How To Build A 10 Million Following - Mrwhosetheboss

Arun Maini 0:00 I remember just before I fell asleep, I checked the view count and was on like 3000 views and at the time I was like, Well, that seems high but okay, I'll just sleep on it. And I got it the next day it was on 300,000 And then I checked my kind of inbox and it was filled with like, CNN news wants to talk to you, BBC News. Good Morning America, like all these places wanted wanted a peace of mind. I just, I couldn't understand what's happening. It was a mindset shift of like, whoa, this YouTube thing like this potential of virality It suddenly became like quite real. Ali Abdaal 0:29 Hey friends. Welcome back to the deep dive. In this episode, I speak to Aaron Meany, who is Europe's biggest tech YouTuber, also known as Mr. Who's the boss. His channel has over 9 million subscribers and he's an absolute inspiration. In the episode we talk about Aaron's early life and how he would have these dreams of being a YouTuber when he was young and at school. And we talked about his journey of going full time on making silly internet videos and YouTube rather than doing a traditional prestigious consulting career at PWC. We talk a bit about his life as an influencer and what it's actually like to be Europe's biggest tech influencer and all the ridiculously cool things that he gets invited to do. And we also talk a little bit about the idea of hedonic adaptation. There is Arun Maini 1:04 a point when you start to think like, what am I chasing here? Like, how is my life different when I'm at 10 million versus 9 million, or 9 million versus 1 million? You know, at a certain point, you're making a living, it's your business, you're comfortable. And so you have to kind of separate yourself from that you can't tie yourself to a number that you have no control over. Ali Abdaal 1:24 I've been following Aaron's channel for absolutely ages now. And it was such an honour and joy and inspiration to be able to speak to him. I'm really gushing like I'm a real fanboy here because I am. And it was great. It's also like really interesting as to how he how much effort goes into the magic. That is his YouTube channel. And you'll see for later on in the episode, I'm just absolutely flabbergasted as to just the insane amount of effort he puts into it. And hopefully they'll come through in the episode as well. So yeah, grab a cup of tea. And I hope you enjoy this conversation with me and Mr. Who's the boss? Let's go. All right, Aaron. Welcome to the podcast. How you doing? Arun Maini 1:52 I'm very good. It's good to be here. Ali Abdaal 1:53 Yeah, it's it's It's nice seeing you in the flesh. We've spoken like twice to three times on the phone before so it's it's weird seeing you here. I was actually just in the toilet earlier today. And I was watching your, your pixel versus iPhone camera comparison. So yeah, I feel like I'm getting the full real life experience Arun Maini 2:10 Satisfactory toilet video? Ali Abdaal 2:12 Yes. Yeah, it was it was it was quite, it was quite satisfying. Like, like the B roll. You have like the like sound sound design when you show a photo, or the photos of yourself, or the selfies and different angles different like, focal length? I have actually so very well done that. Arun Maini 2:27 I feel like a DJ more and more every day, because I'm spending more and more than my time looking at sound and how it syncs with the video. Yep. Because actually, I'm glad you mentioned, Ali Abdaal 2:36 I thought the sound design was very well done. I was I was gonna post a message to our editor on Slack and be like, can we do more some stuff? Because it's just like it like all the little subtleties of where the beat drops, I think yeah, it's, it's, it's very well done. Firstly, happy birthday. Thank you. You've just turned 26? Yeah. So you know, you're like, absolutely huge. You've got like 10 million followers across the across the social media platforms? Or what would your like school, high school self secondary school self have said, let's say 10 years ago, if you'd known that this is where you'd be at 26. Arun Maini 3:12 So I actually I distinctly remember a little meeting I had with a friend. We were at school, and we were looking at other youtubers on the platform. And we were like, dreaming of what it would be like to have 10,000 followers. We will look at channels like that. And we're like, oh my god, I could do that. And this person has the audience that could fill a stadium. That's ridiculous. Because when you're looking at numbers like 10,000, you can actually visualise it. And when you do visualise it, it seems enormous. So I don't know I think I would have cried or had fear. Ali Abdaal 3:47 So one thing I found really interesting about about your story, and you talked about this a little bit in the podcast with Steven and a little bit in your draw my life video. Is that growing up you're you're a massive nerd, shall we say? I'm