284. How Dr. Ali Abdaal Accidentally Built A $6M Business

Speaker A: Welcome to the Productive Insights podcast where you can learn how to systemize, automate and scale your business via the Internet. To, uh, access previous episodes and useful productivity tips, go to www.productiveinsights.com. now here's your host, Ash Roy.

Speaker B: Anyone listening to this right now could decide to do that and become ahead of almost every single person in their niche. Like, hey, I'm Ali Dhal and you're listening to a conversation between me and my Ashroy on Productive Insights.

Speaker C: Today I've got a very special guest, Ali Abdal, the author of Feel Good Productivity. And we're going to be talking about how to build a business for service based business owners like CFOs, lawyers, fractional CMOs. Give us a bit of a background on how you ended up in this situation, Ali. Because I remember watching my television in 2018 and there was this affable looking guy who was a doctor and he was talking about productivity and I was like, what's going on here? And then I followed your journey for eight years and I watched you go from a few hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube to 6 million. Tell us a little bit about how you decided to move from being a medical doctor all the way through to now becoming an entrepreneur.

Speaker B: Yeah, it all sort of happened accidentally. Uh, my goal when I started my YouTube channel, and this is my business before then, was to make an extra £3,000amonth in income. Uh, because I was working as a doctor in the UK where I was, I would have been earning 40k a year and if I'd gotten to consultant level, I would have been earning 100k a year, um, pounds. So like 200k Australian or whatever, you can do the conversion. And the happiest doctors I knew were the ones working part time. And so I reasoned that like, okay, if I work as a doctor three days a week, that will probably be the uh, sort of maximally fulfilling, uh, whereas four days a week, five days a week, six days a week, eight days a week, so starts to get a little like burning out teeth. And so I thought I needed an extra three grand month to make this part time working thing feasible. And so that was why I started my first business which was helping kids get into med school. Um, so I did that from 2012 through to 2019 and then my YouTube channel started as a marketing channel for that courses business. Um, and then the YouTube channel kind of took off and sort of accidentally I ended up becoming known as a productivity expert even though the goal was just to make an extra few grand a month. So that I could work as a doctor part time.

Speaker C: So you were working as a doctor full time and you were finding time to do YouTube videos, which takes a lot of work. How did you manage that?

Speaker B: Uh, in my case, it really wasn't that hard. The reason it wasn't that hard was because I just had a lot of time. Um, you know, I was single at the time, living with a flatmate who was a friend of mine from uni. Did not have any kids, did not have any family obligations or anything like that. Um, I would go to work in the morning, get home around like 6, 7pm and just grind on the YouTube channel until 11pm for four hours. And then I'd sleep, repeat the cycle. Uh, on weekends I would spend most of my weekends working on the YouTube channel and the business when I would have days off. Because if I was doing like a night shift and like night shifts for a week, then they give you an extra few days off. And so I'd have one day of like recovery from the nights and then day two, day three, day four, I'd be like cranking out YouTube videos and working on the business. So in my life at the time, all I did was go to work, come home, hang out with friends occasionally and grind on business. And when you're spending years just doing that, of course the thing is going to succeed.

Speaker C: Didn't you find that draining, not having any kind of a social life? I mean, I understand that you enjoy making YouTube videos and so that was kind of your recreation, but, uh, did you feel like, man, I'm not getting any time to myself?

Speaker B: No, not really. Um, it didn't feel like much of a sacrifice. I, uh, was living with a housemate who was a friend of mine from university. So she and I would just like hang out. I would see my family like once a week, drive over to my mom's place, which was like an hour away for a few hours, see, um, friends on the weekends and stuff in the evenings. Like, but people often ask me this question of like, how did you find time to do the thing? But. And I created this like 168 hour spreadsheet just to show it, show what it was. You know, there's 168 hours in the week. We spend about 56 of them sleeping and we spend about 12 of them doing like, food and toileting and stuff, which leaves about 100 hours. Now I was working for somewhere between 40 and 60 hours a week, so there's still 40 hours left. And 40 hours is a lot of time. And I found ways to just not do things that would otherwise take up time. My screen time was basically zero. I didn't spend time scrolling on stuff. I had a rule for myself that I'm not allowed to watch TV if I'm, if I'm on my own. The average American spends three hours a day watching tv. The average Gen Z spends eight hours a day scrolling TikTok. Like when you just cut those things out, you end up with quite a lot of time. I also didn't. I never cooked. I only got takeaway, uh, which probably did bad things for my health. But that meant that my food time, which on average takes people like somewhere between one and two hours a day, plummeted to like 15 minutes a day. I got a cleaner part time to clean my house every other week. So I never had to do any cleaning at one time. I experimented with like a laundry service because I didn't even want to do the laundry. And so I would pay Connie Pal and stuff for them to collect my laundry and do it back like a couple of days later. I was just trying to find all the possible ways I could optimize not having to do things I didn't want to do so that I could focus on work, social life and like, grinding on the business. You know, I've got a kid now. It's a different situation. I'm married now. It's a different situation. It's like, uh, if I was working full time with a family, with a wife with kids, it's a different equation entirely.

