If You Want to Make Money From YouTube, Do This.
2026-05-21 · Case study or coaching session · Ali, Jeff Su · recording, 1 h 29 min · watch on YouTube
Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Business and entrepreneurship, Mindset, motivation and happiness, Productivity and time, Work and career) · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present, His medical past, AI
In a case study, Ali interviews his friend Jeff Su, who built a YouTube business beside his Google job, from $98 in 2020 to $835,000 in 2025, before quitting; they go through eight steps: teaching creator-first, two locked-in years, sucking less with each video, a scripted checklist machine, the employer, products the audience asks for, a hidden motivation and a quit date.
What is said
The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).
00:00:00 — From $98 to $835K: Jeff's journey
00:00:45 — Step 1: find your itch and pick your vehicle; Jeff's revenue, Google pay and why he started
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's first product was his résumé that got him into Google, shared free as a PDF on Gumroad; a month later he found people had donated a thousand US dollars for it. — 00:01:15 · Google
- ★★★ Ali reads out Jeff Su's revenue from YouTube: $98 in 2020, $52,000 in 2021, $449,000 in 2023 and $835,000 so far in 2025, on track for about $900,000. — 00:02:04
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff now has more than 40 templates on Gumroad, 90 percent (as heard) of them free, and people still donate. — 00:02:04
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff puts his all-in pay at Google at about 100K RMB a month by the time he quit. — 00:03:19 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff estimates that the equivalent Google job in San Francisco would have paid $300,000 to $400,000 a year. — 00:03:19 · Google
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff never wanted to be an entrepreneur: he is extremely risk averse and thought he would stay at Google for the rest of his working life. — 00:04:26 · Google
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff began because he fell in love with teaching in Google's Googler-to-Googler (G2G) workshops, where he taught inbox zero, productivity workflows and health and fitness. — 00:04:56 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff thought videos would scale his teaching, since people kept asking him for the same content; he did not expect to quit one day. — 00:05:21
00:05:50 — Sponsor read for Superhuman Mail
00:07:03 — Why Jeff chose YouTube; Ali's own start
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff chose YouTube in 2020 partly because Ali's videos of the time gave a step-by-step blueprint for succeeding on YouTube. — 00:07:24 · Ali Abdaal
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff also chose YouTube because he did not want to sell anything: YouTube pays creators a cut of its advertising revenue. — 00:07:52
- ★★ Ali also started YouTube with no intention of leaving medicine: his dream was to work three days a week, for which he needed an extra £3,000 a month. — 00:07:52
- ★★ Ali, already selling courses by teaching workshops in person, saw YouTube videos as a lead generation mechanism for them. — 00:08:31
- ★★ Ali's first viral video, on how to study for exams, came from a workshop he had run at university about five years earlier as a Facebook event, which loads of people attended and loved. — 00:08:31 · Facebook
- ★★ Ali says almost none of the original YouTubers of the 2000s and early 2010s started out to make money, but for love of the craft; increasingly people start channels for the money. — 00:09:39
00:09:48 — Creator-first versus business-first
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff cannot think of anyone who started YouTube with money as the first intention and has succeeded yet; choosing today, he would still take a creator-led path, because it feels more organic. — 00:10:08
- ★★ Jeff Su: When viewers who had donated asked for an editable Google Docs version of his résumé, Jeff charged $4.99 for it, adding about $1K a month in revenue. — 00:10:47 · Google Docs
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says that with his personality he would have found it very difficult to start from a product idea and follow Sahil's business-first path. — 00:10:47
- ★★ Jeff Su: Although he comes from a sales background, Jeff finds it very difficult to ask for things when he does not have a lot of value to give. — 00:11:35
- ★★★ Asked how to make money on the internet, Ali sketches two paths: the creator-first approach and the business-first approach. — 00:12:04
- ★★ Ali says his friend Sahil's app Firecut made about a million dollars in annual recurring revenue within about 18 months. — 00:12:04
