AMAN'S PODCAST

The plan is for this YouTube video to be titled something clickbaity like how to make your first something 10K online or you know what words do that effect let's do it so Aman welcome to Welcome to the channel thank you for having me excited to do this this this is going to be fun uh can you tell me about the moment when you watched my video about how much money I make as a doctor absolutely so let's go back four years to May of 2020 I'm sure everyone remembers this was Peak lockdown Peak pandemic it

was you know Co had been around for a couple year or a couple months actually and around this time I was 19 years old I was at home with my family just because it was lockdown my University had canceled everything was online and I remember I was sitting in my living room when my brother who's about a year younger than me came to me and said hey there's this guy who's a doctor and a YouTuber and he posted about how much money he made and they put on the TV actually and my brother and me

and my parents actually sat down and we watched that video and I don't know what about it was so incredible but something in that moment was just like holy [ __ ] this guy he's working as a doctor which is amazing but then also on the side he's making just passive income from places like skill sharing YouTube and AdSense and I think at the time I didn't I was Still 19 so I don't really understand what money was or anything like that but the idea of someone making like 5 to 10K a month passively through

something like skillshare was just incredible to me so that was and I had been watching your content a bit before that like I was listening to not overthinking kind of on and off I was using your active recall space repetition stuff for my classes and also University stuff like that so but the idea of seeing that someone Could make money online I I never even thought about the concept see like before that moment I was I don't think I even had ever thought I should be a business person or make money really at all I

remember all I wanted to do was either be like an engineer doctor lawyer or politician in my mind I never thought oh I could like start a business and actually you know be Financial Freedom as a phrase has never even entered my vocabulary yet so yeah like watching That video was what made tangible that someone could actually do this so that was revolutionary to me and within that week I launched a skillshare class actually so it's pretty crazy very cool I want to talk with to you about the skill sh class in a moment but

I wonder um what's your how how would you how would you describe your background do you have like super rich parents who are all entrepreneurs like you know what's what was your backstory I think that I Feel like my childhood was a very standard Daisy life I I don't think there's anything extr about it other than the fact that I mean obviously I was like very stable like I I was a child of two doctors in the US so financially my family was totally good we were very fine uh and my family like very like

valued education grades studying all that stuff so I I think I pretty much grew up in like a very normal Daisy household nothing really Specific there focusing on grades and stuff like that now there were a couple aspects of my youth which I feel like in retrospect really did feel like it did actually make a difference uh and probably the biggest one was the fact that ever since I was a kid my parents never controlled what books I read so when I was maybe 12 or 13 my parents bought me a Kindle and we had

a rule in the household was that I could buy any book I wanted without even asking so any Time I wanted to read or read anything at all in the entire world I would just buy it and when I was in elementary middle school like 12 13 years old I probably read like 50 to 100 books around that time and even in like early University I would just buy any book I Poss wanted and just read that book and I think looking back I would talk to other people um who were around that age and

ask them hey like you should read this book I would recommend that they Read this thing but they had say I'll have to ask my parents if I can buy that and just like the frictionless nature of my parents just my my father specifically being fine with me using his credit card to just like buy anything on Amazon and like in retrospect that was probably a couple thousand dollars like over several years which really is not that much but I feel like that is what like supercharge my educational progress um and another Aspect of it

is my parents were just willing to invest in me as a person so after I encountered that video of yours I immediately dove into the world of Entrepreneurship like I just followed everything you said like I read the 4-Hour Work week I read like The Magic of thinking big I read Seven Habits of Highly affected people why we sleep like every single self-help like book that everybody was talking Atomic habits I immediately bought and read that I also Just started to like buy software and my parents were fine with it so like um they gave

me a budget of $100 a month which to some people that's a lot to some people that's not much at all but I was able to use that to get like notion things three fantastic hell all these different productivity apps and tools so anytime you mention anything I would just go and buy it ask my parents can I do that so yeah some background on me I did that and then also I was also Studying computer science university so uh I decided to not go and follow my parents footsteps and become a doctor I decided

to study computer science because I was also a tech nerd so around this time I recall when I was in high school I was like a huge tech nerd I would watch all the Apple events there was a moment where I actually skipped class uh when I was 17 to watch the iPhone 10 launch event because I was just so interested in that so that kind Of made me motivated to actually study computer science so before this moment I was just normal kid in University who was studying computer science okay nice so you're 19 you're

in your first year of uni second year of un something like that entering my second year so finished my first year of University nice and you've never really thought about entrepreneurship before seeing that video and you're thinking great I'm going to work at a tech company or Whatever yeah I'm going to earn 70k a year was my goal at the time um I'm going work in a tech company I'm going to be a software engineer I should probably get some experience that was that was the extent of it I really did not think about anything

related to anything else in entrepreneurship okay so then you see that video and then like can you tell me more about like what's the what's the switch that happens in your mind seeing seeing that video I Think another aspect to it which is it's it's either not talked about enough or talked about too much is like the idea of representation of someone who kind of like looks and talks like you and I think people talk about this a lot which is like oh in Hollywood we need like more people of certain backgrounds and stuff and

that's good because people get to see themselves and someone else and I didn't really like I mean sure I understood that on a theoretical level But I never really understood the value of it but someone like you who was on paper demographically I feel like was very similar to me so like you were came from a similar South Asian background uh parents doctors he were in medicine and also had a younger brother was very similar or interested in similar things just seeing someone like me who was several steps ahead earning money online that I feel

like I don't know what but that did the trick I think another Aspect to it was it was during the pandemic so just thinking back I just feel like I had so much time I I like nowadays I feel like I don't have as much I think I was just doing I just didn't have anything to do really I think it was it was a combination of an empty mind like being having so much free time and see someone like you who was very similar to me demographically but a few years ahead recommending this and

also showing the proof on paper Which is like I am making this much a month passively passively which was just insane so all of that went through my mind and within that week I just sat down on my brother and we thought okay we need to do what this guy's doing this is incredible like he's making several thousand a month just passively we need to copy that how are we going to do that he's doing it via skillshare at the end of that video you say you should start a skillshare class we just launch a

Skillshare class with him that week copy that so that okay so that's interesting so uh several million people saw that video I don't know how what the view count is at that point but most people when they watch stuff on YouTube that is inspiring in someway will say not me not now they'll come up with some sort of reason why oh well you know he went to Cambridge so like obviously oh well you know he's a doctor So obviously oh like well you know it worked for him but it won't work for me that sort

of idea or increasingly well he's only you know this is all kind of fake he's only saying that cuz he's trying to sell me of course like uh uh and they'll they'll have all of these those sorts of external things but also the internal things of you know maybe this would work for someone else but I'm I'm not the sort of person who could start my own business business oh my Goodness that's scary like did to what extent did those kind of not me not now thoughts go through your system and then like what was

it about you and your brother that made you just sort of take action and just launch a skill sh class of that week yeah resistance is the problem here like I feel like a lot of people they see things and they immediately come up with all these reasons why it wouldn't work for them and I'm genuinely trying to think here Like why did I actually do that because like I feel like I I don't know if I would actually do that now like if I saw someone saying do this thing right now to get this

result I'm not sure I would have taken action but I wonder like what was the difference what actually motivated me to to to actually launch the course I think there's a couple things I think first of all it was just the fact that maybe something that was different about me at that time Or even now is that I feel like I just have an absurd level of self-belief I don't know why I just think like no matter there's basically anything that someone has done I feel like with given enough time effort and work I could

replicate at least a little bit of that success so there's something about that which is like I don't know if it's delusional but something I think there was that like self-belief there and I think also a lot of it was the fact that It was someone who on paper looked to be very similar to me so it wasn't like Barack Obama was saying launch your business right it was someone who like looked like me on paper with very similar background and upbringing it wasn't like you were born to like a billionaire family or something like

that uh that I feel like that maybe influenced me to do it and actually take action to make that skillshare course but it's hard to exactly say what it was I can't really like genuinely I don't know like what the difference was other than the fact that it was someone who was almost identical to me and you kind of like released your playbook which is like hey just do this do this do this do this and I just had a bunch of free time to actually execute on that and make it done and I guess

a final aspect to this is it's really hard for me to not do things when I feel like I should do them or when I want to do them like for Example we can talk about this a bit later I I ended up quitting my job within 24 hours of making that decision so within the same day of me realizing I could quit my full-time software engineering job I want to do this and iring out a plan I could not sit there and work for any longer I had to quit within the day I drafted

my resignation letter and sent it the next day so I guess I just naturally had kind of like almost like an impulsive bias for Action Where any anytime I would discover something think about doing something decide on doing something I would immediately start to take take action uh almost to a detriment with like other areas of my life where it was like I I tend to get distracted quite easily about like new opportunities and new Ventures where it's like for example um and I want to talk to you about this a bit like the digital

Nomad thing is a big thing in my mind right Now because when you're someone who is able to make like couple tens of thousand dollars online of profit now like the opportunity of oh I can live anywhere in the world I can go to like a lowcost living area and I can just kind of do whatever I want that starts to come to mind so the moment I think about oh I want to potentially move to Mexico for two months I Bally start planning it looking for airbnbs like thinking about oh how am I going

to get the plane Tickets when am I going to do this so yeah I think I think I just naturally have like a a tendency for bias for Action just to like operate on things and also a lot of self-belief that like why can't I do this thing if someone who looks just like me with a very similar background has already done it what is like the reason why I couldn't do that nice yeah that makes a lot of sense uh now that you're like successful you know you've got a big big is YouTube Channel

you're making like tens of thousands of dollars of profit a month uh do people ask you man how did you do it I think they ask me more about that I actually don't think it's public much I made up until this point oh great okay so people don't know that the people who do ask me that are the people in the accelerator so I'm also part of the part-time YouTuber accelerator uh o program yeah and I think people there once I publish like I I released how Much I made in terms of Revenue and like

where I started from I think people like from that Community have like reached out to me and been like hey like could you like why we help on a call I want to start a coaching program I'm interested in doing entrepreneurship online and stuff like that so those people have asked me like hey you're so young how have you actually pulled this off but I I haven't gotten those questions yet just because up until now I don't Think I've really told really anybody how much I made I think the only people who know are my

family uh people in the in like in the programs I'm part of you know what's interesting even my like family friends in my hometown I think they still think like I'm kind of some kind of starving artist or something like like they're not really sure what I'm doing right like I I went home for the holidays and Thanksgiving and I can just tell like one person is doing law Someone's doing medicine someone's doing engineering and and I I even remember a certain circumstance where I was sitting there and someone turns to me and says like

so am are you like fulfilled with your your new career path now that you're following your passion rather than you know working a job and I could just tell like that question by itself doesn't sound like it's assuming anything but I could just tell like this person thinks I'm like some kind of Starving artist who's like barely able to put food on the table so and I'm not saying that in a bad way I'm just saying like I feel like I have not gotten those questions yet just because I have not made a money or

