Ali Abdaal’s Secret 7-Figure Playbook (And His Plan For 8-Figures)

I've been selling shit on the internet for 10 years, but I've never once read a book on how to sell stuff on the internet. I picked up DotCom Secrets and I was like, oh my fucking God, this is bloody incredible. Suddenly my mind was blown open with this whole like internet marketing world. My name is Ali and I'm a YouTuber, podcaster, and writer based in London. If we can apply the same principles of info product marketing that these guys have been using to make millions and apply them to our own products, we can come close to making similar amounts of money. Just follow the playbook of the people who've been doing this for a long time. So Ali, tell us how you went from $2 to $5 million. In 2017, I started my YouTube channel when I was in my final year of medical school. And in those 12 months, I made about $2 or like $1.76 according to AdSense. I was speaking to my CEO coach and, you know, we were trying to identify areas of my life where I could level up, you know, leveling up. And a big one was marketing. And he was like, oh, have you read any books by Russell Brunson? And I was like, no, isn't he that scammy internet marketer guy? And my coach Eric was like, oh, you've gotta read his books. And so I picked up DotCom Secrets and I was like, oh my fucking God, this is bloody incredible. Why have I never read this before in my life? Why have I dismissed this guy's incredible wisdom just because I found something aesthetically distasteful 15 years ago? And so then I dove into his whole trilogy, DotCom Secrets, Traffic Secrets, Expert Secrets. And then I read $100 Million Offers by Alex Hormozi. I read Copywriting Secrets by Jim Edwards. And suddenly my mind was blown open with this whole like internet marketing world. And I realized that I've been selling shit on the internet for 10 years, but I've never once read a book on how to sell stuff on the internet. And this was the Bible. And there's so many more things like it. And it's just really obvious stuff for people who understand marketing that, oh yeah, of course funnels are a thing.

Yeah.

But that was really the first time I'd heard the word funnel. And I thought, oh, this is, this is what we need to do to our business. And the really cool thing about people like Russell and the rest of the OG info marketers is that they built their fortunes of like tens of millions a year off the back of paid, paid ads and paid traffic acquisition. Whereas as creators, we have incredible organic reach and huge warm audiences. And so if we can apply the same principles of info product marketing that these guys have been using for decades to make millions and apply them to our own products for our own audience for warm traffic, then hopefully we can make, we can come close to making similar amounts of money.

What's the business model look like right now? You've got courses, you've got a lot of different things going on.

Yeah. So fundamentally it's, we make lots of content. And I think of it as the 99-1-1 rule. So 99% of our content is free. 1% of our stuff is paid for the 1% of the audience who can afford it. And so like more than 50% of the revenue comes from our online courses. 20% of it or so comes from ads, AdSense, 20% from brand deals, and the other 10% from affiliates and random bits and bobs here and there. So mostly online courses. We were running our course, the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. I'd been running this every few months for the last 2 or so years. And revenues were declining and post-pandemic, people cared a lot less about live online education as they seem to care during the pandemic. And so for the final cohort, I decided to just basically apply all of the principles from DotCom Secrets and also from $100 Million Offers and also from Copywriting Secrets. So we redid the offer based on Alex Hormozi stuff. We redid the funnels based on Russell Brunson's stuff. And we redid the landing page based on Jim Edwards' thing. And cohort 7, I think, did $300K revenue. Cohort 8 did $1.9 million.

Wow.

And so it was just Skyrocket.

Well, that's almost 7 times.

Yeah, like literally just purely based. And, you know, people sometimes ask me, oh, you know, help me make my course landing page or whatever. And I'm just like, look, just read those 3 books in order and just literally follow step by step the exact steps that Alex Hormozi lays out in $100 Million Offers. Great. And then go to the chapter about landing pages that Jim Edwards has in the book. Because these people have figured this shit out and we don't need to invent the wheel from scratch. We can just follow the playbook of the people who've been doing this for a long time.

What would you say If people were like, hey, I don't know what my style is, I don't know how to find like, you know, what I stand for, what would you say to these?

I would say it depends on what stage of the process you're at. So the way I think about it and the way that we teach it in our course is there's 3 levels. Level 1, level 2, level 3. Level 1 is get going. Level 2 is get good. And level 3 is get smart. Now level 1, get going, that is your first like 10 videos. If someone has not made 10 videos and they're worrying about their niche, they are overthinking it. Worrying about your niche and worrying about how you stand out is a level 3 problem to have. A level 1 problem to have is I just need to start my first few videos. And I know so many people who get paralyzed by just that initial upload. Oh my God, what are my friends and family going to think? They don't realize that no one gives a flying fuck. They're just so caught up in their own heads, they're overthinking it. And I was like this back in the day. It took me reading a book called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon to get over the fear of starting my blog. So level 1, get going. That's the first handful of videos. Then level 2 is get good. And in level 2, the objective is to actually get good at the craft of making videos. Now, some people are good at this immediately if they've got a film background or if they're particularly creative. But for a lot of people, the average age of our students in our YouTuber Academy is 36. For a lot of 36-year-olds who haven't been living on the internet their entire life, it's actually quite hard making good videos. And so again, you don't need to worry about your niche over there. You don't need to worry about how you're going to stand out. You just decide, I'm going to make a video about this sparkling passion fruit naturally essenced water, and you try and talk about it in a way that makes sense. Then you think, you know what? I'm going to make a book review of this book that I've just read. And you try and make a video about it. And after you've done this a few times, you get good at the craft of making videos. Now you are finally ready for level 3. But before you get to level 3, you have to decide, am I treating YouTube as a hobby or am I treating YouTube as a business? If you're treating it as a hobby, you can do whatever you want. You don't need to worry about your niche. You don't need to worry about your target audience, your competitive analysis, nothing like that. Who cares? It's a hobby. Great. You have fun. You do it for yourself. But if you're doing it as a business, the key difference between a hobby and a business is that a hobby is for you. A business is providing value to other people. So if you're going to treat it like a business, you then go on to level 3, which is where you get smart about it. Like if you wanted to open an Italian restaurant down the road, you wouldn't just open an Italian restaurant because you like Italian food. You would see what's happening in the area. What's the footfall of traffic in the area? What other restaurants are there? What other Italian restaurants are there? What's the way that my Italian restaurant is going to stand out? Should I even be doing an Italian restaurant just because I like Italian food? Opening a restaurant is a very different skillset to enjoying cooking food. And so, taking that same approach to business as you would if you're starting a business to a YouTube channel. And that's why, you know, the advice I would give for someone who's at level 3 is really think about your YouTube channel like a business. What is the value that your YouTube channel provides? Who is the target customer? What do they like? What are their needs? What are their hopes, dreams, aspirations? All of the standard marketing stuff around, you know, target audience analysis. And then do a competitor analysis. See who else is in the space. See how saturated the market is. Analyze all your competitors and see what are they doing well and what are they doing badly so that when you make videos in that niche, you can find a way to make yours stand out. They don't have to be better than other people's, but they do have to be different.

