Deep Dive Interview with Noah Kagan: From Facebook to AppSumo

theory we are alive but we've got a countdown screen that's currently appeared and okay can people hear what's going on I I'm just looking at I'm monitoring the e chat okay cool hello hello everyone how's it going welcome to deep dive this is a live interview with Noah Kagan can we just do a quick check the guys say on the chat if you can hear what we're doing is this working I think this is working all

right awesome no welcome to the channel how's it going dude it's going great I'm super excited to talk with you yeah this is gonna be fun uh would you be able to do a an introduction of yourself for for kind of the people should I do it with a British accent well no I've I've been trying to work on my British accent it's not very good but I'd love a good cracker thank you yeah man my

the the super brief intro is number 30 at facebook.com/ which I think a few people know about I was number four at mint calm and then I am the founder of appSumo calm which is an eight-figure company and the number one site online for software deals and so I do have a youtube channel Noah Kagan where kind of share how we started and how I do all the more my marketing awesome and you have a podcast

as well I've been listening to a podcast for I think over a year now it's very good wow man that's so crazy yeah I have to know cake and presents show I think my purpose in life is to find people like yourself and other people creating or making amazing things and just evangelizing it yeah that's some pretty awesome stuff like I think the thing I like most about your podcast is how it's it's it's very like

no BS like you're getting guests on and like they're talking through how the businesses are going and you're giving them kind of like you know no BS advice about what they should be doing and kind of busting the balls if they're not doing what they should be doing yeah I mean I just don't like fluff you know for me it's just more about like what I like to eat and for me I want to eat actionable

things I want really tactical stuff and I think a lot of the stuff out there you know like what I was just doing before my youtube channel was we literally in one hour an email for a company called best self Co and we're sending it to a hundred thousand people and so I think it's really easy to come and say like hey let me give you advice and let me you know sit in my high castle

telling people what to do but I think it's even more valuable to say let me show it so that I think that's that's kind of my the thing that gets me excited awesome so I wonder if we could start by if you could just kind of talk through how your career is gone kind of so far like I guess from leaving school what you've done and maybe we can kind of talk about kind of lessons that

we learnt along the way and then we'll dive into more productivity and talk about some of the books that we enjoy I know you're a fan of a million miles and a thousand years which I read like days ago and it made me cry so many times so yeah definitely said about that yeah yeah man it's a it's been a journey and I'm curious for you to show you is your journey as well I don't know

which parts you haven't shared with your audience my journey when I when I graduated college I went to UC Berkeley I I didn't know what a BA or a BS was I guess people you know but bachelors of science and I was like I don't really know I just knew that in college number one I was like super active doing things in college and I just knew that I've always loved technology and I love computers and

I love sales and those things and so I think college especially I know that's a lot of your audience it's like the best time to start a business and start doing anything that you can because you have time and you don't have there's no not much downside so like in college I started like a discount card business I started a consulting business called HfG consulting I started a Craigslist for college students called College up org most

most of these things failed but I think especially early on take a lot of risks as many risks as you can because you get older we get kind of boring and we get safe and we get we get scared of losing like I'm like I don't want to lose my money and and I think especially when there's less to lose it's like go out there and be bold yeah I think so for me I kind of

started my my entrepreneurial journey when I was I guess in America you would call it middle school I think I was around twelve at the time and I kind of taught myself how to code by following tutorials on w3schools and things like that and then I started kind of freelancing my services out on rentacoder comm and I would try and undercut the market because you know I was just a kid I could you know get by

with five dollars for a project and and even so like the Indians would still manage to undercut me and I was like why how the hell is this happening and so that was how I got I kind of got my start and through through middle school we call it secondary school in the UK every year me and my friends we would come up with a new business idea and every year they all failed but we learned

a lot from each kind of iteration of those business ideas and so for me like when I got when I was in my first year of med school that was when the the next business I started started to do well so which one was that one so that was a company called Six med running courses for medical school applicants in the UK and I'd kind of like at the time in like 20 2012-2013 it wasn't as

easy to build a pretty-looking website as it is now and so all those kind of shitty websites that I've made for the past five six years all of those lessons kind of went into going into making this one in in 2012-2013 and that seemed to do really well well just one thing to highlight so literally this morning and starting last night I made a list of every business I've ever started oh and it's it's over 20

right and so I finally I'm worth over a million dollars and it's not bragging and I just want to get people context but that's after 20 years of trying over 20 different businesses and I and I think when I was younger I was like I'm not a millionaire by the time I was thirty I we had this idea called 30 by 30 when I have thirty million dollars by thirty and it's tough and I didn't realize

how many things I've been doing until I finally got became a millionaire and so I call it the ten year rule so if you can find something and work on it for ten years you will become a millionaire if that's your goal or if you're trying to be a musician or for trying to be an artist or if you're trying to be a writer as long as you do ten years of it you'll get whatever level

of success you want but I just didn't realize how long it does take and you know even for yourself I think one thing that you said that I want to highlight that's so great is you solved your own problems like hey I haven't good at this Web stuff hey I'm good at this medical stuff and especially in college and when you're young just get started just get started right now yeah absolutely that that's kind of the

classic advice I give everyone that it's so easy to so much time thinking and reading and stuff but getting started is like is is you know the first step um I wonder if you can tell the story of how how was your time at Facebook like employee number 30 that's pretty early on isn't it I mean I think they're around 50,000 employees now so yeah I would say you know like I was literally just in a

previous conversation mark hated when you hyperlinked periods I know he had a really he was really interesting like this is a guy that at 21 or 22 I was there and Yahoo offered us a billion dollars oh yeah so Ollie if I offered you a billion dollars to never YouTube again drop out of medical school and then you have to start a new career right now what are you gonna do oh that would be tricky I'd

probably take it to be honest a billion yeah a billion is alone yeah it's quite a lot I would oh definitely take it and figure out something else to do with my life so you know I think one of the things that people don't appreciate enough about mark is that he's had to make good decisions for 20 years great decisions mmm first it's been around since 2004 for 16 years anyone could have a company for one

year do well but for 16 and so I think what Mark did well and what was interesting about that experience I said it started saying earlier he would notice on a help page if a period was linked and he would fix it or he would tell the team you need to fix it and so I think his attention to detail was unparalleled but I think something that's even more important that wasn't that's not really talked about

or recognized from Mark he had a vision that was so appealing and so big that we I dedicated my life to working there and I think that's what's missing a lot of come people trying to start businesses or some of these companies not not doing as well mark said we are gonna connect every single person in the world and he did yeah but he said that in 2005 and he said that when he rejected a billion

dollar offer and that says a lot about what he was trying to accomplish and you know I think there's something there when what do the people do when they already have so much money they don't have to work anymore and so what I always encourage people is how do you just do that work now like it's so obvious that you love making YouTube videos I don't know maybe you're in like you secretly cake well when I

watch your videos I'm like this guy is it's not natural because you're putting in the work which I think people don't realize but you're enjoying it and I think there's something there about find the thing that you do if you have a million dollars in the bank and guess what by doing that you'll actually get the million dollars in the bank yeah this is actually something that I've I've been asking a lot of doctors and medical

students for the last kind of six years since since I got into medical is that you know if you won the lottery would you still want to be a doctor and the story that I tell is that like of in the past like I actually I think it's a yeah in in the past eight years of asking this question about half of the people have said they would leave medicine completely and the other half have said

they would still do it because it's fun but they would go part-time and then the next question is okay why don't you go part-time from today and the answer is always well you know I've got bills to pay I've got the mortgage and stuff and so like from very early on I was like okay this is the the future that I want to avoid I don't want to be in this position where you know I've done

this six years of med school they've done all these years of training and I'm now a doctor but you know my answer to that if you won the lottery question would be something different to exactly what I'm doing now and so that was kind of the thought process that started me on this path of trying to set up businesses and passive income and financial independence and all that kind of stuff because medicine is fun but I

don't think anything is fun if you do it full-time and so that's kind of the future in front of mitigate against where would you rather do YouTube full-time or medical full-time if you had to choose ah if I could only choose one probably YouTube full-time just because you get a lot more freedom but ideally I'd like to do both kind of part-time I don't think I'd want to do YouTube full-time I feel like it would lose

some of the charm if it becomes kind of like a full-time job yeah I remember I was at a dinner party in New York years ago and I met this girl and you know I whenever I'm at you know meeting new people I try to avoid asking what they do and I try to hold out as long as possible I make it a game I tried it I'm like oh you're gonna ask me you lose and

so I ended up talking she's like oh I'm an ice cream maker I was like oh that's that's such a cool cool job cool career and I was like oh how much ice cream eating a day and she she's like I haven't eaten ice cream in two years and so I thought there's something kind of an interesting story in that which is you know sometimes if you do something you love so much you don't even end

up liking it so I think generally like find the thing that makes you money that you enjoy but also kind of keep these hobbies because for me the hobbies it kind of keeps my stimulation going like I'm into chess so you can play me chess calm no I see yeah we should totally have a game sometime oh well my username is okay to work I don't know if yours is public yeah I think like last time

I had like a session on chess comm was I think in like 2015 or something but I'll have to check my account oh I think it's a friend of Matt but I think your point is good and so what I try to do with with myself and my company is like we have appszoom accom which is it's our cash cow and it makes all of our money but a lot of my experiments in my curiosity from

reading to chest okay door com2 even my youtube channel those are I can take higher risks and learn things that I can then bring into like kind of my main thing so I think that's kind of what your what I hear you saying is well we're like you get kind of flexibility between both those worlds yeah absolutely and I think that's kind of the the the audial place to be so you're a face book for a

bit and then you left Facebook and then you join mint after that as that was that the trajectory no I got fired oh okay I know what was the story there if you're talking about it cuz I wasn't gonna bring you up because I was like this might be a bit of a sore spot but since you bring it up I think a few things so one I think chips on shoulder create successful people I think

if you have some like you have to have some purpose so for me with this whole coronavirus thing I have literally felt compelled to help people start businesses or do their marketing or I've been calling myself a confidence cheerleader because I'm so excited about all the stuff happening for people that want to do work like the action takers and so I felt called into that with my with my face book experience specifically I you know I

think there's a different component a few different things are but I don't think I think they were right to fire me I think if I was Marc in that team I would have fired me too and it created a chip on my shoulder that has compelled me to go do other things you know so I think the thing there to think about cuz it's not about my story it's about the audience story like Sophie or Siobhan

saman or thought you have a lot of doctors watching that seems like what's the lesson for you so I think the lesson for you is a few different things number one are you invaluable to the company not everyone should run a business not everyone should do YouTube it's a lot harder than it seems like it's easy to watch you put out a video but they don't see the hours and the retakes and the cuts and on

the effort and the years to get there so you don't have to run a business but if you're gonna go work somewhere number one are you invaluable meaning if they try to replace you today how much would they be set back that's number one and number two I think if that's not the case I think for everyone out there like you've done Ollie which I commend you on is how much are you creating control in your

life so because what you've done is you said hey if the medical thing doesn't work out I control this income from Ali Abdullah YouTube channel and so like that's why I try to encourage but we put out a course at $7 called monthly 1k comm which is like hey if you want to do a start a business and get a little more control in your life that's what I recommend we also refund the money once you

make it back I don't want to make I don't wanna make any money from it but so the thing with Facebook again I think being valuable to the company and figure out like alright if I can't control this what things can I start doing to control and I also I think at that time my life I had a mature I wasn't mature enough to actually be successful there and you know I think what's interesting is what

happens when your identity gets taken from you yeah that's it's really I remember the day I was in a coffee shop Matt Kohler who's now a billionaire and Surrey fired me at this coffee shop in Palo Alto I went my cellphone was a Facebook cellphone so they took that from me and so I had to go to the store and buy a cellphone and then I bought a pack of cigarettes and I lived in a house

with all Facebook people and so I went I went to the house packed all my stuff up and I moved to my friend's couch I used to work at Intel before that and I just moved into my friend Johnny's couch and smoked cigarettes and I basically soaked mm-hmm for a long period of time how did you kind of get yourself out of that kind of kind of low point yeah so and we can talk about some

people are asking about how to start businesses in the comments I see some people are asking that and we you know if that's something that we can talk about I think there's other stuff we've discussed so I think with how to get out of that number one you should sulk you should sulk like watch Netflix eight hours drink a little bit smoke a little bit take just get depressed for a bit and and the reason I

say that alley is that I think you have to hit rock bottom oh I think we cut offer to second so I think my point here is like you have to hit rock bottom before you can start coming up and so how to start doing and so you like I hit I was literally sleeping on a couch didn't have a lot of money but all of my friends worked at Facebook everyone knew I worked at Facebook

and I just got fired and this is now public so I think a few things happen number one you need to get your confidence back up you need to feel self-worth so what I did right there is just make your bed okay so what do you live like if you're sleeping on a couch fold the sheets oh okay actually when I'm on the corner make your bed why because you can control that I couldn't control Facebook

removing me or not that was their decision but I can control the bed I can control the gym so start even just doing a push up because guess what you need to do things that give you confidence number three go help one person and so what I mean by that is look on your phone right or look in your network look on LinkedIn or look at your schoolmates or look at your teachers or look at your

parents or look at your religion and say let me just reach out to someone and help them for free and I think when you start teaching like you do with YouTube or you help and you realize you impact one person you start realizing for yourself like I am worthy the next thing that I would do there's two other things I would do number one look at your network you have a bigger network everyone has at least

