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00:00:00Hey friends, welcome back to the vlog.
00:00:06The day starts at 8am when I wake up, negotiate myself out of bed, have a shower, do my skincare
00:00:11and play with the baby girl for a bit. I wave goodbye to the other baby girl and I head over
00:00:19to the office to start the work day. Fridays are unusual in that I start work at 9am, usually I
00:00:28start at 10am, but on Fridays from 9am to 10am I do a live session called the Friday Fireside
00:00:33for students of our Lifestyle Business Academy, which is our online business school. I run
00:00:37a Monday masterclass every Monday, and then twice on a Friday I do the more casual Q&As
00:00:40where I help our students wherever I can with their businesses. Cool, great stuff gang, have
00:00:45a lovely rest of the day, good luck with the businesses and life, and I will see you all
00:00:49next week. Bye!
00:00:50We've just done the Friday Fireside, that was quite nice, there were only like four people
00:00:53on the call, and so it felt like I could really dive in in detail. So these are our very casual
00:00:59like Q&A calls that we run, and they can just ask me anything, and we just have a chit-chat
00:01:03about their business, giving feedback on their content, or on their sales pages, or on their
00:01:06proposals, or on their offers. And in this group we had Sherylaine, who's already made $100,000
00:01:09in the last few months. We've had Carlos, who's just joined us, and so he's trying to figure out
00:01:13his niche. And so yeah, it's good vibes. We then have a little bit of chit-chat with the team
00:01:17about this vlog format, and we take a look at some of the old vlogs I used to do many, many years ago
00:01:21while I was in med school. I mean, I used to save lives in different countries, and now
00:01:25I make YouTube videos. I really enjoyed doing that stuff back in the day, and so I'm experimenting
00:01:29with potentially trying to recreate that sort of format. We'll see how it goes. Sick, man!
00:01:33What have I? Six minute long vlog, edited by me, filmed by me, and so this was how I stayed
00:01:40consistent with content while I had a real life as a student and a doctor. As the day progresses,
00:01:45I sort of am constructing the vlog in my head with the footage that I've got, thinking like,
00:01:50okay, where do I think a little montage would be good? Where is a voiceover sensible? And then I'll
00:01:56like write out the voiceover. I want to experiment with this format for the business stuff, because
00:02:03it's basically like the study with me thing. Instead of studying, I'm like, I don't know,
00:02:06trying to build a landing page or like freaking, I don't know, whatever, trying to figure out ads
00:02:10for Super Focus or whatever. If we can nail this as a format, this is a massive unlock, because it means
00:02:16that for example, a Wednesday can be dedicated to filming, where we're like talking to the camera
00:02:20and shit. But then on a Friday, I can actually just be doing stuff, and we can just film me doing
00:02:24stuff, and I can explain how I'm doing the stuff, and then I'll be fucking sick, because then I can
00:02:29actually do the stuff, rather than just being a professional content creator. So that is the dream.
00:02:34After the vlog discussion, one of our new team members, Anne, shows me some of the process mapping
00:02:38stuff that she's been working on to try and improve the operations of our Lifestyle Business Academy.
00:02:42One thing we've been, me and Anne has been talking about for a while is we need like, we always need
00:02:45like a student roadmap. Yeah. Like a nice, cute looking Figma page that we can be like, this is the
00:02:50roadmap, and this is where you are, and this is what the next step is. Yeah. That'll be sick.
00:02:53So I think, yes. Yes. Yeah. Student facing like roadmap, doc. Yeah. Which then maps to
00:02:59student experience, which maps to coach thingy, and everyone is like singing from the same
00:03:03machine, even though the students never see the coach and the system one. We know that it maps to the
00:03:07roadmap. Yes. And so if we change the roadmap, everything else has to change.
00:03:10And anyone across the entire business is able to look at like, what am I doing today? And what box
00:03:16am I touching? How am I helping? And how does that then fit into the bigger picture? Yes.
