know, there's this one, you know, what's a way to make money? I'm seeing my colleagues being laid off and I am worried. How do I even begin if I feel like I have no skills and no road map. Nice. Thank you. Ah, we've got some food. Okay, nice. Thank you very much. All right, we've got some food. Going to be doing a little this kind of vibe while answering the questions. I hope you'll forgive me. So, there's a few different ways of thinking about this. Um, the key thing to remember is that if we just sort of zoom out a little bit, the way you become financially free is that you make some money and you make more than you spend and then you invest the rest into savings into passive income assets like stocks and shares. Now, what we're essentially trying to do is, you know, you probably don't want to drastically reduce how much you spend because you don't want to live like a monk, right? There's a limit to how much you can save, i. e. it's just as much money is coming in. Uh and so we really want to be focusing on the other side of the equation on like how do we just drastically improve our earning potential. Now the way to think about this is that you currently have a market rate. Your employer currently pays you to do something assuming you have a job. Um if you're a student it's a different situation but I'm you know let's start by assuming you have a job and therefore your employer is paying you to do something. Therefore you have a market rate. The only reason your employer is paying you is because you either directly or indirectly are making them more money than it costs for them to hire you. Otherwise, you'd be laid off fairly quickly if you haven't already. So, you are adding value to the market in some way by virtue of working for your employer. So, you already do have skills. I would call these professional skills. This is the sort of the skill set that your employer is paying you for. Now, what you want to be thinking is like how can I add more value? Like for example, let's say you're a trader at Goldman Sachs, right? like you know that if you make Goldman Sachs way more money, they'll give you way more money and therefore it's easier for you to become financially free. Let's say you have stock options at a tech startup and you think it's going to go well, you probably shouldn't try and start your own business because you're on a high earning career trajectory that's going to help you get to financial freedom. But if you're not in a high earning career trajectory to get you to financial freedom, you really want to start thinking about what problems can you solve that other people would pay for. In your case, your employer is already paying you to solve a certain type of problem. Could you solve more expensive problems or more painful problems for your employer or for other people that are like your employer? This is sort of like the professional skills kind of bucket. And so this is based on like the professional skills that you already have. But then the other thing to keep in mind is that skills can be learned essentially. What is a business? A business is three things. Person, problem, and solution. There is a person who has money who has some kind of problem that's quite painful for them. And then you as the business offer a solution. And the thing is, it's really not that hard to learn a lot of these skills. You know, there are a lot of people in the comments and the questions feeling like they don't have any skills. Firstly, the I don't have any skills thing is just not true because, for example, you could mow lawns, right? You could be a cleaner. You could drive for Uber, right? You probably know how to drive, right? So, you could drive for Uber. You actually do have skills. It's just that those skills have a certain hourly rate attached to them. Like mowing someone's lawn, you're probably not making more than 20 quid an hour. Driving for Uber, you're probably not making more than 50 quid an hour. So, what you're basically looking for is like, what skills do I have or what skills can I learn that have a higher market rate than mowing the lawn or cleaning the house or driving for Uber. These days, it's super easy to learn skills because you can pretty much learn anything on YouTube. And so, the challenge then doesn't become, oh my god, I don't have any skills. What do I do? The challenge becomes, okay, I don't have any skills. So, what skills can I learn that will help someone with money solve a problem that they think is very painful? Now, as a hack for this, the easiest way to make money is to help someone else make money. Because if you were to wave a magic wand and you were able to make me an extra 100 grand, I would pay you quite a lot of money. I'd pay you at least 80 grand or at least or maybe even 90 grand if you were able to make me 100. So, if in doubt, you can start thinking, okay, what skill can I learn that can help a business make money? Because then they are very likely to want to pay you some percentage of that as compensation for your time. There are a lot of these skills increasingly, you know, if you were to learn the skill of how to automate stuff using AI, loads of businesses are super inefficient. They waste a lot of time doing stuff without AI. You could potentially come in with an AI consultancy type business or agency. Loads of people are starting these sorts of businesses because there's a massive trend, a massive rise in the