500 friends and within those 500 friends someone probably has someone that can help you so look within your network and start asking for help like I always tell people to do the coffee challenge I don't know if you heard me talking about what's the coffee challenge so the coffee challenge is where you go anywhere you buy something generally at a cafe at cafe and you ask for 10% off oh yes I have heard you talk about

oh I remember one time you mentioned this on a podcast and I broke out into a sweat literally just thinking about it and I was like oh my god what is wrong with me the 10% off in your heart is like this yeah and then you get rejected or maybe you get accepted and then you realize you're still alive and the reason I think that's I literally think asking is one of the most powerful muscles that

anyone can develop and when you ask that's ultimately what you're doing in almost everything in life you're saying hey I'm asking for this job I'm asking for this relationship I'm asking for things and the more that you could become overcome fear for practicing that things become easier so start asking your network what you could get help with one last thing that I want to say that really helped me with Facebook after the Facebook experience well there's

a few more things but number one especially if you're younger go and start connecting people go and start building up your audience right so sin Fox com is a free newsletter that we created and it's something that I just wanted and so when 20 years ago is in 2000 so is when I started blogging on okay dork calm that's a long time before you're bored Ollie but I started blogging and so I think what's important there

is that start building up your brand start building up your audience because no one could take that away from you so start a blog or you know and send fox.com start a newsletter and so I started doing that and I started hosting events so I actually just put on a conference so I think the part there is look at what you not just your network look at what your special look what makes you special and so

for me I was like well I worked at Facebook that's pretty special there's only like a hundred people that can say that at that time so I said well what if I put on a conference and what if I started hosting things so I didn't have a big Network I didn't have any attention at that point but I put on basically conferences where I hit up these people and said hey I worked at Facebook would you

mind coming and speaking at this thing and so I did this thing called entrepreneur twenty seven org where I just started putting on events and then I promoted him and I started doing that and then I did a thing called community next calm which I just invited I had just asked people like Guy Kawasaki and Max Levchin from PayPal and the hot-or-not guys and I put on a conference and actually ended up making $50,000 because I

wasn't trying to make any money and so the point that I'm saying there that I think especially if you're just getting started in your career start building those relationships because I can't tell you now lycra meet Sethi or Tim Ferriss Guy Kawasaki a lot of these guys I just kind of helped promote them and connect with them really early on and if you're young people are way more open to having you connect with them nice yeah

that's pretty great advice occasionally I get people asking hey you know what would you tell yourself kind of ten years ago when I would have been like 15 at the time and honestly the thing that I would tell myself is you know do start a personal blog start writing you know at the very least book reviews of all that all the books that you're reading you know if you see a good movie just like write something

about it just to kind of build up that habit of of writing and I really wish I'd been doing this for so much longer than I have because it's just it's just such a superpower when you have a blog that's like 10 plus years old and you can see the progression of posts and you build the audience over time and then kind of like going back to all the business stuff once you have a pre-existing audience

it's so much easier to do everything then to start from scratch it's much easy to garden then to hunt God and then to hunt for what do you mean by that well a garden it takes time and you have to plant a seed but then you get this a lot of vegetables and it's guaranteed it's right there in your house but it takes time to actually get that where a lot of us we just go out

and hunt and we're like well I hope I find something out there and I'm just gonna go ask for things right away and you're gonna hope for it right away but you may not get it right away and so I think that's kind of what you were highlighting is like start planting your seeds now for things that you can enjoy later yeah absolutely all right so we've got this a live blog going on the side and

we've got some questions in from the audience if you're if you're up for it so question number one is from Adam al-ghazali who says how do you deal with feeling behind in life career-wise is that anything that you struggle with feeling behind I suppose kind of being fired from Facebook is pretty far behind most of your friends at the time especially if you were living with other Facebook people yeah I think everyone has a different label

for it I think some of the phrases I've had two experiences one I was on the streets of Argentina and I remember being in the center of the street thinking what am I doing with my life I was 25 and I was like what is the purpose of all this and I just felt really lost and and then recently in the past three years I haven't really done a lot of work Ollie I've actually felt really

discouraged I haven't I think the word that I think of it's not behind but unleashed and I know Tony Robbins says unleash the power within yeah but I just think I don't know like I think it's like have I found my calling have I found my purpose and so for Adam I think the one thing I would do is well I would actually do two things but number one just go look back at what you used

to do as a kid oh do we lose you or we good Noah good yeah okay so number one look back what you did as a kid that you just really enjoyed it was it reading was it bicycling was it writing was a photography and then number two look at what you've been doing for in your spare time for free and so I think what what we do is in our heart and now this is gonna

be wow so I'm not a woman person so just let me put that out there but in our heart we know like man like for Noah I love sharing content I love talking with you I love sharing different like things on like on my youtube channel or you know with abscess but in my head I said yeah you know that's just another talkin influencer they're stupid that's never top of it you don't know anything Noah Noah

you actually like your stuff is not helpful you're not enough and I did that for three years and I think and that's our head kind of fighting our heart yeah and yeah you're shaking her head cuz you kind of probably agree and we're embarrassed because I thought about I literally thought oh my high school friends are gonna watch you know the Noah Kagan on YouTube and they're gonna think oh he's stupid or look at he's got

pointy ears cuz I got kind of pointy ears oh yeah you do I do kind of like Spock and I'm self-conscious you know I'm human I bleed real blood but eventually you kind of when you go into that heart and you start really following your gut and that that heart intuition that is when you don't feel behind so I think that's number one thing I would say for Adam is just kind of like really listen to

what you've been doing and go back and revisit it like revisit chest that was important for me revisit sharing and and worrying about not less about everybody else but just more about yourself the second thing I think Adam said is behind ya so to be behind is that a comparison and so yeah it sounds like Adam is comparing himself to you potentially as peers to its peers and so I think comparing is helpful right so jealous

I love jealousy right because jealousy is a compass of something that you either want or don't want in life like I have a friend who is making more millions than I was which is it's ironic cuz I still drive a Miata right so I don't even use this money but I think the idea is it's not about where you're behind or not it's maybe this is giving you clarity about what you really want or where you

want to be and I always think of life as like a Google map and what you do in a Google map is you try to have to be really spend a lot of time say where am I going and then figuring out your route is actually pretty easy so I would just think if you're behind what I would encourage you to do is instead of worrying so far ahead and worrying about others maybe use jealousy to

compass figure out so it's now almost May 1st 2020 just decide where do I want to be at the end of May 30th and what would make that epic like at the end this is what we do in our company this is what I do in my personal life like I did a thing called a fantasy 2020 where I said where could I where would I be at the end of 2020 that would be unreal like

just I'll make a fantasy fiction story about my life and so I was like well I'm gonna go to Oktoberfest right I'm gonna be on the Joe Rogan show like I'm gonna hang out with Ali Abdul yeah nice we're gonna do some of this stuff and you start writing down what where where you are where you're where you want to be with that and it makes it a lot easier and so I would actually break it

down for you on a smaller segment so you can start getting that w the one other thing that I want to highlight Holly because it was so this is game-changing for me and if I'm talking too much nobody this is good stuff that the the chat is absolutely loving it from what I can see well I love every single person here dr. George is going crazy Tommy Omar and so one other thing that I've done recently

that's been honestly a game-changer I have made a list in my day of what makes my day fulfilled okay it's Kai interesting cuz I was like well what you know if you think about it Elliot actually let me ask you this what makes it for you a great day versus just an OK day just just riff with me on it yeah okay so a great day for me would be one where I get home from work

and I feel like I have I've kind of accomplished something at work had good banter with the the nurses and the other doctors and so there's been kind of like a social element to it I think the days that I enjoy less are the ones where I'm just kind of on my own in the doctor's office doing paperwork because that's just boring cuz there's not much kind of human contact I think a day is good when

like often if I filmed a video for the day or if I've kind of done the things that were on my to-do list then I think oh you know that was a good day and I can kind of go into bed kind of happy but on days where I kind of procrastinate and just kind of end up screwing for Instagram I feel like well I kind of wasted my time what am i doing my life so

yeah I mean one of the things that we can highlight for Adam is like everything called Gabby and there's something I put in there but I think part of it is like you know if you're behind how can you just start out at least your morning strong and I think there's a lot of books that do it and they're all kind of maybe more complicated than I want to consume so Gabby to me is basically what

I do every single morning and I'll show you some of it but it's basically gratitude exercise breakfast and you and I do this every single morning I actually use strides app it's a free app oh yes I had that done noted ages ago oh I love strides it's like every to do that I do today I just it basically is my Gabi so it's like how do I start my day off strong so I don't feel

behind so gratitude every morning I write down one thing I'm grateful for and I just put it in my notes I don't do any complicated app for that and so today I was grateful for my stepdad and then yesterday I was grateful for a piano and the day before I was grateful for bathrooms just like funny stuff okay and then exercise so I try to do 250 people don't try do 250 push-ups a day so just

what exercises you're gonna do so I use push-fit ok it's a free app and I just do a bunch of push-ups and so I get some exercise in and this is what helps me start my mornings and my days great breakfast so today I had some healthy blueberry stuff and you and so I think part of you it sounds similar to me which is what are you doing for yourself today and you know that when you

do a video you feel great and so that's what I was kind of starting with that makes a day fulfilled is I think people especially young or old we can be more intentional about how to make a great [ __ ] day and so just think about what makes a day great is it a video for me this kind of conversation I'm gonna be glowing the whole rest of the day the whole wrist the day my day isn't

met he's like I see how the comment there's like Augusta Frederic Omar like Zack I love these people they Andrew Warner's in the house he's amazing like this makes my day and so then the question is when it's Sunday how do you structure Adam more of your week to be as maximum fulfilling as possible nice I think that's them that's some pretty pretty fantastic advice across the board on the on the point of this making list

of things that that fulfill you I came across this in some some blog post like last week and I start I just couldn't was like okay I'm gonna I'm gonna take this seriously I just kind of kind of started writing down a list of all the things in my life that I really enjoy and I kind of got I kind of got about like 20 things down on the list and I realized that the whole doctor

side of it wasn't really on the list it was more things like you know making videos or you know listening to a particularly good audiobook or playing board games with friends or doing practice you know I'm trying to teach myself music theory with piano and guitar and stuff and those are the things now that are bringing me more fulfillment than my job and that was another kind of signal in my head that okay maybe this because