00:03:20Nice. And if, if I go to go spend the next half an hour or like half a day doing X and it doesn't
00:03:26touch any of those boxes. Yeah. Is that a valuable exercise? Even if it seems fun or seems important,
00:03:32and that's going to help, help prioritization. Nice. At this point, it's around 11 AM and it's
00:03:37time to crank on some work. It's time to get started with life notes. Life notes is the email
00:03:43newsletter that I've been sending since like April, 2018. So how many years is that? Eight years,
00:03:47almost every week for the last eight years sending an email. And there is a technique that I came across
00:03:51from a writing coach, which is called the splurge. This is how the splurge works. You basically set
00:03:56a timer for 10 minutes. Conveniently, I only have 12 minutes until my next meeting, pretty much with
00:04:01eyes closed and not being allowed to press the backspace or the, or the delete button. You just like
00:04:06word vomit anything that comes to mind. So this is the sort of thing that it might look like. Okay.
00:04:14The idea is that you do this for like a whole 10 minutes with your eyes closed. You see how
00:04:18janky this is, but this is a good way of like silencing the inner critic and finding out where
00:04:26you want to go and what you want to say about a particular thing. So by literally writing out,
00:04:30ah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've actually landed on what I now think is a good
00:04:33topic, which I'm now going to continue to splurge about. That will be like the first draft of the
00:04:37newsletter. And then if I want to, I can just chuck it into Claude and be like, Hey, can you just
00:04:41clean it up to make sure there's no typos and shit? Or I could just like manually hand
00:04:44craft it if I really felt like it, but we'll see how it goes after continuing on with this
00:04:48splurge. Oh shit. I'm going to have my call with Nathan. Whoopsie.
00:04:59Alrighty. So just got off a call with Nathan, who's one of our coaches. Nathan is in Australia.
00:05:05And so it's a good time zone for Hong Kong because it's a few hours ahead. So it's very
00:05:08easy to get on a call with Nathan. Nathan is actually our outreach specialist in the Lifestyle
00:05:11Business Academy because he ran his own like marketing agency for like 12 years.
00:05:1412 years before joining us. And he basically got all of his clients through outreach, like
00:05:19a combination of warm outreach and cold outreach and sending DMS and doing cold emails and stuff
00:05:23like that, which is really cool. He's never made content as far as I know. He doesn't have
00:05:28much of a personal brand. So he didn't get clients through like being famous on the internet.
00:05:32And he also didn't get clients through running ads. He literally just got them through like
00:05:35messaging and emailing people being like, Hey, do you want to work with me? Obviously doing
00:05:39it slightly more sophisticated than that. And so what we do is that this was initially started
00:05:44out as a sort of coach training conversation where Nathan, you know, I have these two, three
00:05:50times a week with all of our coaches where a couple of coaches get on a call with me and
00:05:55kind of like we model it after like a medical ward round where the coach goes through and
00:06:00we discuss any patients or any students that they are struggling with. So in this context,
00:06:03Nathan was struggling with one of his students. Let's call the student, John. John is having
00:06:07existential angst about his niche and his business model. So he's like, what do I want to go with
00:06:12this particular business model in this particular niche, but that one doesn't really feel aligned
00:06:15or do I want to do this thing, but I know that's going to make less money. And so when people have
00:06:19that kind of like, Oh, I'm pulled in these different directions, it's a real struggle for them.
00:06:24And so we identified that as being the problem. We also then go through the Dr. CPR method,
00:06:28DR CPR, which stands for DMS replies, calls, proposals, and revenue, which is sort of like the,
00:06:33uh, I think of them as the five vital signs of a business in the early stages, uh, that can help
00:06:37the coach and the student and me diagnose again, medical analogy, diagnose exactly where the problem
00:06:42is so that we can then prescribe a solution or suggest an experiment for that specific problem.
00:06:46So we did that with one of Nathan's students. And then we happened to have half an hour left where
00:06:49I was like, you know what, let's actually just cause I'm working on the DMS module of the new curriculum.
00:06:54Let me get Nathan's thoughts on this cause Nathan is a pro at DMS. And actually that was a very
00:06:58generative conversation that resulted in quite a lot of, um, new stuff that I realized we can
00:07:02incorporate into the curriculum, which is absolutely sick. So I love it when a Zoom call turns into
00:07:07curriculum content, which turns into just making a better experience for our students.
00:07:10All right. If you're enjoying the video so far, I would love to tell you about WeWork who are very
00:07:14kindly sponsoring this video. So if you run a small business like I do, you will know how much of a
00:07:18nightmare office space is. A commercial lease is usually at least two years. It's super expensive.
