How To Get Rich

Summary

In "How To Get Rich," Ali Abdaal delves into the often taboo topic of wealth acquisition, sharing insights from his personal journey from a medical student to a successful entrepreneur. The video emphasizes an "unhealthy obsession" with getting rich, preferring dedication over a balanced lifestyle. While he acknowledges that such an approach can lead to personal imbalances and sacrifices, especially in relationships and personal time, he argues that this level of commitment is essential for reaching the top 1% in any field, not just wealth accumulation.

Highlights

• Ali Abdaal transitioned from a doctor to a wealthy entrepreneur by focusing intensely on his financial goals. 🏥➡️💼
• Rich individuals often sacrifice personal relationships and leisure in their pursuit of wealth. 💔
• A dedicated and single-minded focus is crucial to achieving substantial financial success. 🎯
• Ali compares the drive needed to get rich to that of athletes aiming for the Olympics. 🏅
• Many rich people start thinking about balance and side quests after achieving their wealth. 🎮

Key Takeaways

• Becoming rich often requires an 'unhealthy obsession' with making money. 💸
• Ali shares his journey from being a doctor to creating a multi-million dollar business. 🚀
• Dedication similar to that of top athletes or artists is necessary to achieve extreme wealth. 🏆
• Many successful people reflect on the sacrifices made to achieve financial success. 🤔
• A balanced life is usually achieved after attaining wealth, not during the pursuit. ⚖️

Overview

Ali Abdaal, in his insightful video "How To Get Rich," sheds light on the intense dedication required to reach substantial wealth. He candidly shares personal anecdotes, reflecting on his journey from a medical career to building a thriving business. Ali stresses an 'unhealthy obsession' with financial success as a key factor, while also acknowledging the personal sacrifices involved.

Throughout his journey, Ali encountered many wealthy individuals who similarly exhibited deep, almost obsessive dedication to their financial pursuits. This characteristic, he notes, parallels the dedication seen in top athletes or artists, suggesting that excelling in any highly competitive field demands exceptional focus and effort. Ali warns, however, that this path often leads to sacrificing personal and family time.

In discussing the pursuit of wealth, Ali emphasizes the need to realign one's goals and actions. For many, the aspiration to become rich requires a reassessment of life priorities and habits, choosing between learning to develop this drive or adjusting aspirations to match one's current lifestyle. Ali encourages viewers to either embrace the commitment or reassess their goals to avoid the discontent that comes from misaligned ambitions and actions.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to the Video's Purpose The chapter titled 'Introduction to the Video's Purpose' explores the shift in public perception and questions towards the narrator over an 8-year journey. Initially, people were curious about time management and productivity when the narrator, a doctor at the time, was juggling his medical profession with YouTube and business endeavors. However, as he achieved significant financial success, building a multimillion-dollar business with the freedom not to work unless he chooses, the nature of inquiries changed. People attending his talks and events now predominantly ask about wealth acquisition, reflecting the evolution of his career and public perception.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Audience Shift in Questions The chapter explores the shift in the nature of questions towards wealth accumulation and productivity. Common questions revolve around becoming rich, securing high-paying jobs, having successful side hustles, or achieving a six-figure lifestyle business. The speaker reflects on their own experience in 2015 during their third year of medical school at Cambridge University.