made a video about how much money I made so far so yeah I think the only people who have asked me so far are people like in those programs that I'm part of okay so you and your brother decide to create a skill check class indeed why and how Yeah well why was because I saw I actually rewatched your video last night about how much money I made in a week as a doctor and YouTuber because I wanted to know what was that number because I think over the past 4 years since I watched that

video I think that number in my mind has gone up so in my mind I was like okay this guy's making like 50 to 100K a month passively through skillshare that is why I was so motivated but I actually went and Rewatched it I think you and maybe correct me if I'm incorrect but I think it was like7 to $8,000 a month at that time from skillshare yeah it would have been yeah yeah roughly and now that seems like oh wait that's not that much but in my mind I think what I interpreted that as

as almost like it was the gold rush I think at the time because the idea of like several thousand a month passively when the person's like just lach this thing and Like not working to like make that thing work I think that was the why um I think i' had also just interpreted that as oh what can I do with all this money so the how was that I immediately sat down with my brother and we sat on the couch and we thought okay what can we make what do we know that we can teach

so we came up with a few ideas the first one was standardized testing we both did very well on our standardized test classic right uh so we thought oh we can like Make a skillshare course about teaching the ACT which is the exam in the US that all the high schoolers take uh there was a couple other options one was like a music class or something we both had done music for piano and other instruments and stuff like that growing up and finally what we decided on doing was or actually what I decided on doing

was making just like a random course on C which is a programming language I was working on at the time in my internship So the way I pulled this off was I didn't know anything about cameras microphones editing nothing so I just asked my friend who was doing like videography stuff in high school can I borrow your microphone I want to make a course so he literally just lent it to me for 3 days I spent like 5 to 6 hours drafting up a random idea for this course like very basic programming Concepts filmed it

within like an afternoon edited it and Launched it within like 3 days so I literally just like full full full story just literally just like came with this idea edit it launch it within a couple days and just put on the platform nice and how much has that course made you in the last four years yeah that course has passively generated $11,500 which pretty sick for a few hours of work but yeah that was it's interesting because I don't know how to feel about that because part of me is Like that's actually great like I

was able to make money online but I guess if you compare that to how much I made through other areas it's really not that much I think what was great about that skillshare course was the fact that it was it was just me taking action to do something it's not I think there's a common mistake that a lot of people make thinking that the first thing you do has to be the last thing you do right it's like oh I don't know what my Niche is or I don't know how to I don't know what

what idea to start my business I need to look for an idea I've heard this so much talking to friends and family about starting businesses they're like I need to look for a good idea once I have an idea then I'll start my business I'll leave my job I'll do that but the fact that my first forign entrepreneurship was a really frankly shitty C course on on skillshare that only made me 1.5k but that started into creating this entire World of Entrepreneurship four years later I don't know I think the first thing you do doesn't

all does not have to be the last thing you do in fact the first thing can just be your first step into the journey and that's what creates the rest nice another another point on this is like you mentioned earlier millions of people watch these videos and you have 6 million subscribers and I'm always shocked when I talk to someone who hasn't started a business Who's like oh I love Al abdall like that doesn't really computed by head how can you watch Ali abd's Channel and not have already launched a YouTube channel or a business

or do taken action on something right but I think there's a lot of people out there who have just like passively consumed this content but haven't actually done what these people say they're doing and I just don't get it right like why would you watch it and not do what they're saying Like if you want if you want that life so there's someone you want to be like is saying do X Y and Z how how can how is it possible to watch that and not even like take a first step towards that direction you

know what I mean and I it's not even just you right like for anybody else like Chris Williams and Alex Heros um even Hamza from time to time I will like listen to something they say and if something resonates with me I'm like yeah that makes sense just Take action on it and even if it has to be like a very basic shitty version right that skillshare class I think skillshare took it down even like last year or something cuz it just I don't know it didn't fit some new standard or whatever but that was

just like I just got quick feedback I just tried something launched it made a couple tens of dollars a month passively through that and that just inspired me to keep the flywheel going and often it takes Like 5 10 15 of these small random things before even one thing works out and as as you hear it took me three to four years of trying [ __ ] like this before one thing actually worked out and I was able to quit my job and make money online yeah mate it's the it's the this has been the

problem that I'm really trying to trying to figure out as well why don't people take more action like I I discovered the world of making money on the internet when I was like 12 or 13 And like immediately I was like all right cool I mean I've got to do the stuff I'm going to learn web development I'm going to shill myself as a freelance web web developer cool affiliate marketing is a thing okay cool pired the latest course on how to do affiliate marketing and I'm like okay what do I like I'm playing Starcraft

2 so let me build a Starcraft to Niche affiliate marketing site WordPress what's that let's learn WordPress and it it's just a Very natural process of of getting some information taking action on it to my detriment now because what my team will say is that Ali's latest enthusiasm is whoever is the last person he's spoken to so I'll speak to Dan Priestley who's going to tell me m you know what actually having seven businesses is more chill than having one business and I'm like you know what he's right I should have seven businesses I'll speak

to Ryan dice he'll say you know what it'll be Great if you spun off this off this thing off as its own business and I be like you know he's he's probably right he's making 100 million a year you know he's he's like 50 and 40 something and he's got kids and he seems happy P so great let me just do that and this bias to action I think is really really really helpful at the start um over time I think it you know someone's biggest strength can become their biggest weakness if they don't recognize

the Flip side of the thing but that's the thing I think with we were looking at the stats of our YouTuber Academy as well you know we have thousands of people who've paid thousands of dollars to take our YouTuber Academy for the final cohort we had 2,000 students only 40% of people actually did week one 40 60% of people didn't even start the course and yet they paid $2,000 for it and we were looking at our stats earlier as well around like you know who was Who's the target audience for our YouTuber Academy and like

60% of people even now who pay $1,000 for the course have not even started a YouTube channel like they don't have a channel when we ask in the enrollment form what's linked to your channel they take the I don't have one yet they haven't even started one and like I've made videos about this I've made like courses about the like that that first step the first step seems to be the hardest step and like Yeah what's that makes no sense I actually heard that stat I think you mentioned in some prior video or something that

like very few what percent of people who have taken the parttime YouTuber academy uh over the past four years have like continued Beyond like five or 10 videos do you have like a mental number I would say it's less than 10% less than 10% that idea is insane to me I don't I don't understand how that works how how is it Possible for someone to like pay number one pay thousands of dollars or something number two like have that dream because every single person has the same dream right they all like want to do this

thing yet they don't s consistent past five or 10 videos so I don't know I don't know what the solution is but I honestly think just that bias for Action is like immediately puts you like so far ahead the idea of like continuing to do something but it's An interesting point you mentioned earlier about how like you feel like what benefits you from Level 0 to 50 will not take you from level 50 to 100 and that really resonates with me because the strategy or The Meta in fact changes based on what level you're at

um the idea of like quickly launching things there are a bunch of YouTubers who and myself included who like they will keep changing their strategy like left and right and that that really Doesn't work because sometimes you have to sit on something for a long period of time for it to actually pay off for example it took me four years of consistently posting on my channel before I made like a month that was profitable on YouTube so yeah imagine if I been like oh like this YouTube thing's not working I'm going to switch to like

an smma or I'm going to switch to a podcast or I'm going to switch to affiliate marketing or I'm going to Start something else so I think I think it's a balance I think early on you definitely need to just you have to just start basically I think and like I said earlier your your first thing is not going to be the last it's like just do something I think you mentioned how you've done like I don't know like 10 12 things yeah something like that before your first thing worked out maybe 10 years later

which was like the medical courses thing in college right so for me Too it's like it took it took so many various things so many educational resources before one thing even worked out so yeah yeah just find a point on this on this thing so we we are launching I think we already launched it we we're calling it our um YouTube foundation's seven video challenge where the offer is you pay $297 MH and if you make seven just seven videos within seven months of taking the challenge we will refund you the $297 I think this

is A grand slam offer it's like there's so many people who have have not even taken the first step in starting their YouTube channel and now it's like hey we've got this challenge you're in the community other people are doing it you're submitting the videos we can give you feedback on the videos and positive affirmation and stuff and you literally get the money back all you have to do is make seven videos within seven months one video a month that's pretty easy you Could even just like talk to the camera and not even edit it

to you know be eligible for the challenge and we did a bit of a sweep stakes in my team around what percentage do of refunds do we think we're actually going to give for people who complete the challenge like let's say for every 100 people who start the challenge how many people will actually see it through my team has been around this for a couple of years no one predicted anything above 15% and we were all just like yeah I mean it's there as a challenge people have literally got money on the line they've got

every incentive to actually do the work and we suspect fewer than 15% of people will actually complete the challenge and take us up on it cuz Angus my general manager was really worried about this he was like but now we're going to have to keep the money in escrow we're have to keep the money like yeah it's fine we'll we'll we'll see What happens we we don't have the stats yet um I personally think it'll be about 10% of people who will who will Who will complete the seven videos and they've got a whole seven

months to do it um but life will get in the way impulsor syndrome will get in the way they'll realize ah you know it's actually kind of painful talking to a camera the I think one thing also is that people have a weird conception of how hard sum is going to be even even when I speak to Izzy sometimes I'm sure she won't mind me mind me saying this but she often feels that YouTube feels really hard for her therefore she's a bad YouTuber and therefore she's not cut out for this I'm like bro if

youve got like 700,000 subscribers with like 50 videos I had 700 subscribers when I had 50 videos like come on and like by all objective standards Iz is a very very good YouTuber and yet the fact that she feels it's hard makes her go to the conclusion That I suck mhm and I think a lot of people have this kind of conception that like if it's not effortless if if I'm not finding it easy from day one clearly I must be a bad Entre entrepreneur I'm not cut out for this you know uh I'm not

like Elon Musk I just don't have in my DNA there's all these things that come up at the at the prospect of friction I don't know if you VIP with that at all like that's something that you've seen with with people that you know I think This is one reason why I find Alex Hero's content to be valuable I think this is one benefit of it is the idea of like pain tolerance being I I know this is like kind of like opposed towards some of your philosophies about having fun but I think a lot

of this is just being able to deal with like the discomfort of something not working and often often times I come back to the fact that if it was so easy then everybody would do it and the fact that Everybody can't do it is it has to be hard there has to be some level of discomfort um so yeah 100% I think well for the fact that Izzy has like 500 plus thousand subscribers like that is unbelievable yeah like I'm still working to get there four years later so I would say yeah I I believe

I think people have this expectation that something is going like you said something is going to be incredibly easy they they come into it They're like oh they encounter one roadblock and then it immediately falls falls apart so I'll give you an example there are a lot of times where I I decide I want to do something like for example kind of outside of the world of business I want to find a singing teacher in my new environment which is I moved from I moved across the country the US I moved from Iowa to North