We were talking about this at lunch too. It's like one, YouTube, really any social channel gives you this amazing organic reach, but we're basically employees of these social platforms, right? And so once you stop playing the YouTube game, Your organic reach starts to drop. So, how do you plan on combating that?

Mate, this is the thing that keeps me up at night. Because as much as it's, you know, bought my financial freedom and fun and flexibility and autonomy and all of the good stuff from being a YouTuber, I am still fundamentally a slave to the algorithm. Because if I stop uploading, it's only a matter of time before everything dwindles down to zero. Partly what I'm trying to do is to build a business that, A, is not reliant on views. Because it's quite a stressful place to be. Like, you know, you and I know people, know other YouTubers who monetize exclusively through AdSense and brand deals. That's really stressful because now your business revenue is directly tied to how many views you get. So how do we get to a place as a business where our business revenue is decorrelated somewhat from how many views we're getting each month? And that normally comes from having your own product to sell. If you have a product in a niche market that's fairly high ticket, you don't need to be getting hundreds of thousands of views You just need to be getting a few views from the right audience who'll then buy your stuff. And I think a great example of this is August Bradley, who had a YouTube channel about Notion. It still does. And his channel only had like 15,000 subscribers when he released his online course. And I think in his first launch of his course, he made about $600,000 from an audience of only 15,000. And there are so many YouTubers I know with millions of subscribers who do not make $600,000 a year. Because they just don't have a product to sell.

Right.

So, for us, it's like, A, how do we decorrelate our business revenue from the number of views that we get? And B, more broadly, how do we decorrelate the value that we're giving to our audience from me personally sitting in front of a camera and filming? So, one thing that we're trying to do is we've just launched a daily productivity email newsletter modeled after Ryan Holiday's Daily Stoic, where I've started off by giving the broad brushstrokes of what I want this newsletter to look like, but we've hired a writer to write it and it's got like 10,000 subscribers on it now. And that thing is growing. And that means every day the writer can write productivity advice that I can contribute to, but it's not directly tied to me. And so what we're trying to do is how do we build assets and how do we build kind of delivery vehicles for our courses and products that do not require me to sit in front of a camera?

Got it.

And that's a real challenge.

So how are you guys solving that challenge right now?

So number one, we're thinking, what are the organic sources of content that we can create that don't rely on me, like daily productivity, the email newsletter? We're thinking of maybe doing something around YouTube as well, because our course is a YouTuber academy. And so if we had an organic email list, kind of like Colin and Samir's, where we just gave really good, useful YouTube tips, could that be a funnel to the courses? And then on the product delivery end, we have a customer service head, Alison, our head of customer success, and she's got a team of freelancers and contractors working underneath her. And so what we're trying to do is figure out when we're creating the offers for our courses, how do we deliver value to our audience or to our customers in a way that does not require me? So instead of me hopping on a call with them every time, can we get members of the team to have regular office hours? Can we hire people to give them feedback on their videos? We're toying with the idea of doing some sort of productivity coaching thing. Obviously, we need to— that needs to not be me who's delivering the product. So can I create the curriculum? Can we train coaches on the curriculum? And then can the coaches deliver the product? That's the sort of thing that we're trying to do now.

It's kind of like what Think Media does with their YouTube channel. You know how like it used to be tied to the founder, Sean Cannell, right? And now it's like a bunch of people on the squad.

Yeah, so we actually, we got a lot of inspiration from Think Media back in the day and we tried to copy them basically. So we tried to launch a YouTube channel called the Part-Time Creator Academy and we had like this whole vision for it. We did a massive amount of competitive analysis. We looked at Think Media, Video Creators, Channel Makers, Film Booth, all of these other channels that were teaching people how to be creators. And we thought, great, let's just do Think Media. Let's just get a cast of characters. Every week, one person can film a video. If we have 5 people, that's 5 videos a week. This is great. We'll sell our courses. And then we realized, oh my God, it's really, really, really hard growing another YouTube channel. And we made a few videos. It just didn't feel right. And we shut down the whole project. So I'm filled with admiration for what Think Media have managed to do.

Yeah.

Because Sean has really done the thing well, where he has been able to distance himself from the content. And over time, his gang are featuring more and more in the videos, and he's having to show up a lot less.

When you think about your audience sizes, right? So you got close to 5 million on YouTube, like how, like your newsletter and everything, like how big are these other channels?

Yeah, so newsletter's about 400,000. Instagram is 500,000. Twitter is 400,000, 300,000, those sorts of ballparks. I think LinkedIn, we've just crossed 100,000. Podcast is 300,000, that sort of thing. Oh, wow.

What are you doing on LinkedIn right now?

Basically, we have writers who convert my YouTube videos into Twitter threads, and then we copy and paste them onto LinkedIn.

Literally just like the threads?

Yeah, pretty much.

And it works?

Yeah, it seems to.

What? Okay.

And also, like, if I post something on Instagram that's related to the business, like, hey, you know, we just launched a blah, blah, blah, we'll copy and paste it onto LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a copy-paste venue for us, and it seems to be working.

I'm surprised that's working. Wow. Interesting. I thought they got more sophisticated, but apparently not. How about your email list? Like, 400,000 is a lot. Like, are you Are you buying ads to grow it? Like, how are you growing the email list?

