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85 min read · 17,177 words- 0:00 – 1:01
Intro
- AAAli Abdaal
Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive. What you're about to hear is a conversation between me and my business coach, Hasan Kubba, who is in fact also the author of this book, The Unfair Advantage, which won the Business Book Awards Business Book of the Year in 2021. We talk a little bit about the book, about the concepts of this unfair advantages framework, and then we spend most of the conversation talking about the idea of having a business/life coach and why it's a good thing for most people. And then the episode kinda turns into a mini coaching session where Hasan coaches me on issues that I'm facing in my life, and we try and figure out a way of how you as the watcher or the listener can apply these coaching frameworks to your own life without needing to hire someone like a life or business coach. In the episode, we also talk about the idea of limiting beliefs, we talk a little bit about productivity and procrastination, we talk about confidence, and we talk about how to find your unfair advantages. So sit back, relax, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. It feels weird to do this interview because we know each other quite well.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so I feel like... Once I was gonna get through him.
- HKHasan Kubba
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
I feel like this will just be more of a conversation, and I can ask you about the things that I'm curious about.
- HKHasan Kubba
Nice.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, so let's start with, uh,
- 1:01 – 16:00
Understanding Coaching & Limiting Beliefs
- AAAli Abdaal
we are... We're- we're working on a, on a collaborative type video together about, like, you being my coach for some number of months.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And the stuff that I've learned from that.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And you've put some bullet points together. But, like, it was so long ago that we started working together, like a year ago almost t- to, to, almost to this date, that I really can't remember what were the main, like, epiphanies.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I'm very curious, like y- having, having gone through the footage and, like, done... Run, run the sessions, A, what was it like coaching me?
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And what were, like, the epiphanies that I had? And I'm asking because then people listening to this might have similar epiphanies in their life.
- HKHasan Kubba
Sure. Yeah, no, it was really interesting the... Going through all of that and looking at it. And unfortunately we weren't recording the earlier sessions, but I took really extensive notes, so I was looking through the notes and stuff. Um, what was interesting is how much you figured out just in that first session. So the first session, I still remember, you were, you were in a c- a cafe, just a random coffee shop. And it had... We had just come out of a lockdown or something for the autumn, uh, 2020. And, um, in that session, we did some exercises. So you talk about the Odyssey Plan a lot, and we did something very similar in that session, and we also spoke about... I just was asking you, "What do you wanna achieve?" And you were like, "Ah, you know, I don't, I don't like goals." And you have the same squirming thing about goals now, but, but you have evolved a lot in terms of, like, how you view goals and how you see it as a, uh... Having a direction, having a destination matters. You know, it's all about the journey, but the destination still matters. So one of the things that you said, which was very interesting, was, um, "I want to have more, uh, over 50% of the revenue," and this was kind of a very business goal, "over 50% of the revenue f- coming, uh, from a platform that I control," so not from Skillshare and YouTube. And, and basically I was like, "Oh, cool. Have you thought about this already?" You were like, "No, I literally just thought of that now." And within about three months, since the launch of PTYA or s- or something thereabouts, you'd achieved it basically, which is so cool. And also the limiting beliefs that you had was very interesting.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, what limiting beliefs do I have?
- HKHasan Kubba
Oh, about like, "I can't charge a lot of money for my course. It feels weird. It feels like selling snake oil." And actually [laughs] I, I gave you... I brought you snake oil today, 'cause you thought that was really funny. I saw it in Dubai.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
And, um, [laughs] and I bought you some.
- AAAli Abdaal
George, can you chuck us the bottle of snake oil that we can, we can show? [laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
This was like your num-
- AAAli Abdaal
It says snake oil. [laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
It says snake oil. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Thank you for buying me some snake oil from Dubai.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah, you're welcome, man. So this... [laughs] I, I hope it cures everything for you.
- AAAli Abdaal
It's gonna cure everything. And I think I'm gonna leave it in its packaging-
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... and then, like, tr- maybe try and NFT-ify it or something like that. [laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
Oh. Fortunate. No, that's a great idea. So you-
- AAAli Abdaal
Selling snake oil. I don't mean to have it displayed alongside your book, which I'm sure is not, not at all [laughs] related-
- HKHasan Kubba
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
... to the idea of snake oil, but [laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
Exactly. So-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- HKHasan Kubba
... snake... You were really worried about selling snake oil, and I think a lot of people... To be honest, I would be very suspicious of anybody who ha- didn't have that fear at all, [laughs] basically, if you're selling, especially when it comes to, like, information online. And usually what happens is, when we develop some kind of experience, expertise, especially when it comes to business, like, you can be like three years into a business and you could have made massive progress, but this was my experience and the experience of a lot of entrepreneurs I know, is you take it for granted 'cause you're just looking at people ahead of you, and you're just looking at what you're gonna do next, and you still haven't... And always the goal line is always moving. And even if you haven't explicitly set goals, you're always kind of, like, thinking about the next thing you wanna hit, uh, the next milestone.