- ★★ In the business-first approach, Ali says, you create a product and a business first and worry about building an audience second. — 00:12:33
- ★★ Ali says Sahil built Firecut because he saw a gap in the market and a product that could add value to people's lives and make a lot of money. — 00:12:33
- ★★ Ali says the creator-first approach is often taken by people who do not care much about monetisation, at least at first, like Jeff, who began because he liked teaching. — 00:13:02
- ★★★ Ali's homework for a creator-first start: if a university hired you to teach a weekly lecture course on anything you liked, what would its theme be? That may show what to teach. — 00:13:32
00:13:56 — Why most people never start: 37 Googlers, one took action
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Of the 37 Googlers who asked Jeff for advice on starting YouTube, one took action. — 00:14:30 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: The first step Jeff gave those Googlers was to take Ali's $1 course on making a first YouTube video, a product since discontinued. — 00:14:30 · Ali Abdaal
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's friend Hern now has a newsletter of over 5,000 subscribers; he went business first after breaking his leg, writing a book in the six months he could do nothing else. — 00:14:59
- ★★ Jeff Su: Hern self-published Let's Take This Offline, on executive presence at work, and sold it on Gumroad for $10 or $15, with no sales because he had no distribution channel. — 00:15:24
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff advised Hern to start posting on LinkedIn, the professional platform, with a link to the book, and perhaps to start a newsletter. — 00:15:24 · LinkedIn
- ★★ Jeff Su: About two months after starting a newsletter, Hern made his first sale; he then chopped the book into free lead magnets to get newsletter sign-ups. (hedged) — 00:16:08
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff, who says he learned the idea from Ali, defines extrinsic motivation as coming from outcomes you cannot control, such as views. — 00:17:29
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff thinks the 36 Googlers who never started wanted extrinsic validation, such as money, views or quitting one day, while people who take action set intrinsic goals. (hedged) — 00:17:55 · identified motivation
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says intrinsic motivation comes from outcomes you control, such as how many videos you upload a week, a month or a year. — 00:17:55 · identified motivation
- ★★★ Ali enjoyed making YouTube videos because he enjoys teaching; otherwise, he says, he would never have made 90 videos before anything took off or ground out a whole year to make $8. — 00:19:32
- ★★★ Ali says many people come in with the outcome in mind, realise the process is really painful and no longer want to do it. — 00:20:01
00:20:33 — Step 2: lock in and pay the price; the four burners theory
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff followed Ali's premise of uploading one video a week for two years; from the outset his commitment was exactly two years. — 00:21:01 · Ali Abdaal
- ★★ Jeff Su: In those two years Jeff arrived at the office at 6:30 or 7 am, first of anyone, so no one would bother him while he planned his day. — 00:21:01
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Alongside his Google job, Jeff worked on YouTube on weekday evenings from 6:30 until 11, or sometimes midnight to 1 am, and from 8 am to 8 pm at weekends. — 00:22:18 · Google
- ★★★ Ali thinks people really underestimate how much time they have to give something for it to work. — 00:22:43
- ★★ Ali cites the four burners theory, which he heard James Clear discuss on The Diary of a CEO: career, health, family and friends, with a side hustle a fifth; at most two can burn at full blast. — 00:22:43 · James Clear
- ★★ Jeff Su: To attend a wedding or big event without breaking his weekly upload, Jeff sometimes had to make two videos in one week. — 00:24:24
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says he lost about 70 percent (as heard) of his friends during those two years, because people stopped inviting him. — 00:25:03
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says the sacrifice was worth it: he chose to trade five years of pleasure for 50 years of freedom. — 00:26:01
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says most people forget that building something this way is a virtuous flywheel whose growth comes exponentially. — 00:26:48
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff counts not renegotiating with himself once he commits to something as one of his unfair advantages. — 00:28:09 · unfair advantage
- ★ Jeff Su: Jeff recalls a clip in which Kobe Bryant described signing a contract with himself to train 12 hours a day in the off-season. — 00:28:09
