How to Actually Make Money Online in 2025 - Case Study

If you're interested in making money online—enough money to potentially even quit your job—then hopefully you'll get a lot of value from this video. I've been able to make around 20K profit per month, every month, for the past 6 months, which is almost double my full-time income as a software engineer. And I quit my job about four to five months before I hit that profitability.

That is Aman, a 23-year-old who watched one of my videos when he was a broke college student. He actually took action based on the advice I shared at the time and has now made enough money to quit his job and live and work from anywhere in the world, on his own terms. So at this point, I can pretty confidently say I don't expect to have to go back to a 9-5 job if I don't want to.

Now, when Aman messaged me that he was visiting Hong Kong, where I live, I wanted to have him here on the channel to tell his story. Because there are so many people who watch YouTube videos just like this one, but 99% of people never even take that first step; they never even get started. And of the 1% that take action and get started, 99% of those people don't stay consistent long enough to actually see results. Aman is that rare person who watched a video, actually followed the advice, took action, and did it consistently enough for a few years to finally see results.

Yeah, resistance is the problem here. Like I feel like a lot of people, they see things and they immediately come up with all these reasons why it wouldn't work for them. So in this video, we're going to break down exactly how he did it and what mindsets, strategies, and tools helped him along the journey from broke college student to now making over $20,000 a month from his online business. I can confidently say that one can make 10K a month online from almost nothing.

So the way this video is going to work is that we are going to hear Aman's story, and then I'm going to share my own perspectives. And by the way, if you are new to the channel and you're like, "Who the hell is this guy?" Hello, my name is Ali. I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller *Feelgood Productivity*. These days, my main gig is that I'm the co-founder of Sparkle Studios, where we are building a suite of productivity apps to help you save more time and have more fun on route to achieving your goals. And on the side, I've been making YouTube videos on this channel since 2017, documenting my journey from medical student to doctor to entrepreneur and sharing the books, ideas, strategies, and tools that can help us live more intentionally, be more productive, and build a life that we truly love. Anyway, let's dive into Aman's story and what we can learn from it if we are trying to make enough money online to be able to one day quit our day jobs.

Let's go back four years to May of 2020. Around this time, I was 19 years old. I was at home with my family, and I remember I was sitting in my living room when my brother, who's about a year younger than me, came to me and said, "Hey, there's this guy who's a doctor and a YouTuber, and he posted about how much money he made." They put it on the TV, actually, and my brother, me, and my parents actually sat down and we watched that video. And I don't know what about it was so incredible, but something in that moment was just like, "Holy, this guy—he's working as a doctor, which is amazing, but then also on the side he's making passive income from places like Skillshare and YouTube and AdSense." I remember all I wanted to do was either be like an engineer, doctor, lawyer, or politician. In my mind, I never thought, "Oh, I could like start a business and actually, you know, be financially free." "Financial Freedom" as a phrase has never even entered my vocabulary yet. So yeah, like watching that video was what actually made tangible that someone could actually do this. So that was revolutionary to me, and within that week, I launched this Skillshare class, actually. So it's pretty crazy.

So what's interesting about this is that 2.1 million people have seen that video that I made four years ago where I was documenting how much money I was making online. But having now met a lot of people who've seen that video in real life and at conferences and talks that I've given, the impression I get is most people will see a video like that and will immediately say, "Not me, not now. Maybe this thing worked for this person, but the timing is not quite right for me." There seem to be a lot of people who watch the stuff but don't take action on the stuff. And so I asked Aman, "What was it about him and his brother that made them actually take action?"

Yeah, resistance is the problem here. Like I feel like a lot of people, they see things and they immediately come up with all these reasons why it wouldn't work for them. Maybe something that was different about me at that time or even now is that I feel like I just have an absurd level of self-belief. There's basically anything that someone has done; I feel like with given enough time, effort, and work, I could replicate at least a little bit of that success. I don't know if it's delusional, but something—I think there was that like self-belief there. And I think also a lot of it was the fact that it was someone who, on paper, looked to be very similar to me. So it wasn't like Barack Obama was saying launch your business, right? It was someone who like looked like me on paper, with a very similar background and upbringing. It wasn't like you were born to a billionaire family or something like that. I think this is a really, really helpful mindset shift to have, and that anyone watching—if you're watching this right now—you can also have that mindset shift. The thing that Aman said, which is that no matter what, if there is something that someone has done, given enough time and effort and work, I could replicate at least a little bit of that success. And there's a concept in psychology called locus of control. Now there are some people with an internal locus of control, and some people with an external locus of control. And basically what locus of control means is that do you believe that the events in your life are controlled by you—i.e., an internal locus of control—or do you believe that your success or the events in your life or whatever are controlled by other people, external events, the environment, the government, whatever that thing might be? What we see from Aman's mindset is that it's very internal locus of control. It's very much like, "Hey, someone else has achieved that thing; if I just did loads of work, but loads of time and effort and work into it, I could probably get a little bit of the way there, and so I might as well just give it a go."