We don't really do anything. We have a few lead magnets. We've done a few giveaways in the past. Mostly we just try, we try and plug the email list somehow in every video. So, in the middle of the video, in our sort of video production checklist, we have a checklist that says, have we plugged the email list? So, either we'll do that through a lead magnet. So, let's say it's a video about how I manage my time. I'll be thinking when I'm making the video, what is the freebie I can give away with this? And so one of our most successful lead magnets was just a Google Sheet template that I made, that Barb actually made, which was very kind of her. I sort of use a Google Sheet as my annual calendar. And I just said to Barb, hey, can you turn this into a pretty version that we can just, you know, let people download? And so we just had this as a Google Sheet link. And I think we've added 50,000+ subscribers to our email list from one video because people were like entering their email address to get the link to the Google Sheet. And then we give them the opt-in. Would you like to sign up to the newsletter? And so it's little things like that. And occasionally we'll sometimes just say in the middle of a video, hey, by the way, if you're enjoying this video so far, then I'd love for you to check out my weekly email newsletter, Sunday Snippets. It's just a very short email that I send every Sunday and it's got a few thoughts and some things I've enjoyed reading or listening to, basically copying what Tim Ferriss says for 5-Bit Friday. Head over to aliabdaal.com/sunday and you can sign up completely for free, unsubscribe whenever you want. So I'll just say that in the middle of a video and then we'll just get like, I don't know, 1,000 to 5,000 subscribers every week coming in.

That's crazy. Everyone has their own angle. You know, I have a friend, I mean, he's got like a million subs on his email. And it's all driven through SEO. And yours is all like, that's organic, right? And yours is all organic YouTube, basically.

Yeah, we're working on SEO. But we are slowly, slowly getting there.

I wouldn't even consider SEO right now. You're good on all the other stuff. So, is the email the main driver for your revenue right now? Are you pushing them to like buy? Or is it like pushing them to a webinar? Like, how does that sequence work?

Yeah, so the email is the bridge between our content and our products. What we've realized is that, or rather what I've realized is I don't really like selling on my YouTube videos. I don't really like saying, hey, I've got a course, buy my course, blah, blah, blah, because that just feels a bit weird. But I have no qualms with saying, hey, join my email list or get my free 7-day email educational course or whatever. And now they're in our list and they've opted in. And now I have no qualms with us sending them emails. And so like the vast majority of revenue from our courses has come as a result of sending emails to the list.

You're doing launches? Like how are you doing that?

Yeah, so back when our YouTuber Academy was a live cohort, we did I hate live cohorts. We would have— we would do launches through the email list.

Yeah.

Now we've switched to an evergreen model because I hate live cohort courses. So we've just gone self-paced with that, but we still have an email list for that. And Jakob, our marketing guy, is doing kind of daily emails that are providing loads of value with an offer at the end. And when Black Friday is going to roll around, I'm sure we'll do something there. We're going to launch a new productivity course, so we're going to sort of get loads of people onto the waiting list and then give them an early bird discount and just, you know, do sensible things. Daniel Priestley's book Oversubscribed was also a big Bible in terms of how to do launch-based info product marketing. Got it.

And you said you hate live cohorts. Why?

So a standard online course, I think a MOOC is what they're called, M-O-O-C, I don't even know what it stands for, is like you sign up to the course and then you've got this video library and you can just watch it at your own pace. A live cohort course is you sign up to a course, it's running from the 3rd of January to the 24th of February. And in those 6 weeks, you're gonna be joining 300 other students and it's gonna be live sessions with interactive workshops and homework and this and that. It's a whole like production. And so we started our YouTuber Academy as a live cohort thing. Initially it was just gonna be like a $200 prerecorded course, but I spoke to 2 chaps, Tiago Forte and David Perel, who had a lot of success making millions with their own live cohorts. And they said, hey, what would it look like if you charged $2,000 for this course rather than $200? And my mind just blew because I could not imagine charging $2,000 for anything, let alone for an online course that I was doing. But I was like, okay, cool, let's give it a go. This, you know, stepping outside of my comfort zone. And so we launched that initial life cohort in 2020, and I expected like 12 people to sign up as a beta tester for the cohort. In reality, 356 people signed up, and overnight we made like $400,000. And I was just like, oh my fucking God, this is more money. This is like 10 years worth of a salary as a doctor working in the UK.

Yeah.

Wow. And I had just taken a break from medicine.

40 grand a year.

Yeah, it's like I was making 40K a year for my first 2 years of working as a doctor. So I made 10 years worth of that salary in like a week because of this live cohort thing. And it was kind of weird because my YouTube channel is about productivity and personal development. It's not about how to grow on YouTube. I'm not trying to be Think Media. And yet the product that worked for us was a product about how to grow on YouTube. It was kind of weird and we just kept on running that like 8 times. But by around cohort 3, I started to feel the pain of having to show up and say the same stuff again and again.

Also— You have to show up every week, right?

Yeah, because so it was like a 6-week course and every week I was doing like 3 sessions a week. It was like hours and hours and hours. And I was just like, you're spieling all about YouTube all the time. But the other thing I didn't like about it was I don't like launch marketing because it's a lot that's riding on this one week. And it felt quite stressful because it was like half of our business revenue was coming from these live launches. And we had 3 weeks of the year to sell tickets for these live events. And, you know, it was fine initially when there was so much pent-up demand, but then it felt like we had to work harder and harder to convince people to sign up to the course. And that just felt kind of not nice. It's not nice to feel like you're the seller in a transaction. And so, we decided 2 years in that, you know what, this is good money, but it's not worth it anymore. It's not worth the stress, not worth the headache. It's not worth the headspace that it takes to run live cohorts. Let's just turn it into an evergreen course. So now we've done that.

I hate launches. And so, internet marketing world is used to doing launches, right? And it's like you do the launch and then everyone's like super stressed. Like you feel relieved, but then Then you have to get ready for the next launch and then the next. And then it's like you're on this never-ending hamster wheel and then people just burn out, right? But the thing with the live cohort too, it's like, sure, your completion rates might be 98%, but like your burnout rate, your stress rate's a lot higher. So you might as well just go like, sure, evergreen. Like when we used to sell courses, this is, we were sitting in this one boardroom and one of the guys stood up and he's like, gentlemen, we sell courses because Courses are perceived progress. People like perceived progress. And everyone was clapping. I was like, okay, that's an interesting way to look at it. I don't necessarily agree with that. But, you know, I think it's when I worked in online education, it was 98% of people finish a live, but 98% of people do not finish evergreen. How are you seeing it?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, even with our live, you know, we would charge somewhere between $1,500 and $5,000, depending on which product they were getting. 60% So only 60% of people would submit the first week homework assignment.

