How I Grew from 0 to 500k Followers In Under 2 Years - Sahil Bloom

1. 0:00 – 2:13

   Intro

   1. SBSahil Bloom0:00

      Society think of wealth as the measuring stick of our lives, and you think of money as the measuring stick. And the reason is actually a functional one, in my opinion, which is just that it's the easiest. It's so easy to, like, stack yourself on the scoreboard of money. I met way too many people that had astronomical amounts of money that I would not qualify as happy by any stretch of the imagination. You know, I have a close friend who sold his company for a billion dollars recently. He made $300 million. I was asking him, like, "Are you materially happier now than you were when you were just running the company?" And he said, "Not really." And the reason is because

   2. AAAli Abdaal0:35

      Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where I chat to creators, entrepreneurs, authors, and other inspiring people, and we talk about how they got to where they are and the strategies, techniques, ideas, mental models that we can apply to our own lives to help us live our best lives. Now, what you're about to hear is a fantastic conversation, if I say so myself, between me and Sahil Bloom. Sahil is an ex-pro athlete. He used to be a professional baseball player, and now he is an entrepreneur. He's an angel investor, and he's absolutely huge on Twitter. He's, like, one of my favorite accounts to follow on Twitter. He's grown from zero to, like, 500,000-plus followers in, like, less than a year, and the stuff he tweets is just fricking amazing personal development, life advice, mental models type stuff. Sahil's also recently become a dad, and so we talk about how that's affected his approach to, like, life and happiness and productivity, and I've learnt so much from this conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Sahil, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

   3. SBSahil Bloom1:24

      Thank you for having me.

   4. AAAli Abdaal1:24

      Um, this is gonna be so much fun. I've been following you on Twitter. I feel like you've absolutely exploded on the Twitter scene in the last, like, year or so, so we definitely wanna talk about that. But I'd love to get started by kinda talking about what it's been like as a new dad. I'm curious because you have had a pretty illustrious career, and then you had a kid. And I've heard from some people that when you're, like, a tech bro and then you have a kid, suddenly it gives you this newfound motivation for life because now you have a reason to ascend the ladder and acquire more because it comes at, it comes at this for the sake of your kid rather than just for the sake of yourself. How has your, like, drive and motivation changed since becoming a father?

   5. SBSahil Bloom2:00

      Yeah, there's so much to unpack here. I think it's a great place to start the conversation, 'cause it actually speaks a lot to, you know, to me and to m- my changing motivations and h- and how I feel as a human being. I... You know, first off, what I would say is I think there is this general

2. 2:13 – 4:51

   Having enough as a new dad

   1. SBSahil Bloom2:13

      weird almost cynicism around parenthood that has permeated through culture broadly, where, like, you know, you say you're having a kid, and everyone's first reaction is like, "Oh," you know, "Get your sleep now," or, uh, you know, like, "Hope you had fun." You know, "Hope you had your fun years in." Or like, you know, like, all of the, all of the stuff is like, you know, people are sort of saying it jokingly, but there is this feeling of, like, your life is kind of over. Like, that part of your life is over.

   2. AAAli Abdaal2:38

      Yeah.

   3. SBSahil Bloom2:38

      And the fun days and the sleeping and, you know, being clean and all, [laughs] all of those things are done. And I just generally, like, as a bias, whenever there is a broad, sweeping feeling or push in one direction, I try to push back against it or at least see the other side. And so going in, I was like, I had boundless optimism around it. I was not gonna be cynical about the experience. I was like, "This is the best thing that's ever happened to me." My w- my wife and I, you know, candidly had, you know, tried for a little while, and we weren't sure we were going to be able to conceive naturally, and it was a real blessing that it ended up happening for us. And so I was just so taken by the fact that we were going to have a son, that this was all gonna happen, that I couldn't see anything but the positive in all of it. And the second he was born, you know, I had this, like, really profound feeling where I got to hold him, and I had this feeling of like, look, I'm 31 years old and I've spent the last 31 years of my life, or maybe that's not realistic, the last 26 years of my life trying to understand what the meaning and purpose is of all of this. Like, of life. What are we doing? What... Why am I working? What am I doing all these things for? And then suddenly I was standing there, and that was looking me straight back in the face, like, that meaning and purpose. And I really did feel that way. I was like, oh, this is why I'm here. Like, this is the whole reason. And ever since then, it's just been this, like, transformative day after day for me as a, as a human being. And, and, you know, I don't even mean that in, like, a grandiose sense. I really mean it very literally. On a daily basis, I, for the first time in my life, feel like I really have enough. And so you said, you know, at the beginning, people feel like it's this motivation. Now I have a why. I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna, you know, go accelerate my career. I'm gonna go make more money. I'm gonna do it for him, you know, for this kid. And I've actually gone the other way, where I'm like, "I wanna spend time with this child. I don't wanna be working 100 hours a week to try to, like, make more money and have a yacht and a private jet and this and that. I wanna get to be a huge part of his life. I wanna coach his Little League team. Like, I wanna be able to spend time with him when he's doing all of these things." And so it's, it's interesting. I think people go one of two ways with it, and I've definitely gone the direction of just I wanna be around. I really wanna enjoy this and be able to support him.

   4. AAAli Abdaal4:49

      Nice. I love that. That's great.

3. 4:51 – 11:07

   How do we find purpose?

   1. AAAli Abdaal4:51

      Can we zoom in? So you said, like, you were, you were looking at this baby thinking, "Yep, this is meaning and purpose. This is why I'm here." Can we unpack that a little bit? I- Is, is it like, "I'm here to help this baby survive. I'm he- here to help this baby thrive"? Like, what, what is... What's going on in your head when you, when you have that kind of feeling?

   2. SBSahil Bloom5:04

      Yeah, I mean, I am a thinker by, by nature. Like, I, I would say I generally overthink things. And a lot of time during my, like, career post age, like, I don't know, maybe really post age 20, I spent a lot of time just thinking about, like, my motivations. Like, why am I doing this? Why am I getting up?

   3. AAAli Abdaal5:19

      Mm.

   4. SBSahil Bloom5:19

      Why am I working hard? What am I, like... What am I trying to do? What's my reason for being? And not, like, that I was feeling depression or feeling anxiety or anything. I just, I wanted to know what I was striving for. And I would say I, like a lot of people, I imagine, our age, fell into this pattern and cycle of like, you know, I'm doing this because everyone says this is what I'm supposed to do. Like, I'm supposed to try to, you know, climb the ladder in this finance job to make a bunch of money so that I can have $30 million someday or whatever the number is.

   5. AAAli Abdaal5:48

      Yes.

   6. SBSahil Bloom5:48

      And so then I can-

   7. AAAli Abdaal5:49

      Mm

   8. SBSahil Bloom5:49

      ... you know, have fancy wine at dinner. And, and I never really stopped to think, like, is that really what I want? Does that make me happy intrinsically? And if happiness is what I ultimately am striving for as a human being, why? Why am I then doing this? And when I had w- you know, when I had that first interaction, when I looked him in the eye, I just felt that sensation right there of like This is actually happiness. This is my true moment, and like the purity of that feeling and of that happiness was unrivaled in my life. And so what I realized in that moment was, um, it wasn't, you know, taking care of this child, you know, being there, ex- ex- et cetera. It was literally that feeling of like, "This is what pure joy feels like. This is what enough feels like. I don't need a yacht or a plane or fancy wine or fancy food or restaurants or a nice house, et cetera." It's like this connection that I feel is all I ever really want.

   9. AAAli Abdaal6:38

      Okay, so I'm 28 and I feel, well, as you were describing all the stuff around like, oh, why am I here? Why am I striving? That's literally what I've been playing in my mind for the last like 12 months or so struggling to come up with an answer. Because I think one of the nice things about the medical career path is that you don't really have to ask yourself that question-

   10. SBSahil Bloom6:55

       Mm-hmm

   11. AAAli Abdaal6:55

       ... because it's like you sort of are on, on the following the yellow brick road and there's always a next step, and there's always a next step, and it's a, a very clear path. But then, then as soon as I stepped off that path, especially as like the YouTube channel and the business started making more money, especially when I got to the point where I'm like, damn, you know, I've, I was intending to build streams of passive income and I have streams of passive income. What's the point now? Is it to build more? More and more streams of passive income? Like, more financial independence? But like, to what end?

   12. SBSahil Bloom7:19

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AAAli Abdaal7:20

       I, I kinda just wanna spend my time reading, writing, and teaching, and that seems kinda fun. But like I don't need that much money for that, but like I still feel like I still, still need to make all this money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I've been really struggling to figure out like why am I actually striving for all this kinda stuff. So I'm curious for you like pre-kid, what were your conclusions? Um, 'cause we talked a little bit about what happened post-kid that like suddenly it's all about this, but like what... How were you thinking about this kind of before, before you had the kid?

   14. SBSahil Bloom7:41

       Yeah, and I th- I think this answer actually applies to pre and post-kid. You know, notwithstanding all of that of like feeling like I have enough, both pre and post-kid I had had this realization, um, that I was on, uh, you know, m- uh, I was in the finance world, right? So it's pretty similar actually to the medical world where there was this nice neatly trodden path from point A where I was standing to point B when I was age 65 and life had gone great and I was retiring and I was wealthy and, um, had accomplished everything that you're supposed to accomplish as like a, you know, uh, you know, the son of an Indian immigrant. Like that would've been a good life. My mom would've been proud as like, "Oh, he made money, took care of us, et cetera." That scared the shit out of me, excuse my language, um, that I could like put my head down, blink, and wake up in 25 years and be like, "What the hell just happened? What did I just do? And did I enjoy it?" No. Was I like nerding out on a daily basis excited about what I was doing? No. And would, was it gonna steal my happiness and my joy along the way? Probably. When I started to deconstruct it, you know, again it goes back to me being an over thinker, I started to deconstruct it a bit. I just generally realized that society think of wealth as the measuring stick of our lives, and you think of money as the measuring stick. And the reason is actually a functional one in my opinion, which is just that it's the easiest. It's so easy to like stack yourself on the scoreboard of money. And I met way too many people that had astronomical amounts of money that I would not qualify as happy by any stretch-

   15. AAAli Abdaal9:09

       Mm

   16. SBSahil Bloom9:09

       ... of the imagination. Because what happened, and you know I have a close friend who sold his company for $1 billion recently. He made $300 million. And I was asking him like, "Are you materially happier now than you were when you were just running the company?" And he said, "Not really." And the reason is because, you know, he was like, "Look, I sold the company. It was great. I got invited to all these like cool trips, and I went on this trip and I was there and I had t- you know, rented this like really nice yacht for all my friends and we were there. And I got there and there was just three like bigger yachts right next to me. And so suddenly like I'm on the thing, all my friends are here coming, they all think I'm the man, and then they see these other boats and everyone's like, 'I wonder who owns that. I wonder what that, you know, what the story is with that one.'" Because there's always someone that's gonna have more. It's just the reality of it. And so you suddenly get into this pattern where like it's never enough. Everyone has this tendency where, you know, like you mentioned it, you know, when y- when you're a, when you're a medical student or when you're trying to make it in the early years of that, you're trying to basically first like pay off your debt. Then you're trying to maybe make a few million dollars and then you want $10 million and then you'll say like, "Oh, I'll be happy when I have $10 million." Then you have $10 million and you say you'll be happy when you have $30 million. The number just triples no matter what, and it's just the reality of how humans are. We get on this hedonic treadmill and we're never happy. And so for me what I realized was I didn't want that. Money actually didn't make me all that happy. What made me happy was freedom. Um, I loved being able to spend time with people I cared about. I loved having the freedom to work out and to, you know, feel physically fit and, you know, experience vitality. To have headspace mentally to be able to think about my own mental health, mindfulness, spirituality, et cetera, and really experience a much more comprehensive view of wealth in my own life. And so I started prioritizing that. I started trying to think about, okay, what was like my playbook gonna be for building comprehensive wealth? And you know, all of that comes out to happiness, right? Like, all of it then boils down to hopefully a level of fulfillment and happiness in your own

4. 11:07 – 14:10

   Happiness vs. Fulfilment

   1. SBSahil Bloom11:07

      life.

   2. AAAli Abdaal11:07

      How do you think about the difference between happiness and fulfillment, or happiness and meaning, or like short-term versus long-term happiness, like weather versus climate? Like, what's your mental model for this?

   3. SBSahil Bloom11:17

      Yeah. I would say my general model is that happiness is short-term, um-

   4. AAAli Abdaal11:21

      Mm-hmm

   5. SBSahil Bloom11:21

      ... and fulfillment is like the long-term. And I, I personally think that like a lot of happy moments, uh, will generally lead to a lot of long-term fulfillment, but I don't think you can generally experience happiness in a long-term state. I think it's, it's effectively felt in like three-second increments is I think the science of this. Like a moment in time is three seconds from a scientific perspective. And when you feel happiness, I personally think you need to register it. Like I am very, very good about when I feel happy I'm like, "Oh, hey, I feel happy right now," and I wanna like mentally-

   6. AAAli Abdaal11:54

      Mm

   7. SBSahil Bloom11:54

      ... register it so that in my mind I know, hey, I felt really happy on several occasions today. This was great. Because I think it's easy to just like ignore it, pass it by. Kurt Vonnegut, the famous author, has this amazing commencement speech. I think it was like 1997 at Rice. He gave a commencement speech and he said, "When life is sweet, when you have those like sweet moments in life, pause and look up at the sky and say, 'If this isn't nice, then what is?'" And I always loved that because it's this like forced ... stop in your life when those moments are good. And we, it's so easy when you're a striver and when you're, you know, it, like you or like me, you're like focused on growth because you love building, you love growing. That's what motivates you. You wanna get better each day. You say you love reading and writing and teaching. Like, why? A lot of that comes down to you love learning. Like, you love being a little bit better and knowing a little bit more about the world around you. That's happy for you. That's fulfillment for you. But we often, when you're like that, don't stop. You don't pause. You don't appreciate those sweet, sweet moments in life. And so I love being able to pause, recognize those little moments in time, and I've just found it's made a dramatic impact on my daily happiness and my long-term fulfillment.