It's really hard for me to not do things when I feel like I should do them or what I want to do them. Like, for example, we can talk about this a bit later. I—I ended up quitting my job within 24 hours of making that decision. So within the same day of me realizing I could quit my full-time software engineering job, I want to do this, and ironing out a plan, I could not sit there and work for any longer. I had to quit within the day. I drafted my resignation letter and sent it the next day. So I guess I just naturally had kind of like almost like an impulsive bias for action where anytime I would discover something, think about doing something, decide on doing something, I would immediately start to take—take action—uh, almost to a detriment with like other areas of my life where it was like I—I tend to get distracted quite easily about like new opportunities and new ventures.

All right, so what we're seeing here is a strong bias to action. There are a lot of people who have a bias to analysis, a bias to planning. You know what, when I hear something, I need to analyze it a lot; I need to think about it; I need to make plans. But then there are some people that strongly bias towards action. You know what, I've heard something interesting; let me just try it out and see what happens. Now a lot of people talk about the theory of bias to action, and I've made tons of videos talking about why, when you're starting a business or a YouTube channel or anything, actually just getting started is the most important thing. But I think it's useful to hear what this actually looked like for Aman at the time.

I immediately sat down with my brother, and we sat on the couch and thought, "Okay, what can we make? What do we know that we can teach?" So we came up with a few ideas. The first one was standardized testing. We both did very well on our standardized tests, classic, right? Uh, so we thought, "Oh, we can make a Skillshare course about teaching the ACT," which is the exam in the US that all the high schoolers take. Uh, there was a couple other options; one was like a music class or something. We both had done music for piano and other instruments and stuff like that growing up. And finally, what we decided on doing was—or actually what I decided on doing was—making just like a random course on C, which is a programming language I was working on at the time in my internship. So the way I pulled this off was I didn't know anything about cameras, microphones, editing—nothing. So I just asked my friend who was doing like videography stuff in high school, "Can I borrow your microphone? I want to make a course." So he literally just lent it to me for three days. I spent like five to six hours drafting up a random idea for this course—like very basic programming concepts—filmed it within like an afternoon, edited, and launched it within like three days. So I literally just like—full—full—full story—just literally just like came up with this idea, edited it, launched it within a couple days, and just put it on the platform. Nice. This is exactly what bias to action looks like. And so the question I would profit to you, if you're watching here in the video, is to what extent do you have this bias to action in your own life?

See, the thing that most people would say in this context is, "Oh, Skillshare—that's a cool idea. I can make some courses on that, but let me spend some time doing some research." And then they'll forget about it for three weeks. And then three weeks later they're like, "Oh, you know what? I did a little bit of research, but oh, I don't have the right gear yet." And they wouldn't think to just message a friend and borrow a microphone. They'll think, "Oh, let me then research all the gear that I need to get. Oh, I don't quite have enough money. Eight months from now, when Christmas rolls around and I'll get my Christmas bonus, then maybe I'll be able to buy a microphone and a camera. And plus, you know, I'll have to check with my work. What if they find out that I have this tiny ass class on Skillshare that no one's ever going to see? What if my work finds out? Like, oh no, I—I'd have to write a letter to get permission." And there's all of this analysis that goes into it. Analysis is the enemy of action, especially when you are just getting started out.

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So have a pause of this video and have a think: This guy made this course four years ago; he made an online course; he put it online. How much money do you think it's made?

All right, cool. So you've got a number in your mind. I think it's really helpful if you have a number in your mind because there is a point that I want to make a little bit further around, so please do generate a number in your mind if you haven't yet. And now let's hear from Aman and how much has that course made you in the last four years?

Yeah, that course has passively generated $1,500, which is pretty sick for a few hours of work. But yeah, that was it. It's interesting because I don't know how to feel about that because part of me is like that's actually great—like I was able to make money online—but I guess if you compare that to how much I made through other areas, it's really not that much.

Now I suspect for most people watching this video, your guess as to how much money he would have made would have been higher than $1,500. He might have thought he made like five figures, you know, a few tens of thousands of dollars, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is the impression that I get when I do talks where there are aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience. People generally have a skewed perspective of how successful the first thing is going to be. You never really see stuff online from people who tried launching an online course and only made $1,000 in four years. We only tend to hear the stories of people who have already made it. For example, I've done a video talking about how I've made over $10 million from online courses. Iman Gadhi has made over $100 million from online courses. These are the sorts of people you hear from. You tend not to hear from the person who tried an online course initially and then like it kind of failed and they made like nothing, and then the next thing failed and they made like $20, and the next thing failed and they made like $300 over a five-year period. And the common mistake that people make here is thinking that the first thing you do has to be the last thing you do. And let's hear from Aman about that.

What was great about that Skillshare course was the fact that it was—it was just me taking action to do something. It's not—I think there's a common mistake that a lot of people make, thinking that the first thing you do has to be the last thing you do, right? It's like, "Oh, I don't know what my niche is, or I don't know how to—I don't know what—what idea to start my business. I need to look for an idea." I've heard this so much talking to friends and family about starting businesses. They're like, "I need to look for a good idea. Once I have an idea, then I'll start my business; I'll leave my job; I'll do that." But the fact that my first foray into entrepreneurship was a really frankly shitty C course on Skillshare that only made 1.5K, but that started into creating this entire world of entrepreneurship four years later—I don't know. I think the first thing you do does not—does not have to be the last thing you do. In fact, the first thing can just be your first step into the journey, and that's what creates the rest.