Oh, wow.

And by week 6, we were down to 15% completion rate. And this was a course people have paid thousands of dollars for. It's a live course. There is accountability. We hop on a call with anyone at the drop of a hat. We have a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. And yet half of the people don't even submit the first homework assignment. What?

Yeah.

At one point I sort of realized, you know what, I'm not gonna stress out about the fact that some people are not gonna take the course. It's totally fine. I've bought loads of courses that I've never taken. I've never even opened them. I've never even logged in. It's fine. Maybe I'll get to it at some point. I was speaking to another friend who does marketing and he said, you know, probably half the people that buy Peloton don't even unbox the bike.

That's true.

Or something like that.

I bought a Peloton for like 2 weddings, right? Like I was like, where I was the best man or whatever. I was like, okay, I gotta make it a good gift, right? And I look at their accounts now, they haven't logged in for like 2 years, right? And so, I'm like, God, what a waste of money. It's like you try to do something nice and it's just like, anyway.

But so the thing this marketing friend said is that people, like a lot of people will buy a product to fulfill an emotional need. And once they fulfill that emotional need, they feel like they've gotten the value from it. And sometimes they won't even open it and that's okay. And I still feel kind of weird about it, but I think it's almost like a gym membership. There's always gonna be like 80% of people that don't use the gym membership, which actually subsidizes it for everyone else who does.

Hmm.

And so we now have this product, our Part-Time YouTuber Accelerator, which is like a $5,000 for a year thing that gives them ongoing support. And even with this, like 40% of people are inactive and we send them emails and be like, hey, you know, are you thinking of getting back into your YouTube channel? And usually they're like, either don't reply or they'll be like, oh, sorry, life got in the way. I'll get back to it at some point.

So how's that structured? So $5,000 for the year, like what are you giving them?

So, okay, so our evergreen course is $1,000 and then we've got this option to upgrade to the $5,000 a year thing. Essentially what they get for that is the evergreen course, but every week they can hop on office hours with every member of my team. So I've got 13 people on my team. I think 10 of them do weekly office hours. So every day there's like 2 sessions that they can hop on just to ask anything they want, which is pretty good. They get a monthly Q&A with me, like a group Q&A. They get feedback on their videos every 2 weeks. So we've hired a bunch of people and trained them to give feedback on videos. They get channel audits. So we have— that was annoying. That was really annoying to do. No more of that, right? No more of that. But yeah, so we've just done— we have like a Slack group where they can ask anything and the team will get back to them. And so everyone in the team spends, 10, 15 minutes a day in the Slack channel just for this community where we answer people's questions. And so, it's pretty good service for $5K for the year for someone who wants to take their YouTube channel seriously.

How much does that bring in a year?

Ooh, we have 200 students in it so far, but we sold a lot through the final cohort of the course. So, each month we get like somewhere between 10 and 20 sales, but we don't try too hard to plug it. So, this is something we're trying to improve on. We threw actually running paid ads as of like 2 weeks ago.

When you're doing the ads in your videos, it's like you drive them to your list, right? And like a lead magnet.

Yeah.

Do you ever drive them to a webinar?

We've not yet done the webinar thing because that requires me to sit down and film something, which I have not yet gotten around to do.

Yeah, I think you would crush it with a webinar. That's— I mean, you've already read the Russell Brunson stuff, right? But like, that's where you can sell $5,000, $10,000, $15,000.

Yeah. Jacob, our marketing guy, keeps on being like, Ali, we've got to film that webinar at some point. And I'm like, yeah, I know, we'll do it at some point, just not right now.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a scary thing. Were you there when Sam Ovens talked about his mastermind model?

Yes, I was part of his mastermind, Quantum.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then he refunded everyone and shut it down to focus on school.

So, what about the Ali mastermind?

Yeah, I've thought about this a lot. Partly it feels weird because for it to be worth it, I'd have to charge like $24K for the year. And it feels weird to charge people $24K for the year because I have not paid $24K for the year for anything. And so it's like, I haven't paid for this thing myself. I haven't paid that amount of money myself. Therefore it feels weird to charge for it.

How much was uni?

Oh yeah, I mean, uni was only £9,000 a year actually.

But it adds up. It adds up, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was about £50K in debt.

Yeah.

The other thing with the mastermind, this could just be a limiting belief. So I'd love for you to call me out on my bullshit here. But I feel like if I were running a mastermind, I'd wanna invite people like you and like other friends, but I wouldn't wanna charge you for it. I'd wanna do it as like a, hey, let's just get some cool people together.

Yeah.

Let's hang out in a cool place for a week. We'll do it at cost. No one's trying to make a profit. And that to me feels much more wholesome and nice than saying, let me run a mastermind where I'll charge people $24K, $36K to hang out with me.

That's why I do these founders retreats where it's like we— it's only 8 to 10 of us and we meet once a year. We'll go to like— this year we went to Bodrum, Turkey, and we just broke bread, talked about, you know, business life and played a lot of basketball, drank a lot of watermelon juice, blah, blah, blah. And like, that's where nobody charges anybody. And then you can have the bigger one too. But like, I'll have to talk to you offline about this.

Yeah.

But I think there is that angle. I just, I'm with you 100,000%. Let's just say that.

Okay.

Yeah. But, and by the way, before we continue on, so when you paid, you paid $35,000 for the Quantum?

Yeah.

Okay. How was it for you?

Like, honestly, I didn't even log in for 3 months. And then he sent this email being like, hey, we're shutting it down.

Oh, so you never went to the live event?

No, like I missed the live event that was happening. Okay, got it, got it, got it. I think I might have gotten— I mean, I would have gotten value from it if I'd attended, but yeah, I sort of missed the boat on that.

Yeah, it's, it's tough. I get where you're coming from on that.

Um, I actually joined Tony Robbins's Platinum Mastermind thing.

How much is that?

That was, that was, uh, $85,000.

What are you talking about?

But then 3 days later, I got cold feet and I asked for a refund.

Oh wow.

