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How I Would Build A Business in 2026 (If I had to start over)

2025-09-19 · Podcast or interview · Ali, Daniel Priestley · recording, 1 h 15 min · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His own products discussed, Lesson from a book, His medical past, Sponsor segment present, AI

In a Freedom Fridays episode, Ali structures his conversation with mentor Daniel Priestley as ten lessons on starting a business from scratch: school trains the wrong traits, a job is a smooth road that ends rough, do a 7-6-6 apprenticeship first, look for founder opportunity fit and pain, prize and payment, and sell $1,000–10,000 offers to 10–100 customers.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Anyone can start a business; the conversation with Daniel Priestley as a Freedom Fridays episode

  • ★★ Ali says one thing he has really learned over the years is that pretty much anyone can start a business. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Ali presents his conversation with his friend and mentor Daniel Priestley as an episode of Freedom Fridays, the channel's new series. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says anyone watching on a device connected to the internet has everything they need to start a business. — 00:00:29

00:01:33 — Lesson 1: school didn't teach you to be an entrepreneur

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says that when factories needed workers in the 1850s, the militarised Prussian schooling system was set up like military barracks. — 00:02:33
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says school punishes being disruptive or attention-seeking, traits that in today's economy put you on the front page of Inc. magazine or build a billion-dollar business. — 00:03:19
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says children are naturally entrepreneurial, like his own who love selling lemonade and doing chores for money; then we beat it out of them and must relearn those skills. — 00:04:18
  • ★★★ Ali thinks a good student's traits oppose a good entrepreneur's: school trains you to ask permission, follow others' schedules and get the perfect answer first time, while entrepreneurship means putting out something imperfect and iterating. — 00:04:47

00:05:26 — Lesson 2: the entrepreneur mindset shift, business in a box, steps one and ten, who is cut out to be a founder

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: Asked about business-in-a-box ideas, Daniel Priestley says the desire to be told what to do is antithetical to entrepreneurship: that is a job, like a band that only plays other people's songs. — 00:05:51

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says that of a project's ten steps the entrepreneur does step one (what to do, the vision, the team) and step ten (finishing and commercialising), while steps two to nine get outsourced. — 00:06:45

    “the entrepreneur does the one and the ten but the two to the nine typically gets outsourced”

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says AI does neither the beginning nor the end of a project but is very good at the middle, just as employees are good at being told what to do. — 00:07:40

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says that wanting someone else to do a project's first and last steps makes you labour that AI can replace; the entrepreneur needs the skills of the shot caller who plants the seed and harvests. — 00:08:26
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley calls entrepreneurship a team sport: some people are not cut out to be founders but can work close to one, with equity, profit share or sales commissions. — 00:08:55
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says a person's phase of life or level of IQ can make founding a business not ideal, because the founder's role is complex and highly abstract. — 00:10:24
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says he really loves co-founding over founding alone because it is so much easier; he has always started his businesses with co-founders. — 00:10:55

00:11:44 — HubSpot and The Hustle sponsor read

  • ★★ Ali says school teaches that school, university and a job guarantee financial security; that was true of his parents' generation, but he does not think it is true today. — 00:12:42
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley calls job security a bit of mythology now: very few jobs, even very good professional ones, keep up with the cost of living. — 00:12:42

00:12:58 — Lesson 3: the lie you were taught about business, job security, the 90% failure myth and asymmetrical risk

  • ★ Daniel Priestley saw a qualified doctor say on social media that she would likely be unemployed because there are not enough jobs. — 00:13:30
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says accounting used to be a guaranteed route to a six-figure income, but much accounting work is now done by AI or outsourced to low-cost countries. — 00:13:59
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says many people now find security in building a business with equity value and brand value. — 00:14:44

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says that even today a job is at best a smooth road that ends rough, and a business a rough road that ends smooth. — 00:15:06

    “a job at best is a smooth road that ends rough”

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley often hears of employees restructured out of their jobs at 51 or 52, unemployed at 53 with the mortgage not yet cleared. — 00:15:33