market for those things. You could learn the skill of AI automation and then you could find local businesses or online businesses who' be willing to pay for that skill because you are saving them time and therefore making them money. Let's say you wanted to learn the skill of conversion rate optimization. What is that? That's when you get really good at copywriting and running AB tests and data analytics and stuff and you help someone's website convert, i. e. get customers at a higher rate than the website was previously. We have a course at Parttime YouTube Academy that does somewhere between$1 and $2 million a year in revenue USD. So if someone were to have the skills to increase our conversion rates on that, let's say you were able to double our conversion rate through a combination of copywriting, AB testing, and data analytics. Suddenly, you've added a million dollars a year worth of value to my business and therefore I'm very likely to pay you quite a lot of money for that. That's a skill set that you can learn. No one comes out of the womb knowing how to do copyrightiting, data analytics, knowing how Google Analytics works, knowing how to do AB testing and conversion rate optimization. But these are skills that literally anyone in the world with an internet connection can learn because they're all freely available on YouTube and these days you can just ask chat GPT. So really the mental mindset shift here is away from what business should I start and more like okay what problem can I help people solve and ideally those are people who have money and as a hack if those people are businesses it's way easier to access that money. The other categories of thing is that people will pay to solve problems in their health um and relationships. But the other hack is that you really want to be focusing on who can you help who actually has the willingness and the ability to pay for the thing. That's just some ways of thinking about the business. I think when it comes to this sort of stuff, what a lot of people want is like a business in a box that hey, it's super easy. You're a nobody with no life and no skills. Just start XY Z business. And it's like that's just not how it works. It's like that is looking for someone to tell you what to do. and do is uh thinking like an employee rather than thinking like an entrepreneur or thinking like a student where in school you're told exactly what to do. When it comes to starting a business, there is no plan that's like, "Hey, whatever you are in, whatever situation, just follow these exact steps and you can just like copy and paste a solution and blah blah blah. " The closest thing that comes to that is like start an AI automation agency, start a social media marketing agency, start video editing for people who need video editing, run an ads agency, like, but even those require quite a lot of skills. And ultimately what it is you're learning a set of skills that helps a business make more money. So, we want to start thinking in those ways rather than what business should I start. Now, if you're watching this video, you probably care about financial freedom, and that means that you want to figure out ways to make a lot of money and then invest your profits into passive income assets. And that brings us to the very kind paid partners of this video, which is Trading 212. Trading 212 is a commission-free investment platform that I've been using for years at this point. The basic idea, if you aren't familiar, is that, you know, you deposit money into the platform and then you can invest that in things like stocks and shares and index funds and all of the fun stuff. And they've got a bunch of features that make investing very easy. Very excitingly, they've just recently launched their Trading 212 card, which lets you earn 1% cash back on your daily spending. 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Next, we have a consolidated question. a bunch of different people basically asking how do I find my first customer and prove that my idea works. There is the rule of 30 and 150. The rule of 30 says in order to validate a business idea, you have to speak to 30 customers or 30 potential people. All right, let's say I decide, you know what, I know how to use a camera and I I'm pretty sure I could learn videography because I've been following Peter McKinnon's YouTube channel and I like the idea of learning videography. Okay, cool. So that's like my skill that I'm going to learn. And let me see who are people that I know or can find who would pay for the skill of videography and ideally would pay lots of money for the skill of videography. Well then I would think okay I mean I would I mean if you don't know the answer to that you can just ask Chad PT. So I would just go on Chad PT and be like hey Chad PT I'm thinking of building a business helping uh sort of based on the skill of videography. Who should I you know what actually let's just do it right now. I'm just literally going to talk to chat GPT because these days with Claude and Chat GPT, like you really don't need a business coach. It's still helpful to have a business coach, but like there's a lot you can do with that. It's actually I'm just going to I'm going to screen record and I'm going to ask Claude cuz I really like Claude personally. Um, but all of the LLMs will basically give you sensible things that you could Oops. say. Okay. Hey Claude, so I'd like to start my first business. Um, and I'm just not really sure how to how I'd approach getting my first customers. Um, I think I want to start a business in the field of videography because I like the idea of learning videography. I um, yeah, I have some old camera that I'm shooting on. Actually, you know what? I don't even have a camera, but I do have my phone. So, I'd like to do some kind of videography based business. Can you give me some ideas about how I might find my first customers? Okay. Starting a videography business with your phone is totally doable. Many successful videographers began with basic equipment, blah, blah. Start with your immediate network. Think about who might need video content. local small businesses, restaurants, real estate agents, fitness trainers, or people planning events like weddings or parties. Even if they can't pay much initially, these projects help you build a portfolio. Offer services for events and milestones, graduation parties, birthday celebrations, small weddings, anniversary dinners, people are often willing to pay someone to capture these moments, and you don't need elaborate equipment for intimate gatherings. Yes, if you're trying to shoot a luxury wedding, you can't do it on your iPhone. But hypothetically, if someone were to come up to me and say like, "Hey, look, I know you've just had a baby. Um, you know, next time you have a birthday party, I'm going to be the videographer and I'm going to document sort of POV style just with a phone and I'll do all the editing and it's going to be VIB and I'm going to interview everyone at the party and you're going to capture the memories and it's going to be $300. I'd be like, sick. That would actually be pretty good. You don't need anything other than a phone and the ability to edit videos in like Cap Cut or like the Instagram edits app or whatever to be able to provide that kind of value where you as a phone based videographer with allegedly no skills, but you know how to use a phone cuz you're watching this video. Um, is then able to add value in that kind of way. Leverage social media. Yeah. I mean, when you think videographer, you think fancy camera, you think fancy lighting, you think fancy microphone, but a lot of the best social media type content when it comes to like sales and marketing and stuff and advertising is more like homebrew filmed on a phone. So, could you go to local businesses or anyone that you know who has a business or would like to get traffic towards their thing and say, "Hey, I will create social media content for you to post on your social platforms. " If you really wanted to, you could go to the local coffee shop. And you could say, "Hey, you know, I'm a videographer and um I'm starting a new business in social media management. I'd love to work for you for free and to create social media content for your coffee shop in return for a testimonial. What do you reckon? " Most people would say yes to that because if you're doing it for free in order to build a portfolio, then that's how you're getting started. Like that's how you get started with the whole like finding your customers for a particular skill. Um I think a really underrated thing is actually just starting with the real world in your local area. A lot of people are like, "Hey, I have an idea to sell an online course about life design. " And it's like a 19-year-old kid who doesn't have any skills, but like they like the idea of being a life coach. Bro, everyone likes deep down everyone wants to be a life coach. But that's a really hard business to get started off the ground. If you're trying to start online on the internet where you're competing with everyone in the world, but if you're trying to start a business where the your first customers will come from the people that you know, have immediate access to, your friends, your family, your friends's parents, your family's parents, the people that you work with, the managers boss of your workplace, whatever. like literally people that you have physical access to that you can sit across a table with a coffee and talk to them face to face. My brother has just sold or just a few months ago sold his startup for tens of millions of dollars and they've been running it for 5 years. But for the first 2 years, they didn't actually build a product. They spent the first 2 years just talking to potential customers to figure out what product they should build. He and his co-founder would go on LinkedIn, message people, email people who were like finance teams at like big people at like you know small to mediumsized businesses and they would offer to take them out to lunch or coffee for a walk and they would talk to them and ask them about their problems. You're like hey when it comes to financial planning what are the problems that you guys are having and people love talking about their problems. You can get someone to talk about the problems all day long and then they're taking notes. These days you can record the conversation with their permission obviously you can record it on voice pal which is the app that me and my wife have built to help you record conversations and turn it into writing. You can record those conversations. You can shove it into chat or claude and you can say, "Hey, help me figure out some business ideas based on this conversation. " It's so laughably straightforward these days to come up with an idea and to find your first customers provided you are willing to talk to people. The mistake you're going to make is that you will be in your little cave bedroom kind of thing. It was a mistake I made back in the day. I failed at making businesses for like 6 years because I didn't talk to customers. I just sat in my bedroom hoping that like, you know, I'm a 13-year-old kid on my little keyboard and like if I don't talk to anyone, like surely on the internet I should be able to make money. The more you can get into the real world and speak to actual people, the more you realize actually starting a business is really really straightforward. Um, but if you're trying to compete with everyone in the world on the internet and like be an influencer from day one, it's probably not going to work. Okay, we've
