If You Want to Make Money From YouTube, Do This (Case Study)

A few years ago, my friend Jeff Sue decided while working at Google that he was going to start a YouTube channel. He made $98 in his first six months. And then a few years later, last year, he made $835,000 from his YouTube channel. The cool thing about Jeff's story is that he never planned to be an entrepreneur. He wasn't even intending to make money from YouTube.

"I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'm extremely risk-averse. I thought I was just going to like die at Google."

And yet, he was able to build such an incredible business doing it on the side of his full-time demanding corporate job. So, in this case study, we're going to break down Jeff's entire journey from like total noob on YouTube all the way to basically building a million-dollar business and how he was able to do all of that while still being a high performer at his job. Along the way, as we go through the journey, I'm going to be interjecting with my own thoughts on Jeff's story. So, hopefully this won't just feel like a podcast. It'll be a conversation with some actionable takeaways that you can apply to your life.

Step one, find your itch and pick your vehicle. So, before we get into all of this, I asked Jeff to talk us through his revenue trajectory so you can see how the numbers changed over time. I actually prepared a spreadsheet in anticipation of this question, but I can walk you through the sort of high-level first before we dive into the numbers.

"Perfect. When I first started YouTube, I literally did not know what the monetization strategy was. I was just like, 'Oh, there's advertising on YouTube. I could just switch that on. I I'd make money, passive income for the rest of my life and not have to work like one minute longer than I have to, right?' Turns out that wasn't the case. It wasn't that easy. So, by the end of my first year, um, I my first ever YouTube video was uploaded on June 3rd, 2020. I remember that. And by the end of that year, so six months later, I made a whopping $98 through advertising, which was actually pretty impressive considering I didn't think I was going to monetize in the first like two years or something. Fast forward though, I would say the first thing I ever like sold is my PDF version of my resume that got me into Google. And I use air quotes because I actually shared it for free. And a month later after I shared it for free on Gumroad, I literally received an email saying I made $1,000. So I was like, 'Must be a mistake or a scam.' I log in and it's from donations. People have donated ranging from $1 to $20 even when they could have just downloaded for free. And that broke my mind. That was the first time I understood, 'Oh, if I shared massive value for free online, people noticed and they sort of respect that and they reward you for it.' So, fast forward up to now, I have more than like 40 templates on Gumroad, 90% of which are free. And it's people are still donating. It's it's it's amazing. Yeah. So, that's sort of the first taste of selling products that I experienced."

"Nice. In 2020, you made $98. In 2021, you made $52,000. 2023, we've got $449,000. And 2025, this year so far, $835,000. And you're on track to do about 900 by the end of the year."

"Something like that. Yeah, we'll see how this podcast goes."

"And then, how much were you making at Google back when you worked there?"

"I'm going to say the number, but I have to give a little bit of important context. I I I started off working at Google Hong Kong, and I took a 60% pay cut to work in Google China, like mainland China. And not only is that region one of the lowest paid I think globally for Google, but also one of the highest tax brackets. So, for example, at Hong Kong, the tax cap maxed out at around like 15%. But in like mainland China, that's like 35%. So, I want to just set some important context. By the time I left, I was at L5 and I was making my base salary, I believe, 60-some thousand R&B per month. But that's not taking into account number one, the equity that has sort of aggregated over the past nine years and the annual bonus. So, just for discussion's sake, I'd say let's say 100k R&B all in every month by the time I quit."

"So, you're working at Google and you're making around about $150,000 US a year."

"Yeah."

"But you're in mainland China, which is like super low paid. If you were in like San Francisco, for example, how much would you have been earning in the equivalent job at Google?"

"300 to $400,000."

Now, quite a lot of people in my audience, certainly people who sign up to our lifestyle business academy, which is our online business school that helps people start businesses. Lots of y'all are sort of in a similar position where you might have one of these high-paying corporate jobs. And what I hear from y'all at my events and workshops and stuff is that you appreciate the fact that you have this stable and secure job, but really you get you have this itch of like really wanting freedom. You want freedom from the shackles of full-time employment. You want the freedom to live life on your own terms. And so I was curious and I asked Jeff to what extent did he resonate with that particular idea of like freedom?

"So I'll be very honest with you, Ali. I wish I could follow up on that and tell you that's exactly how I felt. That's exactly what I resonate with 100%. But I never had that plan. If I'm being very honest, I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I'm extremely risk-averse. I thought I was just going to like die at Google with some like a lot of, you know, stock options and, you know, having experienced free food and coffee for the last like 40 years, right? I thought I literally thought that was planned because I really enjoyed my time there. Really, I enjoyed working with the people. I watched that interview with Sahel, right, where he was okay with dipping into one year's savings. I was like, 'I'm not about that Chinese mentality. You should never dip into your savings until you know you're married or you know you're buying a house.' And it honestly just sort of happened because I fell in love with teaching. For context, at Google, we have something called, or they had something called GTOG, Googler to Googler workshops, whereby anyone can raise their hand and be like, 'Hey, I have a topic I want to talk about.' And people want to sign up. I ran workshops for like, you know, inbox zero, like email management, productivity workflows, and even health and fitness. Although not many people came to that for some reason. And I realized I really want to do that like forever, basically. And I thought making videos would be a great way to scale that. And that's literally how I started making videos. I didn't think I was going to quit one day. It was more like, 'Oh, this is more scalable because people keep asking me for the same content.'"

"Okay. So, you didn't set out to make money."

"No."

"You set out to simply give back."

"Well, okay. So, that makes me sound really selfless. The selfish part of that is I like I I like the attention and I like the sound of my own voice and I like like being smarter than other people in that specific context, if I'm being very honest. Yes, I always like I also like to teach. Yes."

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Why did you decide YouTube was the way to go back in 2020 rather than, I mean, at the time TikTok was a thing and you could have done Instagram stuff, you could have started a blog, you could have started an email newsletter. Substack had just gotten started, like you could have started a podcast, or what was it about YouTube making YouTube videos that appealed at the time?

"So two reasons. Uh, the first one, at the risk of sounding like a brown-nosing like Ali Abdul fan, your videos back then came at a perfect time whereby when I started thinking about making these sort of content online, a lot of your videos back then in 2020 was talking about exactly your experience making YouTube videos. So, number one, I'm going to stop there because it just makes it sound like I'm like..."

"Validation. I love it. It's great."

"Keep going."

"Yeah. So, so your videos basically had a step-by-step like blueprint on how to how to succeed on YouTube. And number two, I would say is because inherently I didn't want to sell anything. And I knew from watching your videos that YouTube just paid you sort of like an advertising like cut of their advertising revenue. So you didn't have to like hard pitch anything to make money. I knew I didn't have to be like, 'Oh, you should come to my workshop, pay me, and then I'll deliver this.' It was more like, 'Okay, I'm going to make a video on this topic. If you want to watch, come watch, and I think I'll make some pocket change, and if you don't, that's totally cool.' That was the vibe I was going for."

"Nice. So, you're going squarely with this is just a side hustle. I'm just doing this for the vibes."

"To be honest, that was kind of how I started as well. Um, I had no intention of leaving medicine. I was like, 'Oh, my dream would be if I could work three days a week, right?' I was like, 'Cool. I need £3,000 a month.' And then I thought like I was selling courses in in like real life, teaching these workshops and like, 'Oh, YouTube videos as a sort of lead generation mechanism. That seems kind of cool.' And I remember like my first video that went viral was like how to study for exams. And that was actually a workshop I did in real life like five years prior at university. I held a workshop on how to study for exams. And it was really fun and loads of people showed up and they loved it. And I was like a Facebook event back in the day, back when people cared about Facebook events. And the response to that workshop stayed in my mind for like five years. And when I started my YouTube channel, I was like, 'At some point I want to make that video about how to study for exams because I think it's going to bang.' Um, and so that was sort of like sort of from a from a similar place. I wasn't really expecting that it would become a full-time living. It was more like, 'Hey, this is a vehicle for teaching. I'm already kind of selling these like classroom courses. Let me just sort of combine the love of teaching and then make some pocket money on the side.'"

"Right. Was it for med school? By the way, I'm just curious. Was it like for med school applications or just studying in general?"

"It was studying in general. Yeah."

"Oh, studying in general."

"Yeah. So I ran a workshop at at the university where which anyone could attend that was like evidence-based study tips on how to study for exams in general and there were people from all sorts of subjects there and so that was when I knew I had something I guess similar to you like..."

"You would have loved the GTOG workshop program at Google, like you would have just definitely shared a lot of what you learned. Yeah."

"So all the OG YouTubers who started out in the 2000s in the early 2010s, if we think iJustine, like Linus, if we think Marques Brownlee, almost none of them started out because they wanted to make money. They started out because of the love for the craft. Yeah. Increasingly over time, um, people are starting YouTube channels and wanting to build these lifestyle businesses for the money. Um, do you have any friends, any experiences, any any data points you can point to of people who've sort of gone in with the money intention first rather than the teaching intention first, if that makes sense?"

"I'm trying really hard to think. I can't think of anyone who has quote unquote succeeded so far. They're like doing it right now, but they haven't succeeded just yet, if that makes sense. Put simply, if you were to ask me today which path I would choose, I would still go with a creator-led or creative-first sort of journey. The reason is because I feel it's more organic. To give you a very specific example, I mentioned just now that my first product was a free PDF version of my my resume, right? I uploaded that onto Gumroad to complement my resume video. I wanted viewers to have something next to them so they can reference as they watch my video to optimize their resume. I didn't expect them to donate. And after they donated, I got questions like, 'Hey, do you mind if you share a Google Docs version that I can edit myself? I'd actually pay you for it.' I was like, 'Okay, it's the same thing, but okay, sure.' And I charged like $4.99, $4.99 for it. And that was another incremental 1K a month in in revenue, right? I think with my personality, I would have found it very, very difficult to start with a product idea and go with Sahel's path whereby he knew he was going to quit his job. He did user interviews. He did focus groups. He had alpha testing. He had beta testing. Gone through all those sort of challenges and roadblocks, right, of people saying, 'Oh, this product sucks. How dare you ask me to try that?' Right? Like I have thin skin, sort of. So that would have been difficult for me. And him having to reach out, like he sent what, 50 to 100 cold emails a day, right? For three months, and cold calls. Although I come from a sales background, I would I still find it very, very difficult to ask for things when I don't have like a lot of value to give. So that's that's my sort of perspective there."