   8. AAAli Abdaal13:06

      Yeah. Any time I come across that quote, I find that, like, I then do it for the rest of the day, and then I forget about it. And as you were saying that, I was just thinking that like, huh, if this isn't nice, I don't know what is. You know? Having this conversation, followed you on the internet for a while, I get to do this as my job. We're in the middle of a heat wave, but it's air-conditioned and it's super nice. This is so good.

   9. SBSahil Bloom13:23

      It's completely absurd. I mean, when you, when you actually break down-

   10. AAAli Abdaal13:25

       Yeah

   11. SBSahil Bloom13:25

       ... I mean, your, your life, I, I feel the same way about mine. Like, you get to do this for a l- You're getting paid to have interesting conversations with smart people. Not, not me, but with other smart people.

   12. AAAli Abdaal13:36

       [laughs]

   13. SBSahil Bloom13:36

       Um, and that is ama- I mean, that's amazing. Uh, you th- considering where you were two years ago in your life-

   14. AAAli Abdaal13:41

       Mm-hmm

   15. SBSahil Bloom13:41

       ... completely remarkable. I think about it every day. You know, I'm like, I'm at home right now, right? This is my office. My kid is in the other room. He's two months old. If I was in my prior job, I would be traveling three, four days a week. I'd be working 90, 100 hours a week, and I'm making much less money than I'm making now. And so I have the freedom and the income to be able to, like, spend time with the people that I really love and care most about, with my parents, with my kid, with my wife. Um, and if that's not nice, I really don't know what is.

   16. AAAli Abdaal14:09

       That's fantastic. Yeah, I was just imagining,

5. 14:10 – 16:48

   Measuring impact

   1. AAAli Abdaal14:10

      like, what my life would be like if I were still working as a doctor. Probably be in some, like, really, really, really hot office dealing with pa- patients coming in through heatstroke, and it would be fun in a way, and it would be... feel like camaraderie, but certainly not as great as, as, as what this setup is.

   2. SBSahil Bloom14:24

      Yeah, and not as impactful, right? I mean, like, a doctor's role is amazingly impactful on the micro level.

   3. AAAli Abdaal14:30

      Mm.

   4. SBSahil Bloom14:30

      I mean, I think that motivates tons of people, and my whole mental model for life is you should find the thing that you are most uniquely well-suited to create the maximum impact around. And you could have created significant impact as a doctor, but I think you're fantastic at... Like, you would've been a great doctor, I'm sure. No doubt, right? Like, I think you're smart. You're curious. You would've been a great doctor, and you would've impacted a lot of lives.

   5. AAAli Abdaal14:53

      [laughs]

   6. SBSahil Bloom14:54

      But you're fantastic at what you do now. Like, you're in the top 1.01% of the world at being able to do what you do now, and so the number of people you can impact positively through doing what you're doing now is probably 1000x, you know, at what you could have as a doctor. And so-

   7. AAAli Abdaal15:09

      Mm

   8. SBSahil Bloom15:09

      ... from a, like, societal net benefit perspective, matching you into what you should be doing is a huge positive because so many people are better off for having you do that. I never would've encountered you if you were a doctor, right? You never would've had a positive net impact on my life. Now you are.

   9. AAAli Abdaal15:24

      Yeah. That's something I th- I do, I do think about a lot in the sense of, like, measuring impact and effective altruism and all, all that kind of stuff.

   10. SBSahil Bloom15:31

       What does motivate you?

   11. AAAli Abdaal15:32

       I think motivation-wise, I'm just gonna think out loud here. It f- it feels like there's, like, the selfish motivations and then there's, like, the selfless motivations, shall we say, the I wanna have a nice life that I like, and I wanna have impact on other people and help other people in some kind of way. And ideally, the Venn diagram of those things is the thing that you end up doing.

   12. SBSahil Bloom15:48

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AAAli Abdaal15:49

       And I feel like I found that in doing this sort of stuff, basically teaching online and learning from cool people like you and just, like, making videos about that stuff. Feels really cool, and it feels like some sort of impact as well. But I guess the thing that I struggle with is, like, trying to tease out, in a way, what is the true motivation, and I d- I d- I don't know if this is a good way to think about it, but one way that I, I try and think about it is, okay, let's say I didn't wanna... I didn't need to worry about making money anymore. Let's say I had 100 million in the bank [laughs] which is... And, and hopefully at that point I wouldn't be trying to seek 300 million. What would I be doing with my time? And I think broadly, what I'd be doing with my time is fairly similar to what I'm currently doing with my time. I'd still be doing the podcast. I'd still be doing videos. Probably I'd make less courses or just chuck them on YouTube for free because I, I just put it on the internet for free. But beyond that, my life would be very similar to what it currently is.

   14. SBSahil Bloom16:36

       But why do you need 100 million for that?

   15. AAAli Abdaal16:39

       Yeah, no, that's the next question, is like, I don't really need 100 million for that. And I think I'm already at the point where I can just probably do that forever because I don't particularly have expensive tastes-

   16. SBSahil Bloom16:46

       Mm-hmm

   17. AAAli Abdaal16:46

       ... and this

6. 16:48 – 22:36

   Online careers

   1. AAAli Abdaal16:48

      works nicely. One thing that I do struggle with, like, I, I have a bit, a, a bit of a question mark about, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this, is in the back of my mind, there is this large amount of fear of like, okay, I've sort of lucked, lucked into this position right now. Business is going well. YouTube channel's going well. You know, peaks and troughs, like with any kind of social media type thing, and... But it's, it, it almost feels like, I guess, being an athlete, and I guess you'd have experience with this, where you know you've got a few years in the limelight to really make hay while the sun shines, and then you're gonna be hung out to dry. You're gonna become a has been. And all those fears are just, like, in my mind of like, uh, is this a sustainable career for the long term? And especially when I have a family and kids and, and stuff, then will I, will I regret the way that I spent my time in my youth, and will I regret not going for 10 million or 30 million and instead be comfortable with, like, less than that? Any, any thoughts on this?

   2. SBSahil Bloom17:37

      So many. [laughs] Look, I mean, I think this is... First off, it's like, it's a combination of, like, imposter syndrome with this, like, scarcity bias that I think we all have when you first make it, where you're, like, terribly scared-

   3. AAAli Abdaal17:48

      Mm

   4. SBSahil Bloom17:49

      ... of being broke. And-

   5. AAAli Abdaal17:50

      Mm. Yeah. [laughs]

   6. SBSahil Bloom17:50

      ... you know, being, being back to, like, zero. And, uh-

   7. AAAli Abdaal17:53

      Yeah

   8. SBSahil Bloom17:53

      ... for whatever reason, rich people feel this a lot, and it's the weirdest thing in the world, just psychologically, that you- g- it, it's almost, like, functionally very difficult. Like, you have skills. There are things you can do. You'll be, you'll be fine. But we all experience this and have that type of fear. And look, I mean, I've felt that a lot. I went from, like, a normal finance track and, like, very stable, et cetera, to doing something entrepreneurial and, you know, on my own, and that doesn't have a pattern that I can match it to or a precedent that's set around it. You know, my general bias on these things is that you'll figure it out, and you have incredible energy around what you're doing. And when you have incredible energy and motivation around what you're doing intrinsically, there is a path that opens up that you cannot ever predict. And pr- trying to predict it is actually silly. Like, if, if a year ago you could have predicted where you are today, I would call BS. And I think that appli- you know, you're 28. I would guess at, like, every point over the last eight years, if you had tried to predict where you were two, three years out in advance, you would've been wrong. And I think-

   9. AAAli Abdaal18:49

      Yeah

   10. SBSahil Bloom18:49

       ... that applies to today. I actually don't know if you're still gonna be doing this in two or three years, but I do know you're gonna be fine, and you're gonna be, like, figured out something really cool that you're gonna be working on and doing.

   11. AAAli Abdaal18:58

       Mm.

   12. SBSahil Bloom18:58

       And, you know, the last piece, like, more tactically that I think about a lot is I think about income and wealth separately. And so I think that what you really want, an ideal setup from a life perspective, is that you have income generating activities, and then you have wealth generating activities. And the way-

   13. AAAli Abdaal19:15

       Mm

   14. SBSahil Bloom19:15

       ... I generally think about it is that you take your income generating activities. You want those to obviously, like, cover your expenses, et cetera. As soon as all of that is covered, you're taking all of that income and deploying it into wealth generating activities. And if you set up a simple set of systems in that way, it's very difficult to, like, ever be truly in trouble. And if you're, especially during a period where-

   15. AAAli Abdaal19:36

       Mm

   16. SBSahil Bloom19:36

       ... you're earning at a high level, not all of a sudden having your, like, you know, your lifestyle creep up to the point where there's no net excess at the end of the day from the income generating is the way to make sure that you're always fine. I mean, I've just, like, personally, I've always had these fears, and so I've personally built, like, a little personal model of my life of how I'm thinking about taking, like, excess that's being generated and deploying it into things that I consider wealth generating, investing, you know, my fund that I have, all things like that, and make sure that, like, look, if I die or if I can't work and we have literally zero income, how long can we coast on what we have for? And when you get to a... Like, I mean, my general goal is to, like, get to the point over the next couple of years where it's, like, forever, you know? [laughs] Like, w- we can, we can make do-

   17. AAAli Abdaal20:20

       Yeah

   18. SBSahil Bloom20:20

       ... with our current lifestyle forever. And I think that's an amazing place of, like, I call it default alive. It's like, um, Paul Graham has an essay on this, but getting to the point where you feel like you're default alive from a personal finance standpoint is a massive mental unlock.

   19. AAAli Abdaal20:33

       All righty. Let's do a little interlude. Now, I wanna tell you about one of my favorite books, which is Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Austin Kleon's books have, like, profoundly changed the trajectory of my life. Show Your Work in particular is the book that first encouraged me to start my own blog way back in 2016, but Steal Like an Artist is really good. Somehow it hit the New York Times bestseller list with this book that's, like, actually s- mostly a collection of illustrations, but, like, genuinely it's sick, and it's great for, you know, creatives and people struggling with originality and stuff. I would recommend reading the book. It's actually not very long. It doesn't take very long to read. But if you want another way of engaging with the ideas in the book, then you might like to check out Shortform, who are very kindly sponsoring this episode. If you haven't heard by now, Shortform is the world's best service that summarizes popular non-fiction books, but it's way more than just book summaries. So for each book, they have a one-pager that summarizes the book in a single page. They also have detailed chapter-by-chapter outlines. And so for a book like Steal Like an Artist where there's not a lot of text in the book, the Shortform summary adds to and builds on the ideas of Austin Kleon himself. Then in between some of the chapters, they've got these interactive exercises which help you engage with the topic a little bit more. And if the author says anything particularly controversial, then Shortform will often flag up that, hey, this is a thing that might be potentially fake news, lol. Here is another author and what they thought about the thing and how they disagreed with author A. And so it's quite nice as a way of getting a balanced viewpoint about the books that we read. Now, there's two main ways that I use Shortform in my life. The first one is that if I'm short on time and if I've got a book recommendation and I'm not 100% sold on whether I wanna read the book directly, I'll often look at the Shortform summary of the book and be like, you know, are these ideas interesting enough that I will actually wanna read the book itself? And usually I have about a 50% hit rate with this. I tend to read about 50% of the books that I read the summaries of and don't read 50% of the books that I read the summaries of, which, because I have a never ending to-read list, this is actually really helpful. And secondly, Shortform is good as a way of revisiting ideas from books I've already read. So if I'm doing book research for my own book, or if I'm making a video, or if I'm just trying to revisit the ideas because I think they'd be particularly relevant to my life, then it's often way easier for me to read the Shortform summary of the book than it is to just reread the whole book. Anyway, if any of that sounds up your street and you would also like to get access to the world's best book summaries, then head over to shortform.com/deepdive, and that will give you 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you very much, Shortform, for sponsoring this

7. 22:36 – 25:35

   Sahil’s financial advice

   1. AAAli Abdaal22:36

      episode. So okay, so income, income versus wealth. Take income generating activities and use those to cover your expenses and then transition, tr- transfer basically everything else into wealth generating activities. You said the phrase set up simple systems. Can we zoom in on that? Like, what sort of simple systems do you have for this sort of thing?

   2. SBSahil Bloom22:50

      So I mean, the first one I mentioned is, like- Create a model of your, of your finances. I, I'm a huge believer in just being able to, like, look at things and visualize them for peace of mind. And, like, i- if you're like me, I think most people our age are probably like this, where you have this level of fear and, like, scarcity around what your life is gonna look like, and if everything goes to crap. You know, like right now, say we're in a recession and I lose my job-

   3. AAAli Abdaal23:13

      Mm

   4. SBSahil Bloom23:13

      ... or, you know, we're in the creator economy, quote unquote. Like, if people pull back spend and advertisers pull back, and all of this, you know, people stop spending money on courses, et cetera, like, will I be okay? And I think visualizing it, being able to look at it and pull on all the different levers is a great starting point. That's one, one general system. The other way I do it is, honestly, like, I sketch things out. Like, I, I carry around this, this notebook with me, and I will just draw... Like, I'll draw that system. Like, I'll, I'll draw a circle, income generating, and I'll write all the different things that are levers within it. And then I'll show, like, okay, here's my expenses coming out. Here's where the rest is going. And I'll draw on all of the wealth-generating activities. And yeah, I learned that from, like, Walt Disney had this whole thing of, like, if you're having trouble with any concept, just draw it out. And even if it's a crappy looking drawing, it really helps you cement it, the, and understand the idea, and have clarity around it. So I will do that frequently. I'll just, like, sketch things out when I feel that way. But that's an, that, that'd be probably the two big ones that I would think about from a systems standpoint.

   5. AAAli Abdaal24:08

      Nice.

   6. SBSahil Bloom24:08

      Uh, and I guess, like, the last thing I would say is just sit down and think about what your, like, if you were gonna have three wealth-generating activities, and you were only allowed to have three. And, like, that can be, you know, one should definitely be a brokerage account, like, you know, just basic investing. And the other two can be of your choosing. But you never wanna get into a point where you're, like, inve- you know, in 30 different things. Like, there's just no reason for the complexity. Everyone, uh, there's been this, like, general trend towards almost, like, status flexing on all of the different alternative investment classes that you're invested in. You know, you're like, "Oh, well, I, you know, invest in Masterclass. I have art. I invest in real estate through, you know, Fundrise or Lex or whatever all of these platforms are, and I invest in this." And you literally have, like, $10,000 spread across 15 different asset classes. That is like, you're much better off just putting all of that in S&P 500 or, like, [laughs] into a broad index fund that charges you nothing. Because none of those-

   7. AAAli Abdaal25:03

      Yeah

   8. SBSahil Bloom25:04

      ... are, like, durably generating above market returns over the long run. I just, I don't really believe it. Even startups, angel investing, I think is more about learning than it is about generating returns for the most part.

   9. AAAli Abdaal25:15

      Mm.

   10. SBSahil Bloom25:15

       So all of these things, I think, like, complexity is just a demon that, [laughs] that most people run into along the way.

   11. AAAli Abdaal25:21

       Just

   12. SBSahil Bloom25:21

       And, like, keeping your life super simple. I mean, I have steadily learned this lesson the hard way, where I, like, will go down the rabbit hole on something that I think is gonna be a huge game changer. I'll lose money on it, and then be like, "Man, I should've just put that into my brokerage account. I would've been much better

8. 25:35 – 31:26

   Cutting back complexity

   1. SBSahil Bloom25:35

      off."

   2. AAAli Abdaal25:35

      Yeah. [laughs] I know what you mean. We've been, like, within, within this business as well, we've definitely suffered from a complexity creep of, like, ugh, as you grow bigger, suddenly there's more opportunities. G- do that and that and that, and product's there, product's there, course there, course there, course there, content here. And it's just, like, actually focusing on the simple stuff of, like, what's the bread and butter-

   3. SBSahil Bloom25:51

      Yeah

   4. AAAli Abdaal25:51

      ... and just do that, and do it well, and do the fundamentals well, then that's probably way better than trying to be scatterbrained about all these other stuff.

   5. SBSahil Bloom25:57

      Yeah, and you have an idea every day. Like, you're a smart guy. You're ambitious. You just have interesting ideas every day, and you write them down, and then people wanna go execute against them. And the reality is that, like, Warren Buffett had this thing of, like, like a list, like a prioritization list. And the basic idea is, like, write down 20 things that are important to you, like the 20 priorities for your life. Cross 10 of them off the list. You're left with 10 things that really, really matter. Then cross seven off the list, and you're left with the three things that truly, truly matter. And if anything comes up that is something that's not on those three, you just say no. And it, you know, it gives you, like, a very easy way to cut through the noise around things, and it sounds crazy and draconian, but it really does work. Because what ends up happening is when you say yes and you take on all those other things, now I'm super busy, and my bandwidth and my head space is strapped. And so then when the, like, really juicy opportunity comes along, I l- I can't take it because I'm so swamped.

   6. AAAli Abdaal26:49

      Mm.

   7. SBSahil Bloom26:49

      Or I'm just like, "I don't even have the head space to think about that. I'm not, I'm just gonna say no 'cause I can't." And that's a terrible thing, 'cause now you're missing the high upside stuff 'cause you took on the, you know, random one-off singles.

   8. AAAli Abdaal26:59

      Yeah. We, we had a bit of a tangent. We had a two-hour-long session with a marketing agency earlier today, you know, run by some people that we're friends with. And we were just sort of going through the business and figuring out, like, what are the main levers, and thinking, like, oh, for courses, do we want sales team, A/B testing pages and stuff? And what they were saying is, like, "Hang on. Let's go back to basics."

   9. SBSahil Bloom27:15

      Mm.

   10. AAAli Abdaal27:16

       "What's your biggest organic channel?" Answer, the YouTube channel. Everything else is like way, way, way, way smaller than that. And they're like, "How much effort are you putting into the YouTube channel compared to the other stuff?"

   11. SBSahil Bloom27:23

       Mm.

   12. AAAli Abdaal27:24

       I was like, "Oof, not very much." And they were like, "Yeah, we probably wanna just double down on the YouTube channel. Just, like, foc- focus on the basic big thing, and don't worry too much about all of the other little things that we could and pr- should be doing." And that's the thing, I guess, in the creator economy, and I guess people with r- normal jobs have this as well, where there's this long list of things that you know you probably should do. I probably should be on TikTok, probably should be doing Instagram Reels, probably should be doing LinkedIn posts. Gary Vee says LinkedIn and TikTok are big these g- days. Probably should be doing Twitter threads like you do. And also making chat v- videos for the main channel-

   13. SBSahil Bloom27:55

       Mm

   14. AAAli Abdaal27:55

       ... also doing the podcast. And there's just ends up being this long list of options. And actually having the, I guess, discipline, but also, like, the, I think the scarcity mindset feeds into this, because in my mind, I'm thinking, "Shit, TikTok is where everyone's gonna be next year. No one's gonna be on YouTube. Ah, I'm gonna start making TikTok content." Um, and we just sort of get into this scattergunned kind of approach for the sake of trying to build a safety net, but actually it's probably counterproductive in actually building that safety net.

   15. SBSahil Bloom28:19

       Yeah, it's, I mean, it's, like, a constant challenge, right? There's al- but there's always gonna be some new platform, some new thing, you know, some new opportunity that you're missing out on. That feeling of FOMO. I would say, in general, the ability to feel and not take action against FOMO is, like, a superpower of some of the highest performers in the world. Like, that ability to remain focused and ignore the noise and just say, like, "This is what I'm gonna do well." It's like the Bruce Lee line of, like, "I don't fear the man that has 10,000 kicks. I fear the man that has one kick and has practiced it 10,000 times." I think that that's, like- Generally an amazing way to think about life. And, and look, I say all these things, all of them are things I struggle with. Like, I can quote this stuff till kingdom come, but when some new thing comes up, I'm still gonna be like, "Ah, should I be doing that? I don't know."

   16. AAAli Abdaal29:05

       Yeah.

   17. SBSahil Bloom29:05

       It's like causing me a bunch of tension to even think about it. And you say TikTok, you say all these things, I'm like, oh man, I'm not doing any of this. I'm looking at your YouTube channel right now, I'm like, man, this guy kills it on YouTube. I have zero YouTube. Do I need to be doing this?

   18. AAAli Abdaal29:16

       [laughs]

   19. SBSahil Bloom29:18

       Um, so it, uh... Look, I, I, I don't think there's any way around this stuff, but I do tend to think that being like a king of one thing versus a jack of all trades is the right approach long term.

   20. AAAli Abdaal29:29

       Yeah, I do some like... I, I have the same thing when I look at your Twitter account. I'm like, oh, man, zero to 500k in like a year, and you've got the whole angel investing thing off, and you built a fund. Maybe I should build a fund. Someone told me I should make a rolling fund, but like I don't know anything about it. That feels a lot of work. I angel invested in a, in a, in a dozen companies or so, and I kind of re- semi-regret it because they message me ask- asking for things, and I spend, I take years to reply to WhatsApp messages.

   21. SBSahil Bloom29:52

       Mm.

   22. AAAli Abdaal29:52

       And then I feel bad that I'm not able to actually offer them, offer them decent value. And then, ugh, and then I read Tim Ferriss' blog post about why he stopped angel investing and I'm like, you know what? Maybe I should just like, I don't know, stop. E- even though it, it's not even that many, at least like compared to you and, and, and other people.

   23. SBSahil Bloom30:06

       Yeah, I mean-

   24. AAAli Abdaal30:07

       Um

   25. SBSahil Bloom30:07

       ... the more things you take on, our, our heads only have so much room in them to like take things on and to, to actually pursue with any degree of energy or, or ferocity. And you're wired the same way as me, where like you're much better off having two things that you can pursue with all of your might and energy than you are with 100 that you're kind of like eh, eh, eh, you know?

   26. AAAli Abdaal30:27

       Yeah.

   27. SBSahil Bloom30:27

       Pu- putzing around.

   28. AAAli Abdaal30:28

       [laughs]

   29. SBSahil Bloom30:29

       And you just need to figure out what those couple of things... I mean, you, you know it. You're, you're crushing it.

   30. AAAli Abdaal30:33

       Mm.
9. 31:26 – 37:07

   Coping with virality

   1. SBSahil Bloom31:26

      it.

   2. AAAli Abdaal31:26

      Mm. Just on, so I was, I was, I was gonna ask you a question on that front. Your Twitter threads always seem to go viral. There was one you did a few months ago now, a few weeks ago, of being like, "I've just had a kid. Here are 30 lessons or something I would teach my kid." And I was like, I read the whole thing and I was like, this is sick. And I saw all the, you know, likes and retweets and stuff, and I was like, this is sick. And I looked at the quote tweets.

   3. SBSahil Bloom31:43

      [laughs]

   4. AAAli Abdaal31:43

      And there was just some people being like, "Oh my God, this guy's the worst thing." I was like, what, what the hell? [laughs] Just like, it wa- it wasn't my kid, man. And people being like, "Oh my God, this guy needs to go die in a fire," and stuff. It was like how, how do you, how do you react to that sort of thing when you're literally like, "Here are some lessons I'd teach my kid"-

   5. SBSahil Bloom31:58

      Yeah

   6. AAAli Abdaal31:59

      ... and people are telling you to like go die in a fire?

   7. SBSahil Bloom32:01

      This goes back... I, I didn't read the go die in a fire one. That, that's new.

   8. AAAli Abdaal32:03

      [laughs]

   9. SBSahil Bloom32:03

      I like that one. Yeah, I mean, like, look, that goes back to the point I made at the beginning. There's this weird cynicism around parenthood, and that was actually my first experience with it was I posted this thing that I was like, I w- you know, I was like almost tearing up writing that 'cause I was thinking about and reflecting on my own life and things my parents taught me and my grandfather who passed away. And I, you know, I was writing it. It was very emotional for me to write. I put it out and it did, you know, like 95% of the response, 99% probably realistically, was extremely positive and a lot of people found value in it. But there's that, you know, group, 5%, 1%, whatever it is, that got really angry that I thought that I could teach my kid something. Like, they, they were like, "Well, all you're gonna learn about is like poop on your face and, you know, throw up in the middle of the night and crying all night. And, you know, what an idiot that he thinks he can, you know, teach his kid stuff. He's in for a hard lesson." Whatever, all of that stuff. And I was just like, man, what a weird way to live life. Like, you're just gonna live life thinking that you're a passenger and that everything is just gonna happen to you, and you can't create or change or be the, like, driver of your own life? I feel like an empathy towards that. I think, I forget whether it was Gary Vee. I think it was Gary Vee that said this, that when he sees haters, and that guy has a lot of haters, when he sees haters, his first reaction is to feel empathy for the person of, you know, you're like if you are the type of person that writes, "I hope you go die in a fire," on Twitter when someone has put something out, um-

   10. AAAli Abdaal33:24

       [laughs]

   11. SBSahil Bloom33:24

       ... you're probably not a very happy person.

   12. AAAli Abdaal33:26

       Yeah.

   13. SBSahil Bloom33:26

       And there's probably something in your life that is causing some level of tension or sadness or depression, whatever it is, that is leading to you writing that. And so it's actually better, rather than getting angry, rather than being upset, to feel empathy for that person, to hope that they can find happiness and peace in a way that they clearly aren't at the moment. The other thing I would say is like Joe Rogan was just on the Lex Fridman podcast and talked about this. You know, he, that guy has obviously a lot of haters out there for some good reasons, and he says he just doesn't look at it like entirely. You know, and, and it's like an unspoken rule with his wife that she doesn't bring it up to him and he just will not look, won't read any of those things, won't engage. My policy in general is the second one person sends like a bad faith, you know, negative response to me, I'll just mute them. And I don't block anyone really 'cause it sort of like gives them a win that they can be like, "Oh, I got under his skin." But if you mute them, then I never have to see the thing, you know, never have to see their negativity again. So that tends to be my general policy. But look, I mean, when you're growing and doing things and, you know, putting yourself in the arena, there's always gonna be someone on the sidelines that wants to throw a rock at you. It's just the reality of it. And for all the good that it's brought to my life, I'm fine kind of taking a few of those stones to the head along the way.

   14. AAAli Abdaal34:35

       This is one of the, one of the commonest fears that I come across when people wanna start YouTube channels or start putting themselves out there in any kind of capacity. It's this worry of, what will I do about the haters? I'm not, I'm not sure I can take it kind of thing. What was your approach to this like in the early days when you didn't have such a large following and, y- yeah, how, how did, how did you go about- Sort of getting to this fairly zen place where you're like, "Ah, I'll take, I'll, I'll take it."

   15. SBSahil Bloom35:00

       Yeah. I mean, I say I'm at this zen place just to qualify it. I say I'm at this zen place. It still bugs me. Like, you know-

   16. AAAli Abdaal35:07

       Mm

   17. SBSahil Bloom35:07

       ... I, I still will see it the first time before I'm able to mute someone, and it'll bum me out. Because I'm like, man, I'm trying to put out positive things. Like, people that know me, I'm a pretty nice guy. Like, I, you know, my friends I think like me, and I, I'm generally pleasant to be around. I'm, like, very positive. Um, and I hope that comes across on Twitter. Like, I don't fight people back on Twitter when they say things to me. I normally will be like, "Oh, sorry you didn't like it." Or, you know, sometimes I'll message people and just say like, "Hey, this was, you know, in good faith. I wasn't trying to upset anyone," whatever. In the early days on Twitter, I was putting out extremely, like, positive educational content. And so I would say I didn't really encounter any haters until I was at about 25 or so thousand followers. At which point I started getting it from, like, you know, crypto Twitter. Like, anonymous, um, accounts where there's no ramifications to talking crap when you're, you know, an anonymous account, and you're, and you're hidden there. And so honestly what I would do is I would message people. And what I [laughs] generally found, like someone would send something really mean, and I would message them and say like, "Hey, sorry that whatever I did upset you. Was, you know, generally trying to write it in good faith." Whatever. I would send a nice message, and like 99% of the time they would come back and be like, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll delete it." Like, you know, when, when you actually confront someone with, um, or like apologize. Like, "Hey, that wasn't my intention," no one really likes to, like, fight face-to-face. They just assume that you're not gonna react because you're like a big account, and you're not gonna see it, or you're not gonna read it.

   18. AAAli Abdaal36:34

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SBSahil Bloom36:34

       And that there's no ramifications to their actions. And so when you actually confront someone, generally most people actually back down and are fine. I would say that was generally my approach in the early days. And again, it's like when you're doing something, when you're in the arena, it's not, like, h- never worry about the opinions of the people that are on the sidelines. That's just my general bias is like there's plenty of people on the sidelines that are too afraid to put themselves out there. You should take a lot of pride in being willing to put yourself out there, because it's scary, it's vulnerable, it's lonely.

   20. AAAli Abdaal37:02

       Mm-hmm.

   21. SBSahil Bloom37:02

       And when you do that, you should stop taking advice from people that are on the sidelines.

10. 37:07 – 42:51

    Growth vs. passion

    1. AAAli Abdaal37:07

       How do you... While, while we're on this topic, how do you balance w- in k- in terms of the stuff that you put out there, the sense of I wanna share this versus I think this will perform well?

    2. SBSahil Bloom37:16

       Very difficult. The platforms and the algorithms and your emotions always lead you towards wanting to do the thing that performs well. I've talked to many YouTubers that feel this way. That it's like I bas- basically repurpose my top videos over and over again in new formats, because I know they'll do really well and that the algorithm will do it. And I'm so addicted-

    3. AAAli Abdaal37:37

       Mm

    4. SBSahil Bloom37:37

       ... to the like, you know, dopamine of this many views or whatever it is-

    5. AAAli Abdaal37:41

       Yeah

    6. SBSahil Bloom37:41

       ... that I just keep doing it over and over again. And not just the dopamine. At that point, the e- economics of it. Twitter's a little different. There's no embedded monetization. This isn't... Twitter, my like tw- writing on Twitter is not how I make money. Um, indirectly, sure. It, you know, leads to all of the other business things I do, but not directly. I try to balance in general, you know, like that's not to say that I never write the thing that I think is just gonna perform well. There are certain topic areas for me that I know with a pretty high degree of certainty are things that resonate with people, that they'll find interesting. I would say now I'm in the place where like four out of five things that I post are things that I am just super interested in and wanting to write about and think about.

    7. AAAli Abdaal38:19

       Hmm.

    8. SBSahil Bloom38:20

       I will always, always think about what is the opening tweet to this that will grab the most people and that will perform well. So I, even if I'm writing something that, like, I think is a more niche, esoteric topic, I'll always try to have a hook. You know, basically like the equivalent of a, you know, a headline or a thumbnail on YouTube that will grab people. And the pushback against that is like, oh, clickbait headline. And my answer is like, yeah, clickbait headline. Like, I'm trying to get people to read this. I'm not trying to have no one read it, and if that's what it takes to get people to see the thing that I'm very proud of that I put out, then yeah, I'm gonna do a clickbait headline, and people are gonna click on it, and there's gonna be some people that get mad along the way. That's just how these things work. And so I, I mean, I would say I'm never putting anything out that I'm not proud of and that I don't think will benefit some people. But I'm always trying to make sure that it gets seen. Because at the end of the day, that's the game we're playing is like I get th- I get no points for putting out something that is amazingly well-written and so thoughtful and interesting that 50 people see. No points. And like, am I gonna feel proud of that? That I wrote it, maybe, but that no one saw it, it's like what was the impact that that had on the world? So you know, like look, I, I posted this thing this weekend of razors, like the most interesting razors, like kind of decision-making heuristics. It was the most viral thing I've ever put out. I think it's like at 95,000 likes. It did 25 million impressions or something like that. It was, I don't know, 75% stuff that I've already posted in the past that I was able to, like, repackage into something that had a much better hook, tightened it up, like pulled it all together in a more consistent storyline. But it wasn't all, like, brand new content that I hadn't posted in the past. It was, like, super efficient from a time ROI perspective how I put it out. And so I think about this stuff a lot. I would say I'm generally probably not as strategic as, like, I think there are tacticians about this thing that, like, look at the analytics on every word and how they post different hooks. I'm not like that. I'm more inspiration driven. I never create content in advance. I mean, I write things that morning and then post them. Like, I post once a week on Twitter largely from a thread perspective, and I write it that morning. I'm not like, I don't have a repository of things that I'm gonna post-

    9. AAAli Abdaal40:25

       Yeah

    10. SBSahil Bloom40:25

        ... in the future. So I can go both ways on it. That's generally how I've thought about it though in the past.

    11. AAAli Abdaal40:29

        We're just gonna take a quick break from the podcast to introduce the sponsor of this episode, which is very excitingly Notion. If you watch any of my YouTube videos, you have heard me talk about Notion for I think over three years now. If you've been living under a rock and you haven't heard about Notion by now, it is this sort of all-in-one collaborative productivity tool that you can use either personally or with a team, and it combines note-taking, it combines like a personal wiki, it combines tables and databases and tasks and calendars, and it's basically an all-in-one tool for organizing almost anything in your personal life or in your work life. I started using Notion in like 2019 to organize like all the stuff I was doing in my medical life and my teaching and then my YouTube channel, and now with our team of around 20 people, we are basically all of us operate asynchronously using various Notion databases and Notion templates and so much, so much stuff of our life is just revolves and lives inside Notion, and it's just been an incredible tool for helping us stay on the same page and stay productive as a remote and asynchronous team of 20 people. Now, not all work collaboration tools are created equal, obviously. Some of them help you organize your company's information, but there's others that help you organize just projects and tasks. The nice thing about Notion is that it actually does both, and it's all in one tool, which makes it super easy to use, and it's beautifully designed, which makes people actually want to use it rather than kind of shy away from wanting to use it because it's, it's just actually so well, well put together. So whether you're a startup trying to build a team like I am or if you just wanna organize your personal productivity or maybe both and just wanna organize everything about your life, then definitely check out Notion. And if you use the link in the video description or in the show notes, then you will get some kind of promotion, and they'll know that we sent you, and you'd be supporting the podcast as well. So thank you so much, Notion, for sponsoring this episode. Yeah, the, the balance that every... well, me and everyone else I know struggles with as well. I was chatting to another YouTu- YouTuber friend about this over dinner last night, and I was saying that, like, you know, my, my dream YouTube channel involves one where I just make videos about whatever I find interesting. And this friend was pushing back and saying, "Why not put the esoteric stuff on a second channel and put the stuff that you know is gonna perform well on the main channel? Because ultimately the main channel is the nucleus of your business, and you know that. And you kinda know what's gonna perform well on the main channel. It's gonna be finance or productivity or whatever."

    12. SBSahil Bloom42:26

        Mm-hmm.

    13. AAAli Abdaal42:26

        But if you wanna take a foray into like health and relationships, which is kind of outside of your niche, uh, outside of your niche, go second channel. So now you're still posting it. You're just posting it on a different platform. And there was something about that I was like, "Oh, that feels like really good advice," but there's something about it that feels a bit like, uh, like I'm-

    14. SBSahil Bloom42:42

        Fake

    15. AAAli Abdaal42:42

        ... kind of giving something up by-

    16. SBSahil Bloom42:44

        Yeah

    17. AAAli Abdaal42:45

        ... even thinking about the different platforms-

    18. SBSahil Bloom42:48

        Yeah

    19. AAAli Abdaal42:48

        ... for like performance reasons and stuff.

    20. SBSahil Bloom42:49

        Yeah, I've rejected this recently.

11. 42:51 – 47:34

    We can’t automate personality

    1. AAAli Abdaal42:51

       Yeah.

    2. SBSahil Bloom42:51

       I mean, talked about the fatherhood stuff and the content I've been posting there. I would say from the early days, my, my... maybe this will help you or you'll have some ideas that come from this. From the very early days, my realization around the longevity of Twitter, newsletter, podcast, anything I did, was that content was eventually going to be automated. Like AI is going to replace all written content, video content. Like it's just as AIs get better and better, people are gonna be able to produce all the things I write via AI. There's probably already an AI that will put things into Naval's voice and like write-

    3. AAAli Abdaal43:24

       Yeah. [laughs]

    4. SBSahil Bloom43:24

       ... a Naval thread without him writing it.

    5. AAAli Abdaal43:27

       Yeah.

    6. SBSahil Bloom43:27

       So that the content will already exist. What you can't really automate or AI, at least in the near term, is personality and the feeling of connection and affinity that you can build with someone. And so my perspective from the early days was I want to build a personality and a connection with my audience, a community with my audience, that they just care about the things that I am finding interesting. And so that has manifested itself in a few ways. One, my newsletter, um, I don't have like a specific thing I write about. I write about things that are capturing my interest that I find interesting that I'm learning at any point in time. And my newsletter is really a journey of things that I'm learning along the way. My Friday newsletter-

    7. AAAli Abdaal44:04

       Mm

    8. SBSahil Bloom44:04

       ... in particular is like five things that I found interesting during the week that I'm gonna be sharing.

    9. AAAli Abdaal44:09

       Yeah.

    10. SBSahil Bloom44:09

        Similar to like what Tim Ferriss did, and I think did a really good job of, it's like f- the five bullet Friday idea. I'm gonna share interesting things that I'm learning on the journey. Similarly with Twitter, recently it's manifested itself in like I'm sharing more content on fatherhood, on parenting, on my like journey around wealth and what wealth means to me and what enough means to me. Recently, I've done a lot around like health and fitness, something totally off the path of like normally I write about growth and productivity and, you know, self-improvement, et cetera. And well, I was like, well, self, you know, self-improvement, health and fitness is a huge part of that to me, and I really care about physical training. I really care about recovery stuff. I like... And so I started posting, you know, things about my like workout routine or mobility or runs that I'm doing, and it resonates with some portion of my people, and they're building this level of connection with me in a different way. And-

    11. AAAli Abdaal44:57

        Mm

    12. SBSahil Bloom44:58

        ... that has been my perspective is like I'm just gonna share the things that I'm getting excited about. If people aren't excited about those, that's fine. I'm not the guy for them. But if I can build that like depth of connection with a smaller subgroup of the people that do follow me, where they want everything, like anything I put out, they're like, "Oh, I gotta be going and doing that running workout," or, "I gotta go build that habit that Sahil's building," that's cool, and that's what I really want long term, and that's what I think is durable long term.

    13. AAAli Abdaal45:24

        Yeah. I think I've, I've kind of landed at the same, same, same conclusion that, yeah. What is the YouTube channel I would want Tim Ferriss to have?

    14. SBSahil Bloom45:29

        Yeah. That's what he is.

    15. AAAli Abdaal45:31

        Yeah, every few days just makes a video about whatever's on his mind and I couldn't really care less. I just, I'm just interested. I, I like to think. To what extent do you think this model of I will share things I care about is a luxury once you get big already versus a strategy for even when you're quite smaller and trying to break into the Twitter thread boy sphere or the productivity YouTuber sphere or whatever other creator sphere people wanna go into?

    16. SBSahil Bloom45:52

        I think it is a luxury.

    17. AAAli Abdaal45:53

        Mm.

    18. SBSahil Bloom45:53

        I could say otherwise. I don't think I would be being intellectually honest if I said otherwise.

    19. AAAli Abdaal45:57

        Yeah.

    20. SBSahil Bloom45:57

        I think it's really cha- I mean, like, I think you can do it at a micro level. I think there's plenty of people who do it at, like, a sub-1,000 level, where you have, like, basically your friends and friends of friends who find your life very interesting, and the things you're doing and pursuing are interesting, and so you're getting this, like, micro creator connection of someone curating really interesting ideas or insights for you. I think it's probably really hard to, like, grow a durable presence as that guy because there's so m- I mean, like, at the macro level, Tim Ferriss is probably the biggest in the world of, like, he's gonna go learn and do interesting things, and you're gonna be along for the journey. And he's gonna maybe write books about it or do podcasts about it. Like, that's what he is. And so you're not gonna, like, beat him as you're trying to come up along the way. I mean, look, my, like, goal, if you were to define what I'm trying to build, like, I want to be, you know, the modern day or, like, you know, younger and maybe slightly less quirky version of, like, Tim Ferriss, James Clear, Shane Parrish, like some hybrid of these people-

    21. AAAli Abdaal46:53

        Yeah

    22. SBSahil Bloom46:53

        ... that I really admire and have read and created, you know, and, and created around. That's what I kind of like doing. Like, I'm sort of... You know, Shane Parrish has the, like, intellectual angle. I love that. I learn a lot from that.

    23. AAAli Abdaal47:04

        Mm.

    24. SBSahil Bloom47:04

        Tim Ferriss-

    25. AAAli Abdaal47:05

        Yeah

    26. SBSahil Bloom47:05

        ... has always had the body angle. I love that stuff. Passionate about it. You know, James Clear with all of his habit building, self-improvement, super passionate about that. And I sorta feel like where I am is kind of like this hybrid of those different personalities and building a, you know, a life and a, and a universe that's similar to what those guys have done, and kind of standing on the shoulders of those giants a bit, is really my vision for it. Like, I wanna write a book. I wanna, like, you know, go create more. I wanna speak more, do those kind of things, and that's, I mean, that's my vision for it now.

    27. AAAli Abdaal47:33

        It's interesting you say those

12. 47:34 – 53:43

    Being a durable creator

    1. AAAli Abdaal47:34

       names. So that's almost identical to what my vision for my stuff is, but, like, subtly different. So my sort of if I could amalgamate, like, a future kind of playbook career out of what people are doing, it's Tim Ferriss for the same reason as you. Like, I... Actually, it's, it's not really for the body reason. It's more, like, longevity of career reason-

    2. SBSahil Bloom47:50

       Mm

    3. AAAli Abdaal47:50

       ... and how he just seems to post stuff that he cares about and, like, he, you know, crypto does well on his podcast, but after a few episodes he's like, "Ah, I don't care about crypto anymore. Let me just post about some, like, random, random thing." He seems to just follow his own interests. I would add Cal Newport to the list-

    4. SBSahil Bloom48:05

       Mm

    5. AAAli Abdaal48:05

       ... because I really vibe with the whole, like, academic angle of, like, he's a tenured professor and he teaches real students in real life, which seems fun-

    6. SBSahil Bloom48:12

       Mm

    7. AAAli Abdaal48:12

       ... and does the reading the books and stuff on the side. And I'd probably go with Derek Sivers or Austin Kleon on the list, 'cause I like how they don't-

    8. SBSahil Bloom48:18

       Don't know that

    9. AAAli Abdaal48:18

       ... take themselves too seriously, and I think a lot of the other people in this sphere are a bit too serious, and I wanna be the sort of light-hearted toilet jokes, Harry Potter references, that kind of version of this, which is basically my personality just, like, dialed up a little bit.

    10. SBSahil Bloom48:33

        I love that. I think it's so interesting. Like, I just... I'm, I'm learning a lot from just listening to you talk about these things and the way that you're pursuing it, but I think it's so interesting to just try to, like, archetype that way a little bit and figure out, you know, what is your vision. And, and, and you... Real- reality is you're gonna build your own version of all of these things.

    11. AAAli Abdaal48:49

        Yeah. [laughs]

    12. SBSahil Bloom48:49

        And a different perspective and a different way that you grab people. And it's like I said, right? Like, Tim Ferriss, part of what has allowed him to do all of what he's done is that he was making smart investments along the way, that he was taking... You know, when, when you make the, like, $10 million a year from a big book that you're eventually gonna do or whatever it is you're gonna do, where you're gonna have one big thing, it's like what do you do with that? You know, and how are you using that to establish yourself for the long term so that you can continue to do the interesting things that make you unique and that make you stand out for people long term? I mean, cl- clearly you've done that, right? Like, you have a massive following on YouTube. People clearly care about the things that you're talking about and doing, and that's something to be super proud of, but I think the, the focus on longevity and the focus on the durability of it, that's what's gonna allow you to stand out. Because I, I just think most people aren't thinking about that. They're like, "Oh, this is cool. Let me, like, you know, post more shirtless pics on Instagram," whatever it is-

    13. AAAli Abdaal49:38

        [laughs]

    14. SBSahil Bloom49:39

        ... that, that'll allow me to grab people for now. But there's always gonna be someone hotter. There's always gonna be someone richer. There's al- you know, like, all of those things are fleeting, but this connection and, like, intellectual connection that you can have with your community, I d- I think that is really durable. That's why we still love Tim Ferriss, is, like, you and I sitting here-

    15. AAAli Abdaal49:55

        Yeah. [laughs]

    16. SBSahil Bloom49:55

        ... 20 or whatever, 15 years after Four Hour Work Week came out.

    17. AAAli Abdaal49:58

        Mm.

    18. SBSahil Bloom49:58

        That's why we still love him and will consume anything that he puts out.

    19. AAAli Abdaal50:01

        I've been thinking recently around, you know, when people ask, "Oh, how did, how did your YouTube channel succeed amongst all the others and stuff?" And it's, it's, it's easy to connect dots, and there's obviously survivorship bias. So all of those caveats aside, one thing that I was sort of thinking from alm- basically day one is what does the five-year longevity version, what does the 10-year longevity version of this look like? And I knew immediately just like, okay, I'm making content for medical students. That's got a sell by date for as long as I'm a medical student, and we need to, we need to do some reinventing-

    20. SBSahil Bloom50:26

        Mm

    21. AAAli Abdaal50:26

        ... like, very soon before just to, to try and stay ahead of things. And most other creators who I know, like, the ones who are huge think in those terms and sort of like, "I wanna do this for the next, like, 10 plus years." The ones who are less huge tend not to have gotten to that level of thinking just yet. And I think secondly, like, uh, one, well, well, one thing I've been thinking a lot about is this question of, like, what is the infinite game that I'm trying to play here? What is the thing that I'm doing just for the sake of doing it? And the way I get to that is, is asking that question of, like, you know, if I won the, if I won the Euro Millions and had 100 million in the bank, like, what would I be doing? Okay, that's my infinite game. I want to spend my time reading, writing, learning, teaching. Cool. Once you're playing your infinite game, the only objective is to continue playing. And then things like, oh, what if we double down and, like, triple the size of the team and go big. It's like, but, like- That has a high risk because now it increases our cost significantly. And it's not any- it's like I'm still playing my infinite game, it's just like, uh, it's i- in a way it, it becomes asymmetrical downside-

    22. SBSahil Bloom51:22

        Mm-hmm

    23. AAAli Abdaal51:22

        ... trying to go too big once you're already at your point where you're, like, spending your time doing the things you care about and, like, having, having a nice life.

    24. SBSahil Bloom51:29

        I've wrestled with a lot of very similar things. I think one thing that durable creators with long-term longevity will do, and it's something that I would encourage everyone to think about as they're scaling, is scale business outside of your creator business.

    25. AAAli Abdaal51:43

        Mm.

    26. SBSahil Bloom51:43

        So use the creator business to build other businesses that sit alongside it. And maybe they're, you know, tangentially related to the creator side of it, but there are other, you know, there, there are other pillars of business that are, like, real enterprise value or at least real income streams that are just outside of, like, I'm earning money on YouTube or I'm earning money from a newsletter. I have, like, an agency business that I created and started, which I don't really talk about or write about, but it's a pretty big business now and it's very little time from, from, from my perspective. And, you know, I have a couple people that work for me. It's very tight, and it's an example of exactly what you said. If I wanted to spend... If I wanted to ramp that up, so let's, you know, let's say for, for even numbers, let's say it's 100 grand a month. If I wanted to ramp that up to 200, what would that require? Well, if that requires me four X-ing the amount of time and mental, you know, and head space that I have to spend on that, that's really not worth it to me. Like, you know, I would bring home way more money, great. Like, I'd be wealthier, whatever it would mean. But if it means that I have to spend that much more time on it, that's actually not a trade I wanna make. And so I'd rather keep it small and keep it at the s- scale that it's at and not have to go spend all that extra time on it in order to do it.

    27. AAAli Abdaal52:51

        Mm.

    28. SBSahil Bloom52:51

        And that is something that I think is a rewiring of your brain. Because when you're coming from a traditional mindset, your mindset is like, "More, more, more. I gotta get every single dollar..." In my- I'm wired this way. I have, like, an immigrant mindset around this from, you know-

    29. AAAli Abdaal53:03

        Mm

    30. SBSahil Bloom53:03

        ... from my parents. It's like, "I gotta get everything I can get right now." You know, like, my dad is a tenured professor. That was, like, the ultimate income stream job. It's like it wasn't a wealth creation job, it was a income. And my wiring by nature was to, like, say, "Oh, someone's willing to give me $1,000 for something? Let me go do that thing 'cause I need to collect every dollar I can get." But that's actually the wrong mindset for the long term because what I really wanna do is, like, well, right now this is a great setup. I don't have to spend a ton of time on it, generates a bunch of cash flow. I can walk into the other room after this, play with my kid for an hour, take him for a walk. You know, I can go for walks in between calls and clear my head, make me more creative. All of those things are massively valuable to my life, just not in the way of money.

13. 53:43 – 1:03:30

    Longevity and core values

    1. AAAli Abdaal53:43

       You know, I was having a conversation with another YouTuber friend last week kind of talking about this idea of, like, you know, people say that if you're not growing, you're dying. And it's like i- in a, in a way, that very oversimplified model, y- it can cause you to make a bunch of decisions that you n- don't necessarily wanna make. Uh, but what this friend said was that growth doesn't, doesn't just have to be in terms of revenue. Growth can in fact be in terms of it requiring less time from you. And there was just something about that framing of it that made me think, "Oh, hello. Yeah, if I could sustain the same kind of revenue and profit and have to spend less time doing stuff I don't wanna do, then actually we're winning." And I would, I would take that over, like, doubling our revenues at the expense of having to spend more time thinking about stuff I don't necessarily wanna do anyway.

    2. SBSahil Bloom54:21

       The best business decision and the biggest mental unlock I've ever made was canceling a $10,000 a month client in my agency business. Um, and that was like, a year ago if you told me that I was gonna ever do something like that, I would've just told you to shut up 'cause that sounded crazy to me. Like, you're gonna turn off something that, you know, is, like, a great hourly rate. Like, I was probably spending, I don't know, 10 hours a month with that client. It was, like, an incredible hourly rate by any stretch, but it was causing me so much stress, and I was like, it just wasn't worth it, and it was-

    3. AAAli Abdaal54:50

       Mm

    4. SBSahil Bloom54:50

       ... taking me away from a bunch of other things. And I, so I ended the contract, and my life has been, like, so much better since I did that. And I'm making less money on a monthly basis 'cause I removed it. It ended up allowing me to go and capitalize on a few other opportunities that I know are gonna make me, like, probably 10X as much in the long run. Um, and it freed up my mind. Like, during that 10 hours, now I can write creatively, I can read more, I can spend more time with my son, help my wife around the house. Like, it just has made my life better doing that. And it was a huge mental barrier for me to actually do that, and now I feel, like, really liberated from, from [laughs] the actual experience of doing it to be able to think in that way more comprehensively about time, about value, about, you know, what your hourly rate is, where you'll actually wanna take something on. And it really means a... I mean, it changes a lot when you first do that.

    5. AAAli Abdaal55:37

       Yeah, I actually had a, a similar moment yesterday. Then this was the first time I've made a decision like this, where I was just about to record a sponsor plug for one of the YouTube videos, and they were paying 15 grand.

    6. SBSahil Bloom55:47

       Yeah.

    7. AAAli Abdaal55:48

       And it was a product that I don't use, and I was like, "Ugh, I could spend five minutes downloading this and just doing the thing, and it would just take five minutes." And five minutes of my time for 15 grand is a pretty solid hourly rate.

    8. SBSahil Bloom55:58

       Yeah.

