How to Actually Make Money Online in 2025 - Case Study

if you're interested in making money online enough money to potentially even quit your job then hopefully you'll get a lot of value from this video I've been able to make around 20K profit per month every month for the past 6 months which is almost double my full-time income as a software engineer and I quit my job about four to 5 months before I hit that profitability that is Aman a 23-year-old who watched one of my videos when he was a broke college student and he actually took action based on the advice I shared at the

time and has now made enough money to quit his job and live and work from anywhere in the world on his own terms so at this point I can pretty confidently say I don't expect to have to go back to a 95 job if I don't want to now when Aman messaged me that he was visiting Hong Kong where I live I wanted to have him here on the channel to tell his story because there are so many people who watch YouTube videos just like this one but 99% of people never even take that first

step they never even get started and of the 1% that take action and get started 99% of those people don't stay consistent long enough to actually see results Aman is that rare person who watched a video actually followed the advice and took action and did it consistently enough for a few years to finally see results yeah resistance is the problem here like I feel like a lot of people they see things and they immediately come up with all these reasons why it wouldn't work for them and so in this video we're going to break down

exactly how he did it and what mindsets and strategies and tools helped him along the journey from broke college student to now making over $20,000 a month from his online business I can confidently say that one can make 10K a month online from almost nothing so the way this video is going to work is that we are going to hear Aman's story and then I'm going to share my own perspectives and by the way if you are new to the channel and you're like who the hell is this guy hello my name is Ali I'm

a doctor turned entrepreneur and author of The New York Times bestseller Feelgood productivity and these days my main gig is that I'm the co-founder of Sparkle Studios where we are building a suite of productivity apps to help you save more time and have more fun on route to achieving your goals and on the side I've been making YouTube videos on this channel since 2017 documenting my journey from medical student to doctor to entrepreneur and sharing the books ideas strategies and tools that can help us live more intentionally be more productive and build a life that

we truly love anyway let's dive into Aman's story and what we can learn from it if we are trying to make enough money online to be able to one day quit our day jobs let's go back 4 years to May of 2020 around this time I was 19 years old I was at home with my family and I remember I was sitting in my living room when my brother who's about a year younger than me came to me and said hey there's this guy who's a doctor and a YouTuber and he posted about how much

money he made and they put on the TV actually and my brother and me and my parents actually sat down and we watched that video and I don't know what about it was so incredible but something in that moment was just like holy this guy he's working as a doctor which is amazing but then also on the side he's making passive income from places like skillshare and YouTube and AdSense I remember all I wanted to do was either be like an engineer doctor lawyer or politician in my mind I never thought oh I could like

start a business and actually you know be F Financial Freedom as a phrase has never even entered my vocabulary yet so yeah like watching that video was what actually made tangible that someone could actually do this so that was revolutionary to me and within that week I launched this skure class actually so it's pretty crazy so what's interesting about this is that 2.1 million people have seen that video that I made 4 years ago where I was documenting how much money I was making online but having now met a lot of people who've seen that

video in real life and at conferences and talks that I've given the impression I get is most people will see a video like that and will immediately say not me not now maybe this thing worked for this person but the timing is not quite right for me there seem to be a lot of people who watch the stuff but don't take action on the stuff and so I asked Aman what was it about him and his brother that made them actually take action yeah resistance is the problem here like I feel like a lot of

people they see things and they immediately come up with all these reasons why it wouldn't work for them maybe something that was different about me at that time or even now is that I feel like I just have an absurd level of self-belief there's basically anything that someone has done I feel like with given enough time effort and work I could replicate at least a little bit of that success I don't know if it's delusional but something I think there was that like self-belief there and I think also a lot of it was the fact

that it was someone who on paper looked to be very similar to me so it wasn't like Barack Obama was saying launch your business right it was someone who like looked like me on paper with a very similar background and upbringing it wasn't like you were born to like a billionaire family or something like that I think this is a really really helpful mindset shift to have and that anyone watching if you're watching this right now you can also have that mindset shift the thing that Aman said which is that no matter what if there

is something that someone has done given enough time and effort and work I could replicate at least a little bit of that success and there's a concept in Psychology called locus of control now there are some people with an internal locus of control and some people with an external locus of control and basically what locus of control means is that do you believe that the events in your life are controlled by you I.E an internal locus of control or do you believe that your success or the events in your life or whatever are controlled by

other people external events the environment the government whatever that thing might be what we see from Aman's mindset is that it's very internal locus of control it's very much like hey someone else has achieved that thing if I just did loads of work but loads of time and effort and work into it I could probably get a little bit of the way there and so I might as well just give it a go it's really hard for me to not do things when I feel like I should do them or what I want to do

them like for example we can talk about this a bit later I I ended up quitting my job within 24 hours of making that decision so within the same day of me realizing I could quit my full-time software engineering job I want to do this and iring out a plan I could not sit there and work for any longer I had to quit within the day I drafted my resignation letter and sent it the next day so I guess I just naturally had kind of like almost like an impulsive bias for Action where any anytime