"Interesting. Yeah. So I think your perspective is what most people in my audience would actually want. Like almost no one listening to this would be comfortable sending 50 to 100 DMs a day and facing the rejection. We have people who've paid to be in our program that are uncomfortable making their first post on LinkedIn because they're worried about what their colleagues will think. You know, that kind of idea. So when people ask me for advice on this, like how to make money on the internet thing, I broadly sketch out these two different paths. Uh, there's the creator-first approach and then there's the business-first approach. The business-first approach is what my friend Sahel took. Uh, he's the founder of an app called FireCut that made like a million dollars in annual recurring revenue within like 18 months. We have another case study with him on the channel that you might have seen. We'll link it down below if you want to check it out. But the business-first approach is where you're like, 'I want to create a product first, a business first, and then I'll worry about building an audience second.' So in my friend Sahel's case, he built this product called FireCut, which is a YouTube software that helps video editors save time using AI. He didn't particularly have a massive love for video editors or something. I mean, he dabbled with a little bit of video editing in his own time, but he built it because he saw a gap in the market and he recognized that actually he could build a product that could potentially add value to these people's lives and make a lot of money along the way. And then like two years into this journey, he and his wife have now started creating content on Instagram and on Twitter and stuff as a way of like getting leads to the business. This is sort of like the business-first approach to making money on the internet. But then you have the creator-first approach and the creator-first approach is often taken by people who don't care that much about the monetization side, at least not initially. So Jeff is an example of someone who took the creator-first approach. He started doing content because he liked the idea of teaching and over time he managed to build an audience of people who knew, liked, and trusted him and over time he was able to then turn it into a business by selling his PDFs and selling his programs and selling his like, you know, speaking gigs and all that kind of stuff. That was not the intention from day one. So the homework would be, and I'd love to hear it in a comment if you feel like leaving a comment. If, let's say, a university hired you to teach a lecture course about whatever you wanted, and you just knew that once a week you had to teach something around a certain theme, what would that theme be? What would you like the idea of teaching about? That might give you an idea. If you want to take this sort of educational creative-first approach, that might give you an idea as to what that thing might be."

"I actually just got reminded of one of my friends who's on the flip side, like the business-first. Do you mind if I share that experience? So for context, a total of 37 Googlers reached out to me while I was doing YouTube over the course of five years. If you don't mind, Ali, can you guess how many of those Googlers, who are all extremely smart, extremely intelligent, many of them much smarter and more competent than me, very ambitious. How many took action after scheduling a one-on-one with me, asking for specific advice on how to start YouTube?"

"Oh, okay. I would guess that seven of them made their first video and two of them made more than 10."

"Sorry, I'm just smirking because I obviously I know the answer. One person took action."

"One person."

"37 Googlers and the reason again, the reason I know because I just filed them in the Gmail, right? So 37 Googlers reached out to me. One person took action. The first action I took, I told them to do was even simpler than what you expected, like making the first video. Your product has already been discontinued, but I told them, 'Your first step is to take Ali's $1 course.' Do you remember that?"

"Yeah, we had a $1 course."

"Ali had a $1 course. It was like four hours of content about how to make your first YouTube video or something. It was $1. Literally a dollar. That's nothing to to to to most people, especially if you knew you wanted to do something, right? One person took that course. One person took that course. One. I didn't hear from the other 36 again. And Hearn, right now, he has a respectable newsletter of over 5,000 subscribers. The reason why he was business-first is because this might be TMI, he broke his leg and he couldn't do anything for six months. So in those six months, he wrote a book. It's called Taking This Offline. It's basically how to have an executive presence in the workplace and be um tactical and smart about it, right? He wrote the book, he published himself, and he was selling it for like $10 or $15 on Gumroad. No sales. I wonder why. Right? Because he had no distribution channel, no audience, none of that. So, actually, he he approached me after with the book. He was like, 'Hey, I'm trying to sell this product. Like, what should I do?' I'm like, 'I'll be honest. I don't know, but I think it would be much easier if you had people to sell it to.' He was like, 'So, what should I do?' I was like, um, 'Since it's more like professional-focused LinkedIn platform, you could start posting on there and, you know, add a link to to the book in in your description or something and maybe start a newsletter because that's that's what I was doing. I'm trying to sell my products.' He was like, 'Cool.' And that's what he did. And then after he started a newsletter, um, after I think two months, he he made his first sale. Yeah. And then he turned that book, he chopped that book up into lead magnets, free lead magnets to get people to sign up for the newsletter and so on and so forth. So yeah, it was a virtual cycle after that."

"Okay, I'm so glad you brought this up. So why do you think one out of 37 people took action? Like uh what what was it about the other 36? These are smart people. They're very competent in the workplace. They're clearly succeeding in life. What is stopping them from doing the thing that they claimed to have wanted to stop?"

"I'll be I I'll say this up front and then I'll share my thoughts. The short answer is I don't know. But I've thought about it a lot because I was pretty shocked that none of them got back to me. And one or two of them when I ran into them, I was like, 'Oh, how's it going?' They're like, 'Oh, I haven't really started yet.' Right? I was I was pretty shocked because in my mind, I was I thought the only reason people would not do something if they wanted to is they don't know how to do it. For example, to your um uh going back to your workshop on how to study, right? All students want to be, you know, uh want to get A's. They want to get good grades. Most of them probably don't know about specific tactics and that's why going to you, going to your workshop, they can learn it and they sort of execute theoretically 100% of those students should execute and just follow your you know studying tips, right? Theoretically speaking, um, but I'm sure I'm sure 100% did not follow those tactics. They they went and they went back and they didn't change anything. So my hypothesis is that honestly, the motivation for them to start didn't align with what they had to do. I think it's about intrinsic extrinsic motivation at the end of the day and again, I learned this from you. So for those of you who've never um come across this concept, extrinsic motivation comes from outcomes you cannot control, right? For example, views, um, that's controlled by the YouTube algorithm, audience, and like say promotion at work because that's corporate politics and who likes who and all that fun stuff, headcount, budget, all that fun stuff. In extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic motivation, whereby you it comes from outcomes you do control, right? How many videos I upload a week or a month or a year? How many meetings I volunteer to share something about that something I learned this week in the workplace, right? To to to establish presence, right? So, I think the 36 people, they wanted more of that extrinsic validation, like, 'Oh, it would be nice to make money. It would be nice to have views. It'll be nice to have something on the side. It'll be nice to quit one day in the future,' versus I think the people who actually take action, they set the intrinsic goals. They're like, 'Okay, not sure how this will turn out, but I'm going to commit to writing one newsletter a week for two years,' which is what Hearn sort of did, right? So I think that to me, that's the biggest difference between those two groups."

"Yeah. I think Yeah. I think there's also something around like everyone wants the outcome, right? Like if you asked anyone, 'Hey, would you like a multi-six-figure, seven-figure business where you're just like able to talk about whatever you want and people would just buy your stuff and and you would never have to feel salesy?' Like almost everyone would be like, 'Oh, hell yeah, sign me up.' Um, but similarly, if you were if you were to ask most people, 'Hey, would you like to be in like amazing health where you wake up every day feeling energized and like, you know, people sort of give you compliments at the beach about your six-pack abs?' Most dudes, at least, would be like, 'Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I would say that sounds pretty good.' And then I'm like, 'And then if you're like, 'Okay, well, this is the process it involves to get there.' All of a sudden, for the health example, I'm like, 'Ah, yeah, you know, the juice just doesn't seem worth the squeeze.' I don't care about this enough to go through what seems to be a painful process."

"And I think for people starting YouTube channels or starting online businesses and stuff, in your case and in my case, I get the imp like certainly for me, I actually enjoyed the process of making YouTube videos because I enjoy teaching. Uh, if I didn't enjoy the process of making YouTube videos, there's no freaking way I'd have made 90 videos before anything took off or like, you know, grinded out for a whole year to make $8 or like whatever the thing is. Um, and I think I think a lot of people come in with that outcome in mind but then realize the process is really painful and they don't want to do the process anymore, which I think is also fine. Like, yeah."

"Yeah, and there are parts of the process both of us don't like that much, right? For example, let's say the video editing. It initially, especially in the beginning, it was it was very tedious, but you know, it was part of the sharing and teaching process, so it was okay. Like overall, it was a it was a win for us."

"Yeah. So of the 37 Googlers that asked Jeff about this thing, one of them took action. Would you like to be one of the one or would you like to be one of the 36? Up to you. Anyway, let's now move on to step number two, which is to lock in and to pay the price. So, at this point, it's mid-2020. Jeff has uploaded his first couple of YouTube videos. He's doing this YouTube thing. And then I asked him what his life looked like for the next two years, and this is what he said."

"Because you've like actually held on to the job for the last like five years. So, yeah."

"Um, a lot of people will say like, 'Oh, but like I really want to do X, but I've got a full-time job. I've got like things I don't have time. If I do have time, I don't have energy. If I do have energy, I don't have focus.' Ah, dot dot dot dot dot dot. And then people think, 'Man, do I have to like quit my job to start something else?' But you were sort of like maintaining the side hustle for years before you just recently quit."

"Yeah. So I think for context, I followed your premise of 'upload one video a week for two years and your life will change.' So that was my goal from the outset. It was just going to be two years. It wasn't going to be five. It was going to be seven. It wasn't going to be three. It was just two years. Right? So I quote unquote, what the young kids these days would call locked in for those two years whereby every day I'd be the first person in the office. I'd arrive like 6:30, 7 am in the morning. And the reason I arrived that early was because I knew no one else would be in the office to bother me with stuff. So from 7:00 to 8:00 I would review like the upcoming day and the next few days of like workload and plan around that. And this is called my review session. I have three review sessions every day to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. So 7:00 to 8:00, like review what I have to do for the upcoming day. 8:00 to 8:30, breakfast. 8:30 to 11:45 would be work. The reason I say 11:45 because 11:30 is when lunch started in the office and I didn't want to waste time waiting in line. So if you went at 11:45, you could just get the food and go back to your desk or eat with eat really quickly and get back to work. Right? So 11:45 to 12:30, lunch. 12:30 all the way to 5:00 would be Google work. And I got to leave at 5:00 because I got there at 6:30, 7 a.m. Right? 5:00 to 6:00, gym, because for me, actually, the number one thing that matters in my life is health, for sure. Like my mom said, there's no point having money if you're sick. So, uh, 5:00 to 6:00, gym. 6:00 to 6:30, dinner. And then from 6:30 to 11:00 or sometimes 12:00 to 1:00, just be working on YouTube."

"Nice."

"Weekends, 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., YouTube."

"Nice. I love that."

"For two years. Yeah."

"Fantastic. That is music to my ears. I love it."

"It sucked back then though."

"I love it. Um, that's so good. Um, I think people really underestimate the amount of time you have to give to something for it to work. I was I was listening to um James Clear on DR CEO while I was on a run yesterday and they were talking about this like four burners theory. There's like..."

"Four burners there, sort of like you've got this these four burners on the stove and you know, one of them is like career, one of them is health, one of them is like uh family, one of them is friends. I think side hustle would be like a fifth burner and at the most only two of them can be burning at full blast at any given time. And if you want all of them to be burning, like you have to you got to like it's just like life is a series of trade-offs."

"Um."

"Scott Galloway, right? Like you can have it all, but not all everything at once, basically."

"Yeah. Exactly. And this is something that I've I've heard from a lot of women in the workplace as well that like this the this idea that like, yes, you can have the family and you can do the work thing. It's just difficult to do at the same time unless you're going to give up other things in your life. And so it sounds like in your case, you were you were taking care of your health with your one hour of gym. You're maintaining good progress at the corporate job, but then all of the rest of your time seemingly was focused on the YouTube thing."

"I want to be very mindful of how I describe this because in the end, it pays off. And I'm not trying to promote this lifestyle, if that makes sense, right? It it really has to everyone has their own personal preferences and choices, but for me, it was extremely painful. And we can talk about this later, but I you I used to party a lot. I used to go out a lot. Uh, grew up in Hong Kong. I started going out when I was 14. Ali, 14 years old."

"14. Bloody hell. Hey, I was playing World of Warcraft when I was working."

"I I was gaming, too. I was playing Warcraft Warcraft 3, The Frozen Throne, but I was also going out. Funny story, one of the nights I literally couldn't go back home because after drinking, I didn't want my parents to know I was drinking. I slept in an internet cafe. I was I was gaming until 6 a.m. and then went back home."

"Nice, man. Living the dream."

"The dream. I love it."

"Yeah. But I had to give all that up for two years. And that's why I started off saying I only I was only committed two years. For two years, I I I I went out maybe once a quarter and there was never a moment where a friend was like, 'Hey, can we get dinner next Friday?' I was like, 'No, we have to like we have to I have to schedule one month in advance.' Because if I got dinner with you, then the video, you know, I have to upload one video a week. Then I couldn't do the video, but I committed to video. So, you know, I have to plan around that. There were literally times whereby to make a wedding or big event, I had to frontload two videos in a week and basically not sleep. And then to go to the wedding, right? It was it was crazy, crazy like that. And the worst part was, I would say, um, this might be TMI. I'm usually a very happy, optimistic person. I would say I lost like I would say 70% of my friends during that time because people just stopped inviting me to stuff. And the worst part of that was that it was my problem, not theirs. Like, for example, if a girl rejected me, I'd be like, 'I don't like her anyway.' Right? She's not even pretty. Or like if I didn't get the promotion, 'Oh, it's a manager's fault, right? It's not me.' You could also sort of blame someone, but in but not being invited to events because you yourself said no three to five times already, that's just on you. You you cannot reasonably blame anyone because you would I would not do it if someone said no to me five times in a row. I was like, 'Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.' I'm not going to invite the sixth time. Right? Well, maybe maybe, but you get you are you get where I'm going with this. So it it was particularly difficult because I knew it was I had to live with the consequences of my decisions. Um, looking back, it worked out. Like a lot of them, a lot of my current friends would tell me they were like party friends anyway, it doesn't matter. But I would say at that moment, it was really, really hard um on on on me. Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Was it worth it?"

"Yeah. Yes, for sure. Of course it was worth it because at the end of the day, my motivation to do this for the past five years was, 'Okay, do I want to trade my five years of utility, happy, pleasure for 50 years of freedom?' Right? Because we both have heard stories about parents who had to miss important milestones of their kids um because they had to work and provide for the family, right? It's like, 'Oh, I'm so sorry I can't make it to your soccer football, sorry, football practice or football game rather because daddy has to go um go to a conference or something along those lines, right?' I I want the opportunity to ignore my kids myself. No, I want the opportunity to to to be there for them if I if I chose if I wanted to be. So the looking back, it was obviously the right choice, but in that moment, it was difficult."

"So it's like you're you're choosing to pay the cost right now rather than in the future."

"Because I think mo what most people forget that it's a very virtuous flywheel and the growth comes exponentially, but it's not like, 'Oh, you give it five years for like five years of good good stuff, and then you have to give it five years again.' That's not how it works. It's more like you give it five years, and for the next like decade, two decades, three decades, it just keeps getting easier and easier because you already know what to expect. So that's how I think about it."

So Jeff traded two years of his social life for what will hopefully be, you know, a couple of decades worth of freedom. And along the way, he says he lost 70% of his friends and he had to say no to almost everything in his life. You might be interested to know what was the real deep dark motivation underneath this that made him want to do this grind. Uh, and we talk about that a little bit later on in the video. So that will be coming up in step number seven, I think.

Okay. So you're grinding it out for these two years, spending a ton of time. To what extent, like we we talked about the friends piece, but to what extent did it feel like a grind versus feel like actually you were having fun because you're working on this thing that's like quite exhilarating and it's Yeah."

"Ah, I have actually a very interesting perspective on this because it it's happening to me recently. So during that period of time, I didn't even have time to think whether or not I was grinding because everything was so sort of set in stone, so to speak, because I knew what I had to do every single day."

"So for the first two years, that was my life. I didn't overthink it. So, I would say actually this is one of my fair unfair advantages. This is sort of how I'm built. Once I commit to something, I just don't renegotiate with myself and I don't follow basketball. But I saw this clip from Kobe Bryant where he was saying how, and I'm going to butcher the terminology, so people in the comments are probably going to call it out. But long story short, for basketball players like him, um, during the off-season or something, they have a summer training sessions. So, they have to like the three months where they just train, right? And apparently what Kobe Bryant did was he would sign a contract with himself saying, 'I'm going to train 12 hours a day and this is going to be my training plan.' And once that's signed, he cannot renegotiate with himself. He just can't change anything. So he just has to do it. So he doesn't think, he just does it, right? And so to answer the first part of your question, I would say for the first two years, that was like my mindset. I'm like, 'Okay, I'm just going to do the thing and we'll figure it out after.' Funnily enough, it's not until after I quit Google where I was like, 'Oh, I've quote unquote made it. I quit and I'm I have some sort of financial security. I can do what I want.' When that question came into play like, 'Oh, what what do I what do I do now? Like, do I do I do I continue doing this? Like how does my day look like? Suddenly at all these free hours, do I go out? Do I go clubbing? Do I, you know, do I go out and party and make up for those lost time?' That doesn't sound right. I should keep growing. So that was actually when I became a bit more confused and lost. It was after I quit, not during the time. Yeah."

"Yeah. Same for me. I remember distinctly like sort of even from one day to the next, like, you know, the week the my final week of working as a doctor, it was during the pandemic, I had shifts on all the time and we released and we filmed three videos that week."

"Oh, wow."

"The week I left medicine, because I was going to go to Australia for emergency medicine, etc., etc., and they closed their borders. But the week I was unemployed, I filmed nothing. I was like, 'Oh, I've got the whole day. Like, what do I do?' And I found that for me, the negotiation, the renegotiation of the contract started when I quit the job and when my only thing was like, 'Okay, well, I can't I can do whatever I want. So, like, what the hell do I want to do?' Whereas, when you've got a job and you're just sort of squeezing it in because you've got to pump out those one or two videos a week, like that, it's an additional full-time job to figure out how to pump out these extra one or two videos a week consistently while juggling everything and everything else in life, which doesn't leave a lot of room for, 'Hmm, am I really enjoying this? Is this really my purpose? Is this my mission? I don't really want to be doing this.' It's like, no. And especially when you're on a wave and you're riding the wave of like, 'Okay, things are working.' Like um growth can mask a lot of kind of misalignment sometimes where it's like when the numbers are going up, you just don't think too hard about it. Yeah."

"It's when the numbers stop going up or when you have a lot of free time that you start to think like, 'Huh, what should I do? What's going on?' So, now we move on to step three, which is to suck less with each rep. But before we go there, I wanted to ask Jeff the thorny question that's in a lot of people's minds, which is, what if you try this and it doesn't work out? There was a a lovely young lady who came to one of our events when I was in London um a few months ago, and she had taken our YouTube course a few years ago and also swore by that, you know, 'I'm going to going to stay consistent for two years, and it's going to change my life.' And in those two years, she'd made 300-something videos. They were all vlogs of like her life in London, and she had 700 subscribers and was not yet monetized. At what point do you cut your losses? At what point do you decide like things need to change? Like how?"

"Yeah, my answer is twofold. I would say first, one of my friends in China, because uh China has a different sort of creator ecosystem, Devongu, like Little Red Book and Bilibili. And I've actually also seen creators who stayed consistent and might not have gained traction on on the Chinese sort of uh social media platforms. I used to tell them, 'As long as you upload one video a week for two years, you're going to succeed.' But after analyzing their performance, I realized I missed a crucial part. You have to upload a video every week for two years. That's a given. But you have to suck less with each video. You have to make at least a 1% improvement. And looking back, I did that, but I didn't really internalize. I didn't know what I was doing that. For example, my first video was absolute dog [ __ ]. I spent 40 hours on it. It was absolutely terrible. No one watched it. Makes sense. I was like, 'Oh, it's because my lighting sucks.' So, I changed the light. That's the only thing I changed in the second video. It still sucked. And then I was like, 'Oh, actually the color scheme is kind of all over the place.' Like orange, yellow, red, and blue. Uh, let's stick with one. And then I made the color scheme change. And then I made a I got better audio. So on and so forth. And this leads to the second part of my answer. The student that two spoke with you and my creator friends. It seems like the the the student needed to find a painful problem to solve. Like at some point, yes, you get good at making videos, but you might not be making content and making videos people need or want. And I think that's going to be the crossroads in which you have to make a decision whether to cut your losses because let's say let's..."

Say the student realizes, "Oh, my vlogs are not going to take off. I have to pivot to, let's say, how to be a better real estate agent." Sorry, I'm just making this up, right? At that point, she has to ask herself, "Do I really want to talk about this for like two, three years? Do I really want to go all out? Am I passionate? I I'm good at this, sure. But do I really want to do this?" Right? If the answer is no, maybe, you know, sticking with a more full-time thing that brings you better utility is is better. But if the answer is, "Yeah, it's like not bad. I I could see myself doing this," then you would just pivot. I think the pivot I was missing the pivot >> part uh when I was telling people, "Hey, if you just upload one of your two years, you'll you'll win at life." That was what I was uh missing.

Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I've seen this pattern play out quite a lot as well. Um, sometimes I'll see comments on my videos from someone with like a like a a username that's like a jumble of characters and they'll say, "Ali, I've been making YouTube videos for 2 years and nothing's happening." And I'm like, "Huh?" I look at their channel and all of the videos for the last 2 years. They're random topics. They don't have their face. They're like 3 minutes long. They're throwing spaghetti at the wall using whiteboard animation software and now AI animation software, voiceovers that are clearly AI generated and missing the crucial like strategy component of like >> "Yeah, sure, you can you can just make YouTube videos." >> "Just like anyone can publish a book and stick it on Amazon." But like ultimately >> "People need to pay for your videos. If they're not paying with their money, they're paying with their time and attention, which is in many ways more valuable than their money. So like, what is the thing?" And if you were starting YouTube today, would you think about niche from day one or would you throw spaghetti at the wall in terms of making some videos or like? Yeah. >> So, I like this question because I I think I have a good answer. Uh, and it's it's something I've told other people, other budding creators who've asked me like, "Hey, Jeff, like, what would you literally, what would you do if you started today?" Right? I'll be like, "Copy. Find someone to copy." I think I I've I've told you this a few times before. I tried my best to copy your style when I started. I tried my best. I couldn't do it because I'm not you, right? Like I I could try be like, "Okay, what's the font Ali's using? What's the color? What are the packs that he's using in like Final Cut Pro? I took a Skillshare course. I'm going to use everything he he said in that course. I'm just going to make the same video." Not even close to being the same video, right? And and I have this saved in my Google uh photos albums. It wasn't until a year in someone was like, "Oh, this guy's like the Asian Ali Abdal." I have that like to this day. I was so happy to see that, but I was like, "It took me a It took someone a year to figure that out that was trying to figure like copy you." like, "Wow, I did a terrible job in copying you." Right? So, the point I'm trying to make here is if you're starting today, find someone you respect and copy the crap out of them. And people are like, "Oh, no, that's plagiarism." Well, no. Unless you're literally taking the vid downloading their videos and uploading onto your channel, there's no way you could possibly copy them. Well, >> because you're you don't have the experience. You haven't put in the reps yet, right? But you have an image of what good looks like. So, you know, you have like what the gap is. And if you allow me to be a nerd here, Ali, that's exactly why context and engineer is so important for AI, right? It's so much better to give AI like an example of a good output, for example, a YouTube video script than say, "Write me a good YouTube video script in this in tone of voice of Ali Abdul, Jeff Sue," right? If you could get the script, it it's going to be much closer. Exact same way. So, in a nutshell, what I would tell people is find someone you respect right now in whatever social media platform um they're on. Study them, copy them. At some point along your journey, you are going to find your own brand and your own voice and it'll just come naturally come out. You're not going to have to force it because you'll realize, "Oh, I I I disagree with Ali and Jeff here. This is this is my point of view." It's just going to come naturally. >> Yeah, mate. Completely agree. When I started in 2017, I was trying to be Peter McKinnon. So when I was doing like my I would watch his Lightroom tutorials and I was like, "Man, I just love how >> the camera switches seamlessly between like the screen share and the thing and so and how he's like so like vibrant about it." So then when I was doing videos about like, "This is how you how you how you prepare for BMAT section one," I was trying to channel Peter McKinnon and just clearly failing at it. And then similarly when I started doing vlogs of life as a medical student, I was watching every single Peter McKinnon freaking video to be like, "How does he do it?" Okay, when he's uploading his SD card, he's like he's like naming the cameras. So I only had one camera. So I was like, "Sony a6400," whereas he's got like, "7D Mark II, blah blah blah blah blah blah, drone, etc." And I was like, "I'm going to copy me with Peter McKinnon." I started editing in Premiere because that's what he was using. Started I downloaded all his color grades for Lightroom. That was my Instagram profile back in the day and trying to be like, "Oh man >> this lens is really expensive. Oh, but he uses like a 50mm prime for his B-roll. Oh, okay, fine. I'm going to save up and get that 50mm cuz that's what's going to make my B-roll." I'll be carrying two lenses. one for the A-roll like 16 millimeter cuz that's what Peter McKinnon does and then a freaking like 50mm for the B-roll. Try to do the cinematic things back in the day. He was doing the thing where it changes the aspect ratio to 16 by 9 by adding the black bars like fading those in. I was like, "Making it cinematic, right?" >> Yeah. "Making it cinematic was like a cinematic B-roll." Never has anyone ever said, "Man, you're like Peter McKinnon but for nerds or whatever." And I'm like, "God damn it." That was that's what I was trying so hard to go for. But in the process of trying to do that, like my own kind of voice emerged. >> This is going to be the first mean comment, Ali. And I I say this with love. you know, I love you, but you were not even close. There was never a moment cuz I watch his videos, too. I would I would say I there was no correlation or like, you know, connection. There was not a second when I watch your videos, I was like, "Oh, that reminds me of Peter McKinnon's video." I love you, but yeah. No, I'd say that that would be one of your few failures. Yes. Yeah. No. >> Yeah. What can you do? There's still hope. There's still time. I can still try and be >> "Tell yourself that, but yeah." >> So, all of this maps onto a framework that we teach our YouTuber academy students a lot, which is step one is get going. Step two is get good. And then step three is get smart. And a lot of people get really stuck on like figuring out the question of like, "What's my niche?" before they've even made a handful of videos. It's like our whole thing that we try and teach people is like, "Just make the videos first. It's okay that you will feel like you suck at them. You got to embrace the suck because you can't really learn any skills. You can't grow while also being afraid to suck at the thing." Right? So you just make shitty videos. You try and imitate other people in the space. And in the process of imitating those other people in the space, your skills at making videos will improve naturally. You'll develop your own authentic voice and then as Jeff worked out, you start to suck less with each rep. And then in stage three, get smart. You'll hopefully, if if the content is resonating with people, you'll find that people are naturally asking you for the products that you can then create. You don't have to do it in a way that feels salesy. And so your action point from this, if you are interested in building a creator business like mine or Jeff's, for example, is figure out who are some of the creators that you look up to and how can you try your best to imitate their style. And regardless of whether you succeed or not, the point is you'll at least have a model to aim for. And each time you do a video or content or whatever, you'll get closer to that model. And then in the process, you'll develop your own authentic voice. So now we move on to step number four, which is to build the machine. Now, at this point, it's 2023. Jeff has made like 150 YouTube videos, and he's got a little bit of a machine, a system behind it. And in this segment of the video, we're going to dive deep into the system that Jeff built to try and well systemize the production of YouTube videos. This is a fairly long aspect of the video. We were thinking of cutting it out, but then realized, actually, it's more valuable if we keep it in because so few people actually show you the behind the scenes of like what's literally happening on their computer screen as they're making the content. If you don't care, you can always skip to the next time stamp, but we're going to dive deep into Jeff's machine for YouTube content creation.

"I think one of the biggest differences between us, Ali, you excel at like what I call off-the-cuff improvisation, if that makes sense. Because if I remember correctly, if you haven't changed your workflow, you sort of have a rough structure of every video and you're able to sort of riff off that and speak extremely articulately. I am not that. So, I would I would I would say even with this uh with this episode where I have fully prepped, if viewers put us side by side, they're going to be like, 'Oh, Jeff sort of stutters a little bit. He's he's I sort of get what he's saying, but he's not very articulate or focused with his phrasing or words or whatever.' That's one of my I think biggest issues. The reason I'm saying this is because for all of my videos, I have like every word scripted out."

"Oh wow."

"Every single word. I I could share some of the scripts with you. Every single word. And I just I just literally memorize it, say it, screw up, cut, memorize it again, say it, and just keeps going. And so everyone thinks, 'Oh my god, Jeff speaks flawlessly.' Not even close."

"Can we have a look at one of your scripts? Like, what is it?"

"Pull. Let me pull out the latest one."

"Great."

"Master Gemini 3.0. By the way, the Gemini 3 is doing great. I'm not just saying that because I used to work. UDA is is a very solid uh solid solid update. Do you see like everything on the left side? This is every single word. For example, 'Gemini 3.0 is a fantastic model, but the sheer volume of updates is honestly overwhelming and not every new feature deserves your attention.' That's literally how I sound in the video."

"Can you So imagine you were talking to that camera or like, what does the process look like of you like reading look at?"

"Oh yeah, sure. So let's say I'm looking at that camera. I'm like, 'Gemini 3.0 is a fantastic model but the sh is honestly over.' Okay. Gemini 3.0. Okay. Gemini 3 is a fantastic model but not every new. Okay, but the sheer volume of updates honestly over. But the sheer Gemini 3.0 is a fantastic model but the sheer volume of updates honestly over. Okay. Gemini 3.0 is Gemini 3.0 is a fantastic model but the sheer volume of updates is honestly overwhelming and not every new feature deserves your attention.' Like that that's how it looks. Yeah. And then it keeps it keeps going. So, it takes me roughly an hour to film every single video. And on the right, it's the instructions for my editor. Like, I know it's it's completely different than how you do it. Like, but that's Yeah, that's my workflow. I think it's a lot."

"Mate, this is so interesting. This is why you're crushing it and I'm not anymore."

"No, no. The amount of effort that goes into this is insane."

"cuz especially I think for AI content, if I don't use the right terminology or explain it in a visual way, it doesn't work. Another one of my unfair advantages is I'm really able to visualize complex topics in a very easy to understand way. I give me give you a very specific example. I mean, I'm preaching to a choir here, Ali, because I sort of learned this from you. If I told you right now, 'Gemini 3 has a much larger context window than Claude,' you'd be like, 'Okay, I understand that intellectually, so what?'"

"But I'm like, 'Oh, if you think about Gemini 3's context window as a big box to store information. It's a massive box to store your entire apartment of furniture in there. Claude can only store one chair.' You'd be like, 'Oh, okay. That makes sense.' And I'm assuming the furniture is like information and data. Like, yeah, Gemini can process all that all at once, whereas Claude can just process one chair."

"What does the process of writing one of these like word for word scripts look like?"

"Ooh, this is really fun because now it's empowered by AI."

"I used to have to spend 10 hours writing a mediocre script. Now with AI, I use 10 hours and write I think a much better script objectively speaking than my previous scripts. So I could I could walk you through the workflow. Okay."

"Sure."

"So do you see on the right hand side here? My new video template is followed by 8.0."

"Yeah."

"It means I've gone through it eight iterations of a new video template in Notion over the past five years, like continuous iteration. Right? Because previously it was not not good, then it got better, it sucked less, blah blah blah, and now it's 8.0. All right. So the first thing I always do after filling in the properties up here, obviously, is to capture as much information as possible about the video when I first had the idea because again, you know much better than me, information our brains are for having ideas, not storing them. Right? And I have ideas in the weirdest places, running, working out, like in a team meeting at Google. Right? Have this idea, I capture it on, let's say, Todoist right away, and then I immediately move that over here so that it can be wait to be processed so I don't forget about it. Right? So I might come back to this capture information two, three, four weeks later and I'll be like, 'Oh, this is what I want.' Now, here's what I think most people don't get wrong about making, in my opinion, the creative process and making consistently good YouTube videos. 80% of my success, I would say, comes from the checklist on the right here. Like, if you look, you know, the thing on the left, like don't look at the left. Like, if you just look at the checklist here, I would say that's 80% of my success because I follow this every single video for 195 videos. M"

"And people are like, 'No way. Aren't creatives supposed to have this viral idea and you just go with it. You you publish it and you're like suddenly like famous.' That might work once or twice, but to have consistently viral good ideas, it's literally checkbox by checkbox by checkbox."

"Yeah. Nice. And the reason I'm bringing this up in the first place, if you see this link right here, Ali, is my it's a link to my pre-production prompts for YouTube where I have a set of AI enabled workflows and prompts that help me I draft better outlines, um, come up with a better hook, uh, brainstorm better titles and, uh, thumbnails, and I literally just follow this every single time. So, it says right here, 'Use GBT articulate on rough thoughts.' What does that mean? So, remember how just now I said I'm not very good at articulating some concepts? I'm like, 'Oh, maybe like for example, different AI models are all getting better and they're like catching up to each other and so it doesn't really matter which AI model you pick.' That sounds very vague, right? Okay. So, uh GBT art uh GBT articulate. So, once I type in that last um letter, >> it expands to a fully fledged articulation prompt, right? So, I've optimized this over like last two years."

"And then I paste my raw thoughts here. Uh, 'AI models are all getting better. So, it doesn't really matter which one you pick.' We're going to let that run, but and and come back to the we'll come back to this in like a minute. But I repeat that process for every single stage of the YouTube production process. I have production prompts for YouTube. I have post-production prompts. Post production prompts for YouTube. So, pre-production prompts, follow all this. One, two, three, four, five. Production prompts. One, two, three, four, five. Post-production ROMs. One, two, three, four, five."

"And that helps me produce consistently clear and concise YouTube scripts."

"Okay, mate. I love this. This is sort of like what we do, but like on steroids, cuz we've got like video template V4, which is V4 is really more like V16 because we've just been iterating over it through time, >> right?"

"And we have periods of time where I I get very bullish on the checklist. I'm like, 'Okay, we're just following a series of actions.' And then stuff slips and then I stop bothering with the checklist. The team stops bothering with the checklist. We've got the checklist but no one like clicks on any of the items of the checklist. And and I was looking at the checklist yesterday. I was like, 'Huh, this is actually a pretty good checklist. Man, we should go through this more often kind of thing.' And seeing like your checklist, I'm like, 'Ah, that's it.'"

"Being a magic consultant for two years and being a goof for nine years really hammered that home in me. Um, don't get me wrong, I'll be the first person to list all the issues Google has as a company, for sure, but they do a lot of things right. And one of which is, okay, we're going to give you a really, really structured process to follow in your job. You will have flexibility for sure, especially back then, we had a lot more autonomy, but this is like what good looks like. Follow this framework and you'll achieve like this sort of outcome. So, that's I I learned that from being a being a consultant and working at Google. Uh, it's the same in medicine, to be honest, like surgical safety checklists and all that kind of stuff that like, 'Hey, we follow the same checklist for every procedure.' And yes, of course, then there's like the skill of the operator and stuff, but like ideally, you want to minimize the amount the skill of the operator makes on the outcome of the patient because then you're so dependent on that person having a good day. And so the more you can systemize an SOP, if I turn into a checklist, the more the healthcare system as a whole is delivering outcomes rather than any individual contributor."

"Oh yeah. I mean, let me be very specific here. I physically cannot move. Do okay, let me uncheck this so you can read it better. So, the last task here is 'Proceed after the title and thumbnail have been confirmed.' That is as clear as it gets, right? You did the thumbnail. Is the thumbnail thumbnail confirmed? No, I cannot proceed. And this is the thumbnail and title sort of stage. So I have to be happy with how this looks first. Final thumbnail. I use the pre-production prompts to think through what the title uh should be like using creative hooks, frameworks, and then um brainstorming thumbnail ideas. Okay, proceed. Okay. Now, ah, I'm okay scripting. So, I need to find out a hook first because hook is more important than the script outline. Oh, how do I write a great hook? These are the three things I need to remember. And then I have that in my pre-production prompts as well. And then it just goes from there. And literally, as you go all the way down, I've not published this video yet. It will be published on Tuesday, this upcoming Tuesday, but post-production hasn't happened. So, none of this has checked. Just I want to be very clear. It's not that I forgot, but you know, that hasn't been published yet."

"Mate, I love it. How long does it take to prepare each video before you film it?"

"I'll say every video takes around 20 hours."

"Okay."

"For me to produce from end to end."

"Great. And what's the split of that process in pre-production, filming, production, post-production?"

"8 to 10 hours of scripting."

"Yeah."

"Uh, and when I say scripting, I'm talking about all the pre-production tasks from ideation to title, thumbnail to uh thinking through the outline of the script and like writing the script."

"Previously, when I was editing my videos, it took another 8 to 10 hours to edit it. Now it takes around four to five hours. You might be like, 'four to five hours?' Because especially for AI content, I need to explain to the editor or brief the editor how I want the motion graphics to look like."

"To make sure people really understand, right? Um, so so I need to leave a lot of instructions. And guess, oh, I can even show you this. This is gonna surprise you, I think, Ali. Uh, because I don't think this I don't think this is normal, but I I in order to make it easier for me to explain to the video editor what I want, I literally have a Canva design with and mockup screenshots for them to create."

"And if you watch some of my videos, >> whoa, these seem very familiar given that I've seen your videos."

"Yeah, >> nice."

"Um, the idea is if you have a system, for example, this graph, right? With a system, effort goes down over time. With our system is >> it's like our YouTube process. You've got a system, so effort goes down over time. We don't have a system, so or rather, we have a system but we don't follow it, and therefore it stays difficult."

"Right. >> Yeah."

"And in this particular instance, if I didn't show the editor a screenshot, he or she may not understand exactly how to convey the concept or the topic. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, so, so this is why it takes me four to five hours to still brief editor. I still have to come up with instructions, uh, review the first draft, and then we're good to go. But I have a fantastic uh guy working with me. So, it it's just gotten easier and easier over time."

"And so, if you're so as you're going through the script, if you're adding in like B-roll instructions, if so, it's you're thinking, 'Okay, this would benefit from a visualization.' Hm."

"Okay, let me just draw it out in Canva."

"Exactly. Or now I can use Excalidraw. I haven't really used this uh that much. You can see I've only done a couple things here, but now I realize maybe it's easier with Excalidraw. I'm testing that out now, too. Yeah."

"That's really cool. So, you got 8 to 10 hours actually writing the script, going through all the tasks, the pre-production tasks, etc. And then it takes you an hour to film the video because you're doing the back and forth, all of that kind of stuff. Then you send the footage to the editor."

"Four to five hours of uh briefing editor, uh reviewing just one draft, and like having it ready to be published."

"Nice. To what extent do you enjoy this process?"

"I have to say, getting started every single time is the hardest part, but once I get in the flow and zone, I find myself loving it. Yeah. So >> the hardest part is always be like, 'Okay, what's the angle for this video?' Because that that's the part you really need to like >> bunker down and think. Yeah. >> You know, it's like, 'What's my point of view on this? I can't I I don't think I agree with what everyone else is saying. Like, what is my point of view?' And that I'm just sitting there for like a good 30 to 60 minutes just like thinking, doodling, like being distracted. That that's the hardest part."

"But once I have a like crystal concept, for example, this one, 'Gemini theory has generally a lot of hype, but for good reason. And for good reason. The update is significant, but there's a lot of noise. So, can I answer the question, 'How can non-technical knowledge workers best utilize Ja 3.0?' Right? Like practical advice.' Once I figure that out, that's the video. I really, really like testing out all the use cases and doing the thing. I'm be like, 'Oh, does this work?' For example, oh, this is the proudest uh this is the proudest step from this video, Ali, and I'm leaking it to you first. John theory has gotten so good that it can take everything in Google Drive, Google Calendar, Gmail to do stuff for you. If you were working at a company, one a corporate company, one of the most tedious things is performance reviews. It is boring. It is useless, but necessary to get promoted and get a raise and all that stuff. And usually it takes people weeks because they put it off. Now you can and I'll do it in real time at workspace, go through my entire uh go through everything you know about me and write a performance review uh for the past six months. Pay attention to targets and attainments and quantifiable attainments and we'll come back to this. It's going to work for quite a few minutes. It will give give you a finished performance review with all accurate information because it has access to everything, >> right?"

"So, so, so, so when I found this out, when I tested I found this out, I the high I got was I was really, really, really happy because it it's really practical and people can really use this. That's a lot of effort on every single video. Wow. Wow. Reminding me when I had the conversation with Mr. Who's the Boss and he was like, 'Yeah, he spends 40 to 60 hours writing the script for every single video.' Yeah, that's that's crazy. Holy [ __ ] I saw I watched that episode. That's that's that's a lot. Yeah, he's a sort of person who can't who cannot do that."

"Yeah, his personality is very like >> Yeah. >> detail oriented and that's why the videos are so good."

"So, what I'm really taking away from this is that like, and you know, this has sort of been the whole thesis of our YouTube academy for the last 5 years as well, which is that uh it's really really hard if you don't have a system. Um, like if you're having to think of one video idea every single time and then you publish the video and now you're thinking about the new video idea, then life becomes hard. But if you have a system for capturing ideas, if you have a system for like generating titles and thumbnails that are broadly in a house style rather than having to reinvent the wheel for each one, if you have some sort of system that you're following to like script your hooks or script your videos and do the talking points of the video, some sort of post-production system, just some kind of system takes quite a lot of the heavy lifting off your plate and it means that like your thing gets better over time. uh even though you're still putting out the same amount of output."

"For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And >> yeah. >> And again, I'm preaching the choir here, but just for everyone else, it just takes the mental or decision fatigue out of the equation because you know exactly where you're doing next. No."

"Sick. This is amazing stuff. Um, anything else? You given that this is a show and tell? Um, any other thing?"

"Oh, so yeah. So, so there we go. It's it's it's done. And obviously this is for my business, but literally it's able to like like pull everything out and write a very very comprehensive and accurate, more importantly accurate sort of report."

"Uh, the one other thing I would bring up is for example, this is my command center, right? And in tune with not having to worry about decision fatigue, like my new like >> it's all about systems. I manage my life system. I click 'new day' and this is literally everything I need to do today."

"Yeah. >> I don't have to think. I just I just do it, right? Review the calendar, figure that out. I have to wish people happy birthday. It's on there. I read all the comments from social media. So, social media down here. I read all the comments, reply, so on and so forth. Like today, my priority is, oh, prepare for Ali's episode. Like, you know, before I do the other thing. So, in line with sort of like having systems, I think that's that's another thing I want I wanted to share. Nice."

"What's the make time bit Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday?"

"Oh, this is something silly. Uh, probably not relevant to you, but I read Make Time after you recommended it. One of my favorite books in the world. And one of their things, as you might recall, is >> Yeah. Highlight. Yeah. GHL highlight. GHL is what I would put in my physical journal."

"There you go. Yeah. So, like I'm grateful for like Ali. I I didn't plan this by the way. I was like, 'Oh, it'd be nice to be grateful to be invited, you know, to film something.' And then like, for example, 'Let go.' And what I mean by this is I was actually kind of worried because most my content is very educational and I don't have that much opportunity to share the personal side of myself. And I think a lot of people have a false impression like, 'Oh, Jeff is this really kind, generous, smart person,' when in reality, not really, you know? Um, so I was a little bit anxious I think to share that side of myself and I wrote here, 'I get to share a side of myself my viewers haven't really seen.' So, to >> to position in a more positive, you know, light. I get to do this versus I have to do it."

"Sick. Do you have a system for like time blocking on your calendar? Like how do you how do you organize your calendar?"

"Oh, yeah. Um, I prepared this in in anticipation for this sort of interview. I mocked up something that would look like my schedule back when I was at Google."

"Obviously, there's not much that much open space. I didn't want to like just fill it with random stuff. But the key thing I want to highlight was like my my my review sessions >> um in blue. And I think 99% of people don't do this. And this is probably the biggest reason why things slip through the cracks. It's all good and fine for us, me and you, to tell people you need to capture everything immediately. You have to store in you have to make the capture process seamless, right? You have to assign due dates to tasks. You have to tag ideas and thoughts you have. If you don't review them, you might not you might as well not have captured them. So my biggest sort of hack when I was at Google is as long as I can review all my inboxes, my Gmail inbox, Google Keep inbox, Drive inbox, and Google Task inbox, nothing slipped through the cracks."

"Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Yeah. Right here. And I have a link straight to it. Like I can click into it and it goes to my Google Keep inbox. So this is my Google Keep inbox. And once it's processed, I click E and it's archived."

"Yeah. Nice. >> Yeah. So I'm going to bring that back. Yeah, that that's sort of like the the review process right there."

"Sick. >> And to what extent do you still do that now that you're a full-time entrepreneur?"

"Oh, I still do exactly this but in Notion. So, the reason I had to do this using, let's say, Google Keep, Google Task, because when you're working at Google, you're not allowed to use any other platform to do any work stuff. I do the exact same thing but in Notion. So, this workflow I would say is platform agnostic. As long as you capture, organize, review, engage core workflow, >> you can use any tool or platform and get things get things done."

"How much do you procrastinate?"

"Oh, I I do. So, the problem is now I procrastinate frequently throughout the day. That breaks up my deep work. So, let me explain. I still work quite a lot right now. I would but I don't see it as work because I have a lot of fun doing this. I would say I work from, let's say, 9 to 8 >> every day. Yeah. 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Not too bad, right? But but yeah, the problem with my procrastination right now is whenever I finish what I think to be a decent chunk of work, I reach for my phone. When I open YouTube, I'm like, 'I have to reward myself.'"

"Yeah. >> And the reason why that's a problem is because even though I procrastinated uh when I was like grinding and hustling hard, I didn't have time to procrastinate like so frequently. There were like dedicated sessions. I'm like, 'Okay, it's a write-off day, right?' Like or what Ali calls a write-off day, right? But now I'm like, 'Oh, you know, I could get to this. I have time.' And then it becomes it becomes was like 30 minutes. I'm like, 'Oh [ __ ]' And then I have to come back and stuff like that. So I So the short answer is I do procrastinate. I still haven't really figured out a way to beat it completely. What other tips do you find helpful for staying focused when you're on task? Because a lot of people really struggle with focus, attention span, all of that stuff."

"For me, it's simple because I've internalized this. Basically, it's a two-minute rule or five-minute rule, right? It was a two or five-minute rule. I can't remember exactly. Five-minute rule."

"Yeah, it depends on depends on who you ask."

"So, basically, I turn on the I turn on the timer in the app, Super Focus app, and I'm like literally I'm like, 'Okay, five minutes. I'm just going to sit there.' And then I start thinking, studying, thinking. By the time it by the time the alarm rings, I'm already think I'm okay, I stop. and I'm like thinking about the next step. So that trick really works really well on me. So I don't really need to force myself to focus to be very honest."

"And so let's say you have a day where you've got like I don't know, eight different things you have to do, but like one of them is the priority. How are you scheduling in the eight different things, the one thing? Is it that you're time blocking the one thing and just focusing on that? Is it that you don't need to time block because you just know it's the priority? How are you triaging stuff?"

"Oh yeah. So going back to my Notion command center here. So, the thing I forgot to mention just now is whatever the priority is, it goes right in the calendar. That's a non-negotiable. Everything else is like negotiable, if that makes sense. And I've gotten in a really good habit of not overcommitting because I've had so like the last 11 years to sort of figure that out, right, from my first job in magic consulting all the way till now. So, I know for a fact I have more than enough time during that day to get the one thing done. Everything else is sort of negotiable, but nice to haves, if that makes sense. The beauty of having this in a list instead of just having a task um database here, which I also do have, is you can move this around. Like, okay, the highlight can't be moved, but let's say I want to do this afterwards, I can move that and that visually gives me permission to be like, 'Ah, I will move this around. It's not set in stone.' Except for the highlight, that makes sense. And I can throw some stuff to tomorrow as well if I don't have the time. So this just gives me permission to move >> tasks as things change throughout the day for flexibility. ility."

"Nice. And then can you talk us through your project management thing? So let's say you have a project that's like uh Japan trip with Jonathan or something like that. Uh, how do you how do you keep that organized and the tasks and various things you have to do for that?"

"So I have to give a bit of context here. I'm not I promise I'm not trying to like uh uh uh promote my like Notion."

"You can promote as much as you like."

"Okay, perfect. So I've been making one YouTube video a year on my Notion command center or life OS system since 2021. And I think I really cracked the code this past year and I'm using that right now. It's called like build your uh it's I call it command center and the course is called build your command center in Notion. And I'm using Thiago Forte's PARA method, project, areas, resources, archived, or a version of it in this sort of Notion command center. So let me just go through a real project with you. Let's say I create a new project, right? 'Launch a high-ticket AI product.' All right. End date, I don't know, couple of months later. All right. Uh, I I'll usually add the Google Drive link here and related area. This is related to my products area. Why is that important? Well, because product strategy. Well, because I want to be able to find this project at any point, right? To make sure I'm surfacing information as as they come. So, I'm just going to uh expand this. And again, I just go through sort of a mental checklist. I'm going to put the project overview here. When conditions op center, just simply means are there any links or AI chats I want to throw on here so I can reference very easily? Related task, resources, and notes. And the beauty of this is everything is everything is related in a way that I could create a new task, 'Do user research,' and it's automatically related to this project. So even though I can find this in my master task database, the task is surfaced when the in a contextually relevant location."

"Sick. And we'll put a link to the Notion course down below. And by the way, all of this system stuff is exactly what we teach in our Part-Time YouTuber Academy. You get all the systems that I've been using for my channel for the last like eight years and all of the scripts, all the templates, all the Notion stuff. If you want it, there's a link down below. So, now we move on to step number five, which is to do all of this while navigating the day job when you were at Google. To what extent were you worried about like, 'Oh, what if my employer finds out that I'm doing stuff on the side?' H like how did you navigate? I mean, I guess it's YouTube. Google owns YouTube, so presumably they're okay with it, especially because you're saying nice things about Gemini and Google Keep and Google Mail and stuff, but like, yeah, how did you navigate the negotiating with your employer to allow you to do a side hustle?"

"Are you talking about from a professional standpoint or from a compliance standpoint? Because those two, surprise you, you might be surprised to know, are completely different."

"Oh yeah, tell me more. Cuz essentially like we have a bunch of people in our lifestyle business academy who are like, 'Oh, I work at insert big company X here. Uh, I'm not sure I can really build a business on the side.' Have you got any advice?"

"In that case, let me start with the compliance side and I'll move on to the professional side, and you'll see why those two are completely different things, especially at these large tech companies. So, from a compliance standpoint, I'm a risk very risk-averse person. I had emailed the ethics and compliance team even before I started I uploaded my first video. They gave me a bunch of rules to follow, and I'm like, 'Okay, cool.' Eight months later, they audited my channel and they were like, 'Jeff, overall, it's okay, but we found some problems.' Number one, you are not allowed to talk about Google products."

"Oh."

"You're forbidden because you It's surprising, right? Be like, 'You'd obviously want to talk about your own products.' No, because there's a conflict of interest. Viewers or external people might think you had inside information that they did not have access to. For the record, I never had any insider information, right? And they were like, 'Number two, you're not allowed to film the Google office.' So I had to take some videos down. And then a year later, they audited again. It was it was fine, right? Yeah. And to Google's credit, again, I'll be the first person to say negative things about Google because they're not a perfect company. Not even close. But to Google's credit, I sincerely believe the people there always try to do the right thing because I know for a I know people from Meta, from Apple, from Spotify, from these other companies who got fired basically immediately with no recourse for having some sort of social media presence. Obviously, their content might have been a bit more dodgy, to use the word you use, right? But that they were just basically fired immediately, right? Whereas Google's like, 'Look, Jeff, we we see you're doing job search. You're doing your productivity. You're trying to help people. You're trying to teach people. Just just be careful, but you know, but you're good, right?' So, that's a compliance aspect."

"Just on that note, like, so if someone is is watching this and they're like, 'Man, I really want to build a side business or a YouTube channel or or stop posting on LinkedIn, but I do have one of these jobs where like I'm kind of worried about what my employer is going to say.' What advice would you have for that person who's worried about the compliance perspective like because they don't want to get fired?"

"Oh, okay. Then for sure reach out to the compliance team first. I think that's what saved me because I think they saw they because the compliance team has like records of all the sort of like the the communication, right? They saw I tried to do the right thing by reaching out first as opposed to asking for forgiveness later, right? And for the record, I'm usually someone who always does a thing first and asks for forgiveness, but in this specific case, I asked for permission first."

"They gave me the benefit of the doubt."

"Yeah. So, I do generally think if you're worried about being like fired for compliance issues, you should definitely reach out to the compliance team first."

"Okay?"

"And not your manager because in these big tech companies, the managers don't know. They love it. They're like, 'Wow, I my manager literally was like, Jeff, I love these videos. Do more and do workshops for us.' But she didn't know whether or not they were compliant."

"So, when I had to take, let's say, my Google videos down back in the day, she was like, 'Wait, why? What? That's crazy. Why would they make you do that?' Right? Like our initial reaction as well. So, my my manager, she's she's [ __ ] fantastic. I I the reason I actually didn't leave early is because of her. I want to stay longer for her. Um, she was extremely supportive and she was basically like, 'Look, Jeeoff, I understand. I don't even need to say it, but you're not going to let this interfere your full-time job. As long as that's the case, keep going. Love it.'"

"Yeah, >> that was a more professional side of things. The other thing people are worried about in this context is like, 'Okay, technically it's compliant, but if like my manager finds"

out, if my colleagues find out, if my manager's manager finds out, like technically I'm not breaking any rules, but will it look badly on me that like I'm trying to do commercial activity on the side or something? Will they think, oh, she's got one foot in, one foot out, you know, all that kind of stuff?

In my experience, and you've said this countless time, no one cares. Really, no one cares. I initially, and I felt the same. Initially, I thought, oh, people are talking my behind my back. Did you see Jeff Sue's latest video? Like he he sounds so stupid. That's never happened, right? Maybe someone made a comment like, "Oh, I saw your video." I was like, "How's that going?" It's like, "Oh, interesting video. Cool." That was the extent. No one cares. Everyone has their own problems. Everyone think about the next paycheck. They think about the promotion, thinking about their next project, like complain about other people like no one cares about this. So, as long as your content is not again not dodgy, right? Um I think I think we there's a spotlight effect at play. We overestimate how much other people think about us.

We have a bunch of students right now in the academy who are have been procrastinating for about 3 weeks on making their very first LinkedIn post because they're like I can't post on LinkedIn cuz like all the previous colleagues I've ever had in my life are all on my LinkedIn and like uh like am I am I going to post on my LinkedIn saying hey guys I'm just going to just introducing myself all of the all of the cringe associated with like being someone who posts on LinkedIn gets in the way. Any tips? There are so many content types and formats that are arbit like objectively safe. We had offsite these are top three learnings. No one's gonna no one could possibly judge that. And and actually your current colleagues would would advocate for that. Of course the next worry might be what if I butcher it or I sound like an idiot. That's I think that's a whole another thing, right?

I think I think there is another worry on that front. I think some people are like oh no I can't even post that because they're going to think I'm a tryhard. They're going to say that like, "Oh, Lord, did you see Jane's posted about learning from the offsite? What a [ __ ] like wetter that it's like this is genuinely a worry that people have."

The reason I was smirking is like, "Wait, try hard is not a compliment." I was like, "Wait a minute." Like I was that was that was what I was trying TO GO FOR. WAIT, HANG on a minute.

I think for most people try hard is not a compliment. It's like an insult that they try very very hard to avoid.

Okay, got it. Wow. Thanks for letting me know, Ollie. I'm 33 and that Thank you. I appreciate that. If I'm putting myself in a professional shoes and I saw someone I dislike, right, posting on LinkedIn, um would my first reaction be like, "Oh, this person is trying so hard. He or she like they have nothing to offer, nothing to say." I get, but then my argument would I forget about it. I' I'd judge maybe for a second or so, then I forget about it. I don't think anyone in the right mind would take a screenshot of that, send it to a group chat, and be like, "Haha, look at this guy. Like, I can't believe they're trying so hard."

Yeah. I think this is like literally the thing people are scared of. They're like, "What is this?"

Is it LinkedIn specific or like YouTube? uh LinkedIn specific in the sense of a a lot of our students post on LinkedIn and b cuz if you make a YouTube video no one's going to see it ever. But if you post on LinkedIn automatically all of your connections might see that because you have zero followers and so the only people that will ever see that will see it initially are the people that you you're already connected to which is your current colleagues and your former colleagues and people try very very hard to avoid judgment from current and former colleagues as like a a sort of ego defense mechanism or something.

Wow. Okay, I have to I have to myth then I'm so far removed from that point. I I can't really relate. Nor do I have that good cuz now that you say it like that. Yes. If I let's say back in the day I had like 89 connections and if I had to post something Yeah. I I I probably have the same concerns. I I I I don't remember how I got through it. I got over it.

I mean the the thing we're just trying to tell people is like guys, you're going to have to post every day on LinkedIn. So the more you overthink your first post, the slower you're going to build your business. You can take as long as you want. It's just that like, you know, Ricardo over there, he's done his first post, who got his first few sales already. Kelsey's got her first few sales. Um, these guys have got the first few sales and they just kind of did the thing.

And then LinkedIn sales navigator. Like guys, you're going to have to send 200 connection requests a week on LinkedIn and just DM everyone who talks to you.

You're going to have to do this every week for the next like 5 years if you want to build your lifestyle business to like million dollars.

So, like why are we overthinking the first message, bro? Like, this is one message out of like 58,000 you're going to be sending over the course of the next like few years. Like, come on, let's go. And so eventually there's enough of that that like gets people over the edge to realize they can just do it and then they realize no one gives a [ __ ] and then they're like then the whole thing becomes easier.

Exactly. No one cares. Everyone has their own priorities.

Including people like Jeff, people like me, you know, like my hospital knew all about like my YouTube videos and stuff. My med school knew about them. I wasn't trying to do this stuff secretly on the side. From what we've heard from our lifestyle business academy students as well, if you are able to have a conversation with your manager, your boss, your HR, your compliance team about stuff and they give you the green light with some restrictions or whatever, that takes an enormous burden off of your shoulders because you're not lying awake at night wondering will they find out about this secret side hustle that I've got. Your mileage may vary. We also have some students who do it in secret on the side until it gets big enough and then they decide to quit their job. But like generally that's a more stressful way of of running this hustle. So, now we move on to step six of Jeff's journey, which is to let the products come to you. And there is a framework from our friend and mentor Daniel Priestley, who's featured on the channel quite a lot, that Jeff discovered that helped him figure out what products to create.

I mentioned just now that my first product was a free PDF version of my my resume, right? I uploaded that onto Gumroad to complement my resume video. I wanted viewers to have something next to them so they can reference as they watch my video to optimize their resumes. I thought that just made sense, right? I didn't expect them to donate. And after they donated, I got questions like, "Hey, do you mind if you share a Google Docs version that I can edit myself? I'd actually pay you for it." I was like, "Okay, it's the same thing, but okay, sure." And I charge like $4.99, $4.99 for it. And that was another incremental 1K a month in in revenue, right? So that was my first experience with Daniel Priestley's sort of like product frameworks like do it yourself, do it done with you, do done for you or something along those lines, right? So do it yourself is a PDF version. done with you sort of is like the Google Docs editable version. Um, so the point I'm trying to make here, it came very naturally like, oh, I thought this would be a useful resource. Here you go. Oh, you want an editable version? Huh, okay, I guess I could charge for it. And then sort of built from there.

I know a lot of people who have like um elaborate notion systems and including me and then we use them for like a week and then we're like ah this is I don't know you're on a flight or something. Notion offline kind of sucks still. And so then you're like, it goes out the window. You go on holiday for a week and it goes out the window. And then like the inertia of getting back to the system, it's just like, [ __ ] it, I'll just go back to Apple Notes. Like I I've gone through this cycle of build a system, follow the system for a week, life happens, forget about it, go back to pen and paper every six months for the last like eight years. Um, how do you stick to the system? I'm trying to think of any sort of framework or principles I can bring up here. But if I'm being just very honest, it goes back to number one. I think with just my personality, I like Mr. Who's a Boss, I have somewhat of a uptight anal personality whereby I love structure. So this comes this makes me happy like checking off things in checkboxes and like following this makes me happy. If I were to say like a framework or um um um a principle or something, I would say most people fail, especially in notion, when they don't build it themselves.

Yeah. When they download someone else's template, like Thomas Frank's ultimate brain, it's like, oh my god,

I bought that. I bought that and I gave up in not even a week, like three days, I gave up. I love Thomas Frank. He and you are the reason I use Notion. I've watched many of his videos. I've commented on his videos and you've seen my comments, but his Ultimate Brain 3.0 was crazy, right? I'm like, there's no way I need 60 properties for a task. that that doesn't make any sense. So, for my course to to get over that, oh, by the way, just a little bit more virtual signaling here. It's a number one course on the PPA platform. Um, the the education platform that I'm working with in Taiwan, link down below, guys, check it out. 2025. Yeah. I purposely gave them only the raw databases and the course walks them through exactly how to connect them using the relations property, how to add their own areas of life, how to manage their tasks and that has I think improved like student retention.

Makes sense. Yeah. For the system. They're sort of building the furniture.

Exactly. So I think I think that really helps like you can't give someone like just a straightup template. And I'll be honest, Ali, it was really painful because you have no idea how hard it is to turn multiple raw databases to a externally friendly sharable view without leaving like small pockets of random information inside or they copy the wrong thing and stuff like that. So this this setup took me I think two to three months and that's probably why a lot more creators don't do that because it it takes so much finessing. Um but yeah, I think it's worth it. I think students need to build it themselves. Now, there's this sort of product spectrum that has these three areas. There's do-it-yourself, done with you, and done for you. And there are actually different schools of thought around this. If you're going creative first, it is often easiest to start with a do-it-yourself product. For example, the templates that Jeff was selling on Gumroad, it's just a template. The user has to buy it, download it, and use it themselves. It's a DIY product. Those generally tend to be the cheapest things. Then you might ascend to something that's done with you. Maybe this is sort of like a course with a community element added to it. It's sort of like you as the creator, you're live in there, you're doing workshops, or maybe it's like a sort of one-on-one coaching program where if you might be helping someone improve their productivity or build their notion systems or start a business. They're doing the work and you're sort of helping them out alongside. This is sort of done with you. And then generally on the highest end of the spectrum, you have done for you where you sell a fully done for you service where you are doing the work for your client. For example, our part-time YouTuber Academy is a sort of do-it-yourself course where we do a lot of coaching, me and my team, and workshops and stuff with one-on-one support and everything that helps students build their own businesses. That's done with you. But then done for you would be if, for example, we started offering YouTube video production as a service to other businesses. It's like the business would film the content and we would do everything, the editing, the packaging, the titles, the thumbnails, the strategy, etc., etc. That's for example a done for you service. So you could totally start DIY and then go done with you and then go done for you if you want to or or not. Or you actually could start the other way around. This is actually the way that a lot of online businesses start. They start with a done for you service where they're doing the work for their clients. Once they've gotten enough results, they're able to then turn it into a done with you where they're coaching people through the process. And once they're sick of coaching people through the process and showing that they're able to get results and decent testimonials and stuff, they then graduate like downstream into something like an online course which becomes more scalable but costs less money. And so you just have to sort of weigh up how scalable you want it versus how much you want to be charging. In Jeff's case, a lot of this emerged naturally. He built his first thing because the audience seemed to want it. And then he built the next thing because his audience seemed to want it. He didn't really have this sort of like grand vision of like becoming a millionaire. It just sort of happened sort of accidentally, but also, you know, accidental things like this take a lot of work, a lot of patience. As you've seen, the amount of effort that goes into Jeff's videos, the way he does his content, the way he navigated his full-time job, the sacrifices he had to give up along the way. When you're putting in that level of work and you're able to build an audience of people who know, like, and trust you, then the monetization almost takes care of itself without you having to force it, which is what I love about Jeff's journey. Anyway, we now come to step seven, which is to figure out your real why. So, let's say someone's listening to this and they're vibing with your story. Let's say they've got a corporate job of some description and they really want to do the thing on the side and they they're looking at your story as an inspiration to be like, "Man, Jeff managed to do it. He managed to keep up his corporate career. Did a great job. Um, etc., etc. got promoted to a pretty pretty good level and then he was able to build his thing up to the point that it 3xed his salary and now he's able to quit. Like that's like the dream trajectory for a lot of people I know who are working in corporate. Do you have any other bits of advice? Any advice you would give someone in that situation?

