9 Business Lessons - How I Made $1.6m in 30 Days - video Dailymotion

Arshian

9 Business Lessons - How I Made $1.6m in 30 Days  dailymotion.com/arshian   How to guarantee you regret your life:https : //dai.ly/x93180y   My honest advice to a perfectionist:https : //dai.ly/x9319i4  My honest advice to someone who’s doing too much : https://dai.ly/x9319ty  My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life : https://dai.ly/x931a78  My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom : https://dai.ly/x931ex2  If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm  The Best Book I've Ever Read about Making Money : https://dai.ly/x931j9y  How to Go From $0 to $10,000 a Month in 4 Steps : https://dai.ly/x931kb6  How to Make $10,000 Month Writing Online : https://dai.ly/x931l42  How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm  Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252  How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8  How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78

Transcript

00:00Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.

00:01So this business has just hit a milestone

00:03and actually we've made $1.6 million in the last 30 days,

00:06which is absolutely freaking insane.

00:08But in this episode of Backstage,

00:09which is the series where I take you behind the scenes

00:11of this YouTube channel and this business

00:12and share the learnings along the way

00:13so you can hopefully learn from it.

00:14I'm gonna be sharing seven life and business lessons

00:17that me and my team have learned

00:19over the last couple of months,

00:20building up a product to the point

00:21that we've been able to make $1.6 million

00:23in a 30 day period.

00:24So let's get started with lesson number one.

00:25Alex Formosy has a concept that he calls ignorance debt.

00:28And basically what he says is that

00:30at the start of a journey,

00:31when you're starting a business or doing anything,

00:33you spend a long time paying off ignorance debt,

00:36i.e. it's a debt that you are under

00:38because you're just ignorant about things

00:39and you don't have the relevant knowledge

00:41or the relevant skills.

00:41You will get outsized returns on the information.

00:44As soon as you have that knowledge,

00:45you'll be able to skyrocket straight to

00:4720, 50, 100, 500,000 a month.

00:49Now broadly, I think of myself as someone

00:51who's pretty good at learning stuff.

00:52I like to do things

00:53and then I like to learn things as well.

00:55And I've read so many business books over the years,

00:57but a few months ago when it came to launching

00:59this latest cohort of our part-time YouTuber Academy,

01:00I just didn't take the concept of sales and marketing

01:02very seriously at all.

01:03And this was a massive like hole in my knowledge.

01:06And it was only when I spoke,

01:06when I was chatting to my CEO coach, his name's Eric,

01:08I'll link stuff down below.

01:10He and I had a session in like Q3 of last year, 2022,

01:14where we were identifying areas

01:15in which I can level up as a leader.

01:18And he asked me, you know, what's, you know,

01:19when it comes to running a business,

01:20what's your weakest area?

01:21And I said, oh, probably sales and marketing.

01:22Cause I don't know,

01:23I literally know nothing about sales and marketing.

01:24But then a few weeks later, he kept on being like,

01:26hey, have you started reading those books yet?

01:28Have you started reading those books yet?

01:29And then I decided to read the books.

01:30I read dot com secrets by Russell Bronson

01:32and $100 million offers by Alex Formosy

01:35and copywriting secrets by Jim Edwards, someone like that.

01:38And those books, all three of them

01:39were completely mind blowing

01:40because they leveled me up from like here to like here

01:43in like sales and marketing in the space of like three books

01:46and collectively those three books have added so much value

01:49in top and bottom line to the business.

01:50And yeah, I really wish I'd paid off

01:52this ignorance debt sooner.

01:53And actually there's another lesson that I got again

01:54from our CEO coach, Eric, who said that essentially

01:57when you're trying something new,

01:59everything you need to know is already in someone's head

02:00and it's just your job to get that knowledge

02:02out of someone's head.

02:02And so the way you get this knowledge out of people's heads

02:04is by either reading their book or taking their course

02:06or listening to them on podcasts

02:07or even speaking to them face to face.

02:09And so one of my friends, Cliff Weitzman,

02:10who's the founder of a company called Speechify,

02:12I interviewed him on my deep dive podcast link over there

02:14or down there somewhere.

02:15One of the things he does is that when he wanted to get good

02:17at learning a particular skill,

02:18he would find the top 100 people who are doing that skill.

02:21A Google sheet of the hundred people

02:22who knew about the topic the most.

