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How I use AI as an Entrepreneur (My complete workflow)

2025-10-16 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 39:18 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: AI, His own products discussed, His own numbers, Sponsor segment present, Family, Lesson from a book

Ali walks through his AI workflow as input, processing and output: VoicePal, Grain and SuperWhisper for input, Claude as the processing hub that has replaced ChatGPT, and Google Docs, Firecut, Notion and Gamma for output; he shows it prototyping a Momentum feature, generating short-form hooks, and planning the Lifestyle Business Academy's offer and curriculum.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Work as input, processing and output, from farming to knowledge work

  • ★★ Ali describes work as taking an input, processing it and getting an output; knowledge work does the same with ideas and data, and the output is worth more than the input. — 00:00:22

00:02:15 — The AI tools of his workflow: VoicePal, Grain, SuperWhisper, Claude, Google Docs, Firecut, Notion, Gamma

  • ★★★ In Ali's AI workflow Claude is the processing hub for everything; outputs go to Google Docs, to Firecut for videos, and to Notion for content and business work. — 00:02:44 · Google Docs, Notion
  • ★★ VoicePal, the app Ali's team built over about 12 months, lets you write anything by speaking into your phone; it asks follow-up questions and exports a raw or cleaned-up transcript to Claude or another tool. — 00:03:19 · VoicePal
  • ★★ On his Mac Ali dictates into Claude with SuperWhisper, a better version of built-in dictation, because speaking is much quicker than typing; on his phone he uses the Claude app. — 00:04:18
  • ★ The video is sponsored by Anthropic; Ali's team asked Anthropic to partner because they use Claude all the time and have paid for it for about two years. — 00:04:48
  • ★★★ Claude has replaced Ali's ChatGPT use: ChatGPT's memory of past chats was the last reason he used it, and since Claude added memory a week ago he has not needed ChatGPT for anything. — 00:05:17 · ChatGPT
  • ★★ Ali prefers Claude to ChatGPT because its personality is nicer and more engaging, its writing is better, and it is less of a sycophantic yes man. — 00:05:17 · ChatGPT
  • ★ Ali has partnered with his friend Sahil on Firecut, a Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve plugin that saves video editors time. — 00:05:46
  • ★★ Ali uses Gamma, which generates good-looking slides from text, for some course lessons and for pitch decks to brands or book proposals, instead of arranging slides by hand. — 00:06:15

00:06:44 — The strands of his work: content, online education, software apps, books

  • ★★ The first strand of Ali's work is content creation and his personal brand (YouTube videos, Instagram Reels, his email newsletter, LinkedIn posts), monetised mainly by YouTube ads and sponsorships. — 00:06:44 · personal brand, Instagram, LinkedIn
  • ★★ The second strand is online education: Ali and his wife run two small businesses, the Lifestyle Business Academy for lifestyle businesses that lead to financial freedom, and the YouTuber Academy, running for five years. — 00:07:18 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Izzy Sealey, work optional
  • ★★ The third strand is a suite of productivity, personal development and creator apps: VoicePal, made about a year ago, and Momentum, a habit tracker with accountability squads launched a couple of weeks ago. — 00:07:48 · VoicePal
  • ★★ The next app of Ali's team, launching around the time of the video, is CreatorGrid, a free platform connecting creators with brand deals whatever their follower count. — 00:07:48
  • ★★ Ali's book Feel-Good Productivity became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, has sold a few hundred thousand copies and is translated into over 35 languages. — 00:08:35 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ For his second book Ali plans a sprint of two to four weeks focused only on the book, rather than weaving it into his other work. — 00:09:00 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Running four strands of work is probably suboptimal, Ali says: to maximise revenue he would pick one thing and do it really well. (hedged) — 00:09:00 · lifestyle business
  • ★★★ Ali is not trying to maximise revenue and wants to have fun: a portfolio of small, very profitable businesses, each with its own team, will never reach a billion dollars but gives his week variety. — 00:09:38 · lifestyle business

00:10:18 — His Claude team setup, connectors and projects; a warning that the rest shows his own products

  • ★★ Ali keeps a Claude project for each area of his work, so Claude can reference that project's files and has context when he switches between software, content and courses. — 00:11:29
  • ★★ On Sparkle Studios' Claude team plan, Claude is connected to the team's Notion workspace, used since 2019, and to Canva and Google Drive, where it can add and modify files. — 00:11:29 · Notion, Google Drive

00:13:42 — Prototyping a challenges feature for Momentum with Claude

  • ★★ Ali's team is planning a challenges feature for Momentum, where users join a challenge to stay consistent with one habit, such as a final 100 days of 2025 challenge. — 00:14:15
  • ★★ Ali uses Claude as a prototyping tool for app features; he is not trying to vibe code the feature itself. — 00:15:33
  • ★★★ Ali now describes an app feature to Claude, which mocks up a clickable prototype; before AI he drew boxes on paper, then in Photoshop, Sketch and Figma, where you still have to draw the boxes. — 00:15:57
  • ★★ Once a Claude mock-up of a feature is roughly right, Ali records a Loom for Pablo, his software co-founder, and Alex, the lead developer of Momentum, who decide how much of it to build and how. — 00:17:05 · Pablo
  • ★★ Ali's role in his app company is to work out features users would benefit from, given the app's goal, and mock them up with Claude or other AI tools. — 00:17:34

00:18:10 — Generating short-form hooks with Claude; surveys and user data for the app roadmap