I've thought about this is because inherently the question is asking what piece of advice you would you give someone who wants to go through the exact journey you did. Right? Although I'm all about practical, actionable advice like tactics, the tactics, it doesn't matter in this question, the only thing that matters if it boils down to it is the motivation, the initial motivation why you want to do the thing. The reason and and that sounds cliche and that sounds so generic, right? Why, Jeff, would you say that? That's weird. Because I sincerely believe the real motivation powering what you want is something very hidden and dark that very few people will ever get to know. I'm going to take a plunge and share something I I've never really shared before. My motivation to give you some context, I was a terrible student in high school. I if you out of a 4.0 GPA, I'm not sure how the UK does it, out of a 4.0 GPA, my GPA was like 2.8, 2.9. It was terrible. Um, I was lucky enough to go to, in my opinion, the best college in the world, Emory University, uh, where I received a world-class education and, you know, got introduced to a cash who referred me into Google. I I barely scraped by. I was on the wait list and I got in. The reason I turned my life around in college and I graduated topics in my class is because I was angry. I was pissed off that people I didn't think were as capable were getting better grades. I was like, I'm I'm going to show them. [ __ ] that. Like, I'm not I'm not an idiot. I studied my ass off and I got good grades. The motivation is not noble. It's just like trying to prove people wrong. But in my opinion, for a lot of things in life, maybe the intent or the motivation doesn't matter as much as the outcome. Because if it got me to, let's say, good grades, a good job offer, who's to say the anger motivation or the anger sort of, you know, uh, reason you sort of work your ass off um, is was bad.

You know what I mean? Yeah. I know I'm rambling a lot. I know I'm ranting a lot, but I think that does directly apply to sort of um, how to like go through this journey and succeed in the end. You really need to be honest with yourself why you want to do If it's something surface level like making money or freedom, I I don't think that's seriously sustainable. That has to be really part of core of who you are and it's so different for everyone. I don't even know how I would start explaining how to find it yourself. I can only share that in my case, especially for the college days. I was just angry because I didn't want to be seen as an idiot and I want to prove people wrong. That sounds so terrible. We say it out loud. you're supposed to say like like I realized that in college anything was possible and I in order to do that I was going to have to put in the hard work like no it was it was it was part of who I am. I didn't want to I I didn't want to look bad.

Yeah. So again that's my honest answer. There's no framework or principle that deres from that. But if there's one person could sort of think about that and be like okay let's be honest with myself. Why do I really want this? I want the fame. I really want to be liked. I want to like like hook up with girls. Then that's okay. Like you know just channel that through. It sounds terrible to say it loud but yeah whatever gets you there.

So was it still like the anger like I want to prove people wrong that caused you to start the YouTube channel and like build that up.

So I think there's two things. So number one when I started it was definitely for the love of teaching for sure the teaching thing definitely got me started. I think through like at some point during the five years I also did want to prove people wrong in that I didn't need the Google brand anymore because I I'm still am I'm a pretty vain person. Having the Google brand was great. Being like, "Oh, I'm okay with Google. I'm a Googler, right?" Not a great look, but it like I'm trying to be honest, authentic here, right? Having that brand was great. And my my ex fiance, my ex-girlfriend, she's very smart, much smarter than me. She said, "Jeff, one day you're going to leave Google whether you like it or not. You can't you have to divorce yourself from the brand to do anything." She's not talking about a YouTube channel. She's like, "For anything, right? You you can't see yourself as a Googler." And the wakeup call for me oi was when Google laid off a bunch of people back you know a couple years ago and it came as a shock to many Googlers who saw themselves as Googlers right instead of just employees of the large corporate designed to maximize their whole value and a lot of people had a really tough time sort of getting through that. That was a wake up call for me as well. I was like okay yeah I can't I can't see myself just Google anymore. So the YouTube thing was one way for me to get myself out of that. I was like okay I'm an educator. I'm a YouTuber. I'm an educator.

I'm not just a Googler.

Yeah. That was some of that was the hidden motivation there as well.

So it's like diversifying your identity away from putting all your eggs in the I work at Google basket. I I am a Googler and more into sort of Yeah. just like spread the eggs out a little bit.

Exactly. But don't get me wrong, right now I think on my LinkedIn my headline's still like Google trying to educate. I still want to sort of leverage a Google brand, you know.

I mean I still have doctor turn entrepreneurs. So it's like you know

Yeah. There you go. Yeah. You might as well lean into the might as well lean into the thing.

And so your homework from this action point is what is the real reason why you are continuing to watch this video? Why do you want what's the real dark reason behind why you want financial freedom or you want to build a business or create a business or whatever like what's the thing being aware of that um is generally a good idea. And then finally we come to step number eight which is to set the quit date. You quit the job recently.

Yeah in April this year.

Congratulations. Uh how did you decide to quit the job now? And I mean looking at your revenue stats you could have quit like 3 years ago. Uh so why did you not?

There are a couple of reasons I think. So number one, I'm so riskaverse that I would not have been okay with anything less than three times my salary. My my three times my full-time salary. I say that's the first reason. And don't ask me why I reached I I arrive how I arrived at the three times. It was literally I just sounded good. I was like, okay, if it's one, it's one to one. Well, YouTube is volatile. I might not I might not I might make a lot less.

Yeah. If it's two times, well, if it got half, I'd be back to where I started. If it's three times, at least if I got half, it could be 1.5 times. That's literally how I thought about it. Not very scientific, but it is what it is. Like vibes basically, right? Number two, for context, I had planned to quit a couple quarters before the actual date because I knew if I didn't sign that imaginary contract with myself, I'd just stay forever. I really like the team. I really like the work. Um, surprisingly enough, like people are smart. They're hardworking. My like my director, Prisca, she's she's fantastic. I love her. Um, but I knew if I didn't set a date or a quarter to quit, I would just stay. So I was like, "Okay, Q2 of 2025, I have to leave. I have to leave in these 90 days."

And so to make that happen, I literally like emailed or like brought it up with my manager back then in January to force it to happen. I can't take it back anymore. To be very honest with you though, Audi, I I I should have quit a year sooner because over the last year, work on both sides suffered and I felt I looking I I still feel a little bit iffy about it because I care about my personal brand a lot and I care about, you know, I I care about I care about the work. I I care about doing a good job. And I realized over that year there was no way I could go 110% in both. It just it just didn't it didn't make any sense. The YouTube videos suffered. There weren't great topics. Didn't do very well. Um my work at Google suffered. People were like, "Are you okay? Are you sick? Like, what's going on?" Like, this is not usually the Jeff Sue standard, right? So, if I if I if I could, I I would probably have quit a year earlier.

Yeah. Then, why do you think you didn't?

I was too greedy. I was way too greedy. I wanted to have that Google lifestyle, that Google brand, the free food. Half jokingly, it's free food's great, Ali. You were there. Yeah. You you've had the free food. It was It's great to not have to cook or or order out, right? the free food, the the the support system, the team, right? I was too greedy. I wanted everything at once and that's not how it works.

So, you got two full-time team members now.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically,

in person remote, like what's the setup?

Remote, completely remote. So, the one right now, the one has who has been working with me for the past year or so, she actually joined, she actually quit Google first and then she took a leap of faith and joined me. Uh she's based in Guangjo, so remote. And the uh the newly hired one is based out of Taipei.

What are your goals for your business these days? If I could share sort of the vision is to actually build the lifestyle business that Daniel Priesty talked about and overs subscribe. So, as Oh, I didn't tell you yet. I I told Angus um I hired my second full-time hire.

Oh, nice. She's awesome. Wharton recent grad, super enthusiastic about education AI, and I could see her, you know, in the future joining the being part of the core team, growing the business with me and building that up because at Google, I'll be very honest, one of the things I really disliked was managing people. I'm not a great manager. I'm impatient. I am short-tempered. I shout at people. I've made people cry. I hold people to unrealistically high standards. They're like, "Jeff, we're not saving patients. You're not a doctor." I'm all those things. So, that's one of the reasons actually I also love Google. I don't want to manage people. But having smart and motivated people working alongside with you, I think is a great feeling. I'm sure you agree. Let's look at those two people here, right? Um, so I think that's my next goal, you know, is not to like sell maybe not to sell another product or not to make like YouTube videos. I I'll keep doing those for sure. I I'll keep writing my newsletter. I keep writing LinkedIn posts. But I think the goal for the next three or five years is build a team of people who are invested as invested in the mission as I am. There we go. As invested in the vision, mission as I am.

Yeah. To increase the world's productivity by 10%. That that's sort of the the mission that

Jeffy, thank you very much. This has been absolutely wonderful. Any final any final words of wisdom? Anything else you would like to share with people?

Oh, well, no. Well, no, people are going to think I'm just be riffing here, but I've been recommending PTYA for a lot of my friends who are trying to start YouTube. For example, Austin Bellsac. He's massive LinkedIn. But he just started YouTube recently and I was like, "Yo, Austin, if you want to throw money at the problem, Ptya, because it sort of it sort of cuts the trial error out of out of the way." Yeah.

Great. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for that plug. Love it.

No problem. Thanks, Allie. High five. So, as you just heard from Jeff, the part of YouTube Academy is very good. There's a link down below. But if you're interested in more free advice on how to start and grow a YouTube channel, there'd be a video right over here or something that talks about that. So, if you're interested in potentially mirroring mine or Jeff's journey and becoming rich through creating content on the internet, check out that video over there. So, thank you so much for watching. Thank you, Jeff, for being awesome. And I will catch you later. Bye-bye.