got a question here. Can you list some easy boring businesses that you would recommend people start? H, this is the wrong way to be thinking about it. I think like the energy I get from this question is Ali, just tell me what to do. Give me the easiest path to get rich. Just tell me what to do. Please, I beg you, just tell me what to do. And again, it's like that's like thinking like a student, not thinking like an entrepreneur. A student or an employee wants to be told what to do. An entrepreneur figures it out. So that's thing number one to say. Thing number two to say is that an easy business for you or a boring business for you is different to what an easy boring business would be for someone else. If I'm a medical student at Cambridge University, it's easy for me to start a business helping people to get into helping people get into med school. If you are not a medical student or you haven't been in there, it's no longer easy for you to start a business helping people get into med school, right? It's just it depends like the right business for someone else is a completely wrong business for someone else. And so instead of thinking of it as like, oh, what's a copy paste solution that I can just like do and make all this money, think instead of like, who are some people with money that I would enjoy potentially serving? Ask yourself that question. Talk to Chad or Claude about it. Get some ideas. What are some problems, ideally painful problems that I would enjoy potentially helping to solve? And what is what are some skills that I have or skills that I would enjoy learning that can help me solve those kinds of problems? If you have the skills already, amazing. You've got either professional skills or personal skills or a mixture of the two. You could use pre-existing skills. If you don't have the skills, you can learn the skills. You could learn videography. You could learn video editing. You could learn AI automation. You could learn uh data analytics. You could learn copyrightiting. You could learn coding. You could learn like there's so many different problems that individuals and businesses have. Generally easier to serve businesses rather than individuals. So, we're going to go business. There are so many problems that businesses have that these days you can't just speak to business owners. You can just go to the all of the local restaurants in your area and coffee shops and accounting firms and like just walk down the local high street, go to every single one, talk to the manager, easy, right? Ask them what problems they're having because you're thinking of starting a business and you'd love to hear kind of what problems they're having. All businesses want to make more money. If you can find a way to make local businesses more money, you're winning. Generally, doing stuff in marketing and doing stuff in sales has a direct often has a direct translation into revenue. And so those are easier businesses to start compared to doing something in like customer service because customer service is just a little bit more further removed from revenue. So essentially what you're trying to do when you're coming up with business ideas, if you're going easy mode, i. e. selling to businesses and helping them make money. What you're trying to do is you're trying to get as close as possible to saying to a saying to your prospective client who you're going to be talking to in person, obviously, hey, look, if you pay me, I'll wave a magic wand and your business will magically make more money without you having to do anything. You want your business idea to get as close to that as possible. So, for example, look, if you pay me, I will sort out your social media and you're going to make get more customers because now you have a good social media presence. business is like, "You know what? I want more customers because every freaking business in the world wants more customers. " They're like, "Great, fantastic. Sure. " Um, especially if you're like, "And you don't need to pay me anything. I just want uh 20% for every new customer that I specifically get you that we can specifically attribute to your Instagram or your LinkedIn. " Business owner is like, "Sick. I don't have to pay anything for this. You I only pay you when you get me extra customers. Let's go. Easy. " And now you've built a business that is reliant on you actually getting results. So then you get results and you get good at the thing and then you get them customers and then they pay you money. easy. Like this is the sort of way, this is sort of how we want to be thinking of business ideas. If you don't want to serve businesses, uh it is harder to serve non- businesses