Speaker C: Right, well, that's a good segue because a lot of people who are listening to this podcast and our audience are, uh, fractional CFOs, lawyers, professionals of some kind who have recently launched their own business and they probably have young families. They are trying to attract better quality clients and they want to get off the feast and famine cycle being where either they have a whole lot of clients and they have to deliver to them and so they have to protect the brand. So completely lost in delivery and then suddenly the client pipeline dries out and now they got to scramble to get high. So what would your advice be for someone like that?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, that's a, that's a very big question because it's like, how do you grow a business? Um, what would my advice be? There's a method that we teach to our students or that we're about to teach to our students. Um, in my, like, online business school, which you're a part of, uh, it's called the laser method. L A S E R. And so it's sort of like these are five things that you ask yourself to figure out where you should focus on. Because the problem when you're growing the business and your time is scattered in all these different directions, like how should you be focusing on client delivery? What about like lead generation? What about taking sales calls? What about attending a networking event? What about like whatever, building a YouTube panel, posting on LinkedIn? There's all these things you could be doing. You don't have all the time in the world. Even when you're a full time entrepreneur, you don't have all the time in the world. So the key to growing business is figuring out what is the current thing you need to focus on. And so this laser method, L A S E R helps you figure that out. So L stands for lifestyle. I'm a big believer that like your business should serve your life, not the other way around. And so we do a lifestyle check in being like how you currently feel about your lifestyle, is it like reasonable? Um, you might be in a season where you're sort of grinding, hustling to get your business off the ground, but are you like miserable there or are you like, you know what, this is a short term sacrifice for a long term outcome. If there are issues with the lifestyle where you're burning out, you're not spending time with friends and family, your health sucks, your relationship sucks, or anything like that. That of course is an impleted business. And so we kind of need to start with a lifestyle question. How do you feel about your life? If it's all right, then I'm like, okay, cool, let's not think about the business. If the lifestyle is not all right, we fix the life first before we try and fix the business. Because usually that's the order operations in my opinion. Then it comes to a. So a is what area of the business is the constraint. So area of constraint. Um, there are really only three areas in business. There is, I think of them as attract, convert and delight. Attract is am I getting people's attention? Lead generation convert is am I converting them to sales with at a reasonable enough conversion rate? And delight is am I giving my clients a good time so that they Give me the four Rs, which is results, reviews, referrals and renewals. Um, so that's what we're trying to, trying to get us. So we figure out like where is the constraint right now? Do we need more sales or can we not handle, can we not handle new sales if we got them already? That Tells us which area we focus on. Is it attract, is it Convert or delight? 95% of the time service based providers just need more sales because more sales solves a lot of problems. But you know, I, um, was speaking to one of our students the other day. She's got seven clients already, she's working 15 hours a week, she's got a full time job, she's got two kids, um, and if she were to take on the 8th or the 9th or the 10th client, something would break, her life would break, her business would break, et cetera, et cetera. She genuinely has a capacity constraint, I. E. She cannot possibly take on more clients without things falling apart. So in her case she focuses on uh, the area of constraint is the delight side of the business. We want to figure out ways to systemize that. In most other people's cases the constraint in the business is we just need more sales. And so you figure out is it attract or is it converting? If you are getting three, three to five sales calls a week, you don't have a, you, you don't have an attract problem, you have a convert problem. If you're not even getting three to five sales pulls per week, which is where most people are at, you have an attract problems. And we need to focus on lead generation. So that's a, we've got lifestyle, we've got area of constraint, then we have S S is the fide S scam. So there are five S's um, in any particular area. So let's say uh, we are constrained because we need more leads. Um, that's our, we're constrained in the attract area. We figure out, okay, firstly, what components do I currently use for lead generation? It might be for this kind of audience, LinkedIn might be the primary method and maybe there's a secondary method of doing networking events. But like let's focus on LinkedIn because that's like the primary thing spending. You know, if you're, if 80% of your clients coming from LinkedIn, LinkedIn is your primary track mechanism. Within that you're asking about the five S's. The five S's uh, are strategy, skills, self systems and scale. So strategy is do I know what to do Skills is do I know how to actually do it? Like how are my skills at doing the thing? Self is have I got emotional blockers that are getting in my way? Systems is have I got some kind of system to do this sustainably? And scale becomes relevant once you are six figures in revenue, which is can I get someone else to do this? For me. And what we get our students to do is to traffic light each of these areas regular green. Um, so it might be LinkedIn strategy. Do I actually know what I'm doing on LinkedIn? Brady? I agree. Skills. How do I feel about my ability to create decent content on LinkedIn radio? Agree self. Do I feel like anything is currently limiting me in terms of mindset, emotional blockers, anything like that? As regards to Getting clients through LinkedIn ready at agreed Systems, how are, uh, my systems around posting on LinkedIn? Am I just doing it one at a time typing on LinkedIn.com or do I have some kind of production system to make this more sustainable? Ready on a green. And then we don't need to worry about scale because mostly I suspect your audience is under 100 grand annual revenue from business. And now you figured out like, all right, where is the constraint? So which one is red? Let's fix the red one and try and take it to yellow. That takes us to E and R, which stands for experiment and review. So let's say I've decided that, like, okay, my LinkedIn strategy is okay. My skills are okay. Self. It's like, uh, I mean, I still feel weird about posting on LinkedIn, but, like, that's fine. Systems Systems is red. I don't have these systems where I'm posting on.

Speaker C: Great.

Speaker B: At that point, we think, what is the experiment that I can run in the next month? So a monthly experiment cycle that would take my systems on LinkedIn from red to yellow or from yellow to green. We figure out an experiment, we run the experiment for a month, and then R we review after a month to see, like, okay, did I improve my LinkedIn systems that month? Now, this helps you identify what is the primary thing to focus on. And then it goes into like a priority system. Like, priority number one is always helping the clients get results. So, like, you know, X number of hours every week are going to be servicing your files in the remainder of the time that you have. 80% of it should be focused on the constraints that we've just identified and 20% of it on everything else. The mistake people make is when they try to do everything at once. They're like, oh, I've got to post on LinkedIn and I've also got to go to the networking event and I've got to do all this call outreach on the Sales Navigator. Oh, and by the way, Linda called email as well. Oh, shit. And I've, um, got these clients to deliver for. Oh, um, and by the way, I want to Build an online course on the side and start a podcast production agency. Because I've heard that's a good business model. When you're trying to do seven things at once, all of them will totally suck. Which is why the key to business growth is figuring out, uh, what is the constraint and laser focusing on that constraint since the laser method.

Speaker C: Absolutely love that method.

