels, preceded by a tutorial, from birth until you end full-time education, that prepares you for level one, being an employee. — 00:06:56

00:07:01 — The four levels and the tutorial; level one, the employee

  • ★★ Most people start their working lives as employees, Ali says, which is fine: the whole schooling and education system is designed to make good employees. — 00:07:25
  • ★★ Ali estimates an employee spends about 95% of their time doing the work, maybe 5% administering it and under 1% selling it. (hedged) — 00:07:54
  • ★★ Unless they work in sales, Ali says, employees sell their work only when applying for a job, in performance evaluations and when negotiating a raise. — 00:07:54

00:08:53 — Grammarly sponsor read

00:10:49 — Two types of economic entity: the individual and the business

  • ★★★ Ali names two types of economic entity, the individual and the business: both do, sell and administer the work, but the rules of the game are very different for each. — 00:10:49
  • ★★ An individual is paid a salary and cannot sell themselves, Ali says, while a business earns profits and dividends and can be sold, which is how tech founders get rich. — 00:11:19
  • ★★ An individual is taxed before paying expenses, while a business is taxed only after its expenses and gets far more tax breaks, Ali says. — 00:11:56
  • ★★ An employee can negotiate their salary once or twice a year at most, Ali says, while a business can change its prices whenever it wants. — 00:12:21
  • ★★ An individual generally has an exclusivity contract with one client, their employer, while a business can and should have many clients and customers, Ali says. — 00:12:21
  • ★★ An employee generally may not hire people to do their work, Ali says, while a business can and should. — 00:12:50
  • ★ In the UK, Ali says, a key test of whether someone is a self-employed contractor or an employee is whether they may hire someone to outsource the job. — 00:13:19 · United Kingdom
  • ★★★ An individual sells time while a business sells outcomes, Ali says: employers care about time put in, clients care about the result. — 00:13:19
  • ★★ An employee does not capture the excess value they create for their employer, Ali says, while a business owner captures it as profits. — 00:14:37
  • ★★ Employees get legal protections that vary by country, Ali says: in the UK, after more than two years with an employer, they cannot be fired without a reason. — 00:14:37 · United Kingdom
  • ★★ In the US most jobs come with health insurance, Ali says, while a business has to pay for its own. — 00:15:07 · United States
  • ★★ An employee is unlikely to lose money, Ali says, while a business can lose money in a given year. — 00:15:36
  • ★★★ Ali argues that by far the easier way to get rich is to play the game as a business. — 00:15:36

00:16:05 — Can you get rich as an employee; employers, AI and jobs

  • ★★ An employee is a component of one of a business's three functions, Ali says: product or operations, sales and marketing, or legal, finance, HR, admin and IT. — 00:16:38
  • ★★★ You can get rich as an employee, Ali says, but only by creating so much market value for the business that it is worth paying you a lot, which happens only in a few industries. — 00:17:07
  • ★★ A friend of Ali's, a trader at an investment bank, made the bank about $10 million in a good year a couple of years ago and was paid around $1 million in salary and bonus. — 00:17:37
  • ★★ Careers in tech, finance or high-ticket sales, or as a doctor in the US, let employees make a lot of money, Ali says, because they drive a lot of market value for their employers. — 00:17:37 · United States
  • ★★ Ali says the stats show almost all self-made millionaires and decamillionaires got there by starting their own businesses, very few from a job. — 00:18:41
  • ★★★ An employer keeps you only while you make them more money than you cost, Ali says; when that stops, there is no incentive to employ you, as people losing jobs to AI are finding. — 00:19:10
  • ★★ Ali notes that Fiverr recently released a big memo and that Duolingo has stopped hiring contractors because it uses AI instead. — 00:19:55
  • ★★ If a business can get a job done by paying for ChatGPT, Ali says, there is no reason for it to keep an employee doing that job. — 00:19:55 · ChatGPT

00:20:10 — Level two self-employed, level three owner-operator, level four investor