02:24He would send them cold emails

02:25and then I'd message every single one of them.

02:27And then he would literally hop on a Zoom call with them

02:28for a half an hour and then ask them about stuff.

02:30And at the end of the Zoom call, he would say,

02:32this is amazing.

02:32You know so much about performance marketing.

02:34Can I come say hello in person?

02:35And if they said yes, he would buy a ticket

02:36to go to their town on the weekend

02:38and then grab a coffee with them.

02:39And that was how he leveled up his skills.

02:40So one of the main lessons I'm taking away

02:43from all of this stuff is this importance of leveling up.

02:46Because when it comes to making money,

02:47really your ability to make money is directly proportional

02:50to the amount of skills that you have acquired over time.

02:52And you acquire skills through investing time,

02:55sometimes money, sometimes sweat, sometimes experience.

02:57And the more you level up those skills,

02:59the more your own, I guess, personal stock price

03:01or like money-making power increases.

03:04And what that results in is a feeling of financial confidence

03:09rather than necessarily financial security.

03:11Now, at this point, a lot of people have a question

03:12around like, how do you balance out kind of reading

03:15and doing the thing?

03:17And the way I think of it is like the foundation is action,

03:21but kind of reading and acquiring knowledge

03:25goes on top of the pillar

03:26of the foundation of taking action.

03:27So for example, let's say someone wanted

03:29to learn web design as a skill.

03:31What I would recommend is don't just try

03:32and pay off your ignorance debt

03:33by reading books about web design

03:34and watching videos in the first instance.

03:36Start by doing the thing.

03:38And as you're consistently making progress

03:40in doing the thing, then actually the stuff you read

03:43becomes way more applicable.

03:45Like for example, the book,

03:45$100 Million Offers by Alex Formosy

03:47was the main book that we followed step-by-step

03:49to craft the offer, which was what we put on our sales page

03:52for our YouTuber Academy,

03:53which generated this like insane amount of revenue

03:55in 30 days.

03:56And we literally followed a step-by-step method,

03:58but it's not that I read the book

04:00and then tried to sell something.

04:02It's like that foundation of action

04:04was then complimented by reading the thing.

04:06And I kind of wish I'd read the thing earlier,

04:08but I'm glad that I still had the bias to action

04:10of doing the thing.

04:11And so one mistake you can make is by not reading enough,

04:14by just being too quick to take action.

04:16But I suspect the problem that more people have

04:18is that they're too slow to take action

04:20and too quick to just jump to the books

04:22and the reading and all that stuff.

04:23By the way, if you're enjoying this video so far,

04:24then you might like to subscribe to Sunday Snippets.

04:27This is a weekly email that I send every Sunday,

04:29and I've been doing it since like 2018.

04:31For the last five years,

04:32I've been sending this weekly email and it has,

04:34it's quite short.

04:35It's just got a few thoughts,

04:36something I learned that week,

04:37and then a few links to like books or podcasts

04:39or articles and stuff that I've read.

04:40It's completely free.

04:41It will always be free.

04:42You can unsubscribe whenever you want.

04:43And often with like videos like this,

04:45where I've been thinking about these lessons

04:47for the last like two months,

04:48I've shared some of these lessons

04:49in a little bit more of an elaborate format

04:51in Sunday Snippets.

04:52So you can always kind of get more real time updates

04:53as to what I'm learning as I'm learning it,

04:55if you sign up to that.

04:56So let's talk about a specific lesson

04:57when it comes to the world of marketing.

04:58And there's a few,

05:00a few things that we really learned as a business

05:03and kind of me personally,

05:04that allowed us to get to this $1.6 million

05:06in 30 days point.

05:07And those three things are number one, offer creation,

05:09number two, copywriting, and number three, funnels.

05:12So let's start with offer creation.

05:14This is like terminology that I didn't even know

05:17what an offer was before I started reading this book

05:19and realising, oh my God, this is a thing.

05:21I wish I'd known this 10 years ago.

05:22An offer is basically the thing that you are selling.

05:25It's like, you're making an offer to someone.

05:26Hey, would you like to buy this thing?

05:29This is the offer that I'm giving you.

05:30I will give you X in return for Y.

05:32And Hormozy talks in the whole book

05:33about like how to craft a $100 million offer,

05:36where his vibe is you wanna create an offer

05:38that's so good that people feel really dumb saying no to it.