• 01:00 - 01:30: College Anecdote and Fear of Losing License The chapter reflects on a significant moment during a halfway graduation ceremony with fellow medical students and professors. A discussion arises about which student is most likely to become a millionaire but also be struck off the medical register, a serious consequence for being deemed incompetent. In a surprising moment, one of the professors, who had known the narrator for three years, humorously nominates the narrator, Ollie, for this dubious honor.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Obsession with Making Money In this chapter, the narrator reflects on a pivotal moment in 2015, before starting a YouTube channel. At the time, the focus was on excelling in medical school, striving for excellence, and achieving top grades. The narrator recalls winning a prize and ranking in the top two in a subject, feeling dedicated to their medical studies. This dedication was acknowledged by a professor the narrator admired during a casual dinner conversation, highlighting a period marked by academic achievement and the initial stages of considering different life paths.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Impact of Obsession on Personal Life The chapter titled 'Impact of Obsession on Personal Life' discusses a personal anecdote of the narrator reflecting on an incident where they were told they were likely to become a millionaire but also likely to be removed from the medical register. This comment made the narrator feel conflicted emotions: while the idea of becoming a millionaire was flattering, the implication of being struck off the medical register was concerning. However, the narrator clarifies that they were never actually struck off, but chose to leave the medical profession voluntarily to pursue full-time entrepreneurship. This chapter explores the mixed feelings and significant life choices stemming from personal and professional obsessions.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Balancing Career and Personal Life The chapter explores the delicate balance between career ambitions and personal life, focusing on the author's personal experiences and reflections. The author shares how his intense focus and obsession with financial success, particularly within his medical career, have been perceived by others, potentially impacting his reputation and personal relationships. This is exemplified by a commentary from an online Reddit thread where mixed opinions about his productivity content and career approach were shared. The narrative illustrates the broader theme of how professional goals and personal life can sometimes clash, requiring careful navigation.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Sacrifices for Wealth The chapter "Sacrifices for Wealth" discusses the author's journey and obsession with making money over the years. The narrative starts with recalling a professor who accused the author of being overly focused on wealth. This sentiment is echoed by online commentators years later. Despite the criticism, the author admits to their fixation on financial success, charting a path from having a modest income to achieving wealth exceeding that of a doctor's salary. The chapter highlights the sacrifices and relentless pursuit involved in achieving substantial financial growth.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Reflection on Well-being and Wealth The chapter 'Reflection on Well-being and Wealth' delves into the narrator's past obsession with making money. The narrator expresses the belief that to accumulate wealth, one needs to be deeply focused on earning money. This perspective is drawn from their personal experiences and observations of wealthy individuals they have met. The chapter also touches on the societal norm of associating with others of similar financial stature, highlighting instances where the narrator has engaged with people whose net worth ranges from several million to tens of millions.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Comparison to Professional Success in Sports and Arts The chapter discusses the mindset of incredibly wealthy individuals, particularly focusing on Andrew Wilkinson, a self-made billionaire. It highlights that these individuals often have an obsessive focus on their goal to accumulate wealth and build their businesses. Only after achieving significant financial success do they begin to consider work-life balance and engage in other interests or 'side quests.' The narrative is built around the personal observation and experiences of the author with rich individuals, emphasizing an intense dedication to their economic goals before exploring other areas of life.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Cultural Perceptions on Wealth The chapter titled "Cultural Perceptions on Wealth" delves into the phenomenon where individuals who have achieved financial success tend to pursue various personal interests and projects. This often includes activities such as martial arts, video gaming, and writing self-help or productivity books. The narrative suggests a transition from a single focus on wealth accumulation to exploring diverse interests once financial stability is attained. It also touches upon the personal realization many wealthy individuals face regarding their absence in personal relationships with family, due to the sacrifices made during their journey to wealth. Once they have secured wealth, they often reflect on these missed opportunities and may attempt to address them.
• 06:00 - 07:30: Story of 'Jane' and Unrealized Goals The chapter explores the life of a wealthy man in his 40s who, despite achieving financial success with a net worth estimated between $10 to $100 million, faced personal challenges. His excessive focus on expanding his business led to him missing out on significant moments in the first ten years of his children's lives. This obsession with work also strained his marriage, bringing it close to divorce.
• 07:30 - 09:30: Ali's Personal Growth from 2020 to 2025 The chapter follows Ali's journey of personal growth from 2020 to 2025, highlighting a turning point in his life where a stroke of luck saves his marriage and shifts his focus from an obsessive pursuit of wealth to a more balanced approach to life. This change initiates a journey towards understanding work-life balance, as Ali reflects on his unhealthy obsession with getting rich and the sacrifices it brought, particularly impacting his medical career.
• 09:30 - 10:00: Reflection on Content Consumption The chapter reflects on how an unhealthy obsession with wealth affected the speaker's career and personal life. The speaker discusses their forced departure from the medical profession after being removed from the medical register. This led them to focus on building businesses, which they found more enjoyable than their day job. The chapter also explores the potential personal consequences if such an obsession with wealth had developed after marriage and having children.
• 10:00 - 12:00: Advice on Cultivating an Unhealthy Obsession The chapter discusses the potential pitfalls of developing an unhealthy obsession with work and wealth accumulation. It reflects on the risk of missing out on important life aspects, such as family and personal relationships, in the pursuit of financial success. The speaker mentions books like "How Will You Measure Your Life" by Clayton Christensen, "Designing Your Life" by Bill Bernett and Dave Evans, and "The Five Types of Wealth" which emphasize that financial wealth is just one form of wealth. The speaker believes they have managed to avoid many negative consequences associated with an unhealthy work obsession.

