Ali Abdal is a millionaire creator. But he could have been a full-time doctor. He could have built a startup. Instead, he chose YouTube and turned content into cash. But being a rich creator and being a rich founder or even a rich doctor, they all have very different trade-offs. This is the story of why he took the creator path and what it cost. About once a quarter, I'll have like a bit of an existential crisis where I'm like, why am I still doing this? Every month, we're starting from zero. And why he still does it? If I had 100 million in the bank, what would I do? Well, I'd still make YouTube videos. >> So, to set the stage, as you may already know, Alli was on course to become a full-time doctor. But he found his way into a course business, helping students prepare for and succeed in all of their exams. To promote that business, he started making content. And then it spiraled. At the start, it didn't feel like work. It felt like on the evenings, I was like making this thing. I was getting like, "Oh, I've got one new subscriber today." And I'd be refreshing the YouTube analytics and stuff. And then I'd be learning how to edit in like Premiere Pro and then switching to Final Cut and then trying all these like After Effects plugins and stuff to make the videos look a bit shinier and then using like Adobe Spark, which is now called Adobe Express to make the thumbnails. It was so cool. Then I found I discovered like batch filming and I could interview my friends kind of like this kind of model where I would get like my friends to answer the same series of 20 questions about getting into med school and then splice them up into 20 different videos and I was like, "Oh my god, this is incredible." And then after about 52 videos, I got 1,000 subscribers. I was like, "Oh my god, 1,000 subscribers. 1,000 people." And then after about 85 videos, I got like 5,000 subscribers and that was when the channel got monetized. And then I was like making a few dollars each day. And I was like, man, wow, YouTube is funding my coffee. And then YouTube is funding a takeaway. And then, wo, I could have I could eat dinner out every day for the rest of my life. >> Was that money exciting though? Cuz you were already earning like decent revenue off this other business at the same time. >> Yeah. But I had to work for it. >> Yeah. >> It's like I I So I think there's like the moment where you make your first dollar on the internet, that's like changes your life. >> And then when you make money independently, that changes your life. But then when you make money in a way that's decoupled from your time that completely makes that sort of breaks the brain. >> And so it was like I was making these videos anyway and I could then see that like that video that I made 3 months ago has generated $111 in revenue. Wow. And I could see the the graph going up and I'd be watching YouTubers like Graeme Stefen to he he's making like $5,000 a day. I'm like holy that's like a monthly salary of a doctor and he's making it in a single day from his back catalog of videos. That's so cool. Yeah. And so it was it felt like building these like little assets um that were all just like contributing like little trickles to the thing which was way more fun than going and teaching a classroom course um to help people get into school. >> Did you ever play around with like a cuz it's almost like affiliate marketing. Did you ever get into like you know cuz you were you built websites and stuff. Did you ever play with that stuff as well? >> Yeah, I played with it in my that was one of my uh moneymaking schemes back in the day. Uh that didn't work out. But then actually a big chunk of the revenue from the early days of the channel came from affiliate marketing. I found this like mechanical keyboard that I really liked, a colorful one that was on my desk at all times, and I emailed them being like, "Hey, can we do an affiliate deal?" And we drove over a million euros in sales for that keyboard. >> Wow. >> And I and I we got like a 15%. So I made like 150 grand >> from like plugging this bloody mechanical keyboard, which was again completely mindboggling because a full-time consultant doctor in the UK does not even earn 150 grand in a year >> and I was doing that passively through making a video about how I type really fast about keyboard mental. Speaking of money, he also had another YouTube income stream that you definitely recognize. >> So, suddenly, Skillshare was making 25K a month. I was like, "Okay, well, I might just keep might as well just keep going with this." And it just kept on every month we would just launch a new Skillshare class. Skillshare would sponsor our videos. We promote the Skillshare class. And at its peak, Skillshare was making us $83,000 a month, which is a million a year. We had like a million ARR basically from Skillshare. And I knew this couldn't last because I was like, "Too good to be true." >> It lasted for about 2 years. And but I knew as soon as this started to like become 80% of our our revenue, I was like, "Okay, this this needs to change and I need to sell my own thing." >> And so in 2020, that's when I launched my YouTuber, part-time YouTuber Academy course. >> That was kind of accidental. I never really made any content about how to do YouTube. >> Um, at the time, I was helped like by a lot of imposter syndrome. I only had like 1.2 million subscribers at the time, and there were all sorts of YouTubers that way bigger. Obviously, that course, Parttime YouTuber Academy, has been responsible for probably like not quite 10 million, but just shy of 10 million in revenue overall. Wow. >> Which is pretty mental. >> As a creator, Alli had