05:41And so that means you want the value of the offer

05:43to be way, way, way higher, 10 times higher,

05:46if not more ideally than the price of the offer.

05:48Let's say I were to offer you a, I don't know, iPhone 13,

05:51and I were to charge you $10 for it.

05:53That's an offer that you would feel dumb saying no to

05:55if you thought it was actually legit.

05:56If I literally said, hey, give me $10

05:57and I'll give you this fully working iPhone 13

05:59because you know the value of an iPhone 13.

06:00And so really when it comes to crafting an offer,

06:02the thing that we've learnt is that

06:04you've got to think about the offer first

06:05and like the delivery second,

06:07because fundamentally the thing that people are buying

06:09is the offer.

06:09So when it comes to our course,

06:11we were really thinking about what is the gold standard?

06:13What is the absolute best offer that we can make?

06:16And then once we have crafted that offer,

06:18let's then worry about

06:20how we're going to then fulfill that offer.

06:22And just that mental model shift of offer and delivery

06:25being like two different things was a massive level up

06:28in the way that we've been thinking about our business.

06:29Oh, and by the way, if you're wondering what I do

06:31with all the excess cash that this business generates,

06:33I invest it in index funds, mostly in the S&P 500.

06:36And the app that I personally use to invest

06:37is called Trading212,

06:38who are very kindly sponsoring this video.

06:40Now Trading212 is a fantastic app

06:41that allows you to invest in basically anything

06:44in a sensible fashion.

06:44And there's a couple of cool things about it.

06:46Firstly, it's got like a practice mode

06:47where you can invest and trade with fake money.

06:49So if you're new to the world of investing

06:50and you don't like the idea

06:51of like putting real money on the line,

06:53you can invest with fake money

06:54and then it actually tracks

06:55what the markets are doing in real time.

06:57So you can see how much money you would have made

06:59or you would have lost.

06:59But my favourite part about it

07:00is that it makes it super easy to invest in index funds.

07:03As you guys know,

07:04if you've seen any of my videos about money,

07:05I do not recommend trying to pick your own stocks,

07:07but instead investing in broad stock market index funds,

07:10which have really low fees.

07:11For example, something like the S&P 500,

07:13which basically gives you a small percentage ownership

07:15of the top 500 companies in the US.

07:17Now, if you're based in the UK in particular,

07:18you should definitely open up an ISA,

07:20an individual savings account.

07:21And this is a tax-free wrapper

07:23where every year you can put up to 20,000 pounds

07:25into one of these ISAs.

07:26And actually Trading212 have a new deal

07:28whereby if you open up an ISA

07:29and you put any amount of money into it,

07:31they will give you 1% cash back on that money.

07:33So you're literally making free money on top of the ISA.

07:35So if you're based in the UK

07:36and you've been putting off opening an ISA,

07:37then this is the perfect time to do it.

07:39Either way, whether you want to open an ISA

07:40or just a normal trading account,

07:41you can head over to trading212.com

07:43or you can download the app on the App Store.

07:45And if you use the coupon code Ali, A-L-I,

07:46when they ask you, that will give you a free share,

07:48which is worth up to 100 pounds.

07:50So you're literally getting free money.

07:52You might as well do it.

07:52So thank you so much Trading212 for sponsoring this video

07:54and let's get back to it.

07:55Okay, lesson number four that we've really learned

07:57over the last like few months

07:58is just really leaning into the idea of experimentation.

08:02Like for me, whenever I'm struggling to do something,

08:05I try and tell myself, it's fine, it's just an experiment.

08:08Let's just try it out and we'll see what happens.

08:10And similarly for this YouTuber Academy cohort,

08:12when it came to crafting the offer

08:13or crafting the sales page,

08:14initially I wasn't fully sold on this.

08:16Like we were like, oh, is it gonna be too salesy?

08:19Is it gonna be too scammy?

08:20I don't know.

08:21And then we were just like, you know what?

08:22It's an experiment.

08:23Let's just try it out.

08:23Let's follow what's in the book

08:24and let's just see what happens.

08:25We don't have to use it if we don't like it,

08:27but let's just do it and see what happens.

08:29And then it was really, really, really helpful.

08:30And the other thing I think experimentation does,

08:32which is super nice,

08:34is that it reduces the feeling of failure.

08:37Like when we think of scientists,

08:40experimentation is literally part of what they do.