How To Get Rich Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this is a video on how to get rich why am I making a video on how to get rich when I was working as a doctor and doing the YouTube and business stuff on the side no one ever asked me "How do you get rich?" They would always ask me "How do you manage your time how do you how do you be so productive?" And all of this all of this sort of stuff but now like 8 years into this journey I've now built a multi-million dollar business i have a team i never have to work again a day in my life if I don't want to now when I give talks and when I do Q&As's and when I do like events and stuff people will come up to me and ask questions and the questions are no longer about how do you manage your time
• 00:30 - 01:00 and how do you be productive the questions like 90% of them are basically how do you get rich it's framed in different ways you know what's your advice for getting a high paying job uh what's your advice for having a having a side hustle that makes enough money for me to quit my job what's your advice for you know how I can have a sixfigure lifestyle business doing what I love and I want to talk about something that I don't think I've talked about on this channel before basically back in 2015 I was in my third year of medical school it's a six-year degree at Cambridge University and after 3 years we had like a halfway graduation type thing i was at
• 01:00 - 01:30 this halfway graduation with the other medical students in my college there were like 15 of us and sitting with our professors who'd gotten to know us over the last 3 years and one of the questions in the yearbook um that the medics were talking about was which of us is most likely to become a millionaire but be struck off the medical register which means you're no longer allowed to practice medicine because they've deemed you incompetent they've struck you off the medical register big deal and one of the professors who had known me for 3 years and had taught me said "Oh it's obviously Ollie." And I
• 01:30 - 02:00 was like "Oh shit." At the time I had not started this YouTube channel this was 2015 i started the channel in 2017 at the time I spent quite a lot of effort like trying to trying to be a good doctor trying to sort of do my you know get the grades and you know whatever and I got a first class degree in one of my exams and then that year I sort of ranked in the top two in the subject and like won a prize and stuff i I thought I was pretty dedicated to medical school stuff and this professor who I really looked up to casually in the in a dinner
• 02:00 - 02:30 context i was like "Oh you know which of us is more most likely to be a millionaire but be struck off the medical register which is like a really bad thing." He just he he he said it would be me i'd be most likely to be a millionaire but be struck off the medical register i didn't actually get struck off the medical register thank goodness i voluntarily took my name off of it when when I when I quit medicine to do full-time business entrepreneurship type stuff but that made me feel pretty bad i was like "Huh?" Like part of me was like "Oh he thinks I'm going to be a millionaire." But the bigger part of me was like "Holy
• 02:30 - 03:00 he thinks that my pursuit of money is going to get me struck off the medical register." What i think the only reason I got rich or the main reason not the only reason the the main reason I got rich was because I had an unhealthy obsession with making money an unhealthy obsession with making money there's a thread on Reddit there's like a junior doctor's subreddit and someone like posted something a few like last year like "What do you think of Aliabadal?" You know and some comments on this thing were like "Oh you know I like his productivity content and he he helped me study for my exams." But there were a
• 03:00 - 03:30 bunch of comments being like you know that dude is totally obsessed with money he's just obsessed he has an orgasm thinking about money dude is so obsessed with making money and it's interesting cuz this is now like 10 years on this is 10 years after that graduation dinner where my professor basically told me I was obsessed with making money to now people on the internet telling me I'm obsessed with making money um and honestly it's true it's true during the era where my business grew from zero to 5 figures to six figures to seven figures and suddenly I was making more money than a doctor would earn in a
• 03:30 - 04:00 lifetime in a year in that era I was totally obsessed with making money if you want to get rich i kind of think you need to be obsessed with making money i'm sorry i think I think that's it i know a lot of people who are rich now you know when you become rich you start hanging out with other people who are very rich i have been on business trips and stuff with people with net worths in the multi-7 figures i.e up to $10 million like $1 to $10 million i've hung out with people who are and have net worths in the $10 to $100 million i
• 04:00 - 04:30 interviewed a guy who's now a friend of mine actually he wrote a book called Never Enough his name's Andrew Wilkinson he's a billionaire with a B like net worth of $1,000 million plus i have gotten to know a lot of really rich people i have not met a single one who was not unhealthily obsessed with the goal of making money with the goal of getting rich with the goal of building their business once they get rich that is when they start thinking about work life balance that's when they start doing side quests right you know bro has
• 04:30 - 05:00 completed the main story line by getting rich and now bro is doing side quests that's when they take up martial arts that's when they take up video gaming it's when they start writing books about like how to be more productive and how to like live your best life and you know I know lots of people who got rich through the process of them getting rich they were married and had kids and pretty much all of them felt as if they weren't present enough for their relationship and for their family and then they get rich and then they realize