Speaker B: Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Speaker C: Thank you for sharing it. It was fantastic. I have been as guilty as anybody else of doing, trying to do seven things at once for the longest time. The funny thing is that every one of those seven things can work. They just can't all work at the same time. Uh, and so you've got to pick one. And as Apple often says, we say a thousand no's for every yes. You've got to get better at saying no. Which is something I learned from Seth Coden. He told me about leadership being about saying no. Not only leadership of other people, but leadership of yourself as well. Uh, interesting book in that area is called Theory of Constraints by Eliao Gorades. Yeah, so that's a great book.

Speaker B: We reference Hobie, one of the characters in that book, quite often.

Speaker C: Okay, uh, the next thing I want to talk about is content creation. Now, uh, you've been creating content for a long time. You really understand how to create content. What is your approach to content creation? And if you were Starting today in 2026, would you start a YouTube channel? Which channel would you use? Where, as you often say, we're in a trust possession, which I agree with. How would you approach content marketing?

Speaker B: It really depends on the goal. Uh, so it depends on the type of business, depends on the sort of thing.

Speaker C: Service, uh, based professionals.

Speaker B: Yeah, so probably LinkedIn. I wouldn't bother with YouTube. Uh, YouTube is really hard. Yeah, YouTube requires so much more work. All LinkedIn does to create a long form YouTube video, as you know, it just takes absolutely ages. Um, and if I'm a service based professional and I'm not yet comfortable, but I haven't yet made 50 to 100 videos to actually get good at the craft of making videos and, or I'm not comfortable speaking on camera and, or I don't have like a charismatic, magnetic personality that people around me have been telling me, man, you know, you're really good at this public speaking. If I, if I, if, if I didn't have any of that stuff going for me, it's just really hard to make YouTube work, um, for most people, people, unless you can just sink a lot of time to improving at the skill. Everything's a skill, everything can be learned. It's just how long you want to spend doing it. One thing Alex Honey often talks about is that like, you know, you can train anyone to be a brain surgeon. It's just how long do you want to take? It'll take 15 years to train those people to be a brain surgeon. Do you have 15 years? Similarly, I think it will take most normal, boring service based professionals a long time to get good enough at YouTube for you to use it as, as a method of client, Client acquisition. Um, I think it is a lot easier to just do it on LinkedIn. So I would focus on LinkedIn. I focus on getting really good at LinkedIn and use uh, that as my primary method of lead generation. Uh, the goal of content would not be to get famous. The goal of content would be to get conversations. Uh, so get people into the, into the DMs and talk to them with my thumbs manually on beings in DMs, uh, to understand the situation and then try and convert them to a discovery call or a sales call or sales meeting or something like that to see if I'd have them in some kind of way.

Speaker C: Okay. So I agree. LinkedIn right now LinkedIn is an interesting beast. I spoke to Justin Welsh about his approach to LinkedIn and I did a lot of work around LinkedIn a few years ago. LinkedIn's, uh, changed recently. The 360 brew algorithm has changed things. But I grew my following from 2000 to 9000 followers and it was a lot of work. What I've learned over time is it's important to really get very clear on your specific niche and a specific problem and really understand that specific target market. So you can send more relevant messages, short but relevant ones, and you can sort of earn the attention of the other person.

Speaker B: Um, if we're going outbound, I mean, ideally we, our, uh, profile would, and our content would be so good that people are DMing us, which solves a lot of the problems.

Speaker C: Great point.

Speaker B: I'm not a fan of cold outreach. I think a lot of people jump to cold outreach because they don't want to get good at making content.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: I think cold outreach is like a good accelerant if you are just starting out.

Speaker C: Um, interesting. Yeah.

Speaker B: But like, I mean, let's just, let's just. I'd never need to cold outreach anyone. Right. Because I just do content.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, uh, let's just spout that content piece for a minute. I want to circle back to that. But my question is it's very common for people to say, and I do this too. If I target this tiny niche, I'm leaving all these opportunities on the table. And that's paradoxical that, you know, the opposite is true. It's counterintuitive. But actually, the more niche you go, the more likely you are to get traction. I loved what you talk about in the course in your lifestyle business academy about the bullseye technique. And that really was a. Was, uh, a needle mover for me, at least psychologically, because I realized that when you're aiming for the bullseye, you don't have to hit the bullseye. Now, I'm not going to stain your thunder. I want you to explain that to our listeners.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, it's my attempt to try and understand this whole thing of, like, you should target a particular niche. You should go, like, so narrow, narrow, narrow in your targeting. And the metaphor I found best for this is that imagine you're like an archer shooting arrows towards a target. Firstly, you want to have a target in the first place. Uh, rather than I help anyone with blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's not particularly a target. It's worth, like, defining roughly what even is my target. Um, and then it's worth spending a little bit of time, spending not very much time initially, but then refining this over time through conversations with actual people to be like, okay, who's the absolute perfect client for me? So I know with our online business school, the absolute perfect client is actually someone who's probably in their 40s. They have a very specialist, professional skill set. They are sufficiently competent at that skill set and have an experience and have a network that they've already done the thing for other people. And so starting a business is not very hard for them. They are good at public speaking and understand how to create good educational content in that space, just intuitively, because they're. They've been teaching this sort of stuff to other people throughout their life. And so when they start a business, it becomes. It's a very easy step for them to do. That's the bullseye. Five percent of our customers are in that bullseye. The other 95% are varying degrees away from that bullseye. Uh, and our question is then, is basically like, who do we say yes to and who do we say no to? But we say yes to a lot more people than just the bullseye target. Uh, but it's just worth knowing that that's the bullseye target because then all my messaging is targeted to that person. If I was targeting a 17 year old from, uh, the UK who wants to make money on the Internet, which is what certain YouTubers are targeting. Uh, I would probably a 17 year old dude, I would probably lean into Lamborghinis and like talking about the draws you can get and stuff like that, but that stuff is not going to fly for you. For example, if I had Lamborghinis and my stuff, you certainly would not be. You would, you wouldn't resonate with that.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so it's like, because I know who my bullseye is, I know what my messaging is, we want to not get fixated on that, especially if we're just starting out. Because you'd want to know. It's just an educated guess. Um, but that educated guess gets refined over time as you find in your case, you've worked with a bunch of clients over the years. You figure out like, okay, what are the characteristics of the clients I love to work with and I can get the best results for and who are happier to pay money? So this combination of, do I like them, can I help them, will they have me pay? Which I got from one of my mentors talking, who's actually here in Australia. Uh, that combination helps you define your bullseye, but if someone is slightly outside of it, maybe in your case you target fractional CFOs, but if a fractional CMO comes into your funnel and says, hey, I really want to work with you, you probably wouldn't turn them away. Unless you've got so much demand that you're being like, no, no, no, I want to narrow so much that I'm only doing fractional CFOs because I've got so much demand that I couldn't possibly take on a fractional cmo. Then it's a different kind of story. But for most service based business owners, you kind of start with a bit of a shotgun approach where you're sort of taking anyone who'll pay you. And over time, you narrow to the sniper approach of like aiming for the bullseye.