08:41Like an experiment is like,

08:43hey, I'm testing a hypothesis or an idea

08:45and I'm gonna do an experiment

08:46and I'm gonna see if it succeeds or if it fails.

08:47And either way, I'm gonna learn something.

08:49It's gonna give me some data

08:50about whether my hypothesis was true or maybe not.

08:53And this is the thing that we started doing a lot

08:54in the business recently,

08:55especially over the last few months,

08:56just treating things as experiments.

08:58You know, adding this extra sales feature

09:01to our landing page to add extra revenue for the cohort.

09:04Is it gonna work?

09:05Who knows, but let's take an experimental approach.

09:07Let's try it out and see what happens.

09:10One of the ways to think about this is like,

09:11this is how Jeff Bezos thinks about this apparently.

09:14There's like two doors.

09:15There is door number one and then there's door number two.

09:18Now, if you go through door number one

09:20and you have the option of coming back,

09:23this is like that.

09:25And if you go through door number two

09:27and then the way back is blocked,

09:28that's like a different kind of decision.

09:30And essentially what he says is that you wanna recognize

09:32is the decision that you're trying to make reversible?

09:35If you go through that door,

09:36do you have the option of coming back from that door?

09:39Or is the decision you're making irreversible?

09:41And he basically argues

09:42that if you are making a reversible decision,

09:44then actually the speed of the decision-making

09:46is what's important.

09:47And I think that's where this idea

09:48of playful experimentation comes in.

09:50But if you're making an irreversible decision,

09:52at that point you should spend more time thinking about it.

09:54And so this is now a mental model that I try to apply

09:56to any time I find myself overthinking a decision.

09:59I ask myself, is it reversible or is it irreversible?

10:01And if it's reversible,

10:02I can choose to take an experimental approach to it.

10:04I can approach it with a spirit of play

10:06and I don't necessarily need to let the idea

10:08of failure hold me back.

10:09So lesson five is all about alchemy.

10:10Now this is a book by Rory Sutherland,

10:12who's like a marketing and advertising guru.

10:16I actually interviewed him on my podcast,

10:17but that'll be linked somewhere over here.

10:18And what Rory Sutherland talks about

10:19is how you can actually create value from nothing.

10:21For example, let's say you're a YouTuber

10:23and you wanna delegate your video editing.

10:24I could create an offer where I say,

10:25hey, I will teach you in a two-hour seminar

10:27how to delegate your video editing.

10:29That's fine.

10:30Or I could say, I will teach you a 30-minute seminar

10:33where I teach you how to delegate your video editing.

10:35And I will also give you a step-by-step checklist

10:39that you can follow.

10:40And I'll also give you the literal job description

10:43that I use to hire freelance editors.

10:45And I'll give you a bonus half an hour long training

10:48where I show you how to give feedback to your video editors

10:50so that by the end of it,

10:51you'll be able to outsource your video editing.

10:53And the perceived value of that offer is way higher

10:56than I will teach you how to delegate,

10:58how to outsource your video editing in two hours,

11:00even though it's the same product.

11:01And this is the thing that just blew my mind.

11:03It's kind of unfair.

11:04I think just recognising the alchemy,

11:06recognising that the perceived value of an offer

11:09is not necessarily the same

11:11as the actual value of the offer.

11:12And the packaging matters a great deal

11:14was a huge level up in my own business,

11:16kind of acumen and business knowledge.

11:18Alrighty, let's talk about lesson number six.

11:19Now, this is a concept

11:20that Naval Ravikant talks about a lot.

11:22And that is the concept of acquiring a specific knowledge.

11:25Number one, specific knowledge can't be trained.

11:27If you can be trained for it,

11:28if you can go to a class and learn specific knowledge,

11:30then somebody else can be trained for it too.

11:31And then we can mass produce and mass train people.

11:33So if that's the case, then you're extremely replaceable.

11:35Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your curiosity

11:37and building specific knowledge will feel like play to you.

11:40This is really good.

11:41This is sick.

11:42Like this is what I meant by specific knowledge.

11:43You know, this video is about

11:44how we got to 1.6 million in 30 days.

11:46I think it's because I've literally spent the last six years

11:48building specific knowledge

11:50in the realm of kind of being a part-time YouTuber,

11:53like how to build a YouTube channel

11:55while doing other stuff on the side

11:56without it taking over your life

11:57and growing it to insane levels.