  • ★★ Self-employed, Ali estimates, you spend maybe 40% of your time doing the work, at least half selling it, and about 10% on admin. (hedged) — 00:20:32
  • ★★★ From being self-employed and knowing many self-employed people, Ali says their biggest problem by far is getting enough clients: leads and sales. — 00:21:16
  • ★★ Self-employment brings a business's benefits, Ali says: profits, dividends, tax breaks, setting your own prices, multiple clients, hiring and more time freedom, since customers care about outcomes. — 00:21:56 · time freedom

  • ★★★ A key point of Ali's video: selling the work is far harder than doing or administering it, and selling is why business is hard. — 00:23:04

    “selling the work is way harder than doing the work and way harder than administering the work”

  • ★★ With clients lining up, Ali says, self-employment is a great life where you choose clients and hours; without enough clients you are up at night and working weekends. — 00:23:30

  • ★★ Level three, in Ali's game, begins when you hire at least one person and become a business owner-operator, who now also has to manage people. — 00:24:14
  • ★★ Level four, in Ali's game, is the investor: a founder who hires a CEO to run the business can live off its profits while someone else operates it. — 00:24:44
  • ★★ A business owner-operator spends little time doing the work, Ali says, a good amount administering it, and still a lot of time and mental energy selling it, plus managing the team. — 00:25:41

00:26:21 — Active and passive income, leverage, and levelling up

  • ★★★ As you move from level one to level four, Ali says, active income from doing work falls and passive income from ownership rises, as with Warren Buffett, who earns from what he owns. — 00:26:52 · passive income
  • ★★★ Leverage grows at each level, Ali says: employees trade time for money, the self-employed trade outcomes, owners hire people, investors hire an operator; more leverage means more and more passive income. — 00:27:41 · passive income
  • ★★★ Ali's one message: to win the game of getting rich, understand where you are on the four levels and make levelling up over time a goal. — 00:28:41
  • ★★ Ali says you can level up small: start a side hustle as an employee, or take a year's sabbatical to try self-employment if you have savings and a job to return to. — 00:28:41

00:29:36 — The three S's, You Incorporated, supply and demand, and why selling matters most

  • ★★★ Ali's three S's that hold would-be rich employees back from starting a business: stability and security, stress, and sales. — 00:29:36
  • ★★ When Ali asks employees who want to get rich why they have not started a business, they usually cite the stability and security of a job, the stress of a business, or not wanting to deal with sales. — 00:30:04
  • ★★ Getting rich was Ali's goal until he bought his freedom and realised freedom is not all it is cracked up to be. — 00:30:35
  • ★★ Everyone who is rich will say it is not all it is cracked up to be, Ali says: money gets rid of money problems but does not solve fulfilment, happiness and meaning. — 00:31:00

  • ★★★ Every employee already owns a business, "You Incorporated", Ali says: an employee is a business owner selling their time to a single client, while a self-employed person sells to many. — 00:31:40

    “You are already the business owner of the business titled You Incorporated.”

  • ★★ The old social contract, Ali says, was to get a well-paid job at a big corporate, climb the ladder, and get a company car, health insurance and a good pension; it worked in the 20th century. — 00:32:47

  • ★★★ Ali is not sure that relying on a single employer looking to cut costs in an age of AI is a recipe for stability and security; multiple clients mean being diversified. (hedged) — 00:33:16
  • ★★★ Ali would feel more scared if his income relied on a single employer than if he had multiple clients and customers to sell to over the internet. — 00:34:15
  • ★★★ Ali says the three S's are related: when supply and demand favour you, as for an in-demand banker, you can sell yourself, so you have leverage, low stress and stability. — 00:34:43
  • ★★ For an entry-level content writer whose bank replaces writers with AI, Ali says, supply and demand turn against you: harder to sell yourself, more stress, less stability. (overstated) — 00:35:43

  • ★★★ Ali's hot take from the video: to get rich you have to be able to sell, whether yourself, a product or a service. — 00:36:10

    “You have to be able to sell, either sell yourself or sell a product or sell a service.”