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley calls it a myth that 90% of businesses fail: with 6 million businesses in the UK, that would have taken 60 million business failures. — 00:16:48 · United Kingdom
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says business has asymmetrical risk: a tiny downside if it fails and a massive upside if it succeeds, tested with fast, cheap experiments. — 00:17:34
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley has several times started businesses for less than 10,000 that were producing hundreds of thousands a year two years later. — 00:18:23
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says that even at a 90% failure rate, a casino table costing a grand per play that pays a million would be worth playing all day; people misunderstand risk and reward. (hypothetical) — 00:19:15
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says the startup failure figures use venture capitalists' definition of success, a billion-dollar valuation, far beyond what most people want. — 00:19:50
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says most entrepreneurs want seven-figure revenue and six-figure profit on top of what a job would pay them, a home run that a VC would not recognise. — 00:21:11
  • ★★ Ali has been reading Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, which says wild success is broadly down to luck while mild success comes almost entirely from skill. — 00:21:50
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says his businesses with seven-figure revenue and six-figure profit did not seem linked to the economy's ups and downs. — 00:22:55
  • ★ Daniel Priestley knows software-as-a-service founders with a few thousand customers paying 30 or 40 a month and a team of six or seven. — 00:23:24

00:23:50 — Ali's online business school for lifestyle business entrepreneurs seeks its first cohort

  • ★★ Ali says his team is building an online business school for lifestyle business entrepreneurs and is looking for a small first cohort to get direct mentorship from him and his team, aiming at a $100,000-a-year lifestyle business in under 12 months. — 00:23:53 · lifestyle business
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: A lifestyle business, Daniel Priestley says, is set up so you end up with fun, freedom and flexibility, fitting within the broader context of your life. — 00:24:22 · lifestyle business

00:24:30 — Lesson 4: what a lifestyle business actually looks like, examples, the 12-person ceiling

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says a lifestyle business would have been a scam in his grandfather's day; it is possible only because of the internet, AI, social media, cloud computing and cheap software. — 00:25:47 · lifestyle business
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley's lifestyle business example Stephen Box enjoyed the tabletop game Warhammer and now travels the world speaking at Warhammer conferences. — 00:26:17 · lifestyle business
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley's example Scott Mansell runs Driver 61, a YouTube channel about track days followed by 1.4 million people. — 00:26:49 · YouTube
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley's friend Gabriella Rosa gives away a few thousand copies of her book Natural Fertility Breakthrough a year; readers come to her clinic, which has multiple seven-figure revenue. — 00:27:59
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: If he started his career again, Daniel Priestley would focus on lifestyle businesses, because a team of more than 12 is very demanding: there is a ceiling at about 12 people. — 00:28:28
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says a team of 3 to 12 people is very easy to manage, almost self-managing, like having 3 to 12 people over for dinner. — 00:29:06
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley considers the times his businesses had 3 to 12 people the good old days. — 00:30:28

00:30:56 — Lesson 5: goodbye Homer Simpson, the industrial and digital economies, land, labour, capital and enterprise

  • ★★ Ali says the idea of a high-paying middle-class job at a large corporation kept for 50 years is a tiny slice of human history, a post-war idea. — 00:30:56
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says that until the 1900s the vast majority of businesses had at most about 150 people, the biggest a company could get. — 00:30:56
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says only 50% of adults worked right after the Second World War, and women entering the workforce diluted the value of labour: households went from needing 12 paychecks a year to 20. — 00:32:18
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says automation cut labour: the largest US companies went from eight people to two per million dollars made, and a US steel producer went from 30,000 people to 5,000. — 00:33:47 · S&P 500
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says The Simpsons, whose Homer is an average man with a five-bedroom house, a car and a wife who need not work, could not be started today: no one would believe it. — 00:34:45
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says the share of people aged 30 with a house, a marriage and a family is now lower than 12%, down from the peak of late industrial society. — 00:35:21
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley sees a widening gap: life in the digital economy gets better every year, while working for a factory, office or big employer gets harder every year. — 00:35:21
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says Ali, by leaving medicine for YouTube, got off the declining industrialised system and into the rising digital economy. — 00:36:09 · YouTube
  • ★ Ali says 40% of the S&P 500 is ten stocks. — 00:37:20 · S&P 500
  • ★★ For anyone who cares about raising their living standards or becoming financially free, Ali says it makes no sense to work outside tech-enabled or AI-enabled industries. (overstated) — 00:38:05
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: Of the classical economists' land, labour, capital and enterprise, Daniel Priestley says enterprise matters most in the digital age, since a business needs few people and little money. — 00:39:05
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says many who provide labour to large tech companies are paid like normal people because so many want those jobs; the point is to be more entrepreneurial. — 00:39:46
  • ★★ Whenever Ali's team surveys its audience about what holds them back from starting a business, the main answer is not having the right idea. — 00:39:46

