DDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal
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Life Update12 May 2022

Life Update: Building My Business And Writing My New Book

6Frameworks
14Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Strategy6 steps

Diversifying Away From Yourself

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Productivity7 steps

Energy-First Productivity

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Mindset5 steps

Input-Based Goals

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Strategy5 steps

Main Quest, Side Quest

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Leadership6 steps

The Bottleneck Hire

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Marketing5 steps

The Free Content / Paid Content Flywheel

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Insights & moments

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

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take10:30

"Career" is an anachronism — work as an extension of life

Ali rejects the word career for his own life, calling it an anachronism belonging to a world of being a banker for forty years. He does not think of what he does as work at all, catching himself mid-sentence for saying he enjoys going to work each morning. He views it as an extension of his life, and acknowledges this framing may only be available to him because he is the founder and owner. Angus offers a different version: it is a job because it pays a salary, but it has never felt like a chore or like clocking in and out.

“i don't really think of it as a career i i don't really use the word career when i think of my own life”

Ali Abdaal · 10:30

“i just kind of view all of this as like my life and part of my life is quote work”

Ali Abdaal · 11:00
Hot Take41:30

Single income source limits your autonomy

Ali explains why he is so bullish on building multiple streams of income. It is not primarily about wealth — it is that being reliant on a single source of income, namely your job, for survival limits your autonomy and your ability to live your best life. He contrasts this with his own position, where anything on the calendar he dislikes can simply be changed, and acknowledges that most people are not in that position. The point connects directly to his broader thesis about control and energy at work.

“that's partly why i'm so bullish on people you know building multiple streams of income”

Ali Abdaal · 42:00

Explainer· 3

Explainer02:30

Why an 18-person team runs a "YouTube channel"

Ali addresses the public criticism that his team is bloated, citing Graham Stephan's reaction and friends with three-person teams and ten million subscribers. His answer is that the business is not just YouTube videos: it also runs courses, a podcast, YouTuber Academy as a six-week live cohort three or four times a year, the book, social media and the website. Each additional line adds real work, and even at eighteen people they still hit capacity issues — he concludes eighteen is probably too few for what they are trying to do.

“he's got 18 people on his team what the hell are you doing with 18 people on your team”

Ali Abdaal · 03:00

“i think what we're trying to do here is yeah 18 people is actually probably too few for that”

Ali Abdaal · 05:00
Explainer22:30

Book status: January 2024 target and the state of the manuscript

Ali gives a progress update on the book. Tentative publication is January 2024, with a decent draft of the manuscript targeted for July or August. The previous twelve months went into massaging the concept and working out what he actually wants to say; research and some writing are now underway. The immediate task over the following weeks is to bullet-point outline every chapter — they roughly know each chapter's thesis and strategies — and then run a deep dive into the research to check there is sufficient scientific evidence, changing anything that does not hold up. He also plugs the free book newsletter, then at around 25,000 subscribers, whose reader stories will feature in the book.

“tentative publication date is probably in january 2024 we are hoping to have a decent draft of the manuscript done by like july august this…”

Ali Abdaal · 22:30

“that's the challenge right now over these next few weeks to basically bullet point outline every single chapter”

Ali Abdaal · 30:00
Explainer33:30

The revenue mix — and how much is left on the table

Ali breaks down where the money comes from: most revenue is courses, via YouTuber Academy and Skillshare; roughly twenty percent comes from the YouTube channel through brand deals and AdSense; the podcast about breaks even and may be slightly profitable. Despite nearly three million subscribers and a large podcast audience, and a projected five million in revenue this year with maybe three million profit, he says they are still leaving a lot of money on the table because they do little to monetise the audience. The fix is more pre-recorded courses — Angus notes they suit Ali's available time and have an evergreen, recurring-revenue quality that live cohorts do not.

“right now most of our revenue comes from courses it comes from our youtuber academy and it comes from skillshare”

Ali Abdaal · 33:30

“despite the fact that we're probably gonna make five million this year with like maybe three million profit or something like that”

Ali Abdaal · 34:00

Story· 3

Story08:00

Six months after leaving medicine: trading certainty for uncertainty

Ali reflects on quitting his job as a doctor. Medicine offered a very certain career path; this offers the opposite, and one of his biggest fears is slowly losing relevance over time. His coach Liz Wright and Angus both pointed out that he has already changed direction several times — including building a profitable business helping people get into med school before the YouTube work — and that building businesses and creating content are transferable skills he had previously under-appreciated. He now frames uncertainty as universal, present for employees as much as entrepreneurs, and something to be embraced.

“one of the nice things about medicine is that it gives you a very certain career path and one of the less nice things about…”

Ali Abdaal · 08:00

“one of my biggest fears is kind of slowly losing irrelevancy”

Ali Abdaal · 08:00
Story14:30

The three-year picture: research team, multi-set studio, students for life

Ali sketches his three-year vision while insisting nobody can predict the future. The book is out and doing well, he is writing a second, the channel and podcast keep performing, and the team is slightly but not significantly bigger. A London studio has multiple filming sets. YouTuber Academy alumni become students for life, invited to a weekly lunch at the studio to build a creatorpreneur community. A research team subscribes to psychology, sociology and health journals to surface new studies and academics worth interviewing — using David Sinclair's work as his example — so the business packages other people's personal development research for a mainstream audience. His own week: one day with the team, one filming, half to one recording podcasts, the rest reading and writing.