a different trajectory than a lot of founders. Unlike those often fruitless grinds while growing the business and getting it going, the early days for Ali kept providing new opportunities for more revenue. But then came a wall. >> I think in 2023 we did like 6 point something in US dollars. Uh but it sort of hovered around that amount. >> And is that for lack of trying to grow it? Why is that that that's plateaued? Do you think >> it's not for lack of trying? We tried tried lots of things. Um, what I've realized over time, uh, and this could just be a cope, but what I've realized over time is that, um, there kind of is a natural plateau >> to any kind of personal brand-based business. Yes, a subscriber count was going up, but the percentage of people that are qualified and warm and like sufficiently ready to buy something, that number actually goes down over time unless you're consistently replenishing it with like new leads and also nurturing them and this, that, and the other. And so because we also never had any recurring revenue, it's like every month we're starting from zero and we're having to acquire new customers for a one-off payment. >> But money isn't the only thing that can plateau as a creator. There's another biggie. Energy. The hamster wheel of content creation. When did that feeling start to kick in for you around YouTube? >> Four years into the process and four years ago. >> Um about once a quarter I'll have like a bit of an existential crisis where I'm like, why am I still doing this? Um am I doing it for the money? Am I doing it for the clout? Am I doing it for the fame? I'm like why why am I really doing this thing and I'll always come back to sort of the reason for doing it is there's basically three three reasons for doing anything right like in business is make money have fun and help people. >> Yep. >> Usually in that order. >> First people make money and then they want to make money and have fun and then once they've made the money and had the fun then then they start caring about like the good feels. >> Yeah. You know helping people the mission the impact and all that all that kind of stuff. So it's always kind of multiffactorial. And so for me it's like if I had all the money in the world, I actually still would make YouTube videos. I would just do it on my own terms. I would do it without an upload schedule. >> And so this has been the tension in my life for the last like four years of like making stuff when I feel like it versus doing stuff consistently. >> Cuz if you only go to the gym when you feel like it, you probably wouldn't be in very good shape, right? >> Sure. >> Um if you only hang out with your wife when you feel like it, you probably won't have a very good marriage. Like there there is something to be said for like a cadence of consistency. If you you know all these professional writers are like oh you know I like hate writing but I just rock up in my desk every morning and at 9:00 am and I I feel good when it's done. >> Yeah. So, I love having made a video and I love the process of coming up with the frameworks, >> but the process of actually talking to an inanimate object, the camera, and trying to deliver stuff with energy and like imagining someone on the other end and that's as you know is can be a little bit like how do you balance enjoying what you're doing, making YouTube channels, YouTube content and and still enjoying it and actually making money from it like because presumably you could just go off and make videos about surfing if you felt like if that was your passion this week. Um, but it probably wouldn't contribute particularly well to the audience you've built for yourself. >> Yes. Um, yeah, this is the constant challenge. Um, I think a big part of what makes it like it it's it's much easier for us to do compared to other YouTubers that I know because we have products that we sell. So, we've got my book, we've got the apps. Those don't really make any money in the in the short term because we make like I don't know $1 to $2 per book sale. So, you have to sell millions of copies of a book for for for that to be interesting, which we haven't gotten to yet. But, we sell online courses. So, we have my $1,000 course on how to do YouTube. We've got a $300 course on how to be more productive. We've just launched a $1,000 >> challenge, six week challenge thing on how to make your first thousands on the internet. Y >> we've got like 1,400 people in that. We did like 1.1 million in sales from that with like 10 days worth of launch period. >> Yeah. Wow. >> So it's like that allows me to basically make videos that I want to make and as long as there's enough of a call to action or enough lead generation into like our email lists or whatever. But then again, I have I have YouTuber friends who are especially in entertainment where it's really hard to sell anything. Like the way you monetize as an entertainment YouTuber is primarily through brand deals >> and that means you're constantly chasing views >> because you're only as good as your your average view kind of the last five videos and I know YouTubers who are constantly stressed being like, "Oh man, the last video got 3 million views." The next one needs to be even bigger than that and you're on this you're on the content hamster wheel, but you're also on the chasing views hamster wheel. Yeah. >> And you have to go bigger and bigger and bigger each time. >> That sounds way more stressful. >> Which is way more stressful. Whereas an artist >> B2B man every time we boring businesses are so much better >> or B2 want to be as like >> yeah Ironically Alli doesn't really love the business side of things which is also