Skip to content

If I Started A Business in 2026, I'd Do This

2026-02-26 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 24:49 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present, His medical past, AI

Ali lays out his Diverge, Converge, Emerge process for finding a business idea: list craft skills, passions and skills to learn and match them to people and problems you know, rate each niche red, yellow or green on whether you like them, can help them and will they pay at least $2,000, then use journaling prompts to pick a gold, silver and bronze niche.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Financial, time and creative freedom through a business; how to come up with a business idea

  • ★★ Ali is a big advocate of starting your own business as the way to get financial freedom, time freedom and the creative freedom to do work that energises you. — 00:00:00 · work optional, time freedom

00:00:29 — Person, problem and product: the holy trinity of a business idea

  • ★★★ Since you cannot print or steal money, Ali says, the only way to make money is for someone to give it to you, and a person gives you money because they have a problem you can solve. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Ali's holy trinity of a business idea is a person, a problem they will pay to have solved, and a product or service that solves it: pick one card from each stack. — 00:01:17 · person, problem, solution
  • ★★ A business idea is profitable, Ali says, when the person has enough money or the problem is valuable enough, and they want the product more than they want to keep their money. — 00:02:15

00:02:44 — Diverge, Converge, Emerge; start with person and problem, the niche, initial niche ideas

  • ★★★ Ali's process for finding a business idea has three phases, Diverge, Converge and Emerge: come up with many ideas broadly, narrow by elimination to one to run as an experiment, and the right niche emerges from that discovery. — 00:02:44

    “Phase 1 is Diverge. Phase 2 is Converge. Phase 3 is Emerge.”

  • ★★★ A mistake many beginners make is starting from the product, such as an app, a hoodie or a tote bag; from coaching many people, Ali says you get more value by thinking of the person and the problem first. — 00:03:21

  • ★★ Ali defines a niche as a specific type of person with a specific type of problem; in his Lifestyle Business Academy, beginners first work out the niche rather than the product. — 00:03:51 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Ali's very first step is to write down any initial niche ideas: which problems you could solve for which sorts of people. — 00:03:51

00:04:33 — Method one: craft skills, his own and his students'

  • ★★★ Ali's first method is to list your craft skills, the skills or expertise you have from personal, professional or life experience: what you are good at, what people ask your help with, what your employer pays you for. — 00:04:33
  • ★★ When he launched his medical school admissions business about 13 years earlier, Ali listed what he was good at: making websites, which he taught himself as a child, and teaching, from years as a private tutor. — 00:05:15 · 6med
  • ★ Ali wondered about a business around close-up magic, but his attempt to get gigs at a restaurant totally flopped. — 00:05:15

00:06:43 — Skillshare sponsor read

00:07:41 — Passions and skills you would like to learn

  • ★★ After craft skills, Ali's next list is the things you are passionate about, written down even if they seem useless for business, such as his old passion for World of Warcraft. — 00:07:41 · World of Warcraft
  • ★ One of Ali's passions these days is Harry Potter, and recently Harry Potter fan fiction. — 00:08:16 · Harry Potter (book series)
  • ★★ Ali's third list is skills you would like to learn: you do not have to base a business on skills you already have. — 00:08:45

00:09:15 — The pen he designed with Baron Fig, and James Clear's pen

  • ★★ Ali has designed a pen, inspired by his Diverge, Converge, Emerge process, in collaboration with his favourite stationery brand, Baron Fig. — 00:09:15
  • ★★ At a writers' retreat, James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, gave Ali a copy of his own pen, designed by Baron Fig, which became Ali's favourite pen until he lost it. — 00:09:15 · James Clear, Atomic Habits
  • ★ Ali asked Joey, Baron Fig's founder, for a white, light-mode version of the James Clear pen; Joey offered a hexagonal pen to collaborate on instead. — 00:09:44 · James Clear

00:10:14 — Matching skills to people and problems; people you know; quantity over quality

  • ★★ With the lists made, Ali looks for any combination of people and problems the skills could help with, aiming for quantity rather than quality. — 00:10:14
  • ★★★ Rather than thinking of people in the abstract, Ali advises listing people you actually know with the problem: it is generally easier to start a business where you know the name of your first client. — 00:11:31
  • ★★ The first money Ali made on his own was from website design at 13: his school friend Luke put him in touch with his stepdad, who paid Ali about 30 quid for a website. — 00:11:31
  • ★★ Ali suggests thinking of people you know who own or run a business: businesses have many problems and owners can justify the return on investment, and buying such a friend lunch to ask about their problems gives amazing insights. — 00:12:01
  • ★★ People who think they know no business owners probably do, one degree of separation away, such as whoever runs the local kebab shop or a freelance designer, Ali says; talk to them about their problems. — 00:12:30
  • ★★ If you have an audience on social media, Ali says, your person could be people in your audience, made more specific later. — 00:13:28
  • ★★ Ali likes James Altucher's phrase: if you can't think of 10 business ideas, think of 20 instead; at this stage no idea is a bad idea. — 00:13:58