“we maybe have a studio in london that has multiple filming sets”

Ali Abdaal · 15:00

“i'm kind of imagining that we have a sort of research team”

Ali Abdaal · 15:30
Story47:00

From cold email to general manager in two years

Ali closes by publicly thanking Angus. Around two years earlier, before the pandemic, Angus cold-emailed asking whether Ali needed a random writer for some videos. He started one project at a time, moved to one day a week, then two, then four, and has since become general manager, integrator and director of operations — effectively creating the ranks as he ascended them. Ali credits him with keeping the trains running on time, which is precisely what frees Ali up to do the work he loves. Angus names Part-Time YouTuber Academy as the most gratifying thing they built together, from sticky notes on the floor of the old flat to a full course.

“you cold emailed me thing like hey do you need a random writer for some of your videos”

Ali Abdaal · 47:00

“and now he has become our general manager integrator director of operations whatever you want to call it”

Ali Abdaal · 01:30

Q&A· 1

Q&A19:30

Why he won't build a GaryVee-style media empire

Angus asks why Ali does not build a large media company around his name. Ali distinguishes GaryVee's roughly twenty-five-person content team, which is not radically different from his own, from the thousand-person agency empire doing social media consulting and advertising for clients. He has zero interest in running an advertising agency — the thought of running something like Social Chain or VaynerX does not excite him at all. What excites him is being a teacher: learning what he finds interesting, teaching it, helping people, and being stupidly profitable with a team supporting those functions. His euro millions test confirms it — with a hundred million in the bank he would do the same things, minus the courses.

“the thing that i fundamentally care about is teaching yeah and i have zero interest in running an advertising agency”

Ali Abdaal · 20:00

“if i won the euro millions and had like 100 million in the bank what would i do with my with my life and i…”

Ali Abdaal · 20:30

Tool· 1

Tool32:00

This year's job: organisational clarity via Lencioni

Ali says everything the business does is currently okay but could be consolidated and systemised, and names the failing as his and Angus's: they have not done the four obsessions of an extraordinary executive from Pat Lencioni's book — creating organisational clarity, over-communicating it, and creating people systems to reinforce it. The job for the year is getting the house in order so systems, processes and people all know what they are doing, allowing them to systematically produce decent videos, courses, website articles and podcast episodes. The payoff is safety plus autonomy: less heavy-handed shaping from Ali, and more team members shaping their own projects within the core values, tone and branding.

“we have not kind of done the four obsessions of an extraordinary executive as per pat lencioni's book”

Ali Abdaal · 32:30

“the more systemized we can make the whole thing the kind of safer it becomes”

Ali Abdaal · 33:00

Takeaway· 4

Takeaway12:30

The founder–employee work-life balance gap

Reviewing the quarterly employee survey, Ali finds it baffling that people report struggling with work-life balance, since he does not care when or whether people work. Angus pushes back: that attitude was fine at three or four people, but with a real team those things matter. Ali then lands on the insight — because neither he nor Angus experiences the work as work, it is easy for them to be there constantly, which sets an unhealthy default for team members who have a healthier relationship with a job as a job. He concludes he needs to be more mindful, taking real time off without checking Slack or joining Zoom calls.

“a bunch of people basically saying that they really struggle with the work-life balance and i found that baffling”

Ali Abdaal · 12:30

“because you clearly don't view it as work it's very easy for us to just be here all the time”

Ali Abdaal · 13:30
Takeaway39:30

Set the vision before you delegate

Ali names a mistake he made earlier: telling the team he wanted to launch a podcast and then leaving it entirely to them without direction. The result was that Amber, who produces the podcast and does a fantastic job, would go down one path because she reasonably thought it was right, and then Ali would see it, change his mind, and effectively waste two months of her work. His conclusion is that there needs to be some level of direction and vision from him about what the thing is actually meant to be — after which he is happy to leave execution to Angus and the team.

“there probably needs to be some level of direction from me some level of vision of like what do we actually want this to be”

Ali Abdaal · 40:00

“so there's a lot that i should do in setting out the vision more clearly and then i'll happily leave it to you and the…”

Ali Abdaal · 40:00
Takeaway40:30

Business coaching ends up being therapy

Ali describes weekly coaching calls with a coach named Corey and observes that business coaching essentially becomes therapy — talking through uncertainty about the org chart, whether the business is doing too many things, or whether he really enjoys showing up to twenty hours a week of live YouTuber Academy events. Having an impartial third party to think out loud with has helped him notice a signal: whenever he looks at his calendar and feels dread, that is evidence his calendar is out of alignment with how he wants to live, and something needs to change. He acknowledges he is unusually free to act on that signal.

“business coaching ends up basically being therapy”

Ali Abdaal · 41:00

“any time i sort of find myself looking at my calendar and thinking ugh then i think okay that's a sign”

Ali Abdaal · 41:30
Takeaway44:00

A year of podcast interviews: nobody knows what they're doing

Asked for the biggest lesson from roughly eleven months of interviews since the first episode with the Musclefood founder and Ben Francis, Ali gives three things. It has been fun and he simply enjoys the conversations. It has shown him that no one really knows what they are doing and everyone is making it up as they go along. And he still genuinely values actionable life advice — if Ben Francis, James Hoffmann or Julie Smith tells him something he did not know, he starts using it immediately. He frames the show as making friends, having good conversations, and getting to ask the questions he personally wants answered, like asking Hoffmann whether running a coffee shop is actually fun.

“it's helped me realize that like no one really knows what they're doing and everyone's just trying trying their best and making it up as…”

Ali Abdaal · 44:30

“i still really do care about actionable life advice”

Ali Abdaal · 45:00