• 05:00 - 05:30 you know there was a guy I was speaking to he was like 42 or something uh he was rich way richer than I am uh I would estimate his net worth to be in the $10 to $100 million rangeish he I was chatting to him about a year ago on a trip and he said that his unhealthy obsession with growing his business uh meant that he missed the first like 10 years of his kids' childhood because he was always working and was on the brink of divorce because he was always working
• 05:30 - 06:00 and it was just a stroke of luck that saved his marriage and he became less obsessed with making money then and started to think about work life balance this is a video on how to get rich how do you get rich by having an unhealthy obsession with getting rich to the point often that it sacrifices other areas of your life in my case I'm kind of lucky that my unhealthy obsession with getting rich the thing that it sacrificed was my medical career um thankfully it
• 06:00 - 06:30 didn't sacrifice it in the way that the medical career was taken away from me by force by me getting struck off the medical register but it basically sacrificed my medical career because my obsession my unhealthy obsession with getting rich made me build businesses and stuff and I realized I enjoyed that more and then I I left the day job that it's actually very fortunate if I'd gotten married and had kids and then developed an unhealthy obsession with getting rich or had an unhealthy obsession with getting rich and was growing my business and stuff to the point where I then got married and had kids that unhealthy obsession with getting rich might well have caused me
• 06:30 - 07:00 to look back on my time with regret thinking man I missed my kids' childhood as I was getting rich I had in the back of my mind that like okay this is fine but really the important things in life are like health and relationships and stuff and like I don't want to I don't want to screw this up um you know a really good book is How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen a book like Designing Your Life by Bill Bernett and Dave Evans there's books like Sil's The Five Types of Wealth which talks about how financial wealth is only one type of wealth i think I managed to avoid uh a lot of the really negative consequences of being unhealthily
• 07:00 - 07:30 obsessed with making money thankfully um but it's interesting that even though I managed to avoid those consequences my professor 10 years ago thought I was obsessed with making money random people on the internet now think I'm still obsessed with making money maybe it's true let's say you have a dream to become like a professional athlete right you want to play football professionally you want to play squash or tennis professionally do you need to have an unhealthy obsession with the sport to make it yeah pretty much like if you look at the training regimens of people who make it professionally like top 1% people in any sport from the outside it
• 07:30 - 08:00 looks as if they have an unhealthy obsession with the thing they're just obsessed with it it's all they think about they live and breathe the thing their entire life is focused around the thing and they go for that thing timote Shalamé famous actor talked about how he wants to be one of the greats he wants to be a great actor and I know we're in a subjective business but the truth is I'm really in pursuit of greatness i know people don't usually talk like that but I want to be one of the greats i'm inspired by the greats i'm inspired by the greats here tonight this this kind of unusual like you know we we've been
• 08:00 - 08:30 in an era where aspiring to greatness is like frowned upon you kind of want to be humble about it like oh you know I just stumbled into acting i don't know how I got these roles i didn't try very hard like being a tryhard is considered or used to be considered a bad thing but I think people like Timotees Shalamé are making it cool to be a tryhard he's being a tryhard he wants to be one of the great actors that means he probably has an unhealthy obsession with the craft of acting which is how he's he's getting there and also he's really good-looking and stuff and also a great actor but you don't get there without having an unhealthy obsession with the
• 08:30 - 09:00 thing everyone who has a top 1% or above outcome in anything tends to have an unhealthy obsession with the thing we don't look down upon it when it's an Olympic athlete or when it's uh a musician or when it's a concert violinist or when it's an actor or something but when it comes to making money there's something about that that we like to look down upon um if you want to get rich you probably don't look down upon it right i mean if you're watching this video you you probably wouldn't look down upon someone who has an unhealthy obsession
• 09:00 - 09:30 with getting rich but if you want to get rich and you're at this point in the video and you've sat through me talking about how I think the way to get rich is to have an unhealthy obsession with it your friends and family will probably look down on you for having an unhealthy obsession with getting rich especially if you are in a country like the UK uh and I've heard Canada similar to this i think in the US they're a bit more chill about you want to get rich go for it like you know that kind of rah rahrh helping like big you up for wanting a big outcome in the UK and a lot of