Carolina from the Midwest to the east coast and I've been doing singing Lessons for the past few years I'm like hey I want to find a singing teacher so Step One is like Google singing teacher Raleigh North Carolina to take that to to do that Google I've been thinking about it for a week okay I was thinking I should probably find a singing teacher first Google's a week later then scroll through click on a few websites ah none of this looks that good done for two weeks then I remember oh I should probably find a

singing teacher I do the Same Google again I look oh I find some person I F A contact form don't hear back for another few weeks okay then I come back and think oh I should probably find a singing teacher so it is actually it is kind of surprising to me how uh non-real it is to really do anything because often to get anything done you have to make five to 10 various attempts for it to happen and then it actually works out so for example if in your mind you're like okay I should probably

start A I want to start a business what is an easy way to start a business oh I can start creating content online okay I have to create my Channel all right I'm going to go on YouTube I'm going to create a channel all right I have to film my video I have to make a script now I'll do it tomorrow I'll do it later so I think there is there is like real value into like that sequential step by step by step and there's friction at every step of the way so if you're Someone

who can just like see things through to completion be like I am going to complete this no matter what it takes so for example if you're like I have to start a channel you can't just let yourself be satisfied with the trying to try I'm like I'm going to try to start a channel I'm going to like make an account I've done the work I've done it you have to do what's necessary to achieve the outcome rather than seeing the the effort as enough right I think a Lot of people they're like oh I tried

like if you talk to those people who did the program and like didn't actually take action they will probably have reasons why they're like oh like I tried I did this and something came in the way so everybody has like things come in the way like what actually separates people out is being able to the follow through to actually like come up with what is necessary to actually make the result happen consistently yeah I think also no One I've ever so we we do these like meetups for our YouTuber Academy and inevitably you know like

100 people will show up and in the majority of conversations I'll have with them I'll be like oh so how's the channel going and they'll say oh well I haven't been consistent with it for for the last few months or all this sort of stuff and they'll never say I have quit YouTube they will always say life got in the way it's not the right time right now and That's I think what is interesting about this it's sort of like this thing that you and I know because we we've consumed the Kool-Aid of the self-help

books kind of not yet not right now is the thing that takes all the dreams to the Grave because the timing is never right we had talks in med school uh from um doctors with kids who are always like look if you want to have kids literally the timing is never right there will always be another exam you could take another Step of the rung that you could climb when you're a junior doctor you'll think oh once I once I get my exams out the way once you got your exams out way you'll think ah

well and I'm once I'm a senior regist once you're a senior registar you'll think when I'm a consultant when you're a consultant you think well I'm a junior consultant right now and you know once I find my feet and eventually you become 48 and you can't have kids anymore and they were like a Lot of the message was like if you want to do something recognize that the timing will never ever ever feel right and you actually just need to do it right now and I think that is the thing that that's a thing that

holds a lot of people back thinking the timing is not right right now 3 weeks from now 3 months from now when dot dot dot when when my calendar clears up when the kid comes out or when the kid goes off to school or when the kid gets a bit older Or when the kid goes off to University or when that next thing happens etc etc it's never I'm not going to write my Symphony it's always I'm not yet going to write my Symphony because the timing is not quite right yeah and that is a

total s up that like it's it's just like yeah it's the Mind honestly I feel like the mind is the worst enemy in fact it's like it's so easy to I feel like people are great at convincing themselves to to do to like basically not follow their Own dreams it's like you talk to anybody very often you cannot convince someone to do something like that because they have so much of of like arguments and baggage in their mind like if like let say someone says oh not right now they can probably give you three to

five reasons why now is not the right time um so it's not like I think there a perception that oh it's within one conversation something can change their mind but it's really like they're Convincing themselves that like now it's not the right time and kind of on like a different note um when it comes to health and wellness this is something I've been really thinking about over the past few months that argument is so common amongst people why they don't want to get in shape now it's not the right time so so a couple of

ideas here first of all I I have a lot of friends who they quote unquote exercise and work out when they're not in school during Breaks but then as soon as school starts they immediately give it up and the reason is oh I don't have time for this I'm busy I have to work on school I'm bus like have a 95 job you know this project once like I'm on break I'll work on this right but if you kind of take a step back and think about okay what what is the value of like exercise

and wellness and health right if you kind of like take the longevity angle right if you look at any studies or something Like that just like do some rudimentary analysis you'll see that spending one to two hours a day on exercise and also nutrition is going to give you like a solid at least 5 to 10 years of healthy life that you would otherwise not have and if you consider that right I think there's like a there's a mindset which like Life's too short to exercise I don't have time for this I need to like

grind out the business I need to work on myself and I'll worry about that later But if actually run the numbers if you spend one to two hours a day exercising and like focusing on eating healthy and working out and going to the gym and doing Z do cardio and stuff like that you're going to net out 5 to 15 years and those that 5 to 15 years people might say oh like but I'm going to spend two hours a day working on this I'm actually going to lose a bunch of time but that 5

to 15 years is actually if you account to the time you spend Exercising too so this is 5 to 10 years of just net life in general minus the time you spent exercising and working on your food and nutrition of just bonus years you get and another aspect this is people hear this and say you know what sure I get it I'm going to have a bunch of years at the end of my life but my 20s are when I need to grind this is the time we're going to set up the rest of my

life I need to work hard now so I can reap the rewards for the rest of my life But think about it this way right when what at what point of your life is 1 hour more valuable is it when you're 15 is it when you're 25 is it when you're 35 or is it when you're 55 most people's one hour is the most valuable when they're actually at the end of their career when they're like a Senior Management Consultant when they're like uh like a a doctor with 20 years of experience when they're like

partner at a law firm right one hour of their time Is worth $2 to $500 compared to 1 hour when you're 25 so it doesn't make any sense to prior to sacrifice something in the moment which is like oh I can't spend two hours of time to to work out to exercise to get healthy right now because I need to focus on this now and later on I'll worry about it because number one you Net 5 to 10 years anyway if even if you subtract the time you spend exercising and working in health and wellness

number two that time at the End of your life in terms of like 50s and 60s when you're in the middle age is actually more valuable economically and business wise than your time now is when you're in your 20s and 30s so when I realized that when I realized that the the idea of I don't have time to exercise is just complete it's just it's just a farce it's just completely useless I completely redid my entire calendar so nowadays I actually prioritize the gym and working out Because I'm like hey this thing is actually the

most productive thing I can do um I can it is more important than consultation calls and sales calls and meetings on my team they working on my product because buying myself more time is actually it's better economically and better in terms of like life and fulfillment and stuff like that yeah I think you you make a really good point around this friction thing like for example in my Case for years since the age of like 14 I've been wanting to do some sort of martial art cuz I thought it was cool and at the time

I asked my mom to be like hey can I take karate lessons and she was like um no for various reasons I was like okay cool whatever parked it for seven years I get University and I'm like I take one taond class and I'm like hm I should I should do more of this and I just park it for another eight years and like a couple weeks ago I have A friend staying over who's like black belt in multiple martial arts and this friend you know I said to this friend hey you know is it

is it important to learn a martial art and he was like oh my God it'll change your life you know you'll be able to protect your wife and kids on the street if it ever comes down to that you'll feel confident you'll feel good you'll be a new mountain to climb and I'm like all right cool which one do you recommend like what's the and Then I watch some videos about what's the best martial art to learn and cuz I'm like obviously I can't just get started with one where you know what the guy what

my friend said to me was like you know just tried a few different ones like it it doesn't really matter start anywhere and I was like no no no you know I can't just do that I have to know the difference between BJJ and mu Thai and Krav Maga and MMA and Taekwondo and Judo and like huh okay well Lex Freedman Talks about okay well what about what about this and and sort of the pros and cons table of all these different freaking martial arts when in reality everyone I've actually spoken to about this who

does the thing says bro just go to the nearest fing like whatever it is like they probably do box boxing kickboxing myed it's all it's all the same like come on just like just like do the thing and when I was in London you know Izzy and I started taking Kickboxing lessons and then it was like oh well we're going to be leaving London in a few months anyway so like what's the point of committing to this thing when like oh actually yeah there's no point cuz I you know when when we figure out where

we're going to live long term that's when I'll start the martial arts lessons we're now in Hong Kong we've been here for four months and four months ago I posted on Instagram story being like which martial arts gym should I join and I got loads of people recommending different gyms I now have a list and it's been four months and I've done absolutely nothing then I got inspired by my friend last week and I put out another Instagram story being like looking for a BJJ gym nearby because my friend said okay just St BJJ and

I got a bunch of inbound and I haven't done anything with it because it's like at each step of the process there is friction and I think one of the Problems is when it came to sort of when I read the 4our work week and realized [ __ ] I don't want to live a life where I'm chained to a chained to a job there was a profound negative motivation there of like I do I I can literally see the doctors in front of me who are miserable I do not want to end up that

way the way out of that is to build passive income therefore I need to build a business let's freaking go like that was a kind of magnetic goal that pulled me Towards wanting to avoid that fate but when it comes to health when it comes to martial arts when it comes to longevity the thought of like I don't want you know I want to be able to pick up my grandkid when I'm 85 like it's it's not as it's it's not as motivating a thing similarly the thought of like I should probably learn martial arts

because just in case I ever get attacked and I have the inability to run which is the right answer there and my family is with me And I really have the inability to run and I need to take someone to the ground then the BJJ training would help me the I just don't give a [ __ ] enough about it to bother seeing through the friction of the process because everything as you say has friction at every single stage and like yeah yeah what actually makes you push through I think there's a couple things there

uh first of all I think this is very IQ curve meme where it's like just do it it's like the dumb Guy on the left and then the middle guass like no like I need to find out what gym I need to do my research it's important because like BJJ is like you know if the guy is like if I can run then there's no point to like you know if they grab me then I should learn BJJ because it's more effective under like a ground control situation I don't like like striking is less useful

there so I'm going to find what BJ J gym should I actually go to oh this one's only on Tuesdays and Thursdays I really prefer Monday wday Friday because like I already have my personal training sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm going to find another gym and then the guy at the end is just like just do something I think there's another aspect of it which is uh that I've been picking up lately is very often I think the curse of trying to save money holds a lot of people back with a lot of different

things so we use the health And well this example while you're traveling a lot of people will avoid going to the gym because there's a friction of paying for a $5 to $20 day pass and these are not people very often who need that 15 to $20 they would happily pay $5 to $20 for a lunch or a dinner right but $15 for a day pass at the gym my membership is $50 a month what the hell like why might I do this like I'll just waake I just take take a week off like it's

fine you know I don't Want my de week that's my week I don't want to overtrain yeah exactly so there's I think I think very often just like lately I I've gotten into rock climbing right and that is something I just do for I really enjoy it and I want to get better at it it's something I care about and while I'm here in Hong Kong for a few weeks I was like oh The Rock Climbing Gym are kind of expensive it's kind of inconvenient it's in I don't know some other area of town I'm

