Skip to content

Brutally Honest Truth On How To Get Rich

2026-03-06 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 17:26 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Money and investing (also: Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Ali argues that, all else being equal, people who make more money spend more of their discretionary hours actively trying to make money; he shows Lifestyle Business Academy scorecards of two students, lays out a funnel from time to actions, outputs, outcomes and money, and asks viewers to track those hours, aiming at 10 to 15 a week.

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 a World of Warcraft guild teaches about money

  • ★ Ali says he used to be addicted to World of Warcraft, which he has played on and off for about the last 15 years. — 00:00:00 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★ Ali recounts Maximum, who leads Team Liquid, the best World of Warcraft guild in the world, saying that basically every member has spent 15 to 20 years playing the game 8 to 12 hours a day. — 00:00:58 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★ To be among the world's best at World of Warcraft, Ali says, you would have to sink huge amounts of time into it and actively try to improve rather than just play for its own sake. — 00:01:56 · World of Warcraft

00:02:26 — The pattern behind people who make more: time spent actively trying to make money

  • ★★★ The pattern Ali sees: all else being equal, people who make more money spend far more of their discretionary time actively trying to make money, and people who make less spend less. — 00:02:26

    “the people who make more money are spending way more of their time actively trying to make money.”

  • ★ Ali says privilege and unfair advantages are definitely important to how rich you can get and how easily, though they are not the subject of this video. — 00:02:55 · unfair advantage

  • ★★ Ali's rough count of a week: of 168 hours, say 56 go to sleep and 12 to eating and the toilet, leaving about 100 hours, of which a job or school and responsibilities take a share. (hypothetical) — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Ali does not count your day job as time spent trying to make more money unless the job is itself your vehicle for getting rich, such as a highly paid algorithmic trader at Jane Street. — 00:03:24
  • ★ Ali compares making money with the gym, cooking and music: someone far better than him, a basic amateur guitarist, at the guitar or piano has mostly just spent far more time on it. — 00:04:52
  • ★★ Ali's friend Jane, whose key goal for ten years has been to become a millionaire, be financially free and retire her parents, spends basically zero hours a week outside her day job trying to make money. — 00:05:21
  • ★★ Because money is woven into the fabric of society, Ali says, people treat money goals unlike goals such as running, so many do not see that making more money takes more time than they now spend on it. — 00:05:50

00:05:59 — Sponsor read: Stan

00:07:18 — What counts as actively trying to make more money

  • ★★★ When you are just starting out, Ali counts reading books, watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts about money and entrepreneurship as trying to make money, but only for the first three to six months; after about month six those hours stop counting. — 00:07:18
  • ★★★ After that, what counts for Ali is the hours a week spent building skills, or a product or service that solves problems people will pay to have solved: getting better at your job to negotiate a raise or, to get rich quicker, a product in your own business. — 00:07:47

00:08:16 — Real student scorecard data: Hermione and Harry

  • ★★ For the last few months Ali has been running the Lifestyle Business Academy, an online business school where he, his team and coaches mentor working professionals starting their first business. — 00:08:16 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Every week the Lifestyle Business Academy asks its students to fill in a scorecard: hours intended and actually worked, content posted, followers gained, DMs started, calls booked and taken, and money made; Ali invites viewers to copy it. — 00:08:45 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Ali says a Lifestyle Business Academy student he calls Hermione, with a demanding full-time job and two kids, is closing a lot of revenue, which would not happen without the 10 to 15 hours a week she puts into her business. — 00:10:13 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Ali says a student he calls Harry, twelve weeks into the Lifestyle Business Academy with a full-time job, has put in 10 to 21 hours a week on cold outreach and content but has made no sales yet. — 00:10:42 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Ali predicts that his academy student Harry will in a few years be a very successful business person with a six-figure lifestyle business, because of the sheer hours he puts in each week. (hedged) — 00:11:41 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ The column Ali looks at to tell which students will make it is hours put in each week: what you do with the time, your content, offer and strategy, matters too, but the hours are the prerequisite. — 00:11:41
  • ★ A minority of Ali's academy students put in a lot of hours that do not turn into actions, often because they overthink, spending eight hours on a LinkedIn post instead of 20 minutes; coaches help them use the time better. — 00:12:10 · LinkedIn

00:12:19 — Hours are the prerequisite

  • ★★ Experienced entrepreneurs such as Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates can make a lot of money without many hours, Ali says, because over decades they have built leverage, skills, a network and wealth. — 00:12:47
  • ★★★ A beginner without skills, credibility, experience, leverage, a team, money or a network, Ali says, just has to put in a lot of time and get better over time: there are no other shortcuts. — 00:13:16

00:13:33 — The money funnel

  • ★★ In Ali's money funnel an output, such as how much content you publish, is broadly under your control, while an outcome, such as the followers it gains, is only partly under your control. — 00:13:46
  • ★★★ Ali's money funnel, on which the academy's scorecards are built: money comes from outcomes such as sales or followers, outcomes from outputs such as published content, outputs from actions, and actions from the time you put in each week. — 00:14:16 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Ali says the channel will make more videos in the future in its Freedom Fridays series; it already has a bunch on other parts of the equation from time to money. — 00:14:45

00:15:14 — Track your hours

  • ★★★ In his 20s, with the goal of financial freedom, Ali put 10 to 15 hours a week, from about 2013 on, into building a business alongside his full-time work as a medical student and doctor. — 00:15:43
  • ★★ If you lack 10 to 15 spare hours a week to make money, Ali says, look at what you can cut, starting with your screen time: if it is over 10 to 15 hours a week, that time could go to the goal. — 00:16:13
  • ★ Ali calls money a morally neutral thing: making it is neither morally good nor bad. — 00:16:13
  • ★★★ Ali's one takeaway for anyone who wants more money: track how many hours each week you spend actively trying to make money, which he calls a very good starting point. — 00:16:42
  • ★★ Only once you put in 10 to 15 hours a week, Ali says, is it worth discussing your business strategy, skills, content, offer and packaging, which all come downstream of the time. — 00:16:42

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali says his point about getting rich is not about hustle culture or working yourself to death but about being honest with yourself about where your limited time goes. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Lifestyle Business Academy · money funnel · World of Warcraft

Also: Bill Gates · Freedom Fridays · Jane Street · Jeff Bezos · LinkedIn · Maximum · Team Liquid · unfair advantage

Only in the description or credits: hustle culture

← Previous: Why your straight A's are keeping you broke · Next → Why learning to code is vital even with AI