in Yeah. And and and you said that in primary school you ended up like playing chess for England or something. That's very cool. And then in in secondary school, things, things were a little bit a little bit difficult. I wonder if you can you can talk a bit more about what that experience was like. Arun Maini 4:16 Yeah, I think. I think more and more, it's easy to feel insecure in yourself. I think for me, YouTube was like a vehicle towards confidence. And I was always lucky that I found it and like, did it properly. But at school I had very little reassurance and myself, and like people would constantly tell me like every touchpoint I had with another person was generally a negative one. It's like, oh, you're really nerdy? Oh, you're really lanky? Oh, your skin is awful. Oh, you need to shave that beard of yours or if you call it a beard. So I just didn't have a very good impression of myself. Ali Abdaal 4:53 And then how did how did you fit into this? Arun Maini 4:56 So I think I was probably at my lowest point when I started YouTube and to others, even when I started it for the first few years, it wasn't a big part of my life. And I was quite embarrassed about it. And I wouldn't tell anyone. But I think there was like an internal sense of like, I am doing something that other people aren't doing. And that's quite, that's quite nice. Ali Abdaal 5:14 So was it a kind of a way of, of having that, that aspect? However, having an aspect of your identity that you could kind of point to internally and say that yeah, I'm doing something cool. Was, was that the vibe or? Arun Maini 5:26 Something like that, yeah. I mean, I had no idea that it could be a career or what it would turn into. Yeah, it felt it felt cool. I remember it actually, there was a point when I showed my friend that I had a channel with 5000 subscribers. And he said, No way. That's not you. Because at that point, it was only my hands. But I had to convince him to be like, listen, that's my voice. Now hear my voice in person. It's me. Ali Abdaal 5:50 Nice. What What prompted you to start start the channel. Arun Maini 5:53 So my brother bought me my first smartphone. And I think especially relative to my real life, at the time, this smartphone was like, it was like a guilty pleasure. Like, I just fell in love with that thing. And so like, naturally just learned as much as I could about it. And then one day, I just thought, I've got enough info to share with people. So I just made this video on, like, how to customise it just add themes make it faster. And it just did better than I expected. And then I, I kept going. Like, literally, I remember a point where my life goal was to get that phone to score a certain score in a benchmarking app. Okay, this is my third as it wasn't a good phone, but I wanted it to be better. And that kind of created a drive to find out how to do that. Ali Abdaal 6:36 A lot of people have this thing where, where they get super interested in something, they go deep on it, but then it I imagined, like most people don't then go a step beyond and think I'm going to make a YouTube video about this thing. What What was it about you? Can you can you remember like that made that that leap? Arun Maini 6:55 So I actually don't remember. I don't remember I just I'm just very, very, very grateful for whatever the trigger was. Yeah. I'm assuming it was something to do with the fact that I did watch other YouTubers. And I think some part of me just wanted to be like them. Ali Abdaal 7:09 Were you worried at all about what people would think when you started this? Extremely, Arun Maini 7:14 extremely? Yeah. I mean, like, I was not a confident person. And I was very aware that on camera, I was not going to give a good impression. It was strongly driven by my passion for what I was covering, put it that way Ali Abdaal 7:28 On camera as in if people saw your face... Arun Maini 7:30 Yeah, I didn't reveal my face for a good few years. I think it was just hands. And even then people were like, your voice is so irritating. Shut up. That was good. Ali Abdaal 7:42 Oh, what was the kind of comments like in those because, like, when I started, it was like, a start up was like 2017. I was I was pretty old. I was like 23. And it was all educational content, where the comments, which is broadly like, Oh my God, thank you so much for helping me get into uni kind of vibes. But whenever I see comments on tech videos, in particular, it seems like it's a bit more polarising. Arun Maini 8:07 The tech audience is quite hard to please. So they're very educated, but also cynical bunch, they can be amazing. But they will pick apart everything you say, and you can never contradict yourself, you have to make sure you're 100% consistent. And like you fact check everything you say. And so when you throw that kind of pressure on like a 15 year old who doesn't really know what they're doing completely, you're going to get things wrong. And I