I think one thing that I sometimes struggle with is because having gotten gone through so much of medicine kind of the story in my mind is that if I were to kind of take a break from that potentially then I don't know I'd be kind of throwing away all this effort or I'd be kind of stepping out into the void but in terms of the things that fulfill me I think that was a helpful exercise for

me to realize that okay cool if I could design my kind of ideal day these are the things that would be in it and so how can I work towards a future in which that's possible what called you into medicine to begin with then because it seems is that yeah I have to revisit that or is that in question now I think so the thing that called me into it was honestly idea I didn't really know

what else to do and when you're kind of my ethnicity and you get decent grades in school like the default path is you just do medicine I was like alright I might as well do medicine I I was torn between medicine and computer science because I've been I've been doing the whole coding thing and I'd been doing stuff in PHP and I was like ooh Jane could be designs would be cool but when I was making

this decision at the age of like 17 I kind of had the thought that it would be much cooler to be a doctor who can code than to be just a coder and I also had the thought that six years at university is more interesting than three years at university because they say that university is the best time of your life and so that was why I chose to do medicine it wasn't really a calling as

such it was more like okay you know the best option I'm not really sure what to do let's just go for it and I'm super glad that I did I did the degree and the job is quite fun but I don't think it's what I want to do for the rest of my life at least not full-time hence the whole kind of YouTube channel and all this other kind of business stuff that I've been trying to

do and learning from you and your podcast so how are you gonna move forward with that man that's that's a big thing because I yeah so from August I am going to be unemployed essentially because after two years of being a doctor in the UK at that point you then apply for a residency program and whatever specialty you want and I wasn't really sure what specialty I want to go into and I was from speaking to

loads and loads of consultants ie senior doctors at work most of them were saying that look there's no rush to get through the training pathway the nice thing about a medical courier is that you can always take a break and then you can come back and you don't really lose anything and so the plan before the whole virus situation hit was that I wanted to spend a year just kind of traveling the world and doing that

thing because I've never really done solo travel I've been listening to Rolf Potts his podcaster dv8 and like all these interviews with people like traveling the world and you know travelling would just one backpack and I was thinking that that would be as sort of a much more interesting story and kind of going to Donald Miller's a million miles in a thousand years that was what was going through my mind I was like okay you know

this kind of crossroads that I'm at it's like do I go down this traditional path of kind of being a standard doctor or do I do something more more like adventurous and the more interesting stories definitely I don't know you know putting on a backpack and trying to travel the world as cliche as that sounds so one thing you're redditor to like me you seem like you do reddit i double here and there one of my

favorite subreddits is it's called one bag oh you know somebody oh I mean oh it's phenomenal so basically you just go to Reddit slash are slash one bag yeah and it's just people's one bags and what they pack for this travel so I think that a it's super inspiring and you see a lot of like Oh what's like the shorts to wear like I like we're in like a little lemon stuff because it kind of you

can wear it for a lot of days without smelling yeah or these new Lululemon shorts they're pretty good nice but I think that's interesting for you man like that book that book changed my life and we both talked about how we cried for a minute so one of my favorite books all-time as a thousand is a million miles and a thousand yeah I think of a million miles in a thousand years yeah yeah by Donald Miller

and I think the two things that stuck with me is to live an interesting life you just have to do interesting things I don't know that I can't say stuff like that baby but it's such a truism yeah it's like you just and I think he's such a Christian author which I'm not a Christian but I still love his messages and I think they're positive and I think the second part about living in istria life is

just to do interesting things with the second part that's just as powerful is how do you just be around interesting people right and some people might be geographically limited like maybe the people are in Ohio or are there in you know some other foreign country and the Internet is a great way I think almost eighty percent of my best friends I've met online which used to sound sad but now it's the second thing everyone does yeah

you still making friends on Twitter and then you hang out in real life you let go we have so much in common like this dude like Andrew Warner Andrew Warner's actually he's listening he runs mixergy he is the reason my appSumo actually got started and I met him because I was doing those conferences and I think the beauty of just getting going and starting with something starting with your writing starting with your photography starting with your

video is the relationships you get to make the people you get a meet and for me my blog I haven't made that much money blogging like directly blogging maybe a few thousand over 20 years but the relationships and the fulfillment of that is amazing so what one thing I'm curious just to come back at before in the book and you traveling a book what are you to tell your parents cuz I'm wondering was it your parents

that were like you're gonna do a doctor and you're gonna go do this thing no not really actually so my mom is a doctor but she never really tried to push me into it she just kind of thought I would I'd be more likely to do maths cuz I was a bit of a nerd and so nowadays what she says is that I I think she's quite like a traditionalist she says that look you know you

can travel the world and all that but finish your training first and then do all that stuff later on whereas my Theory's more that all you know I'm I'm single at the moment I you know I'm not tied down by kids or responsibilities as such so you know I'm traveling the world for a year when I'm 25 26 it's unlikely to be something I'll ever regret I'm not gonna be on my deathbed thinking ah damn I

wish I was a fully qualified doctor for one year longer and then I actually was and yeah well I think well I I have a friend I won't name him it starts with a J but you kind of get trapped in work life right you get you get trapped in as you get older you start making some money and then you start having bills and then you're like well you know I want to do this thing

but like you know I got to pay the bills and I want to do this thing and so I think especially earlier on like you're doing is really commendable and it's one of the things that a lot of people say they want to do afterwards and so like one phrase for myself and why I've been so more vocal on you know on my youtube channel and would you know my content on my podcast am i you

know list is I think it's really interesting in the phrase that goes in my head it's called no apologies and so I think for you it's the same thing with the doctor piece like yeah I'm a doctor so I'm supposed to go to this thing and I supposed to do this thing we kind of apologize to the world yeah and and we kind of apologize too oh if I put out this video I have to apologize

and so I think it's interesting for every single person like Tarun or Jake or Tyler Naveen if we didn't have to apologize for anything we did obviously don't like kill people or Rob or do anything stupid but my question is if you didn't have to apologize and you could really just follow your heart it's not what I thought we'd be talking about but what would you want to do and like so for me one of my

my fantasy list this year is I wanted to live in a van uh-huh okay yeah and so yesterday I rented a van and I'm gonna go live in a van for three weeks oh and amazing yeah man and so I think well there's two things there which is number one you got to have stuff to look forward to in life that's just something my me my friend Adam Gilbert from my body tutor.com we talk about that

a lot like what are you looking forward to this week this conversation was on my highlights for Sunday like on Sunday I was like I'm looking forward to talking with ollie so what are you looking forward to and if you're not just go makes look forward to and the second thing is like have these fantasy lists of things that you're like man I think this would be an amazing adventure because especially get older it goes fast

like someone asked me yesterday how old I am and I was like I know it's I think I feel I feel in my 30s but technically I think I'm 38 and it just keeps going and so in this in this period of time we have alive it's you know what things are really excited to go do so I really I commend you mix it's it's hard to go against the grain it's hard to be like saying

hey I'm everyone else is going this way and all of you you're choosing to go left yeah that's something I I think I think about have you have you come across the YouTube channel yes theory now what is this ah it's amazing that they would like it's a it's a life-changing YouTube channel basically it's these three guys that travel around the world and and their whole mantra is seek discomfort like they would do in st. challenges

like you know travel to a country and without any money at all and rely on the kindness of strangers to kind of get by and have these amazing adventures from kind of going up to random people on the street and kind of introducing themselves and just having a good time and they you know I think I think last year they challenged Will Smith to do bond to bungeed to bungee jump off a helicopter and he accepted

their challenge and they had this like massive like thing going and their whole spiel is about this thing of stepping outside your comfort zone and that being where growth happens and just super positive vibes I think you'd really really like it I'm gonna check it out well two things two things there is number one I'm curious what the audience can do for themselves like what's one thing uncomfortable or discomfort or action you could do for yourself

today and I want the audience to kind of comment on some of those things the second thing and I'm curious for you you know in our lifetimes I think it's really fascinating what we're most proud of and when we've grown the most again what are we most proud of and when have we grown the most and so I'm curious for that so it's one thing you do but from only for yourself like what are you most

proud of so far in your life and when have you grown the most and and I think there's a point to the both of these I'll go afterwards okay so we I think we're getting some answers in from the audience so for me I think the thing I'm most proud of is probably the YouTube channel because it was the thing that's been the most kind of difficult in in inverted commas and just kind of the amount

of grind that it takes over a very long period of time and at the start you're shouting into the void and no one's listening but over time kind of V as the flywheel turns it starts to gain momentum and so seeing how I don't know like proud is a an interesting word that I don't often use because it sort of implies that it's it sort of implies that I'm kind of taking credit for for the thing

that's happened whereas I know it's mostly down to luck and privilege and circumstances and I just try to not squander the good hand that I was all I was dealt but I'd probably say the YouTube channel and then when do you think you've grown the most hmm that's a good question honestly I so there was one experience I had a few years ago where so every year at the the the medical school at Cambridge we we

put on a pantomime and kind of sell tickets and all this sort of stuff and I was involved in the pantomime in my fourth year of med school I was part of the singing troupe but then in my fifth year I got a random message from a guy saying that hey Ally I'm gonna be directing the pantomime this year would you like to direct the show with me and I had no acting experience no theatre experience

like I knew nothing about about theatre in the slightest and I kind of thought that this is like an amazing opportunity to step massively outside of my comfort zone and so I said yes to that and this guy was amazing like he was something he was been into theater for years and years and like knew what he was doing and I very much had impostor syndrome like I had no idea what was going on but through

that I think the main thing that I learned honestly is that I was so worried every every rehearsal I was thinking to myself you know everyone's everyone's looking at will the other guy and and the and he's amazing and people are looking at me and thinking that I don't know what I'm talking about and I realized actually that everyone is just worried about themselves there wasn't they're worried about screwing of their own lines and how they're

doing they're not looking at me and thinking of that guy's got no experience they don't even know I have no experience and so it was a big kind of gotcha moment for me that was like oh wow all of this time I've been worrying about what other people are gonna say about the fact that I don't know how to do this thing but actually no one cares and that was very liberating I think that was that

experience kind of catalyzed me kind of spreading out into more kind of contact on my youtube channel because initially it started off as very much sticking to my lane just talking about medical school but then I was like you know what I could just branch out to the things that I enjoy people generally are worried about themselves if they learn something from it then fantastic and if not then I mean I don't think anyone's gonna care

and so yeah I think that was the experience it's probably made me grow the most so just to highlight for what you said for the audience is that the things we're proud of are generally one we wanted them and I think that's actually the hard thing to figure out in our lives and our chain to earth are once change but figuring out what you want right and so you wanted freedom from this doctor job that's what

you sounds like you really wanted and the second part is that it's hard like I have gotten things like I just got some investment I just teachable comm they sold and I got some money and I was like I never have to do anything which it's not you're not proud of that like I'm proud of them but we're proud of the things we actually had it work for which is kind of little it's a little counterintuitive

or it's not as obvious potentially and so I think that's what such about prod in the growth part what you said is you're uncomfortable and being being uncomfortable it's easy to watch this show it's easy to read the comments it's easy to read the book it's hard to get on stage it's hard to ask for the coffee challenge I would love anyone if they're down to do the coffee challenge to post it in the comments what

they do and more importantly not whether they get the discount or not but what they learn about themselves and so you know I think dr. Jovic one of your people was like there they're doing a YouTube challenge they're doing a hundred videos inspired by you no less so I think I would tell him to do that or go to sin Fox comm sites we have it started weekly newsletter and I challenge you to do that send