I would discover something think about doing something decide on doing something I would immediately start to take take action uh almost to a detriment with like other areas of my life where it was like I I tend to get distracted quite easily about like new opportunities and new Ventures all right so what we're seeing here is a strong bias to action there are a lot of people who have a bias to analysis a bias to planning you know what when I hear something I need to analyze it a lot I need to think about it

I need to make plans but then there are some people that strongly bias towards action you know what I've heard something interesting let me just try it out and see what happens now a lot of people talk about the theory of biased to action and I've made tons of videos talking about why when you're starting a business or a YouTube channel or anything actually just getting started is the most important thing but I think it's useful to hear what this actually looked like for Aman at the time I immediately sat down with my brother and

we sat on the couch and thought okay what can we make what do we know that we can teach so we came up with a few ideas the first one was standardized testing we both did very well on our standardized test classic right uh so we thought oh we can make a skillshare course about teaching the ACT which is the exam in the US that all the high schoolers take uh there was a couple other options one was like a music class or something we both had done music for piano and other instruments and stuff

like that growing up and finally what we decided on doing was or actually what I decided on doing was making just like a random course on C which is a programming language I was working on at the time in my internship so the way I pulled this off was I didn't know anything about cameras microphones editing nothing so I just asked my friend was doing like videography stuff in high school can I borrow your microphone I want to make a course so he literally just lent it to me for 3 days I spent like 5

to 6 hours drafting up a random idea for this course like very basic programming Concepts filmed it within like an afternoon edited and launched it within like 3 days so I literally just like full full full story just literally just like came up with this idea edit it launched it within a couple days and just put it on the platform nice this is exactly what bias to action looks like and so the question I would profit to you if you're watching here in the video is to what extent do you have this bias to action

in your own life see the thing that most people would say in this context is oh skillshare that's a cool idea I can make some courses on that but let me spend some time doing some research and then they'll forget about it for 3 weeks and then 3 weeks later they're like oh you know what I did a little bit of research but oh I don't have the right gear yet and they wouldn't think to just message a friend and borrow a microphone they'll think oh let me then research all the gear that I need

to get oh I don't quite have enough money 8 months from now when Christmas rolls around and I'll get my Christmas bonus then maybe I'll be able to buy a microphone and a camera and plus you know I'll have to check with my work what if they find out that I have this tiny ass class on skill show that no one's ever going to see what if my work finds out like oh no I I'd have to write a letter to get permission and there's all of this analysis that goes into it analysis is the

enemy of action especially when you are just getting started out oh by the way if you are enjoying this video then you might like to check out brilliant who are very kindly sponsoring this video if you haven't heard brilliant is a learning platform which I've been using for the last 5 years and I absolutely love it now one of my gripes with the education system in general is that we're taught to passively consume content but there's a bunch of research studies that show that this is a very ineffective way to learn and a far more

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annual premium subscription so thank you brilliant for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it so have a pause of this video and have a think this guy made this course 4 years ago he made an online course he put it online how much money do you think it's made all right cool so youve got a number in your mind I think it's really helpful if you have a number in your mind because there is a point that I want to make a little bit further around so please do generate a number in your

mind if you haven't yet and now let's hear from Aman and how much has that course made you in the last four years yeah that course has passively generated $1,500 which pretty sick for a few hours of work but yeah that was it's interesting because I don't know how to feel about that because part of me is like that's actually great like I was able to make money online but I guess if you compare that to how much I made through other areas it's really not that much now I suspect for most people watching this

video your guess as to how much money he would have made would have been higher than $1,500 he might have thought he made like five figures you know a few tens of thousands of dollars or maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars this is the impression that I get when I do talks where there are aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience people generally have a skewed perspective of how successful the first thing is going to be you never really see stuff online from people who tried launching an online course and only made $11,000 in 4 years

we only tend to hear the stories of of people who have already made it for example I've done a video talking about how I've made over $10 million from online courses Iman godi has made over $100 million from online courses these are the sorts of people you hear from you tend not to hear from the person who tried an online course initially and then like it kind of failed and they made like nothing and then the next thing failed and they made like $20 and the next thing failed and they made like $300 over a