00:14:50 — Converge: person, problem, promise rated on like them, help them, will they pay

  • ★★★ To converge on the ideas worth testing, Ali's favourite framework is from his mentor Taki Moore: write each niche idea as a person, a problem and a promise. — 00:14:50 · Alex Hormozi
  • ★★★ Ali rates each niche idea red, yellow or green on three questions: do I like them, can I help them, and will they be delighted to pay to have the problem solved. — 00:16:25
  • ★★★ Ali recommends starting a business in the high-ticket space, charging at least $2,000, adjusted for your currency; starting from scratch today he would try to sell something for at least $2,000. — 00:16:52 · the $2,000 offer rule
  • ★★ Rating his own first niche, Ali gives a yellow to UK medical school applicants paying $2,000 to ace the BMAT: parents would pay, rich international families might, but homegrown UK students' competitors charged far less. (hedged) — 00:17:21 · BMAT
  • ★★ For UK accounting firms whose client onboarding takes too long, automating it would get green lights across the board from Ali: he likes accountants, knows automation and thinks they would pay $2,000 to save time. (hedged) — 00:18:28
  • ★★ Students always worry about the "will they pay" column, Ali says; on the first pass he tells them to go with their gut. — 00:18:28

00:18:58 — Competitor prices, luxury, premium and mass markets; the admissions businesses selling to rich parents

  • ★★★ Ali advises checking competitors' prices: competitors in a market are a good sign; if they charge $5,000 some people will pay $2,000, but if all charge $20, $2,000 may be a tricky ask. — 00:18:58
  • ★★★ In every market, Ali says, about 1% of buyers are luxury buyers, roughly 9% premium buyers and roughly 90% the mass market. — 00:19:47
  • ★★ Starting a business for the mass market is playing business on hard mode, Ali says: it needs a lot of volume and the mass market shops on price, which is very hard to compete on. — 00:19:47 · business on easy mode
  • ★★★ Targeting the luxury market, which buys on status, is generally not sensible for a beginner, Ali says; target the premium market of people willing and happy to pay for high quality. — 00:20:37
  • ★★ From 2012 to 2019 Ali's medical school admissions business charged between £50 and about £110 for a one-day classroom course on medical school exams or interviews. — 00:20:37 · 6med
  • ★★ A few months earlier Ali hosted an event for entrepreneurs in London; three attendees ran businesses helping children get into medical school and charged $5,000 to $15,000. — 00:21:06 · London
  • ★★★ Those admissions entrepreneurs targeted rich parents in mainland China, for whom $5,000 to $15,000 was nothing, so as junior doctors they built multi-million-dollar businesses solving the same problem Ali solved cheaply. — 00:22:01
  • ★★ Ali advises not being put off a business idea by thinking its buyers will not pay much: in every market some people will spend a lot, provided the problem is painful enough. — 00:22:30
  • ★★★ For the Emerge phase, Ali suggests journaling prompts on the shortlist, starting with the two-year test: which niche would feel most exciting to work in for the next two to three years? — 00:22:30

00:22:40 — Emerge: journaling prompts and a gold, silver and bronze niche

  • ★★ Ali's second journaling prompt is the no-fail scenario: which niche would you choose if success were guaranteed, which removes the fear and shows what you actually want. — 00:23:00
  • ★★ Asking which niche feels most like you often leads to a less profitable niche, Ali says, but it is always interesting to see whether the heart aligns with the profit. — 00:23:00
  • ★★ Finally Ali has students pick, on gut feeling, a gold, silver and bronze niche, each with its person, problem, why they are excited and why the buyers would pay. — 00:23:52
  • ★★ Ali's Lifestyle Business Academy gives students feedback on their niche choices; without a mentorship programme, Ali says you could get that feedback from Claude or ChatGPT. — 00:23:52 · Lifestyle Business Academy, Claude, ChatGPT

00:24:33 — Sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: craft skills · Diverge, Converge, Emerge · person, problem, solution · Traffic Light System

Also: People: Alex Hormozi · James Altucher · James Clear · Taki Moore

Projects: Lifestyle Business Academy

Works: Atomic Habits · BMAT · Harry Potter (book series)

Organizations: 6med · Baron Fig

Concepts: business on easy mode · fan fiction · the $2,000 offer rule · time freedom · work optional

Places: China · London

Products: ChatGPT · Claude · Figma · Make · n8n · World of Warcraft · Zapier

Also centred on craft skills: How to actually make money online in 2026

← Previous: My productive dating system · Next → My favourite writing technique #ad