Fox I'll come do your newsletter for 365 days or even just once a week 52 times and I think people will learn a lot more about themselves doing things that using that discomfort as a compass to maybe some directions of growth yeah absolutely that's another piece of advice I always give to people that you know if you want to start start anything just start an email newsletter like it's so easy to get started and you'll initially

have like three people on it which is you your friend and your mom and then over time you just just just having that encourage you to it encourages you to write so much more like like for me I started a personal blog in 2016 and I was like I'm gonna do a blog post every week and I wrote like three posts of that whole year but then in 2018 when I was like you know what I'm

gonna start an email newsletter now every Sunday without fail for the last one hundred and eight weeks I've been sending out a weekly newsletter and it's been the the one thing that's probably the single best habit I've ever just ever started because when you start writing then you start getting more ideas when you start writing and publishing you start getting feedback and you kind of build the audience in that kind of way and actually it was

it was through the newsletter that I connected with you so without that then yeah it's amazing I mean one thing people are asking what's the coffee challenge so just again it's just you go to any place and you ask for 10% off your coffee or whatever you're buying next and you just kind of learn you practice your fear muscle we actually we started this course monthly 1k calm and I thought here's how you start a business

bla bla bla but everyone was afraid and it's actually a fear and a lot of things in life oh yeah I think we stay here do we come back yeah I think goodbye lose you alright awesome oh hello hello can you hear me I can't I think wonderful cut out for a second but you know so I was saying the the coffee challenge and even the monthly 1k people are afraid and I was like what are

you afraid of and so I try to I think you have to try to put yourself in things you're afraid of so one of my other favorite silly ones is I like asking people for their newspapers at the airport it's stupid it's stupid but it's an ask and it's a fee and I'm afraid and I'm uncomfortable and then it pushes me once they say no or some nice lady says yes then life goes on and I

don't know I think at the end of the day I don't believe in happiness okay I don't believe in happiness I don't believe in recessions I don't believe in this stuff I believe in fulfillment I believe in control I believe in taking in action takers and so fulfilment is not easy happiness could be easy and it could be fleeting fulfilling is challenging and so that's the part of the life that we had to figure out what

what fulfills us and for you it's creating it's creating content and exploring different things that your student yeah so um a question that I had so after after reading a million miles and at the end a thousand years one thing that didn't could that I couldn't quite reconcile is that he seems to be saying that okay so you want to you want to get these things that you want and you want to kind of go after

them and you want to preferably go through some kind of conflict to get there and there was a line where he says that you can tell a lot by about a person based on what they want if you don't want anything then you're living a boring life and if you want a Roomba vacuum cleaner then you leave then you're living a stupid life but well I was wondering how that how that ties in with the the

other side of the equation which is this whole thing of you know be satisfied with what you have want what you have you know trying to get to this and of enlightenment where we don't really have any once any kind of desires and I could really think of like how how do you kind of put those two together I wonder if you've got any thoughts on that nothing great I mean the only thing I think of

as I was talking with the friend who his name's Leo and he is gonna starting a YouTube channel Leo wid and he sold his company and he made I think 10 million dollars and then he went and lived in a monastery okay for two years he went to go live with the monks okay and then now he bought a Lamborghini hmm interesting maybe he has a Roomba and so he said something to me he's been coaching

me and he said something to me that stuck with me he's like maybe materialism isn't bad if it makes life more fulfilling and so I think I've been trained and conditioned that material and more is always like it's kind of an evil thing hmm and so I think if people are wanting more like for me with YouTube I stopped wearing how many views I'm getting and I started enjoying it more yeah so I think I think

when I was just so connected to the ego of it and I had to detach the ego and said am i doing what I really want am I putting out what I believe in it's yes and so I think we have to explore that it's I don't think it's a binary 0 and 1 I think it's a spectrum so for me instance I'm really struggling with buying a house I'm fortunate that I have the money but

I live in like a in a run-down house that's falling apart and I've been struggling with appreciating myself and actually spending on that and so what I'm doing is I rented a nice house you know you could see I I was like alright no you're gonna spend a little money and this is like a dream house for me so they have like it's got a pool it's got a hot it's got an ice machine it's gonna

last me so nice machine like it is it's amazing yeah and so I think the part there is that if you're not sure of what makes it if it makes a difference or not just go try it out you don't have to commit to that I think the other part for me is I like earning things so if you're saying hey I want like I want to buy a new DJI maverick drone and I was like

alright if you work hard this week and you do these things then you can have it and so I think it's nice to have a little bit of earned reward versus if you can afford things like you know as a kid we always wanted candy I don't know about you I was like give me the candy dad and now we although this money even if you have like $100 you don't buy the candy yeah that's so

true it's like you know at the age of 11 I walk into a game store and think oh my god if I was rich I'd buy every game and now I can buy whatever can't buy what I have to buy any I mean I think the thing there that the way I think about it is like optimize the 80% in terms of satisfaction and fulfillment so what I mean by that is that look at what activities

like it so if you're a photographer like I know you're into videos like it's obvious you have a good camera and you're into your computer nerd like me it's obviously of good computers and so what I would encourage everyone is where are you spending your time right your bed no good yeah your computer you're like I'm into bicycling my bicycling my chess like I have a chess coach so wherever you're spending the time it's probably valuable

there to invest and then the things that that don't matter is much like my clothes I'm pretty happy just wearing the same outfits over and over so I try to buy clothes that don't smell very badly I just like think about where what's important to you and where you're allocating that time and then I would just invest in those things nice yeah the other thing that I think about when it comes to kind of making purchasing

decisions is firstly where do I spend my time but secondly where do I want to spend my time so you know at one point I was like really sort of battling with myself trying to convince myself and not to get a Tesla that classic that classic problem and then I was thinking that if I got a Tesla all that would encourage me to do is spend more time driving which is not what I want to be

doing with my life if I got a nicer couch it would encourage me to spend just more time sitting on the sofa which is not what I want to be doing whereas if I buy a fancy camera like a drone or you know a better laptop he encourages me to do those things to create to do stuff you know buying a piano buying a guitar but ukelele like two days ago because it encourages me to do

the things that I wanted to be doing rather than just kind of vegetating on the on the sofa which is why myself is very uncomfortable right now that's another way I mean I have a Miata so I would I would disagree a little bit not disagree it's there's no right or wrong way to live we're all you know we're all trying to figure out the right paths for ourselves so I had a Miata and then my

friend Katherine was like hey do you want to try my Tesla and I didn't realize my life could be so much better oh really just for me and I don't even like driving yeah right in the car drives itself which is the best part so you know you try this stuff out a few people are asking for the newsletter to start it's sin Fox com I just saw a lot of people asking about oh yeah which

one think I'll eat yeah one thing I want to hook up I want to do for your audience which is fun we're gonna talk about the Donald Miller book for a few of the comments about action or things they're gonna take from this conversation do for themselves I'll give out five of his book so for five of the commenters worldwide I'll ship it anywhere for five of the comments or to let your team pick them maybe

like seven days after this video comes out I just think getting people excited for me I love people doing things it's easy you know we're talking about being discomfort ism to watch something it's hard to do something absolutely all right let's just bash through some more questions um so how do you find what from from Talal he says how do you find what you're good slash talented at I eat innate skills unfair advantages that you have

yeah that's it stuff and I think like what would you say yours is I think mine is that I enjoy all this kind of computer stuff and therefore any time I spend doing computer nerdy stuff is time like it doesn't feel like work another advantage that I have is I've got the brand of being a doctor and having gone to Cambridge University which is has some kudos among students around the world so those are probably my

two biggest things so I think there's a few pieces that you highlighted and then I mean I think that's the right answer so number one just look at what you're doing in your free time right and so what are your gravitating towards if it's music if it's art if it's computers there's probably something unique there about finding your skills in that number one number two that I really like is ask your friend so ask someone that

you respect don't ask someone that's a bum ask the one that you're like hey I admire this person ask them like hey what do you think my unique talent is and guess what they'll probably tell you and you'll be like oh yeah you're right and and three I think you also find try a bunch of things out to find out what you don't like yeah that sounds legit I think or maybe the last maybe the last

one and I'll just give everyone a challenge here's another chance to do just go text and help one person so what I mean before that is that just text someone right now I'll go on whatsapp go on Instagram go on your text phone I'll do it right now and if you actually help one person one it makes you feel more confident but think about what would I help someone with all right and what you would help

with is probably your unique skill that you have an advantage in nice all right we have a question from let's see from Anirudh rajesh who says what's your best message to current high school students what advice would you give to high school students Oh high school students man what's up yes I don't know man high school was a weird time for me I was like I was with like my like height my was with my elementary

school friends then I was with the jocks and then I was with the Nerds and I just was very emo man I was very like I smoked cigarettes and I like were my Boy Scout uniform to school because I thought that was cool and kind of it was it weird time I mean I think like high school as well as college I think that for me I would just try to think of life as a buffet

and try a bunch of dishes out so I think that's number one right so tryi Boy Scouts try online businesses try reading clubs like a night and I tried a lot of things out and the second thing I would say is that I was very lucky that I got born in San Jose California represent the 408 ya area if anyone's out there but I was lucky that my classmates one of them sold their company for a

billion to Cisco Meraki that's the company some of them now are VPS at the public companies and that was the expectation that was like the and then me like going to work at Intel was like oh it's gonna work at Intel out of college and then you know running a company that's like we're an eight-figure business setup sumo comm which is amazing and we love our sumo Ling's and the customers and that's the norm and so

the point I'm trying to really highlight for going out there is if in your high school think about who you're surrounding yourself with because if you're spending time with like my jock friends they're nice guys there's nothing with them but they're now and this is not as a knock on these professions but it was never my aspiration it was their electricians and their plumbers and that's great I don't actually everyone should do whatever job they love

that's part of one of the things I really mattered something like I want to love their work but I knew that I wanted to be in tech I knew I wanted to be in in like a you know building big companies and be an entrepreneur and so I tried and I surrounded myself altum Utley with people that did that like my best friend he's like a senior developer at stripe comm and my other friend was one

of the early people that lift comm and so these are guys that I went to high school with and I try to spend more time with them and less with the people that were cooler my friends are cool but like just the ones that were cool only in high school nice that's pretty good voice yeah I think I would I would I would fully agree with that I think in in in school in college in University

you've just got so much spare time on your hands and I don't think we really appreciate this one we're going through it but when you start working especially if you're working like a normal kind of a normal job like nine-to-five it ends up in it it ends up never being nine-to-five you end up at work until like seven if not later every day you end up having so much less time on your hands and so when

you're at school I think really take advantage of all of that just ridiculous amount of free time you have and occasionally I get messages from people being like hey when I get home I do my homework and then it's time for bed and that's just unfathomable because you you know if you get home from school at like let's say 5:00 you do your homework for let's say two hours you still got like you know between 7:00

and 11:00 to just kind of do whatever you want and high school is the time where for example I learned to code I taught myself design I sort of took on lots of these different hobbies that now looking back I'm so glad I went down these rabbit holes because at the time it didn't seem like it would be particularly helpful or just like oh this is kind of cool and making like you know ten dollars here

and there making a website for someone but now like those skills compound on themselves so much over time and he feel really glad that you spent that time in high school well having said that I despair I did spend about 4 hours a day playing World of Warcraft for three years happiest time of my life but hey you know but now you can make a living doing that though which is kind of wild yeah that's true

yeah that's true one thing I want to highlight though I thought about this with twitch because my friends work at League of Legends and so forth and we see people that are twitch people that make a million dollars that's only the top ten and so I think the thing that's interesting there is that you can't follow your passions so I think people are asking how do I find my passion try a lot of things out and

find out the stuff that you're like excited to keep doing and so with the twitch stuff if you're not able to make it in the top 10 there's still a lot of opportunity to start businesses or get jobs in gaming right like you can start a marketplace for gamers or you can sell books for teaching people how to game or you can do gaming parties there's a lot of opportunities if you're not in that thing but

you know for me I think where I've done success in my career by my own self I think success is a horrible word by the way yeah it's a dirty word because success is what we tell everyone else yeah Oh Ally is successful this person is successful and I think we have to decide our own metric of success in this life I think that that's almost one of the most important things and so for me it's

like when I've chased money an opportunity I've been at less fulfilled I just sustained it and I've made less money when I just said hey I really love doing these things I don't really care how much money it ends up making I've made the most money yeah I don't know that's kind of my theory for it as well it's like the first question is is this thing fun and if it's fun that I'll probably do it

if it's not fun but makes money then I probably won't I think early on I was more open to doing things that weren't fun but but that made money but now I've realized actually but especially once you've got some level of success or success it's it just makes so much more sense to do the stuff that that fills you with joy as corny and hippy as that sounds I think that's exactly a man cool we've got

a Oh a technical question from Tavia woods who says what platform would you recommend for blogging or would you just lower just making your own website so I think especially early when you're starting out I don't spend any money that's kind of one of my big premises don't money until you start making money so how much you know what's crazy YouTube is free it's free so I think what I would recommend for someone starting out like