00:40:01 — Lesson 6: how business actually works, a customer who wants to buy, ideas and cloning

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says that at a basic level you are in business when you have a customer who wants to buy something; then you work out how to supply it. — 00:40:15
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says the smartest entrepreneurs do not worry about having something to sell until they first have someone who wants to buy. — 00:41:28
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley calls cloning, opening near home a business like one seen thriving elsewhere, a perfectly valid way to get a business idea. — 00:42:26 · London
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says a business idea is not enough: you need to know how businesses work, how they generate leads, make sales, keep customers happy and keep developing products. — 00:42:52

00:43:25 — Lesson 7: the 7-6-6 apprenticeship, getting paid in experience, business as a process

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley's first mission for a would-be entrepreneur is a 7-6-6 apprenticeship: six months as a direct report to the founder of a business with seven-figure US-dollar revenue and six-figure profit. — 00:43:46

    “a 766 apprenticeship is where you find a business that already does seven figures of revenue”

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley: On a 7-6-6 apprenticeship, Daniel Priestley says, do whatever it takes, mopping floors or running social media, to spend time up close with the founder and see behind the scenes. — 00:44:17

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says the more you have, such as a family and a salary, the less you should roll the dice: no leap of faith, but fast, cheap experiments. — 00:45:09
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley: For someone with a job and a family, Daniel Priestley suggests agreeing with your spouse to work one day a week or a weekend day at the small business. — 00:45:38
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says people working in the NHS, KPMG or Ernst & Young have no idea how a small business works. — 00:46:14 · NHS
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley suggests a doctor find a small business that needs a doctor, such as a private clinic or a startup that uses doctors' skills. — 00:46:39
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says contact with a founder matters because being a founder is a role, like any career learned under seniors: you see pitching and recruiting without a big brand. — 00:48:07

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: On an apprenticeship, Daniel Priestley says, you are paid in experience, a currency more valuable than money: self-awareness as a founder, commercial awareness and access to resources. — 00:49:09

    “you want to get paid in something more valuable than money which is experience”

  • ★★ Ali says his new in-person hires in Hong Kong always tell him they have learned more in their first month than in about eight years in a corporate job. — 00:49:45 · Hong Kong

  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says a dozen of his former employees are now millionaires because they went off and started their own businesses. — 00:50:58
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley: Two young salesmen from Daniel Priestley's team started an online infrared sauna business, sold it to private equity and became multi-millionaires before 30. — 00:51:27
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley cites the PayPal mafia: people who worked for Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, in effect an apprenticeship, then started YouTube and other multi-billion-dollar businesses. — 00:52:06 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali thinks people underestimate how much a business is just the acquisition of skills, like any career where experience makes things easier. — 00:52:06
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley has seven companies now, has taken seven startups from zero to a million in their first 12 months and three businesses past 10 million. — 00:52:59
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says the odds of his business record being luck would be one in hundreds of thousands: entrepreneurship is a process of set steps and a series of experiments. — 00:53:29
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley compares business with flying, now the safest transport because a narrow set of things that work is repeated with checklists; business is the same. — 00:54:27
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says the idea a business starts with almost never becomes the idea it scales with. — 00:55:07

00:55:16 — Lesson 8: founder opportunity fit, origin, mission and vision

  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says execution is way more important than the idea itself; big ideas are super easy to have. — 00:56:05
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says Pret a Manger's sandwich shop was never a revolutionary idea but was executed really well. — 00:56:59
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says to look for a good idea for you, founder opportunity fit: from your origin story, case studies and background, something that seems a really good next step. — 00:57:34
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says a productivity app, software or school would be an obvious founder opportunity fit for Ali, who already has people interested in productivity. — 00:57:56
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: For founder opportunity fit Daniel Priestley asks about origin, mission and vision; origin: your background, successful case studies, when you did something others noticed or transformed someone's life. — 00:58:45
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley defines your vision as what you want to see happen in the world and would work hard towards, not the rewards you want. — 00:59:12
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley defines your mission as the highest-value activity you could do in a month, such as a dentist's occasional consultation that sells a large package. — 00:59:36

01:00:45 — Lesson 9: pain, prize and payment; how budgets are spread across buyers