  • ★★ Hooking attention, such as YouTube titles and thumbnails or the first three seconds on Instagram and TikTok, is one of Ali's least favourite parts of making content, so he likes AI tools to do that work. — 00:19:02 · Instagram, TikTok
  • ★★★ To market his apps through short-form videos, Ali asks Claude for 50 one-line hooks, picks those that resonate, tells Claude his favourites and asks for 50 more along those lines, and keeps the best in a hook book. — 00:20:04
  • ★★★ A common mistake with AI for creative work is to dismiss it over the ideas you dislike, Ali says: generate 50 to 100, you will probably like 5 to 20 % of them, and use those. (hedged) — 00:20:38
  • ★★ When filming short-form content from a hook, Ali asks what value he can give the audience from his own knowledge on it, then segues into the app. — 00:21:21

  • ★★★ Ali does not let AI write his scripts: outsourcing too much creativity to AI loses some soul, and he does not want a language model putting words in his mouth, though AI hooks are fine. — 00:22:14

    “if you outsource too much of the creativity of a process to AI, then there's some soul that gets lost”

  • ★★ Ali's app team sends users surveys and puts the CSV of results into Claude to parse what people say about the app and decide roadmap priorities. — 00:22:14

  • ★★ Ali's team found that VoicePal users who create at least three recordings are far likelier to become paying users and stay, so the app's onboarding aims at those first three recordings. — 00:22:56 · VoicePal
  • ★★ With endless possible work on an app or business, Ali says the trick is to prioritise what moves the needle most for users, because adding value for users adds value to the business. — 00:23:28

00:23:53 — Interviewing himself in VoicePal about the Lifestyle Business Academy offer

  • ★★ The six-week challenge Ali's team ran for the Lifestyle Business Academy, the 1K Challenge, went really well, he says. — 00:23:53
  • ★★ Whenever Ali starts something new, he begins with a voice transcription to get as much out of his head as possible, often interviewing himself in VoicePal on a walk. — 00:24:32 · VoicePal
  • ★★ Ali wants the Lifestyle Business Academy to be a better MBA for lifestyle business owners, imagining a three-year programme that takes beginners to $1 million a year in revenue with about $500,000 profit. (hedged) — 00:24:54 · lifestyle business
  • ★★ Ali expects Lifestyle Business Academy students to take 12 to 18 months from zero to $100,000 in revenue, depending on their skills; those who hit the ground running can do it in about six months. — 00:26:12
  • ★★ Building a lifestyle business properly takes 10 to 15 hours a week, possibly more at the start, Ali says; four hours a week can work but takes longer. — 00:26:58 · lifestyle business
  • ★★★ The key habit for building a $100,000-a-year business is devoting time to progress every week: even tiny weekly progress drastically raises the chances, Ali says. — 00:27:42
  • ★★ Each Lifestyle Business Academy student gets a one-to-one coach and a squad of six meeting weekly with a WhatsApp group, and Ali will run weekly live sessions with breakout rooms. — 00:28:11 · WhatsApp
  • ★★ Mindset and motivation are among the biggest hurdles in building a $100,000-a-year business, Ali says: the technical side should not be too hard, but staying motivated over the long term is. — 00:28:51
  • ★★ Ali finds that at least about 800 words of spoken transcript is a good amount of material to give Claude to process. — 00:30:07 · VoicePal

00:30:28 — StoryBrand brand script, applicant data, coaching calls and the curriculum in Claude

  • ★★★ Donald Miller's brand script framework from Building a StoryBrand is Ali's first port of call when designing a new product; he asks Claude to build one from his VoicePal transcript. — 00:30:50 · VoicePal
  • ★★ The Lifestyle Business Academy has had 346 applications in a few days, while the team is looking for only 30 people for its founding case-study cohort. — 00:32:41
  • ★★ Ali puts the CSV of Lifestyle Business Academy applicants' responses into Claude to see which issues students will likely face at each stage of the roadmap. — 00:33:29
  • ★★ Analysis paralysis over choosing a niche comes up every time Ali speaks to anyone who wants to start a business. — 00:33:29
  • ★★ Ali puts transcripts of his coaching-call recordings into Claude and asks what the coach recommends to make the programme better for students. — 00:35:04
  • ★★ To prepare his team to deliver results in the Lifestyle Business Academy, Ali has used Claude as a thought buddy and paid coaches tens of thousands of dollars. — 00:35:34
  • ★★ Ali wants Lifestyle Business Academy students to hit $100,000 in revenue, but realistically many won't; even they should get a massive return on the programme. — 00:36:15
  • ★★★ All of Ali's AI use comes down to input, processing and output, with different AI tools to help at each stage, whether for software, content or online education. — 00:37:57

00:38:08 — Gamma for slides and sign-off

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Answering a viewer whose Claude said it had no memory across chats, the channel says Claude's memory feature has to be enabled in settings. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Claude · Lifestyle Business Academy · Momentum · VoicePal

Also: People: Donald Miller · Izzy Sealey · Pablo · Sahil

Projects: 1K Challenge · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Building a StoryBrand · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

Organizations: Anthropic · Instagram · LinkedIn · Sparkle Studios · The New York Times · The Sunday Times · TikTok

Concepts: analysis paralysis · hook · imposter syndrome · lifestyle business · personal brand · work optional

Products: Adobe Photoshop · Adobe Premiere Pro · AirDrop · Canva · ChatGPT · CreatorGrid · DaVinci Resolve · Figma · Firecut · Gamma · Google Docs · Google Drive · Google Slides · Grain · Keynote · Loom · Lovable · Microsoft PowerPoint · Notion · Sketch · SuperWhisper · Typeform · Universal Clipboard · V0 · WhatsApp · YouTube Shorts

Also centred on Claude: How I use AI to save 10+ hours per week · 5 AI Tools I Use Every Day · One of my favourite AI tools #ad

Also centred on Lifestyle Business Academy: How to Change Your Life

Also centred on Momentum: We’ve got some HUGEEEE news... @IzzySealey link in description 👀 · If you struggle with consistency, try this app

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