think I wasn't ready for people to pounce on me in the way they did. But it's good that it happened because you develop a thicker skin. Ali Abdaal 8:42 How do people pounce on you? Arun Maini 8:44 Oh it's stuff like, you're doing this all wrong, you idiot or like, I mean, there was there was racist stuff. There was like, there was all sorts of dislike nasty comments. I mean, technically, there is truth hidden in most of them. And as long as you can kind of scrape away the layers that you don't like you can find it. But definitely abrasive comments or throw it away? Ali Abdaal 9:04 And do you start getting those from from like day one, or Arun Maini 9:07 I think especially on day one. Because the videos are the worst? I think the better your videos get. Generally speaking, the more the tone shifts to positivity. Ali Abdaal 9:16 Yeah. So you're so you're 50 in not having a great time at school socially, and you decide to start the YouTube channel and on day one, you start getting hate. Arun Maini 9:25 My first video did better than I thought it was okay, but then I thought it would. And so it hit like 50,000 views, which is rare for a first but yeah, that's also like really good. But back then as well. Yeah. Especially good back then. So I wasn't ready for it. Yeah, there was definitely an influx of people. Not none of them who subscribed because the video was so bad. You know, there were comments. Ali Abdaal 9:48 And so at that point, again, if I if I imagined myself at 15 You know, things like things I'm going grade school I put a video it gets a bit gets gets a bunch of hate comments. It would be very easy for me to just be like, Okay, I've tried this thing. It's not working. Let's, I don't know, trying to become a chess international masters. Like really lean into the nerd. What was it the thing that kept you going with the YouTube stuff, we're gonna take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor for this episode. And that is brilliant. I've been using brilliant for the last two plus years. They're a fantastic platform for learning maths, science and computer science with engaging and interactive online courses. And the great thing about brilliant is that they really teach stuff from a very first principles based approach. 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So if you want to check out the courses on math, science and computer science, then head over to brilliant.org forward slash deep dive, and the first 200 people to sign up with that link will get 20% of the annual premium subscriptions. Thank you brilliant for sponsoring this episode. Arun Maini 11:17 So I think this is really important, actually. It is said a lot you have to really love what you do. So is the fact that I had all this tech in my house because I've been buying it anyway, as I was growing up. And I was so passionate about that tech that I just I was having fun doing it. So my my first two years was basically me just kind of like roaming around my house trying to find things I already had, using equipment I already had, and just filming it and just talking. I wasn't thinking about things like, you know, watch time or retention or like, you know, consumer insights, it was very much just a case of this has been Ali Abdaal 11:50 Where you tryna stick to like an upload schedule or anything then or Arun Maini 11:54 I didn't know what an upload schedule was. Ali Abdaal 11:58 So you started the channel at 15. What did things look like then on the channel kind of over the next few years? Arun Maini 12:04 Very kind of like bitty it wasn't that I wasn't trying to be consistent, but it's the fact that oftentimes, I just didn't have anything to show or say, it wasn't like I was getting the latest, Samsung's latest apples or anything like that. So when I got some in call, I talked about it. But it also meant that like I was doing videos at very strange times when most people wouldn't have been like, the day before my a level exams. I was just sat in the garden recording some earphones that just came in and stuff like that. What was the growth like in those in those early few years? Nothing special. Ali Abdaal 12:36 And you just kept waiting to be kept out? Because it was fun? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Okay. At what point did you start kind of taking it seriously. Arun Maini 12:44 So there was one big turning point. And it happened partway through university. So it's probably like 20 I think 2015 And it was one video I uploaded just as part of one of my you know, many other videos, I don't load it didn't think much of it. And I fell asleep. But I remember just before I fell asleep, I checked the view canon was on like 3000 views. And at the time I was like, Well, that seems high. But okay, I'll just sleep on it. And I got it the next day, it was on 300,000 Well, and then I checked my kind of inbox and it was filled with like, CNN news wants to talk to you, BBC News. Good Morning America, like all these places wanted wanted a piece of mail, I just, I couldn't understand what's happening. And it was getting like 80,000 views an hour. I just was not accustomed to numbers like that. And it was basically a video on how to turn your phone into like a hologram. So it just did really well. I think it was a combination of like, clear tutorial released at the right time. It was like a Friday just for the weekend. So it became like this viral DIY project, I guess. And even though like that one thing didn't change my overall average view count too much, or didn't rocket my channel into millions. It was a mindset shift of like, whoa, this YouTube thing like this potential of virality It suddenly became like, quite real. Ali Abdaal 14:00 So what happened then? Arun Maini 14:03 See, I still wasn't making enough from it to like, call it a job immediately and just quit everything. Yeah, it was, um, it was definitely a shift for me, my parents, my family and my friends were everyone was all of a sudden, like, whoa, like, some, there's something there's something here. So I think I started taking it more seriously, creating a rough schedule, trying to actually get stuff from brands like things like that. So if I had to put one thing as like a turning point, it would be that. Ali Abdaal 14:26 Interesting. So it sounds like kind of if you're if you're halfway through university, you would have been sort of 19 ish 1920 when that happened. So you'd been doing YouTube for like five years for five years at that point, kind of just for fun. Yeah, because you enjoyed the process you enjoyed reviewing the stuff because you were into tech you were passionate about the thing. And then like all of that it's like I think this is a fascinating because there's always kind of this myth of the the overnight success. And when you see a you know, I love looking at channels that are huge now and looking at their older videos and saying, Oh, well, you know, like I started and how you started and all these like people who are absolutely enormous. I think now I speaking to a lot of people who are starting YouTube channels, the survivorship bias means that the only channels they really see are the big ones. And it's hard to imagine that you could be doing this thing for five years before any real traction and started starting to take it seriously. Arun Maini 15:19 Yeah. And it's also tough to see what exactly led up to that moment. So before I posted that hologram video, even though in my head, I'm like, Well, what was I putting around that with those 300 videos before that? Why did I need to make those I should have just made this from the start. I needed to make every one of those videos to learn the things I needed to know, to make the hologram video. Ali Abdaal 15:38 Did you end up going on like Good Morning America and things like that? Arun Maini 15:41 I took on a few of them. There were a few like local news channels I did. Yeah. Ali Abdaal 15:46 What was that experience like, being on the news? Arun Maini 15:49 I felt a little out of place. So put it that way, because I didn't know how to like present still, it was still like the video itself. It's not something I'm proud of, like from a production standpoint. Yeah, I still wouldn't back back how I came across in that video. And so you ended up sort of being sort of, I won't watch them again. Ali Abdaal 16:07 Fair enough. Okay. So at that point, you started taking things more seriously. What was your kind of non YouTube life looking like, at the time? Arun Maini 16:16 I had a pretty good time at uni. I was very disciplined with my time, because as I started to take YouTube seriously, it's like, Well, okay, so I'm at uni, I've got to have a good social life, I've got to get a first class honours, I've got to do YouTube. And so those three things alone means you're quite busy. And then you've got family, you know, you want to see them, you want to be there for the big moments. So I scheduled my time quite well, such that I think I got everything I wanted to get done done. But it just meant that I couldn't waste time. So I find myself in lots of situations where the default option would be to just stay and just chat with someone. But I had to be like, right, okay, it's nine, I'm going to go script by, do you still have that kind of attitude today. So what I found is like, the larger the channel has gotten, the more I've started to put my time at a premium. It's very much like that now, except I think I am more in control of my time. And I'm more I understand myself better. So, for example, I'll have situations where I'll try and I'll try and set my life up so that the minute I finish working, I am with my friends. Okay. So for example, I was scripting all the way on the way here. And I literally from here, I'm off to meet a friend. So it's kind of like, there's no dead time, which in itself sounds stressful, because then you're planning every