• 09:30 - 10:00 European countries and I've heard Canada is like this as well it's more like you want to get rich bro what's wrong with you like you know think about the finer things in life like money won't buy you happiness it's not going to make you happy like you know why why do you need to get rich like there's this whole like this thing this idea that if you're trying to get rich that is somehow bad um And I don't know maybe it is maybe it is but like again I don't know anyone who's gotten rich without being unhealthily obsessed with it this is a
• 10:00 - 10:30 video about how to get rich how do you get rich by becoming unhealthily obsessed with getting rich what does it look like to be unhealthily obsessed with getting rich i was having a conversation with a friend this is a friend who wants to be rich she wouldn't say I want to be rich but what she would say is "Ah I'd love to have a lifestyle business that helps me make at least £10,000 a month so that I can retire my parents so that I can work whenever I want wherever I want and do work I love with people I love." That basically translates to I want to be rich right you know how many people have the money to be able to retire their parents have a lifestyle business work from wherever they want whenever they want making at least 10,000 a month in profit like man
• 10:30 - 11:00 basically she wants to be rich right um and so we kind of had a bit of a conversation and I was like come on oh man you know let's call a spade a spade is it fair to say that you want to be rich and she was like yeah I want to be rich i was like great fantastic you know we're owning the fact that that we want to be rich she was saying that she's doing all these different things but feels like she's stuck in one place because she's not actually becoming rich and she's been watching the content and reading some of the books that I've been recommending and stuff cuz you know she watches the channel occasionally but she's still no richer than she was 5 years ago she is still stuck in her job
• 11:00 - 11:30 that she enjoys sometimes and doesn't enjoy some whatever still stuck in a job not getting rich and so I'm kind of talking about this you know she is is training for a marathon and at the same time she wants to create YouTube videos exploring her um artistic side and at the same time she wants to document her life on Instagram because it gives her artistic fulfillment to do that and at the same time she uh wants to host events for friends uh because she's very sociable and enjoys hanging out with friends and at the same time you know she really cares about her family wants to spend a lot of time hanging out with
• 11:30 - 12:00 the family and visiting her parents a lot and like just has all these different things that she wants to do and she also has a day job for the record so it's like you know 40 to 50 hours of a week are taken up by the the day job i asked a simple question i was like okay let's call her Jane okay Jane how many hours a week would you say you are devoting to the goal of getting rich and she had never thought about this question before like literally never it's like for 5 years she'd had the goal of 10 years she'd had the goal of I want to get rich was worry was wondering why she's not there yet which is why she was talking to me about this cuz it was a
• 12:00 - 12:30 conversation about how to get rich basically and I asked "How many hours a week are you dedicating to the goal?" And she was like "Oh damn um I mean I've got my day job." And I was like "Okay come on you know let's be honest the day job is probably unlikely to get you rich." The way you get rich from a day job is either you work in tech or you work in finance those are broadly the two fields where your day job can get you rich tech and finance is there anything else pretty much just tech and finance right if you have a really high paying job in tech or a really high paying job in finance you can get rich off that right
• 12:30 - 13:00 cuz you make way more money than you spend even if you're living in London and if you're living in London you're making 500 grand you're only only spending 100 grand on like rent and food and drinks and you've got 400 grand left taxes etc etc put it in an index fund S&P 500 compounding by the time you're about 40 you'll be rich if you work in finance similarly if you work in tech this person Jane does not work in finance or tech therefore being honest she's unlikely to get rich off of her day job so time spent working towards a day job broadly does not really count for the goal of of trying to get rich
• 13:00 - 13:30 basically it transpired you were spending zero hours a week focused on the goal of getting rich let's say you're trying to become a professional athlete let's say a professional football player how many hours a week would you need to be dedicating to that goal of being a professional footballer like many many many hours a day forever for like a 10-year period and yet my friend Jane had the goal of being rich which is a 1% goal and was putting zero effort towards the the thing and we realized at the end of the conversation that this is a big part of why she feels sad a lot of the time that she's not getting to where she wants to be cuz she
• 13:30 - 14:00 wants to be here and the actions that she's taking are completely devoid completely decorated from like this this thing that she wants what else does an unhealthy obsession look like so we talked about kind of the hours per week that you're spending trying to get rich what else does an unhealthy obsession look like i want to tell you a little story um and I want to compare in this little story I'm going to take a snapshot of my life right now in 2025 i'm currently 30 years old 30 and I want to compare it with a snapshot of my life let's say 5 years ago yeah 5 years
