[00:01] to how much you can earn. People love talking about their problems. All you can find a way to make you're winning. Can you list some easy boring people start? The energy I get from this question is, "Ladies and gentlemen,
[00:14] welcome back to the channel and to Freedom Fridays, our new series where each weekish, I try and share strategies, books, ideas, tools to help you get to financial freedom so that you can live life on your own terms." Now,
[00:26] we've done a handful of episodes which you guys have very kindly responded to. And in those episodes, I asked you to ask me some questions. And so, what the comments from the last few episodes of Freedom Fridays. And in this video,
[00:39] most commonly asked questions. So, if you're interested in potentially working there'll be at least something in this video that could be helpful. Okay, so we were all basically asking variants of how to actually get started. So, you
[00:52] a way to make money? I'm seeing my colleagues being laid off and I am worried. How do I even begin if I feel like I have no skills and no road map. Nice. Thank you. Ah, we've got some food. Okay, nice. Thank you very much.
[01:04] All right, we've got some food. Going to be doing a little this kind of vibe you'll I hope you'll forgive me. So, there's a few different ways of thinking about this. Um, the key thing to remember is that if we just sort of zoom
[01:17] out a little bit, the way you become financially free is that you make some money and you make more than you spend and then you invest the rest into savings into passive income assets like stocks and shares. Now, what we're
[01:30] essentially trying to do is, you know, you probably don't want to drastically don't want to live like a monk, right? There's a limit to how much you can save, i.e. it's just as much money is coming in. Uh and so we really want to
[01:42] equation on like how do we just drastically improve our earning this is that you currently have a market rate. Your employer currently pays you to do something assuming you have a job.
[01:54] Um if you're a student it's a different situation but I'm you know let's start your employer is paying you to do something. Therefore you have a market rate. The only reason your employer is paying you is because you either
[02:07] directly or indirectly are making them more money than it costs for them to fairly quickly if you haven't already. So, you are adding value to the market your employer. So, you already do have skills. I would call these professional
[02:23] set that your employer is paying you for. Now, what you want to be thinking is like how can I add more value? Like for example, let's say you're a trader that if you make Goldman Sachs way more money, they'll give you way more money
[02:35] become financially free. Let's say you have stock options at a tech startup and you think it's going to go well, you probably shouldn't try and start your own business because you're on a high earning career trajectory that's going
[02:48] But if you're not in a high earning career trajectory to get you to start thinking about what problems can you solve that other people would pay for. In your case, your employer is already paying you to solve a certain
[03:00] expensive problems or more or more painful problems for your employer or employer? This is sort of like the professional skills kind of bucket. And professional skills that you already have. But then the other thing to keep
[03:14] in mind is that skills can be learned essentially. What is a business? A business is three things. Person, problem, and solution. There is a person problem that's quite painful for them. And then you as the business offer a
[03:27] not that hard to learn a lot of these skills. You know, there are a lot of questions feeling like they don't have any skills. Firstly, the I don't have because, for example, you could mow lawns, right? You could be a cleaner.
[03:41] probably know how to drive, right? So, you could drive for Uber. You actually skills have a certain hourly rate attached to them. Like mowing someone's than 20 quid an hour. Driving for Uber, you're probably not making more than 50
[03:53] quid an hour. So, what you're basically looking for is like, what skills do I have or what skills can I learn that have a higher market rate than mowing driving for Uber. These days, it's super easy to learn skills because you can
[04:05] And so, the challenge then doesn't become, oh my god, I don't have any skills. What do I do? The challenge becomes, okay, I don't have any skills. becomes, okay, I don't have any skills. So, what skills can I learn that will
[04:17] help someone with money solve a problem that they think is very painful? Now, as money is to help someone else make money. Because if you were to wave a magic wand and you were able to make me
[04:30] quite a lot of money. I'd pay you at least 80 grand or at least or maybe even 90 grand if you were able to make me 100. So, if in doubt, you can start thinking, okay, what skill can I learn that can help a business make money?