In chatin I don't have the time and effort to like go there and it's $30 for a day pass I could just not work out for a few weeks but very often I have to over override that just like no I care about this this is most important to me like there is nothing else that matters as much as my health right now at least so I'm going to just like whatever I'm going to pay the $30 I'm just going to like take the bullet spend the time spend the time and effort to go find

a Place to do it so I I often come back to like how you actually find that motivation because I think you're right I think the time Horizon of oh if I'm attacked on the street I need to defend my wife and kids that is not not enough so I don't think that your high level motivation which is truly I need to defend my family on the street if a one in a million chance happens when I get attacked I think often to actually make anything happen we need to hijack the Limic system which I'm

just using that phrase to actually create the motivation and for me uh there's a couple ways that I've done that I think the best one is that negative visualization which very often is like not talked about but if you have an actual monster that's chasing you so for example for me the reason I put my job was at the end it was because I had a conversation with my boss where he sat down and he said Aman you have a lot of potential I think You're doing well but I want you to put in a

little bit more time and effort I want you to stay a little bit later I want I want you to you know come a bit earlier leave a bit later I want you to push our projects through and then if you're were able to step up 20 30% you'll get promoted come summer but right now you're doing great but you're not on track for promotion and to hear hear that from him and to know that the only way I could actually pull that off Was if I sacrificed a bit of YouTube time so for example

here I was actually spending every morning lunch and evening working on YouTube but I was a full-timer so I would wake up at 7:00 a.m. I would spend an hour writing before I went to work then I would go to work then during lunch for one to two hours on work on YouTube then in the evening I would spend two to three hours on YouTube as well so the only way I could actually grow the channel was if I Or the only way I could actually get promoted was if I cut down on that time

and sacrific my child which is YouTube to actually focus on the business and to get that dichotomy given to me so succinctly that I I would have to actually give up on this dream to progress in business or my in my job then that was it I was like dude there's no point of doing this I have to quit I can't I can't sit here for one day longer and give up what I actually want To do to progress in this thing so that was that like demon on my shoulder which is like if I

actually I I have to quit because I can't I can't just give up on this thing I actually want to do so very often for me it helps to create that with other areas of life so for example if you want to take the gym seriously if you just sign up for a bodybuilding show six months from now dude you're going to do it or you sign up for a marathon yeah Like a year from now or like 6 months from now or a triathlon or an Iron Man or something right or you agree I'm

going to climb this rock wall in y70 you're going to do it you know what I mean so I think you were talking about this in not overthinking actually recently you you kind of have to create these small immediate challenges because you cannot think 40 years from now it's sure sure maybe some people can do it Peter petera can do that I can't okay You you kind of have to come up with these immediate challenges in the short term to actually pull it off to make progress in the short term okay so you make the

skill sh class you're 19 years old you make the skill sh class you release it presumably nothing much happens what happens next what happens next is I just start taking action on all these different things I hear from you and other people so for example I also just launch a Blog and an Email newsletter at the same time so we want to skill share week two is blog so Botto domain man.org I don't know why I got it.org but man.org it was available go in webflow make a website notal license preaching webflow so I use

webflow build that website I read a bunch of books to start writing book reviews I start a newsletter thoughtful Thursday still around weekly email newsletter start posting that every single week great that's done then after That week three or four I'm like hey you know someone's saying to make a YouTube channel maybe I should start this YouTube channel thing so I also launched a YouTube channel around that time it was July of 2020 I think to myself I actually have a document that I wrote in a car on a road trip which is what are

my what can I teach what can I talk about on YouTube channel I still have that document available um I was good at the saxophone in high school so I was Like oh I can make music videos with a saxophone I was great at doing standardized tests like I mentioned earlier I can talk about that I can talk about studying in University I can like talk about my my grades in college so I just decided hey I like Apple I'm computer science student I'm going to film a video called why the MacBook Pro is perfect

for computer science students so that was my first video on my channel it's still available right now posted That July 2020 it's terrible quality the lighting's bad the audio is terrible I have no conviction when I speak whatsoever but I decided to just do something launch my channel and I think you were also at the time talking about how the consistency is key you just kind of have to stay I think there was like an MKBHD y combinator interview classic that's the one where he was like yeah you know if you stick with anything for

10 years it's hard to Not be successful at it so I just set the intention I'm just going to post something every single week so I just started making videos on studying computer science Quizlet versus anky todoist things three just like budget bad quality productivity videos and studying in computer science while also running the newsletter while also being a student so that was year one I made 20 something videos just consistently and I had maybe 1,000 subscribers or 500 or actually I think I only had like 100 subscribers in year one so I just consistently

post it every single week on something I could think of every single week okay this great so you're doing all this work you're putting in all this time while you're at University and presumably have better things to do than grinding on YouTube videos although it's co so maybe not but like I'm sure you could come up with better things to do with your time Most people in that like a most people don't even take the first step of creating the YouTube channel and making that first video because of all of the not yet not now

the timing is not right the people that do take the first step 99% of them don't take the next one and at each Step at each step of this process every everyone who started a YouTube channel everyone in our course everyone I know about this everyone I know who does this there's so much Friction to making that next video it's always a negotiation do I really want to do this do I really want to do this do I really want to do this how did you just do it for a whole year to four years

without seeing any results what's up with that yeah dude honestly I'm trying to think about what what actually influenced me to do that for so long because 4 years is insane to me right now before anything actually worked out so I think there's a couple of things Looking at hindsight the first thing is I think I actually did sacrifice on other areas of my life during that time so for example I really it was lockdown so like I was not going to class I was not seeing people in person I think at that time I

I genuinely did sacrifice my life at that point so I was doing okay in University but I didn't have like straight A like I did in high school because I was like hey I care about this YouTube thing more I'm actually going to Do that before I work on my classes I didn't have very many friends at the time because I was like it's co it's pandemic I'm not going to worry about this inste going to work on YouTube so I think it is underrated to actually sacrifice things to make this happen there's a perception

out there which is that this thing should come for free I should be able to schedule it it should be nice it should be 1 hour in the evening and that should be enough I Should be able to spend Saturday mornings and that should be enough but I think you can speak to this as well there is something to be said about really actually deciding is this something I want is this an acceptional result to have a business and a YouTube channel with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands subscribers yes it is there therefore

maybe I do need to sacrifice things in my life right now to actually pull that off so during year 1 And two I did sacrifice my grades I did sacrifice my friends and family I kind of just locked in and actually did that um I was even editing my own videos at this time too so I was spending 10 plus hours per video just like sitting there editing them um so I think there there was there was some level of sacrifice I actually did have and also what I did was I was just consuming all

of this self-improvement productivity self-development content and I also Think that is underrated I think there's a lot of people out there who tell who say it's all the same stuff it's all the same idea why do you why do you have to watch every single one of this person's videos or why do you have to read every single one of this but it's all the same thing you already know what you have to do but there's something about just hearing that message over and over and over and over and over again of you just have

to stay consistent you have to keep Doing this you have to keep doing this unless it's not going to work out um and on that note I would just Implement all these little productivity hacks and techniques so for example one thing that probably made 50% of my progress was Thomas Frank this product acity YouTuber um especially from back in the day he made this video about how he would get charged by this app called be minder if he didn't wake up on time so I watched that about four to five years ago and I Decided

to like make that automation but for posting on YouTube so beinder would charge me $100 if I didn't post every single week to my credit card and I've already paid them over $1,000 because I did miss many weeks but and people thought I was crazy when I told him this I was like yeah dude like I get charged if I don't post on time so that also was just like the fuel on the fire just building these small things to like force myself to stay consistent in Year one in year two and year three so

yeah year one posted 20 30 videos they were all right they were not that good and just like trying to come up with these things to motivate me to keep on going over time that's a long time to grind at it for without seeing any results that's very impressive I'm amazed I would I wouldn't have done that yeah you know you always talk about how I think it was like for you what like 6 to 12 months in when you had like yeah Video yeah about 10 months in I had a viral video 10 months

in yeah I hear that I'm like I think you posted a lot more than me though like video me video 91 was a viral video yeah I've only ever posted like 90 full length videos or something at this point so for me I think I was posting like less frequently but over a longer period of time I actually went 16 or 18 months before my first video Hit 100K views so my first viral video came in a year and a half Into posting like consistently every few weeks every month so yeah I don't know I

don't know what it was but I just stay consistent I think it was just yeah I think it was also just consuming other people's content what you're talking about I think this is another thing I don't think you realize the impact that you have when you actually rehash the same ideas over and over and over and over again cuz I see the comments being like Oh just Repetition and I think oh like it's like a knife a knife to my heart where I'm like am I just saying the same I guess I am just saying

the same I mean yeah I guess I guess yeah and then I think I don't want to make this video because I'm just saying the same thing again because I'm saying the same thing again but there is really something to be said about saying the same thing over and over over again because that is the message you need to hear like someone Like me I needed to hear every single week from o doll's Channel just stay consistent just stay consistent just stay consistent I'm reading this book on the side just just stay consistent so there

is something special to that and like even on my own channel I often say the same thing every video and I also get those comments which are like bro fall yeah bro falling off bro saying the same thing bro remakes the same video every month like but that is what you Actually have to do so I think that was another aspect that really did benefit me like continuing to watch the same content over and over and over and over and over you know there's a thought that's coming to mind around I I also think the

sort of just drowning out your inner sabur with the voices from podcasts and audiobooks and YouTube channels is so underrated to this day people like we we'll get into my car back when I was in London and had a car And audible or a podcast would autoplay and it would be like homos at Double speed or it would be like noan and Tim Ferris interviews at 2.5 x speed and they'd just be like dude you're a [ __ ] psychopath like what the hell's wrong with you and still to this day I I I mean