• 14:00 - 14:30 ago it would have been 2020 that was when I was in the peak of my getting rich phase 2020 was the year where I went from earning 100,000 a year on my YouTube business to like 1.2 2 million a year from my YouTube business for the regular so 20 2020 was a massive year of growth i want to talk about the idea of mental bandwidth and content content uh content diet so back in 2020 there were two types of content that I was consuming number one was fantasy fiction
• 14:30 - 15:00 audio books on my drive to and from work some of the time and while I was at the gym some of the time that was maybe 10% of my content consumption the other 90% of my content consumption was about getting rich it wasn't explicitly about getting rich back in 2020 there wasn't that much content about it but it was about business it was about how to grow a YouTube channel i was listening to literally all of the podcasts about how to grow a YouTube channel i was listening to all of the podcast about how to build a business and how to market a business the Smart Passive Income podcast the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast Noah Kagan's podcast i was reading all the books listening to all
• 15:00 - 15:30 the audio books about business the E-Myth Revisited and Traction and dozens and dozens of books and audio books about how to get rich 90% of the stuff that I was consuming that I was listening to every single day at like two times and three times speed was content about how to get rich the way you get rich is by having an unhealthy obsession with getting rich what that unhealthy obsession looks like is that in your discretionary time in your spare time the thing that you are thinking about the thing that you're consuming content about the thing you're reading about the thing you're listening about
• 15:30 - 16:00 the thing you are listening to stuff about the thing you're watching videos on is on how to get rich going back to this friend Jane I also asked her "How much time do you spend watching or reading or listening to content that is specifically towards this goal of getting rich?" And she said "Well I watch a lot of content about like content creation because I'm interested in that." I'm like "Okay but like do you plan to get rich through content creation?" And she was like "M okay probably not right?" She's she's doing the content creation thing as a hobby rather than as a vehicle to getting rich i Okay do you watch or listen or to read anything else about getting rich and she was like "Yeah I sometimes watch some of your videos about finance and stuff but
• 16:00 - 16:30 other than that not really." And so this is someone who has the goal of getting rich which is like a 1% goal cuz you know let's say rich is top 1% however you want to define it whatever and she's putting zero hours a week towards the goal acting acting towards the goal of getting rich and she's putting zero hours a week of consuming content towards the goal of getting rich that is not what an unhealthy obsession with getting rich looks like unfortunately yeah so back in 2020 when I was in the process of getting rich when my income 10xed I was listening to some fantasy audio books i was occasionally going to the gym but literally all of the rest of
• 16:30 - 17:00 my time even while I was at work in my day job all of the rest of my time was focused on how do I do stuff towards building my business and therefore getting rich or how do I learn stuff towards the goal of building my business and therefore getting rich and my personal view is I think that's what it takes i think that's what it takes it's so hard to get rich it's not an easy thing social media will make you think it's an easy thing social media will make you think that you can you know get super rich and while you're in the
• 17:00 - 17:30 process of getting super rich you can also have a balanced life right you can go to the gym you can have your friends and family you can go on the holidays you can do the things you can have so much fun you can train for a marathon you can do a Hyrox whatever the a Hyrox is you can do all those things in reality those are the things that rich people do once they are already rich they are not the things that they did while they were on the way while they were switching from day job earning 50 grand to business earning 500 grand while they were growing the business from like you know 100k in revenue and
• 17:30 - 18:00 no profit to a million in revenue and like lots of profit generally pretty much everyone I've spoken to who has been in that position has been unhealthily obsessed with the goal of getting rich or building a business or whatever vehicle towards getting rich they are unhealthily obsessed with that goal to the point that it has created imbalance in their life because they've been single-mindedly pursuing that goal this is a video about how to get rich how do you get rich you become
• 18:00 - 18:30 unhealthily obsessed with goal what else does an unhealthy obsession with a goal look like so I talked about what my life was like back in 2020 i want to contrast that with what it's like in 2025 let's have a look through my YouTube feed a man's content feed can tell you a lot about what they value and what their priorities are so let me so show you what my YouTube feed looks like these days okay a video from Alex Okconor about philosophy a community post from Lea Homozi a Garry's Economics video about
• 18:30 - 19:00 why growth is stupid okay oh here we go simon Squib this is a video about how to get rich i have one video about how to get rich method versus mythic sprocket monger lemonto lockentock protection warrior POV this is a video about World of Warcraft this is not a video about getting rich schwarz is this rogue genius another video about World of Warcraft why you can tax billionaires uh this is a economics type thing another World of Warcraft thing oh Alex Forzosi video about getting rich this new weapon