the main reason why being a content creator works for him rather than being like a regular founder. It allows him to have the ultimate lifestyle business based on his lifestyle. Of course our setup is something that a mentor of mine Daniel Priestley uh kind of introduced us to a few years ago. Uh the way he describes it was is that if you want a lifestyle uh a lifestyle boutique, he defines as sort of under 12 employees. He was his whole stick is that as soon as you get to the 13th, everything starts to break. What he encouraged us to do is really decide, do you want to be a lifestyle business or do you want to be a performance business? And whenever I've had that conversation, I've always been like the thing I really want is just a lifestyle business. I don't really I I care about being able to do stuff that I want to do. >> Um and my guiding northstar has always been if I had 100 million in the bank, what would I spend my time actually doing? >> Mhm. And I want my actual calendar to be as close to that 100 million vision as as humanly possible. And so if I had 100 million in the bank, what would I do? Well, I'd still make YouTube videos because it's fun and I enjoy teaching. I still write books because it's fun and it's cool and I'd still make apps and we're doing a few apps and we can talk about that. But I wouldn't do courses and I wouldn't do sponsorships. >> Okay. >> So courses and sponsorships are like the revenue generating activities that I'm primarily doing for the money. >> Super high margin, right? >> Yeah. Really high margin. It's good vibes. Yeah. So, it's like in in that category of things I do for the money, I try and optimize my hourly rate uh and the margins and just make it as fun as possible. >> Even if he'd still make videos with 100 mil in the bank, the prospect of having no choice but to do so is still taxing. Yes, he's found a great balance already, but not enough to keep him completely out of the founder game. So, what was it about 2 years ago? Uh people started I started hearing like on the grapevine this whole thing around you know the stuff in the startup world like first- time founders focus on product second time founders focus on distribution. >> Yep. >> And you know creators with audiences have lots of distribution but they suck at making products and they don't want to make products because if you make product then that takes the eye off the ball um of the content. Mr. Beast often says that like you know creators will make the mistake of trying to build a physical product business or something else and then their golden goose which is their YouTube channel or their social media following will sort of crumble because it hasn't got the focus. >> Yeah. >> I think a lot of people sort of somewhat independently arrived at the conclusion that okay SAS is amazing because you've got MR uh you've got exit value creators are amazing because they've got distribution you what if creators could partner with a product person who builds the thing creators get the initial distribution and then you get productled growth to grow the thing. >> Yep. So conveniently around this time about a year ago, a friend of mine called Pablo um had just exited his second company and he and I were really good friends. He's also based in London. Um you should have pod. He's great. Um and I was saying, "Hey Pablo, you've made you've built and sold these two companies. Do you want to do like consumer productivity apps and like I have all these app ideas for apps I want to exist in the world and like you could help make them and we could just partner. We can make this happen." >> And initially he was like, "Oh, you know, maybe I want to be a YouTuber." And so he tried being a YouTuber and then realized he hates it. So then he was like, "You know what? I just want to build stuff." So we partnered up to build some apps and we we thought like longterm let's build this sort of app studio where me and now my wife Izzy who's also a YouTuber we can be like the ideation and initial distribution of the products and then Pablo and his teams can build the thing. So about 12 months ago like middle of 2025 we launched an app called voice pal which is a sort of AI sorry 2024 we launched a conversational writing app. It's like you speak into it, it asks you follow-up questions and then whenever you want you can it can export a first draft into notion or Google Docs or Tragy T or whatever you want it to do. >> Um, and so >> that took like a few a couple of months to build and get to a point where it was released and then we released it and immediately it sort of got to 10K MR just through my distribution and then over time it's just sort of been growing by >> 4 to 5,000 MR per month for over the last 12 months. So now it's on just under 70,000 a month in revenue which is really cool. And the even cooler thing is last time we surveyed the audience only half of them knew who I was. >> So of our paid subscribers, half of them have no idea who I absolutely fantastic because it means that people are finding about the app through word of mouth and stuff. >> So there you have it. Being a content creator and a founder both have personal freedom attached to them. >> You can be your own boss, build your own team around you, but there are trade-offs to each and the grass isn't always greener. It's it's a case of optimizing for what you want. If it's money, maybe stick to just regular business. If it's for lifestyle, could be worth buying a camera if that's what you're into. And if you want a more detailed look at Alli's finances and his perspective on wealth and optimizing for happiness, you can hear our full episode with him by clicking