Nice. This is a really, really, really important point: The first thing you do does not have to be the last thing you do. And the way I think of it is that when you're starting a business, your first three businesses are probably going to fail, and that is a very good thing because it's sort of like riding a bike. In order to learn how to ride a bike, you don't just watch videos about how to ride a bike; you—you get on a bike, and then you try, and then you fall off a few times. You get on, you try again; you fall off; you get on; you try again; you fall off. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike, not by consuming knowledge or watching lectures and stuff about how to ride a bike, but by actually getting on the bike and doing it. And it's the same thing with business. If you're trying to make money on the internet and you have not yet failed at at least a few business ideas, you're probably worrying too much about analysis and getting it perfect rather than just taking action.

Another—another point on this is like you mentioned earlier, millions of people watch these videos, and you have six million subscribers, and I'm always shocked when I talk to someone who hasn't started a business who's like, "Oh, I love Ali Abdal." Like, that doesn't really compute in my head. How can you watch Ali Abdal's channel and not have already launched a YouTube channel or a business or taken action on something, right? But I think there's a lot of people out there who have just like passively consumed this content but haven't actually done what these people say they're doing, and I just don't get it, right? Why would you watch it and not do what they're saying? Like, if you want—if you want that life, so there's someone you want to be like is saying do X, Y, and Z, how—how could—how is it possible to watch that and not even like take a first step towards that direction? You know what I mean? And I—it's not even just you, like for anybody else, like Chris Williamson, Alex Hormozi, um, even H3H3 sometimes. I will like listen to something they say, and if something resonates with me, I'm like, "Yeah, that makes sense," just take action on it. And even if it has to be like a very basic, shitty version, right? Not the Skillshare class—I think Skillshare took it down even like last year or something because it just—I don't know—didn't fit some new standard or whatever. But that was just like—I just got quick feedback; I just tried something; launched it; made a couple tens of dollars a month passively through that, and that just inspired me to keep the flywheel going. And often it takes like five, ten, fifteen of these small random things before even one thing works out. And as—as you hear, it took me three to four years of trying like this before one thing actually worked out, and I was able to quit my job and make money online.

M—again, Aman has got it spot on. It often takes like five, ten, fifteen of these random little things before one thing works out. In my case, I had like eight or nine failed businesses that just—I didn't make any money from—before I finally built my first business when I was in medical school that actually succeeded and made some money. But all of those different failures taught me the ropes of like how to build a website, how to code, how to accept payments, how to like actually get customers for the first time. And I just wouldn't have gotten any of that if I just spent all day watching YouTube videos and trying to read books and trying to come up with the perfect idea.

All right, so now we move on to talking about the strange concept of difficulty as it relates to entrepreneurship. Even—even when I speak to Izzy, sometimes—I'm sure she won't mind me—mind me saying this—but she often feels that YouTube feels really hard for her; therefore, she's a bad YouTuber, and therefore she's not cut out for this. I'm like, "Bro, if you got like 700,000 subscribers with like 50 videos, I had 700 subscribers when I had—"

50 videos like, come on. And like, by all objective standards, he is a very, very good YouTuber. And yet, the fact that she feels it's hard makes her go to the conclusion that I suck. Mhm. And I think a lot of people have this kind of conception that like, if it's not effortless, if, if I'm not finding it easy from day one, clearly I must be a bad entrepreneur. I'm not cut out for this, you know, uh, I'm not like Elon Musk. I just don't have it in my DNA. There's all these things that come up at the, oh, at the prospect of friction. I don't know if you VIP with that at all, like that's something that you've seen with, with people that you know.

I think this is one reason why I find Alex Hero's content to be valuable. I think this is one benefit of it is the idea of like pain tolerance, just being able to deal with like the discomfort of something not working. And often, often times I come back to the fact that if it was so easy, then everybody would do it. And the fact that everybody can't do it is, it has to be hard. There has to be some level of discomfort. Um, so yeah, 100% I think, well, for the fact that Iz he has like 500 plus thousand subscribers, like that is unbelievable. Yeah, like I'm still working to get there four years later. So I would say yeah, I, I believe I think people have this expectation that something is going, like you said, something is going to be incredibly easy. They, they come into it, they're like, oh, they encounter one roadblock, and then it immediately falls, falls apart. Again, this is why I think that this law of Entrepreneurship, which is that your first three businesses are probably going to fail, and that is okay, is really helpful to know.

I think that's why content like this and podcasts with other business owners are also really interesting to listen to because they all talk about how hard it is. No one ever says, oh yeah, it was super easy, and I was making money from day one. They all talk about the difficulty of the process. And so if you recognize that the process is going to be difficult when you find it difficult, then you're not going to be surprised. But if you think the process is going to be easy and you find it difficult, which you will, then you'll be very surprised, and you're going to be a lot more likely to quit. All right, so now we move on to talking about the idea of friction, and Aman is going to give an example from his singing lessons. But I think there is a so much to be learned from this specific example.