00:07:22You've got to sort out the fit out and you end up having to do things like unblocking the toilets
00:07:25and dealing with plumbing and all that kind of stuff yourself. Total nightmare, which is why me and my team
00:07:29have been paying customers of WeWork since like 2020. Back then it was just me and our general manager
00:07:33Angus working out of the WeWork in Cambridge. We'd go there every day. It was super nice interior
00:07:37design. There'd be whiteboards everywhere. And a lot of what the business does now got sketched out
00:07:40in those conference rooms in the WeWork. These days, the team is a lot bigger and mostly remote.
00:07:44And so we've got people working from all around the world and we don't have a physical office
00:07:47anywhere except here in Hong Kong. So instead, everyone on the team has a WeWork all access membership.
00:07:52So wherever someone happens to be, they can walk into the local WeWork and get a proper day of work done.
00:07:56And then whenever I'm back in London or a few of the team end up in the same city, we can just book a
00:08:00desk or a meeting room and actually work together in real life, which is awesome. The great thing
00:08:03about WeWork is that it's also super flexible. The contract goes month to month and you can add
00:08:07or drop membership super easily as the team changes. So especially for our remote team these days,
00:08:10WeWork basically takes care of all of the office side of things, which means our team and me can get
00:08:14to focus on actually running the business rather than trying to be a part-time office manager. And
00:08:18wherever you are in the world, you know exactly what you're getting. So if your business is at the point
00:08:21where you're ready to think about something like this, head over to we.co/aliabdal and book a tour
00:08:26at a WeWork near you. And if you use the codes on screen, you can get 10% off the monthly membership
00:08:30or 25% off the pay-as-you-go on-demand desks and meeting rooms. Links and codes are in the video
00:08:34description as well. So big thank you WeWork for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it.
00:08:38At this point, it's 12:25 PM. I've got 15 minutes until lunch with the team.
00:08:42And so I'm going to use that time to try and incorporate Nathan's insights into the DM's curriculum
00:08:47material and also to polish off this week's issue of life notes.
00:08:52Alrighty. So that is this issue of life notes that has been written. I'm actually very proud of it.
00:08:56Just actually it's weird because it's having, having very few minutes to actually write it,
00:09:00I think made it way better than sometimes I agonize over it for like two or three hours and stuff.
00:09:05And yeah, not a single ounce of AI was used in the writing of life notes.
00:09:09Previously, I used to use our app VoicePal and used to walk around and sort of like dictate
00:09:12what I would, what I wanted to write about. Then I would chuck it into Claude and then go back
00:09:15and forth with the AI for absolutely ages to like figure out. And then once I discovered this like
00:09:19splurge method, um, it just, I, I just sort of realized that I prefer the craft of writing with
00:09:26my fingertips on a keyboard. So I'll still use like AI dictation and stuff for things that are not like
00:09:30creative output, but for things that involve like creative output that sort of, I actually do prefer
00:09:35sort of raw dog writing it myself rather than, um, trying to get an AI to find my voice and you know,
00:09:41all of that, all that crap. Now me and Sean are, uh, so the team has gone for lunch. Uh,
00:09:47they are going to a local Thai place and they're going to order for us. And then we are going to
00:09:50join them. Uh, once we go to the DJI store, cause we want to buy some new tech. What are we buying?
00:09:55Yeah. New microphones. Cause we want to be able to capture more stuff like in a more sort of candid
00:09:59fashion, uh, rather than it just being the sort of official desk setup. So yeah, time for a little trip
00:10:05to the DJI store and then team lunch, multi-colour magnetic front cover.
00:10:21All righty. So we are back after lunch. We have done a nice haul of equipment from the DJI store,
00:10:28which we are now putting on charge for a four-way microphone setup with a single transmitter, which
00:10:32means we can do four-way podcasts. We can do four-way like round tables. We can capture conversations
00:10:36that are happening over lunch. So that's really cool. And so now I have a call with Angus. It's
00:10:40currently 20 past two. Uh, I've got a call with Angus at three. And so the rest of the afternoon,
00:10:44I'm going to be focusing on super focused marketing. So super focus is our app.
00:10:48And the way I think of it is like magnetic marketing and effortless sales. We want marketing that is
00:10:52magnetic, i.e. it effortlessly attracts our ideal customers and also repels people that we don't want.