Speaker C: Okay, I want to come back to. Talking about Paper tigers was a really lovely metaphor that I found very helpful. But I'll circle back to that. Let's jump back to what you said about creating good quality content, because once you figured out your niche, uh, you now know what content to create and what problem to solve because you understand your niche's problem. So you said earlier that you're not a big fan of outreach, which actually surprised me a little bit.

Speaker B: I mean, I would do it if I was just starting out. I didn't have an audience because, uh, like, I mean, you got to do something, right?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Ideally, I would get to a point pretty quickly where I didn't have to do any.

Speaker C: So how do you.

Speaker B: Outbound outage. Yeah.

Speaker C: How do you make such good content that people come to you? And more importantly, let's say my target market is lawyers. Okay. I go for the bullseye, the lawyer. But then I might have other people reach out to me as well. Some of them might not even be a good fit. Like, you know, a lifestyle coach, for example, may not be a good fit for me. Okay, how do you create content just for the lawyer? And then if these people outside of your niche do reach out to you, do you work with them, do you take the discovery call with them? Or do you just say no, I think you're not a good fit? And I totally understand. It's, it's about how much demand you have. Can you talk around that a little bit more and give a, give us a bit of a feel for how do you find that balance?

Speaker B: How do you create good content? I don't think there is a trick to it. I think you just have to have experience, expertise, credibility, skills, something, some kind of interesting point of view that stands out within the market that you're trying to target. And this is why sort of this, the niche selection thing is very important because if I was just starting out, I wouldn't target lawyers because I know nothing about lawyers. I have like three friends who are lawyers, but I don't talk to them that much these days. And so, like, how would I be able to really understand what problems lawyers have?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: If I was a CPA and I've been a CPA for 30 years, I'd be targeting people who are CPAs.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: Because I've been in that industry for 30 years. If I was a doctor, I'd be trying to figure out, can I target doctors or people like, adjacent to the medical profession rather than trying to think, oh, accountants are a good place to be? Because I've heard accountants, I've met kind of like M. So it's like the more you can lean into, you know, everyone has experience in something or another, right? It's just like. And the more you can align the niche that you've chosen with what you have already done in the past, the more of a leg up you have compared to trying to target a totally new niche where you're having to learn the language from scratch. Um, or compared to someone who doesn't have an experience. So I would really figure out like the targeting of the niche and then the content becomes how can I share my own perspectives? You know, the stuff that's working on LinkedIn these days, um, is rather than how to, how to get clients, the how I, you know, uh, here's how I got five new clients in my high ticket program or whatever. It's like the personal experience of the stuff that cannot just be recreated by ChatGPT and Claude because half the content on LinkedIn is AI generated these days. So the way to stand out is to not try and play the how to game. It's to really, really lean into the personal experience and the personal credibility. And then some people are like, if I don't have any personal experience and personal credibility, I was like, okay, well you can just pick something and um, develop a personal experience and personal credibility in it. There are a lot of people who developed credibility in the world of AI over the last like two years. You could right now actively decide, I'm going to become the AI guy for CPAs. Um, there's not that many AI guys for CPAs. You could totally do it. And within like a week you could learn way more than the average CPA about how to use AI. Within two weeks you could become cutting edge. People aren't willing to do that because they think, oh, um, my God, I can only lean into the skills I already have. Or like AI is so hard or like whatever. But the people making millions off of AI AI wasn't around like three years ago. Uh, they will learn the skill from scratch. So it's like lean into the experience and credibility you already have to be able to create content around this how I stuff and, or develop an interesting expertise in something else. So that you can then create content around that.

Speaker C: Yeah, it reminds me of Google's EAT acronym that then became 2e. Like it was expertise, authority and I can't remember the last one, I think it was trust or something. And then came eeat, which was experience, expertise, authority, trust. Dan Martel is doing some interesting stuff in the AI space. I watch a lot of his content.

Speaker B: But here's the thing, like anyone can do what Dan Martell is doing. Dan Martell is absolutely crushing it in terms of general broad, mass market appeal. Here are five ChatGPT prompts that will make you unstoppable. Uh, here are the five new AI tools that you should use. And he's going super, super broad. So he's obviously getting millions of followers by going super, super broad. No one listening to this should be trying to go super, super broad. It's like, become The Dan Martell AI coach for your specific niche. Who's on LinkedIn, who's like, AI for lawyers, AI for professional CFOs, AI for CPAs, AI for medical professionals. Oh, even medical professionals is too broad. It would be like AI for surgeons, AI for spinal surgeons. Like, once you find your niche, to be honest, you can slap AI for any of those niches and probably become like a thought leader in that space within the next six months if you put enough time and effort into it.

Speaker C: Wow, that's definitely something to think about.