I watch every hosi video why do I watch every hosi video not because I'm going to learn something new but because I need the reminder that like there's one thing That's going to grow your business spend the first four hours a day focusing on that one [ __ ] thing do it keep doing it don't stop doing it there's there's the the woman in the red dress every time I hear that I'm like all right cool and I need to hear that message again and again mhm and if I think about it I don't struggle

with consist consistency when it comes to growing my business I struggle with consistency when it comes to going to The gym how many Health podcasts do I listen to zero when was the last time I put on like occasionally I I'll listen to Mike Israel on his YouTube channel if I see Chris Williamson interviewed him I'll be like you know what his stuff's actually really good let me just watch a video or two of Rene s's periodization then I'll sign up to a program and I'll watch the first like I don't know three or four

videos in this online course and then I'll forget about it again and then I'll have my call with Danang go and then I'll try and put it off to be like I don't want to talk to Danang go because he's going to call me out for not being consistent and if I imagine just flipping my content diet from Pure business to Pure Health of course I would suddenly get jacked and become like fit and appreciate because now the vo is in my head kind of like you know you are the average of the five people

around you other than my wife you who is Really big on the health thing but she's not like a jacked dude right like she's it's like she cares about yoga and she cares about like leg day and she cares about like flexibility and mobility and stuff and so that's nudging me a little bit more in that direction but if I were surround about like Jack dudes I would be a jack dude if I was if I had podcast in my ears all the time around these sort of people who take the health really seriously would

take my health a Lot more seriously because the inner sabur and this the sort of friction would would get drowned out by the symphony or the cacophony of voices that's like telling me just stick it at stick at it in the gym bro like you got this 100% I actually wanted to talk to you about this as well because you talk about how you struggle with motivation for the gym I feel like I don't at all which is interesting right like what is the difference like why why why is it Like why do I feel

intrinsically motivated to show up three to four times a week yeah because because you sent me a message being like hey do you want to hit a workout after this and I was like do I want to not really but okay fine yeah yeah yeah it's cuz I I do my if you look at my phone right now it's going to be a Jeff Nipper video it's going to be the third one down for the past four years dude why why am I watching Mike iSell Why am I watching Jeff nibber why am I still

watching these people yeah um it's I think there is something to be said about just drowning out like the inner saat tour drowning out that voice which is telling you it's not important every time I see a jacked dude like doing bicep curls on my feet I'm just like I probably should schedule the gym there's there's something there's something about that and um I also plan to to sign up for like a bodybuilding competition Two to three years from now that's also like a goal of mine as well I think another aspect to it um

when it comes to staying consistent is yeah like setting medium to short-term goals so like 3 to six month tangible goals I think back in the day you had a goal to like get six pack abs or something right for me it usually helps to be like way more specific so like I think sixpack apps is great like I'm still that's a goal of mine at some point but that is not That's too like intangible I have found that setting a goal of 15% body fat via dexa um is a lot more tangible there and

then it's like okay you can find a coach you can work with them you can get on a call with them it's like okay the goal is 15% body fat by dexa by May 31st 2025 okay so we're going to work back several weeks okay this is my calories I need to stay consistent to tracking calories to actually pull that off I need to go to the gym through find three to four times A week to do it I'm going to watch Jeff Nipper videos I'm going to watch athleen x I'm going to watch Jeremy

ET or something like that to stay consistent there um and also another thing is that like I you probably will F the goal like I have set so many of these goals if my goal is 15% I end up at 18% 18% is pretty good like seven that's like five or s% less than I was before right if I my goal was 225 on the bench I made it to 215 on the bench yeah pretty good Right so I have found that just like replacing your diet with like just the same videos over and over

again uh setting very like three to six month goals with other people like for example for YouTube I had a goal of hitting 100K subscribers by March of 2025 it's probably not going to happen I'm probably going to hit like 70 80k or something like that but pretty good that's fine with me I was already profitable in my business anyway that Was the main goal at the end of the day um rather than a subscriber count right so I found that like replacing your contact diet and also setting like these short to medium-term highly specific

tangible goals is helpful and also output based goals I found is more helpful than input based goals at least for me so a lot of people they have the goal of hey I need to show up two to three times a week I have found that that is not enough just showing up Because that doesn't really it doesn't provide a sense of urgency just showing up yeah um especially when it comes to health and wellness m M nice yeah I think for me like the most progress I've ever made is when I've had a dexa

scan with a clear follow-up scan book 3 months from now where with a clear number to follow and I'm like all right let's go yep and then I travel for a bit and then it's like well who who wants to pay $10 for Planet Fitness as a for for A day pass God I've got to got to get an Uber to drive 7 minutes to go to Planet Fitness he's got time for that and then I would fall off that particular train but yeah also if I I'm curious if I if I look on my

on my feed yeah what is it yeah what is it this is this is interesting um Iman godi $100 million V vill or hero I think I saw that one too Dan Co Alex hosi making billions with Ryan Miller what nobody tells tells you about Achieving success Samsung the frame TV 2022 transform your life Linus Tech tips Tech founder Tech founder 20 expensive things are it's all business all business self-improvement Chris Williamson alexos grae Weaver building a life you love Russell Brunson William Brown oh you know an episode with kop gup Nal rant yeah bit

of spirituality in there Joshua Weissman cuz of learning how to cook but there's like literally I would have to Scroll so far down to see anything related to health yeah and actually you know there's there's something here there's something here around like your for you page or your like sub your like YouTube homepage reflects your priorities people say that your calendar reflects your priorities but actually the modern day version of that is your your your your feeds reflect your priorities absolutely no and it's it's even to the point where I will rewatch People's videos that

I just like love like for example I will just go and rewatch Jeff nier videos while I'm eating like I've seen this video four times about like bulking I'll just rewatch it for because it's just I find it so entertaining yeah I just love it so much and even with your videos I will sometimes just go and rewatch them in the past because like I just I want these constant message to be like reminded to me about certain things I Need to do like I will just go find a video from like 2.5 years ago

on your channel and I just like rewatch it because I feel like those ideas I just need to hear it over and over and over and over again to drown out the lat in sabator to continue doing what I'm doing okay so what else are you doing so so you're you've set your beinder so you're charged $100 every time you don't upload like what else is keeping you going for three four freaking Years YouTube and Newsletter and like yeah what what what the hell yeah so one other aspect of this is I was I was

consistent over a long period of time but there were many times I stopped and I restarted so for example there was probably like a two-month period where I didn't post but then I restarted so in the grand scheme of things like for example even for my newsletter I went six months consistent and I stopped for two years and restarted again so in the grand scheme Of things it is okay if you stop as long as you restart so I think that's an underrated form of just idea in general it's like helin getting back up bro

exactly the most important step step is the next one exactly 100% yeah exactly te to thinking about that like just so good bro Journey before destination's been hitting so hard lately but I actually have notes about different each year um I just want to see like what I had to say about years two and three Want to dry my tears you can bring up theing so in year one uh I was also reading a bunch of books so I had also read for our work week Atomic habits magic of thinking big seven highly effective habits

of highly effective people can't hurt me I will teach you to be rich why we sleep so I was reading all these books SS are also going in the background via like audible 2.5x speed something like that as well hold up 2.5x speed you're a psychopath how can you Possibly do that like why not listen to it One X speed yeah I what's wrong with you what's wrong with you enjoy the journey I thought you said Journey before destination yeah I just enjoy it better when it's a faster speed but I do slow down when

it comes to like sections I like more nice than so oh year two on my channel I had still made zero money off the platform and I posted roughly 15 to 20 videos that year I posted a bit less But I was actually building ethos in outside of the platform so during that deer I had did two to three software engineering internships at companies like Amazon Shopify and also some other smaller companies as well so I was actually working on the my unfair Advantage which was doing these highp paying software engineering internships so I was

going on in the background as well I had my first video go viral so it was a notion video called why how to Study for computer science using notion that went viral that was like more motivation to keep on going there um I hired my first video editor so at this time I was realizing hey video editing is taking a [ __ ] T of my time I have more money now for my internship so I can hire a video editor I had no clue how to do that so I hired my younger brother he

was like 16 17 years old um I paid him like 100 150 bucks per video so he was just editing my videos for me so That like took away a lot of time there question so people get hung up on this because they're like well my YouTube channel is not making money so how can I possibly Outsource my editing honestly what was I thinking there I think it was it was a an idea of like two things first of all do I actually want to do this or not and in order to stay consistent with

this I have to not spend 10 to 20 hours a week editing my videos if I can hire someone to do that for me I can post multiple more videos and I had the dream that I can make this into a success one day all I need is a few viral videos so that was like in my mind as well and also I had money for my day job SL internship so I was earning $30 plus doll per hour for that um which is a pretty high paying internship and through that I was like okay

if I hire someone for $20 an hour I guess it's like my hourly rate but again it almost come back to the interat tour right Someone might sit across me and say oh but like that free time you're not actually earning so why are you spending money you could save that money instead and you could do the editing yourself I still have people come to me and say why do you why do you have an editor for your videos could you do that yourself so I think that the level two level one is just post

consistently do whatever it takes deal with the friction edit your own videos whatever you can possibly do To can stay consistent level two is try to Outsource what you can so you can focus on the high leverage tasks for me I knew that what I could do at the time that no one else could do is writing and filming right no one else can write these videos and no one else can film them as well editing was a huge time sync that I knew someone else could do namely my brother who is better at it

than me in fact he could edit these videos he was high schooler with a bunch Of free time I can pay him he has pocket money now he's happy it's in the family whatever so nice so I I was able to hire him and do that so that was year two and that was like what happened next at that point cool year three nice I think what's what's interesting here is that like um sort of there's in in in in these early days it's like you you're putting in a lot of work to get the

flywheel turning and every now and then It's sort of like the intermittent reward schedule you you get like oh that video got like 50 videos 50 views rather than three whoo thing things are starting to work like every now and then you get a little bit of like oh my God that one that video went viral or whoa that was actually a really heartfelt comment on that video or oh [ __ ] someone sent someone replied to my email newsletter saying that they really resonated with this thing that I've I've Just said and I think

it's almost like I'm i' I've got the image of like a man like that's dying of thirst you know that that Meme of like trying to get the little the droplets of water dying of thirst trying to find any source of motivation to keep this thing going and like really like like for me I remember in the early days of the channel getting one new subscriber getting one new comment was such a a such a thrill now is it takes It takes a lot to get the same thrill with the honic adaptation and everything but

just that one view that one comment and I think this is where it's sort of like you know the whole idea of the Gap in the game if you're constantly comparing yourself to like well I'm not a million subscribers yet good luck feeling good about like that one comment or that one View but if you're comparing yourself to like what you were yesterday or what you were last week where last Week you didn't have that extra view or that extra comment there's something about that that's like I'm just running my own race here and I'm

not trying to compete against anyone and this is why for me personally I didn't find it useful to set subscriber count goals cuz I was like you know what I'm just running my own race I'm just going to try and stay consistent running my own race and I know that if I keep doing it something good will happen and I cannot Predict what that good thing is going to be but I'm just going to keep on I'm going to keep on running that race and those little morsels of affection from the audience was what kind

of kept the thing going absolutely no even like the subscriber account thing like when I look at other people's channels there are people out there who have gotten hundreds of thousand subscribers in like one fifth a time than me and like that it that is profoundly unmotivating when I look at someone else's YouTube channel who like within 20 videos have already surpassed my view and subscriber count it is profoundly unmotivating but what is more motivating is when I look at where I was last year in terms of Revenue or in terms of views or subscribers

and I'm like okay I've made a significant amount of progress in the past year I just have to keep going I have to keep do what I'm doing and I I trust that things will actually work out So yeah just comparing yourself to where you were before um just all the time I feel like there's there's so much it's so underrated to just like repeat the same thing over and over and over again so it's like just remind yourself every single day okay this is where I was last year last year I was in my