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff became more confused and lost only after he quit Google, not during the years of grinding. — 00:29:22 · Google
- ★★★ In his final week as a doctor, during the pandemic, Ali filmed three videos between shifts; in his first week unemployed, after Australia closed the borders he meant to cross for emergency medicine, he filmed nothing. — 00:29:47
-
★★★ Ali says growth can mask misalignment: while the numbers go up you do not think too hard, and only when they stop or you have free time do you ask what you should be doing. — 00:30:16
“growth can mask a lot of kind of misalignment”
00:31:01 — Step 3: suck less with each rep; copy someone you respect
- ★★ A woman at one of Ali's London events had taken his YouTube course and stayed consistent for two years, making 300-something vlogs of her life in London. — 00:31:02 · London
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff used to tell creators that uploading one video a week for two years means success; after analysing how they did, he realised he had missed a crucial part. — 00:31:30
-
★★★ Jeff Su: The missing part, Jeff says: beyond uploading every week for two years, you have to suck less with each video, improving at least one percent each time. — 00:32:10
“you have to suck less with each video”
-
★★ Jeff Su: Jeff spent 40 hours on his first video, which no one watched; he then changed one thing per video: the lighting, then the colour scheme, then the audio. — 00:32:10
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says the London vlogger needed to find a painful problem to solve: you can get good at making videos and still not make videos people need or want. — 00:32:46 · London
- ★★ Jeff Su: Before pivoting to a new topic, Jeff says, ask whether you really want to talk about it for two or three years; if not, sticking with a full-time job may serve you better. (hedged) — 00:33:16
- ★★★ Ali says channels posting random videos for years miss the strategy: anyone can publish videos, as anyone can publish a book on Amazon, but viewers must pay for them, if not with money then with time and attention. — 00:34:05
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff tried his best to copy Ali's style when he started, and could not, because he is not Ali; a year in, someone called him "the Asian Ali Abdaal". — 00:34:53 · Ali Abdaal
-
★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's advice for anyone starting YouTube today: find someone you respect and copy them as closely as you can. — 00:35:22
“find someone you respect and copy the crap out of them”
-
★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says a beginner cannot copy someone well, lacking the reps, but has an image of what good looks like and so knows the gap. — 00:35:45
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says this is why context engineering matters for AI: giving it an example of good output, such as a video script, works far better than asking for a script in someone's tone of voice. — 00:35:45
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says that somewhere along the way of copying others you find your own brand and voice, and it comes out naturally. — 00:36:15 · personal brand
- ★★★ When Ali started on YouTube in 2017 he tried to be Peter McKinnon, watching his Lightroom tutorials. — 00:36:15 · Peter McKinnon
- ★★ No one ever called Ali the Peter McKinnon for nerds he was aiming at, but in the process of trying, his own voice emerged. — 00:37:42 · Peter McKinnon
- ★★★ Ali maps Jeff's path onto the framework his YouTuber Academy teaches: get going, get good, then get smart. — 00:38:12 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
- ★★★ Ali teaches making the videos first and accepting that you will feel you suck at them: embrace the suck, since you cannot grow while afraid to suck. — 00:38:41
- ★★★ Ali's action point for building a creative business: figure out which creators you look up to and try your best to imitate their style. — 00:39:10
00:39:36 — Step 4: build the machine; the checklist and how long each video takes
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff has every word of all his videos scripted out. — 00:40:33
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff counts the ability to visualise complex topics simply among his unfair advantages, such as picturing Gemini 3's context window as a box holding a whole apartment's furniture and Claude's as one chair. — 00:42:29 · unfair advantage, Claude
- ★★ Jeff Su: With AI, Jeff spends the same ten hours on a script as before but writes a much better one. — 00:43:08
- ★★ Jeff Su: Because brains are for having ideas, not storing them, Jeff captures each video idea in Todoist right away and moves it into his Notion video template. — 00:43:47 · Notion
