DDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal
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03 January 2025

How I’m Scaling My Business from 7 to 8 Figures

6Frameworks
14Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster28:00

There is no such thing as passive income

there's really no such thing as passive income because the minute you let it go passive it starts dying it starts just slowly going down

Guest · 28:00

in two years you're going to be back where you started before you built the thing so you better use those two years to get…

Guest · 28:30

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take03:30

In an early-stage startup, the founder is your head of growth

unless you've had a very good reason otherwise you're found ER is your head of growth because a startup has one job you know a…

Guest · 03:30

the one person in organization who can tell an engineer to do one thing and tell a marketer to do another thing and tell the…

Guest · 04:00
Hot Take37:00

Wealth affects you at the level of your insecurity

wealth impacts you to the level of your insecurity that's really where it comes from

Guest · 37:00

objectively the number does not need to be going up they're not purchasing anything that would need the the number to go up

Guest · 38:00

Explainer· 3

Explainer05:00

Growth can live anywhere: Wise's compliance team, Spotify's lawyers

so in that sense their compliance function became a component of their growth engine

Guest · 06:00

you need to sort of figure out from first principles how does your business grow and then align whatever organizational pieces are required to make…

Guest · 06:30
Explainer13:30

Why Apple plays a harder game than the rest of tech

Apple shipping Hardware once those iPhones leave the factory and you know 10 million of them or whatever and go into stores there's no fixing…

Guest · 14:00

we'll make 100 million in iPhone sales per day if we ship a day late we miss our earnings number by 100 million

Guest · 14:30
Explainer19:30

The conflict between growing an audience and serving your existing one

returning viewers are way more likely to want to watch my Vlog where I document my life and stuff but a new viewer doesn't give…

Ali Abdaal · 19:30

a returning viewer might sigh bit internally and think Ali sold out

Ali Abdaal · 19:30

Story· 4

Story00:30

How PayPal actually grew: an eBay bot, web devs and shopping carts

they wrote a a bot to start bidding on eBay items and pretending to be a buyer and asking if they would accept PayPal and…

Guest · 00:30

we reached out to all the shopping carts and hosting companies and got pre-integrated with all of those

Guest · 01:00
Story08:30

The locksmith sticker on the doorbell: showing up at the moment of need

this locksmith could advertise anywhere in London but the place I'm going to be when I suddenly realize need a locksmith is

Guest · 08:30

if you heard a podcast and as locksmith sponsored it yesterday you're not going to remember that

Guest · 09:00
Story14:30

Apple's one thing a year, and why focus made the launches work

Steve stands up at the beginning of the year and he said this year is about version two of the iPhone

Guest · 15:00

everyone who came in in the morning you know if you're in procurement you're procuring parts for the new iPhone and everyone knew exactly what…

Guest · 15:30
Story27:00

The freedom trap: travel, novelty and the empty feeling that follows

it's fun for like three 6 12 months you do the traveling you do the you know taking whatever random classes you want playing with…

Guest · 27:30

you love them because they're a break from the work that you don't enjoy doing and because they're occasional things when that's your whole life…

Guest · 30:00

Q&A· 1

Q&A45:00

Can you ever reach contentment, or should you assume you can't?

can you get to that level of like peace or is it something that it's almost easier to assume you can't get to that level…

Guest · 45:00

the best thing I've gotten to is I like increasing like concentric circles of Freedom

Guest · 45:30

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway22:00

You can't make every video a banger, and you shouldn't try

no matter how clever I try to be and make them all bangers y I'm just not and then when I analyze other people's content…

Guest · 22:30

ultimately the the more videos you make the more good videos you're going to make

Guest · 22:30
Takeaway29:00

Use a lifestyle business to buy runway for the thing you actually want

where I think the the passive income 4our Work Week lifestyle business stuff is very useful is a way to bootstrap working on something bigger

Guest · 29:00

if you can do the lifestyle business to give you some Runway to actually work on a startup so that you don't have to take…

Guest · 29:30
Takeaway35:30

Baseline financial security is the first practical step nobody talks about

if you're at the point where you worried about paying your bills then obviously getting more money is going to make you way happier because…

Ali Abdaal · 36:00

once you can get to a point where your expenses are 4% of whatever you have saved that is a fundamentally like different just as…

Guest · 37:00