9 to5 job I had made next to$ Zer online I had one or two videos that cracked 100K views now I have like five to 10 of them right that and just keep doing what you're Doing to to to go to the next level so in year three I was still doing the same thing so I posted 12 videos and like 20 or 30 shorts um just to keep the binder away cuz it check was a short just just to do something right my I hired a couple of editors just cuz my brother was busy

with school I hired a couple other people still nothing was happening so I was still only at 20K 15K subscribers like in year three and I'd still made almost no money from the Channel but I still kept going honestly I don't know what I think it was just I think it was still going back to that just repeated thing i' keep seeing your videos I was seeing other people videos on on YouTube just to know that like eventually this is going to happen something is going to happen one day I will have 5 to 10

videos take off and eventually I will somehow make that into a business so then we went into year four that was the year that everything Changed so that was this past year now year four I posted about 30 videos which was more than the prior three years and and this year I basically graduated college so I had finished three four or five software engineering internships at companies like Amazon Shopify HP I or I landed the HP offer I graduated college I landed a six-figure full-time job um in my college town I was working as a

software engineer so there were a couple things that were special about this time Period the first thing was that I had real money coming in every single week I had a reliable paycheck um I was earning a good salary it was a 95 job I I knew that hey like I have money I have a bunch of money saved up my internship so I had like cash flow basically to invest when it came to the business I was able to spend more in editing I hired a photographer to helping my thumbnails and graphic design and

stuff like that was able to reinvest in that another Aspect of this was I was a 9 to5 job so I had time in my mornings lunch and evenings and weekends so when I was a student I was spending a lot of my time on classes and that kind of like bleeds to like your life as a student is very unstructured so there's not like a hard rigid timetable and for me the idea of like 9 to5 was very helpful because I knew that I could work on this in the morning during lunch and evenings

and weekends as well so I now had about I Think I was spending between 20 and 30 hours a week outside of work working on yoube yeah I think I think the thing with student life as well is that the work is infinite like you could always be doing more whereas when you have a job it's like you know in in medicine for example if you really care about it there are always more things like you could be working on a publication or boosting your CV or whatever but for the most part when you get

home from work You can't interact with the patients anymore or like for the most part when you get home from work you're not going to be grinding on the 9 to-5 job so it actually does free up a lot of mental head space whereas I remember when I was a student it was always a thing of like H I should be doing getting ahead on my essays or should be revising for this exam that's coming up or all this sort of stuff yeah 100% I think when you're a 9 to5 job I remember after 5:00

p.m. I Was just checked out I and I think another part of this was I don't think I really cared about my job that much I think most people who worked with me there were a couple people who did work with me who really did care about the job they were like hey I want to get promoted I really intrinsically care about this work therefore I'm going to put the extra effort in when it comes to doing anything I think there's there's like multiple levels to it so there was The base level of effort to

not get fired some people just put that in I'll be honest that was me in my job I was putting in that base level of effort I was showing up at 9: and I was leaving at 5: I I would max out the lunch break as much as possible I would do what was necessary to not you know go to to not backslide basically I was maintaining my current position but to get to any Next Level you often have to put in that extra sauce right you have to put in the Extra 20 30% and

it's very hard to funnel that extra 20 to 30% into more than one or two areas so as a 9-5 worker we had people at the company who were putting that 20 30% extra St into the job and those are the senior software Engineers those are the people on the track They promoted who were getting like the raises who were those are the people who were staying in like I remember there was this guy named Harrison who was there at 7 or 8:00 p.m. Just randomly several days a week he would come in on the

weekends because he genuinely intrinsically cared about this job he wanted to put in that extra stuff so those people sure they were putting that extra time for me I was funneling that 20 30% every single minute of it into YouTube so like I said earlier I was spending I think honestly 30 hours a week later into my job aside from my 40 hours a week on YouTube so I would spend three to four hours a day during the Weekdays and almost 6 to8 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday grinding on the channel so nearly

every single minute was going into YouTube okay I'm I'm curious so during that process um someone else in that position might think might have voices in their head about work life balance about mental health about uh burnout about sustainability about like Journey before destination Etc you know all of all of this sort of stuff what is why hasn't The why are you putting why are you working 70 hours a week when you could be self-caring and only working 40 hours a week I think there's a couple aspects to it the first thing is that I

think there's a bit of a narrative that you only have the capacity to spend 40 hours a week on quote unquote work things and the rest have to be spent on quote unquote personal life which is outside of work for me I deeply intrinsically cared about YouTube it was it was my Dream it was my passion it was what I wanted to work out at the time um so it was the case where I couldn't wait to get home to work on the channel I actually remember I was late to work multiple days because I

was so engrossed in writing my script in the morning before work that I would show up late I would take unnecessarily long lunch breaks to work on the channel so much show them like I told you about the conversation with my boss he was not Happy about that I would leave early to work on the channel and I I don't think it was a grind but it also wasn't that much of a grind because I had that flame it was like oh like I can't wait to get home I can't wait to write a script

like I would I would watch my own videos with the zest like the editors came back with the new cut like I'm so excited to watch watch that there were times where during my 9 to5 job and I actually I would go into the meeting room which is like a Separate room I would like lock the door go on my laptop and watch a cut of my cut of my recent video CU I was like and I guess you're not supposed to do that but it was something I was so intrinsically excited to watch so

I I think I just had like a joy of kind of going back to like enjoying the journey right I think at the time like I'm only now realizing I think I really did love that because of was outside of my 9 to5 job so it was something that I Intrinsically really did care about so if it was something where like I it was a massive slog every single part of the journey if I hated it I it would not have worked out at all yeah zero chance yeah that's I think where you know when

people ask me about my days where I was like how how did you do the thing while you were doing the J day job and stuff and it it it comes down to that nalism of like find the thing that feels like play to you but looks like work to Others to others it would look like work to be grinding on a video edit or whatever at like you know 7:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. 900 p.m. after after a shift at work but for me at the time and it sounds like for you as well it

was like I was delighted to to do it there were some days where I didn't feel like it where you know that's where the beinder reminded that's where like the consistency it's like H okay on those days where I really don't feel like Doing it I'm still going to do it that's where I have to motivate myself with the dream with the negative visualization with all that kind of stuff but for the most part because I enjoyed the process it didn't feel like work trying to find ways to sprinkle in play Power people into all

the stuff field of productivity all that shtick trying to make it fun because that fun was where like the the excitement that excitement and motivation which was was generated by I'm still chasing that flame honestly like I remember yeah there there certain things where it's like something about toiling away on like a landing page at like 8:00 p.m. for a new product I don't know what about that is so intoxic love [ __ ] like I remember when I launched my program in January of this year I was in London for a couple weeks just

for vacation and I was in you know foils like in in London I was like upstairs in their Cafe just toiling just like Grinding on that landing page and I was so happy I don't know why it was just something about like it being the dark and just grinding and building out this page and same to like watching cuts of my video like working on a script and of course there were times that I I wasn't intrinsically motivated I think for me I don't really enjoy filming videos same I much prefer this this 100% I

think this is way more fun and it it is a bit of a Grime like I have three video Scripts I have two video scripts done I need to sit down I have to build a setup I have to sit down I've record it it's a big grueling it's my my throat hurts it's a bit sweaty like I don't like to do this I have to keep Mo motivating myself to keep going but but for the most part you I do intrinsically enjoy it I I don't know if it's possible maybe it is possible but

I don't know if it's really practical for for anyone to do anything long term enough to make it Work because again like this was 4 years of grind if I hated every minute of it there's no way I would have done that yeah so presumably for the gym you don't hate every minute I know you found a way to enjoy it yeah genuinely like of course there are certain parts of the gym which are tough like oh diet is a huge difficulty for me I don't enjoy cooking as much yet um it is a huge

slog to track my calories which is why I'm like trying to force myself to do it but The act of showing up to the gym the act of hitting new PRS the act of like getting a pump the act of flexing the idea of like thinking oh I'm going to hit that workout today that is fun to me like I I intrinsically like that I watch gym related content all the time so what about if someone's like well I don't have anything in my life like that I can't imagine having fun doing the business thing

I have fun watching Netflix or reading the fourth Wing or Whatever what you know that that sort of stuff yeah I would actually push back on that I think there I think for most people there is something they enjoy doing on the side that is that is something related like for example I'm thinking about this right now I have friends who they do like music compositions in their free time so I have a friend who like they'll make like little mixups or like AC capella mixes of their own voice and like publish that On Instagram

because they intrinsically love that or I have a friend who they will build like a little like mechanical engineering lightsaber from Star Wars just at home so I actually feel like most people have something if you like truly think about it there's something you do for fun other than watching Netflix even with watching Netflix like you know watching Netflix are fun I'm sure there are like okay for example let's say I watched Breaking Bad season 5 recently can I film a little 20-minute mon little 20-minute YouTube video where I'm review me what my thoughts are

about that would you find that fun there there is a way to like inject something you enjoy about something into like some kind of creative art or Pursuit I think also there's there's something around you won't know until you've tried it M like I wouldn't have thought that like I thought I wanted to be a like a singing guitar acoustic sort of Music YouTuber And that to me felt fun because I was like oh that feels fun but I wouldn't have thought that writing educational content and like coming up with Frameworks and [ __ ]

would actually be enjoyable but it actually is and it's like it's kind of fun and I think a big part of the fun of something is in it's in building building your own ship mhm I think most people if they had their own business would enjoy working on it almost whatever that business was Whether it's printing t-shirts or making muffins or selling coffee or doing a YouTube channel or building an online course or building an app like any of these different vehicles for business if you're the sort of person who enjoys like building stuff which

is quite a lot of people you know it gives you autonomy gives you a sense of growth gives you a sense of contribution gives you a sense of that you're building your own thing there's something really addictive about That you know like building your own Lego building your own like Ikea furniture whatever the thing might be there's something about that and I think I know a lot of people who count themselves out of the business game game or they'll hear a conversation like this being like oh man I get okay so the secret is to

really enjoy the thing but I don't I don't know what I'd really enjoy and that's what's stopping them from they're they're almost like self- Projecting ahead knowing that like okay I mean Ali and Aman are saying that you've got to grind at YouTube for like 2 to four years to see any results can I see myself right now without having a YouTube channel enjoying that process absolutely absolutely not like who would who who would think that they might even enjoy that person but when you start with it when you when you're building the thing and

you're seeing those initial bits of momentum and stuff There's something about that that lights the flame that is so hard to predict ahead of time I think there's a SC up that this thing is not actually enjoyable like for example um recently I went full-time on YouTube about 9 months ago and I've had people ask me just from my friends and family hey what's it like being a full-time YouTuber now like you must be like Mr Beast you must be doing challenges cuz like obviously that's an availability bias right people see Mr Beast and Logan