Because I realized that actually $85K plus the $10K a time when you have to go to an event Plus the fact that there were events happening every month, it was going to take up a huge chunk of my life. And I was speaking to my girlfriend about this and she sort of pointed out that, hey, you could probably do a lot with like $150K. Yeah.

So are you in any other founder groups?

Not officially. There's a few that I'm part of, but these are just sort of random events that friends organize that they do at cost.

Got it. Okay. Understood.

I'm not part of like YPO or any of that sort of Remember when—

so, when you're at my mastermind, I hate calling it that, but my event or whatever. Remember when Neil said something to you on stage and he said like, courses aren't the best business or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then like, there's like a moment of like, oh, like lightbulb moment or maybe not. Like what were you thinking there? Because I was like, man, there's like a lot going on in your head there. Yeah.

So, for context, I think I asked Neil if he had any tips on marketing info products or courses. And he was like, dude, Why are you in the courses business? And I was like, because it's fun and makes money. And he was like, yeah, but it only makes like, I don't know, $5 million a year. You should be in the agency business. We're doing $100 million a year. And Neil was like, and I probably work less than you do. And I was like, huh, interesting. But then Neil's CEO piped up from the back being like, Neil, shut the fuck up. Like, we've got 900 employees. You spend all your time fighting fires. Like, and I spoke to that CEO chap afterwards. I can't remember his name.

Mike Kamo.

Yeah. So I spoke to him afterwards and he said, look, honestly, If you enjoy info products, stay in the info product business. Do not think you need to start an agency.

Yeah, yeah.

He's right. Oh, he's right. I've not met many agency owners who are happy.

Yeah.

But I've met a lot of online course creators who are ecstatic because they're making a million a year, working very little and being able to monetize their expertise.

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts around that. I mean, Mike was good to do that 'cause Neil will give his opinion and then, you know, it's his opinion. So it is what it is.

No, and yeah, I love everything that Neil does. I've been on Neil's mailing list since the age of 13 as well. Oh, okay.

Okay, amazing.

Longtime Neil Patel fan.

But one has to ask, at age 13, like what was going on in your head to sign up for these?

Oh, I was trying to make money on the internet. So, I taught myself freelance web design. I made like a niche affiliate marketing site.

Yeah.

I tried to make like a pyramid scheme. I was doing like bunch of random PHP and MySQL coding for like small businesses and trying to sell it for $5 a pop. I was just desperate to make money on the internet.

Okay.

So, I started around 12, 13, and then age 19 was when I launched my first business that actually succeeded. And this was a business that was helping people get into medical school.

I love it. Okay. So, when I was 9 years old, I started a website and then I got distracted by games. So, all I did was play video games from like, you know, 10 years old until like 22 years old or so.

Nice. Oh, I was doing the video. I was playing World of Warcraft 3 hours a day from 14 to 17.

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

But at the same time, I was also just like doing dabbling with freelance web design because I was like, oh my God, I'm making money and I can afford my WoW subscription fee of $9 a month.

Okay. I love it. What are you focused on right now?

Mate, I was watching Hormozi's recent video on the plane here yesterday that I think is titled something like How to Get So Rich It Makes You Sick. And one of the things I wrote in my journal was, what are the bottlenecks to our business growth and what are our priorities? So, it's funny that you're asking that question. I think for us, partly the bottling depends on what the goal is. So, I always really struggle to define the goal. But one of the things Hormozi said was, what's stopping you from 10x-ing your business? I was like, okay, cool. We'll do maybe, I don't know, $4 or $5 million revenue this year. So, 10x would be $40 million. Shit. What's stopping us from getting to $40 million? And I think the main thing is we just don't have enough stuff to sell. The only thing we have to sell right now is a course on how to be a YouTuber. But I'm not known for how to be a YouTuber. I'm known for productivity stuff. And so, this book is coming out. We're going to launch a course off the back of it.

Yeah.

We're going to have more stuff to sell. That's probably going to be it. But also, do I want to get to $40 million in revenue? Like, I wouldn't say no if I could wave a magic wand, but do I want to do the work it would probably take to get to $40 million in revenue? I don't think so. I think I am all about, I'm all about the lifestyle business model. And I'm trying to find a way to rebrand it for myself and call it the feel-good business. 'Cause my book is Feel Good Productivity. It's a feel-good business.

Yeah. What does feel good mean to you? We talked about this.

Yeah, to me, feel good means like, you know, in the context of business, feel good means that I'm looking forward to Mondays. Feel good means I look at my calendar and I think, yeah, I'm excited about everything on my calendar. It means I'm making plenty of profit. Like, our margins are really good, so I don't have to worry too much. It means I'm working with people that I really enjoy working with and who I can have personal relationships with, which probably means the team is capped at a certain size. So we've got 13 at the moment, 12 plus me, and that feels like a very reasonable size. And I've spoken to a couple of mentors who say that beyond 12, it starts— you start requiring middle management and you stop like getting that personal connection with everyone.

Yeah.

So to me that— and to me, a feel-good business is— I like to ask myself the question, what would I do if money were no object? Or what would I do if I had $100 million in the bank? And I want my answer to that question to be exactly what I'm currently doing. And to me, that's a feel-good business. That's a business that I would do anyway, even if I didn't need to make money. And so all of this stuff, whenever I watch a Hormozi video or attend like a conference in the US and I start to feel broke because everyone's making more money than I am, I have to kind of take a few days. And the team will often joke that whenever Ali comes back from the US, ignore everything he says for 72 hours because I'll come back and be like, Neil Patel told me we're gonna start, guys, we're gonna hire 100 people.

Yeah, you're the lightning bolt CEO. Yeah, exactly.

And now we have in, In the team, we have the 72-hour button where anyone can at any point saying, I'm gonna press the 72-hour button and I have to shut up for 3 days. And then if I'm still excited about it, we'll revisit the idea.

Wait, so that's the shut up, Ollie button?

Yeah.

So do you actually shut up?

Yeah, I mean, it's a, we're not gonna take any action on this until 72 hours from now.

Got it, got it, got it.

And usually at that point I'm like, okay, good point, I'll think about this myself. And then usually I become a lot less excited about the thing after that.

So that 72-hour button is active 7 days from when you come back to Facebook?

Yeah, pretty much.

I like that. I mean, I'm just— I have this calculation on my screen. It's like, it is pretty realistic for you to be making, you know, anywhere from $2 to $5 million a month. Productivity is a very large TAM, total addressable market, right?