00:10:58And we want effortless sales, sales that feel effortless. I don't like it when it feels like
00:11:02we're trying to sell something and it feels hard. I want it to feel effortless because selling is a
00:11:06service and sales is merely about educating the person about your product. And if it's right for
00:11:11them, then they'll just naturally buy. Right. Um, and if it's not, then this is no hard feelings.
00:11:15And so I'm trying to sort of figure out like, okay, how do we present, how do we position and present
00:11:20super focus so that we attract the right people to become founding members? Uh, because we have only
00:11:25another couple of weeks while we're still doing the founding member program for super focus,
00:11:28which is basically you get massive discount, uh, which will be grandfathered in forever for as
00:11:33long as you're a subscriber, you get like a money back guarantee and you get to join our little
00:11:36community where you give us feedback about the product. Oh, by the way, if you happen to be
00:11:39watching this before Saturday, the 26th of September, 2026, I'm hosting my quarterly workshop,
00:11:44the autumn reset. It's completely free. I host it with thousands of attendees from all around the
00:11:48world. And the whole idea in this totally free live workshop is that you and I work together to
00:11:52essentially reflect on how 2026 has gone so far. And then we set goals for the final 90 days of
00:11:572026 so that we can finish the year strong. I've been running these every three months for the last
00:12:01few years. It's around two hours together on a zoom call. People get tons and tons of value from it.
00:12:04And so there'll be a link to register completely for free down in the description, if you're interested.
00:12:15At three o'clock, I have a 45 minute one on one zoom meeting with Angus, our general manager,
00:12:20where we discuss various issues and opportunities in the business. Alrighty. So I was meant to be doing
00:12:26some super focused stuff, but I ended up spending half an hour just yapping with Ann because she had
00:12:29to leave. And so we were just sketching out a bunch of the operations and processes for the Lifestyle
00:12:33Business Academy in terms of like what, like what the student journey looks like and what the coaches
00:12:38are up to and basically trying to figure out where are the holes in the system? Because what we're really
00:12:42trying to do is there's like basically a zillion different things we could do to improve the
00:12:46experience of students and coaches in the Lifestyle Business Academy. But the discipline is in
00:12:50figuring out what are the high priority, high impact ones and doing those first, which requires us to
00:12:54really understand the map of all of this stuff so far. One of the things with Lifestyle Business Academy
00:12:59is I had an idea going in of what the student experience would look like. And then students
00:13:03started going through it. And then almost from day one, we started to get data about where people are
00:13:09struggling. Basically, the struggles with building a business were a lot more numerous than I thought
00:13:13they would be, because in particular, various like mindset and emotional and like mental hurdles were
00:13:19coming up for students. So even though I thought it was pretty clear, like what they should do, and they
00:13:23sort of knew what they should do, they were not doing the thing. And so all of those like things are now
00:13:28bubbling to the surface and have been over the last few months where we're like, all right, there's all sorts of
00:13:33things we could do to solve this, to solve these problems. Let's figure out what the problems actually
00:13:37are. And then let's put systems in place to actually solve them. And so there was a lot of like drawing
00:13:41boxes on a page and like process mapping and stuff. So it is now 4:47 PM. I have my next Friday fireside
00:13:48with the LBA students. So that is the next order of business. We then have our second Friday fireside
00:13:53for the day, this time where I'm speaking to our European and Australian students primarily. And then the
00:13:57day ends with a casual chit chat amongst the team in the office. Yeah, I feel like I've been sort of
00:14:01carrying the weight of some kind of business since the age of 18 for the last like 14 years. Because
00:14:07even with the first business, the first successful business, the courses business, SixMed, there was
00:14:11always stuff that was going wrong with it. Like books weren't delivered on time or like a student was
00:14:15unhappy or like a student was really happy and I had to get a testimonial or just the website was broken.
00:14:20And then there was a period of time once I sold that business and when the YouTube channel was still a
00:14:24side hustle where it didn't feel heavy, I don't think. It felt like I was playing with house money. Just
00:14:30like, oh, this is the, you know, we're in the bonus round. I've already got my day job. I have no intention
00:14:33of quitting my day job. So this YouTube thing is just like a cool, cool, cool thing on the site. But then
00:14:37it got so big and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to quit the day job and made it my main thing.