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff credits about 80 percent of his success to the checklist in his video template, which he has followed for every one of his 195 videos. — 00:44:26 · Notion
- ★★ Jeff Su: A viral idea might work once or twice, Jeff says, but consistently good ideas come checkbox by checkbox. — 00:44:55
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff keeps AI prompts for pre-production, production and post-production, which he says help him produce consistently clear and concise scripts. — 00:46:19
- ★★ Ali's team has a video template with a checklist, but there are periods when things slip and he and the team stop bothering with it. — 00:46:19
- ★★ Ali compares this to surgical safety checklists: medicine minimises how much the operator's skill affects the patient's outcome, so the more is systemised into a checklist, the more the system delivers. — 00:47:32
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Each of Jeff's videos takes around 20 hours to produce from end to end. — 00:49:16
- ★★ Jeff Su: To brief his editor on motion graphics, Jeff makes Canva designs and mock-up screenshots for the editor to recreate. — 00:50:05
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff finds getting started on each video the hardest part, above all finding its angle, but once in flow he loves the process. — 00:51:40
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says Gemini 3.0 has become good enough to use everything in Google Drive, Google Calendar and Gmail to do work for you, such as drafting a performance review. — 00:52:20 · Google Drive
- ★★ Ali recalls Mrwhosetheboss (Arun Maini) telling him he spends 40 to 60 hours writing the script for each video. — 00:53:43
- ★★★ The thesis of Ali's YouTuber Academy for five years: YouTube is really hard without a system; systems for ideas, titles and thumbnails in a house style, scripting and post-production take much of the heavy lifting off and make the work better over time. — 00:54:06 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
- ★★ Jeff Su: In his Notion command center Jeff clicks "new day" to get everything he needs to do that day: reviewing the calendar, birthday wishes, replying to social media comments. — 00:55:12 · Notion
00:55:16 — Jeff's daily command center, reviews, procrastination and focus
- ★ Jeff Su: Jeff read Make Time on Ali's recommendation and calls it one of his favourite books. — 00:55:47
- ★★ Jeff Su: In his physical journal, following Make Time, Jeff reframes tasks in a more positive light: "I get to do this" rather than "I have to do it". — 00:56:43 · identified motivation
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's biggest hack: captured tasks and ideas are useless unless reviewed; at Google, reviewing all his inboxes (Gmail, Google Keep, Drive, Google Tasks) meant nothing slipped through the cracks. — 00:57:12 · Google Drive, Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff calls his workflow platform-agnostic: as long as you capture, organise, review and engage, you can use any platform and get things done. — 00:58:14
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Now full-time, Jeff procrastinates often: after a chunk of work he rewards himself with his phone and YouTube, whereas when grinding he kept procrastination to write-off days; he has not figured out how to beat it. — 00:58:41 · write-off principle
- ★★★ Jeff Su: To focus, Jeff uses a five-minute rule: he sets a five-minute timer in the Superfocus app and sits with the task; by the time it rings he is already thinking about the next step. — 00:59:23 · Superfocus
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff puts the day's priority in his calendar as a non-negotiable; everything else on his list is negotiable. — 01:00:09 · time-blocking
- ★★ Jeff Su: Since 2021 Jeff has made one YouTube video a year on his Notion command center; his course Build Your Command Center in Notion uses a version of Tiago Forte's PARA method. — 01:01:32 · second brain, Notion
01:03:21 — Step 5: navigating the day job; nobody cares about your side hustle
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Before he uploaded his first video, Jeff asked Google's ethics and compliance team, which gave him a set of rules to follow. — 01:04:18 · Google
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Eight months later Google audited Jeff's channel and found problems: first, he was not allowed to talk about Google products, because of a possible conflict of interest. — 01:04:18 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: After the audit Jeff had to take some videos down; a year later a second audit found his channel fine. — 01:04:53 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says he knows people from Meta, Apple, Spotify and other companies who were fired immediately, with no recourse, over their social media presence. — 01:04:53 · Apple