[04:45] want to pay you some percentage of that as compensation for your time. There are a lot of these skills increasingly, you know, if you were to learn the skill of how to automate stuff using AI, loads of businesses are super inefficient. They
[04:57] waste a lot of time doing stuff without AI. You could potentially come in with these sorts of businesses because there's a massive trend, a massive rise could learn the skill of AI automation and then you could find local businesses
[05:10] pay for that skill because you are saving them time and therefore making learn the skill of conversion rate optimization. What is that? That's when running AB tests and data analytics and stuff and you help someone's website
[05:25] rate than the website was previously. We we have a course at Parttime YouTube and $2 million a year in revenue USD. So if someone were to have the skills to let's say you were able to double our conversion rate through a combination of
[05:41] copywriting, AB testing, and data analytics. Suddenly, you've added a my business and therefore I'm very likely to pay you quite a lot of money for that. That's a skill set that you can learn. No one comes out of the womb
[05:53] analytics, knowing how Google Analytics works, knowing knowing how to do AB optimization. But these are skills that literally anyone in the world with an they're all freely available on YouTube and these days you can just ask chat
[06:06] GPT. So really the mental mindset shift here is away from what business should I start and more like okay what problem can I help people solve and ideally those are people who have money and as a hack if those people are businesses it's
[06:21] other categories of thing is that people will pay to solve problems in their health um and people will pay to solve problems in their relationships. But the other hack is that you really want to be focusing on who can you help who
[06:34] actually has the willingness and the ability to pay for the thing. That's business. I think when it comes to this sort of stuff, what a lot of people want is like a business in a box that hey, it's super easy. You're a nobody with no
[06:48] life and no skills. Just start XY Z business. And it's like that's just not how it works. It's like that is looking for someone to tell you what to do. and looking for someone to tell you what to do is uh thinking like an employee
[07:00] entrepreneur or thinking like a student where in school you're told exactly what to do. When it comes to starting a business, there is no plan that's like, situation, just follow these exact steps and you can just like copy and paste a
[07:13] The the closest thing that comes to that is like start an AI automation agency, start video editing for people who need video editing, run an ads agency, like, but even those require quite a lot of skills. And ultimately what it is is
[07:27] helps a business make more money. So, we want to start thinking in those ways start. Now, if you're watching this video, you probably care about financial figure out ways to make a lot of money and then invest your profits into
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[08:47] check out the card. So, thank you trading212 for sponsoring this video and choice for many, many years. Let's get back to the video. All right, cool. bunch of different people basically asking how do I find my first customer
[09:01] and prove that my idea works. There is the rule of 30 and there is the rule of 150. The rule of 30 says in order to validate a business idea, you have to speak to 30 customers or 30 potential people. All right, let's say I decide,
[09:15] you know what, I know how to use a camera and I I'm pretty sure I could following Peter McKinnon's YouTube channel and I like the idea of learning videography. Okay, cool. So that's like my skill that I'm going to learn. And
[09:29] my skill that I'm going to learn. And let me see who are people that I know or videography and ideally would pay lots of money for the skill of videography. Well then I would think okay I mean I would I mean if if you don't know the
[09:43] like hey Chad PT I'm thinking of building a business helping uh sort of based on the skill of videography. Who should I you know what actually let's going to talk to chat GPT because these days with Claude and Chat GPT, like you
[09:57] still helpful to have a business coach, but like there's a lot you can do with I'm going to screen record and I'm going to ask Claude cuz I really like Claude personally. Um, but all of the LLMs will basically give you sensible things that
[10:10] you could Oops. say. Okay. Hey Claude, so I'd like to start my first business. so I'd like to start my first business. Um, and I'm just not really sure how to customers. Um, I think I want to start a business in the field of videography
[10:24] because I like the idea of learning videography. I um, yeah, I have some old you know what? I don't even have a camera, but I do have my phone. So, I'd based business. Can you give me some ideas about how I might find my first
[10:39] business with your phone is totally doable. Many successful videographers Start with your immediate network. Think about who might need video content. real estate agents, fitness trainers, or people planning events like weddings or
[10:51] initially, these projects help you build a portfolio. Offer services for events birthday celebrations, small weddings, anniversary dinners, people are often moments, and you don't need elaborate equipment for intimate gatherings. Yes,
[11:04] wedding, you can't do it on your iPhone. But hypothetically, if someone were to I know you've just had a baby. Um, you know, next time you have a birthday party, I'm going to be the videographer and I'm going to document sort of POV
[11:16] the editing and it's going to be VIB and I'm going to interview everyone at the party and you're going to capture the memories and it's going to be $300. I'd pretty good. You don't need anything other than a phone and the ability to
[11:28] edit videos in like Cap Cut or like the Instagram edits app or whatever to be able to provide that kind of value where you as a phone based videographer with use a phone cuz you're watching this video. Um, is then able to add value in
[11:41] Yeah. I mean, when you think videographer, you think fancy camera, fancy microphone, but a lot of the best social media type content when it comes to like sales and marketing and stuff and advertising is more like homebrew
[11:54] filmed on a phone. So, could you go to local businesses or anyone that you know who has a business or would like to get traffic towards their thing and say, for you to post on your social
[12:08] you could say, "Hey, you know, I'm a videographer and um I'm starting a new love to work for you for free and to create social media content for your What do you reckon?" Most people would say yes to that because if you're doing
[12:23] portfolio, then that's how you're getting started. Like that's how you get started with the whole like finding your customers for a particular skill. Um I think a really underrated thing is actually just starting with the real
[12:37] world in your local area. A lot of people are like, "Hey, I have an idea to sell an online course about life design." And it's like a 19-year-old kid coach. Bro, everyone likes the idea of being a life coach. deep down everyone
[12:49] wants to be a life coach. But that's a really hard business to get started off online on the internet where you're competing with everyone in the world, where the the your first customers will come from the people that you know, the
[13:03] to, your friends, your family, your friends's parents, your family's parents, the people that you work with, the managers that you work with, the boss of your workplace, whatever. like literally people that you have physical
[13:16] access to that you can sit across a table with a coffee and talk to them or just a few months ago sold his startup for tens of millions of dollars and they've been running it for 5 years.
[13:28] But for the first 2 years, they didn't actually build a product. They spent the first 2 years just talking to potential customers to figure out what product would go on LinkedIn, message people, email people who were like finance teams
[13:43] at like big people at like you know small to mediumsized businesses and they take them take them out to coffee or take them out for a walk and they would problems. You're like hey when it comes to financial planning what are the
[13:56] problems. You can get someone to talk about the problems all day long and then record the conversation with their permission obviously you can record it record conversations and turn it into writing. You can record those
[14:08] chat or claude and you can say, "Hey, help me figure out some business ideas based on this conversation." It's so laughably straightforward these days to first customers provided you are willing to talk to people. The mistake you're
[14:21] your little cave cave bedroom kind of thing. It was a mistake I made back in the day. I I failed at making businesses for like 6 years because I didn't talk hoping that like, you know, I'm a 13-year-old kid on my little keyboard
[14:35] surely on the internet I should be able to make money. The more you can get into starting a business is really really really straightforward. Um, but if in the world on the internet and like be an influencer from day one, it's
[14:49] got a question here. Can you list some easy boring businesses that you would recommend people start? H, this is the wrong way to be thinking about it. I I question is Ali, just tell me what to do. Give me the easiest path to get
[15:02] please, I beg you, just tell me what to do. thinking like a student, not thinking like an entrepreneur. A student or an entrepreneur figures it out. So that's thing number one to say. Thing number
[15:17] two two to say is that an easy business for you or a boring business for you is different to what an easy boring business would be for If I'm a medical student at Cambridge University, it's easy for me to start a
[15:31] helping people get into med school. If you are not a medical student or you easy for you to start a business helping people get into med school, right? It's just it depends like the right business for someone else is a completely wrong
[15:43] instead of thinking of it as like, oh, what's a copy paste solution that I can just like do and make all this money, think instead of like, who are some people with money that I would enjoy potentially serving?