5year period and the common mistake that people make here is thinking that the first thing you do has to be the last thing you do and let's hear from Aman about that what was great about that skillshare course was the fact that it was it was just me taking action to do something it's not I think there's a common mistake that a lot of people make thinking that the first thing you do has to be the last thing you do right it's like oh I don't know what my Niche is or I don't know how

to I don't know what what idea to start my business I need to look for an idea I've heard this so much talking to friends and family about starting businesses they're like I need to look for a good idea once I have an idea then I'll start my business I'll leave my job I'll do that but the fact that my first forign to entrepreneurship was a really frankly shitty C course on on skillshare that only made 1.5k but that started into creating this entire world of Entrepreneurship 4 years later I don't know I think the

first thing you do doesn't all does not have to be the last thing you do in fact the first thing can just be your first step into the journey and that's what creates the rest nice this is a really really really important point the first thing you do does not have to be the last thing you do and the way I think of it is that when you're starting a business your first three businesses are probably going to fail and that is a very good thing because it's sort of like riding a bike in order

to learn how to ride a bike you don't just watch videos about how to ride a bike you you get on a bike and then you try and then you fall off a few times you get on you try again you fall off you get on you try again you fall off and eventually you learn how to ride a bike not by consuming knowledge or watching lectures and stuff about how to ride a bike but by actually getting on the bike and doing it and it's the same thing with business if you're trying to make

money on the internet and you have not yet failed at at least a few business ideas you're probably worrying too much about analysis and getting it perfect rather than just taking action another another point on this is like you mentioned earlier millions of people watch these videos and you have 6 million subscribers and I'm always shocked when I talk to someone who has hasn't started a business who's like oh I love Al abdall like that doesn't really computed by head how can you watch Al AB doll's Channel and not have already launched a YouTube channel

or a business or do taken action on something right but I think there's a lot of people out there who have just like passively consumed this content but haven't actually done what these people say they're doing and I just don't get it right why would you watch it and not do what they're saying like if you want if you want that life so there's someone you want to be like is saying do X Y and Z how how could how is it possible to watch that and not even like take a first step towards that

direction you know what I mean and I it's not even just D like for anybody else like Chris Williams and Alex heroi um even hza from time to time I will like listen to something they say and if something resonates with me I'm like yeah that makes sense just take action on it and even if it has to be like a very basic shitty version right not skillshare class I think skillshare took it down even like last year or something cuz it just I don't know didn't fit some new standard or whatever but that was

just like I just got quick feedback I just tried something launch laed it made a couple tens of dollars a month passively through that and that just inspired me to keep the flywheel going and often it takes like 5 10 15 of these small random things before even one thing works out and as as you hear it took me 3 to four years of trying like this before one thing actually worked out and I was able to quit my job and make money online M again Aman has got it spot on it often takes like

5 10 15 of these random little things before one thing works out in my case I had like eight or nine failed businesses that just I didn't make any money from before I finally built my first business when I was in medical school that actually succeeded and made some money but all of those different failures taught me the ropes of like how to build a website how to code how to accept payments how to like actually get customers for the first time and I just wouldn't have gotten any of that if I just spent all

day watching YouTube videos and trying to read books and trying to come up with the perfect idea all right so now we move on to talking about the strange concept of difficulty as it relates to entrepreneurship even even when I speak to Izzy sometimes I'm sure she won't mind me mind me saying this but she often feels that YouTube feels really hard for her therefore she's a bad YouTuber and therefore she's not cut out for this I'm like bro if you got like 700,000 subscribers with like 50 videos I had 700 subscribers when I had

50 videos like come on and like by all objective standards is he is a very very good YouTuber and yet the fact that she feels it's hard makes her go to the conclusion that I suck mhm and I think a lot of people have this kind of conception that like if it's not effortless if if I'm not finding it easy from day one clearly I must be a bad Entre entrepreneur I'm not cut out for this you know uh I'm not like Elon mask I just don't have it in my DNA there's all these things

that come up at the oh at the prospect of friction I don't know if you VIP with that at all like that's something that you've seen with with people that you know I think this is one reason why I find Alex Hero's content to be valuable I think this is one benefit of it is the idea of like pain tolerance just being able to deal with like the discomfort of something not working and often often times I come back to the fact that if it was so easy then everybody would do it and the fact

that everybody can't do it is it has to be hard there has to be some level of discomfort um so yeah 100% I think well for the fact that Iz he has like 500 plus thousand subscribers like that is unbelievable yeah like I'm still working to get there 4 years later so I would say yeah I I believe I think people have this expectation that something is going like you said something is going to be incredibly easy they they come into it they're like oh they encounter one roadblock and then it immediately falls falls apart

again this is why I think that this law of Entrepreneurship which is that your first three businesses are probably going to fail and that is okay is really helpful to know I think that's why content like this and podcasts with other business owners are also really interesting to listen to because they all talk about how hard it is no one ever says oh yeah it was super easy and I was making money from day one they all talk about the difficulty of the process and so if you recognize that the process is going to be

difficult when you find it difficult then you're not going to be surprised but if you think the process is going to be easy and you find it difficult which you will then you'll be very surprised and you're going to be a lot more likely to quit all right so now we move on to talking about the idea of friction and Aman is going to give an example from his singing lessons but I think there is a so much to be learned from this specific example I've been doing singing lessons for the past few years I'm