- 16:00 – 24:50
How To Find Your Identity And Unfair Advantage
- HKHasan Kubba
So one of the things that he asked me is, "So rem- so why is it that you wanna..." What, what, he, he went back to the what you're trying to achieve. And I go, "Okay, well, I'd like to fit into my large clothes again instead of XL. That felt terrible to not know what to wear, and to feel confident in front of the camera, or to feel confident on stage, et cetera." And he's like, "What would it feel like if you don't get there? What would it feel like if you do?" And actually, I found those really diffi- difficult questions. I felt very, like, ah, okay, I have to, like, touch in with my emotions of how that's gonna feel.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- HKHasan Kubba
But it really helped. Like, he forced me to do it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- HKHasan Kubba
And-
- AAAli Abdaal
So how, how would that feel if you, if you had to wear XXL cloth- clothing? [laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
[laughs] It just, it would, I'd just feel like such a failure because I've been talking about it for so long. So one of the things about, funnily enough, about health and fitness and stuff, and particularly nutrition, I was into this 10 years ago and everyone used to be like the Hasan diet. Before, like, the, the whole like, um, primal paleo, keto, that, that world, I was, like, very early into that world. I was telling everybody that butter is actually quite healthy before anybody really believed it, until, like, now people are starting to agree with that. I used to drink Bulletproof coffee before that was, like, tr- trendy. So everybody used to... So if anybody hasn't seen me for a very long time, they're like, "Oh my God, what happened to you?"
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
'Cause I was really slim.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
And so, so that I think is the identity thing, and then this is because of a lot of introspection. I'm into self-development. But I think the identity thing of, like, "Oh, come on, Hasan. You used to be the one who used to give people advice and inspire people to get into shape."
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
"And now you're, like, gained weight, you're overweight, you've locked down as an excuse. You've moved house, renovations," all this kind of stuff. So it feels really crappy.
- AAAli Abdaal
So you ti- so you tied your identity to the idea of being someone who is slim, who gives people advice on how to be healthy?
- HKHasan Kubba
I mean, not, not-
- AAAli Abdaal
Kind of. [laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
Not on purpose.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- HKHasan Kubba
I mean-
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, right. Yeah
- HKHasan Kubba
... yeah, I didn't do that on purpose, but, like, as in part of that is, like... And also, um, if you're on, out there giving advice, like, on sta- even if it's nothing to do with it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
One thing that I've learned just as a coach in general, um, is you wanna be, like, a s- you're, without meaning to be, and I think you've experienced this yourself-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- HKHasan Kubba
... is you're a role model without trying to be a role model.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
And it's like, as much as you don't want it, you have... People are gonna look up to you, and they're gonna look at other parts of your life even though you're not saying, "Oh, I, I've got these other parts of my life-"
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- HKHasan Kubba
... "all, you know, optimized and I'm doing so well in them." Maybe there are areas of your life where you need work on, but they'll still look at them.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- 24:50 – 26:27
How Creators Can Become Coaches
- AAAli Abdaal
So you're teaching creators how to become coaches essentially?
- HKHasan Kubba
Essentially, yeah. Not necessarily for the end goal of being a coach, although many of them wanna be coaches and it's... But really the idea is how do you monetize a small audience? And you monetize a small audience not by building it into a huge audience and then selling a $10 product to each person or a $5 product, whatever, T-shirts and stuff. But instead, if you have a tiny audience, you should sell a higher priced product, a more premium product.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- HKHasan Kubba
And a very valuable, premium product that genuinely adds a lot of value is coaching And learning to coach and learning to become a coach. Not only do you get to know your audience better, get to know your niche better, and niching down is so important, but you get to, um, come up with new ideas. What are they thinking about? What video titles to create? What headlines to create? What emails, newsletter subject lines to write down? 'Cause you understand how to enter the conversation going on in their heads.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
So it's a way to be a good listener to your audience, to qualitatively take them through a process. And one of the things I've been telling you for your book as well is take somebody through that process as you're developing it. Uh, like a s- a small cohort of people and see how they get on, where do they get stuck? And then that's what we did for our book, um, kind of informally through mentoring, et cetera. And then you can kinda... And giving public spe- pu- uh, public speaking as well is a big piece of that. See what questions you get asked. So basically you're honing and iterating your content to then make it into a better product, and that was the idea.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Uh, one thing I wanna talk to you about, so you've done a fair bit of backpacking, traveling type stuff around like Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, that kind of thing. Um, and offline we were talking about how
- 26:27 – 36:10
How To Build Social Confidence
- AAAli Abdaal
over time you develop the ability to just go up and talk to people and get involved and like talk to strangers. How, how did you go about developing that kind of confidence?
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
'Cause if I imagine kind of like going to a random country and then going up to strangers and like striking up a conversation, even the thought of that just fills me with dread.
- HKHasan Kubba
And same with me. So I grew up very shy, and I remember even, even when I was in university, there would be these kind of careers events and everyone would be kind of standing around with drinks and kind of networking and I f- I was extremely uncomfortable in those environments of like, do you just join a circle of people who are talking already? How do you join that conversation? And that's something that I really started to read up about, or started to read up about social dynamics, started to read up about attraction and, and dating and how the... I, I still remember I saw an advert when I was 15, like some random, I was on like eBaum's World, which was this [laughs] I don't know if you remember that website, but it was this g- online gaming website. And it was like how to attract the girlfriend of your dreams or something. And I was like 15, super religious Muslim boy, not even having any intention of getting a girlfriend, but I was just so curious and I, and I started reading and reading and reading about it. And I've learnt so much, so it's like it's quite interesting when nerds kind of put their mindset on the things that aren't necessarily nerdy, like social dynamics. It's really fascinating stuff, and I think it's really helped me in business. Um, so essentially I really had to push myself outside of my comfort zone in that. I really had to just, like, ugh, you get approach anxiety and you're scared to go and talk to somebody, to go and strike up a conversation. You know, funnily enough, like w- an interesting story just out of the blue that just came to my mind. I saw somebody, this is around, I don't know, 2016-ish, I saw somebody on the tube, um, on the London Underground, and it was this guy and he was wearing this hoodie, and it said Facebook on the shoulder.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And this is before Facebook had a terrible reputation. I never really was a huge fan necessarily, but I was kind of on Facebook at that time. Um, [laughs] so it's not like nowadays the climate is now. Oh F- oh, that's interesting, Facebook. This guy, may- maybe he's a Face- that's so lame. Is he a Facebook fan? Like he's such a fan. Then I thought, oh, maybe he works for them. So I, I c- I go on the same carriage and I struck up a conversation with this guy. He turned out to be like the global head of, of, uh, marketing, the global head of growth of Facebook. It was like really high up executive at Facebook. And he was super friendly, and then he invited me down to the Facebook offices and I got sh- shown around and he's told me the story of how he used to, he was one of the founders of, um, uh, what was it called? A Fire? Something to do with RSS. So he was one of the R- uh, FeedBurner I think it was called.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
He was one of the founders of FeedBurner or one of the early members, and then it was bought by Google, and then he worked for Google for a number of years, and then he went to Facebook and this guy's like now at Amazon and stuff. And it was just like what a cool, um, networking things happen just from talking to a stranger. Like the serendipity that can happen from that. Another story based on like me getting over my fear of doing stuff like this is I got into university by doing this. I got into the university I wanted. I was going down this path of medicine and all this stuff at Queen Mary. I dropped out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I decided after a lot of soul searching and drama, I talk about that in the book as well. But I decided to, um, do economics, and I wanted to learn about the developing world. I wanted to help. I'm born in Iraq, kind of came to the UK when I was three years old. I was like, okay, maybe I can help rebuild Iraq after the war and stuff. So I thought, let me do this course at SOAS University, which has, uh, got of emphasis on developing economies. That'll be interesting. I'll learn about China, the Middle East, Africa, et cetera. Um, and but I actually was six months behind the UCAS deadline, which was like Oct- January 4th. This was in June. And I was... Also, I didn't have the grades because I didn't do the right subjects and I didn't have... So I didn't... So by any s- stretch of the imagination I shouldn't have been able to get in. But what I did is I looked up the undergraduate admissions tutor, Googled him. This, those days Google, like people didn't have their pictures online as often, but luckily he did. It was like this low-res image of his face. It was just a headshot. And he was, um, a prof... He was this professor and he was also the underg- undergraduate admissions tutor. I went to his page and he said, "Student office hours." And this is, goes back to the whole thing of like bending rules as well. I've always been a bit, I've never really liked rules. I have this-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
Maybe that's why I wanted to start my own business, didn't like authority. So it was like, okay, I can't get into, uh, this course because I don't have the grades and I'm six months late. Okay, by any str- I shouldn't even bother. But, okay, let me look this up guy up and let me go and see if I can convince him. I can just go talk to him. So I turned up at like 2, just like 5 minutes to 2 on like a Tuesday, whi- which was during his office hours. I walked down, I got into the university somehow. I think they didn't have barriers at that time to get in. I went up to his... I walked down the corridor and I saw him walking towards me and I was like, "Oh, uh, Professor, can I, do you have a moment?" He's like, "Yeah, sure," thinking I'm a student coming for his student office hours. I sat down with him and I was like, "Okay, so here's why I wanna study [laughs] economics at SOAS. Here's why I wanna do this." And by the end of my little ... spiel, my little pitch where I had, I, on, on the train over I was writing bullet points and stuff in my notebook. And he was like, "Okay, tell the admissions office that I'm gonna accept your late application." And then I even wrote my personal statement just for SOAS. I didn't even hedge my bets. I literally just said, "This is what I want." I sent it out, and they accepted me, and I go in. So this has really changed, like pushing past shyness and that fear of starting a conversation, fear of initiating, has helped me in so many ways. I've built up a lot of rapport skills-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- HKHasan Kubba
... which has been interesting, which has helped me in business in so many ways. It's helped me with, like, dating and stuff like that, like just to be comfortable to talk on first dates and stuff when I... So it's, it's really changed my life. Like, learning about social dynamics, learning about status, learning about, like, body language and stuff like that. And then actually learning it's more of a m- m- mindset thing than it is about how you sit and how you talk and how you project your voice, et cetera. It was a whole journey. And yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So if you were to guide someone along that path, like what, what are the key milestones, key resources, key sort of things that helped you get from point A to point, point B?
- HKHasan Kubba
It's, there are some brutal truths that you have to accept when it comes to learning about attraction, and some of them feel a bit like, "Oh, sh- life shouldn't be this way. People should judge people, you know, on the contents of their character rather than how they look and how they come across and how, I don't know, how they behave and what..." So, uh, it's whole rabbit hole to go down, but it's really understanding, particularly for men to understand how... Well, actually it's not, 'cause it's just about... Uh, okay, let me go back to this. This is, I just realized it's not, 'cause when we talk about business it also applies. It's understanding that human beings are hierarchical creatures.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And that's a hard pill to swallow, 'cause we wanna f- feel like we're an egalitarian thing and everybody's equal, and we try our best to make it that way. But then there is always something happening. There's a, there's the conscious communication, which they say is only about... What do they say in neurolinguistic programming? It's only about 7% of actual communication is the words, the content, when most of it is your voice tone, your body language, your timing, your pauses, your whatever. Like-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- HKHasan Kubba
... so under- starting to understand communication, so I've been fascinated by this, persuasion communication, it goes back to marketing, it goes back to coaching. It's just understanding how human beings work. So I did psychology at A level, and one thing that I didn't like about it is it was about, like, um, mental illness for the most part. It was about, like, h- if somebody's below baseline, how do you deal with that? How do you treat them? But what I was much more interested in is what they call positive psychology, is, like, h- what is it for the average person? And so I studied that, and I learned all about, like, communication. I learned about... So yeah, just research s- status. Understand that it's not... So the first level of learning it is, like, "I need to be more alpha," and that's this really silly and stupid and sim- overly simplistic way of thinking about it, 'cause that's now how it works. That is, um, is way over simplification of it. It's actually much more subtle, and it's actually, you kind of go full circle oftentimes. You think that you have to, like, p- you know, do, do this. And y- you know that, that stereotype of, like, somebody trying to be more confident than they really are. But once you start to understand it's more about self-esteem and it's about deeper transformation, that is actually what changes things. Uh, another person is Mark Manson as well that used to talk about this stuff a lot, which I actually haven't learned of his content, but lea- I learned about it a little bit from you, and I think he's really on the right track. I li- I like this, his stuff anyway. Um, so that might be a good place to start. Um, yeah, I've kind of... It's, it was a long time ago. It was before I got into business. I was like this, I was obsessed with this. I was like, "Why do I care so much about popularity?"
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
"Why do I care so much about, like, how I come across? Why do I feel so, um, inadequate or insecure?" You know, that was a lot of my younger kind of teenage years. I had a lot of that issue.
- AAAli Abdaal
So I wanna change gears a bit and talk about, talk about the book. Um, I've already done a video talking about the book, so I, I kind of wanna talk to you more about the meta, the meta game of, of the book.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, how do you deal with negative reviews?
- HKHasan Kubba
It's funny. This goes back to the whole kind of maybe some people are wired, not literally necessarily genetically, although that plays a role, but maybe because of an inclination. You're always interested in it, and you always, uh, learn about it. So one thing that I've always been interested in is, um, like, celebrities and how they talk about how they deal with fame and how they come across in interviews and stuff.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
So, like, one person speaking of, like, social dynamics was interesting when he was younger, and he still is very interesting, is Russell Brand. So I'll, I'll, like, I'll be like, okay, I'll look on YouTube, and I'll just see every interview of Russell Brand, and I'll just learn that. And I'll kind of... I have this, um, immersion approach to life of, like, immerse yourself in something to learn about it, and I really think that's a good way to learn things, is model others and immerse yourself in something. Um,
- 36:10 – 43:31
How To Deal With Hate
- HKHasan Kubba
so one thing that I learned is from celebrities talking about haters, and obviously for them it's much more extreme. Like, um, they'll have a lot of people that really love them, and a lot of people really hate them. So I think I've, um... So I think I've imbibed that so much that I was okay with it. Like, I was okay with negative comments. One thing that was quite challenging is when the book came out, the day it was launched, so this was this whole thing, this is our first book, it's gonna be published, all this. The day it was launched, literally, like, I think it was, like, I can't remember now. It was dozens. It was, like, a, well, close to 100 review, reviews and ratings came out for the book on the day it launched, which was, like, already weird because, like, how could people have already read it? And they were weird. Like, for example, s- some of the reviews would be, like, positive, but then it'll be, like, two stars.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And then some of them were just random. Some of them were four stars, some of them were one star.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
And we're like, "That was weird."
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
There's some bots. Something's happening. There's some bots happening or something going on because they can't have already read the whole book. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
It's only just released today. It's not like we're that famous to have this huge marketing push that people are ready to buy it and stuff. So, um, that was difficult. And then, but at the same time it was just like, "Oh, these must be bots. Something weird is happening here." So we got in touch with our publishers, and we're like, "Oh, by the way, there's a duplicate, there's also a duplicate, um, book issue," where it was like there was two listings of the book and one of them had all these negative reviews. We're like- There's these weird bad reviews of the book, but they must be bots, uh, because people can't have read it already. And also there are two listings. Can you please merge them together, but... Or, or sort out the listings, but don't bring the bad reviews into it, 'cause they're not good anyway. I don't wanna start off with bad reviews for the book. [laughs] And so what did they do? They merged the p- and the reviews came along with it, the bad reviews came along with it. So it was like, ugh, okay. All right. Well, anyway, so we just have to get on with this. So I don't know. It's, it's almost like I just wasn't that affected by it. I just told myself that this wasn't it, and it's not gonna be right for most people. Now, the book overall has done really well. Now, we've, we've just hit 1,000 reviews on Goodreads, and it's, the average rating is 4.1 something. So it's like it's done really well. So I get the occasional bad review. Okay, that wasn't for them. I always knew it wouldn't be for everybody.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
So I'd already come to terms with that, that you can't be something for everyone.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And that also applies to dating. That also applies to, like, talking to people. You just won't get along with some people.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And you kind of... And if you have too far of an internal locus of control and you blame yourself for everything-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Yeah, I think this is my problem.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah, like you think it's all about you. It's not all about you.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
It's so self-centered and so narcissistic to think it's all about how we approached it. They might be having a bad day. They might just have a personality clash. They might have just, I don't know, whatever. They... [laughs] Somebody might have passed away recently in their lives. Who knows? I don't know. So yeah, it was, it's part of that is to think people have their own shit.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
I'm not gonna... It can't appeal to everybody.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And to understand niching down, to understand that actually being polarizing can be a good thing anyway.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
And to understand that if you're... If you wanna please everybody, then you're gonna be so bland and blah, no one's really be into what you're doing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Yeah, so, um, so, uh, as you, as you know, I'm a fan of systematically breaking things down. So it sounds like kind of your, your strategy, as it were, for dealing with the negative reviews. Number one, understand that you aren't for everyone, and that's okay.
- HKHasan Kubba
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Understand that it's really not about you a lot of the time. Maybe it's just it was, it wasn't right for them. Um, two, you said that you had this bot issue, which you can just sort of write off.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
What were some of the other things that you kind of imbibed from the, the Russell Brand ecosystem-
- 43:31 – 45:47
The Process of Co-Writing A Book
- HKHasan Kubba
sounding board, and he- Came up with the whole thing. The Unfair Advantage just came about from Ash. Um, the Miles framework came about from Ash. I developed it further. I, I poked holes in it. I, I put it together into a whole system. I think I'm good at that conceptual thinking thing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
So I'm like, I put it into a whole system and into the whole, "Okay, what if people say this? Okay, how does mindset..." Pe- people will say, "Mindset is my biggest unfair advantage." What would you say to that? What do pe- what do you say to people who say, "Working hard is my advantage? Is my... Is that an unfair advantage?" Where do you draw the line between an unfair-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- HKHasan Kubba
... advantage and a earned advantage? You spoke about it as fair play in your video, which some people think is in the book. Some people like-
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, okay
- HKHasan Kubba
... when they interview me, they'll be like-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- HKHasan Kubba
... "Oh, so where do you think fair play?" I was like, "Yeah." [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
[laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
You've watched Ali's video, which is a great video about it. Um, and essentially it's doing all that thinking. So you have to know what each of you brings to the table. And one of the things, again, I go back to Steven Pressfield, he was talking about how, I think he was, uh, in Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit, which is one of my favorite books about, like, how to create compelling content and storytelling-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- HKHasan Kubba
... and stuff, which I've recommended to you a lot, is he talks about how he was working with a writing partner to write scripts for Hollywood, and this writing partner just would, wouldn't really turn up-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- HKHasan Kubba
... at the time they said they would, and he'd be fed up waiting for him, and he... And then he realized that this, this guy isn't a writer-writer, this guy's a writer-editor, and he's the writer-writer, and that was he wh- he, he had to do the writing, and this guy would come and edit and give his thoughts and give his feedback on it. And I think that was essentially the relationship with me and Ash. It was like, um, I did the actual writing for the most part. Um, there are bits here and there that are written by him, but essentially it wouldn't have c- happened if it wasn't for him. It w-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
He brought his name to it. He brought his ideas to it. He brought his whole... It gave it a lot of clout and status. We had the Just Eat IPO 1.5 billion pounds, $2.4 billion. So you have to think about what each of you brings to the table. And he's given me so much confidence and pushed me so much to go and do public speaking, to go and mentor people, and that was something that I hadn't done. So there has been... This is how we've split up ourselves. Um, I'm a big believer in business partners and co-authors and working with people as opposed to doing everything yourself, and that's a big theme in the book too.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, so I'm wo- I was working on a draft of chapter one this morning, which is all about, like, why you shouldn't really set hard goals, and you should actually focus on setting easy goals,
- 45:47 – 1:10:21
Mini Coaching Session
- AAAli Abdaal
and that's sort of the, like, sort of somewhat counter-narrative argument that I'm trying to make, that screw smart goals, focus on goals that are within your control. And, uh, once you've got a goal, then thinking of it, think of it purely as a destination, and then just completely forget about it because at that point, fixating on it or even thinking about it at all is, at least for me, like, not a very helpful thing. And it's how... And it should be, like, you know, oh, ima- imagine the, the treasure at the end of the rainbow, and then that will motivate you to do the thing. But at least for me, I find that imagining the treasure at the end of the rainbow does not at all motivate me to do the thing.
- HKHasan Kubba
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And instead, focusing on the bits that I can control, focusing on the journey, focusing on, okay, my only task right now is to just write one really shitty first draft of this next, of this chapter. I'm on 2,700 words. Cool, let's just keep on going. And then any time I think, "Oh, but, like, this sounds bad," or, "Oh, but I should probably edit it," or, "Here," or, "Oh, but, like..." I, I think, "Nope. Stay on task. Enjoy the journey." I've got my music in the background.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Got my coffee. I've got my oat milk, whatever, and I'm just, like, banging stuff out.
- HKHasan Kubba
Nice.
- AAAli Abdaal
Speed, speed running writing the first chapter.
- HKHasan Kubba
Oh, cool.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, and that seems to be working, but I often find myself, like... I think one of the issues with these sorts of nonfiction books is that really it's not really about what's true. It is about what's useful. I think in a self-help book like this, like, y- you know, James Clear, you know, Atomic Habits, the four things that make a habit stick. It may not matter that this, my mental model is 100% true.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
But if it's a useful way of modeling the information and it's true enough that people can use it and apply it to their lives, you know, similar to left brain/right brain analogy, like, that's not actually how the brain works.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah, yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
The whole like, oh, right brain is creative and left brain is not. But, like, just having that model is still somewhat useful where you think, you know, if someone say, uh, describes themself as a more, like, right brain kinda person-
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... or if someone says, "Oh, I'm really high on trait extroversion," like, you know, the OCEAN personality traits. It's not actually how the brain works. It's just a model that we've taken to put on top of it to kinda simplify things, and as long as it's useful, it's all good. But at the same time, I, I keep on, like, poking holes in my own argument where I'm like, "Yeah, but y- you know, you know..." My point is that for me, setting more achievable and easier goals is better than setting harder goals. But also if you look at the evidence, actually there's a bunch of evidence that setting challenging goals is better than setting easy goals. I'm like, "What the hell? How do you... Ugh." And I keep on kinda second-guessing, guessing myself. How do you, how do you deal with that?
- HKHasan Kubba
Right. Yeah, this is important, and I think what you're doing is you're thinking on paper. It's like what I said about coaching, like, I said that, um, one of the biggest takeaways is you don't know what you think until you hear yourself say it, and it's similarly with writing. That's why writing's so valuable. That's why journaling is sort of a good analog to-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- HKHasan Kubba
... coaching if, specifically if you follow a good structure. It's you're figuring out what you think by writing it down. That's what's happening there.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And I'm impressed that you're, you're disciplined enough to not edit as you write because I, I still ended up doing that quite a bit, but as much... The more I stayed away from it, the better it was. Um, yes. So going back to the whole idea of mental models, I think this is huge, and I talk about that in the book. I was like, so here... So what I did is I went meta and said, "Okay, look, there's two, two models, extreme models. One is success is all luck, and the other's success is all hard work and merited and earned, and success, if it's all fate and luck and unearned, that's the other one. The truth is in the middle." And then I talked about this kind of tension between the two. So that's one approach, is you could describe it as a tension, and you could talk about how-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- HKHasan Kubba
... yes, you could do hard goals, but you can also do easy goals, and here's how to think about it. But yeah, the whole thing about mental models are fascinating. That's one thing that I got out of economics is, is in economics it's too complicated. Just like the, the human body. It's way too complicated. Any guru out there telling you, "Well, this is to burn fat and this one's to bloody b- ma- turn your body alkaline," or some shit like that.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. [laughs]
- HKHasan Kubba
It's all oversimplified- For the most part nonsense. For the most part. Even when they sound like they're using scientific language and they're saying, "Insulin this and ghrelin and leptin," and all this stuff. It's like, okay, yeah, but it's actually super, super, super complicated, and this is an oversimplification. But you know what? The patients whose doctors tell them, "Well, you know, the saturated fat that you're eating is just furring up and clogging your arteries," that's not actually how it works. But if it's a simple model for them to use, and if saturated fats were actually bad, which is very... It's a whole other kettle of fish. But the point is that you wanna help people to change their behavior and transform. So this goes back to the online course I'm doing. So you could be a YouTuber, and you can be an educational YouTube. Obviously, you could do comedy, you could do whatever, you could do drama. The point is to be an educational YouTuber is a whole category, and you could then teach physics and maths. But then t- there's another subsegment of educational, which I said transformational creator. So you're helping people to transform, and that's what you're doing with your book. You're helping people transform. What is that? That's mindset and behavior change. Ultimately, it's behavior change really.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- HKHasan Kubba
And because that will also change the mindset and the identity and all of that stuff.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- HKHasan Kubba
So for behavior change, how do you motivate people to change their behavior? You oversimplify. That's one thing. And then you make it-
- AAAli Abdaal
You, you empower.
- HKHasan Kubba
Yeah, exactly.
Episode duration: 1:10:21
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Transcript of episode GM1ZzMpF3NI