I personally I host on Hostgator with a blog I use wordpress.org what I would do if I was starting today to build my audience I would probably well I would do three things add YouTube Instagram and I would do Sun Fox calm for the newsletter here's the most important thing though you have to do it at least once a week for a year and you can't even think about stopping until after a year then you could

start thinking about what you want to do with it and I think what most people do and I was joke about my mom my mom does a watermelon diet she eats watermelon for a month okay and of course she can't eat watermelon for the rest of the year because that's just not healthy and you're gonna end up dying I mean you're a doctor you know that and so what you have to find is you have to

find something that's enjoyable so you can sustain it and so generally with with content creation or building your brand or building your audience I would say you know Instagram is interesting especially if your photos I'm not a photo person I'm not really even a video person I'm more of like a words person or a conversational kind of raw person I'm not a high production like your videos are my production my YouTube stuff is like just more

of me chatting and so I think find the medium that works better for your style maybe it's audio maybe it's written maybe it's photos and then commit to it weekly for one year and then after a year I promise anyone out there will have as long as you stick for it for a year and you do a weekly you will have some results ya know I fully agree with that sometimes I get emails from people saying

that hey can you critique my you know Eman use that for my blog post on my youtube channel and they've put out like three videos and I usually reply with some kind of nice from a nice variant of okay you know ask me again in a year's time once you've made fifty videos and then and then and then my advice will start to make sense because when you've just made three you're still very much on the

steep end of the learning curve you'll learn so much just by doing it and you'll learn far more by just churning out more and more videos then you will by me giving you specific targeted feedback about your existing ones so I think at the start it's just about showing up and and doing the thing yeah well so two things with that one I one of the phrase I think about is don't call it in I think

people are like well I'm gonna put up a YouTube thing and just get rich right you can't call it in you have to show but let me I'm curious for you man when you started YouTube like just liked ovo or I think we were like well look at Ali's got it's like yeah but he started now just like any of you can he has you know any of you can go to youtube and hit that upload

button and start promoting it but what was your plan when you started it did you say what was your mindset my mindset like I said this in my very first video I said that I said that I'm just gonna try this and see what happens I know that my first 100 videos are going to be absolutely terrible so the plan is to just make a hundred videos and then start getting good at them and I said

that a worst-case scenario this will be a good memory to look back on and my grandma will enjoy watching the videos I've got that from my very first vlog and actually so when I made the decision that you know what I'm gonna start vlogging I had all this stuff going through my head about you know what sort of gear do an ePub a bla bla bla but through kind of all of the kind of books and

podcasts and stuff I've listened to I knew that that was the wrong way to go so I literally took out my iPhone flipped it over and ate Leo lying on my bed I spoke to the camera and then that night I put it into premiere uploaded at that and then that same evening and that was vlogging ombre one and I think had I worried about making making it good I wouldn't I would have never done it

but just putting something out there you know builds the moment and builds the flywheel and then you got going so one of my favorite quotes that I think about is momentum that gets momentum right and it brings on stuff so so how did you keep going though were you getting results were you getting a lot of views right away was it like oh my god it cuz you also said that you're like you had to detach

from the view count so I'm curious yeah sustained it now over the years so at the start I was very much focused on the view count I I'd be refreshing the YouTube studio or the YouTube app I like sort of 18 times a day and be like us I've now got 71 subscribers rather than 70 oh we got we got two subscribers today sake this is a great day I can't just be doing that multiple times

a day and then after I think I think instead of after doing this for a few months and I started hitting you know a thousand two thousand sites that looking at at the metrics just doesn't make any sense and actually what I should be doing is focusing on on the process of just trying to churn out these two videos a week and just not worrying about the views at all and this is something that I still

struggle with today like you know I want to make videos talking about you know fiction books that I've read but every every video I've made about fiction books in the past is 10 compared to a video about productivity or you know something like that but you know I read a lot of fiction I read a lot of fantasy this is what I like and so I want to I want to have the freedom to make those

videos without worrying about what these stats on YouTube studio were gonna say there's there's actually a theory it's called the sex cash theory know a little bit know what is that so I I don't know where I heard about it or who came from but it's like Leonardo Leonardo DiCaprio right so he did Titanic made a bunch of cash and then he does like some indie film like Basketball Diaries because it's sexy and so I think

there's something there is a creator where you have to do the videos that that bring in the audience and bring in the traffic and then you also have to do the experimental stuff which could be something that happens in the long term but also is just like a little sexier and a little bit more creative I think one thing that you you sparked in me man that that I think is really powerful especially for the audience

like I think you know like Adam is asking some questions in Sofia is what would you work on for free because when you started this channel how much were you getting paid no absolutely nothing right and I think that's something that's really been fascinating for me as I've gotten more into the content creation is that I think what people don't realize like they see oh these views they don't realize how much work really goes into it

they don't realize that like yeah to be an influence as much work as almost any other job so I think you have to figure out what would you work on for free so where they're getting paid a lot or a little you're like well I'm still enjoying this I'm gonna still keep going yeah I'm big on the whole the the phrase of trying to trying to monetize your passions and I know that some people rail against

this on Twitter they're like oh no you know it's not that every passion has to be monetized I'm not saying that you have to monetize every passion I'm just saying that if you can monetize somehow the things that you're doing anyway then life just becomes more interesting because then you kind of get paid for doing the stuff that you enjoy doing and I don't know if you feel this as well but I often find that for

example when I was learning the guitar and I would be sitting by myself learning guitar or actually whenever when I was towards the end of high school I started learning close-up magic so I'd be doing magic tricks and stuff and every magician he starts off Kino starts doing tricks in front of the mirror in front of their webcam but when I started performing in real life so I used to volunteer at the local hospice and do

magic trick so then once a week and I had this paid gig at a restaurant and it was some really really really scary and completely failed at it but kind of just having that mindset of okay I'm now taking this out into the real world I'm showing it to people and putting it out there it completely changed the game because it's it's so easy to focus on kind of the moves and the shuffles and kind of

the coin rolls and stuff that no one cares about because you're doing it in front of your webcam but as soon as you start putting out publicly it just a it makes it it makes it more fun because you've got this other element to it but B it really focuses down the things that you weakest art and the things that you need to improve for it to actually make a difference in the world and so why

I say that is that when it comes to monetizing your passions I think trying to make money off of kind of baking cakes I mean yeah sure if you want to bake them off in them that's absolutely fine but if you want to bake them off in and then try and sell those muffins it just it just adds another dimension of fun to the whole process yeah I mean one of the things that are especially high

school I remember the person's name but in the audience if you're trying to rise up and maybe you you don't have the job you want maybe you don't have like the career you want maybe you're trying to figure out your passion look at the person that's probably doing the thing that you admire right and the I'll be very specific go work for them for free and so how do you work for them for free let's just

take Ali Ali is telling you about close-up magic I'll use telling you his YouTube channels important Ali is telling you he's working on other businesses I would email Ali or me or whoever's life you imagine is living the life that you want to kind of learn from and email them value so what is value email is saying hey Ali I know that this is important to you plus your channel has changed my life here's three things

I think you should be doing that maybe will help you I'm happy to do that for free if you like me too if not no hard feelings PS keep doing amazing work and so that is what like the people I've hired at our company like Mitchell who helps me with all of the okay dork dot-com stuff he volunteered at my I do a charity bike ride he volunteered he's like hey I know this you're doing a

ride I want to just help out for free and then from that now he has a full time work that he loves and he gets paid really well and so I think it's interesting and then you go work for the school maybe you're like man I hate these people or I hate this type of work but at least it helps you understand what you don't like so you can get to the things you do like but

I'm fully about it with you man like my mom hated her work my mom was a nurse my brother's a doctor and my mom came home every day for 20 years saying like I hate being a nurse and I don't know I think that that well I do know that that kind of planted a seed in me that planted a seed in me to say I want to love my work and I want to have everyone

around me love their work whatever it is if it's a plumber if it is a doctor because there are people out there my one of my best friends wives is an OBGYN she loves it my brother's a doctor he does I think he likes his status he likes actually he loves saying he's a doctor yeah but if he had five million dollars in the bank he would stop being a doctor mm-hmm and I and I kind

of you know that's a whole longer discussion you know I think maybe earlier on it should have explored it but I think what you're kind of saying too is that it's not too late yeah it's not too late like if you want a sort explored but you have to plant the seeds now so that you can you know have those fruits and that vegetables in a few years yeah yeah absolutely and I've I've been getting a

few emails recently from people asking you know it's it's the summer holidays I mean I'm in high school and I'm going into college what should I do to prepare for college and I think the advice or you know I'm going to med school next year what can I do to prepare and I think the advice they want to hear is you know get this book on Anatomy get a you know get a head start on your

biochemistry stuff but what I tell them is no no don't waste your time doing schoolwork because you'll be doing that forever instead learn learn a new hobby learn a new skill level up what you're doing like the existing stuff that you're doing because that is the stuff that will kind of synergize firstly with your with your studies a little make it more interesting like for me so many more doors have opened in medicine because of the

fact that I can make a pretty-looking website then because of the fact that I'm I scored 1% higher than someone else in an anatomy exam like you know I've been invited onto the committee of this like super big plastic surgery charity just because I could make the website look cool and I was like hey you know you guys need a cool-looking website here are some examples I'll do it for free and they were like yeah sure

come on board see that's awesome and I good access to this whole network of like amazing consultant plastic surgeons and doing cool stuff and then sort of threw off the back of that that led to me helping develop an app for like remote sort of augmented reality remote assistance for surgery in you know low in like low resource areas and all of this stuff came about because of my interest in web design not because I spent

my summer holidays yet trying trying to get a head start on learning Anatomy and so that would be one thing that I would have to strongly advise anyone who's a student at the moment use your free time to learn the other stuff don't worry about using a free time to learn the student stuff because that that happens by default in your day job you know I double majored in Business and Economics and I literally don't think

I've learnt used one thing from that after I graduated all of my learning is experience and so I think what you're saying is a great point it's like just start exploring different things start helping different people start either physically being around other people or online like part of your community be a part of all these community there's a bunch of people here that want to be more productive that are thinking about medicine exploring life and you'll

be able to get ahead now get ahead but you I think you'll be able to find your answers faster hmm great all right we got loads and loads of questions but I wonder if we can just talk about productivity for a little bit because I know we're both fans of the topic and I understand that you were keen on on this idea of so the way that I I think about it is like trying to optimize

every interaction that I have with a computer so like one thing that I think is a is a big part of why I'm considered by some to be productive is because I've got a pretty fast typing speed and cuz I use keyboard shortcuts and things like Alfred and you know fully like I want to minimize the time between thinking of something and the action happening on a computer and when I see people clicking around it like

earth it's three seconds every time you're clicking something like I believe you one thing I just want to highlight have you read this book yes oh I love that book it's so good dude because I know you're into books to courage to be just like I just finished it this morning but I think I think it's kind of its kind of your path it's my path I hope it's everyone else's path who's watching now and watching

later which is you know it's not about going out there and trying to get people to dislike you which is what the title says but I think it's just self acceptance and then really finding that the path that you want to take and then being okay with other people saying oh that's weird yeah yeah I think the productivity thing is interesting because if you're very you know one of my favorite quotes around this is that there's

a guy paddling his canoe really fast but he's paddling it up the wrong stream and so there's a really big difference between efficiency and effectiveness and I believe that's from Gary Halbert if you guys don't read the Gary Halbert letters they're for you don't have to pay for them they're aligned if you want to learn how to do copywriting or writing Gary Halbert letters phenomenal and so I think with productivity there's a really big difference where

you can learn how that you can learn all the fastest stuff and we can I will go through at tactical stuff but I think you have to figure out how do you work on the right things and for me the best way that I've done it actually this is a cool thing I've been really getting into lately is color coding my calendar okay how so so I'll show you I'll post a screenshot I don't I can't