single minute, but it means you really look forward to the times when you switch off because you're completely switched off. Ali Abdaal 17:36 What does that planning process look like for you? Arun Maini 17:38 It's all in my head. It's like a little mental jigsaw. Ali Abdaal 17:41 So, in the morning, you decide, here's what my schedule looks like for the day? Or do you plan out like a week in advance? Like, what does? What does it look like? Arun Maini 17:50 I think I've just got naturally quite good at just shuffling things around in my brain, such that I kind of, I have a guide in my head of what needs to be done, what point I can switch off, and that kind of thing. Okay, interesting. But I always have these like short term things to look forward to as well. So for example, this weekend, I'm really excited because I've got a party tomorrow. And that party has been in my brain for the last two or three weeks as a kind of like way of making sure I get the things I want to get done done, and making them more enjoyable to get done. Ali Abdaal 18:17 Yeah, yeah. Like a lot of people talk about how the majority of an enjoyment of an event is in looking forward to the event. And then the event happens, and then there is some extra enjoyment and like reflecting back on the event. So it sounds like you're kind of... Arun Maini 18:31 I get a lot of enjoyment just from looking forward to things, I think, because I don't maybe do as many fun things as other people. I'd imagine most my enjoyment is the looking forward part of it. Ali Abdaal 18:42 Hmm, what do you mean you to do because many fun things as other people? Arun Maini 18:45 Because I don't have that much time off, I think I think you must have found this as well like, as your channel starts to grow. Because you're putting a higher premium on your time, it takes more to pull you away from that. And so the stuff that you make time for has to be of higher importance, I guess, because the opportunity cost is higher. Ali Abdaal 19:04 Yeah. Do you find yourself thinking about that in terms of in terms of like social life and relationships and friends and stuff as well? Arun Maini 19:13 I try not to let it's really hard to separate yourself from it. You know, when you're self employed like it, your life does become one kind of like jigsaw puzzle. And social life and work life do blend into one. Sometimes you pull all nighters, sometimes you have to just do it. So I have had to cancel on people sometimes and I hate cancelling on people. I have had to say no, I can't come to your wedding because I've got work to do. But more often than not I do make time for the things that I think are important. Ali Abdaal 19:44 Okay. And when you say that I can't come to your wedding because I have to I have to do work like you. I imagine people would find that a bit strange because they're like you're you're a big YouTuber you control your time you can do what you want your hashtag living the dream What what does it mean to kind of like, like, you have to have to do work. Arun Maini 20:04 So I think one thing that I do feel and I need to get better at is almost like a sense of FOMO. It's a sense that, at any point in time, you're almost scared to say, Yes, I can come to your thing in two months, because you're not sure of what opportunity is gonna present itself. Because So oftentimes, I wake up, I check my inbox, and probably once every two days, there is something that I think is really, really cool that I really want to do. And I've had loads of situations where I'm like, I then checked my calendar, and I'm like, Oh, my God, I can't do that. Because I've said yes to this person for this thing. And so if someone says, Can you book a week off my wedding in Italy, in a year's time, I am naturally very, very hesitant to do that. And I will delay it as much as I possibly can. And probably try to confirm two weeks before. Ali Abdaal 20:50 What sort of emails are you getting? Like, every two days? I get none of these emails. I get emails from like Chinese charger manufacturers being like, hey, can we can we send you a review? I ignore them. Arun Maini 21:05 I get those to that. Yeah, I got I got some makeup ones as well, actually 'Hey Arun we love your beauty channel.' It's all sorts of stuff. But it's a lot of it is like experience based. Like, I love the idea of like doing stuff that feels different. I feel like I'm going off on a tangent here. But I am of the philosophy that I want to do something different every day, right? Even if that means on the way out to go to work, I kick the door. So my like, that becomes the day my foot is hurting. Right? I want to lead a distinct life. And so when companies come to me and offer experiences, and they say, Okay, let's fly around on a helicopter in London, to take footage with our new phone, it's hard to say no. Or like, you know, let's hire out a theme park, or let's do this video in a plane, and then you jump out