00:14:41But then it added a level of heaviness to it. That's like, it's my main thing now. And so this business
00:14:45is like what I do for work and like the work domain. And ultimately every decision makes its way back to me.
00:14:52And having a team is amazing because it takes, it definitely takes a lot of that load off.
00:14:55And without the team and without Angus, like being the general manager, it would be a lot worse than
00:14:58it currently is. But it's sort of like the whole thing is sort of reliant on me to continue to
00:15:03do the content, sort out the curriculum with LBA and all this sort of stuff.
00:15:08And we don't yet have senior leadership team that can truly take ownership of their particular
00:15:14department yet because we've historically only really hired people who are like young and inexperienced.
00:15:20And so in that context, because I can't hand over the ownership to a senior leader in that
00:15:25department, it's just sort of me and Angus who are like shouldering the load of the entire business.
00:15:29At least that's what it feels like. But I hear from more experienced entrepreneurs that once you
00:15:32get that load, those like senior hires who can truly own something, then it's like that load
00:15:38feels like it's being taken off your shoulders and it's being sort of shared around a bit more.
00:15:41But at the same time, it feels weird to be talking about this, right? Because it's sort of like,
00:15:44I don't want it to look as if, and also I don't want it to feel internally as if I'm complaining
00:15:48about this at all, because this is the life I've chosen for myself and it's absolutely sick. And it's
00:15:51like way better than the life I would have had working as a doctor. And so it's sort of like,
00:15:55choose your heart. It's like, if you want to be a business owner, then you're signing up to
00:15:58feeling the weight of the business on your shoulders. If you have co-founders, then it feels like more
00:16:02like the load is shared. I had a friend who had four co-founders for his business. He was like,
00:16:05four was probably a bit much, but like, it felt like the load was shared. Whereas when you're
00:16:09a solo founder or even a duo, then yeah. One of the challenges is constant context switching,
00:16:16where it's like, we've got this LBA workshop in the morning. And then immediately it's like
00:16:21doing operations with Anne. And then there's, we're talking about something about the YouTube channel.
00:16:24And then we're like, all right, we need to work on the curriculum stuff. Oh, and then there's
00:16:26meeting with Nathan, which turns into a curriculum chat. And then it's like, okay, lunch with the team.
00:16:30We need to sort out our audio process while we're doing lunch. We're trying to figure out like the
00:16:34content for the vlog for the day. It's like, in the back of my mind, I need to focus on super focus.
00:16:37And then I start working on super focus. And then I've got this meeting with Angus. In some ways,
00:16:41I like the variety of it, but in other ways, I'm like, ah, there's a lot going on. And also it's like
00:16:47all in one day. And so I almost prefer when the calendar is completely empty and I can just like
00:16:51dig into just like one thing. And so this is sort of where I've, I'm, I'm always trying to sort of get
00:16:56to that Nirvana where I can actually just single task on something for four hours rather than being
00:17:01constantly derailed by other things. So that's been a bit of a struggle with today. I find it useful to
00:17:06set the rules for myself. Like the rule is I'm not allowed to work after 7pm. And it's not my
00:17:10definition of work. It's like someone else's definition of work. Like what looks like, if it
00:17:13looks like work to someone else, I'm not allowed to do it after 7pm. And I find that to be a very
00:17:16useful thing. It was like, okay, well, it's all like going home at the end of the day in medicine where
00:17:20you're like, yeah, that's patient's bleeding, but I can't do anything about it. It's not quite as detached as that,
00:17:24because you really can't do anything about it when you're not there. And I could always just like
00:17:27open up code code or do something. And sometimes I do, I do those things, especially when inspiration
00:17:31strikes. I think for the most part, the balance feels good. For the most part, I feel happy, fulfilled,
00:17:36joyful in the business. And at the same time, it also feels like heavy, um, to an extent. But at the
00:17:44same time, it also doesn't because we've got, we've got, we've got a great team and it does feel
00:17:47light a lot of the time. And if it was heavier, I wouldn't be like, oh my God, I can't, I can't
00:17:51spend a lot of lunch with the team because it's like, well, that's fine as well. And so I definitely
00:17:56have it a lot better than most business owners because of the team structure around, around it.
00:18:00And because the products are so high margin and because we've got the audience. So we have a lot
00:18:02of unfair advantages in our favor. Um, who knows how long that will continue to last, but fingers crossed.
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