  • ★★ Someone who can show a business they will make it far more money than they cost, or help it sell, is an easy hire and will always have work, Ali says. — 00:36:36

  • ★★ The disconnect, Ali says, is that sales is the most important part of getting rich, yet most employees are not the ones directly bringing in money. — 00:37:32

00:37:59 — Recommendations: get close to the money, personal brand, networking, side hustle, ownership

  • ★★★ Ali's first piece of advice to get rich: get close to the money, working out how to move closer to the sales side of the business you work in. — 00:38:01

    “get close to the money”

  • ★★ Naval Ravikant (quoted): Naval Ravikant, as Ali cites him, says that if you learn to build and learn to sell you will be unstoppable and always have a job. — 00:38:01 · Naval Ravikant

  • ★★★ Building is not the hard part, Ali says; selling is, so learning to sell is the most important thing. — 00:38:01
  • ★★★ Ali advises building a personal brand, your professional reputation in your industry, which makes you far more able to sell yourself when you need a job. — 00:38:01 · personal brand
  • ★★ Though he dislikes the word, Ali says networking is important: you get known and seen, and adding value to others makes you known as helpful. — 00:38:01
  • ★★ Going from employee to self-employed with a personal brand and the respect of your industry makes getting clients far more likely, Ali says, because people already know, like and trust you. — 00:38:49 · personal brand
  • ★ Building a personal brand does not mean you have to write on LinkedIn, Ali says. — 00:38:49 · LinkedIn, personal brand
  • ★★★ To employees who care about getting rich, Ali recommends starting a side hustle that makes money, not a hobby: a business makes money and a hobby does not. — 00:39:19
  • ★★ The point of a side hustle, even baking cookies for a school fair or a lemonade stand, is to teach you to sell, Ali says. — 00:39:44
  • ★★★ Ali's YouTube channel was a side hustle that grew to replace his income as a doctor and more, letting him quit his day job to focus on YouTube. — 00:39:44
  • ★★★ In medical school Ali ran a side hustle teaching classroom courses around the country to help 17- and 18-year-olds get into medical school, making a few thousand pounds each summer and learning to sell over the internet. — 00:39:44 · 6med
  • ★★★ Ali's fourth tip is to invest or negotiate for ownership, since owners win the game: take stock options in tech, or ask a small business for less salary and some profit share or equity. — 00:40:14
  • ★★ Saving and investing in the stock market will not get you rich quickly but can slowly over a long time, Ali says; he owns a tiny amount of Apple stock. — 00:41:02 · Apple
  • ★★★ To speed-run the game of getting rich, Ali says, move from level one to levels two, three and four, though school and society prepare us only for level one. — 00:41:02
  • ★★ Self-employment and managing people are hard, Ali says, but no harder than depending on a single employer for your livelihood, and in the US for your family's health insurance. — 00:41:47 · United States
  • ★★★ Fears about stability, security and stress in starting a business, Ali says, come down to a fear of selling yourself, lacking the skills, or You Incorporated not winning on supply and demand. — 00:41:47
  • ★★★ Your position on supply and demand is under your control, Ali says: learn high-income skills and build your personal brand or professional reputation. — 00:42:17 · personal brand
  • ★★ Getting rich does not happen without work, Ali says: a life of doing what you want, with time and location freedom, takes a lot of work and a reasonable amount of time. — 00:42:17 · time freedom

In the description and comments

  • ★ To a viewer naming the maker, the manager and the marketer as an entrepreneur's three core roles, Ali replies he wishes he had put that in the video. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): The channel agrees with a viewer that, with paid holidays, health insurance and sick pay, one steady employer's income can feel more secure than many uncertain clients. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked about working with colleagues versus working alone as a self-employed person, Ali says a small in-person team is far more fun than working alone. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): To a medical device salesperson wanting a side business, the channel recommends Million Dollar Weekend for its process for coming up with a business idea. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): To an under-18 viewer whose parents will not let them freelance in copywriting, the channel replies: seek forgiveness, don't ask permission. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: leverage · passive income · three S's

Also: People: Adam Smith · Naval Ravikant · Warren Buffett

Organizations: 6med · Apple · Fiverr · Google · LinkedIn · Starbucks

Concepts: artificial intelligence · diamond-water paradox · high-income skills · personal brand · time freedom · You Incorporated

Places: United Kingdom · United States

Products: ChatGPT · Duolingo · iPhone

Only in the description or credits: Million Dollar Weekend

Also centred on leverage: How to Become a Digital Nomad · How I Started My YouTube Channel in My Spare Time · The 5 Key Components for Financial Freedom

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