I've been doing singing lessons for the past few years. I'm like, hey, I want to find a singing teacher. So Step One is like, Google singing teacher Raleigh North Carolina, to take that, to do that Google. I've been thinking about it for a week. Okay, I was thinking I should probably find a singing teacher first. Google's a week later, then scroll through, click on a few websites, ah, none of this looks that good. Done for two weeks. Then I remember, oh, I should probably find a singing teacher. I do the same Google again. I look, oh, I find some person, I fill a contact form, don't hear back for another few weeks. Okay, then I come back and think, oh, I should probably find a singing teacher. So it is actually, it is kind of surprising to me how, uh, non-real it is to really do anything, because often to get anything done you have to make five to 10 various attempts for it to happen, and then it actually works out.

So, for example, if in your mind you're like, okay, I should probably start a, I want to start a business, what is an easy way to start a business? Oh, I can start creating content online. Okay, I have to create my Channel. All right, I'm going to go on YouTube, I'm going to create a channel. All right, I have to film my video, or I have to make a script. Now I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it later. So I think there is, there is like real value into like that sequential step by step by step, and there's friction at every step of the way. So if you're someone who can just like see things through to completion, be like, I am going to complete this no matter what it takes, so, for example, if you're like, I have to start a channel, you can't just let yourself be satisfied with a trying to try. I'm like, I'm going to try to start a channel, I'm going to like make an account, I've done the work, I've done it. You have to do what's necessary to achieve the outcome rather than seeing the, the effort as enough.

So this is something I've been thinking about a lot since I had that conversation with Aman, that with anything you try and do, there is friction at every single step, and the trick is to be able to follow through and, and get through the friction. And this is where that mindset shift is really important to recognize, which is that as soon as most people encounter friction, they will just drop off the thing, they'll just stop doing the thing, be like, oh, this friction, I'm not going to bother anymore. But if you can be, as it relates to starting a business or anything you want to do, in that 1% of people that sees the friction, recognizes, okay, this is friction, this is normal, I just need to work through the friction, then you are far more likely to succeed at whatever you're doing. All right, so that was friction. Let's now talk about a really common excuse, which is the timing is not right right now.

So we, we do these like meetups for our YouTuber Academy, and inevitably, you know, like 100 people will show up. The majority of conversations I'll have with them, I'll be like, oh, so how's the channel going? And they'll say, oh, well, I haven't been consistent with it for, for the last few months, or all this sort of stuff. And they'll never say I have quit YouTube. They will always say life got in the way, it's not the right time right now. And that's, I think what is interesting about this, it's sort of like this thing that you and I know because we, we've consumed the Kool-Aid of the self-help books, kind of not yet, not right now is the thing that takes all the dreams to the Grave, because the timing is never right. We had talks in med school, uh, from, um, doctors with kids who are always like, look, if you want to have kids, literally the timing is never right. There will always be another exam you could take, another step of the wrong that you could climb. When you're a junior doctor, you'll think, oh, once I, once I get my exams out of the way. Once you got your exams out of the way, you'll think, ah, well, and I'm once I'm a senior registrar. Once you're a senior registrar, you'll think, when I'm a consultant. When you're a consultant, you think, well, I'm a junior consultant right now, and you know, once I find my feet. And eventually you become 48 and you can't have kids anymore. And they were like, a lot of the message was like, if you want to do something, recognize that the timing will never ever ever feel right, and you actually just need to do it right now. And I think that is the thing that, that's a thing that holds a lot of people back, thinking the timing is not right right now.

Honestly, I feel like the mind is the worst enemy. In fact, it's like, it's so easy to, I feel like people are great at convincing themselves to, to do, to like, basically not follow their own dreams. It's like, if you talk to anybody very often, you cannot convince someone to do something like that because they have so much of, of like arguments and baggage in their mind. Like, if let say someone says, oh, not right now, they can probably give you three to five reasons why now is not the right time. We all have this fallacy in different spheres of our life, like, oh, the timing is not quite right to do this thing. But it's worth recognizing, like the thing that I've always found helpful is to recognize that that is just procrastination in disguise. And for almost everything, the timing is never going to be quite right. And so what would happen if you just acted now, assuming that the timing is never going to be right?

So you make the Skillshare class, you're 19 years old, you make the Skillshare class, you release it, presumably nothing much happens. What happens next? What happens next is I just start taking action on all these different things I hear from you and other people. So, for example, I also just launch a blog and an email newsletter at the same time. So week one is Skillshare, week two is blog, so bottle domain, make a website, Nat a license, preaching Webflow. So I use Webflow, build that website, I read a bunch of books to start writing book reviews, I start a newsletter, Thoughtful Thursday, still around, weekly email newsletter, start posting that every single week. Great, that's done. Then after that, week three or four, I'm like, hey, you know, someone's saying to make a YouTube channel, maybe I should start this YouTube channel thing. So I also launched a YouTube channel around that time. It was July 2020. I think to myself, I actually have a document that I wrote in a car on a road trip, which is what are my, what can I teach, what can I talk about in YouTube channel? I still have that document available. Um, I was good at the saxophone in high school, so I was like, oh, I can make music videos with the saxophone. I was great at doing standardized tests, like I mentioned earlier, I can talk about that, I can talk about studying in University, I can like talk about my, my in college. So I just decided, hey, I like Apple, I'm a computer science student, I'm going to film a video called Why the MacBook Pro is perfect for computer science students. So that was my first video on my channel. It's still available right now, posted that July of 2020. It's terrible quality, the lighting is bad, the audio is terrible, I have no conviction when I speak whatsoever, but I decided to just do something, launch my channel. And I think you were also at the time talking about how the consistency is key, you just kind of have to stay. I think there was like an MKBHD Y Combinator interview, that's the one where he was like, if you just stick with anything for 10 years, it's hard to not be successful at it. So I just set the intention, I'm just going to post something every single week. So I just started making videos on studying computer science, Quizlet versus Anki, Todoist, things, three, just like budget, bad quality, productivity videos and studying in computer science while also running the newsletter, while also being a student.