because individuals are just less likely to pay for stuff than businesses. But you could still totally do that if you wanted to. Ideally, you would find individuals with money rather than individuals without money. So, let's say you wanted to do something in the health niche for whatever reason. Uh and you're like, I really want to help people get fit. Okay, cool, fine. Um you think, okay, who would you like to help get fit? Do you want to help students get fit? probably not because they won't pay for it. Do you want to help CEOs get fit? Okay, they would pay for it and they need the help. So, being a fitness trainer for CEOs is much easier than students because CEOs are willing and happy to pay for fitness training whereas students are not training. And then you might be thinking, well, how do I find CEOs? All it takes is one client. The one the first client you get opens the door to every other client. If you can just get one client and do an amazing job for that person, ideally for free in return for a testimonial and some referrals, CEOs have other friends who are CEOs. You might not know any CEOs, but I guarantee the CEO knows a ton of other CEOs. So, if you can just find one entry route to get your first client that then allows you to sort of basically print cash like going to their friends and obviously you have to do a good job. All of this is predicated on you doing a good job. Um, this is why it's all if you're doing something like a service-based business, it's just about finding that first client because that first client opens the door to
every other. With so many possibilities, how do I choose what kind of business to start? There is this thing the myth of the perfect choice or the perfect choice fallacy, which is that when you are a student, you operate thinking that there is a right answer because school teaches you and you got to get it right the first time around. When you start a business, you realize that there are no right answers. And the way you build a business is by trying something, running an experiment, gathering data from the market, and then iterating based on the results of that experiment. So, how do you choose which one to start? Well, a really simple framework is you list out all of your business ideas. Um, and a business idea, as we talked about before, is who is the person, who what is the problem that you're solving, and how are you planning to solve it? So let's say one of my business ideas is wedding videography for um Indian weddings in Hong Kong. Okay, I've got a person Indian weddings in Hong Kong broadly. Uh I've got a problem that they want videography and I've got my solution which is I will provide them videography. Let's say that's idea number one. Let's say idea number two is uh copywriting and editing for uh email newsletters for people in the finan like financial journalists. So, I've got my people, which is financial journalists. Maybe I know some of those because I've previously worked in finance or whatever. Uh, the skill that I'm using is like I'm good at writing. And the problem I'm solving for them is that they need someone to write and edit their newsletters cuz they're building a personal brand. So, maybe that's idea number two. Maybe idea number three is, hey, uh, helping medical students get into Hong Kong University to study medicine because maybe I used to be a doctor and I'm like, I have the skill of helping medical students get into Hong Kong University for studying medicine. Let's say I've listed out my business ideas and you have to list them out with who, what, and how. Who is the person, what is the problem and how are you planning to solve it? You list them all out and then there is a nice little framework for deciding which is from one of my mentors, Taki Moore. He's his stuff is great. Which is you ask yourself three questions. Do I like the idea of helping these kinds of people? So, do I like it? Number two, can I actually help them? Do I have the skills to actually be able to help this person? And will they be happy to pay? and you just literally do tick or cross. Like it, can I help them? Will they be happy to pay? If you're targeting students, you might put a cross on the will they be happy to pay because students are broke and they don't like paying for anything. Um, if you're targeting sort of large Indian weddings uh in Hong Kong, probably willing to pay because they have loads of money to have a large Indian wedding in Hong Kong, which is a mega expensive city. You take the box. And so, you just kind of base it on that. And then if you have something that's like you're uh you're torn between two or three options, you literally just go with your gut. You're like, which of these seems like it would be the most exciting to start with? And the crucial question is to start with. When you pick a business idea or pick a niche, you are committing to that niche for a period of 3 months. 3 months is the secret spot. You do a 3-month side hustle where you're like, "Okay, in the next 90 days, my goal is to get at least one paying customer to be able to validate this business idea. " You're not thinking of it as like, "This is my forever business. " You're not thinking of it as marrying your business idea. You're think of it, you're thinking of it as dating your business idea for the next 3 months. And I guarantee as you date your business idea for the next 3 months, you will de you'll get interesting data and stuff and you'll be able to refine your who, your what, your how, or maybe you'll switch completely after 3 months time. That is how you get started when there are so many different possibilities. Okay, we have another question. What