that plane. And like all this stuff is constantly coming in. Because I feel like this is like the new age of influencers, and every brand wants to be a part of it. Obviously, I have to turn down a lot of those because I'm like a tech channel and you have to like, you know, it's integrity first. So if a company wants you to do some big, you know, brand promotion, you have to be very selective. But I want to filter out those opportunities and make sure like I consider all of them. Ali Abdaal 22:19 The fact that that stuff comes in makes it harder for you to say yes to things because then you don't want to be like oh crap, I said yes to that thing, like a year ago. Arun Maini 22:27 And then I'll be sitting at like some baby shower thinking like I could have been in like the Dubai arena right now. You know, crowd surfing, no not crowd surfing. Ali Abdaal 22:37 Mrwhosetheboss live shows coming up. That's really cool. That you get this the the sort of what what like, when when did that stuff start happening? Like what stage of your channel? Do you start getting offers to fly in helicopters and things like that. Arun Maini 22:49 Pretty recently. I'm not adjusted to it by any means. It's like probably in the last year, I think what happens is like, there is an element with YouTube of exponential growth, right, providing that you use the data you're given you respond to the comments that have been sort of left in terms of like, you take that feedback on board and keep improving, you will see a trajectory. And so like I think in the last year, my channel is gone from like 3 million to nearly 9 million. And if you go back, it's a similar kind of like jump each year proportionally. So the difference in like value you're giving to a brand and 9 million versus 3 million is enormous. And it's also that kind of status shift of like, okay, this is a big influencer to this is the biggest tech influencer in Europe, right. So it's like, you're the go to person. Yeah. So that that makes a difference. Ali Abdaal 23:39 And then all of a sudden, your inbox gets flooded with all these all these cool things. And, yeah, one thing that I find on a lower scale is like, we talked about kind of like valid valuing your time. And you know, there's a few a few people talk about its idea of setting and setting your own personal hourly rate, and then not to doing things that are not making more than the hourly rate. Or if you can, if you don't like doing something, you can outsource it for less than the hourly rate, then then that's all good. And so I kind of followed this semi religiously to eliminate things like laundry from my life, like well, you know that even that 15 minutes I spent hanging up clothing, if I just outsource it, and I spent 15 minutes scripting a video, well, that's significantly more valuable to my business and my life than that 15 minutes of doing laundry. But then it's very easy to start thinking, Hmm, is it really worth, you know, X $1,000 to hang out with that friend for two hours. And I have like, you know, a one point probably about a year ago, I started to find myself thinking in those terms. I was like, Okay, no, like, there's got to be like some sort of separation between the socials like real life and business. How did you do that? Recognising that when it comes to life, so recognising that ultimately relationships are the most important thing in life and you You know, when you read these books around, you know, Top Five Regrets of the Dying and so on. It's always around, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd made more time for my friends. There was, you know, the other day, that was a scenario in which I could have had a sleepover at a friend's place. And we would have kind of chilled until the early hours in the morning and then woken up at like 11:11am. Or I could have gone home early, woken up at a reasonable hour and done three extra hours of writing on my book. And I thought, you know, a few weeks from now will I remember more the hang out with this friend, or the three hours of writing for my book, clearly, the three hours of writing for my book are going to be more ROI positive, but there is some intangible social value for my life and for my memories and stuff around hanging out with friends instead? Arun Maini 25:45 I think that that intangibility makes it really hard when you're trying to view the world in black and white, isn't it? It's like, okay, you can measurably see the value of doing your work, but you can't measurably see the value of hanging out with your friends, even though it's there. It's programmed into us we need that interaction, I think because we can't measure it. That's probably where the disconnect happens. Ali Abdaal 26:05 Yeah, I think so. And I think like when when when you were describing how you manage your time at uni, that was that was that was fairly similar to how I would do mine as well, in that I had this kind of diminishing returns