Yeah.

And so, if you have 20,000 people paying you $250 a month, that's $5 million, right? But because how many people want to be more productive? Like everybody, everybody here that I'm looking at, right? And just because you're the productivity master, I heard you say in another podcast that you're not always productive. You know, neither am I. But it's like, You know, it's a large total addressable market. Like, this goes a lot bigger than YouTube.

Let's spitball on this. So I was speaking to a few— so Ramit Sethi and Matthew Hussey, both of whom have, have tried doing subscription revenue things in the past, and they said, man, if you can retain a customer for beyond 3 months, you're like doing really well.

For education.

For education stuff.

Yeah.

And so in my mind, I'm thinking $250 subscription.

Not subscription. You're selling one-time courses here. Oh, and then, and then like these people are buying, they're all now customers, right? And then you can upsell them.

Okay, so that's what we're working on. So we're going to make a productivity course. It's probably going to be about $299 or $297 with maybe a higher ticket one-on-one coaching on the back end.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm sure you've probably thought about this already, but it's like productivity people like to waste money on apps. I certainly do. I spend money on a bunch of apps. Like you made a Short on this 1Sec thing. I automatically paid for it. Like I signed up for it and paid for it, right? It's like $10 or whatever. You can do a bunch of these all day.

Yeah.

I mean, in fact, you can go buy a bunch of these that already have users already.

Yeah. Well, that's another thing that we are sort of working on. I've reached out to a couple of companies whose products I used to be like, hey, can I take equity in your business in return for promo? We're also— I'm also building something with a friend that's a sort of voice-enabled, AI-enabled journaling-y type thing, which I'll be a co-founder in. So we're slowly dabbling in that space.

There you go. Do the Hormozi model, but for productivity. Yeah, like that. That's my opinion.

Acquisition of different—

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I had Nathan Barry on the pod the other day. He came to London and we hung out a bunch and he was, he was so bullish on this thesis that like the billion-dollar creators are the ones who are going to be acquiring equity stakes in companies.

I think that will be you. So it will take time.

Yeah. As long as it feels good. I think a big part of, of my thing is that—

That's a t-shirt. As long as it feels good.

Honestly, as long as it feels good. Like even with like book marketing, for example, there's a lot we could do in terms of like trying to schmooze people to get on their podcast and all this kind of stuff. But it doesn't feel good to, to do that. And so I just don't want to do it. And I'm probably leaving money on the table. Yeah.

Hey, you know, my good friend said this, like, I don't want to do what I don't want to do. Yeah. I'm like, oh, that's good.

So I mean, one thing I've said to the team recently is that I had a whole existential crisis about my YouTube channel, like in the last few weeks and then took some time off. And I decided to create the constraint within our business that I'm just gonna film whatever I want, whenever I want, and never have anything on my calendar unless I want it to be on my calendar. And that means that we won't have an upload schedule for the YouTube channel or even for the podcast. And yeah, it means we're gonna leave money on the table. It means we can't do as many sponsored videos, but that's totally okay because I'm now at a stage of my life where I'm okay with leaving money on the table.

And it feels good.

It feels good. Yeah.

There you go. Well, let's talk about the book for a second. So, you know, I always like to ask people, the book is a labor of love. Yeah, it's a huge pain.

Yeah.

So tell us about the book and what are your— what's the home run with it?

Yeah. So the book is called Feel Good Productivity. It's about how to do more of what matters to you in a way that's hopefully enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable. And this, this whole journey started when, like, I got obsessed with productivity when I was working as a doctor and trying to build my YouTube channel and business on the side. 'Cause it's like working as a doctor is pretty demanding. There's all this stuff going on. And I'd get home from work and I'd be totally drained and think, oh, I just don't have the energy. I've got some time, sure, but I don't have the energy to work on my YouTube channel. And after sort of coming close to burnout, I had a moment of epiphany where I realized, hang on, like, does work really need to be this grindy? Do I need to get home from work every day feeling drained? And I started looking into it and started doing a bunch of research and found that basically There's one secret to productivity, and that is to make your work feel good. Feeling good, positive emotions, positive affect in the scientific literature. When you feel positive emotions about anything you do, it creates energy, it makes you more productive, it makes you more creative, it makes you less stressed. And so, the whole idea of the book formed around this experience that I was having in real life, which is how can I find a way to make everything I'm doing just feel good?

Hmm.

That's not to say it has to be fun all the time. Being a doctor is not fun all the time. Being a YouTuber or entrepreneur is not fun all the time. But there are so many things that we can do to make it feel just a little bit better. And the better we can feel about our work, the more productive we're going to be. And it's so rare to meet people who are actually at the top of their game who don't enjoy what they're doing.

Yeah.

And that's, that's just the secret. And so the book is kind of like a bit of a scientific exploration. What are the practical, actionable strategies that we can actually use to make whatever we're doing feel that little bit better so that we're more productive, but also it's also an inherent good for the thing to feel good. I did an interview this morning for a magazine and the journalist interviewing me asked, hey, does feeling good actually make you more productive? I was like, yeah, it does. But also that's sometimes not the point. Feeling good is itself a good thing. If more of us could feel good about the work we were doing, whatever the work is, it would just be a win for humanity. So, partly it's about improving your productivity, but mostly it's about How getting more enjoyment out of the things that you are already doing.

You know, when we talk to our entrepreneur friends, it's like, why do you continue to do the thing you're doing? You already have, you know, the money that you want. It's like, because it's fun. But fun really means it feels good.

Exactly.

Right? Here's my challenge. I'll call it here first. I don't even think you're the productivity guy. Maybe that it's what you are short-term, but you're actually the feel-good guy.

Interesting. So, again, I wonder if this is worth spitballing on. So, I want to write more books. Now that I've been through the process of writing this one, I now know how to enjoy the process. Now, I want the next book to be maybe about fitness because I want to try and get fit and I want to do a book kind of documenting my learnings and what I wish I'd known. Now, one option is to call it Feel Good Fitness, and we actually bought the domain feelgoodfitness.com just in case. But the other option is to call it like Productive Fitness or something.

Mm-hmm.

So, do I lean into the word productivity to continue being the productivity guy? Or do I try and broaden out from productivity to be the feel-good guy?

