My Struggle to Balance Money & Fulfilment as a Creator | Ep 7

hey friends and welcome back to the Vlog We are continuing the Vlog experiment now I'm actually in Austin Texas right now in the wonderful Noah kagan's house in studio he has very kindly allowed us here to stay because he happens to not be around and he's also a Legend So filming in a studio now this has been a pretty solid week in Austin but with a few interesting bits so got here from New York this is stop number two on the world travel tour after doing all the Spotify stuff in New York and here we are in Austin and the intention was that Austin would be a batch filming week which is why Tintin is around because we were like you know come on it come on come on over to Austin and let's try and film 15 videos that week we've actually only filmed one video um because while I was kind of in transit from New York to here and like thinking about this I sort of had a bit of an existential crisis around the business where I sort of realized that you know when I looked at my calendar and I saw that I had like these 15 videos to film I had the sense of uh and I was like huh why do I have the sense of uh and I came across a video recording of Alan wats the philosopher where he poses the question what would you like to do if money were no object and I've been really thinking about that question a lot what would I like to do if money were No Object now if money were No Object would I try and film 15 videos in a week absolutely not if money were No Object I would still make YouTube videos and I still do podcasts but i' do them on my own terms i' do them when I felt like it I would do them based on topics I cared about rather than topics I thought would do well I wouldn't be wedded to an upload schedule I would just make videos when I felt like I had something to share now this is very lat on very different but it's somewhat different to how the business currently operates because we have an upload schedule we aim for two videos a week and a podcast every week and we have sponsors and we have deadlines and I realized that the freedom that I bought for myself by building a business and the freedom that I gained by and being able to like leave my day job as a doctor I was actually creating a prison for myself because of money I feel like I'm a cow and you know initially when you're were a YouTuber you're a cow and you produce milk when you feel like it and you're like cool I want to be consistent I'm going to try and produce milk every now and then I'm going to mix some metaphors here cuz there's like cow and then there's chicken and eggs and then the cow realizes that oh whenever I produce milk I make money and these sponsors want to pay me money for producing this milk for my UTS and then the cow's like you know what maybe if I hired someone there could be a more efficient method of milk production because like you know I'm I'm the cow and I'm producing milk but I'm making money for this milk and then so the cow hires someone the cow hires someone else and eventually the cow builds a farm around their milk production because every time they produce milk they make all this money and the image that I had in my mind was like I feel like this cow where I have built an industrial Factory around my milk production and I feel like I have connected these machines to my three Udders have have cow's got three UDS or is it more is it four four I feel like there's four I feel like there's been sort of these industrial arm machines that are connected to my Udders and even though I'm the cow and I'm the owner of the farm and the owner of the machine and I'm making all this money I'm like just sitting there and milking milking milking milking being or rather being milked by the industrial apparatus of machinery and systemization that I've got around this business and that is optically fun and I realized this is optically fun if you're optimizing for making loads of loads money then okay cool as a cow you volunteer to sit in this thing but once you've already made the money and once you've already got Financial Independence and like you know then why am I choosing to voluntarily imprison myself in this industrial Factory and be milked by the various people in my team as it were it's a bit weird right and so I kind of mentioned this to the team and Dan one of our team members said what if the cow could become a free range cow where it had the freedom to roam and just milk on its own terms and I was like yes that's it I want to be a free range cow I want to roam around my farm and my grounds and stuff and I don't want the IND industrial Factory to be connected to my utters unless I feel like it on a given day long long-winded way of saying that I realized that the pursuit of money and the pursuit of sponsorship revenue and the pursuit of like upload schedule cuz it grows the channel and stuff in the pursuit of all those things I'd created a business and a life for myself that no longer felt good and I'm all about Feelgood productivity link down below I'm also about feel creating a Feelgood business creating a business where you look forward to Mondays where you know the thing that you're doing is the thing you'd be doing anyway if you won the lottery but that Alan wats quote made me real realiz if I won the lottery if I didn't care about making money this is not the setup that I would choose for myself and then I thought well why don't I just do the thing that I would do like if money were No Object I would make YouTube videos on my own terms I would make them about topics that I want I'd still have a team because a team is nice to have and the team helps leverage my output but I wouldn't hold myself to an upload schedule and I wouldn't C certainly wouldn't do badge filming and so I thought what damn what if we just cancel all the videos for this week and so we just canceled all the videos for the week and I had a pretty chill week of trying to figure out what to do with my life and stuff and we kind of met met up with a bunch of creative friends we had a great lunch with gra Stefan went on a little hike with my friend Corey and Kevin and we met a couple of people we had dinner with Ethan chki kovski I'm never quite sure how you pronounce that but he's one of our students