- ★★★ Jeff Su: If you fear being fired over a side project, Jeff advises asking your company's compliance team first, not your manager, because in big tech companies managers do not know the rules. — 01:06:20
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's manager at Google supported his channel as long as it did not interfere with his full-time job. — 01:06:50 · Google
- ★★★ Jeff Su: In Jeff's experience no one at work cares about your side project: everyone has their own problems, their next paycheck and promotion. — 01:07:13
- ★★ Ali says some students in his academy have put off their very first LinkedIn post for about three weeks, worried about all their former colleagues on LinkedIn. — 01:08:02 · Lifestyle Business Academy, LinkedIn
- ★★★ Jeff Su: For a first LinkedIn post, Jeff suggests objectively safe formats such as "we had an offsite, these are the top three learnings", which no one could judge and colleagues would support. — 01:08:31 · LinkedIn
- ★★ Jeff Su: Seeing someone he dislikes post on LinkedIn, Jeff says, he would judge for a second and forget; no one sane screenshots it to mock in a group chat. — 01:09:38 · LinkedIn
- ★★ Ali says a first LinkedIn post is seen first by your existing connections, your current and former colleagues, whose judgment people try very hard to avoid as a kind of ego defence. — 01:10:05 · LinkedIn
- ★★★ Ali tells his students they will have to post on LinkedIn every day, so the more they overthink the first post, the slower they build their business. — 01:10:34 · LinkedIn, Lifestyle Business Academy
- ★★★ To build a lifestyle business to about a million dollars, Ali tells students to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to send 200 connection requests a week and DM everyone who talks to them, every week for about five years. — 01:10:56 · lifestyle business, Lifestyle Business Academy, LinkedIn
- ★★ Ali's hospital and medical school knew all about his YouTube videos; he did not make them secretly on the side. — 01:11:25
- ★★★ Ali says that if you can talk to your manager, HR or compliance team and get a green light, even with restrictions, it lifts an enormous burden: you no longer lie awake wondering whether they will find out about your side hustle. — 01:11:25
- ★★ Some of Ali's students build in secret until the business is big enough and then quit, but he calls that generally a more stressful way to run a side hustle. — 01:11:25
01:12:04 — Step 6: let the products come to you
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's résumé products were his first experience of Daniel Priestley's product framework: the free PDF as do it yourself, the editable Google Docs version as done with you. — 01:12:43 · Google
- ★★ Every six months for eight years Ali has gone through a cycle: build a system, follow it for a week, life happens, forget it and go back to pen and paper. — 01:13:38 · Notion
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says most people fail with Notion when they do not build their system themselves. — 01:14:05 · Notion
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff bought Thomas Frank's Ultimate Brain and gave up within three days: though he loves Thomas Frank, he does not need 60 properties for a task. — 01:14:05 · Thomas Frank
- ★★ Jeff Su: In his Notion course Jeff gives students only raw databases and walks them through connecting them, which he thinks has improved how many keep using the system. (hedged) — 01:14:54 · Notion
- ★★★ Ali describes a product spectrum of do it yourself, done with you and done for you; going creator-first, it is often easiest to start with a do-it-yourself product, such as Jeff's templates. — 01:15:38
- ★★★ Many businesses go the other way, Ali says: a done-for-you service first, then done-with-you coaching once they have results, then an online course, more scalable but cheaper; you weigh scalability against price. — 01:17:13
- ★★★ Ali says that when you put in that level of work and build an audience who know, like and trust you, monetisation almost takes care of itself without forcing it. — 01:17:42
01:18:10 — Step 7: figure out your real why; Jeff's hidden motivation
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Asked for advice for someone following his path, Jeff says tactics do not matter: the only thing that matters is the initial motivation, why you want to do it. — 01:18:43
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff believes the real motivation behind what you want is something very hidden and dark that very few people ever get to know. — 01:18:43
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff was a terrible high school student, with a GPA of about 2.8 or 2.9 out of 4.0. — 01:19:21
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff turned his life around at college and graduated in the top 10 of his class because he was angry that people he thought less capable were getting better grades. — 01:19:21