about investments? Aren't they a good way to build long-term wealth? Yes, they are. But um the way you become financially free is that you put money into invest passive income investments like stocks and shares or sort of like real estate. Although I don't like real estate, I prefer stocks and shares. You invest in like a broad stock market index fund like VTSAX or like the S& P 500 or whatever. And then over time your wealth compounds. The problem is that this takes time. So if you have a job earning 50K a year or even 100K a year, let's say you're able to save 20 grand a year, cool. You year and you put it into the S& P 500, yes, it will grow at 7%. So, you'll be rich when like 30 years from now, you'll be super rich. But if you want to get to financial freedom before 30 years from now, the problem is not that you invested in the S& P 500. The problem is that you only had 20 grand a year to invest in the S& P 500. If you had 200 500, you're now way richer way more quickly because compounding still works in your favor, but you just have way more money to start. Therefore, if you can find a way to earn 300 grand, so you can save 200 and stick into the into investments, it gets you to financial freedom way faster than someone who earns 50K and is able to save 20 or earns 100 20. If you're able to earn 2 million a year from your own business and you put a million a year into the S& P 500, you become financially free very, very quickly. So, this is the thing. Investments are a long-term wealth building game, but increasing your ability to earn, like your ability to earn for the most part is under your control. This has been one of the most life-changing realizations that I've ever had in my own life, which is that if you're watching this on a device with an internet connection, your ability to earn money is entirely within your control. Almost entirely. Yes, we all have different starting points. Yes, maybe you know you've got some neurody divergence or you've got some like family situation, whatever to but like even though we all have different starting points, still your ability to earn more money is entirely within your control. You might not be able to earn become a trillionaire like Jeff Bezos or whatever because you know right place right time all that kind of stuff but certainly from your starting point or wherever you are in life there are people who have been in a similar situation to you with all of the disadvantages that you have and all of the advantages that you've had who have managed to build six or seven figure businesses. Maybe not 8 figure, maybe not 9 figure, maybe not 10, but like six and seven figures is like kind of mid as it relates to entrepreneurship. At least six figures is seven figures is like now you're getting into the top like 7% of businesses. Although even said that like that includes Uber drivers and like personal trainers and people who really aren't trying to get to a million a year. So building a six-figure business is actually fairly mediocre as far as entrepreneurship goes and you can pretty much from any kind of background you can in fact build a multi6fig lifestyle business if you wanted to. It's entirely within your control. The timeline might not be you know for some people it'll take a year for some people it take three some people it will take five but it's entirely within your control right? So when you have a job, your earning potential is not under your control because you're operating within someone else's system. You're operating within the limitations of like the salary bands and like whether your manager wants to give you a raise and all that kind of stuff. If you're in a very big corporation, it's even less under your control. If you're working at a small startup, you know, if anyone on my team was able to add a million dollars in value to the to the business, I'd be paying them a ton of money. Like they would be massively increasing their earning potential. But if you're at a massive corporate and you make a case for how you're adding a million dollars a year in value, they still might say, "Well, screw you because like technically you're on band X and band X is different to band Y, ABC, ABCD, E. " So within the context of someone else's system, yes, your ability to earn money is more outside of your control. But that's why I'm very bullish on you can just start your own business. You don't have to. You can do what you like. But if you were to start your own business now, your earning potential is 100% within your control and you can do whatever you want. And as long as you are adding value to other people in a way that they want to pay you money for it, there is no limit to how much you can earn. And therefore, there's put into investments. Oh, and by the way, if you are enjoying the video so far and you would like my and my team's mentorship in helping you build a sixfigure lifestyle business, we are working on a new thing called Lifestyle Business Academy. We want it to be like the world's best online school for lifestyle business entrepreneurs. So, if that sounds like your street, then there will be a link in the video description to join our weight list and we'd love to