I think feel-good is just the thing you can own. Like, to me, that phrase, it's like nobody occupies that right now. And then when people look at you, you're not productivity anymore. You're the feel-good guy. And that feels good on its own.

It does.

Yeah.

I love the idea of being— I think like Tim Ferriss had to step away from being the 4-Hour Guy.

Yeah.

Whereas I can see myself being the feel-good guy forever. Forever.

Yeah, exactly. And you could— that will live on beyond you. Like, that's a Lindy thing, right?

Feel-good parenting, feel-good cooking, feel-good spirituality, feel-good Relationships. Like, yeah, got the whole thing planned out.

Better go buy a domain.

Yeah. Oh, shit.

Good point. feelgood.com. Yeah. Let's see how much that's worth.

Oh my God, that's gonna be expensive.

How many drafts do you think you worked on for this book?

Ooh, so many. Threw it out completely and started completely from scratch like 2 or 3 times. And then first draft, second draft, third draft. Like we were on like final V6, you know, all of that kind of thing in our Word document and Google Doc and all that. So there was so many, there was so much back and forth.

The Hormozi thing sticks with me where he's like, he went the extra mile, like 100 extra miles, right? Just to make sure that everything's buttoned up because if you release a book that's, you know, half-assed, it's just not going to do as well versus like if it's— people can tell if you went the extra mile, right? So, how did you think about— did you think about it the same way? Because I can tell you I half-assed it for my book.

Totally, yeah. Yeah, this was like a 3-year-long journey and I ended up in a place where I'm very proud of it. So I don't think I half-assed it. I think had I tried to do it in productive fashion, I would've half-assed it. 'Cause initially when we got the deal, I already had a couple of courses on Skillshare about productivity.

Mm-hmm.

And the publisher was just like, oh, it's fine. You know, we can just turn the courses into a book.

Mm-hmm.

And so that was the original proposal, just turning the courses into a book. And, you know, I spoke to the publisher, they were like, yeah, this is great. Spoke to this writing coach, he was like, yeah, it's great. And it was only when I sent this proposal to a guy called David, who was James Clear's book proposal guy, He looked at it, he was like, this is not very good. And I was like, wait, what? He was like, yeah, this is just shit. Like, no one cares. Like, throw it out. And I was like, oh, thank you. So, it was like the half-assed version. Thankfully, someone along the way said, this is bad, don't do it.

Yeah.

And as a result of throwing that out completely and starting from the ground up, you know, the question that David asked me was like, if you had to turn your whole philosophy of productivity, you've been productive, you've been a doctor, a business owner, a YouTuber, What's the one secret? What's the one thing that makes it all possible? And I said, find a way to make your work fun. And he was like, great, that's the book. Write a book about that because that's interesting. I was like, oh, okay. And so, yeah, the whole like 12 months of work on the proposal with the whole productivity equation and all the stuff that we were teaching in the course, all that went out the window because of this one idea that if there is only one idea someone takes away from the book, it's that the secret to productivity is to find a way to make your work feel good.

You threw— but you threw the drafts out, the entire drafts out twice, right?

Yeah. So the first one was the productivity equation one. The second one would then— then actually we sort of overcorrected and went too much into the fun angle.

Yeah.

And so the working title was Make It Fun or Make It Fun, Get It Done or something to that effect. And the whole thing was like, okay, what are the things that make work fun? And then that also didn't feel good because I ran— kept running into this issue of like the word fun does not encapsulate the thing that we're talking about. Like running a marathon is not fun, but running a marathon feels good. Running a business is not fun all the time, But it does feel good. And so, there was this sort of difference between fun and enjoyment and fun and fulfillment and fun and feel good. And so, that whole thing ended up being scrapped in favor of what we now have is our 3-part structure, which is energize, unblock, and sustain. And that covers how to make work more feel good, how to beat procrastination, and how to sustain it over the long term so that you don't burn out.

I love it. And just so people know too, the first draft that you threw out, how long did that take you? Like, how many words were in there?

Oh, that was about, 70,000 words.

That takes a lot of courage to throw that out. I was not willing to throw mine out.

Yeah, I mean, I kept hold of it because I'm like, I could form the basis of blog posts and YouTube videos in the future. It's fine, blah, blah, blah. And like, I think 3 or 4 paragraphs made their way into the final draft. Yes, that's a good reason. Most of it got completely destroyed.

Okay, so the vlog. So you got Bob here, right? So you've been doing the vlog for how long?

Oh, it's been a few weeks. Yeah, we saw Stephen Bartlett started his weekly vlog and I was very inspired by that because I actually don't watch his podcast because like, you know, I'll watch an episode of the podcast if the guest is particularly interesting and he's just got too much content. But I love his vlog. I love seeing the behind the scenes of another entrepreneur's life. And so, I thought, hey, what would it look like if we just did our own weekly vlog?

Yeah.

And so, we've been doing an experiment with Bob being the sort of videographer for the weekly vlog. I'm not sure if we're going to continue it. We'll see. Maybe it's still— we're still testing it out there. I think we've released like 2 or 3 episodes. And so we've got— we've been filming for the last 2 months. So we're going to release maybe 6, 7, 8 episodes, see how it feels. If it feels good, we'll continue. And if it doesn't, we'll just—

So I did that for— this is like 2017 or so. I was like, yeah, I'm going to try the Gary Vee thing, right? And then I just like a month in, I'm just like, I hate having someone follow me around. I'm just like, maybe it's like, you know, some something inside, but yeah, I quite like it. We just switched to direct-to-camera. Like, I just was really worried we'd be on the streets and he'd like trip over. I don't wanna be injured, you know? So it's just stupid like mental blocks. But so you like it? Okay. How's it— you've done 3 of these. How are they going so far?

Um, I haven't actually looked at the comments. Actually, no, I have. I looked at the comments of the first one and they were pretty, pretty promising. Yeah, I liked watching, watching the vlogs back. Yeah, and I was kind of thinking that even if, I mean, It costs us maybe like, you know, we pay the editor, I think like $600, $700 or something to edit each one. Pretty good, yeah. Which is quite a lot. And we're not making money on the vlog.

Yeah.