Speaker B: Uh, for the last couple of years, few years, I've been using ChatGPT and CLAW like everyone else, using it on a super basic level of like, type shit into the app and then copy and paste it into the relevant piece of whatever. And then like three weeks ago, I discovered OpenClaw and discovered Flawed code. This stuff had put me off. Previously. I'd heard flawed code, but I was like, you could use the flunk terminal. Like, what the thing you're going to, uh, is this like 1981? Why would I be interacting with a freaking terminal? That seems scary. And I watched a couple of YouTube videos and I've tried it out over a weekend. And now I'm so pilled in the AI tool space that I've literally spent the last three weeks building our own custom software for our Lifestyle Business Academy. And right now, while we're doing this, I've got Claude Code in the background on my laptop at home, uh, in the Airbnb, improving various things that we're doing for our students. I just discovered this three weeks ago. Um, I'm not like a AI native. I was just using ChatGPT like everyone else. But I decided to play around three weeks ago over the weekend to install OpenCloren to see what all the fuss was about. Realized. Oh my goodness, there's a paradigm shift. And now I'm like, ahead of 99.9% of people. And I've just been doing it for three weeks. Anyone listening to this right now could decide to do that and become ahead of almost every single person in their niche by just deciding to lean into core code. Claude, Cowork, OpenCore, Manus. These kind of AI tools that are beyond basic ass copy and paste strip from the free version of ChatGPT into a webhook.

Speaker C: After, uh, looking at the bot that you built in Lifestyle Business Academy, I reverse engineered it and I built one for my own community. And it was so easy. Um, I literally asked ChatGPT, how do I build this? It told me what to do and I just followed its instructions. And now I've customized, uh, custom GPT for my community. I started playing with this on the weekend. So that was Saturday, this is Wednesday. I can't see how I would go back and do anything without first asking, can I build a custom GPT for this, even for myself?

Speaker B: Um, and then a week from now, you'll evolve from custom GPTs into a custom platform, but that's the next seven days fee.

Speaker C: I want to jump back to paper tigers and paper walls. A lot of our fears look like tigers, but they're paper tigers. And a lot of obstacles look like brick walls, but they're paper walls. And AI is one of those things, right? A lot of us sort of think it's really difficult until we actually go and poke it or touch it, and then it's suddenly a whole lot easier.

Speaker B: Especially, uh, these days. Like, you know, previously to learn any technology, you had to find tutorials on how to use the technology. Like back when I was learning to code, I had to find tutorials on the Internet about how to learn to code. These days, to learn how to use AI, you just talk to AI about how to use AI. You can go on the free version of ChatGPT and you can start talking to it and ask it to, uh, be like, hey, I'm trying to improve my skills at AI. I heard how you're talking about Claude code. Can you explain to me what cord code actually is? These days, while I'm building stuff, uh, with my virtual private server and doing all these things, I'm just talking to the AI to understand how things work. Um, there's never been a time where you could literally talk to the tool, which will teach you how to use the tool itself. So it's just so easy.

Speaker C: And speaking of talking to tools, I think you mean that literally because I've learned from you about Super Whisper. And there's another tool. I can't remember what it's called, but it works with the AI things, but you don't have to type anymore. And I found that the act of actually using my voice literally makes it conversational. Uh, and I feel the barrier to sharing information with the, uh, AI tool has significantly dropped. Because I can just sit there and say, oh, um, man, I'm struggling with this so and so thing. And, you know, I just speak like I'm speaking to you. And the thing picks it all up perfectly. The native voice to text on max are crap compared To Super Whisper. Super Whisper is just incredible. Yeah.

Speaker B: So Super Whisper, there's whisper flow.

Speaker C: There's a bunch of whisper flow. That was the other one. Yeah.

Speaker B: A bunch of these tools that turn voice into text, super wicket.

Speaker C: And they do it very accurately too. So, like, if you pause, it'll put in a full stop or a comma. It is a far more cognizant of tone. Like, if you ask a question, it picks up the inflection, the upward inflection, and puts a question mark on it. So it's brilliant. Which AI tools do you. Which is your weapon of choice? Which do you use the most right now?

Speaker B: Mostly, um, cold code and opencloud.

Speaker C: I know nothing about opencloud. What does opencloud do and why is it so special?

Speaker B: Uh, okay, so level one of AI tools is going on chatgpt.com or Claude AI and typing into the chat box, and then you get stuff and then you copy and paste it. Great. Everyone's doing that. Level two of AI tools is when you use them to create stuff. So you hook up like the word document extension to Claude, or like you hook up a slide creator or whatever, and then you say to Claude, still on the Claude web app or the ChatGPT web app, hey, create me a set of slides for blah, blah, blah. It will look at the skill that it's got, slide creation, and give you a PowerPoint file. Great. Amazing. That's like level two. Level three would be something like Claude code or Claude cowork, which is like, you can ask it to do stuff, and if it doesn't have the skills already, it will figure out what skill it needs, download it from the Internet, and then create it for you. So instead of saying so, you can say to it, hey, I'm trying to create a tool, uh, for our Lifestyle Business Academy students that helps them validate the niches and offers. It will come up with some ideas, and then it can literally build it for you, um, either as a custom GPT or as a tool on your own web server, et cetera. Then level four is where you have sort of these autonomous agents where something like openclaw, which is sort of like clawed code, but m, uh, with less security permissions attached to it. So it has control over your entire computer and can do anything that you.