• 19:00 - 19:30 modification is amazing for speedruns in Horizon Forbidden West this is not a video about getting rich this is a video about a video game h Scall Bloom quote this is a video about how to get ripped which is not about getting rich this is a Deru episode about fear and anxiety this is Rory Sutherland not about getting rich i don't know what this is this is another World of Warcraft video not a video about getting rich this is an art video cuz I'm doing a side quest and learning how to draw you know bro is running side quests i'm doing a side quest and I just completed Horizon Forbidden West on the PlayStation 5 i've
• 19:30 - 20:00 gotten back into World of Warcraft the War Within season 2 on my character which is a paladin where I'm trying to play holy and prot and retribution and stuff i'm trying to learn how to draw i'm running running all these various different side quests i'm taking white lessons i'm starting going to the gym very regularly i'm taking squash lessons uh here's a book this is one on how to get rich i've read this book by the way it's a good book this is music another side quest I'm running is trying to improve my guitar piano and singing skills not a video about how to get rich uh this is Louis House and J Shetty sort of a video about how to get rich but not
• 20:00 - 20:30 really they're going to talk about like feelings and stuff world of Warcraft iman Gazi video about how to get rich sell something video about how to get rich survive or thrive i don't know what that means australian Grand Prix networking storytelling not about getting rich i worked out like David Gogins for 100 days not about getting rich my content feed these days reflects what my priorities are if you were to look at that what would you say are the things that Aliabadal cares about according to his YouTube thing according to his YouTube feed he cares about World of Warcraft cares about gaming on the horizon Forbidden West cares a little
• 20:30 - 21:00 bit about making money because you know 20% of the videos were about how to get rich cares about becoming healthy a handful of those videos were about like health and stuff um if you if you'd looked at this like two weeks ago it was like filled with like baby gear recommendations because I was on a freaking rabbit hole about like you know we've got a baby on the way and like researching the absolute best crib pram stroller car seat this that and the other and so my entire YouTube feed was recommendations for like baby gear if you compared this to my YouTube feedback in 2020 all you would have seen is
• 21:00 - 21:30 content about how to get rich content about how to build a business content about how to manage a team content about how to grow a YouTube channel content about how to grow social media content about sales funnels and all of this sort of stuff that's all you would have seen this video is about how to get rich the way you get rich is by having an unhealthy obsession with getting rich what does that look like what it looks like is that your content diet is towards that unhealthy obsession with getting rich the unfortunate truth is that the more different goals you're working towards the more balanced your life is the less likely you are to get rich maybe there are a handful of
• 21:30 - 22:00 exceptions to this rule but in general the pattern I've seen through I I I know I know a hell of a lot of people who are rich i've interviewed a lot of them on podcast read a bunch of their books none of basically 100% of them did not have much of a balanced life while they were in the process of getting rich they started they got rich first and then they got the balanced life second i am not saying that this is what you should do i am saying that if you have the goal of getting rich any or or becoming a professional athlete or becoming a professional actor or becoming a professional musician anything
• 22:00 - 22:30 where this is a goal that only 1% of people attain like to be better than 99% of people requires you to be more dedicated than 99% of people generally requires you to work harder than 99% of people say you know work but but I can work smart it's like okay but like everyone Everyone else is also trying to work smart like also when you're a beginner at the thing you don't know what working smart looks like like when you're a beginner to the goal of getting rich are you building business or whatever you just have to work really
• 22:30 - 23:00 hard and in the process of working really hard you will figure out what does working smart look look like so that further down the line you can now work smart right now I don't need to work that hard right now my multi and deca millionaire friends don't need to work very hard they still choose to anyway cuz they're kind of obsessed still a lot of them are obsessed but you know the ones with families and like balance they don't need to work very hard why because they have employees who do the hard hard work for them they've got systems they've got leverage they've got personal brands they've got Burks they've got passive income assets they don't need to work hard anymore but all of them had an unhealthy
• 23:00 - 23:30 obsession with getting rich while they were younger when they were building it up so if you're at this point in the video and you would like to get rich it's really worth asking yourself do you have an unhealthy obsession with getting rich would your friends and family say that you have an unhealthy obsession with getting rich does your content diet reflect an obsession with getting rich does the way you spend your time reflect an obsession with getting rich if the