    9. AAAli Abdaal55:58

       But then, uh, there, there was something about it that felt really off, and I was like, "No, this is a point where I have to make a decision." So I sent a message to the agency being like, "Sorry, guys, we're not, we're not gonna do this deal 'cause I don't use the product. I'll try it out in the next few months, and if I end up using it at some point, we can do a deal at some point. But sorry, can we disappoint them and cancel the deal?" And that suddenly felt like a huge weight off my shoulders, and now that feels like in a way, well, in, in law, once you have precedent for a thing, then you tend to, to kind of continue doing the thing. So now I have precedent that I will genuinely only do sponsor plugs for things I actually care about. And there's something about that, like, ugh, you know. I'm, I'm now... You know, obviously that's a privileged position to be in, uh, and I would've s- probably made a different decision even last year. But just knowing that I value authenticity more than, like, cash is nice to know.

    10. SBSahil Bloom56:39

        It... Yeah. You know, it's privileged, but there's a seed of really important insight there for anyone to take away from this, which is when that happens, when you have an experience like that, one thing I would encourage everyone to do is, like, write that down on a piece of paper Under, you know, core values or something like that. Because I- I've always found that I have a tough time, like, defining ... Like, if I were to sit down and you were to tell me, "Write down your 10 core values," I don't know what the hell I would write.

    11. AAAli Abdaal57:02

        Yeah.

    12. SBSahil Bloom57:02

        That sounds really daunting. But when I experience something like that and I draw a line in the sand on something like that, now I know, like, okay, that is one of my core values. I'm not gonna promote anything that I don't genuinely use and benefit from. I'm gonna write that down on a piece of paper. And when you write that down, now you're like, okay, I'm starting to build that list of things that I really care about.

    13. AAAli Abdaal57:21

        Mm.

    14. SBSahil Bloom57:21

        And maybe it's five, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 20 eventually. But now I know. Like, I've written it down. That line in the sand that I drew mentally, I've now, like, verbalized and really put it somewhere. And as that builds and compounds, I've just generally found that that makes a huge, huge difference, 'cause now, like, it- it's written somewhere. Now it feels like it's really cemented into, you know, how you operate and how you do business with people.

    15. AAAli Abdaal57:42

        I really like that. I've literally just written that down in, like, core values list. Because I've- I've done a bunch of these exercises to try and figure out your core values, and I've never really vibed with many of them.

    16. SBSahil Bloom57:50

        It's so hard.

    17. AAAli Abdaal57:51

        It's so hard to do.

    18. SBSahil Bloom57:51

        I think generally, like, uh, structure is, like, the enemy of progress on these things. Like, people are always ... Uh, you know, the big one for me has been journaling. Like, oh-

    19. AAAli Abdaal57:59

        Mm

    20. SBSahil Bloom57:59

        ... gratitude practice and journaling. And everyone's like, "Oh, you have to journal, and you have to do gratitude practice, and you have to do all these things." And what I realized was, like, if I tried to force myself into a structure around any of those, I just didn't do it. It was like, oh, now it feels like a chore and I'm not gonna do it. So what I did was I was like, look, my daily gratitude practice is going to be, the hard line on it is, uh, going to be that I'm going to three things at the end of every single day that I felt grateful for. I can either write them or I might just say them in my head when I'm in the shower before going to bed or lying in bed, but I'm gonna do that. And that for me ended up making all the difference in my life. Like, removing the feeling that I had to sit down and write it down in a journal, suddenly it became very accessible for me to do, and it's made a huge difference in my life. But I personally think that, like, having too much structure or making something too challenging is holding back so many people from these, like, simple daily habits that would otherwise really improve their lives.

    21. AAAli Abdaal58:51

        One of, uh, one of the, the other kind of moments I have around this core value stuff is ... I mean, I- I did, I did a bunch of, like, about five different core values exercises. They all landed on freedom being, like-

    22. SBSahil Bloom59:00

        Yeah

    23. AAAli Abdaal59:00

        ... the ultimate true core value. And I was like, okay, I mean, that vibes with, with everything I know about myself. But then this time last year, uh, our accountant and business advisor were suggesting, "Hey, it's currently costing you a million a year to live in the UK. Why not move to Dubai?"

    24. SBSahil Bloom59:14

        Mm.

    25. AAAli Abdaal59:14

        And I was like, "Hmm, okay, interesting." I sort of talked to some lawyers, talked about this a bunch. And it was like, "Well, if you do that, to be, you have to become non-tax resident in the UK," and it's like, that means, like, you can only spend somewhere between 90 and 180 days in the UK every year. And I was like, "Ugh, that is ... The- the price of being in the UK is a million-plus a year. But actually, all my friends are here, my family is here. I actually do value the freedom to come and go as I please and just hang out in the UK, even at the expense, quote, expense of paying a million-plus in, in taxes every year." I was like, "Yeah, that's fine. That actually feels really good." And that cemented, yeah, I actually do value freedom more than, more than I value money. Which, which was nice, because before it was just a theoretical thing, but then I had, like, a concrete example of, like, where that core value made me make a decision that-

    26. SBSahil Bloom59:56

        Mm-hmm

    27. AAAli Abdaal59:57

        ... someone else may not have chosen to make or that I might have not made in, under different circumstances.

    28. SBSahil Bloom1:00:00

        Yeah. I use, like, Twitter as my, uh, [laughs] my tracking system on some of these. This is a hill-

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:00:05

        Oh, yeah

    30. SBSahil Bloom1:00:05

        ... by the way, that I'm willing to die on, the one you just said. I'm ... You know, I lived in California for 12 years, uh, from the time I went to college until last summer, until July 2021, when my wife and I moved to New York, uh, to be, mainly to be closer to family. I have so many friends, like, you know, wealthy friends that have sold companies or done whatever, and they're like, "Oh, why did you move from the highest tax state in the country to the second-highest tax state in the country?"
14. 1:03:30 – 1:19:16

    Are you default alive or default dead?

    1. SBSahil Bloom1:03:30

       state.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:03:30

       I'd love to go back to something we talked about, um, a bit earlier in the conversation, this idea of default alive-

    3. SBSahil Bloom1:03:36

       Mm

    4. AAAli Abdaal1:03:36

       ... from a personal finance perspective. I guess easy enough on the path... Well, uh, it is now kind of the fact that, you know, I've been doing this for a while for us to, to, for us to be at that point. But I wonder if, if you were speaking, if you were to, if you were speaking to, let's say, uh, someone who's at university or just about to graduate or has just graduated. You know, so let's say someone in their early 20s, kinda going into their first job, who's, like, listening to this and thinking, "You know what? This default alive thing sounds pretty good. This financial freedom thing sounds pretty good." What would be your, like, playbook? How would you go about-

    5. SBSahil Bloom1:04:03

       Mm

    6. AAAli Abdaal1:04:03

       ... kind of getting to that point from the point... I've got a bunch of friends who started finance careers or, like, worked in-

    7. SBSahil Bloom1:04:07

       Mm-hmm

    8. AAAli Abdaal1:04:07

       ... in McKinsey or something. Well, how, how would you approach that s-

    9. SBSahil Bloom1:04:11

       Yeah

    10. AAAli Abdaal1:04:11

        ... that journey?

    11. SBSahil Bloom1:04:12

        So for people that aren't familiar with the reference, Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, has this essay called Default Alive or default dead? Which you can look up, and it was in reference to startups. And it was about, you know, startups are either default alive or they're default dead. And what he meant was that, like, if you stop growing and you just kind of run out the current expense load and the kind of current growth rate or whatever the revenue is that's coming in, will you, you know, be able to self-sustain, or will you eventually just run out and die? And I read it and, you know, it's interesting as it applies to startups, and it's sort of a bible for startups during recession times like right now. But I think it's more interesting to think about as it relates to yourself. Like, you want your own personal situation to be default alive. And so, like, what, what would my playbook be? I mean, if I were starting out, I would say the first thing is the systems point, which is figure out, like, what are your income streams? And if you're gonna get your one core job, that's obviously gonna be your first income stream. I personally think that, like, figuring out a way to build and create certain... I, I think passive income is a little bit of a misnomer that's become a meme. Like, no income is truly passive. I've never had passive income in my whole life. There's always something to do. But creating, you know, some sort of side hustle income that allows you to augment that in the early years, I think it's a great time to do that. Like, just figure out how to set up certain things, you know, whether that's online income, whether it's, like, frankly, you know, doing little, like, side hustles, consulting, services, et cetera. Figure out what your skills are and how that you, how you can sell those for more than what they cost you from a time perspective, and create that income base. Live frugally in the early years I think is, like, a huge, huge advantage. Everyone that I know that did that, I wouldn't say anyone regrets it. Like, people that just lived within their means. You know, make sure you're saving money every month. And take that money and put it into things that compound. And, you know, I, in general, think that, like, money... You know, you, you should just be thinking about investing and compounding in everything you do, and I think that's knowledge, I think that's career skills, and it's definitely money. And for me, that's like do the basics. Like, put money into a zero-cost, um, you know, ETF or mutual fund that is just going to kind of track the market. Don't try to outsmart the market and be the, like, genius investor. Don't fall victim to the, like, FOMO when your friend has some, like, "Oh, this is 10X with no risk," or, "This is, like, 20% yield annually, no risk." It's just like, just avoid it. You know, I've lost money on plenty of those things. Just trust me. It's like [laughs] anything that sounds too good to be true definitely is. So I think it's just doing the basics. Like, uh, you will... If you are getting a stable job and if you're kind of, like, thinking about and building, you know, augmenting that income along the way, if you're living frugally, and if you're investing that money, everyone can be a millionaire by the time they're, you know, in their mid-30s. Like, it's just, it, the math just works out if you, you know, if you live that way. And so I, that, that's what I would encourage people to start with. And, like, if you're living that way and you're living frugally, I think it's a huge advantage. The other thing I would say is, like, if you are gonna scale up your lifestyle, which, like, look, I'm sitting here. I'm in a nice house. You know, like, I have done those things. I've scaled up my lifestyle as I've, as I've done better. I'm always careful to know what can I scale back. And if I need to, there are things that I can pull back on, like, you know, different things about our life where I'm like, "Hey, this wouldn't impact my life in any material way for me to, like, cut back on this cost." You know, maybe it's that I like to take, you know, Uber Black instead of UberX. I mean, a stupid thing, but, like-

    12. AAAli Abdaal1:07:32

        Yeah

    13. SBSahil Bloom1:07:32

        ... you know, to get home from the city when it's late or if I wanna work in the car, I'll do a more expensive Uber. Or, like, maybe I'll take the train instead of Ubering. That'll save me a bunch of money every week. Or maybe, like, instead of that really nice, you know, dinner that I like to take a client out to, maybe it's something slightly cheaper. But there's ways that, like, you think about in your own mind of, like, okay, if I need to, I can cut back on this, this, this, and this. And having those levers in your mind, it just creates, like, a stress reduction that is really beneficial to, to how you live on a daily basis. It's just like this peace of mind that brings a level of calm to the rest of your life.

    14. AAAli Abdaal1:08:03

        Okay. Bunch of questions on that front. Observation on this point around cutting back things. I like to think... I mean, I, I, these days I d- I definitely live, live within my means, but I've had a lot of lifestyle creep over the last, like, year or two, especially as the business has skyrocketed. And I decided I was gonna move to London, and if I'm, if I'm moving to London, I might as well live bang in the middle of central London in, like, the nicest... And it's, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then I, I fi- I find that, like, depending on what my information diet is, I feel differently about this. So I w- I was listening to an episode of My First Million where they were interviewing Neil Patel-

    15. SBSahil Bloom1:08:32

        Mm-hmm

    16. AAAli Abdaal1:08:32

        ... and talking about his, like-

    17. SBSahil Bloom1:08:33

        Yeah, that guy's crazy

    18. AAAli Abdaal1:08:33

        ... two, $250,000 a y- a, a month, like, burn rate in, like-

    19. SBSahil Bloom1:08:37

        Yeah, insane

    20. AAAli Abdaal1:08:37

        ... full-time chef, full-time housekeeper, driver. I was like, "Bloody hell." That... A p- part of me was thinking, "Oh my God." Part of me was thinking, "That sounds kinda cool." But then I watched a friend, uh, a, a video yesterday of another YouTuber friend of mine called Oliur who made a video of how much money he's, he spends in a year. And it was like, it was, like, 40 grand a year.

    21. SBSahil Bloom1:08:52

        Yeah.

    22. AAAli Abdaal1:08:52

        And he was like, "Yeah, you know, I just live on the basic 40 grand salary." And this guy's making, like, 800K a year off his YouTube channel and, like, could easily make more. But he's, like, living a pretty chill life, does whatever he wants, and does it on 40K a year. And I was like, "Wow." And in a way, like, the more of those sorts of people that I see, the people that are living r- frugally relative to the ridiculous income that they have, the more I feel very satisfied with my current situation of, like, actually, yeah, this feels good. But whenever I speak to someone who's, like, in the 10 million plus range and they're talking about, like, how they fly private because it's, it's good ROI and stuff, then I start thinking, "Oh, maybe I should be trying to grow the business." I, I c- I find myself sort of pulled in- In, in different directions-

    23. SBSahil Bloom1:09:30

        Yeah

    24. AAAli Abdaal1:09:30

        ... but I always feel like I have to come back to the center of, like, no, let's return to the thing that I actually-

    25. SBSahil Bloom1:09:34

        Yeah

    26. AAAli Abdaal1:09:34

        ... care about. Reading, writing, learning, teaching. I don't need lots of money to do that.

    27. SBSahil Bloom1:09:38

        Yeah.