Speaker C: I want to say something that really stood out for me as you were speaking there. One word curiosity. I think that that is so important for people who want to build a successful business or life in today's post AI world. If you're not curious. I think you're going to get, you're going to get flattened by what's coming. Uh, I think it's so important to be curious, to be interested and, and to want to learn more. What you just described was a whole series of, okay, tell me about this. You keep pulling the thread and that's how you learn. And I have learned so much in the last two years using AI, because I just use it as a way to ask questions and just dig deeper. Your learning can be so targeted, but yet under your control. You don't have the benefit of having the context that structural learning imposes on you. Say you could do a medical degree or accounting degree or whatever. You have to learn certain things here. You're kind of in control of your learning and you may go down too far down one tiny path. But there are benefits to that too.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's sort of like when I, when I learned how to code. I think a lot of people try and learn how to code by going on some online course that teaches them how to code. But I've always found, and the people I know who are actually good at coding have found that if you just try and build your own project, if you're trying to build something in your life or in your business that will actually help you, not just like a sample to do list app that you're never going to use just because you want to launch code, but you're actually building something that will help.

Speaker C: Yeah. Ah, that's a really important thing, uh, I want to draw out, which is bias towards action and learning by doing. Yes. But particularly for professionals. We have been trained to be served, uh, curriculum.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're trained to be sort of like, you must learn first and take action second. But like, the world has really changed. You sort of take action. And then in the process of taking action, you do the learning to fill in the holes in your knowledge.

Speaker C: Correct.

Speaker B: And you can just keep pulling the thread for as long as you want. You can get like a master's degree in like, server infrastructure if you really want, by just asking ChatGPT. Enough questions. Yeah, yeah, if you want.

Speaker C: And this is actually a mental hurdle I find a lot of my clients struggle with because they've all been trained in traditional universities and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker C: But that world is pretty much changed or changing. Uh, I'm not saying university degrees are not useful. There probably are. There's certain benefits to it. You learn content, you learn structure, you learn how to learn. And those things are definitely always Going to be valuable. But people seem to stop learning after they finish university and they start a job. Yeah, I think just learning by taking action and starting with the smallest possible experiment, which is another important word that I heard you say the other day. I asked you how did you build your business to $6 million? And you said, I started small and I just kept running experiments. That would be my advice. Would you add anything to that?

Speaker B: Oh, no, that's pretty much it. Like, yeah. Start small, run experiments, set the goal, figure out what's needed to make the goal happen, run an experiment, try and be there. Um, run these sort of monthly experiment cycles or bi weekly or like six weekly, depending on the scale of your business and just keep it trading. And over time there's no way you're not going to succeed. It's sort of like if you're, if you kind of know what the destination is, then you start walking the path. Look at the destination, look at how you come, how far you come, see what needs to change. Keep walking, keep walking the path. Eventually you get to your destination and then the goalpost shifts, which is fine. Um, that's okay.

Speaker C: Um, what's your advice to somebody who hasn't created content before? And a lot of people have a lot of anxiety about creating content. So, uh, they haven't created content before. They know they need to create good quality content. They figured out their niche. But what does good quality content look like? Let's say they are using AI and everyone is concerned about adding to the AI, uh, slog. So yes, you talked about how I versus how to great. Is there anything else we could be doing to create really great quality content that makes our, uh, audience stop scrolling and want to reach out to us?

Speaker B: My view these days is that good content comes through conversations. So I record every single conversation I, uh, have with any of my students with Lifestyle Business Academy, even this one. After this, I'm going to ask you for the MP3 file of everything that I've said. Uh, because I can then take the MP3 file of everything I've said, turn it into a transcript, put it into my Claude code project and be like, okay, what are the things that I've said in this conversation with you that can be turned into LinkedIn post ideas or Instagram carousel ideas or YouTube video ideas? Um, and I found that like the way I explained laser, I was like, huh, that's interesting. Like, I haven't really thought about that. The thing you said about paper tigers and uh, paper walls, I was like, huh, I actually haven't made a post about that, but that's interesting. So it's sort of like through a conversation with a real person. And you know, right now we're like just having kind of like a casual chat. Yes, there's cameras and stuff, but I'm able to think out loud about the stuff that I know about because you're asking me about it. Um, similarly, I had a one on one call with one of our students yesterday. Uh, she is already doing 100,000 a year and trying to scale to a million a year without taking up all the time. And so I was like, huh. The stuff I said in that was stuff that I. Well, it would have been hard for me to sit down and be like, I need to write a LinkedIn post today. What do I write it about? But because I'm already having a conversation with science Correction about AI to help tease out the ideas, I'm able to use that to figure out like what are my unique point of views? I mean, sort of unique. Um, but I still, I know exactly what I was.

Speaker C: There's something about. It isn't ali. We are social creatures basically. And I think a lot of our um, cognition or the, you know, the sparks happen when we are in social interactions in conversation with each other. Which is interesting because, um, the way technology is going is kind of reducing that. But I'm actually running more and more in person workshops, uh, because people love it. I'll be running one in the boardroom here on Friday at CPA Australia, which is where we're recording this. Let's talk a little bit about privacy. Privacy is something that I'm very concerned about, but I don't know enough about it. I don't know what I don't know. And you mentioned earlier on you've got a server, a um, VPN server. And I'm going to go home and look it up and I'm going to do exactly what you did, which is take this conversation and see what I can learn from it. Or if I'm using AI, say I'm using AI to analyze conversations that I've been having with people. What are the privacy implications and how do I know whether I'm doing, doing something that's not compliant?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, okay, good question. My first answer to that is that you can just ask the AI. Literally ask it, hey, I'm having conversations with people. I'm using Claude to analyze them. What are the privacy issues here? What, uh, I suspect it will say is something like, well, if you're just using Claude, the Web app, you don't have too much to worry about. Yes, the conversation lives on the servers of Claude. Uh, and if you have a free plan or a pro plan, uh, Anthropic will use your data to train the model, but it will be harmonized and blah, blah, blah. If you have an enterprise plan, you could even like opt out of that so that they never even see your data. For example, um, if you are using something more beefy with less security options, again, you can literally ask it being like, okay, I have a bunch of student data on my virtual private server. What are the security implications behind this? And then it says, oh, uh, whatever, whatever, whatever. I, uh, would recommend you actually use a secure database rather than storing it in SQLITE files. I'm like, huh, what do you mean, SQLITE files? What do you mean secure database? Oh, you should totally use a service like Firebase or Supabase, which have literally been designed for data security, et cetera, et cetera. They have RLS for a little security, which means that even if someone were to get your username and your password, they would still need to get access to your Google account credentials to even see the data in the database. Okay, cool. And then if it's helpful, it's like, would you like me to implement the security feature? Yes, please. Boom. That kind of stuff. Uh, uh, so it really depends on your use cases and depends on how secure and how compliant you want to be with your data, depending on like what the situation is, if it's health, if it's legal, obviously there's like higher requirements for stuff compared to if it's your own business and you've got three clients

Speaker C: now, a lawyer would probably say, ah, uh, not so fast, Ali, you could, you can't just, uh, you have to look at the fine print. You can't just assume that AI is going to give you good advice. Um, I just want to sort of put that caveat out there because if you are using AI to get advice, don't assume it is always 100% correct.

Speaker B: Uh, so fine. In my opinion, that kind of goes without saying, but it's worth saying it also. The better the models are, the better the advice is, so using the free version of ChatGPT is way worse than using the latest ChatGPT 5.4, which just came out like two days ago, or like using latest for Opus 4.6, which is genuinely really, really, really good. Um, and just like each month as they release new models, they hallucinate less, they make up stuff less. And I think when A lot of people are like, oh, my God. He contrasts AI. They're thinking of the free version of ChatGPT from 2023. They're not thinking of the latest paid version of Core Opus 4.6 from March 2026. Um, but of course, even then, you should check the courses and make sure that the thing's actually legit.

Speaker C: Maybe, uh, that's my training coming out. But, um, as a professional, we always say I'm a cpa, not your cpa. And I'm sure you would say the same if you were talking to a patient. Not that you talk to them anymore, but you know what I mean. Okay, you mentioned earlier on that you're taking all these conversations and you're putting it into an AI and you're getting it. To analyze the conversations, you must have terabytes of data. How are you doing this?

Speaker B: Oh, conversations are like, uh, kilobytes rather than terabytes.

Speaker C: I know.

Speaker B: They're all like, tasty files. Yeah.

Speaker C: You had so many conversations. So my question is, how do you manage this? Can you talk a bit about the process of. How do you. I mean, what do you take? Just copy the transcript and just dump it into, uh, Plaude and ask it to give you the insights. What's your.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, so that's like, the easy way of doing it. Take the transcript, shop it to Plaud Oscar Insights. Uh, that's like level one. Level, uh, two is, for example, in Notion, we set up a database called Raw Transcripts. So anytime I run a workshop, anytime I do a coaching clinic, anytime I make a YouTube video, anytime I'm on a podcast, we take the Raw Transcripts, uh, transcript of what I've said and put it into a Notion database. Uh, Notion AI is a feature. So you just click on the Notion AI button and say, what interesting things have I said in the last two weeks? And because in the last two weeks, I did three YouTube videos, a podcast, two workshops for Lifestyle Business Academy, and three coaching clinics, there's a lot of data there. I can be like, okay, what are some topics I can talk about in my newsletter? Something, something, something paper wolves versus Tiger Wolves could be interested in. I was like, okay, cool, nice. Um, write me the first draft or ask me clarified questions so that I can clarify my own thinking about this. I tend not to just get it to write the stuff because I want it. I tend to get it to surface the insights and ask any questions. Yeah, Notion AI. Uh, that's like level two. Level three is you stick all the transcripts into a folder that Claude Code or Cursor or one of these more autonomous AI tools has access to. And then you query that next level. Beyond that is what we're doing for our Lifestyle Business Academy, which is automatically taking all the transcripts of all the things that are happening, putting them into this secure database, this very secure database. Um, and then there is a cron job, which basically means a program that runs every X number of times. So I have a cron job that runs every. That runs every day in the nighttime Hong Kong times. I'm not around. Uh, that takes all of the recent transcripts and pulls out struggles that students are having. Um, and gives it to me in a curriculum refinery page on this custom dashboard that I've built that then me and my team can look at to see, like, okay, this week, in the last week, in the last four weeks, in the last three months, in the last six months, what are the struggles that students are having prioritized by severity? We can filter it based on, like, is the student in the ideation stage, in the validation stage, or in the momentum stage?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Now, we know that the biggest struggle people are having in the momentum stage is time management and LinkedIn. So we know LinkedIn is the next thing we're working on. We know the biggest struggle people are having in the validation stage is not enough people to reach out to, uh, with warm outreach. So we know that that's the thing that we need to focus on. And so this is now happening all automatically behind the scenes without me having to copy and paste a transcript into Chord and get it to, uh, analyze stuff. Um, that's the different levels of this.

Speaker C: I've been paying for Notion now for ages. I haven't even had a chance to look at it. So I need to go home and start understanding how that thing works.

Speaker B: Remarkably good.

Speaker C: Yeah. I assumed I would expect no less because the founders of Notion are brilliant.

Speaker B: That's very, very good.

Speaker C: Very smart people. In a couple of sentences, what does it do? How is that different to Claude?

Speaker B: Uh, it is basically Claude, but it has access to everything in your Notion workspace. So, for example, you can choose the model, right? So I use Claude Opus 4.6 within Notion AI.

Speaker C: Oh, so it hooks into Claude.

Speaker B: Yeah, like, they just run Claude. It's not their own AI. You can choose Dem, you can choose ChatGPT, you can choose Claude, you can choose Auto. I think Auto chooses, like, a cheap one because it's probably expensive for them to run the most expensive bubble. But I'm like, well, I'm paying for Notion AI. They currently don't have any usage limits on it, so I'm just going to use the most expensive model that's currently out, which is called Opus 4.6. It knows everything within Notion. So I can ask it things like, hey, take a look at all these student notes that we've got for Ash Roy and help me figure out why he's struggling to grow his business. And it will actually do a really, really good job of like taking the notes that the coaches have written about you through the conversations they've had, et cetera, et cetera, taking a look at the pulses that you've submitted every week that are in your CRM record within Notion and being able to, does uh, it have access to your workbook? I uh, don't think you did much of the workbook because you already have an offer. But like um, it could theoretically pull into people's workbooks, look at their scorecards, what they're filling in to be like, okay, Ash's problem is that he's uh, X, Y and Z. So recommendation for coaches is to talk about A, B and C next. That's like insanely helpful.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I'm still not clear on how that information is getting funneled into your secure server. And how did you, what does that mean? Like you said, you've got a secure server, is that right?