show my whole calendar but basically what I do is that to be effective you have to have a goal and to accomplish your goal you have to prioritize the activities towards that goal this is like the does stuff that you read and up I read it and literally just read a blog post it's like have a goal do stuff toward your goal it's like duh but here's the real thing look at your calendar today look at

it yesterday look at the week and I do it color-coded how much of the colors are aligned towards your goal so my colors one of my goals is around content creation and so I have all of my content creation activities purple and so I can instantly look at my Google Calendar and see how much is purple then I have yellow which is learning and so I can see instantly in my week how many of my hours

are learning hours and so it's just a really interesting way of framing your productivity and saying all right well if I'm spending time and that things I'm most likely going to get more things done because I'm always fasten with this Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg agates they have the same amount of time as you and me so what are they doing differently right so number one they're prioritizing better in their week they're hiring better and then they're

using tools better so I just think a lot of people are asking about the tools it said kind of you might notice efficiency have you have you got a process that you go through to kind of set goals and I'm kind of asking selfishly because I'm not sure I I guess you're familiar with the Jason freed and DHH approach to kind of goals like the whole like the whole Basecamp spiel seems to be that we don't

really like setting goals goals are arbitrary why would you bother taking this number that you've made up out of thin air why would you take that seriously and instead they seem to say that it's more about just focusing on you know just trying to make a good product and have fun while you're doing it and serve the community and stuff and I find that I resonate with that quite a lot and so when it comes to

you know I've got I've got this business mentor who always encourages me to set numerical goals for my youtube channel and I always feel that uh what's what's the point you know I my goal is to hit a million subscribers by 2021 like it's it seems very arbitrary um how do you think about goal-setting because I'm really not sure on this run okay so you're where are you in the UK right now I'm in Cambridge you're

in Cambridge it just sounds so cool when you say it man and if you were gonna if I was gonna say Ali go to France well how would you figure that how to get to France just like directionally oh I'd gone google maps and figure it out okay so I think what the 37signals guys are saying is let's say you're in America and you want to get to Mexico they're like you know just drive south write

it and eventually Mexico's down there and if you don't hit it just keep going south until you do and so I've kind of observed three systems of setting goals and I think each of them can work so I think there's the the object oriented goal which is what is my objective right so I want a million subscribers so for appSumo our company we have a revenue goal we want to get X and millions of dollars in

revenue this year very objective and you would have to sometimes have to have a destination Mexico revenue that so then I think there are process I think there are progress goals so a progress goal is so another example is like my mailing list so like San fox.com /no a my mailing list I don't care if I get one you so and what's important about goals is they have to matter to you so a progress goal is

I don't care if I get one new active subscriber a month or a thousand it doesn't change for me the value so a progress goal to me is is it progressing and I get five I'm happy if it's negative I'm not and so that's the progress goal and the last one is the system goal so a system goal is I'm gonna go to the gym three times a week that's it that's my system there's not a

progress but I will be there three times a week and so I think each of those goals work in different in different scenarios and different things so it's I don't I wouldn't say absolutely that 37 was wrong I think in business I think you have to kind of know how things are performing or progressing so we generally do our whole system in there we call it a GMO but I think there's other goals where you don't

want to have that because for me like YouTube if right now I'm at 50,000 and if I said I went a hundred thousand honestly you would kill my motivation and I don't care if I get a hundred thousand or if I get 50 1000 I'm just enjoying what I'm doing so it's more of like alright I want to put out three videos a week or two videos whatever that is and you know each one is a

different tool at a different time okay yeah that makes sense I think that's what the system's goal is very much how I think about my youtube channel that you know the only thing we're aiming for is to get one video a week or two or three depending on the week and if if we can make these videos a bit better over time if the numbers can be kind of trending in the right direction then that's all

that really matters and I don't really have a sort of subscriber count' goal because kind of as you said I think it would take a lot of the fun out of it because I feel like if I did set up to get a million subscribers by 2021 I'd be doing things that prioritize kind of getting views and that might not necessarily be the same stuff as what I'm interested in so for example if that was a

goal I wouldn't do any books about fiction I went do any videos about fiction books because it doesn't tie in with that particular goal but I guess I do kind of have goals in in other domains like for example if I'm setting out to do like a new business venture or something I kind of have this bar in my head that I want this thing to make at least $500 a month and I kind of do

what it takes for it to make at least 500 a month and beyond that if it makes 2,000 at that point I don't really care provided it hits that 500 a month thing and I think I suppose that's to the extent to which I have that sort of goal yeah I think that's great man I mean I'll tell you for me when I launch my podcast 3 years ago I want I set a goal before I

really knew anything and I think what's really important and this is really really important so pay attention to this not not you well you too would be every advice I give is just advice for myself by the way all the advices for me to remember it's really easy to get what you want but it's hard to know what you want I'll say it again and I'll say it the opposite way it's really hard to know what

you want but it's really easy to get it when you know it I believe every single person out there that's watching and listening Nicola Amir truth humanity ravines Stannis I believe I believe in every single person here can do but I think we need to spend more time thinking about what we actually really want because then you're like like one year for appszoom I wanted a million emo subscribers and and I knew in my heart I

was like I don't give a [ __ ] and so I would spend more time exploring what do we really want journaling writing thinking talking and the second thing so in terms of that is that like I told you my podcast I wanted a hundred thousand downloads in episode and by the end of the year I got thirty thousand downloads in episode and so I quit really oh I quit I gave up because I wasn't at a hundred

thousand and about seven months later I said well I really enjoyed the podcast but because I put that pressure on the goal it kind of it killed the motivation for it and so it's not to say not to have that so I started up again about seven to nine months later my downloads now are at ten thousand an episode I would beg for a thirty thousand and I changed my goal to say just put out one

episode that you love a week and now I don't look at my stats and I love doing the show I look like that it gave me an opportunity to hang out with like Owen and with you and talk to the audience and share their stuff that I know fulfills me and so I think goal-setting could be dangerous because guess what thirty thousand is actually a top show but now at ten thousand I'm just as satisfied but

if I would have just stayed consistent and and kind of adjusted my expectations maybe would be a 50,000 now or it would have been at a hundred thousand I think what we imagine we don't realize how long this is gonna go on for like we didn't think like the shows are gonna be going or the work like appSumo and sumo group our company I did not think I'd be doing this ten years later I thought I

would make three thousand dollars a month and live on the beaches of Thailand nice the old timber yeah yeah I mean he actually came to live with me and I went ended up going to Argentina and he came and stayed at our house for a little bit no he wasn't buds for a long time let's go so I think the point is find the things that you could do for ten years as I said earlier the

10-year rule is true yeah I remember a familiar with a marques Brownlee the tech youtuber mkbhd yeah a little bit what about him yeah so he was he he was he was only on the y combinator podcast for some reason and they're interviewing him and and and and he was basically talking about the ten year rule like they asked him like what's the secret to your success and he was like he was like in in fairness

I don't know man just pick something and work on it for ten years and then it's probably gonna be successful I was like to have that's such a good advice just pick something anything and just work on it for ten years like as as people like Gary Vaynerchuk would say it's all about patience in the in the long term it really is I mean we could talk about some of their productivity things because I think what's

interesting this is like the advice that that people need just to get started the provice thing needs is working on a fear but what they like knowing is hey what microphone does he used for his channel oh good yeah but the real advice is hey take some content and do it for the next year even every week that's actually what matters more and as you said just use your phone I mean I'd be curious like your

favorite productivity things I think my favorite productivity stuff that I and whenever I tell it or I see it it's so obviously number one is your trackpad that's always my first thing I always tell everyone is if your trackpad is not at full speed or your mouse is not a full speed you're doing half work so I think that's one that I'm actually a little known for PETA's insensitivity oh yes are you I'm I'm I'm at

like a very low level of sensitivity oh my god so I'm oh my goodness you're right I'm spending an extra one second every time I move the mouse just to be clear this is what I said earlier about where to invest you also should optimize the 80% of your productivity so do you have the fastest computer is your trackpad at tracking speed fast is yours a tracking speed fast I don't think it is I'm gonna change

it right now so go to System Preferences click on trackpad and make it the fullest fastest speed possible number two if your typing speed is not at least 80 words per minute I'll give you guys three sites that you should use they're all free to get your typing speed up number one key be our comm number two radda type comm number 310 fast fingers net just go practice 20 minutes a day and get 280 words per

minute those two things because think about if you're working on a computer and everything flows from computer if you're typing slow if your trackpad is slow if your computer is slow everything else is gonna be slow hmm so it doesn't matter what you're doing after that so those are the kind of the same ones and I think the last one that you kind of hinted on that that I'll say that I've gotten really excited about is

the Gmail shortcuts so if you're using an email which every single person does which you know that people are more on Instagram or maybe this other stuff but if you're sending any emails learn the GBO shortcuts you can hit shift question mark and it'll just show you all of them when you get into Gmail and make sure you haven't turned on in settings but how do you keep wear short cuts on learn them and you'll save

hours of life literally hours if not days of your life yeah I've I recently started started using the app things things three is like to do it as like a to-do list management and every time I have to do something I'm tempted to use the mouse but I think no I'm gonna find the shortcut and I would Google the keyboard shortcuts and just try and animate them to memory because it takes a bit of investment upfront

to learn the shortcuts for everything but then yeah you're saving days of your life over the long term I think the key thing here is you know as you once you get to 30 in my opinion you don't change your productivity system it's really hard to like if you're like I'm a note card person so you can see like every day I do my note card I'm a note card person and that's probably I'm gonna do

for a long time so I think figure out the system that works for you is really important but I think people get to think people get too sidetracked with like which to-do app are you using I'm like I used to remember the milk it honestly I just put into Do's I don't tag them I don't categorize them I just put them in there and that that works for me and I have you know a bunch of

other systems but that's the one that works are just my basic two do's and so I think what people need to spend more time on is just like the higher level 80% typing trackpad computer and also bed that's one thing I just got to put it out there if you have not optimized your bedroom that is the number one thing to go do immediately and I literally I just documented it for myself I can walk you

through my bedrooms I didn't realize it but if you think about it your whole day is based on you getting up and we spent all this time on everything else but the thing that actually can set us up for a great rest of the day we kind of like oh yeah I just have a cheap thing that that's ok and if you have money that's fine but at least do whatever you can to improve it so

if you want me I can share some of my bed tip yes by all means I've recently started going into this I got some blackout curtains I've got the the our our smart ring one that I sleep with to track my where's my deep sleep REM sleep and all that I've got some blue like blocking glasses on the way so I'll introduce you to Harpreet the guy from oaring as well if you'd like but you should

I think I have a $50 off code but you can put a link and I'll get you to set up your own code I'll write that down but or ring is amazing so yeah in terms of my system but not system but for my bed I use an Euler bed jet oh I've heard about those what's it like oh I saw at first I thought it was stupid it's basically a bed heater slash air conditioner and

it's for your mattress pad and at first I was like what do I need a heater or such cooler and then I started using it and it's just like it actually and I looked at ordering like my sleep scores improved and so it helps regulate your temperature better throughout the night so that's an euler bed jet beavers selected for the mattress I actually have the cheapest mattress possible on Amazon it's called a memoir sleep signature it's

375 so basically it's what Casper and all these guys use but it doesn't have a brand name okay so I use that I'm 75 for that I use JCPenney bed sheets that's what why are kind of recommended at the best business I use a tienen toughened needle pillow because I'm a side sleeper and I find that really comfortable I what are the other three other things I think if you're if you have no money and you're

like man I don't have money these beds stuff sounds expensive I don't have money for an or ringing I don't have money for this all you have to do is buy a mattress topper a mattress topper is $50 max or as they say in UK fifty quid and it is literally the most affordable way to update upgrade your sleeping or when you're traveling without having to spend a lot of money but what other stuff have you

started experimenting with her on that so after after I rode why we sleep I was like okay cool this is gonna change my life and so now what I do is I haven't got any air conditioning in my room but I bought a fan and I leave the window open and hopefully that cools it to 19 degrees or something overnight because I find that kind of like obviously sleeping the colder bedroom as the evidence says it's

just you know better for everything after reading that I also stopped taking my phone into bed with me I now have it across the room on the dresser so the only thing you have on my bedside table is my Kindle and therefore the only thing I can do when I go to bed is read on my Kindle which is fine because I have it set to the lowest brightness and then I just end up sleeping and

then when I'm up in the morning I I can't just lie in bed on my phone I have to physically get up and get my phone and just that level of friction stops me from getting back into bed and on my phone sometimes sometimes I still do our Lila screw it I'm just gonna take my foot it's better but just those two like little things have helped me I have have a nicer morning I've also now

started taking a filling up a bottle of water each night depending on a bedside table so the first thing I wake up yes and for open the curtain and just chug as much water as I can because I read some stuff online about how that's good and that also helps me to wake up so 2 2 1 1 2 thoughts why not keep the phone out of the room uh the alarm on it I guess but