like hey I want to find a singing teacher so Step One is like Google singing teacher Raleigh North Carolina to take that to to do that Google I've been thinking about it for a week okay I was thinking I should probably find a singing teacher first Google's a week later then scroll through click on a few websites ah none of this looks that good done for two weeks then I remember oh I should probably find a singing teacher I do the same Google again I look oh I find some person I F A contact form

don't hear back for another few weeks okay then I come back and think oh I should probably find a singing teacher so it is actually it is kind of surprising to me how uh non-real it is to really do anything because often to get anything done you have to make five to 10 various attempts for it to happen and then it actually works out so for example if in your mind you're like okay I should probably start a I want to start a business what is an easy way to start a business oh I can

start creating content online okay I have to create my Channel all right I'm going to go on YouTube I'm going to create a channel all right I have to film my video or I have to make a script now I'll do it tomorrow I'll do it later so I think there is there is like real value into like that sequential step by step by step and there's friction at every step of the way so if you're someone who can just like see things through to completion be like I am going to complete this no matter

what it takes so for example if you're like I have to start a channel you can't just let yourself be satisfied with a trying to try I'm like I'm going to try to start a channel I'm going to like make an account I've done the work I've done it you have to do what's necessary to achieve the outcome rather than seeing the the effort as enough so this is something I've been thinking about a lot since I had that conversation with Aman that with anything you try and do there is friction at every single step

and the trick is to be able to follow through and and get through the friction and this is where that mindset shift is really important to recognize which is that as soon as most people encounter friction they will just drop off the thing they'll just stop doing the thing be like oh this friction I'm not going to bother anymore but if you can be as it relates to starting a business or anything you want to do in that 1% of people that sees the friction recognizes okay this is friction this is normal I just need

to work through the friction then you are far more likely to succeed at whatever you're doing all right so that was friction let's now talk about a really common excuse which is the timing is not right right now so we we do these like meetups for our YouTuber Academy and inevitably you know like 100 people will show up the majority of conversations I'll have with them I'll be like oh so how's the channel going and they'll say oh well I haven't been consistent with it for for the last few months or all this sort of

stuff and they'll never say I have quit YouTube they will always say life got in the way it's not the right time right now and that's I think what is interesting about this it's sort of like this thing that you and I know because we we've consumed the Kool-Aid of the self-help books kind of not yet not right now is the thing that takes all the dreams to the Grave because the timing is never right we had talks in med school uh from um doctors with kids who are always like look if you want to

have kids literally the timing is never right there will always be another exam you could take another step of the wrong that you could climb when you're a junior doctor you'll think oh once I once I get my exams out of the way once you got your exams out of the way you'll think ah well and I'm once I'm a senior registar once you're a senior registar you'll think when I'm a consultant when you're a consultant you think well I'm a junior consultant right now and you know once I find my feet and eventually you

become 48 and you can't have kids anymore and they were like a lot of the message was like if you want to do something recognize that the timing will never ever ever feel right and you actually just need to do it right now and I think that is the thing that that's a thing that holds a lot of people back thinking the timing is not right right now honestly I feel like the mind is the worst enemy in fact it's like it's so easy to I feel like people are great at convincing themselves to to

do to like basically not follow their own dreams it's like if you talk to anybody very often you cannot convince someone to do something like that because they have so much of of like arguments and baggage in their mind like if let say someone says oh not right now they can probably give you three to five reasons why now is not the right time we all have this fallacy in different spheres of our life like oh the timing is not quite right to do this thing but it's worth recognizing like the thing that I've always

found helpful is to recognize that that is just procrastination in Disguise and for almost everything the timing is never going to be quite right and so what would happen if you just acted now assuming that the timing is never going to be right so you make the skill share class you're 19 years old you make the skill sh class you release it presumably nothing much happens what happens next what happens next is I just start taking action on all these different things I hear from you and other people so for example I also just launch

a Blog and an email newsletter at the same time so week one is skillshare week two is blog so bottle domain make a website Nat a license preaching webflow so I use webflow build that website I read a bunch of books to start writing book reviews I start a newsletter thoughtful Thursday still around weekly email newsletter start posting that every single week great that's done then after that week three or four I'm like hey you know someone's saying to make a YouTube channel maybe I should start this YouTube channel thing so I also launched a