Speaker B: Yeah. So for most people listening to this who are building like client programs, you probably don't need to build your own server and build your own database. You could just chuck it into Notion. And as long as you have sensible security settings on your notion, I. E. You don't have like public access to all the pages and stuff like that, then like Notion data is pretty secure. So you just have it within Notion. And now uh, the AI can access anything that's within Notion. So as long as you don't like, willy nilly give access to your notion to run team members or whatever, or like random contractors that are, you know, you keep an eye on your Notion security settings but like in all those enterprises run with all of their data on Notion. So I'm not too concerned about Notion data security provided um, the access levels are ah, legit. Um, so yeah, then the AI can just read all that kind of stuff and pull out insights when asked.

Speaker C: Mindset traps. And you talked about, and I talked about this too, you know, just get started, just begin to the most valuable words I got. Seth Godin told me this and I implement it as often as I can. Um, someone is Terrified to put themselves out online publicly. What's the smallest first step they can take?

Speaker B: I think it's useful to. It is good to have a reason to do it. Um, I'm assuming we're talking to people who are trying to grow the business, or we're talking. If we're talking to a random person. A random person is like, I'm terrified to put myself out there online. It's like, okay, why do you want to? I don't know, because people said you have to. Please. I've had to run that. It's like, um, if there's no compelling reason to do it, it's hard to. It is hard to overcome the paper walls, even if they are paper walls. It's just without having a compelling drive behind it. But it's like if you have a business that you're trying to grow because you want financial freedom and you know that like all marketing these days is online social media marketing. Do you care about becoming financially free or do you care about staying within your comfort zone? Kind of to be like, okay, I don't care about being financially free. Okay, so the price is discomfort. Are you willing to pay the discomfort of posting on LinkedIn if it means that you could work towards becoming financially free? You know what, when you put it that way, okay, fine, or not, it's entirely up to you. It's like some, some things are not worth the cost. Right? I don't have six pack abs. If I really wanted to, I could get six pack apps. I back myself to do it. I just don't want it enough to pay the cost. Um, I don't want to be a billionaire. If I wanted to, could I do it? Probably I back myself, but like, I just don't, I, I don't want to pay the cost because I've seen on the Internet, like what it takes. Everything you want is on the other side of a particular cost. Like if I want, uh, I don't know, What's a Ferrari F50? Is that the car these days? And I know the cost is 300 grand. I decide, do I want to pay the cost or not? Either way. It's like the problem arises when you want something without being willing to pay the cost because then you're sort of misaligned. You're like, I really want this thing, but I'm not willing to pay the price. It's like, bro, stop wanting the thing or be willing to pay the price.

Speaker C: You said something important though, that you're making an assumption. I think when you say I back myself. You back yourself. But not everybody is comfortable backing themselves. What do you have to say to those people? Not everybody feels that confidence that you seem to have that, you know what, if I decide to get six pack abs, I'm going to do it. I back myself. You believe that? Y, uh, not everybody believes that if they do the work, they'll get the result and so they don't start.

Speaker B: Okay, yeah, I can see, I can see why that would be the case. The thing is like, okay, okay, so there's inputs, outputs and outcomes. Inputs would be like, um, let me spend four hours a week on LinkedIn. It's an input of time. Outputs would be that four hours a week on LinkedIn is generating five LinkedIn posts. That's the output. My output is five LinkedIn posts a week, for example. The outcome is, I'm aiming for uh, five sales calls to be booked each week on my, from my LinkedIn. The outcome is less within your control than the inputs and the outputs. I can fully control how many hours a week I put into my LinkedIn. I can pretty much control what the number of the output. Well, what number of outputs that input of time is producing. I cannot really control the outcome of that, but I can't to a degree. Right. Like if the outputs are good, good, um, and if I'm sufficiently good at producing the outputs, then is it reasonable that the outcomes would follow? Well, are there other people who are generating five sales calls a week from LinkedIn from posting niche content? Yeah. So it's, it's not impossible. It's not. It doesn't defy the laws of physics.

Speaker C: Last question. If I am trying to. I'm uh, starting out on LinkedIn. I know who my niche market is. I want to post five posts every week on LinkedIn. So I have people reaching out to me. Um, given all the stuff we've talked about today, including AI, uh, models and all that sort of stuff, how would you go about doing that in 2026?

Speaker B: Oh, I would figure out who Manish is. What problems do they have? What expertise or credibility or like advantages can I begin to. That I can use to stand up and then I wanted to make really good content.

Speaker C: How do people find out about you and what you're doing right now? Uh, and your book?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, just search my name. Ali Atal. Uh, or I'm sure there'll be a link somewhere in Video Description. Wherever you're watching this, uh, you can find out more if you are interested

Speaker C: and do you have any final words you want to share with our audience. Um,

Speaker B: the journey to financial freedom is not easy, but it's totally worth it. And so, provided you are setting a sensible goal, doing sensible things to get there, keep kind of focusing on the right things, iterating the process, uh, and making sure you're learning how to use AI along the way, and ideally staying as close to the cutting edge as you can. There's no way you're not going to be successful if you do it.

Speaker C: Great. Well, thanks very much for being on the show.

Speaker B: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Productive Insights podcast. You can find all the links in the show notes below this episode on productiveinsights.com you can also ask questions in the comment section that Ash personally answers. How can Ash help you today?