Paul and assume that's what a YouTuber is so and I actually tell them no it's actually quite similar I spend four I spend most of my day on a laptop I'm you know reviewing edits I'm joining meetings I'm writing scripts I'm working on like new landing pages I'm like ideating new product and they're like that doesn't actually sound that fun not for me so I think I think people assume that that stuff is not it's boring because It's quote unquote work I think if you actually double click on why is me working on my business

different than a 95 job why for me was a 9 to5 job actually quite grueling and not- enjoyable I did not enjoy working for someone else it was stressful it was irritating I did not like having to do certain things yet working in my own business is more enjoyable and fun why is that the case if both are me to sitting on a laptop 8 hours a day I Think there's something to be said about setting the course of your own journey and being the one who like decides what I want to create and having

that s a freedom and ownership which is like almost it is intoxicating right so yeah I think you're right that you don't know what is actually enjoyable until you start I guarantee you if you try three to five different things related to creating a business creating content building a landing page ideating a Product doing something right you will probably have a sense of like wow this is actually quite enjoyable like even when I was video editing even though I don't like video editing as much right now I would finish an edit and I would click

the space bar and be like dude that's sick like I love that animation like the music's lining up there so there was something about building something sitting back and taking a look at it and finding that intrinsically Enjoyable so when did things start working mhm okay so Midway through year four I I honestly Define one of the biggest inflection points is realizing that I could spend money on knowledge which I had not actually realized nor internalized for much at all other than buying books so i' had been buying books for years that was something I

was reading in the background so I was reading many books but there were two great unlocks I had in year four which Was actually about a year ago um the first one was realizing that I could read business books which is something I just did not realize I was like wait there are books on business that I could read like for example all of Russell brunson's books um Alex rosi's books just these books on sales and marketing I can read to just like level up my brain in the world of business I didn't realize that

was a thing that was one great unlock the second one was Realizing that I could buy that I could buy coaching from people who have done the thing I've done and then learn their lessons and supercharge my progress and I procrastinated for months on doing this so the first thing I actually invested in was Captain seed's YouTube coaching program I've been watching his videos for years liked his channel he' been talking about this YouTube coaching program I never even thought to buy it or even like invest in that until my Brother called me and was

like come on you have to just just apply just submit the application and see what happens so I submitted the application he sent me like a loom video like reviewing my channel just for free hopped on a call with it with this guy and I ended up buying the program and it was expensive for me it was like in the thousands of dollars it was not cheap it was the first time I spent money on anything and because of that it created like a level Of fire and drive to actually perform so I believe he

said later on that I was probably the best client he ever had of like over a 100 people because I showed up to there were 24 calls and I didn't miss a single one um I was on a plane for two of them so I bought Wi-Fi on the plane and joined zoom using a VPN so I could actually show up to the call and not miss it and I sent a video a loom beforehand of like all of my questions for him that I had before so I listened To if he said jump I

said how high and that immediately supercharged everything because up until this point I had a bunch of like raw potential I had a bunch of like building blocks there I had done a bunch of internships that gave me an unfair advantage that I could actually talk about on YouTube I had the skills I had a video editor so I knew how to like edit videos and also how to manage a video editor I had built a skill of writing so I was like pretty Decent at actually writing these scripts and I could write them effectively

but he basically like put fuel on the flame when it came to making marker research so making good videos titles and thumbnails he also taught me how to negotiate sponsors and he told me hey you have something that you can teach which is getting internships and getting jobs in software engineering is something you've done before so you could probably charge people to actually Make the transformation and it is worth it like that knowledge is worth 20 30k if I can get someone a 20 to $30,000 internship if they couldn't get before so it was that

mental unlock which made me decide to actually launch my program which is a software engineering accelerator um to actually make that progress happen so that was the greatest unlock it was buying programs so after that I bought Colin on samir's course um I think it's like something about Sponsorships so that really helped me negotiate sponsors you know earn money from sponsorships I joined the part-time YouTuber accelerator that was super helpful when it came to actually making viral videos and making my videos packaged in a great format um it was great there and I joined another

program by this guy named Charlie Morgan when it came to actually growing the growing the business aspect of things and doing sales and marketing and actually Fulfilling all these clients for an info product like coaching so it was a combination of all these things which quote unquote made things work so and the final thing I guess combined with all of that was the fact that I left my job in February of 2024 so there was a moment in my job like I said before I was working on YouTube on the side I was working in

the morning lunch evening where my boss had a conversation with me it was a very straightforward Conversation he said am on I like what you're doing but you're not doing it good enough I need you just put an extra 20% effort into what you're doing I need you to show up a little bit earlier I need you to leave a bit later so is that combined with the fact that I was talking to Captain simbad regularly every week I actually flew out to Arizona to meet him and be on one of his friends podcasts as

well around that time so I could see these entrepreneurs Kind of doing their own thing they had rented a car and he was just like living in Arizona doing whatever he wanted that combined with that ative conversation with my boss combined with me calling my parents and saying hey if I leave my job and I need food and I need a place to stay will you guys support me and they said 100% absolutely like you don't even have to ask you think we'd like let you starve so it was all of that realizing hey I

have this vision of what I want to Do these entrepreneurs who have freedom flexibility and can do whatever they want combined with the negative of my boss being like hey I need you to actually show up and put more time and effort something I didn't want to do combined with the safety net of knowing that my parents would be okay with it which motivated me to leave my job and go all in so some people might be hearing that and thinking well I can't believe you sign up for these courses Like all course are scammers

what's your take what's your take on that so there's a couple of reasons why I mentally at least I was able to like overcome that fear I actually remember I hopped on the sales call with Captain sb's guy and he told me the program was like in the thousands of dollars and I remember thinking how could I spend that money holy [ __ ] like thousands of dollars for some knowledge like couldn't I get that for free online could I do this but it Was a couple things first of all he had a guarantee where

I could do half the program if I didn't find it valuable I could just get a full refund there was that aspect the second aspect was anchoring it towards what the value is if this program gets me helps me earn a few sponsorships I've already paid it off and it's that all the way up right like yeah I spent probably 20 to 30k on these educational resources in the past year and I have 10x that in terms of the Revenue I've brought in from that knowledge so I think all you have to do is just

think you have to overcome your loss aversion I think loss aversion is a big issue that a lot of people face which is that they would they're more worried about losing $5 than they would be excited about earning $100 people often fight that uh issue of loss aversion like if you kind of like think about it in terms of time for money right people would take a lot of People would spend an hour taking the bus to avoid $20 for an Uber but they wouldn't spend an hour doing like a freelance gig for $50 right

that doesn't make any sense that's like an asymmetry there so you kind of have to like like fool yourself into like overcoming the like innate urge for loss aversion think about the fact that what is the risk reduction here right like there's a guarantee almost every single program you'll ever Pay for as a guarantee because the most of these things are good and worth it where it's like if you do this thing and if you do X number of things or you can get a refund if it's not actually good there are a bunch of

reviews and testimonials and even if the program only gets me a few thousand in a year it will have paid for itself and the chances are it's going to get me a lot more there so you need to like kind of overcome that that that thought there And finally I think a lot of people don't really realize what knowledge they don't have that could actually get them really help them out a lot so what I would often think back to is could I influence my 17-year-old self to do great things beyond what I already did

100% there's so much knowledge I've learned over the past few years in the world of careers and world of Education the world of health and wellness and and relationships everything you've learned So much through this like living life for years and years and years so how do you not realize that you can just pay someone else who's 3 to 5 years ahead of you just to download their knowledge and get yourself ahead so those are all the reasons why I've kind of like realized hey no matter what level I'm at I need to just like

spend money to get ahead and it has genuinely worked out because like I said before I actually operated and executed on what I learned yeah I Love that I think um there there's something uh this is something Alex homoi talks about as well like he's invested hundreds of thousands into these programs and his goal is to be the best student they've ever had and to like eventually like outpace the instructor because of how much he's executing U my friend Nicholas Cole talks about how every single thing he's ever paid for has been Roi positive because

he's made it Roi positive he Pays $68,000 for a mastermind he get and he's like okay well I need to make sure I get at least $130,000 out of this and therefore he's showing up to the stuff he's doing the extra work he he is taking responsibility for making sure he gets the outcome from it I think the mistake people make is that a they don't sign up to the stuff in the first place because of yeah this this sort of loss of verion but you know case in point with our YouTuber Academy like you're

One of the the the most consistent students we have in our accelerator that when when you when you rock up to a call to ask me a question you prepare a freaking document to be like okay this is all here here are all my problems these are my goals these are the things I think you're going to say here's what I would say in response so this is really my ultimate question you prepare for those questions so much more than almost anyone else does and you're Getting value out of the program and so a lot

of it is like you get what you put in um and I think you and like other entrepreneur friends of mine in including myself it's like if I sign up for anything of course I'm going to get the value out of it I'm not if it's a trivial cost for like you $200 for what if it it doesn't matter but if I'm paying serious money for anything like it's it's guaranteed to be Roi positive because I will make it Roi positive Absolutely and I think another aspect to it is I would rather pay $10,000 for

something than $100 for something why why would I rather pay in the in the thousands of dollars for something rather than something cheaper and I think a lot of people are like this the reason is because I would rather have the best thing that actually works because of the value it provides like for example let's say there's two options one option is a $100 course About how to make good thumbnails or option two is a $2,000 course where it's like it's the course but also some guys going to work with you for 3 months and

actually make sure your thumbnails are good if you think about the ROI of both of them chances are sure you're going to spend $100 and it's probably not going to go anywhere because you might have that knowledge but you're not going to actually execute or maybe execution becomes a lot harder it becomes more of A risk whereas if you spend a lot more money on something number one you get like better instruction because someone's actually helping you implement and execute number two your accountability is actually more because you put you've sacrificed more so you actually

want to do it number three that all contributes to the to the outcome being a lot more so at least for my own personal experience I have benefited greatly from spending money on high Ticket things from like putting more money rather than less money into things because of the ROI that it provides at least in my own personal experience nice so you've invested all this money into these educational programs you've been grinding the [ __ ] out for four years how did it go how much money are you making now absolutely and honestly in the

spirit of the fact that four years ago your video where you revealed how much you made in a week that just changed my Life I want to like literally go month by month by month exactly what I made with the hope that someone watching this video we'll see that this stuff really does work and to actually take this advice seriously if you aren't already enough of an inspiration there so in June of this year I joined another coaching program um from Charlie Morgan another guy he basically taught me sales conversion fulfillment for my coaching program