YouTube channel around that time it was July 2020 I think to myself I actually have a document that I wrote in a car on a road trip which is what are my what can I teach what can I talk about in YouTube channel I still have that document available um I was good at the saxophone in high school so I was like oh I can make music videos with the saxophone I was great at doing standardized test like I mentioned earlier I can talk about that I can talk about studying in University I can like

talk about my my in college so I just decided hey I like Apple I'm a computer science student I'm going to film a video called why the MacBook Pro is perfect for computer science students so that was my first video on my channel it's still available right now posted that July of 2020 it's terrible quality the lighting is bad the audio is terrible I have no conviction when I speak whatsoever but I decided to just do something launch my channel and I think you were also at the time talking about how the consistency is key

you just kind of have to stay I think there was like an MKBHD y combinator interview that's the one where he was like if you just stick with anything for 10 years it's hard to not be successful at it so I just set the intention I'm just going to post something every single week so I just started making videos on studying computer science Quizlet versus anky todoist things three just like budget bad quality productivity videos and studying in computer science while also running the newsletter while also being a student so that was year one I

made 20 something videos just consistently and I had maybe 1,000 subscribers or 500 or actually I think I only had like 100 subscribers in year one so I just consistently post it every single week on something I could think of every single week I think this is the harsh truth about trying to make money on the internet or trying to build any kind of business online which is that if you are trying to go for an extraordinary outcome if you're trying to go for something that most people do not have you often have to put

in more work than most people are willing to do there is almost no one I have ever met who's made enough money to be able to quit their job who didn't have to sacrifice something to make that happen and it's really just a case of what are the trade-offs you are willing to pay what is the price that you are willing to pay in my case for example I didn't need to sacrifice hanging out with friends and family but I did need to sacrifice watching Netflix watching TV I set a rule for myself when I

got to University which is I'm never allowed to watch TV shows on my own instead of using that time watching Netflix I would sacrifice that time and put it towards my YouTube channel or my business or writing my book everything has a price and if you don't want to pay that price that's totally okay you don't have to but it's worth recognizing that if you want the thing on the other end of that hard work on the other end of that sacrifice you kind of have to pay the price and also what I did was

I was just consuming all of this self-improvement productivity self-development content and I also think that is underrated I think there's a lot of people out there who tell who say it's all the same stuff it's all the same idea why do you why do you have to watch every single one of this person's videos or why do you have to read every single one of this book it's all the same thing you already know what you have to do but there's something about just hearing that message over and over and over and over and over

again of you just have to stay consistent you have to keep doing this you have to keep doing this unless it's not going to work out um and on that note I would just Implement all these little productivity hacks and techniques so for example one thing that probably made 50% of my progress was Thomas Frank he made this video about how he would get charged by this app called be minder if you didn't wake up on time so I watched that about four to five years ago and I decided to like make that automation but

for posting on YouTube so be minder would charge me $100 if I didn't post every single week to my credit card and I've already paid them over $1,000 because I did miss many weeks but and people thought I was crazy when I told them this I was like yeah dude like I get charged of it on post on time so that also was just like the fuel on the fire just building these small things to like force myself to stay consistent in year one in year 2 and year three so yeah year one posted 20

30 videos they were all right they were not that good and just like trying to come up with these things to motivate me to keep on going over time that's a long time to grind at it for without seeing any results that's very impressive like I'm amazed I would I wouldn't have done that yeah you know you always talk about how I think it was like for you what like six to 12 months in when you had like viral video or something yeah about 10 months in I had a viral video 10 months in yeah

I hear that I'm like I think you posted a lot more than me though like video for me video 91 was a viral yeah yeah I've only ever posted like 90 full L videos or something at this point so for me I think I was posting like less frequently but over a longer period of time I actually went 16 or 18 months before my first video Hit 100K views I think it was also just consuming other people's content where you're talking about I think this is another thing I don't think you realize the impact that

you have when you actually rehash the same ideas over and over and over and over again cuz I see the comments being like Oh just repetition and I think oh like it's like a knife a knife to my heart where I'm like am I just saying the same I guess I am just saying the same I mean yeah I guess I guess yeah and then I think I don't want to make this video because I'm just saying the same thing again to saying the same thing again but there is really something to be said about

saying the same thing over and over and over again because that is the message you need to hear like someone like me I needed to hear every single week from o doll's Channel just stay consistent just stay consistent just stay consistent I'm reading this book on the side just just stay consistent so there is something special to that and like even on my own channel I often say the same thing every video and I also get those comments which are like bro falling yeah bro falling off bro saying the same thing bro remakes the same

video every month like but that is what you actually have to do there's a concept that Aman and I were discussing over lunch that day when when he came over to hang out which is that your YouTube feed reflects your priorities like the algorithms on YouTube and Instagram and Tik Tok they're all pretty good at figuring out what we actually care about what we actually spend our time on and so a fun little exercise is to go on your YouTube homepage and see what's the sort of content that's coming up is it the sort of

content that is aligned with the goals that you want to go for or not you can actively start to pay more attention to content that is aligned with your goals like if you're here in this video you probably want to build some kind of business to probably make money on the internet it would make sense for you to just consume loads more of that content compared to other things that you might be consuming in your spare time instead again if you want you don't have to I'm not trying to tell you what to do Aman