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says that for a lot of things in life the motivation may matter less than the outcome. (hedged) — 01:19:48
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says you need to be honest with yourself about why you want to do it: a surface-level reason such as money or freedom is not sustainable; it has to be part of who you are. — 01:20:38
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's wake-up call was Google's layoffs a couple of years earlier, which shocked many who saw themselves as Googlers. — 01:22:04 · Google
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's other hidden motivation was to stop seeing himself only as a Googler: YouTube made him an educator, not just a Googler. — 01:22:47 · Google
- ★★ Ali's homework: ask yourself the real, dark reason you want financial freedom or a business; being aware of it is generally a good idea. — 01:23:16 · work optional
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff quit his job at Google in April 2025. — 01:23:16 · Google
01:23:33 — Step 8: set the quit date; Jeff's team and goals
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Being so risk averse, Jeff would not quit Google for anything less than three times his full-time salary. — 01:23:45 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff chose three times his salary so that if his income halved he would still have 1.5 times it; he admits the rule was not scientific. — 01:24:09
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff set the second quarter of 2025 as his quit date and raised it with his manager in January so that he could not take it back. — 01:24:38
- ★★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says he should have quit Google a year sooner. — 01:24:38 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: In his last year at Google Jeff could not give 110 percent to both jobs: his YouTube videos did not do well and his Google work suffered. — 01:25:06 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff says he stayed at Google too long because he was too greedy, wanting everything at once. — 01:25:39 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff has two full-time remote team members: one who left Google to join him, based in Guangzhou, and a new hire in Taipei. — 01:26:09 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's vision is to build the lifestyle business Daniel Priestley describes in Oversubscribed. — 01:26:09 · lifestyle business, Lifestyle Business Academy
- ★★ Jeff Su: By his own account Jeff is impatient and short-tempered as a manager, has shouted at people and made people cry, which is one reason he left Google: he does not want to manage people. — 01:26:56 · Google
- ★★ Jeff Su: Jeff's goal for the next three to five years is to build a team as invested in his mission as he is. — 01:26:56
01:28:11 — Sign-off
Threads in this video
- restate · How do creators make money from YouTube? — Jeff cannot think of anyone who started YouTube with money as the first intention and has succeeded yet; choosing today, he would still take a creator-led path, because it feels more organic. (00:10:08)
- mentioned · Ali sets a goal of an extra £3,000 a month so he could work three days a week as a doctor — Ali also started YouTube with no intention of leaving medicine: his dream was to work three days a week, for which he needed an extra £3,000 a month. (00:07:52)
- retold · Ali gives a talk at Cambridge University about how to study for exams (2015) — Ali's first viral video, on how to study for exams, came from a workshop he had run at university about five years earlier as a Facebook event, which loads of people attended and loved. (00:08:31)
- refine · How do creators make money from YouTube? — Asked how to make money on the internet, Ali sketches two paths: the creator-first approach and the business-first approach. (00:12:04)
- refine · Should you pick a niche for your channel? — Ali's homework for a creator-first start: if a university hired you to teach a weekly lecture course on anything you liked, what would its theme be? That may show what to teach. (00:13:32)
- restate · Do you need motivation or discipline to get things done? — Jeff thinks the 36 Googlers who never started wanted extrinsic validation, such as money, views or quitting one day, while people who take action set intrinsic goals. (00:17:55)
- mentioned · Ali makes 85 YouTube videos, twice a week for a year, before his channel is monetised; it takes 52 videos to reach 1,000 subscribers — Ali enjoyed making YouTube videos because he enjoys teaching; otherwise, he says, he would never have made 90 videos before anything took off or ground out a whole year to make $8. (00:19:32)
- restate · How do you find time for projects alongside a full-time job? — Alongside his Google job, Jeff worked on YouTube on weekday evenings from 6:30 until 11, or sometimes midnight to 1 am, and from 8 am to 8 pm at weekends. (00:22:18)
- refine · How do you find time for projects alongside a full-time job? — Ali cites the four burners theory, which he heard James Clear discuss on The Diary of a CEO: career, health, family and friends, with a side hustle a fifth; at most two can burn at full blast. (00:22:43)
- looked back · Ali's one-year sabbatical from medicine (2020) — In his final week as a doctor, during the pandemic, Ali filmed three videos between shifts; in his first week unemployed, after Australia closed the borders he meant to cross for emergency medicine, he filmed nothing. (00:29:47)
- shift · How do you grow a YouTube channel? — Jeff used to tell creators that uploading one video a week for two years means success; after analysing how they did, he realised he had missed a crucial part. (00:31:30)
- refine · How do you grow a YouTube channel? — The missing part, Jeff says: beyond uploading every week for two years, you have to suck less with each video, improving at least one percent each time. (00:32:10)
- restate · Should you pick a niche for your channel? — Jeff says the London vlogger needed to find a painful problem to solve: you can get good at making videos and still not make videos people need or want. (00:32:46)
- restate · How do you grow a YouTube channel? — Ali says channels posting random videos for years miss the strategy: anyone can publish videos, as anyone can publish a book on Amazon, but viewers must pay for them, if not with money then with time and attention. (00:34:05)
- restate · How do you start a YouTube channel? — Jeff's advice for anyone starting YouTube today: find someone you respect and copy them as closely as you can. (00:35:22)
- restate · How should you use AI in work and life? — Jeff says this is why context engineering matters for AI: giving it an example of good output, such as a video script, works far better than asking for a script in someone's tone of voice. (00:35:45)
- retold · Ali tries to be the Peter McKinnon of medical school — When Ali started on YouTube in 2017 he tried to be Peter McKinnon, watching his Lightroom tutorials. (00:36:15)
- restate · How do you start a YouTube channel? — Ali maps Jeff's path onto the framework his YouTuber Academy teaches: get going, get good, then get smart. (00:38:12)
- refine · How do you start a YouTube channel? — Ali's action point for building a creative business: figure out which creators you look up to and try your best to imitate their style. (00:39:10)
- restate · Should you script your videos? — Jeff has every word of all his videos scripted out. (00:40:33)
- restate · How do creators keep going without burning out? — Jeff credits about 80 percent of his success to the checklist in his video template, which he has followed for every one of his 195 videos. (00:44:26)
- restate · How do creators keep going without burning out? — The thesis of Ali's YouTuber Academy for five years: YouTube is really hard without a system; systems for ideas, titles and thumbnails in a house style, scripting and post-production take much of the heavy lifting off and make the work better over time. (00:54:06)
- restate · How should you plan your day? — In his Notion command center Jeff clicks "new day" to get everything he needs to do that day: reviewing the calendar, birthday wishes, replying to social media comments. (00:55:12)
- restate · Should you journal, and how? — In his physical journal, following Make Time, Jeff reframes tasks in a more positive light: "I get to do this" rather than "I have to do it". (00:56:43)
- restate · Which productivity system should you use to organise your life? — Jeff's biggest hack: captured tasks and ideas are useless unless reviewed; at Google, reviewing all his inboxes (Gmail, Google Keep, Drive, Google Tasks) meant nothing slipped through the cracks. (00:57:12)
- restate · How do you improve your focus? — To focus, Jeff uses a five-minute rule: he sets a five-minute timer in the Superfocus app and sits with the task; by the time it rings he is already thinking about the next step. (00:59:23)
- restate · How do you decide which work to prioritise? — Jeff puts the day's priority in his calendar as a non-negotiable; everything else on his list is negotiable. (01:00:09)
- restate · Should you start a side hustle, and which one? — If you fear being fired over a side project, Jeff advises asking your company's compliance team first, not your manager, because in big tech companies managers do not know the rules. (01:06:20)
- restate · How do you handle criticism and comparing yourself with others? — In Jeff's experience no one at work cares about your side project: everyone has their own problems, their next paycheck and promotion. (01:07:13)
- restate · How do you build an audience online? — For a first LinkedIn post, Jeff suggests objectively safe formats such as "we had an offsite, these are the top three learnings", which no one could judge and colleagues would support. (01:08:31)
- restate · How do you build an audience online? — Ali tells his students they will have to post on LinkedIn every day, so the more they overthink the first post, the slower they build their business. (01:10:34)
- refine · How do you get leads and traffic for what you sell? — To build a lifestyle business to about a million dollars, Ali tells students to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to send 200 connection requests a week and DM everyone who talks to them, every week for about five years. (01:10:56)
- refine · Should you start a side hustle, and which one? — Ali says that if you can talk to your manager, HR or compliance team and get a green light, even with restrictions, it lifts an enormous burden: you no longer lie awake wondering whether they will find out about your side hustle. (01:11:25)
- refine · Which productivity system should you use to organise your life? — Jeff says most people fail with Notion when they do not build their system themselves. (01:14:05)
- refine · What kind of business should you start first? — Ali describes a product spectrum of do it yourself, done with you and done for you; going creator-first, it is often easiest to start with a do-it-yourself product, such as Jeff's templates. (01:15:38)
- restate · How do creators make money from YouTube? — Ali says that when you put in that level of work and build an audience who know, like and trust you, monetisation almost takes care of itself without forcing it. (01:17:42)
- refine · Do you need motivation or discipline to get things done? — Asked for advice for someone following his path, Jeff says tactics do not matter: the only thing that matters is the initial motivation, why you want to do it. (01:18:43)
- restate · Should you quit your job to start a business or a channel? — Being so risk averse, Jeff would not quit Google for anything less than three times his full-time salary. (01:23:45)
- restate · How do you get past perfectionism and the fear of starting? — Ali teaches making the videos first and accepting that you will feel you suck at them: embrace the suck, since you cannot grow while afraid to suck. (00:38:41)
- restate · How do you come up with ideas for content? — Because brains are for having ideas, not storing them, Jeff captures each video idea in Todoist right away and moves it into his Notion video template. (00:43:47)
- milestone · Lifestyle Business Academy, Ali's curriculum for building a lifestyle business to $100,000 a year in profit (2025) — Ali says some students in his academy have put off their very first LinkedIn post for about three weeks, worried about all their former colleagues on LinkedIn. (01:08:02)
Where the stories that moved here went next
- Lifestyle Business Academy, Ali's curriculum for building a lifestyle business to $100,000 a year in profit (2025) — running; last: milestone, 2026-10-19
Mentioned
Central: business-first approach · creator-first approach · Google · Jeff Su · service to product spectrum
Also: People: Arun Maini · Daniel Priestley · Hern · James Clear · Kobe Bryant · Marques Brownlee · Peter McKinnon · Sahil · Scott Galloway · Thomas Frank · Tiago Forte
Projects: Lifestyle Business Academy · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
Works: Build Your Command Center in Notion · Let's Take This Offline · Make Time · Oversubscribed · The Diary of a CEO
Organizations: Apple · Bilibili · Emory University · Facebook · Instagram · LinkedIn · Meta · Skillshare · Twitter · Xiaohongshu
Concepts: deep work (concept) · diversifying your identity · embrace the suck · Emergency medicine · extrinsic motivation · five-minute rule · four burners theory · get going, get good, get smart · identified motivation · imitate then innovate · lead generation · lead magnet · lifestyle business · NOC mindset · second brain · spotlight effect · standard operating procedure · unfair advantage · work optional · write-off principle
Places: Australia · China · Hong Kong · London
Products: Adobe Lightroom · Adobe Premiere Pro · Apple Notes · Canva · Claude · Final Cut Pro · Firecut · Gemini · Gmail · Google Calendar · Google Drive · Gumroad · LinkedIn Sales Navigator · Notion · Sony A6400 · Superfocus · Todoist · Ultimate Brain · World of Warcraft
Also centred on business-first approach: My Honest Advice to Anyone Starting YouTube in 2026 · If I Started YouTube from Scratch in 2026, I’d do THIS
Also centred on creator-first approach: My Honest Advice to Anyone Starting YouTube in 2026 · If I Started YouTube from Scratch in 2026, I’d do THIS
Also centred on service to product spectrum: The Easiest Business to Start in 2026 for Beginners
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