11:58That is specific knowledge

12:00that you can't really be trained for.

12:02Secondly, it's knowledge that I gained

12:03through exploring my curiosity.

12:04Six years ago, when I started my YouTube channel,

12:06I never set out to make money

12:08setting a course for YouTubers or anything like that.

12:10I didn't even set out to make money at all.

12:11I just thought, you know what?

12:12I'm gonna make a video every week for two years

12:14and hopefully something good will happen

12:15and maybe some people will sign up

12:17to my medical admissions courses.

12:18And thirdly, acquiring the specific knowledge

12:20felt like play to me.

12:21People would see me, you know, when I was at med school

12:23or when I was working as a doctor,

12:24editing videos in the evenings and stuff

12:26and thinking, that sounds like a lot of work.

12:28How do you have the energy to do that and all this stuff?

12:30But to me, it genuinely didn't feel like work.

12:32It genuinely felt like play.

12:33And so the lesson I would take away here

12:34if you're watching this is that

12:35what is the specific knowledge that you can acquire

12:37or that you can build in whatever field you're in

12:39which would make you more valuable,

12:41which would increase your personal earning power,

12:43your personal stock price,

12:44so that further down the line,

12:45you can monetize it if you really want.

12:47And then finally, I wanna talk about PPP,

12:49not the Pakistan People's Party,

12:51but those three Ps are number one, patience,

12:54number two, progress, and number three, playfulness.

12:57So patience in the sense of

12:59this was not an overnight success.

13:00I've been trying to make money on the internet

13:02since the age of 13.

13:03I am now 28.

13:04So for the last 15 years,

13:05I've been literally trying to make money on the internet.

13:08And this is the first month that we have had.

13:10It's the first million dollar month

13:11or million pound month or whatever you wanna call it.

13:14The first 10,000 pound month was when I was 20.

13:18So seven years into the journey.

13:20And the first 1000 pound month was when I was like 18.

13:23100K month was when I was about 25 years old.

13:26And now I'm 28 and we've just done a million pound month.

13:28And that's like a really long journey.

13:30And so many people are like,

13:32you know, I get emails from people being like,

13:34bro, how do I make my, I'm 13 years old.

13:36How do I make money quick?

13:38And I'm like, man, you aren't gonna make money quick.

13:40This is not about quick.

13:41This is about the long road.

13:43This is about having patience, making progress

13:46and executing with playfulness.

13:48Brings us to number two, progress.

13:49You gotta make progress.

13:50Again, it comes to this thing of taking action,

13:52having a bias towards action

13:54and actually just taking small actions every single day

13:56to get you to a certain point.

13:57It's about consistency rather than intensity.

13:59As like James Clear would say,

14:00you know, putting in consistent effort

14:02over a very long period of time compounds massively

14:04compared to like intense bursts of effort

14:06when you feel like it,

14:07when you have the motivation to do it.

14:08And then finally,

14:09I think the thing that makes all of this sustainable

14:10is approaching all of this stuff

14:11with an attitude of playfulness.

14:13An attitude of, you know what?

14:14Let me just try things out and see what happens.

14:16Let me try and make this fun for myself

14:17because fundamentally,

14:19I've been trying to make money on the internet

14:21for 15 years now.

14:2215 years is a very long time

14:23and I still think I'm kind of young.

14:25You know, 28.

14:26Some people might say 28 is a kind of old,

14:27but like, whatever.

14:28I've still got basically my whole life ahead of me.

14:30I've been trying to make money on the internet

14:31for like literally more than half of my life.

14:33But the reason it's been sustainable

14:35is because I approach it broadly

14:37with an attitude of playfulness.

14:38Whatever you're working on,

14:39whether it's your studies or your work

14:41or your side hustle or anything in life,

14:43I think approaching it

14:44with more of an attitude of playfulness

14:46is just the thing that reduces the amount of stress,

14:48makes it more fun

14:49and makes it way more sustainable in the long run.

14:50All right, so if you enjoyed this video,

14:51you might like to check out this video over here,

14:53which is what I would do

14:54if I started a YouTube channel today

14:56because I learned completely from scratch

14:57and that will give you like a step-by-step playbook.

14:58So hopefully you find that helpful.

14:59Thank you so much for watching.

15:00Catch you later.

15:01I'll see you in the next video.

9 Business Lessons - How I Made $1.6m in 30 Days

Category

Transcript

Recommended