is not trying to tell you what to do we're just sharing the stuff that has worked for us for me I deeply intrinsically cared about YouTube it was it was my dream it was my passion it was what I wanted to work out I actually remember I was late to work multiple days because I was so engrossed in writing my script in the morning before work that I would show up late I would take unnecessarily long lunch breaks to work on the channel so much told them like I told you about the conversation with my

boss he was not happy about that I would leave early to work on the channel and I I don't think it was a grind but it also wasn't that much of a grind because I had that flame it was like oh like I can't wait to get home I can't wait to ride a script like I would I would watch my own videos with the zest like the editors came back with the new cut like I'm so excited to watch that there were times where during my 9 to5 job but I actually I would go

into the meeting room which is like a separate room I would like lock the door go on my laptop and watch a cut of my cut of my recent video cuz I was like and I guess you're not supposed to do that but it was something I was so intrinsically excited to watch so I I think I just had like a joy of kind of going back to like enjoying the journey right I think I at the time like I'm only now realizing I think I really did love that because of was outside of my

9 to5 job so was something that I intrinsically really did care about so if it was something where like I it was a massive slug every single part of the journey if I hated it I it would not have worked out at all yeah that's I think where you know when people ask me about my days where I was like how how did you do the thing while you were doing the J day job and stuff and it it it comes down to that nalism of like find the thing that feels like play to you

but looks like work to others to others it would look like work to be grinding on a video edit or whatever at like you know 7:00 p.m. 800 p.m. 9:00 p.m. after after a shift at work but for me at the time and it sounds like for you as well it was like I was delighted to do it there were some days where I didn't feel like it where you know that's where the beinder reminded that's where like the consistency it's like H okay on those days where I really don't feel like doing it I'm

still going to do it that's where I have to motivate myself with the dream with the negative visualization with all that kind of stuff but for the most part because I enjoyed the process it didn't feel like work trying to find ways to sprinkle in play Power people into all the stuff field of productivity all that shtick trying to make it fun because that fun was where like the the excitement that excitement and motivation was was was generated by I'm still chasing that flame honestly like I remember yeah there there certain things where it's like

something about toiling away on like a landing page at like 8:00 p.m. for a new product I don't know what about that is Sox love that like I remember when I launched my program in January of this year I was in London for a couple weeks just for vacation and I was in you know foils like in in London I was like upstairs in their Cafe just toiling just like grinding on that landing page and I was so happy I don't know why it was just something about like it being the dark and just grinding

and building out this page and same to like watching cuts of my video like working on a script and of course there were times that I I wasn't intrinsically motivated I think for me I don't really enjoy filming videos same I much prefer this this for 100% I think this is way more fun and it it is a bit of a grind like I have three video scripts I have two video scripts done I need to sit down I have to build a setup I have to sit down I record it it's a big ruling

it's my my throat hurts it's a bit sweaty like I don't like to do this I have to keep Mo motivating myself to keep going but for the most part you I do intrinsically enjoy it I I don't know if it's possible maybe it is possible but I don't know if it's really practical for for anyone to do anything longterm enough to make it work because again like this was four years of grind if I hated every minute of it there's no way I would have done that I really agree with this I found it

to be so true in the lives of most people that I know including myself which is that it's just impractical to do something for a really long time if you absolutely hate it if you don't find a way to enjoy the process this is kind of the whole concept of my book feel good productivity you know back when I was grinding on my YouTube channel and stuff I was really focusing on how do I make this so enjoyable that I choose to keep working on it rather than forcing myself to keep working on it now

I want to share a common objection here so you know I've heard people again when when I do talks and stuff people come up to me and say you know well someone will hear this advice of hey you should do something you enjoy because then you you're going to be more consistent with it you're going to stick to it and some people will say but what if I have nothing in my life that I actually enjoy I don't have any passions I just like watching Netflix and playing video games and scrolling social media this is

the thing like we all have hobbies which are things that we do for fun but in the capitalist world that we live in there are some hobbies that let you double dip in terms of you have fun doing the hobby but you could also make money or you could also become healthier or you could also have more love in your life through relationships for example sitting on the couch and watching Netflix sure maybe that makes you happy but if for example you go for a run that can make you happy and also makes you healthier

what about playing board games playing board games makes you happy but it can also improve your relationships because you generally want to have friends over to play board games one of my hobbies back at University was doing hackathon side projects with my friends where we would go on a mini holiday together and we would try and build an app within 24 hours that could make some money that was a hobby that would make me happy because it was fun but it also improved my relationships cuz now I'm hanging out with my friends and it also