So that was year one. I made 20 something videos, just consistently, and I had maybe 1,000 subscribers or 500, or actually, I think I only had like 100 subscribers in year one. So I just consistently posted every single week on something I could think of every single week. I think this is the harsh truth about trying to make money on the internet or trying to build any kind of business online, which is that if you are trying to go for an extraordinary outcome, if you're trying to go for something that most people do not have, you often have to put in more work than most people are willing to do. There is almost no one I have ever met who's made enough money to be able to quit their job who didn't have to sacrifice something to make that happen. And it's really just a case of what are the trade-offs you are willing to pay? What is the price that you are willing to pay? In my case, for example, I didn't need to sacrifice hanging out with friends and family, but I did need to sacrifice watching Netflix, watching TV. I set a rule for myself when I got to University, which is I'm never allowed to watch TV shows on my own. Instead of using that time watching Netflix, I would sacrifice that time and put it towards my YouTube channel or my business or writing my book. Everything has a price, and if you don't want to pay that price, that's totally okay, you don't have to, but it's worth recognizing that if you want the thing on the other end of that hard work, on the other end of that sacrifice, you kind of have to pay the price.

And also what I did was I was just consuming all of this self-improvement, productivity, self-development content. And I also think that is underrated. I think there's a lot of people out there who tell, who say it's all the same stuff, it's all the same idea. Why do you, why do you have to watch every single one of this person's videos, or why do you have to read every single one of this book? It's all the same thing, you already know what you have to do. But there's something about just hearing that message over and over and over and over and over again, of you just have to stay consistent, you have to keep doing this, you have to keep doing this, unless it's not going to work out. Um, and on that note, I would just implement all these little productivity hacks and techniques. So, for example, one thing that probably made 50% of my progress was Thomas Frank. He made this video about how he would get charged by this app called Beeminder if you didn't wake up on time. So I watched that about four to five years ago, and I decided to like make that automation, but for posting on YouTube. So Beeminder would charge me $100 if I didn't post every single week to my credit card, and I've already paid them over $1,000 because I did miss many weeks. But, and people thought I was crazy when I told them this, I was like, yeah, dude, like I get charged if I don't post on time. So that also was just like the fuel on the fire, just building these small things to like force myself to stay consistent in year one, in year two and year three. So yeah, year one posted 20, 30 videos, they were all right, they were not that good, and just like trying to come up with these things to motivate me to keep on going over time. That's a long time to grind at it for without seeing any results. That's very impressive. Like, I'm amazed. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done that.

Yeah, you know, you always talk about how I think it was like for you, what, like six to 12 months in when you had like a viral video or something? Yeah, about 10 months in I had a viral video. 10 months in. Yeah, I hear that. I'm like, I think you posted a lot more than me though, like video for me, video 91 was a viral. Yeah, yeah, I've only ever posted like 90 full L videos or something at this point. So for me, I think I was posting like less frequently, but over a longer period of time. I actually went 16 or 18 months before my first video hit 100K views. I think it was also just consuming other people's content where you're talking about. I think this is another thing I don't think you realize the impact that you have when you actually rehash the same ideas over and over and over and over again, cuz I see the comments being like, oh, just repetition. And I think, oh, like it's like a knife, a knife to my heart, where I'm like, am I just saying the same? I guess I am just saying the same. I mean, yeah, I guess, I guess yeah. And then I think I don't want to make this video because I'm just saying the same thing again, to saying the same thing again. But there is really something to be said about saying the same thing over and over and over again because that is the message you need to hear. Like someone like me, I needed to hear every single week from O'Doll's channel, just stay consistent, just stay consistent, just stay consistent. I'm reading this book on the side, just, just stay consistent. So there is something special to that. And like, even on my own channel, I often say the same thing every video, and I also get those comments which are like, bro, falling, yeah, bro falling off, bro saying the same thing, bro remakes the same video every month, like, but that is what you actually have to do.