[15:57] Ask yourself that question. Talk to Chad or Claude about it. Get some ideas. What problems that I would enjoy potentially helping to solve? And what is what are some skills that I have or skills that I would enjoy learning that can help me
[16:10] solve those kinds of problems? If you have the skills already, amazing. personal skills or a mixture of the two. You could use pre-existing skills. If the skills. You could learn videography. You could learn video editing. You could
[16:22] data analytics. You could learn copyrightiting. You could learn coding. You could learn like there's so many different problems that individuals and serve businesses rather than individuals. So, we're going to go
[16:35] business. There are so many problems that businesses have that these days you can just go to the all of the local restaurants in your area and coffee shops and accounting firms and like just walk down the local high street, go to
[16:47] easy, right? Ask them what problems they're having because you're thinking having. All businesses want to make more money. If you can find a if you can find a way to make local businesses more money, you're winning. Generally, doing
[17:01] stuff in marketing and doing stuff in sales has a direct often has a direct translation into revenue. And so those are easier businesses to start compared service because customer service is just a little bit more further removed from
[17:15] revenue. So essentially what you're trying to do when you're coming up with mode, i.e. selling to businesses and helping them make money. What you're trying to do is you're trying to get as close as possible to
[17:27] client who you're going to be talking to in person, obviously, hey, look, if you business will magically make more money without you having to do anything. You want your business idea to get as close to that as possible. So, for example,
[17:43] your social media and you're going to make and you're going to get more social media presence. business is like, "You know what? I want more customers world wants more customers." They're like, "Great, fantastic. Sure." Um,
[17:56] don't need to pay me anything. I just want uh 20% for every new customer that specifically attribute to your Instagram or your LinkedIn." Business owner is anything for this. You I only pay you when you get me extra customers. Let's
[18:11] go. Easy." And now you've built a business that is reliant on you actually and you get good at the thing and then you get them customers and then they pay of way, this is sort of how we want to be thinking of business ideas. If you
[18:24] don't want to serve businesses, uh it is harder to serve non- businesses because for stuff than businesses. But you could still totally do that if you wanted to. money rather than individuals without money. So, let's say you wanted to do
[18:37] whatever reason. Uh and you're like, I really want to help people get fit. Okay, cool, fine. Um you think, okay, who would you like to help get fit? Do probably not because they won't pay for it. Do you want to help CEOs get fit?
[18:52] Okay, they would pay for it and they need the help. So, being a fitness trainer for CEOs is much easier than being a fitness trainer for students pay for fitness training whereas students are not willing and happy to
[19:04] might be thinking, well, how do I find CEOs? All it takes is one client. The one the first client you get opens the door to every other client. If you can just get one client and do an amazing job for that person, ideally for free in
[19:17] return for a testimonial and some referrals, CEOs have other friends who are CEOs. You might not know any CEOs, but I guarantee the CEO knows a ton of other CEOs. So, if you can just find one entry route to get your first client
[19:31] that then allows you to sort of basically print cash like going to their good job. All of this is predicated on you doing a good job. Um, this is why it's it's all if you're doing something like a service-based business, it's just
[19:45] about finding that first client because that first client opens the door to every other. With so many possibilities, how do I choose what kind of business to start? There is this thing the myth of the perfect choice choice or the perfect
[19:59] choice fallacy, which is that when you are a student, you operate thinking that teaches you that there is a right answer and you got to get it right the first time around. When you start a business, you realize that there are no right
[20:11] answers. And the way you build a business is by trying something, running an experiment, gathering data from the market, and then iterating based on the you choose which one to start? Well, a really simple framework is you list out
[20:26] all of your business ideas. Um, and a business idea, as we talked about before, is who is the person, who what is the problem that you're solving, and how are you planning to solve it? So let's say one of my business ideas is
[20:39] wedding videography for um Indian weddings in Hong Kong. Okay, I've got a person Indian weddings in Hong Kong broadly. Uh I've got a a problem that solution which is I will provide them videography. Let's say that's idea
[20:52] number one. Let's say idea number two is uh uh copywriting and editing for uh email newsletters for people in the finan like financial journalists. So, I've got my
[21:06] previously worked in finance or whatever. Uh, the skill that I'm using problem I'm solving for them is that they need someone to write and edit personal brand. So, maybe that's idea number two. Maybe idea number three is,
[21:21] hey, uh, helping medical students get into Hong Kong University to study doctor and I'm like, I have the skill of helping medical students get into Hong Kong University for studying medicine. Let's say I've listed out my business
[21:33] who, what, and how. Who is the person, what is the problem and how are you out and then there is a nice little framework for deciding which is from one stuff is great. Which is you ask yourself three questions. Do I like the
[21:46] idea of helping these kinds of people? So, do I like it? Number two, can I actually help them? Do I have the skills to actually be able to help this person? And will they be happy to pay? and you just literally do tick or cross.
[22:00] Like it, can I help them? Will they will they be happy to pay? If you're because students are broke and they don't like paying for anything. Um, if you're targeting sort of large Indian weddings uh in Hong Kong, probably
[22:13] in Hong Kong, which is a mega expensive city. You take the box. And so, you just kind of base it on that. And then if you have something that's like you're uh options, you literally just go with your gut. You're like, which of these seems
[22:28] start with? And the crucial question is to start with. When you pick a business idea or pick a niche, you are committing to that niche for a period of 3 months.
[22:40] 3 months is the secret spot. You do a 3-month side hustle where you're like, "Okay, in the next 90 days, my goal is to get at least one paying customer to You're not thinking of it as like, "This is my forever business." You're not
[22:53] idea. You're think of it, you're thinking of it as dating your business guarantee as you date your business idea for the next 3 months, you will de you'll get interesting data and stuff and you'll be able to refine your who,
[23:06] switch completely after 3 months time. That is how you get started when there Okay, we have another question. What about investments? Aren't they a good way to build long-term wealth? Yes, they are.
[23:19] But um the way you become financially free is that you put money into invest passive income investments like stocks Although I don't like real estate, I prefer stocks and shares. You invest in
[23:31] like a broad stock market index fund like VTSAX or like the S&P 500 or whatever. And then over time your wealth compounds. The problem is that this takes time. So if you have a job earning 50K a year or even 100K a year, let's
[23:44] say you're able to save 20 grand a year, cool. You save 20 grand a year and you put it into the S&P 500, yes, it will grow at 7%. So, you'll be rich when like 30 years from now, you'll be super rich. But if you want to get to financial
[23:57] freedom before 30 years from now, the problem is not that you invested in the had 20 grand a year to invest in the S&P 500. If you had 200 grand a year to richer way more quickly because compounding still works in your favor,
[24:10] but you just have way more money to start. Therefore, if you can find a way to earn 300 grand, so you can save 200 and stick into the into investments, it gets you to financial freedom way faster than someone who earns 50K and is able
[24:24] save 20. If you're able to earn 2 million a year from your own business S&P 500, you become financially free very, very, very quickly. So, this is the thing. Investments are a long-term wealth building game, but increasing
[24:37] your ability to earn, like your ability to earn for the most part is under your life-changing realizations that I've ever had in my own life, which is that an internet connection, your ability to earn money is entirely within your
[24:52] control. Almost entirely. Yes, we all have different starting points. Yes, maybe you know you've got some neurody divergence or you've got some like family situation, you've got some like whatever to but like even though we all
[25:04] your ability to earn more money is entirely within your control. You might trillionaire like like Jeff Bezos or whatever because you know right place right time all that kind of stuff but certainly from your starting point or
[25:17] people who have been in a similar situation to you with all of the the advantages that you've had who have managed to build six or seven figure businesses. Maybe not 8 figure, maybe not 9 figure, maybe not 10, but like six
[25:30] and seven figures is like kind of mid as it relates to entrepreneurship. At least you're getting into the top like 7% of businesses. Although even said that like personal trainers and people who really aren't trying to get to a million a
[25:43] year. So building a six-figure business is actually fairly mediocre as far as entrepreneurship goes and you can pretty much from any kind of background lifestyle business if you wanted to. It's entirely within your control. The
[25:58] people it'll take a year for some people it take three some people it will take five but it's entirely within your control right? So when you have a job, control because you're operating within someone else's system. You're operating
[26:11] salary bands and like whether your manager wants to give you a raise and all that kind of stuff. If you're in a very big corporation, it's even less a small startup, you know, if anyone on my team was able to add a million
[26:24] business, I'd be paying them a ton of money. Like they would be massively increasing their earning potential. But if you're at a massive corporate and you million dollars a year in value, they still might say, "Well, screw you
[26:36] because like technically you're on band X and band X is different to band Y, ABC, ABCD, E." So within the context of someone else's system, yes, your ability to earn money is more outside of your control. But that's why I'm very bullish
[26:49] You don't have to. You can do what you like. But if you were to start your own 100% within your control and you can do whatever you want. And as long as you way that they want to pay you money for it, there is no limit to how much you
[27:03] investments. Oh, and by the way, if you are enjoying the video so far and you in helping you build a sixfigure lifestyle business, we are working on a Academy. We want it to be like the world's best online school for lifestyle
[27:18] sounds like your street, then there will be a link in the video description to have you. Okay, we have a question here. My HR and business. I signed a non-compete and have to declare my income. I'm not sure
[27:31] that's true. If it's true, then you're kind of screwed and you can't start your your job. Generally, a non-compete like your HR and legal probably wouldn't complain if you did babysitting on the weekend, right? They probably wouldn't
[27:44] complain if you in your weekends and evenings wrote a romance fiction book and published it on Amazon as a hobby and it just happened to be making some money. Your HR and legal probably wouldn't complain if you were offering
[27:58] college and they paid you 20 quid an hour for that. Generally non-competes within the same industry. If you're a lawyer, you're not allowed to start a competing law firm or work for a competing law firm. So generally when
[28:12] allow me to start a business." It's like, okay, is that actually true? Can you put your employment contract into chat GBT and ask it like what businesses context of your employment contract? That would be a way of thinking about
[28:25] if you have to declare your income. Would HR and legal really complain if selling your like random random book that you wrote in your spare time on the in the same industry as the thing that you're doing for work. So make sure it's
[28:38] think there's a lot of creative thinking that you can do with this. And for a lot allowed. And the whole thing of like I'm not allowed is also thinking like a entrepreneur. It's like asking for permission rather than thinking
[28:51] creatively about like, okay, all of the rules are made up, right? The employment contract is made up. HR systems are made up. All of the laws in the world are literally made up by random ass people and are only relevant in so far as they
[29:04] oh my god, I'm not allowed to do X. It's like, okay, are you sure about that, though? Like, what actually are the physical, legal, and the physical and legal limitations of the thing? because it's it's not normally as blanket as we
[29:18] know are like, "Oh my god, I'm not allowed to start a business because the me." It's like that's just not true. It's just a myth that the general that start a business. If you start a business where you're doing something
[29:31] that then brings the name of medicine into disrepute and that like reflects the GMC will come after you. But if you're starting a local lawn care you're creating educational content, if you're being a teacher, they don't care.
[29:43] their time than come after you because you like started a business on the side. So I just think if you're being held back by this sense of I'm not allowed to you and what are the consequences and what actually is X? Can we find all the
[29:56] different permutations and have we spent half an hour thinking creatively about issue they talk to me and then they realize, oh actually there's all sorts just didn't realize because I was blinkered by HR won't allow me to start
[30:10] super super hot in I eat my lunch. Thank you very much for watching the video. If little playlist that has more episodes in our Freedom Friday series.