• 23:30 - 24:00 answer is no then you have two options i think all of this is just my opinion whatever i think you have two options here either you can decide to develop an unhealthy obsession you can change your content diet you can start consuming all the content about getting rich you can start waking up 2 hours early before your day job putting in effort towards building your business you can start while you're at your day job taking slightly longer lunch breaks and using squeezing in half an hour of like work on your business here and there in the evenings you can not go out with your friends every night or whatever the thing is you can stop playing freaking video games you can stop watching Netflix stop watching random YouTube
• 24:00 - 24:30 videos even videos like this one and only ever work on your business while you're going on a walk while you're doing the dishes you can switch your content diet so that you are listening to audiobooks and podcasts and videos about getting rich on weekends you can be like "Ah weekends incredible i've got like 16 full hours on Saturday and 16 full hours on Sunday where I can literally just wake up lock myself in a room work for 16 straight hours on my business." That is what an unhealthy obsession with getting rich looks like that is often what it takes getting rich is not easy that's that's option number one if you decide that hey I want to get
• 24:30 - 25:00 rich i trust Ali's advice on this i trust that he he knows what he's talking about sort of somewhat ane anecdotally and I trust that okay I currently don't have an unhealthy obsession with getting rich and I would like to develop one or you can decide you know what actually this this isn't for me i I if getting rich requires having an unhealthy obsession to the point where my life becomes imbalanced if getting rich requires me to stop running my marathons and stop hanging out with friends and like work on the weekends and like wake
• 25:00 - 25:30 up a bit earlier to work before work and like work during work if getting rich requires my medical school professors to think I'm going to get struck off the medical register because like I'm so obsessed with getting rich man if that's what's required to get rich I actually don't want to be rich if that's the path you want to go down man I'm so glad you watched this video because this video might have saved you all of this angst that you've currently got from like you have a goal of getting rich but you're not doing the thing which is to have an unhealthy obsession in terms of action and in terms of like learning to towards getting rich you could just decide to
• 25:30 - 26:00 make the goal less ambitious on that front um I'm not putting a moral judgment on this i'm not saying it's anyone should have a goal of getting rich i'm not saying getting rich is a morally good thing or a morally bad thing it's a morally neutral thing in the same way I'm not saying that being a professional football player is good or bad it just it just is what it is if you have the goal of being a professional football player it makes sense that you're either willing to put in the effort required to be a professional football player or not but if you're not willing to put in the effort you're not willing to pay the price that it takes to become a professional football player why set yourself the goal of becoming a professional football player the more we
• 26:00 - 26:30 have this gap the gap between where we want the gap between the thing that we want and the actions we're taking this gap creates misery misery is created in the gap if I have the goal of being a professional squash player for example I don't but if I did and I'm only training 2 hours a week I'm like bro that's going to make me miserable because I'm never going to get to that goal by only training 2 hours a week similarly if you have the goal of getting rich and you're not willing to pay the price which in my opinion is having an unhealthy obsession with it to the point that the rest of your life becomes imbalanced if you're not willing to pay that price either
• 26:30 - 27:00 become willing to pay the price i.e become unhealthily obsessed or just don't have it as a goal you know various people in my team for example are totally chill not being rich they do not have the goal of becoming financially free financially independent the ones that do often tend to go out and start their own business and then they make videos about why they left the Alidal team to start their own business and they've you know joined our team got inspired and started to and decided to run their own businesses cuz they wanted to get rich right but there's a lot of people in my team who are like you know what I don't really want to get rich i just want a nice job that pays
• 27:00 - 27:30 reasonably well that gives me flexibility that gives me fun gives me autonomy lets me learn and lets me hang out with people that I like and lets me travel the world while I'm doing it that's actually the position of like half the people in my team they're like you know what actually this is great i I love my job i love my life that's fantastic they do not have the goal of getting rich and therefore the fact that they're not unhealthily obsessed with getting rich is fine it's not causing any misery because there's there's no misalignment but there are various people I know including Jane for example who has a job and has the goal of getting rich which is there and her actions are here and she feels misery
• 27:30 - 28:00 every day because she feels the pain of misalignment the pain that her goals are misaligned with her actions and whenever you're in a situation where what you want is misaligned with what you are doing it creates misery so either change what you're doing or change what you want that's my honest advice that's my hot take on how to get rich and if you enjoyed that video then you will absolutely love my weekly email newsletter it's called LifeNotes and it's where I share whatever I'm learning watching listening to and just notes that I'm generally taking away from my work and my life thank you so much for
• 28:00 - 28:30 watching i hope you found this useful and I'll see you hopefully in the next video bye-bye