There's a concept that Aman and I were discussing over lunch that day when, when he came over to hang out, which is that your YouTube feed reflects your priorities. Like the algorithms on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok, they're all pretty good at figuring out what we actually care about, what we actually spend our time on. And so a fun little exercise is to go on your YouTube homepage and see what's the sort of content that's coming up. Is it the sort of content that is aligned with the goals that you want to go for or not? You can actively start to pay more attention to content that is aligned with your goals. Like if you're here in this video, you probably want to build some kind of business, to probably make money on the internet. It would make sense for you to just consume loads more of that content compared to other things that you might be consuming in your spare time. Instead, again, if you want, you don't have to. I'm not trying to tell you what to do. Aman is not trying to tell you what to do. We're just sharing the stuff that has worked for us. For me, I deeply intrinsically cared about YouTube. It was, it was my dream, it was my passion, it was what I wanted to work on. I actually remember I was late to work multiple days because I was so engrossed in writing my script in the morning before work that I would show up late. I would take unnecessarily long lunch breaks to work on the channel. So much, told them, like I told you about the conversation with my boss, he was not happy about that. I would leave early to work on the channel, and I, I don't think it was a grind, but it also wasn't that much of a grind because I had that flame. It was like, oh, like I can't wait to get home, I can't wait to write a script. Like I would, I would watch my own videos with the zest, like the editors came back with the new cut, like I'm so excited to watch that. There were times where during my 9 to 5 job, but I actually, I would go into the meeting room, which is like a separate room, I would like lock the door, go on my laptop and watch a cut of my, cut of my recent video, cuz I was like, and I guess you're not supposed to do that, but it was something I was so intrinsically excited to watch. So I, I think I just had like a joy of kind of going back to like enjoying the journey, right? I think I, at the time, like I'm only now realizing, I think I really did love that because it was outside of my 9 to 5 job, so it was something that I intrinsically really did care about. So if it was something where like I, it was a massive slug every single part of the journey, if I hated it, it would not have worked out at all.

Yeah, that's, I think where, you know, when people ask me about my days where I was like, how, how did you do the thing while you were doing the day job and stuff, and it, it, it comes down to that nalism of like, find the thing that feels like play to you, but looks like work to others. To others, it would look like work to be grinding on a video edit or whatever at like, you know, 7:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m. after, after a shift at work. But for me at the time, and it sounds like for you as well, it was like I was delighted to do it. There were some days where I didn't feel like it, where, you know, that's where the Beeminder reminded, that's where like the consistency, it's like, okay, on those days where I really don't feel like doing it, I'm still going to do it. That's where I have to motivate myself with the dream, with the negative visualization, with all that kind of stuff. But for the most part, because I enjoyed the process, it didn't feel like work. Trying to find ways to sprinkle in play, power people into all the stuff, field of productivity, all that shtick, trying to make it fun, because that fun was where like the, the excitement, that excitement and motivation was, was, was generated by. I'm still chasing that flame, honestly, like I remember, yeah, there, there certain things where it's like

Something about toiling away on, like, a landing page at, like, 8:00 p.m. for a new product. I don't know what it is about that. I love that. Like, I remember when I launched my program in January of this year, I was in London for a couple of weeks, just for vacation, and I was in, you know, foils, like, in in London. I was like upstairs in their cafe, just toiling, just like grinding on that landing page, and I was so happy. I don't know why; it was just something about, like, it being the dark and just grinding and building out this page. Same with, like, watching cuts of my video, like working on a script.

Of course, there were times that I I wasn't intrinsically motivated. I think for me, I don't really enjoy filming videos. I much prefer this. This, for 100%, I think this is way more fun, and it it is a bit of a grind. Like, I have three video scripts—I have two video scripts done. I need to sit down; I have to build a setup; I have to sit down; I record it. It's a big ruling; it's my my throat hurts; it's a bit sweaty. Like, I don't like to do this. I have to keep motivating myself to keep going. But for the most part, I do intrinsically enjoy it. I I don't know if it's possible—maybe it is possible—but I don't know if it's really practical for for anyone to do anything long-term enough to make it work. Because again, like, this was four years of grind. If I hated every minute of it, there's no way I would have done that.

I really agree with this. I found it to be so true in the lives of most people that I know, including myself, which is that it's just impractical to do something for a really long time if you absolutely hate it; if you don't find a way to enjoy the process. This is kind of the whole concept of my book, Feel Good Productivity. You know, back when I was grinding on my YouTube channel and stuff, I was really focusing on how do I make this so enjoyable that I choose to keep working on it rather than forcing myself to keep working on it. Now I want to share a common objection here, so you know, I've heard people—again, when when I do talks and stuff—people come up to me and say, you know, "Well, someone will hear this advice of, 'Hey, you should do something you enjoy, because then you you're going to be more consistent with it; you're going to stick to it'," and some people will say, "But what if I have nothing in my life that I actually enjoy? I don't have any passions; I just like watching Netflix and playing video games and scrolling social media."

This is the thing: like, we all have hobbies, which are things that we do for fun, but in the capitalist world that we live in, there are some hobbies that let you double-dip in terms of you have fun doing the hobby, but you could also make money, or you could also become healthier, or you could also have more love in your life through relationships. For example, sitting on the couch and watching Netflix—sure, maybe that makes you happy—but if, for example, you go for a run, that can make you happy and also makes you healthier. What about playing board games? Playing board games makes you happy, but it can also improve your relationships because you generally want to have friends over to play board games. One of my hobbies back at university was doing hackathon side projects with my friends where we would go on a mini-holiday together and we would try and build an app within 24 hours that could make some money. That was a hobby that would make me happy because it was fun, but it also improved my relationships, 'cause now I'm hanging out with my friends, and it also had the potential to make money.