I could just yeah I could I could for the completely outside the room I've actually found that helpful and I think the other thing for me that I've noticed is that I removed all my followers following followers on Instagram and I really make an effort I'm not perfect I'm human I really make an effort to say all right I have to read and I have to do my push-ups and I have to drink my water and

I take collagen pills because I'm older and I'm white so our skin doesn't age as well as you had a lot of so every morning I aim to read for 30 minutes so I read that book the courage to be disliked and do my push-ups and then I can look at the phone and I think there's something there because it's kind of like in the morning I even today I felt like man you've a cop you're

accomplished because it's easy and I you know you get on Instagram or one of these things and it's like 15-20 minutes later and I don't know what I've done so I unfollowed everyone so even if I do get on there's nothing to see like I don't have email on my phone I don't have a lot of the distractions that can take me away from the things I want to be focused on Oh on the note of

the Instagram I've not really said it publicly but like a couple of weeks ago I made decision I was like I'm spending way too much time on Instagram so instead of unfollowing everyone I just unfollowed all of the pretty girls that I was following I think that's a good and now on my feeds rather than getting these kind of like you know girls in bikinis on the beach and stuff I now have either kind of photos

of desk setups or photos of like amazing photography landscapes or follow loads of photographers or like photos of like these like ripped dudes in their workout gear which encourages me to kind of actually do some do some pull-ups whereas before I'd be landing on you know some some Instagram model and just kind of sighing uh I think it's crazy well you know it's funny though dude so I I did I had the same problem and go

to the Explorer tab it's all models they know they're like we don't you want I'm like but I think that you said that is really I think about this with friendships and I know this is gonna sound a little harsh but the same thing with Instagram and honestly with all of our activities is is this adding or subtracting hmm friends Instagram YouTube like your channel it adds hey I'm gonna learn about productivity I don't learn how

to improve my computer system and I learn how to take better notes I'm gonna be potentially go to medical school if that's what people want and I think people aren't intentional they're accidental and they're they give away their time to freely but they need to be a little bit more intentional like hey is this Instagram serving me cuz Instagram and YouTube and all these places they are optimized to waste our time they are literally incentivized and

their algorithms are because they make money that way so they want us to waste as much time as possible so they will do whatever that is and so we have to be we have to defend ourselves and be aggressive and saying no I want to follow my friends I want to follow inspiration things that are adding and I'm gonna remove anything that takes away from that yeah like one of my favorite apps like people don't use

Facebook as much but what am i my number one favorite Chrome extensions do use the news feed Eradicator oh yeah I've got a few friends you do I don't look into Facebook enough to need it ah yeah I don't have these on my phone but on the chrome newsfeed Eradicator extension phenomenal go into Facebook check my messages check my groups I'm outies nice yeah so uh on the note of things that add well one thing I

realized is that often if I'm if I'm on the computer or now I kind of want to take a break the default thing is I would go on the couch I would open I would open up my phone and start scrolling through Instagram so instead what I've done is that I always have my guitar right next to the couch which means if I'm taking a break the easiest thing for me to do rather than pick my

phone is to pick up the guitar and like practicing scales and stuff and it's just like really funny and it also works two words my goals because one of my goals is to get better at guitar into kind of perform out on the streets and things like that rather than sit on my phone and scroll through Instagram so I think part of it is kind of the environment design you know removing all the friction from the

things that you want to do and adding frictions to the that don't that you don't want to do like having Instagram uninstalled from your phone or you know like buried within a folder somewhere or whatever I have it on the third page what are you going to perform on the street I've done it a few times actually so in in Cambridge it's very nice because it's it's a historic town you don't need a license to busk

on the streets so when I was when I was in med school I think two or three times me and my friends we got together with a microphone and the guitar in the amp and we raised money for the local homeless shelter but I haven't done it for a few years ever since I started working in my time became from time to time which is just an excuse so I want to do that and one of

the things on my bucket list is to busk on the London Underground but that's kind of quite hard because you actually need a license for that you have to audition and you have to get a license in order to perform at a London Underground because they have standards so I want to get good at guitar and it's thinking and they know what a performer on the London Underground and maybe make a video about it cuz I

think that would be cool I think you should do when you're when I'm saying I'm saying to myself from from August when I'll be unemployed I'll have all the time in the world to explore these things and you know randomly go to go to London for a weekend and hopefully the lockdown will have died down by then yeah I mean I think it's funny I forget sometimes of lockdowns happening but I think this is such a

blessing it's unfortunate for the deaths but I think this limitation is inspiring a lot of people to try you know cooking like I've been playing piano and just learn I suck at him and I just playing four Non Blondes last night it was a rough night but it was just like it's it I think it's a great opportunity that people now there's no FOMO not everyone's out there's nothing to miss out on and so go explore

your business explore your art explore your creativity so I love that part of it yeah what else is on your bucket list man oh let me bring it up I want to make a magic show and perform it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that's on my bucket list what else do I have I want to learn archery and I want to become a gym shark athlete that's been that's been homeless yeah and I've got the kind

of list of places that I want to go to I I quite like the idea of doing a thing where we're whereby I would just like posting Instagram be like hey I want to visit someone somewhere in the world who wants to host me for a week you know can I come can I come live with you and your family and see who replies and then just go to it's like hang out with someone for a

week and turn into video I think would be fun as like yeah well I yeah just everyone put in the comments where would you ho if he if you're open to hosting Ally where are you in the world for him to come get hosted I'm curious I want people to go crazy yeah come to my city yeah so that's another thing on the bucket list so do you when you do your bucket list so one thing

your estimate my goals I generally like doing goals in one year segments and I think each year should be the bucket list okay so my bucket list is per year and some of the things that are not on the bucket list I have just I have a Evernote folder called 2021 already yeah that's just everything I'm thinking about for next year and so I just like saying hey what are the crazy things I'm gonna do this

year so wasn't even book a list with this year what is on my bucket list I want to go to Oktoberfest an urban Oktoberfest I basically I have five categories work workout living personal and travel so I want to do van life I told you that yeah I want to do a hundred thousand push-ups okay how many is that add a hundred think about 270 day no yeah it sucks sucks at first I wasn't gonna get

it but this quarantine has kept me inside so I'm doing a lot of push-ups well like so the the 270 presumably not all in one go presumably like throughout the day right yeah thirty right when I wake up yeah exactly so the thing I would say with this is that one thing that I would highlight and highly recommend and so you had your goals really accessible yeah like you typed it things you circles so for me

I look at my goals on my phone every day I read a daily mantra a little cheesy but it works for me so I call it daily I have it pinned yeah and I read my mantra and then I read my goals I don't wanna show mine some of these goals but every day I just read my goals and so I think the point here is with your bucket list or goals you should have them everywhere

on your mirror I remember what I got fired by Facebook and I ended up I think I went and lived at my mom's house for a little bit after that I put on my mirror I was like in 10 years I want to be a millionaire in 10 years I want to have a house in ten years I want to have a car so you got to see your gotta have goals you want and then see

them but some of you know and see them as many places as possible I want to make coconut wine and if you ever had it it's super weird okay I loved it I mean just different different categories and then I think the other thing at work I want i like attending conferences i always find a lot of inspiration hmm so anyways i just the last thing i do from my bucket list i always pick a word

of the year a wood of the year okay well what do you would this here now where did this year and it's come true as congruence okay what do you what do you mean I want you know I think what I've noticed for myself and I've noticed for others is that like in my professional life I'm very organized and I'm very discipline I'm very goal-oriented in my relationships yeah we'll see what happens or in my travel

you know and so I want to feel aligned with all the things I'm doing okay not that they all have to related well like the way I'm behaving when relationships we're having in my work behaving to myself is congruent and it kind of made me may some harder decisions in my relationship it's made me identify and be comfortable not apologizing being myself in my work without fear and with some fear and still going I having courage

to do some of these things as well as for myself nice you know there's a there's a concept that my brother and I talked about on our podcast sometimes which is that for us we've we've noticed that most of the gains in our personal lives have come more from treating it like a business and a lot of the games and our businesses have come from treating it like a personal lives like having that more of a

personal connection and kind of treat treating your personal life like a business like that kind of concept makes me think hard about the stuff that I'm doing with my time and the things I'm giving my time to that you know if if I were a business allocating my time as a resource would I really be spending it on you know browsing these Instagram models for a for an hour each day probably not it's a it's a

it's a waste of company resources and so if you kind of just thinking about it in those terms has actually helped me do and and also things like systematizing relationships to the extent that III I guess everyone keeps her like a calendar of their friends birthdays but I've never really done this and so I also like loads of friends you know for their birthdays I put it in things as a recurring reminder that reminds me five

days before the birthday see pop up on my to-do list I'm like okay I need to buy this person it birthday present and then I'd kind of get the group together and be like okay let's like every old chip in let's get'em this like expensive thing and just just that slight a system a system ization of of the thing has led to a lot of gains and so I'm trying to figure out other ways in which

I can kind of business if I my personal life to make it more totally more fulfilling I just got a highlight in the comments man you have so many places in the world that you can go visit oh I don't think I was like yesica Castro from San Diego there's a guy Hollenbeck I think from Wisconsin I love the Packers do you go pack go so many cool people over well Columbia Munich Germany yon sees an

Auckland dude that's Man III I don't know maybe you should take your chat up on your challenge Emma from from from August I'll post an Instagram /youtube and someone can host me for a week by the way if you guys one thing I'm curious for everyone out there hit the like button if you like la this dude you're amazing and I'm curious for everyone out there just like what is one thing that you've learned from Ali

that's improved your life because I think sometimes when you're creating the content and you put it out there and for me only recently if I finally started not being so afraid of myself or not being so scared that I'm not smart okay scared that my information is that helpful so sometimes it's actually really nice to hear how much you've impacted Sony's by the way there's a few oh it's still all over the world on manual casters

got the Golden State Warriors but I'm curious for that everyone hit the like button for ollie and then something you've learned from him by watching and subscribing to his channel thank you that's very nice that's a very a positive vibe thing to say Oh someone just in Babcock's in Austin that's where I'm in Austin Texas Saudi Arabia Denmark Brazil Ireland Austin yeah Oh grace wing alley taught me how to study you learned about mister money mustache

from Ollie Minot Babur said and changed my outlook on life dan I know in said notion learned about notion dude you guys are using notion by the way the way that you guys have set up this video thing with notion I'm gonna probably copy that's super impressed it's pretty cool isn't it yeah who's on your team that's helping you live blog yeah we've got Angus and Liz everyone say say kudos to Angus and Liz for for

being on the call and maintaining this live blog as we go along they've crushed it I'm gonna give some claps I'm gonna do the taco emoji for them that's my favorite emoji by the way do you know that on Mac the keyboard shortcut for emojis I just learned this or the command ctrl spacebar just learn that oh it tomato is another such a good it's a good one because I used rocket there's a thing called rocket

app which I love just as much that's a little bit easier yeah but yeah I learned the control command spacebar you can do emojis yeah I find that when I was using motion a lot because you can just you can type in control command spacebar and then you can type in what you're looking for like I don't know watermelon and it would give you the emoji for that because I can I can never be bothered like