had the potential to make money I'm not saying you have to spend all of your time doing productive things but what I'm saying is that if you care about making money on the internet which you probably do if you're watching at this point in the video if you care about that and you have limited time which we all do then actually finding hobbies that double dip finding hobbies that are fun and also have the potential to make money is going to make you way more likely to make money compared to having hobbies that are simply

just fun I think also there's there's something around you won't know until you've tried it like I wouldn't have thought that like I thought I wanted to be a like a singing guitar acoustic sort of Music YouTuber and that to me felt fun because I was like oh that feels fun but I wouldn't have thought that writing educational content and like coming up with Frameworks and would actually be enjoyable but it actually is and it's like it's kind of fun I know a lot of people who count themselves out of the business game or they'll

hear a conversation like this being like oh man I get okay so the secret is to really enjoy the thing but I don't I don't know what I'd really enjoy and that's what's stopping them from they're they're almost like self- projecting ahead knowing that like okay I mean Ali and Aman are saying that you've got to grind at YouTube for like 2 to four years to see any results can I see myself right now without having a YouTube channel enjoying that process absolutely absolutely not like who would who who would think that they might even

enjoy that person but when you start with it when you when you're building the thing and you're seeing those initial bits of momentum and stuff there's something about that that lights the flame that is so hard to predict ahead of time so when did things start working mhm okaying so Midway through year four I I honestly Define one of the biggest inflection points is realizing that I could spend money on knowledge which I had not actually realized nor internalized for much at all other than buying books so i' had been buying books for years that

was something I was reading in the background I was reading many books but there were two great unlocks I had in year four which was actually about a year ago the first one was realizing that I could read business books which is something I just did not realize I was like wait there are books on business that I could read like for example all of Russell brunson's books Alex Hero's books just these books on sales and marketing I can read to just like level up my brain in the world of business I didn't realize that

was a thing that was one great unlock the second one was realizing that I could buying that I could buy coaching from people who have done the thing I've done and then learned their lessons and supercharge my progress and I procrastinated for months on doing this so the first thing I actually invested in was Captain ced's YouTube coaching program I've been watching his videos for years it was the first time I spent money on anything and because of that it created like a level of fire and drive to actually perform so I believe he said

later on that I was probably the best client he ever had of like over 100 people because I showed up to there were 24 calls and I didn't miss a single one um I was on a plane for two of them so I bought Wi-Fi on the plane and joined zoom using a VPN so I could actually show up to the call and not miss it and I said a video Al Loom beforehand of like all of my questions for him that I had before so I listened to if he said jump I said how

high and that immediately supercharged everything because up until this point I had a bunch of like raw potential I had a bunch of like building blocks there I had done a bunch of internships that gave me an unfair advantage that I could actually talk about on YouTube I had the skills I had a video editor so I knew how to like edit videos and also had to manage a video editor I had built a skill of writing so I was like pretty decent at actually writing these scripts and I could write them effectively but he

basically like put fuel on the flame when it came to making marker research or making good videos titles and thumbnails he also taught me how to negotiate sponsors and he told me hey you have something that you can teach which is getting internships and getting jobs in software engineering is something you've done before so you could probably charge people to actually make the transformation and it is worth it like that knowledge is worth 203k if I can get someone a 20 to $30,000 internship if they couldn't get before so it was that mental unlock which

made me decide to actually launch my program which is a software engineering accelerator um to actually make that progress happen so that was the greatest unlock it was buying programs some people might be hearing that and thinking well I can't believe you sign up for these courses like all course sellers are scammers what's your take what's your take on that I think loss AV version is a big issue that a lot of people face which is that they would they're more worried about losing $5 than they would be excited about earning $100 people often fight

that uh issue of loss of version like if you kind of like think about it in terms of time for money right people would take a lot of people would spend an hour taking the bus to avoid $20 for an Uber but they wouldn't spend an hour doing like a freelance gig for $50 right that doesn't make any sense that's like an asymmetry there so you kind of have to like like a fool yourself into like overcoming the like innate urge for loss aversion think about the fact that what is the risk reduction here right

like there is a guarantee almost every single program you'll ever pay for as a guarantee because these most of these things are good and worth it where it's like if you do this thing and if you do X number of things or you can get a refund if it's not actually good there are a bunch of reviews and testimonials and even if the program only gets me a few thousand in a year it will have paid for itself and the chances are it's going to get me a lot more there so you need to like

kind of overcome that that that thought there and finally I think a lot of people don't really realize what knowledge they don't have that could actually get them really help them out a lot so what I would often think back to is could I influence my 17-year-old self to do great things beyond what I already did one 100% there's so much knowledge I've learned over the past few years in the world of careers and world of Education the world of health and wellness and and relationships everything you've learned so much through this like living life