of our part-time YouTuber Academy he did a podcast with Ryan holiday that was sick we met him in his Bookshop his Bookshop is absolutely phenomenal the podcast was super cool great conversation did a podcast this morning with Cody Sanchez that was sick had dinner with Nat Eliason who's a you know longtime internet buddy and we've never met in person there was so many kind of you know I did a bunch podcasts and hung up with a bunch of creative friends and I feel like I'm creatively rejuvenated and revived or some like that but the point is we didn't film any videos I filmed one yesterday because I felt like it I had the energy and I came to the studio I was like you know what I feel like filming today therefore I'm going to film today I want to operate the business based on this idea of you know doing the things that I feel like cuz here's the thing right on one end of the spectrum the dumbass person is I make videos when I feel like it and that is the person who doesn't take YouTube seriously who has like three videos on their Channel and is complaining why why is their Channel not growing this is the person who does not treat YouTube like a business then you kind of go into the middle of it where you start to treat YouTube like a business which is In fairness the stuff we teach on our YouTuber Academy and that's like all right cool I'm going to build systems I'm going to stay consistent I'm going to post one or two videos every week I'm going to make sure I grow the audience I'm going to do competitor analysis I'm going to do idea generation sessions I'm going to maximize and optimize my titles and thumbnails I'm going to AB test the back catalog I'm going to do all of this because that will grow my YouTube channel but then on the other side of it you have the Jedi Master who's like I film videos whenever I feel like it and I feel like I've been in the middle ground of this for the last 6 and a half years where I have been optimizing the out of my cow milk production and now on the other side of it I I want the business to work for me rather than for me to work for the business I want to film videos when I feel like it because it's genuinely enjoyable and I love I love making videos and I love talking about stuff and reading books and sharing about them and stuff I want to write books when I feel like it like you know the next thing I'm interested in is like relationships or Fitness or I don't know personal development and I want to be able to write books about those on my own terms and not care about how they perform how much money they make and had a really good call with a with a friend Mika the other day and he said he he gave me a great great phrase the phrase he gave me was maximize profit within constraints how hard do you want to hustle for more money when you actually don't need more money um and so he and I had a zoom call like a couple of hours ago and he basically helped me get to this conclusion that I was already sort of thinking about anyway which is he was like so he knows a bunch of super rich people but the ones who are happiest are the ones who have created constraints around their work and so there's a guy he knows he's like Mega rich but he's like I I only work for for an hour a day and So within that hour a day I'm going to I'm going to maximize my profits but if if it requ if anything requires me to work more than an hour a day I'm just not going to do it and similarly a chat I had with James clear a few weeks ago I asked him like how do you how do you seem to have a viable Family Life while also the success of atomic habits he was like I just draw a box around with what I want my day to look like anything within that box I maximize profit anything outside of that box I say no to so he's like I only ever do one talk every month and therefore I'll just charge stupid prices for it I'm I'm not going to do a course I'm not going to do an app cuz all this stuff will take me away from my kids and that's how he's happy while also being successful at a certain point the St the goal stops being how do I maximize revenue and start starts being how do I maximize Revenue within the constraints I actually want for my life what if the constraint was I only film videos when I feel like it I only record podcasts when I feel like it I never have anything on my calendar unless I wanted to be on my calendar what if I just operated on those constraints we never have an an upload schedule great within those constraints can we build a profitable business hell yes do some things need to change change in terms of the way we do stuff yeah probably but I've decided that those are the constraints I want and we're going to maximize profit within those constraints so that has kind of been the the vibe behind this Austin trip initially it was meant to be a being milked from all angles and all sides by various members of my team in a way that would not be fun I might change my mind about this next week uh but for now that's a plan and that's been this trip to Austin so massive thank you to Noah Kagan for lending us or giving us this studio and this incredible house to to hang out in N of thank you to tinon and Bob that my team members who have been with me over the last like two weeks and have been hearing the brunt of all my existential crises uh massive shout out to all my other team members who are not here right now uh but who have been dealing with the uncertainty where it's like Ali's just decided he's going to go on strike and not going to he's going to disconnect his utds from the Machinery that we created around him and massive thanks to you guys the audience for allowing this life to happen where I actually can now do what I want and I just need to remind myself that I can in fact do what I want and not be wedded to trying to make more and more money because money's the root of all evil and all that fun stuff so anyway that brings us to the end of this Vlog as always do leave a comment down below like what you liked what you didn't like what's the deal and I will see you hopefully in the next one bye-bye ni cool

Channel: Ali Abdaal - Appendix

Views: 15,854

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali, Abdaal

Id: T6xzpUNnS1k

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2024