and almost immediately I went From barely making 5 6K a month through like a handful of brand deals here and there some random agency work on the side you know stuff like that to becoming profitable so I went from negative 20K in the whole in the business for 2024 and immediately hit profitability in June I did revenues of about $30 something, in or in July in July I had $30,000 August also did 30k September did around 30k October did 22k but then November I had 55k in Revenue December it's around 36k right now um and

expenses are like around 10K a month on average so I've been able to to make around 20K profit per month every month for the past 6 months which is almost double my full-time income as a software engineer and I quit my job about four to five months before I hit that profitability so those are the that results and I'm really excited to see where we go from here like obviously I'm Hoping to grow that as much as high as possible but it's been great to actually be profitable and make income how does it feel yeah

it feels good I mean it's nice I think there's a lot of layers to it first of all I have a sense of confidence that I am not going to have to go back to the 9-5 job if you I actually made a video cataloging this journey um like a life update in May of 2024 where I mentioned how I need to make 4K a month profit and then with That number that was like my freedom number if you used a million dollar weekend term where I won't have to go back to my 95 job

and I've blown that out of the park so at this point I can pretty confidently say I don't expect to have to go back to a 95 job if I don't want to so that's nice that I feel like I have that sense of security it's also nice that I have freedom and flexibility I think that was like people like us I think that idea of freedom was like a Huge deal to me I I hated the fact that I had to ask my boss if I was allowed to take a PTO a day off

here and there like last year when I was in London for a couple weeks I remember being so stressed out because I had to work one week remotely for my 9-5 job I was worried about the US hour so I had to stay up super late at like 11:00 p.m. randomly just to continue doing this job and I just had no flexibility whatsoever and now I can be here in Hong Kong I can Record this podcast with you I just complet I can do whatever I want essentially and I just feel like that is like

infinitely valuable so that that's all the good so I'm pretty happy with where I am I think one thing I didn't expect that you heal from everyone and you probably won't listener probably won't take this seriously is that the goal post always changes so like I said I've done 20K a month profit for the past several months and the goal post Has now shifted to like 50k 60k 70k a month profit eventually like 100k a month and within the next few years and even then I know like I feel like I expected the gopost might

shift um there's a couple reasons why I think one is that a sense of security I've only done this for 6 months where I've hit profitability so in my mind there's like a little bit of fear which is like okay I need to I need to continue to grow this so that if something bad happens I Can absorb that negative and like land where I am now so I don't have to because there are YouTubers out there who like they stop posting content they need to focus on their family then something happens right and then

the views go down and then they didn't have a good enough business back end they didn't have a team ready they hated working with the team something like that right and then they were super stressed out about money and they had Like a bunch of security issues in terms of their safety financially right so there is that drive to continue to grow to hit 50 100K a month profit because I want that like safety net to know that if something were to happen I can absorb that I think there's also an element of comfort creep

have you read uh the Comfort crisis I'm reading at the moment Micha yeah so I'm also about like halfway and he talks about this idea of comfort creep and it it is like I had Never even realized but that was like silently happening in the background I think people used to some people call it lifestyle creep right where for example U yesterday I got this haircut in Hong Kong and it was I think it was like 120 USD but the guy like massaged my head like he had some special like grapefruit after like shaving cream

like he like used like a straight razor he handed me like two coffees that are espresso drinks on the plate like it was Just such a beautiful experience I got like 40 years of experience getting haircuts and it was around like 120 130 USD and I was like oh my God like this is great like I'm loving every moment of this but 10 years ago I would get like a $10 cut at the Great Clips or Cost Cutters that my parents would throw me at just like do this $10 haircut and move on and now

I feel like my standards are reset so that anything that's below that like luxury experience feels less Good right there's so many other areas where this is happening where it's like I go to like a nice restaurant and it's like oh my standards are much higher like or like another example is in terms of just like lifestyle and sleep like I have eight sleep now like that thing like temperature controlling the bed like I feel so nice I feel warm I feel cool in the night and warm in the morning and then when I travel

I don't have that eight sleep so I feel like There is that element of comfort creep so I want to ask you like do you have any kind of solutions to that or not really at this point so I've thought about this a lot like lifestyle inflation this this sort of stuff for me it's there was re I was reading something about this which is that you know you've got the whole fire movement that talks about how lifestyle inflation is really bad because it's bad for the soul it's bad for the bank account it's Bad

bad for whatever then there's the other side of the equation I think this is Bill Perkins taken di with zero uh which is that a good amount of Lifestyle inflation actually makes life more fun for me for me I've been able to upgrade my life from like a small smaller house to a bigger house I think the amount you spend on rent actually seems for me at least is is a meaningful a meaningful change in sort of quality of life standard of living I like the fact that I can fly business instead of economy and

it's just kind of nice and I every time I make those decisions to do luxury purchase to buy a more expensive thing rather than a cheaper thing to max out the MacBook Pro when really I don't need 32 gigs of RAM I could probably get by with 16 but like you know all of those small decisions here and there as to whether do I upgrade or do I stay with the thing I find it useful to remember that like a good amount of Lifestyle Inflation is fine as long as it is vastly two two things

number one if your income is increasing disproportionately highly compared to your expenses in a world where income is only increasing slightly and expenses are really increasing that's a real problem and secondly being non-attached to that so like um at the start of this year I was at my mom's house in St Orbin this town in London it was cold and miserable she was in Pakistan I had to supervise the Builders who were fixing the bathroom hammering and like Drilling and stuff happening all day basically and I was there for about 2 months where I was

sleeping in the same bedroom that I was filming YouTube videos in and I was sort of grinding away My Little Mac but connected to like a cheap ass screen and I was like this actually totally fine like in a world where I lost everything and went back to a single bedroom sleeping in the same room filming video From the same room being on the laptop building the next thing it was it was actually kind of exhilarating because I was so locked in and we were working on productivity lab and it was like the joy of

building this new offer for the business similarly uh my mom had uh needed a courtesy car at one point cuz her car was wrecked um actually no it was it was my car so I have a Tesla Model 3 and I crashed it and so it had to go to the body repair shop and so They gave me some shitty pojo you know $5,000 car and as I was driving it I was like huh this actually feels identical to being a $50,000 Tesla that's really good to know because it's like oh even if I didn't

have a fancy car I'm actually totally fine because it feels exactly the same and I was like a yes I've won that aspect of the game um you know I I sometimes run these experiments of like sort of this is going to sound very out of touch but like I I really Try and figure out what is what's the point where further increases in money no longer actually buy increases in happiness so for example Virgin Atlantic I think economy Delight is just as good as business class and it's like five times cheaper fantastic unless you're

trying to sleep in which case you know avoid avoid the nighttime flight economy Delight is it's amazing it's like you know $400 rather than $4,000 upper class is totally you know disproportionately Expensive on on version Atlantic things like that where I I feel good about finding an optimal sweet spot where actually you could spend more money but actually that increase in expenditure doesn't actually buy increases in happiness so I'm curious for you are you happier now that you are doing your own thing and making all this money yeah yeah I would say I mean unequivocally

yes I'm more fulfilled for sure happier I think happiness and fulfillment is I Guess like people like tend to use those interchangeably but I think I tend to see happiness as kind of like a day-to-day thing which is like happiness can be bad one day and better one day it can be it can go up and down on the same day right like I can be happy one afternoon and then I get like a negative email or something like that it can go down or I get like a refund request or something and then it

can go down as well so I think happiness tends to Fluctuate but F fulfillment wise that I feel like I'm I'm like aligned with what I want in life right like what I want in life meaning like my my whole life is now pointed in the same direction whereas when I was working an N5 job I was that was kind of pointed in the in a different direction than what I wanted right which was I was trying to escape that now I'm just like on this vehicle where I'm going I'm I'm basically on this path

going towards Like a forward in a direction I'm trying to go to but nothing I'm doing is going against what I want in terms of spending my time so definitely more fulfilled I think in terms of day-to-day happiness I'm I'm honestly surprised that it has gone up but it also it hasn't gone that much up meaning like there were days a year ago when I was just sitting in a cafe in London working on my landing page which I was just I was happier that day than I was many days in like the Past month

when I was like struggling with certain client interactions or like certain sales issues and issues in the business basically or like working with an employee who wasn't performing at the capability I want them to right so I think one big realization I had was it is it is very similar all the way up yes of course it's good to have like a profitable business where you can just live independently do what you want and be financially quote unquote financially Independent and financially free but that doesn't excuse like the mental work you have to do to

like just be like a functioning happy human being long term like I guess I started to realize that like putting this 10K 20K month on a pedestal it is good and I'm happy I did that but that doesn't solve all your problems that doesn't solve any of your relationship problems do Sol that doesn't really solve any of your health problems it doesn't solve like any Spiritual issues it doesn't solve like a lot of your day-to-day happiness is not solved by that it gives you the resources to like go out and invest in areas to help

you with that like for example I have a personal trainer I can get a good gym I can get Ubers to go to the gym I can pay for day passes I can stuff like that right but fundamentally you have to do the work in those other areas and if you in your mind are telling yourself hey I can sacrifice on All of these other things and once I hit a certain monthly revenue or monthly profit it'll all get taken care of that's great motivation and I definitely had a lot of that but it's not

the case where every single thing in your life is solved the moment you hit 10K a month online what advice would you give to someone who's maybe watched this far in the video maybe they've some watched some of my stuff they've seen some of you know they've they've done the rounds Of consuming content and maybe even read some of the books but they've not yet taken the first step taking action what advice would you have for that person yeah absolutely there's a couple things first of all I have benefited immensely for paying for educational resources

I think a lot of people will do this for University so they'll pay for a $200,000 Business Degree at a college which frankly doesn't teach you much but they will B at like a$1 th000 program or like A $2,000 program which is teaching you business but is updated for like the content ecosystem and modern day barking right so if you have the capability I would recommend it doesn't have to be any program I mentioned in this conversation but anything like if you find hey I want to learn this knowledge I find it valuable I really

care about this I would recommend you invest in your own skills rather than like you know putting that money in the stock Market at this point Heros talks about this it's pretty known I feel like if you're already in this podcast but like $1,000 in the S&P 500 is going to make you like 50 bucks at the end of the year instead that $1,000 you can like 10 to 100x that if you actually invest in your own Knowledge and Skills so I benefited immensely by investing my money that I took from my 9 to5 job

and also my internships investing in Te Knowledge and Skills and honestly just keep doing It it like this is a case study that is possible it is still possible to make a profitable YouTube channel from not much it takes time it is not easy it takes effort but just know that if you are someone who is willing to invest in your Knowledge and Skills keep on going stay consistent and just keep grinding until it works out it is possible I can confidently say that in 2024 2025 one can make 10K month online from almost nothing

so I would just say keep going You can do this nice thanks man any final comments for anyone who's watched this part of the video yeah absolutely I mean no real comments other than everything I've said here but you can check out my channel I'm M and ozer I'm on YouTube so thanks for watching stks for having me you very welcome thanks for coming by nice