I'm not saying you have to spend all of your time doing productive things, but what I'm saying is that if you care about making money on the internet—which you probably do if you're watching at this point in the video—if you care about that and you have limited time, which we all do, then actually finding hobbies that double-dip, finding hobbies that are fun and also have the potential to make money, is going to make you way more likely to make money compared to having hobbies that are simply just fun. I think also there's there's something around—you won't know until you've tried it. Like, I wouldn't have thought that—like, I thought I wanted to be a like a singing guitar acoustic sort of music YouTuber, and that to me felt fun because I was like, "Oh, that feels fun"—but I wouldn't have thought that writing educational content and like coming up with frameworks and would actually be enjoyable, but it actually is, and it's like it's kind of fun.

I know a lot of people who count themselves out of the business game, or they'll hear a conversation like this, being like, "Oh, man, I get it. Okay, so the secret is to really enjoy the thing, but I don't I don't know what I'd really enjoy, and that's what's stopping them." They're they're almost like self-projecting ahead, knowing that like, okay, I mean, Ali and Aman are saying that you've got to grind at YouTube for like two to four years to see any results. Can I see myself right now, without having a YouTube channel, enjoying that process? Absolutely absolutely not. Like, who would who who would think that they might even enjoy that process? But when you start with it, when you when you're building the thing and you're seeing those initial bits of momentum and stuff, there's something about that that lights the flame that is so hard to predict ahead of time.

So when did things start working? Mhm. Okaying. So midway through year four, I I honestly define one of the biggest inflection points is realizing that I could spend money on knowledge, which I had not actually realized nor internalized for much at all other than buying books. So I'd been buying books for years; that was something I was reading in the background; I was reading many books. But there were two great unlocks I had in year four, which was actually about a year ago. The first one was realizing that I could read business books, which is something I just did not realize. I was like, "Wait, there are books on business that I could read," like, for example, all of Russell Brunson's books, Alex Hormozi's books, just these books on sales and marketing. I can read to just like level up my brain in the world of business. I didn't realize that was a thing. That was one great unlock. The second one was realizing that I could—buying—that I could buy coaching from people who have done the thing I've done and then learned their lessons and supercharge my progress. And I procrastinated for months on doing this. So the first thing I actually invested in was Captain Ched's YouTube coaching program. I've been watching his videos for years. It was the first time I spent money on anything, and because of that, it created like a level of fire and drive to actually perform. So I believe he said later on that I was probably the best client he ever had, of like over 100 people, because I showed up to—there were 24 calls, and I didn't miss a single one. Um, I was on a plane for two of them, so I bought Wi-Fi on the plane and joined Zoom using a VPN so I could actually show up to the call and not miss it. And I sent a video Loom beforehand of like all of my questions for him that I had before, so I listened to—if he said jump, I said how high. And that immediately supercharged everything because up until this point, I had a bunch of like raw potential; I had a bunch of like building blocks there; I had done a bunch of internships that gave me an unfair advantage that I could actually talk about on YouTube; I had the skills; I had a video editor, so I knew how to like edit videos and also had to manage a video editor; I had built a skill of writing, so I was like pretty decent at actually writing these scripts, and I could write them effectively. But he basically like put fuel on the flame when it came to making market research or making good video titles and thumbnails. He also taught me how to negotiate sponsors, and he told me, "Hey, you have something that you can teach, which is getting internships and getting jobs in software engineering is something you've done before, so you could probably charge people to actually make the transformation, and it is worth it; like, that knowledge is worth $20–$30,000 if I can get someone a $20,000 to $30,000 internship if they couldn't get before." So it was that mental unlock which made me decide to actually launch my program, which is a software engineering accelerator, um, to actually make that progress happen. So that was the greatest unlock; it was buying programs.

Some people might be hearing that and thinking, "Well, I can't believe you sign up for these courses; like, all course sellers are scammers." What's your take? What's your take on that? I think loss aversion is a big issue that a lot of people face, which is that they would—they're more worried about losing $5 than they would be excited about earning $100. People often fight that uh issue of loss aversion. Like, if you kind of like think about it in terms of time for money, right? People would—a lot of people would spend an hour taking the bus to avoid $20 for an Uber, but they wouldn't spend an hour doing like a freelance gig for $50, right? That doesn't make any sense; that's like an asymmetry there. So you kind of have to like like a fool yourself into like overcoming the like innate urge for loss aversion. Think about the fact that what is the risk reduction here, right? Like, there is a guarantee—almost every single program you'll ever pay for has a guarantee—because these most of these things are good and worth it, where it's like, "If you do this thing and if you do X number of things, or you can get a refund if it's not actually good." There are a bunch of reviews and testimonials, and even if the program only gets me a few thousand in a year, it will have paid for itself, and the chances are it's going to get me a lot more there. So you need to like kind of overcome that that that thought there. And finally, I think a lot of people don't really realize what knowledge they don't have that could actually get them—really help them out a lot. So what I would often think back to is, "Could I influence my 17-year-old self to do great things beyond what I already did?" One hundred percent. There's so much knowledge I've learned over the past few years in the world of careers and world of education, the world of health and wellness and and relationships. Everything—you've learned so much through this like living life for years and years and years. So how do you not realize that you can just pay someone else who's three to five years ahead of you just to download their knowledge and get yourself ahead?

Yeah, I love that. I think um there's something—this is something Alex Hormozi talks about as well—like, he's invested hundreds of thousands into these programs, and his goal is to be the best student they've ever had and to like eventually like outpace the instructor because of how much he's executing. My friend Nicholas Cole talks about how every single thing he's ever paid for has been ROI positive because he's made it ROI positive. He paid $68,000 for a mastermind, he gets—and he's like, "Okay, well, I need to make sure I get at least $136,000 out of this," and therefore he's showing up to the stuff; he's doing the extra work; he he is taking responsibility for making sure he gets the outcome from it. I think the mistake people make is that a they don't sign up to the stuff in the first place because of yeah this this sort of loss aversion. But, you know, case in point with our YouTuber Academy, like, you're one of the the the most students we have in our accelerator that when when you when you rock up to a call to ask me a question, you prepare a freaking document to be like, "Okay, this is all—here are all my problems; these are my goals; these are the things I think you're going to say; here's what I would say in response; so this is really my ultimate question." You prepare for those questions so much more than almost anyone else does, and you're getting value out of the program. And so a lot of it is like you get what you put in, um, and I think you and like other entrepreneur friends of mine, including myself, it's like, if I sign up for anything, of course I'm going to get the value out of it. I'm not—Mhm. If it's a trivial cost, for like, you know, $200 for whatever, it doesn't matter, but if I'm paying serious money for anything, like, it's it's guaranteed to be ROI positive because I will make it ROI positive. Absolutely.

So you've invested all this money into these educational programs; you've been grinding it out for four years—how did it go? How much money are you making now? So in June of this year, I joined another coaching program from Charlie Morgan—another guy—he basically taught me sales, conversion, fulfillment for my coaching program. Almost immediately, I went from barely making $5,000–$6,000 a month through like a handful of brand deals here and there, some random agency work on the side, you know, stuff like that, to becoming profitable. So I went from negative—$20,000 in the whole on the business for 2024—and immediately hit profitability in July. I hit $30,000; August also did $30,000; September did around $30,000; October did $22,000; but then November I had $55,000 in revenue; December it's around $36,000 right now, um, and expenses are like around $10,000 a month on average. So I've been able to make around $20,000 profit per month every month for the past six months, which is almost double my full-time income as a software engineer, and I quit my job about four to five months before I hit that profitability. How does it feel? Yeah, it feels good. I mean, it's nice. I think there's a lot of layers to it. First of all, I have a sense of confidence that I am not going to have to go back to the 9-to-5 job. If you—I actually made a video cataloging this journey, um, like a life update in May of 2024, where I mentioned how I need to make $4,000 a month profit, and then with that number, that was like my freedom number, if you used a Million Dollar Weekend term, where I won't have to go back to my 9-to-5 job, and I've blown that out of the park. So at this point, I can pretty confidently say I don't expect to have to go back to a 9-to-5 job if I don't want to. So that's nice; that I feel like I have that sense of security. It's also nice that I have freedom and flexibility. I think that was like—for people like us—I think that idea of freedom was like a huge deal to me. I I hated the fact that I had to ask my boss if I was allowed to take a PTO—a day off here and there. Like, last year when I was in London for a couple of weeks, I remember being so stressed out because I had to work one week remotely for my 9-to-5 job. I was worried about the US hour, so I had to stay up super late—at like 11:00 p.m. randomly—just to continue doing this job, and I just had no flexibility whatsoever. And now I can be here in Hong Kong; I can record this podcast with you; I just complet—I can do whatever I want, essentially, and I just feel like that is like infinitely valuable.

What advice would you give to someone who's maybe watched this far in the video—maybe they've—some watched some of my stuff; they've seen some of—you know, they've they've done the rounds of consuming content and maybe even read some of the books, but they've not yet taken the first step, taking action? What advice would you have for that person? There's a couple of things. First of all, I have benefited immensely from paying for educational resources. I think a lot of people will do this for university, so they'll pay for a $200,000 business degree at a college, which frankly doesn't teach you much, but they will balk at like a $1,000 program or like a $2,000 program which is teaching you business but is updated for like the content ecosystem and modern-day marketing, right? So if you have the capability, I would recommend it. It doesn't have to be any program I mentioned in this conversation, but anything like—if you find, "Hey, I want to learn this knowledge; I find it valuable; I really care about this"—I would recommend you invest in your own skills rather than like, you know, putting that money in the stock market at this point. Hormozi talks about this; it's pretty known, I feel like, if you're already in this podcast, but like, $1,000 in the S&P 500 is going to make you like $50 at the end of the year. Instead of that, you can like 10 to 100x that if you actually invest in your own knowledge and skills. So I benefited immensely by investing my money that I took from my 9-to-5 job and also my internships, investing in the knowledge and skills, and honestly, just keep doing it. It—like, this is a case study that it is possible; it is still possible to make a profitable YouTube channel from not much. It takes time; it is not easy; it takes effort, but just know that if you are someone who is willing to invest in your knowledge and skills, keep on going, stay consistent, and just keep grinding until it works out. It is possible. I can confidently say that one can make $10,000 a month online from almost nothing. So I would just say keep going; you can do this. All right, if you got to this point in the video and you enjoyed this conversation, then you're going to absolutely love this video, which is my honest advice for someone who wants passive income. Thank you so much for watching; have a lovely day, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.