it's it's it's too much effort to scroll through the emojis I want to find a way of typing the dude people are learning to manage this is honestly so impressive it's it feel good cuz I think sometimes it's like you're the views are it's who cares about the views it's like oh and art saying thank you to Angus and Liz notion man people you're like then the notion evangelist he asked seem to be the the iPad

pro under the notion evangelist and I self about stuff about study techniques dude hell yeah you know I think what you did it's a commend you is that you put yourself out there and that that's scary right because that makes us vulnerable right and I think I've been hesitant on putting myself out there even though I I'm out but not out because you know I wonder if I'm enough I mean it's scary to be vulnerable there

and and have people say like oh I don't like your thing or no one watches your thing oh and that's actually good because it's it seems like you've been putting yourself out for quite a while like you know the podcasts been going three years you've got the blog that's super popular you kind of write on the internet about your businesses and stuff like yeah why do you still feel like you're not putting yourself out there enough

oh like what's your thought process behind it well I think for the past especially three years I haven't really put it out like I think I put out with like an asterisks like you know advice may vary or user you know user difference may vary and I think because I don't want you know I'm scared that my stuff might not actually be good mmm and then I you know I had some therapy and I started putting

it out there and said hey I'm not gonna apologize anymore let me just start doing the things I really believe because I do think it's helpful and I'll do help people one by one if so what at the end of the day and so it's just changed my perspective and what's interesting is that when I started saying hey it's enough and stop apologizing I finally started appreciating the audience because I this is a true story I

would I'd see people who follow my youtube channel or read my blog or read my newsletter and I'd be like if they followed my advice they're stupid Oh interesting huh yeah okay I know that sounds working it sounds really messed up and I thought it's like well maybe cuz I think I'm stupid and my advice isn't good and I started thinking like why why am I so worried about that and only recently when I said hey

this is what works for me I believe it's very helpful I'm gonna put it out there not apologize for it have I actually now the audience like I'm open to the audience yeah I know what you mean I kind of have that as well like even though I've been kind of giving advice on the internet for the last three years the way that I present it in the videos is very much that oh you know this

is the these are just some things that work for me they might work for you as well and I'm I'm always really pleasantly surprised / shocked whenever anyone who's older than me says that they get they learned something from me because in my head I'm very much thinking that okay like you know why is anyone over the age of 25 gonna bother listening to my advice about productivity like what the hell do I know I'm just

making up as I go along for someone who's like 17 and applying to med school you know they would see me I can see why the appeal would be there but I was you know a few months ago I had coffee with this like 41 year old banker from Sweden and his 39 year old IT executive girlfriend who were talking about how they like my tech videos and I was like wow that's like who knew that

this could happen on the Internet and even now I still I still feel a little bit hesitant about kind of like unapologetically saying stuff I feel like I always have to cloak it with lots of kind of clearing my throat and lots of guys you know don't hate me for saying this but yeah I said that's something I'm trying to get better at as well yeah there's a great book that I've really liked it's the dali

lama's art of happiness oh I haven't heard that it's a really great book and two of the things that I've taken away from that book is be intentional with your words so a lot of people when they say things are like oh yeah my work that [ __ ] oh yeah that [ __ ] or whatever that stuff and I think even if you label other people or you label your work that stuff it kind of is partially true so

I try to be intentional about that the other thing I've gotten better at is that I do I try to remove the word I think the word try and so I think and I think what I'm trying to explain to people is that be definitive in your thought so not I think this this is what I think I'm trying to do this now this is what I'm doing and I think being more mindful of the word

usage is actually more powerful than it seems now all right we will have that booked or a list of books mentioned Thank You Angus and is it's already on there and I'm sure they're putting in Amazon affiliate link in there so we can squeeze some revenue out of this podcast yeah well then I would have recently absolutely slashed their affiliate affiliate earnings I mean that's a whole nother discussion about like how do you reduce dependency in

business and it's what we talked about earlier on how do you get more freedom and control of your career and if you're a doctor I think what you did is a great thing that everyone can copy right like start a newsletter or start a podcast or start an e-commerce store or start a digital story there's no rules there's like that's what's cool about the Internet there's no laws yet yeah like you can't can't no one's stopped

on YouTube and it's free to host videos yeah and I think like especially those of us who are sort of in in quite like traditional fields I it feels like for a lot of things we need permission and that's one of the biggest things that I've learned that actually no one's like we don't need permission like yeah if you want to do the thing then just do the thing and I I struggle this even even today

like like for example this whole thing about you know do I want to travel to travel the world or do I want to apply for residency program I know the right answer is travel the world but in a way by talking to people like you and and other people that I look up to on internet I'm in a way asking for permission and I really don't need to because I know what I'm going to be doing

and so yeah when it comes to starting anything on the internet you know just just go for it you don't need anyone's permission yeah and I think I heard the phrase without permission I mean one of the things I've always said about entrepreneurship is that an entrepreneur cannot be satisfied and what I mean by that is that if you're satisfied you probably don't have any problems that you want to solve because if you believe that there

was content out there that was as good at sharing the thing about notion or productivity or how to study better which is what you've done you would have never started it you weren't satisfied and I think that's saying it's it's also without you know you know not being satisfied you're saying well like do I need permission to start this who do I because I trained we're literally our parents our schooling everything is you need permission for

this class you need this structure you need this acceptance you need to raise your hand like one of my favorite books about this is called teaching as a subversive activity it's an older one if you had read that one it's phenomenal it's like how would schools be if they weren't treated like factories and so it kind of shifts a lot of the thinking around that and I how they recommend it but I think for everyone out

there it's like no apologies without permission nice right yeah and just get going I think that's my biggest thing is I love people that watch this watch our conversation and just do something for themselves like they improve their notion they put out a post they apply for a new job they go and do the coffee challenge nice okay fantastic I think that is a good place to end this to start wrapping things up you know just

go out and do the things you want to do don't ask ed don't ask for information don't require permission just just kind of go for it so um can is is there any court of resources that you that you'd be able to kind of point to people to because I know there's loads of people in the audience who are looking to kind of start their own businesses or start their own stuff I wonder if you can

just kind of plug a few things that you'd kind of recommend for people i8 seems to be probably I guess the audience is mostly mostly students mostly people who haven't started their own businesses yet like how would you suggest they get started so we have a course I just didn't want to reopen it just to be clear and it's only seven dollars and there's no more sales or upsells or down sells or cross sells and once

you make seven dollars we give you the money back just to be crystal clear and that's monthly 1k calm frankly if you just watch my Noah Kagan on YouTube you'll get just as much I think what what I found through the course is that people need help with some accountability right like it's easy to watch like an ollie video but then sometimes you kind of need someone double checking or supporting you so I highly recommend that

I would start a newsletter so send Fox comm it's a tool I built for me because I was tired of overpaying it's free to start there's no hidden sales and just start sending out a newsletter once a week about anything you're interested in because 20 years later for me it's been able to connect with cool people like you like and as I got older I'm trying to not get be an old curmudgeon I'm 38 I don't

know everything and I'd do it my way it's like I want to be around the 20 year olds like you who are doing notion like I'm even still like notion it's for the kids and that's what I have to catch because I'll tell you a true story when I was at Facebook we took over half of this office space is there a half of this office space this is a middle-aged Asian guy and he's like what

do you guys do or like Facebook it's a social network he's like oh that's stupid and then three months later we took over his office space and he moved out well and 10 years later went public and now they're worth you know half a billion dollars half a trillion dollars and so I think you have to check your ego at the door especially as we get older because it's easier to get you know safe and the

reason sometimes you create greatness is because you didn't play it safe because you made videos about fiction because you were excited about it so yeah number one monthly 1k number two cent Fox com obviously you can check out my youtube channel Noah Kagan just search Noah Kagan or youtube.com slash okay dork and if you have a business or you're starting a business app suma comm is our site for software deals so think of it like Amazon

for software tools to run online companies I think that's kind of main thing my newsletter is a free newsletter on marketing sin Foxconn slash Noah yeah pretty good that's what I aim for I aim for just my favorite great was an a-minus because you've got the a but you didn't have to do all the work like I'll plug one other thing that I actually think your audience would really dig this one is yeah my Goodreads page

Goodreads calm slash Noah Kagan and that's every single book I read with every single rating so if you're like oh what books did they mention or what things are they mentioning you could do that it's also an okay dork lock on my personal blog I've put a lot of book reviews similar to what you're doing but your your video for the book you put out on unfair advantage it made me not want to do book videos

because that would not have to just that was a Saudi like how long did that take oh man so it's really interesting with that video because Angus one of the guys who's helping kind of live blog this as we go along that was that was entirely his edit and it was his first time editing a YouTube video and all of the comments were like oh my god the editing on this is insane and Angus had never

edited a video before but he actually took my Skillshare class on how to edit videos in final cut and just kind of worked through the 35 videos in that like a month ago and now he's editing videos for the YouTube channel on it it's gotten like 150,000 views in two days and all the comments are saying oh my god this is amazing editing so kudos to angers for doing that but I think it just speaks to

the power of how and just how much you can learn on the Internet and then you just start putting stuff out there cuz like it's free it's it's like the first time the dudes editor the edited a video and it was that good so yeah one other thing that we do have a Facebook group so I am in a group of people want to hang out with smart people like myself or others and connect so okay

dork comm slash group it's free it's a chance that people can connect and talk to other people because I think one of the things especially like it's easy to watch your videos and I don't know how you're doing it with your community but like how can you become more of a hub to help connect you know like Luke and Stannis and city and like because they want to talk to each other man and like what I

found especially this is what I learned early in life like the book I read was never eat alone by Keith Ferrazzi which it Just's a very strong book but the more that you could become a hub and have events or be a hub and connect people or be a hub and connect community one your life is more enriched but two people think of you as an expert and it's a great way to build a community yeah

that's something I'm thinking about a lot so if a few months ago I started a channel on discord and that had like a few thousand people in it kind of giving each other homework - homework tips and stuff it it became very unmanageable just because of the sheer volume of people so I've been looking for like a new kind of way of doing it Facebook groups seemed a bit like that's where the old people are at

[Music] but I think yeah I think I could get a lot of value from Facebook I'm sure I'm sure a lot of other people could if I just kind of unfollowed on newsfeed and started joining these Facebook groups instead because I know a lot of people you know you've got one Thiago Forte has one you know there's there's all sorts of Facebook groups of kind of small people out there where you can learn a lot of

stuff and that might be one way to get more value out of Facebook there's so what I found we've actually we custom built our own forum software to build our own community and the problem is that people it's hard to change behavior so you have to figure out how do you enhance behavior and if people are on Instagram if they're on YouTube if they're on discord that's easier to kind of keep them there so that's where

I've done more of the Facebook stuff yeah there's some community software I'll find out what it's called and I'll send it to you maybe building like a forum like my buddy has a forum that he uses a copywriting course knock on /join you could see the forum example yeah and it's a way that people can help answer each other's questions the other thing I don't like about Facebook is they own the community and all the information

so it's not public and it's locked in there their garden their vault yeah but I'll send you a message I'll send you the the forum software when I find out what he uses because I think your people would honestly appreciate it they can help each other even better it's probably needs more structure absolutely it seems like people are keen on the discord thing I have to reinstate that potentially at some point once we could figure out

a way of managing like 10,000 people in it a subreddit potentially that could work oh that's cool I like that that's a good idea rainbow random rainbow 1200 good Scheldt I think I separate or the software just on on your site yeah alright awesome well thank you very much Noah for taking the time it's been a solid two hours there's been a lot of fun where'd it go yeah I just completely flies what he's talking about

cool stuff and guys like all the stuff that we've talked about all the books all the apps or all of the things the different challenges that no was talking about the coffee challenge the newspaper challenge the health challenge all of this stuff is on that notion page and there's a link in the video description along with links to all of Noah stuff sign up to subscribe to his podcast it's very good so subscribe to the email

newsletter and and the blog it's just all like generally good insights for if you want to start a business if you're going to grow business like all of this sort of stuff yeah thank you so much for taking the time now thank you for having me every single one of you out there I love you go to do something for yourselves today it's been it's been a pleasure just made my day thank you so much man

all right I'll see you later guys bye bye