for years and years and years so how do you not realize that you can just pay someone else who's three to five years ahead of you just to download their knowledge and get yourself ahead yeah I love that I think um there's something uh this is something Alexy talks about as well like he's invested hundreds of thousands into these programs and his goal is to be the best student they've ever had and to like eventually like outpace the instructor because of how much he's executing uh my friend Nicholas Cole talks about how every single thing

he's ever paid for has been Roi positive because he's made it Roi positive he pay $68,000 for a mastermind he get and he's like okay well I need to make sure I get at least $130,000 out of this and therefore he's showing up to the stuff he's doing the extra work he he is taking responsibility for making sure he gets the outcome from it I think the mistake people make is that a they don't sign up to the stuff in the first place because of yeah this this sort of loss aversion but you know case

in point with our YouTuber Academy like you're one of the the the most students we have in our accelerator that when when you when you rock up to a call to ask me a question you prepare a freaking document to be like okay this is all here here are all my problems these are my goals these are the things I think you're going to say here's what I would say in response so this is really my ultimate question you prepare for those questions so much more than almost anyone else does and you're getting value out

of the program and so a lot of it is like you get what you put in um and I think you and like other entrepreneur friends of mine in including myself it's like if I sign up for anything of course I'm going to get the value out of it I'm not mhm if it's a trivial cost for like you $200 for what it doesn't matter but if I'm paying serious money for anything like it's it's guaranteed to be Ro positive because I will make it Roi positive absolutely so you've invested all this money into these

educational programs you've been grinding the out for 4 years how did it go how much money are you making now so in June of this year I joined another coaching program from Charlie Morgan another guy he basically taught me sales conversion fulfillment for my coaching program almost immediately I went from barely making 5 6K a month through like a handful of brand deals here in and there some random agency work on the side you know stuff like that to becoming profitable so I went from negative - 20K in the whole on the business for 2024

and immediately hit profitability in July I hit $30,000 August also did 30k September did around 30k October did 22k but then November I had 55k in Revenue December it's around 36k right now um and expenses are like around 10K a month on average so I've been able to make around 20K profit per month every month for the past six months which is almost double my full-time income as a software engineer and I quit my job about four to five months before I hit that profitability how does it feel yeah it feels good I mean it's

nice I think there's a lot of layers to it first of all I have a sense of confidence that I am not going to have to go back to the 9 to5 job if you I actually made a video cataloging this journey um like a life update in May of 2024 where I mentioned how I need to make 4K a month profit and then with that number that was like my freedom number if you used a million dollar weekend term where I won't have to go back to my 95 job and I've blown that out

of the park so at this point I can pretty confidently say I don't expect to have to go back to a 95 job if I don't want to so that's nice that I feel like I have that sense of security it's also nice that I have freedom and flexibility I think that was like people like us I think that idea of freedom was like a huge deal to me I I hated the fact that I had to ask my boss if I was allowed to take a PTO a day off here and there like last

year when I was in London for a couple weeks I remember being so stressed out because I had to work one week remotely for my 9 to-5 job I was worried about the US hour so I had to stay up super late at like 11:00 p.m. randomly just to continue doing this job and I just had no flexibility whatsoever and now I can be here in Hong Kong I can record this podcast with you I just complet I can do whatever I want essentially and I just feel like that is like infinitely valuable what advice

would you give to someone who's maybe watched this far in the video maybe they've some watched some of my stuff they've seen some of you know they've they've done the rounds of consuming content and maybe even read some of the books but they've not yet taken the first step taking action what advice would you have for that person there's a couple things first of all I have benefited immensely for paying for educational resources I think a lot of people will do this for University so they'll pay for a $200,000 Business Degree at a college which

frankly doesn't teach you much but they will B at like a $1,000 program or like a $2,000 program which is teaching you business but is updated for like the content ecosystem and modern day marketing right so if you have the capability I would recommend it doesn't have to be any program I mentioned in this conversation but anything like if you find hey I want to learn this knowledge I find it valuable I really care about this I would recommend you invest in your own skills rather than like you know putting that money in the stock

market at this point heroi talks about this it's pretty known I feel like if you're already in this podcast but like $1,000 in the S&P 500 is going to make you like 50 bucks at the end of the year instead that, you can like 10 to 100x that if you actually invest in your own Knowledge and Skills so I benefited immensely by investing my money that I took from my 9 to5 job and also my internships investing in Te Knowledge and Skills and honestly just keep doing it it like this is a case study that

it is possible it is still possible to make a profitable YouTube channel from not much it takes time it is not easy it takes effort but just know that if you are someone who is willing to invest in your Knowledge and Skills keep on going stay consistent and just keep grinding until it works out it is possible I can confidently say that one can make 10K month online from almost nothing so I would just say keep going you can do this all right if you got to this point in the video and you enjoyed this

conversation then you're going to absolutely love this video which is my honest advice for someone who wants passive income thank you so much for watching have a lovely day and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye