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If you're ambitious but feel stuck, please watch this

2026-09-30 · Case study or coaching session · Ali, Eric Partaker · recording, 51:32 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past, Family, Sponsor segment present

Ali traces the jumps in his income, from $50 in 2007 to a business stuck at about $5 million a year, almost always to a friend or mentor who pushed him past his "that's not realistic"; his CEO coach Eric Partaker then walks him through a 10x goal of $50 million, breaking it into 2,000 customers at $25,000 and 40 coaches, and the nine squares of his ScaleOS altitude matrix.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Teaser: Eric asks where Ali would take the business with a magic wand

  • ★★ Ali made his first money online in 2007, $50 for making websites for a friend's dad, after his school friend James told him it was possible, which Ali first called not realistic. — 00:00:29

00:00:46 — Step 1: that's not realistic — almost every jump in his income followed a push from a friend or mentor

  • ★★ As a schoolboy making websites on a freelance platform, Ali made basically nothing in 2009, around £250 in 2010 and around £100 in 2011, and felt rich. — 00:01:15
  • ★★★ In 2012, just before medical school, Ali was scammed out of his life savings, about £1,000; wondering whether a business could make back ten times that, he first said it was not realistic, then built his first successful business. — 00:01:15
  • ★★ Ali's medical school admissions business made about £10,000 in revenue in year one, about £80,000 in year two and £150,000 in year three. — 00:01:44
  • ★★ Ali started his YouTube channel in 2017; it made basically no money for two years; in 2019 he graduated and worked full-time as an NHS doctor while running his admissions business. — 00:01:44 · NHS
  • ★★★ In 2019, with his channel making about £3,000 a month, Ali's mentor Rohan urged him to hire a £3,000-a-month full-time editor; Ali thought it not realistic, but Christian became his first full-time employee. — 00:02:13 · Christian
  • ★★ With his time freed by his first hire, Ali's business grew from about 30K to about 300K a year. — 00:02:13
  • ★★★ In 2020, about to launch his first YouTube course, Ali planned a $200 series of videos; two mentors pushed him to make it a high-touch live cohort at $2,000, which he did. — 00:02:43 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Ali's business revenue went from 300K to about $1.2 million in 2020, making him a millionaire at about 26; with COVID it reached about $4 million, and since 2021 it has hovered at $4–6 million with 40–60% margins. — 00:03:12 · COVID-19
  • ★★★ Ali says at almost every plateau a mentor or friend with an outside view pushed him to think bigger; his first response was always "that's not realistic", and listening to them broke the plateau. — 00:03:41

  • ★★★ Ali asks viewers what they have been calling unrealistic before even giving themselves permission to explore it, and to explore it, even just hypothetically, by modelling out what it might look like. — 00:04:39

    “What's something you've been calling unrealistic before you've even given yourself permission to explore it?”

00:05:10 — Step 2: the 10X question — Astro Teller's 10X can be easier than 10%

  • ★★ Ali cites Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, Google's moonshot factory, who argued in a 2013 Wired article that 10X can sometimes be far easier than 10%. — 00:05:42 · Google
  • ★★ Ali explains that growing a business by 10% means doing more of the same a little better, while growing it tenfold forces you to think outside the box and do something completely different. — 00:06:11
  • ★★ Ali encourages viewers to imagine earning ten times their income and model out what it might look like, which is easier in your own business, where there is no limit, than in a job. — 00:06:40

00:07:15 — Sponsor read for Perplexity Computer

00:09:07 — Step 3: confronting the 10X goal of 50 million a year

  • ★★ Ali's business has made around $5 million a year in revenue fairly consistently for the last few years, across different products. — 00:09:07
  • ★★★ Eric Partaker: To get value from setting a 10x goal, Eric Partaker says to suspend disbelief: pick the number as if with a magic wand, with no burnout, extra chaos or compromised life attached. — 00:10:08
  • ★★ Asked to suspend disbelief, Ali names 50 million a year as his business's 10x goal, then wavers between 10, 20 and 100 million before settling on 50. — 00:10:08
  • ★★ Eric Partaker says jumping ahead to all the reasons to disbelieve is the main thing stopping people getting value from a 10x exercise, rather than simply setting the goal. — 00:10:33
  • ★★★ Eric Partaker: Answering Ali's "it's not about the money", Eric Partaker says wanting money is completely fine and healthy: there is nothing wrong with it and no need to justify it to anyone. — 00:11:22
  • ★★ Eric Partaker compares business to an athlete going for Olympic gold: nobody faults the athlete, and there is nothing wrong with going for gold and the money that comes with it. — 00:12:17
  • ★ Ali's conversation with his CEO coach Eric Partaker was recorded about a month before the video, in London; Eric only said he wanted to explore an interesting 10X framework. — 00:12:17 · London
  • ★★ Ali recommends applying the 10X question to something you care about, your income, your revenue or even your health and relationships, and asking what you have not let yourself explore. — 00:12:46
  • ★★ Ali had a crush on his wife for ages before they got together and always assumed it was not realistic. — 00:12:46 · Izzy Sealey
  • ★★★ Ali says you need not go for a bigger goal, and he does not know whether he wants $50 million, but exploring it hypothetically makes sure you are not sabotaging yourself. — 00:13:45
  • ★★★ Eric Partaker says a common mistake after setting a 10x goal is objecting that the current business cannot 10x: if it could, you would already have done it, so change is required. — 00:14:14

00:14:24 — Step 4: opening the black box — product, market and delivery, and running the numbers

  • ★★ Eric Partaker says a business model is simply three things: the product and its price, the market and its channels, and delivery. — 00:15:02
  • ★★ At a mastermind in Scotland Ali met people making about $50 million a year from high-ticket coaching, consulting or services, so to him the goal does not defy physics. — 00:16:27
  • ★★ Ali notes that such $50-million businesses sell at a far higher price with recurring billing, and thinks both his software and his info products need that: a higher price and a membership model. — 00:16:54
  • ★★ Ali knows few consumer products making $50 million but zillions of B2B ones, so he thinks Superfocus for individuals is unlikely to get there, while Superfocus for teams, selling to businesses, is a well-trodden path. — 00:17:18 · Superfocus
  • ★★ Ali realises $50 million needs only 2,000 customers at $25,000 a year, a big but not insane number, since he has an audience of about 8 million across platforms. — 00:18:28
  • ★★★ Ali says he had dismissed $50 million as unrealistic before running the numbers; broken down into hypothetical steps, the steps are still hard but feel doable rather than impossible. — 00:18:28
  • ★★ Eric Partaker's liberating thought: since results follow a normal distribution, somebody will always occupy the outlier data points in any business, so why not you. — 00:19:08
  • ★★ Ali's immediate objection to aiming for outlier results is that he does not want the stress. — 00:19:37
  • ★★ Eric Partaker says you cannot be an outlier and burnt out at once: like pro athletes, outliers achieve outlier results sustainably, which takes finding the leverage, the 20% that creates 80% of growth. — 00:19:37 · burnout
  • ★★ Ali's business coaches students in one-on-one calls; each coach now has about 30 students, and the aim is closer to 50, which friends in the space make work. — 00:21:22 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Serving 2,000 students at 50 per coach would take 40 coaches; when Ali's business recruited coaches, 1,200 people applied and it has hired seven so far. — 00:21:22 · Lifestyle Business Academy

00:23:05 — The 3172 method

  • ★★ Eric Partaker's 3172 method: triple the leads, raise the win rate 1.7 times and double the price; a business of $2 million in sales becomes $20.4 million, 10.2 times bigger. — 00:23:11
  • ★★ Eric Partaker advises pricing on the outcome you deliver rather than the hours that go into the product: next to helping someone build a $1-million-a-year business, $25,000 is peanuts. — 00:24:38
  • ★★ Eric Partaker: To triple leads, Eric Partaker suggests picking one dominant channel, such as LinkedIn or Instagram, and getting really good at it. — 00:24:38 · LinkedIn, Instagram
  • ★★ Ali's business currently has about 30,000 customers who have paid it some amount of money. — 00:25:23
  • ★★ Ali admits he had even read 10x Is Easier Than 2x and simply dismissed it. — 00:27:24

00:27:32 — Step 5: the execution — the company: elevate, eliminate, execute

  • ★★ Eric Partaker says the constraints to 10x growth live in one or more of his matrix's nine squares, and for each square needing work he sets very simple steps for the next 30 days. — 00:28:05
  • ★★ Angus has campaigned for a $25,000 price point for a while; Ali thought it too much, but if the goal is getting students to a million in revenue, it is nothing at all. — 00:28:34 · Angus (general manager)
  • ★★ Ali's mission is to build the world's best online business school; he rarely talks revenue with his team, as few besides marketing and sales are motivated by revenue numbers. — 00:29:18 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Eric Partaker warns that a founder who sees a path to 10x but keeps serving customers with a product that holds them at 1x or 2x spends time there that the 10x needs. — 00:30:59
  • ★★★ Ali keeps his low-ticket products: all his best high-ticket customers came from a $1,000 product, were blown away by it, then applied for the $15,000 one, so he is bullish on a low-ticket ascension model. — 00:32:09
  • ★★ Ali says the YouTuber Academy and especially the 1K Challenge have driven a lot of leads into his high-ticket programme. — 00:32:55 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★ Eric Partaker: When building Skype, Eric Partaker's team partnered with the top internet service providers in every major market and had Skype bundled with their software. — 00:33:33
  • ★★ Ali thinks his business can reach $50 million without external partners, but rates its operating infrastructure for that scale red. — 00:34:19
  • ★★ Ali's team has just run its first project management sprint, a two-week cycle assigning tasks and dates. — 00:34:45
  • ★★ With its work spread across Circle, Slack and Google Sheets, Ali thinks the systems that work for 200 students will probably break at 2,000. (hedged) — 00:35:31 · Google, Slack, Google Sheets

00:36:10 — Leadership: talent bar, bottlenecks and the 10X seats

  • ★★ Ali rates his team's talent bar fine: cloning the current team's standard would reach the goal; the business needs someone in charge of sales and is hiring one. — 00:36:53
  • ★★ Ali is still a bottleneck for vibe-coding tools for the business and is looking for a developer to take development off his hands. — 00:37:21
  • ★★ Ali would spend the freed time building curriculum for his $25,000 product, which is light on curriculum and so has to be very heavy on coaching. — 00:38:05
  • ★★ Ali names his business's 10x seats: a student success lead over the coaches, a product lead, a 10x developer, a marketing lead and a sales lead. — 00:39:35
  • ★★ Eric Partaker advises mapping the 10x seats and when to fill them first; only then ask which current people fit them, which could with training, which don't, and which roles need new people. — 00:40:39
  • ★★ Eric Partaker's ScaleOS altitude matrix crosses elevate, eliminate and execute with company, leadership and self. — 00:41:05

00:41:11 — Self: self-belief, stepping in, and the 10X week

  • ★★ Ali did not believe he could build a $50-million-a-year business before the conversation, but now that he sees how non-ridiculous the numbers are, he thinks he does. — 00:41:42
  • ★★ Eric Partaker says what traps people is not breaking a lofty goal down, so it stays overwhelming and outlandish and they think they cannot achieve it. — 00:41:42
  • ★★ Eric Partaker: For self-belief, Eric Partaker suggests talking to people who have already built such businesses and asking what they had to change about themselves, how they operate and what they believe. — 00:42:24
  • ★★ Ali says a habit that holds him back is getting involved in other people's areas; he struggles to balance hiring good people and getting out of their way with founder mode and his high standards. (hedged) — 00:42:50
  • ★★ Seeing his two new senior hires in student success and product, seats he and Angus used to fill, do a great job gives Ali the trust not to get overly involved. — 00:44:02 · Angus (general manager)
  • ★★★ Eric Partaker: Citing Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There, Eric Partaker says he has never seen a 10x version of a business with anything close to the people of its 1x version. — 00:45:23
  • ★ Eric Partaker says he has built many businesses himself and helped over 500 founders and CEOs scale theirs. — 00:45:23
  • ★★ Eric Partaker: Quoting Patty McCord, Netflix's former chief talent officer, that families stick together while great teams are optimised to win, Eric Partaker asks founders whether they are building a championship team or keeping a family together. — 00:45:46 · Netflix
  • ★★ Eric Partaker: Working back from the 10x goal and the areas where you keep stepping in, Eric Partaker says to ask whether you have the right people in the right positions and which conversations you are avoiding. — 00:46:15
  • ★★ Ali has condensed his software work, once spread over three days, into Thursdays to avoid context switching, leaving the other weekdays for curriculum and content. — 00:46:42
  • ★★ Ali's two new senior leaders are very new, one starting the week before the recording and one three weeks before. — 00:47:55
  • ★★ Ali says that in the short term he should be in his team's meetings, but the goal should be to get him out of the operational meetings as soon as possible. — 00:48:21
  • ★★ Eric Partaker advises planning an ideal 10x week in which most of your time goes, without interruption or distraction, to the activities that will generate the 10x outcome. — 00:48:21

00:48:52 — What to fix first, and what has happened since

  • ★★ Eric Partaker sums up Ali's next steps: a $25,000 product for people building million-dollar businesses, sharing the 10x goal with the team, Sparkle OS project management, a developer, the 10x seats and a 10x ideal week. — 00:49:39
  • ★★★ Ali decides the head of product can hire the developer, so his single next step is codifying the 10x goal and spreading it across the team. — 00:50:23
  • ★★★ Since the conversation Ali's business has started hiring a developer and brought in a new sales leader; Ali does not know if it will aim for $50 million but found exploring it super useful. — 00:50:59

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Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 10x goal · Eric Partaker · Lifestyle Business Academy · Limiting belief · ScaleOS altitude matrix

Also: People: Angus (general manager) · Astro Teller · Christian · Izzy Sealey · James · Marshall Goldsmith · Patty McCord · Peter Thiel · Rohan

Projects: 1K Challenge · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: 10X Is Easier Than 10 Percent · 10x Is Easier Than 2x · What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Organizations: Circle · Google · Instagram · LinkedIn · Netflix · NHS · Sparkle Studios · X, the moonshot factory

Concepts: 3172 method · burnout · funnel · info product · leverage · vibe coding

Places: London · Scotland

Products: Google Sheets · Skype · Slack · Superfocus

Also centred on Eric Partaker: How I Manage My Time - The Trident Calendar System · I spent $50,000 on a business coach so you don’t have to · 7 Mistakes to Avoid While Building Your First Business

Also centred on Limiting belief: If you’re ambitious but inconsistent, please watch this

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