    28. AAAli Abdaal1:09:38

        And any time I try and chase more of it, it just adds more pressure to making YouTube videos, which, like, hampers creativity, and it just leads to bad things happening when I try and over-optimize for-

    29. SBSahil Bloom1:09:46

        Yeah

    30. AAAli Abdaal1:09:47

        ... growth and, and stuff.
15. 1:19:16 – 1:27:11

    Enjoying the side hustle

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:19:16

       think it is to genuinely enjoy the side hustle you're doing versus treat it more like instrumental for the sake of building some amount of financial freedom further down the line?

    2. SBSahil Bloom1:19:25

       I think there has to be a level of intrinsic motivation from, from joy that you get from it. The reason I say that is just because there's two sides to this, right? There's like intensity and there's consistency. I think that money can create intensity. Like, I think that you can see like, oh, I'm gonna make a million dollars this year and it's gonna make me focus a ton and I'm gonna really grind it out and, you know, put in all these hours and do this. I'm gonna get the bonus or I'm gonna make my YouTube channel big, whatever. But the consistency and your ability to show up every single day when you feel good, when you don't feel good, when you're tired, when it's a holiday, when your family has something and you have to miss it, like that consistency only comes from enjoying it and from wanting to be a part of it and enjoying the process around it and enjoying the ups and downs. Like, it's not always gonna be good. You're gonna put things out you're proud of and they're not gonna go anywhere. You're gonna get punched in the face. Haters are gonna tell you they want you to go burn in a house.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:20:14

       [laughs]

    4. SBSahil Bloom1:20:15

       You know, like all of that stuff. The consistency only comes from enjoying it along the way. And like I, you know, I, I will say this until the cows come home. The biggest driver of my success in anything in life has always been that I am consistent. Baseball, I was never the most talented, never going to be the most talented, but I was just gonna show up every single day and just come at you over and over and over again. And it's really hard to beat someone that does that. Like, it's just very hard to durably beat someone that just keeps getting up, keeps showing up. And I felt that way when I took, you know, my approach to Twitter. It was like I might not write the most viral post ever. I've still, you know, never had a post that goes over ... I mean, now I just had my biggest one ever, but never had something go over 100,000 likes. I see people putting out like 10 Excel tips and it goes over 100,000 likes and it's crazy to me. Like, I've never done that. But I have written something on Twitter every single week, you know, since May of 2020, and I would stack that consistency up against anyone in the world that has, you know, been around during that period. And so people are like, "Oh, what's the hack? You know, how did you grow to this big?" I'm like, "Well, the hack is that I wrote 250,000 words on Twitter over the course of the last two years."

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:21:17

       That's like five books.

    6. SBSahil Bloom1:21:17

       Like, that's the hack.

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:21:18

       Yeah.

    8. SBSahil Bloom1:21:18

       I spent, you know, thousands of hours writing on the weekends, you know, while people were out doing fun stuff. Like, I just, I enjoyed it and I got energy out of it, and so I wanted to keep doing it. And I think you have to enjoy it in order to do that. 'Cause otherwise I would've just been miserable. I would've been at home writing-

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:21:32

       Mm-hmm

    10. SBSahil Bloom1:21:32

        ... you know, working long hours, 'cause I was trying to balance it against my day job until I ended up doubling down on this. And, um, the enjoyment is so key to creating that consistency.

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:21:41

        When it comes to this enjoyment, to what extent do you think it's finding something you enjoy versus finding enjoyment in the thing, if you go, if you get what I'm trying to say?

    12. SBSahil Bloom1:21:49

        Hmm. I think it's the latter actually. You know, and I've never really thought about the ... characterization there. I thi- personally, I don't think you know whether you enjoy something until you really get into the weeds on it.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:22:01

        Mm-hmm.

    14. SBSahil Bloom1:22:01

        Like, if I waited to only pursue things that I thought I was passionate about at the outset-

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:22:06

        Yeah

    16. SBSahil Bloom1:22:06

        ... if I just didn't pursue anything because I wasn't passionate about it, I think I would've missed a lot of really cool things along the way. I just think you don't realize you're passionate about something until you get into the weeds.

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:22:16

        Mm.

    18. SBSahil Bloom1:22:16

        Like, I didn't know I was passionate about writing. I had one idea, uh, to, to write this thing on Twitter. Like, may- it was May 12th, 2020. I was out on a walk, and I had this idea come to me, and I was like, "Man, I really wanna write this one thing." I wasn't passionate about writing on Twitter. I wrote this one thing. It picked up because it was clear that it came across, it resonated. And so then I was like, "Oh, there was something to that. Let me write another thing." And as I started doing it, I realized I was getting a lot of energy from the writing and from the research and from learning about it. But I didn't, like, set out saying, "I love writing things on Twitter," or I lo- I didn't even consider myself a writer. I didn't think of myself as someone that loved writing. And along the way, I found this immense love for writing, immense love for, like, sharing, you know, self-improvement or productivity knowledge or different insights around these things. And, you know, that was what the big unlock was for me.

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:23:03

        Mm.

    20. SBSahil Bloom1:23:03

        And so I, I think it's the la- I really do think it's the latter. It's like, y- you know, you find an enjoyment in something as you pursue it.

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:23:10

        Yeah.

    22. SBSahil Bloom1:23:10

        And that only comes from trying things. And so, like, I think if there's one lesson to take away from it, it's to go experiment, try things, you know, and be quick to switch. Like, test and learn very quickly, and try things, and, like-

    23. AAAli Abdaal1:23:24

        Yeah

    24. SBSahil Bloom1:23:24

        ... double down on the things you really enjoy and that you learn, and that you're, that you're growing around.

    25. AAAli Abdaal1:23:28

        Yeah. I've, I, I, I totally agree. Th- this is, in fact, the thesis of the book that I'm writing, where it's like the secret to sustainable productivity, really, is to find a way to make what you're doing already, find a, find a way to make it more energizing.

    26. SBSahil Bloom1:23:40

        Love that.

    27. AAAli Abdaal1:23:40

        Uh, and I think it's that question of, like, does this thing currently give me energy? And if not, can I pull on the various levers that we know from the science and the research and stuff that ch- tend, for most people, to correspond to stuff being energizing. You know, power play, people, autonomy, mastery, purpose, all these other things that I'm in the process of writing about. All of that stuff is stuff that really can apply to almost anything that we're doing. Because the whole, the whole thing of, like, follow your passion and... I- is, is sort of a bit of a, a thing that's reserved for people with s- decent amounts of privilege to be able to spend all day playing the guitar, which is the thing that I truly enjoy. But there's pl- what, what I found is that, like, with the YouTube channel, with the podcast, with writing, with medicine, with random stuff at university, with anything I've done, the more I've leant into the stuff that within those specific things fills me with energy rather than drains my energy, and the more that I've been able to sort of use that as a guiding framework for, like, is this energizing, is it draining? If not, let's make it more energizing. The more it's just felt like I'm operating on, like, easy mode, because nothing feels like I'm pushing a boulder up the hill.

    28. SBSahil Bloom1:24:41

        Mm.

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:24:42

        And it never feels like I need to use discipline to put out a YouTube video, 'cause I'm just doing the bits that are energizing and I'm just not doing the bits that are not.

    30. SBSahil Bloom1:24:48

        Yeah. It's an interesting... It is a really interesting framing. I do think things, you have to give things time to get to easy mode. Like, my newsletter, I would say for the first nine months, I mean, I've only been doing it for, I guess, 14 months now. But for the first, like, nine or 10, it really felt like it was on hard mode. I would say only in the last couple months have I felt like, "Oh, my God, this is fun. I really enjoy this. This feels easy for me. It feels like flow state when I'm doing it." And that's cool. It's cool when you feel that, that something all of a sudden becomes easy. I, I always, like, I use a lot of, like, sports or fitness analogies, but I... There was this hill. I started running earlier this summer, 'cause it was nice out. I hadn't ran, like, really in my whole life. And I was like, "Ah, this is a thing. It's good for me. I like to be outside. Let me try it." And so I started running, and there was this hill near my house. I'm a very competitive person. I ran up it. I told myself I was gonna run up this hill, and I ran up it, and I was gassed, like completely dead. You know, had to stop, couldn't really make it up the whole hill. And I was like, "Man, screw that. Like, is that hill... Like, that was so hard that that happened." So what I said was, like, "I'm gonna run up that hill every single day for the next 30 days, and I don't care, like, whether I feel good or not. I'm just gonna run up it every day for 30 days." And I just finished that 30 days, and yesterday I went out for a run, and that hill was right at the end. And I ran up the hill, and I, like, got to the top and felt great. And I was like, man, I just complete- like, in the span of 30 days, that hill went from being, like, a nemes- like, I thought I was gonna die, feeling fresh and running up it, to, like, it was like my dessert at the end of this run. I ran up it and felt totally good. And it's like a, it, it's a powerful metaphor in there of, like, 30 days is really all it takes sometimes to go from feeling like, you know, beginner mode to expert mode on something.
16. 1:27:11 – 1:31:35

    Starting Youtube today

    1. SBSahil Bloom1:27:11

       I have a question for you on this general topic. So I have, I don't know, zero subscribers on YouTube. I don't know what my actual number i- maybe I have, like, five.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:27:19

       Mm.

    3. SBSahil Bloom1:27:19

       Effectively zero. But I do think that I have a lot of really interesting written content that would make some amazing videos. Like, just taking the written content-

    4. AAAli Abdaal1:27:26

       Yep, I agree

    5. SBSahil Bloom1:27:26

       ... turning them into videos that I could kind of talk about, narrate over, et cetera. I, you know, I, I've been told maybe that I have a face for radio, but I think I could manage it. What advice would you have if, if I were going to purs- and it, like, it's terribly daunting to me, 'cause I have zero videos.

    6. AAAli Abdaal1:27:41

       Yeah.

    7. SBSahil Bloom1:27:42

       21 subscribers, I just checked. Big, big subscriber count. 3.199 million away from you. So like, what, what advice would you give to someone that was, you know, in my shoes? You have a bunch of content, et cetera.

    8. AAAli Abdaal1:27:52

       Mm.

    9. SBSahil Bloom1:27:52

       Like, try it, don't try it, you know, dedicate... You have to dedicate a ton of time to it. Like, h- how would you think about it?

    10. AAAli Abdaal1:27:58

        Loads to unpack. I would think about it In the sense of, there's three levels. Level one, level two, level three. Level one is get going, level two is get good, and level three is get smart. And in between these different levels, you have a choice that you need to make. So level one is get going. That's just ... So what I'd s- what I'd say to you or anyone else in this position is just make five videos and see what happens. Just, like, don't overthink it. What would this look like if it were easy? Do the Tim Ferriss thing. Take one of your tweets, like, literally just even on this very setup you have with a podcast, with a microphone, just, like, just chat through it-

    11. SBSahil Bloom1:28:26

        Mm-hmm

    12. AAAli Abdaal1:28:26

        ... 'cause you're good at talking and, you know, all that stuff, and see how it feels.

    13. SBSahil Bloom1:28:29

        [laughs]

    14. AAAli Abdaal1:28:30

        Five videos in, at that point you have a decision to make of, like, do I want a s- casual relationship with YouTube or do I want a serious relationship with YouTube? Serious meaning am I gonna commit to doing this consistently? Casual being like, "Oh, I'll post ... I'll clip my ... I will send this po- Any time I do a podcast I'll send a rec- I'll send the video to my, uh, uh, an outsourced editor and they'll just chuck clips of me on." Uh, that's, like, casual 'cause you're not really taking it seriously.

    15. SBSahil Bloom1:28:52

        Mm-hmm.

    16. AAAli Abdaal1:28:52

        Serious is like, "I'm gonna commit to it." Beyond, uh, once you've decided that it's serious, at that point it's get good, which is like, okay, let's actually get good at making videos. Let's see, like, what does it take to make a good video? Title, thumbnail, hook, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's d- dial in my production values. Stick a light in the background, stick a plant in the background.

    17. SBSahil Bloom1:29:07

        Mm-hmm.

    18. AAAli Abdaal1:29:07

        Figure out what I wanna do. And at some point, and I think this'll happen pretty quickly for you because you are pretty experienced in this content stuff, your videos will be, quote, "Sufficiently good that you don't cringe at them," and you'll start to see some level of traction. Again, gonna happen quicker for you because you've got a stupidly large audience on Twitter so you can always transition some audience from Twitter to YouTube. Now, once you're, once you're at the point where you're not cringing at your videos anymore, at that point they're good enough, and now most of the gains... I mean g- improving at YouTube is a lifelong endeavor, of course.

    19. SBSahil Bloom1:29:33

        [laughs]

    20. AAAli Abdaal1:29:33

        But now most of the gains are gonna come from getting smart. And at that point the q- the, the question is on the spectrum do I wanna treat this like a hobby or do I wanna treat this like a business? And the more on the businessy end of the spectrum you are, the more you then start doing the things that a startup would do. Market research, competitor analysis, how are you gonna stand out, what's your niche gonna be, who is your, you know, interviewing target audience and, like, figuring out what, what people want. Looking at analytics and trends and all that jazz. Looking at other vir- other people in your niche's viral videos to see if you can replicate their performance and their success and do it, but do it in your own way. And you start to get into all of those, like, business strategy parts of YouTube. But I think the mistake people make is they overthink their niche. They overthink, like, what are, what's my target audience? What's my niche? Like, I don't know what to make videos about. That which is sort of like a level three thing while they're at lev- like level zero or level one and they haven't started making any videos yet. So I think you could absolutely bang on YouTube, to be honest. But a big part of it is because you don't need it, so it's really a case of do you enjoy doing the thing? You seem pretty natural and confident on camera so I think it's, it's definitely worth trying.

    21. SBSahil Bloom1:30:31

        Interesting. Super, super helpful. I appreciate all the pe- all the perspectives. And the idea of just, like, outsourcing the whole thing, what do you think about people doing that? Like, you know, pa- paying a bunch of money, like, you know, it costs a lot honestly. Like, the people that have quoted me on doing this, you know, two, four videos a month, whatever, it's super expensive, but they'll be really high production value from the get-go 'cause you're, you know, giving it to people that really know it. What do you think about that?

    22. AAAli Abdaal1:30:53

        I think it's reasonable. I think you cannot outsource the writing of your own videos.

    23. SBSahil Bloom1:30:58

        Mm. Totally.

    24. AAAli Abdaal1:30:59

        I have tried so hard.

    25. SBSahil Bloom1:31:00

        Mm.

    26. AAAli Abdaal1:31:00

        It's impa- basically impossible to do. [laughs] And everyone I've spoken to has really, really, really struggled with this. Unless you're like a Vox Media or a Wendover Productions where you're researching scripts and it's not a personality, but I suspect you wanna be a personality channel.

    27. SBSahil Bloom1:31:11

        Yeah.

    28. AAAli Abdaal1:31:11

        But if you... I mean, absolutely outsourcing the editing to make it look slick would be m- uh, yeah, abso- complete- totally reasonable.

    29. SBSahil Bloom1:31:16

        Mm.

    30. AAAli Abdaal1:31:17

        But there's no getting away from the fact that you actually have to do the work yourself.
17. 1:31:35 – 1:41:48

    Making money now

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:31:35

       thing. How do you make money these days?

    2. SBSahil Bloom1:31:36

       Man, this is gonna be a long conversation.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:31:38

       [laughs] What are the-

    4. SBSahil Bloom1:31:39

       Um-

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:31:39

       What's the portfolio? [laughs]

    6. SBSahil Bloom1:31:40

       Yeah, so I, I mentioned I have the kind of agency advisory business. You know, that's broadly speaking helping startups with social and content, like narrative, really narrative and storytelling. You know, and that's mostly across written content, mostly, like, Twitter, newsletter. You know, have a few writers on staff and, you know, helping with strategy, execution, and amplification of, of content. That kind of, you know, is a, is a pretty self-sustaining business. I have my fund which is a $10 million venture fund that I invest in early-stage technology companies, 100 to 250K checks. You know, that's really a longterm wealth creation vehicle. You know, I take a percentage of the profits that-

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:32:16

       Where did you get that 10 million from? Are you getting-

    8. SBSahil Bloom1:32:18

       Um-

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:32:19

       ... LPs is it to, or is it, like, your own personal cash flow?

    10. SBSahil Bloom1:32:20

        Yeah, so I did a traditional fund, not a rolling fund. So I have-

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:32:23

        Yeah

    12. SBSahil Bloom1:32:23

        ... three anchor LPs that are kind of larger checks and then a long list of, you know, really, like, some institutions and high net worth individuals. A lot of that was because I had spent my first seven years of my career in, in high finance and so had a lot of relationships and, you know, LPs, et cetera, from my private equity days that, uh, you know, that I was able to go talk to and kind of tell the story of what I was gonna go build.

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:32:45

        When did you make the fund?

    14. SBSahil Bloom1:32:46

        January 2022, so just a few months ago.

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:32:48

        Oh, damn.

    16. SBSahil Bloom1:32:49

        Yeah, yeah. So-

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:32:50

        How, how did you just, like... If I wanted to make a fund can I just make a fund? Like, how the, how the hell does that work? I know, I know s- I know basically nothing. I don't, don't even know what LP stands for.

    18. SBSahil Bloom1:32:57

        Yeah, with, um-

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:32:57

        Feel like I'm a complete beginner to this.

    20. SBSahil Bloom1:32:59

        So AngelList as a f- as a platform makes it very easy-

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:33:02

        Yeah

    22. SBSahil Bloom1:33:02

        ... to go create a fund. You could do it a couple of different ways. You could do a syndicate which is people can kind of subscribe to see deals that you're looking at, and then they can on a deal-by-deal basis decide whether to invest in something. That is economically the best way for you to do it because then you get carried interest, so, like, a percentage of the profits on a deal-by-deal basis rather than across an entire fund. So, you know, having a dud doesn't matter 'cause it's just, like, on an individual deal. Or you can do a rolling fund which would be, you know, basically people subscribe to your fund on a quarterly basis and a minimum amount. You can publish that on YouTube or on Twitter or wherever your channels are and people could, who want to kind of, like, invest alongside you because they believe in the things you're doing and the value you create, they could invest alongside you. I did a traditional fund which means you can't market it on Twitter. You cannot market it publicly. I did that mainly because I had the relationships and, you know, LP interest that I didn't need to at the time. I think in future I would open it up so that more people would come into future funds and I would market it more broadly so that other people could, could invest alongside me. But for this first one I wanted to kind of keep it pretty tight in how I, uh, in how I pursued it.

    23. AAAli Abdaal1:34:08

        Okay. This sounds pretty cool. I'm, I'm gonna need to ask you more questions about this rolling fund at some point. You've got this fund. You decided in January you're gonna make a fund. You've raised $10 million from, like, people that you just knew 'cause you worked in finance for, like, ages. And now you invest in companies and you've given them 100K to 250K and you're hoping that over time some of them will become the next Stripe and Return the fund? Is, is that the idea or what?

    24. SBSahil Bloom1:34:27

        Yeah. Stripe would be great. I would b- I would, I would, uh, I would not be doing any more, uh, any more podcasts, uh, if, if one of them [laughs] turns into Stripe. No, yeah, I mean, generally speaking it's like pre-seed and seed investing, so you're investing at valuations between 10 and, or, you know, maybe $5 million and $25 million. And, you know, the goal is that you're, uh, you know, seeing some of those become billion-dollar companies. And so, you know, you're seeing 25, you know, turn into a couple billion dollars and those companies go public or they're acquired and, you know, the 100K that you put in becomes worth $10 million in a, you know, in a great outcome, in 100X outcome. And, you know, the general goal is that you kind of, you know, 5X the value of the fund. So you turn $10 million into 50, I would say would be like a supreme amazing outcome. 10X would be like astronomical. You know, you turn 10 million into 100. You know, two, 3X is like average probably, and you've done okay. But the whole goal is that you're, you know, delivering outsized returns to your investors and then you get a percentage of the profit. So I take 25% of the profits that I generate. So if I 5X the fund, I take $10 million back from that.

    25. AAAli Abdaal1:35:30

        Damn. That's pretty cool.

    26. SBSahil Bloom1:35:32

        Yeah.

    27. AAAli Abdaal1:35:32

        Fr- okay. From, from what you know, this is a bit of a selfish question. From, from what you know about, like, what I do on, on YouTube and stuff, do you think it's reasonable for me to think about doing a rolling fund?

    28. SBSahil Bloom1:35:41

        Yes. Yeah. I mean, this is very broadly, like, in line with my thesis on where the world is heading. And so, like, I'm more than happy to catch up with you more on this and, you know, give you kind of more of a playbook around it as well.

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:35:50

        Yeah.

    30. SBSahil Bloom1:35:50

        Because my general perspective is that we've had this, like, barbell that has formed around the investing landscape within early stage companies. And what, what's happened is you have the, like, really high name brand venture funds on one end, you know, the Sequoias, Andreessen Horowitz, you know, Tiger Global, some of these, like, really big brand name funds that when they invest it's a huge marker to say, like, wow, stamp of approval on this company.
18. 1:41:48 – 1:45:46

    Sahil’s fitness routine

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:41:48

       I wanted to ask before we, we close things off, you're pretty ripped. What's, what's your workout routine? How do I, how do I get ripped like you? [laughs]

    2. SBSahil Bloom1:41:55

       [laughs] Oh, man, uh, 15 years of consistent workouts. No, no, no.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:42:00

       [laughs]

    4. SBSahil Bloom1:42:01

       I, um-

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:42:01

       That's all good

    6. SBSahil Bloom1:42:02

       ... no, I, uh, I'm pretty, like, OCD, man. When I, when I wanna get locked in on something, I just, I stick to it. And so, I mean, n- like, I go back and forth. I like, I'm sort of like Tim Ferriss in that I like experimenting with different things and seeing what works for me and what doesn't. So I, um, I have a trainer who kind of sends me all my workout programs. I have a gym at, at my house, um, that's, that's all built out now with all the fun stuff in it. And from a diet perspective, I, you know, sort of like, I'll try different things. So for a month I'll do, like, hardcore keto, you know, won't eat a carb for a month, and see how my body responds to it. I'll, like, do blood testing around it and see, you know, how I perform. Sort of a nerd about those things. Right now, I'm doing more of, like, counting macros and kind of, like, doing a carb cycling thing to see how I perform around that. But I don't know, man. I mean, I do, I physically train every single day. I do something. Mainly just 'cause I love it. Like, I just, it's my, probably my number one hobby is just, like, I love being active.

    7. AAAli Abdaal1:42:54

       Mm-hmm.

    8. SBSahil Bloom1:42:54

       I love getting outside. I love doing this stuff.

    9. AAAli Abdaal1:42:56

       Okay. I've, uh, I've got a personal trainer now. You know, he comes to my place three times a week, and it's like, ugh, you know, whenever, when I see it scheduled on the calendar I'm like, "I know this is gonna be hard work. I know it's not gonna be particularly fun." Sometimes it is, but, like, yesterday was leg day and, God, I hate leg day. And it's like-

    10. SBSahil Bloom1:43:13

        Yeah

    11. AAAli Abdaal1:43:13

        ... I, I have some friends who seem to genuinely love weight training. But unless I'm doing, like, a bench press or just, like, a deadlift, those are, like, the two things that I enjoy, everything else feels like a lot of work and a lot of pain and a lot of suffering. Is there, like, a mental model shift that I can make to start enjoying this kind of stuff? Like, or is it, like, you have to do it for ages on hard mode before it becomes easy mode? Like, how do you...?

    12. SBSahil Bloom1:43:36

        No, I mean, I think there's a component of that. I also think you should have it tailored to the things you do enjoy doing, and make those, like, upfront so that you can find the motivation. Like, I, I will tell my trainer, sometimes my trainer will program, like, you know, five sets of 10 rep squats. And that, like, to me, when I look at that on my calendar, I'm just like, "I don't wanna do this-

    13. AAAli Abdaal1:43:54

        Yeah

    14. SBSahil Bloom1:43:54

        ... workout." 'Cause that, that to me is, like, sucking wind. I'm gonna be dying-

    15. AAAli Abdaal1:43:57

        Yeah

    16. SBSahil Bloom1:43:57

        ... for five sets of squats. I'm not gonna feel like I got stronger-

    17. AAAli Abdaal1:44:00

        Mm

    18. SBSahil Bloom1:44:00

        ... 'cause I'm just gonna be miserable, and it demotivates me. And so, like, I'll tell him, "I don't want that at the beginning. Like, just give me something that feels exciting for me to dive into it." 'Cause I find that it's like, it's like jumping into a cold lake or getting into a cold plunge. Once you're in, it's fine. It's the, like-

    19. AAAli Abdaal1:44:15

        Mm

    20. SBSahil Bloom1:44:15

        ... getting in that's the hardest part, and, like, the anticipation of it.

    21. AAAli Abdaal1:44:18

        Mm.

    22. SBSahil Bloom1:44:18

        And so I would just, like, if you love deadlifts and you love bench, like, have your trainer bring that to the front. Like, do, I mean, you could do a dumbbell bench and then a, and then a bar bench on multiple days and be totally fine. Or you could do neutral grip or close grip or whatever and, like, change it up. But just something that gets you into it. Similarly with deadlifts, you do trap bar, you do straight bar, sumo, whatever, just, like, a hip hinge movement that you might like. Similarly, like an RDL. You know, you can find a way to, like, hack your, your kind of motivation around it.

    23. AAAli Abdaal1:44:46

        Sick. Right. Sahil, I think we'll, we'll, we'll draw this to a close there. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I still have a long list of other stupid things to ask you in my little notebook, but, um, hopefully we can do a part two in person potentially.

    24. SBSahil Bloom1:44:57

        I would love to do it in person.

    25. AAAli Abdaal1:44:58

        Excellent. Yeah. I'm in the process of applying for an 01 visa for the US, so fingers crossed that works. But if not, then you're coming to London at some point soon, so we can, we can get together and, and record in person sometime.

    26. SBSahil Bloom1:45:07

        Either way, we will make it happen. I'm looking forward to it, man.

    27. AAAli Abdaal1:45:09

        Sick.

    28. SBSahil Bloom1:45:09

        Thank you so much.

    29. AAAli Abdaal1:45:09

        Thank you so much. Uh, where can people find you if they wanna learn more about you?

    30. SBSahil Bloom1:45:12

        I am @sahilbloom on Twitter. Um, and then my newsletter you can find at sahilbloom.com.

Episode duration: 1:45:46