  • ★★ Ali says doctors leaving medicine mostly think of helping people into medical school, creating a massive oversupply aimed at students, whose willingness to pay is low. — 01:01:29 · Personal statement
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: For a better business idea Daniel Priestley looks at pain, prize and payment: what pain you can solve, what big outcome you can deliver, and which people with big budgets will pay. — 01:01:58
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says doctors can solve all sorts of pain beyond exam forms: they know how the body works and can lend credibility to things. — 01:01:58
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says that of any hundred people, one has 15% of the budget to spend, nine have 45%, and the other 90 share just 40%. — 01:02:41
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says it is worth ignoring the people with no money and spending a lot of time talking to the one person in a hundred with 15% of the budget. — 01:03:48
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley: In money terms, Daniel Priestley says, one buyer in a hundred will spend 15 grand, nine will spend five grand each, and the rest average 445 each. — 01:03:48

01:04:42 — Lesson 10: selling to rich people, value versus volume, the easiest first business

  • ★★ Ali's friends sell high-ticket programmes, from 7,000 to 15,000 pounds, helping Chinese students abroad get into UK universities, entirely through ads. — 01:04:45 · United Kingdom
  • ★★ Ali's friends' admissions business uses its application forms to check that the child's school fees are at least £25,000 a year, since only those families are likely to buy a £10,000 package. — 01:05:17
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley told a personal-trainer friend to find clients by knocking on the doors of a nearby street where every house is massive. — 01:05:47
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says people see value based on their own situation, not yours: saving a week for a CEO on a million a year is worth far more than for someone on less. — 01:06:56
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says couples therapist Esther Perel figured out that the marriage of a couple worth more than 30 million has a higher value than that of a couple with no money. — 01:07:25
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: Selling to the rich is a design choice, Daniel Priestley says: a few higher-paying clients are easier to look after and more profitable, so the business is more likely to meet your needs. — 01:08:23
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley has a one-to-one client with a business doing 200 million a year who pays him a lot to be available, since a couple of key decisions a year make the fee irrelevant. — 01:09:41
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley: Asked whether selling to the rich is fair, Daniel Priestley says nothing about life is fair, such as the geography one is born in. — 01:10:47
  • ★★ Ali says people assume that selling 100,000 copies of something for $1 is as easy or as hard as selling one thing for $100,000. — 01:11:17
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says that at the extreme of one client paying $100,000 you have a job: if that one client restructures you out, you go from $100,000 to zero in one meeting. — 01:12:00
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley says volume is insanely hard: the hardest businesses in the world sell cups, drinks or perishable food in enormous amounts. — 01:12:39
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says someone leaving a $100,000 job for a burrito stand would need to sell 1,500 burritos a day just to cover the basics. — 01:13:11
  • ★★★ Daniel Priestley: The easiest first business, Daniel Priestley says, sells something for between $1,000 and $10,000 to between 10 and 100 customers. — 01:13:40
  • ★★ Daniel Priestley says agency or services businesses are the perfect balance for moving from a job to a business. — 01:14:16

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 7-6-6 apprenticeship · Daniel Priestley · founder opportunity fit · lifestyle business

Also: People: Angus (general manager) · Elon Musk · Esther Perel · Gabriella Rosa · Jeff Bezos · Joe Wicks · Nassim Taleb · Peter Thiel · Richard Branson · Scott Mansell · Stephen Box

Projects: Freedom Fridays · Lifestyle Business Academy

Works: Fooled by Randomness · Natural Fertility Breakthrough · The Simpsons

Organizations: Coldplay · Driver 61 · Inc. · NHS · PayPal · Pret A Manger · YouTube

Concepts: asymmetric upside · OMV · pain, prize, payment · Personal statement

Places: Hong Kong · India · London · Mauritius

Products: Google Sheets · Notion · S&P 500 · Warhammer

Also centred on 7-6-6 apprenticeship: The Proven, Reliable Path to Earn $1M (Step By Step)

Also centred on Daniel Priestley: I Asked 15 Experts For Life Advice. Here's What I Learned. · A Multi-Millionaire's Advice on Starting a Business #shorts · I Asked 5 Millionaires for Their Best Financial Advice · 5 Steps to Start Your First Business · 7 Life Lessons School Didn’t Teach You · 4 Steps to Making $10,000/Month in Your First Business

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