But if I had a record of my life where it costs $700 a week to get a record of my life, I'd probably do it. That feels good. That feels good. I was like, yeah, why not? So yeah, we'll see.

Okay. Yeah, I like that. And these are, this is your entire day from waking up until the end?

Yeah, no, it's more like sometimes—

Workday.

Yeah, workday, sometimes personal stuff. You know, if Bob's around, she'll be like, hey, Ali, can you do an intro for the vlog? And I'll be like, hey, vlog, you know, just about to have lunch with Eric and Sahil. It's gonna be good. We're gonna do podcast, blah, blah, blah. And we've got like a time-lapse set up over there. So, you know, Bob will get the footage from the time-lapse. And if you guys could send us the footage from here as well, we can then splice bits and bobs of the podcast and be like, check out the podcast on Leveling Up. And it'll splice into like an 8 to 10 minute edit.

Yeah, I saw the— I really like Steven's vlogs. It's like a combination of him like just going direct to camera with his phone and then someone following him around, I believe. Like, that's the best combination because like, I don't want someone in my bedroom, you know? Like, so, so why not? I mean, you know, depends on who, right? Um, but you know, for his, it's like, it's the entire day and it's like what, it's like an 8-hour day basically, right? Getting condensed. And that's like $600 for 8 hours.

Uh, yeah, so we do as a whole week. So Bob will film stuff on and off for the whole week and then that will be condensed to an 8 to 10 minute video.

Okay.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. So it means there's less pressure on each individual day. Like a year ago, 2 years ago, we tried doing a daily vlog. That was hard because for the first 3 days I had stuff to say and then day 4 I'm like, well, I'm just sitting in the office writing my book and I have nothing to say.

That doesn't feel good.

It felt— yeah, it doesn't feel good. It felt like trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel every time.

Yeah. I'm getting used to saying this. Yeah, it's actually good. It's sticking, man.

Yeah, it's starting to stick to me as well.

I think this is it.

This is the guiding philosophy. Does it feel good?

Yeah.

I love it. And if it doesn't, you can find a way to make it feel good. And if you really can't find a way to make it feel good, then it definitely doesn't feel good.

Definitely don't do it. Yeah. What would you say, working towards wrapping here, what are like the productivity staples for you right now? And this could be any like tools or apps too, because I think so. For example, the video I saw with you introducing— this is probably the only time in my life I've ever taken an action on a reel or a short. And I was like, yeah, this 1-second thing, you know, prevents you from logging into Instagram. I can't help myself. I just like Instagram, Twitter, whatever. And that saves me a ton of time and it actually makes me a lot less anxious. So, what else you got? Could be habits, tools, apps.

Yeah. So, honestly, over time, I have ended up simplifying my life a lot when it comes to productivity. I was super into testing out all these apps and stuff back in the day. These days, the main thing that I've realized is that it's about 3 things which conveniently have the acronym GPS: goal, plan, system. What's the goal? What's the plan to get there? And what's the system to make sure we actually do the thing? And I find that in every domain of my life, if I just sit down for 5 minutes and identify what is the goal, what is the plan, and what's the system to get there, it just works.

Yeah.

And, you know, in like, like for example, in fitness, the goal, build more muscle. What's the plan? Gym 3 times a week. What's the system? Gym 3 times a week.

Cool.

And progressive overload. Okay, that's easy enough. Now I can find an app like Strong or something, which is a nice way of inputting my workouts.

Yeah.

Or if it's like relationships, what's the goal? Healthy relationship with my girlfriend. What's the plan? Okay, we're gonna do this, this, this. And what's the system? Date nights twice a week. Okay, that's in the calendar. That's nice and easy. And so, I'm trying to think in those GPS terms for every area of my life in which I actually have a goal.

Got it. How about with like podcasts, for example?

As in with the podcast?

Yeah, you doing a podcast, you know, like what's the goal, plans, like real life example again?

Oh sure. So, if, If I were doing it for the podcast, so I don't think about this for the podcast because we have a podcast producer and so she figures out the goal planning system. So I've kind of removed that from my mind. But if I think about writing books, for example, I've written this one, I want to write future books. The goal is to write and publish a book every few years, roughly. It's a very loose goal. I don't really believe in SMART goals because yeah, they work, but they can be a bit too specific. And sometimes I think a vague goal is totally fine. So write and publish a book every few years. Cool. So that's the goal. The plan is how am I going to get to the goal? And so basically what that involves is having a Notion page in my case that's like, okay, these are the 8 different ideas for the books I have. And I reckon the next one will either be the fitness book or another personal development book. Cool. I've now got the plan. And the system is, I think if I just write 500 words a day, that'll probably get me to my goal and then some. Great.

Yeah.

So let's just write 500 words a day and let me just track it in a Google Sheet so I make sure I actually do it or in the Streaks app on my Apple Watch or whatever. And so goal, plan, system.

The system is really your repetitive—

Exactly. It's a habit.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, what is the thing that I'm doing every day or every week that's gonna take me more towards that goal? And then find a way to feel good along the way because, you know, the journey is the destination.

Final question. Ali, have you found your why yet?

I'm not sure. So sometimes I think I have and sometimes I think I haven't. So in the times I think I have, I ask myself, what would I want written on my gravestone? What would I want my eulogy to read? And I actually wrote out my eulogy, I think a few weeks ago when I was thinking about this question. And every time I asked myself this over the last several years, it's always landed on this idea of being a teacher and just being a really good teacher. And I think that's my why, to teach. and to learn cool things and to then share them with people in the hope that they'll find them useful. Sometimes in moments of doubt, I'm like, is that really my why? Is that really what I want? Do I want to build a $100 million business? And then usually I'm like, no, I think the teaching thing is actually the thing that I want to do.

Yeah.

And so I think that's my why. But it's not, it's not so solid in my heart that I never question it. I always question it, but I always come back to it.

Oh, hey, it feels good, right?

Feels good.

So Ali, what's the best way for people to find you online and also to learn more about the book?

Oh, well, they can find me online by checking out my YouTube channel, Ali Abdaal. And you can check out the book. It should be now available in all retailers. You can search for it on Amazon or anywhere else, or you can go to the book website, feelgoodproductivity.com, and we'll give you some freebies and stuff if you buy the book. There'll be more details on the website.

Go get the book. Thanks, Ali.

Thanks, man.