curve of social interaction in my mind. And so I was like, you know, I could spend an hour at this party, or I could spend three hours at this party. And if I just go for an hour, I will get 95% of the value. And if I stay for the extra three hours, there's really nothing more to be gained. And there was a very like, liberating moment when I realised that if I'm at a party, I can just leave whenever I want, even without saying goodbye, and no one will really notice because everyone else is like, you know, Tipsy or drunk at that point. So I can just leave and like edit a video. And then all of a sudden, it was like, I can have my cake and eat it too, as long as I keep diminishing returns of light. Arun Maini 26:55 So I'm laughing because I think I thought the exact same thing. But also at that point, are you enjoying being at the party? What's the point going at all? Is it to try and maintain connections with people who you don't like that much? Ali Abdaal 27:10 Yeah, I had a weird, weird attitude towards parties in that I thought I should enjoy them. And I thought I should be that become the sort of person who enjoys parties, because I wanted to be like confident charismatic, and all that jazz. And to break away from my massive nerd, unconfident guy that it wasn't school. And then, it was actually a few years into uni, where I was having like a DMC with some, some friends around parties. And even my cool friends said that they didn't enjoy parties. I was like, Whoa, that was that was my boy. If the cool kids don't enjoy parties, and actually everyone seems to prefer like, intimate dinners of like, you know, four or five people, Max that's like vibes, then why am I forcing myself to attend these parties? Just for the heck of it? Yeah. So then once I realised that kind of my attendance at parties significantly dipped. Okay, so traversing the timeline back, so you're at university, you start to take the YouTube channel seriously, you start to kind of split your time between aiming for first class having some semblance of a social life, and also continuing to the YouTube thing. I'm big on like productivity hacks and time management hacks and stuff, other than other than the kind of curtailing social interaction to be on the point of diminishing returns, did you use any other kind of strategies in hindsight, that that helped you make the time for all this kind of stuff? Arun Maini 28:26 I think the big thing for me was seeing things as bonuses is the idea of not punishing yourself for not doing things but encouraging yourself to do things. So in my head, when I was sort of setting up the day, I would try to tell myself, okay, your goal is not necessarily to finish this YouTube video, but it's to kind of like film a part of it. And then what I tend to find is that when I pick up my camera, I'm like, Okay, I might as well do the whole thing. And I would feel even better at the end of the day, because I've done more than I asked off myself. But also, sometimes when I just couldn't do it all, I wouldn't feel bad, and then sleep terribly and have nightmares about tech videos. I would just be like, well, you know, it's fine. I did what I needed to do. Ali Abdaal 29:08 Okay, so, like setting low expectations for yourself, and then being happier when you when you sort of support those expectations. Arun Maini 29:15 Yeah. And and it's tricky to do when you're ambitious, because on one hand, I was trying to become like, you know, UK biggest tech YouTuber. And it's tough to do that when you have to temper your own expectations. But it was almost like a really deliberate thing I did for my own mental health. Ali Abdaal 29:31 But one thing that came up when I was when we were kind of researching your vibes is that you seem to be quite big on goal setting. In that you tweeted at the start of the year that all right, new goals for the year 10 million subscribers on YouTube, a million followers on Twitter and I think a million followers on Instagram. And, you know, hit that milestone on Twitter and Instagram, and basically basically we're gonna hit it on YouTube as well, which is awesome. It strikes me that this is in stark contrast to at the start when you're 50. And you're like, I'm just going to make videos for fun. At what point did your goals shift to, I'm aiming to be the UK largest tech YouTuber. Arun Maini 30:12 So I've always actually been very numbers driven. So even at the start, when I didn't really have a schedule, I still had like sheets on my wall of like, how many subscribers I wanted to hit. And I've always had that in me. And actually, to be honest, I think, as the channels grown, I've sort of tried to detach myself as much as possible from those numbers. Because Youtube is one of those things that you just, you can't win. So, I mean, there's an element, there is a point when you start to think like, what am I chasing here? Like, how is my life different when I'm at 10 million versus 9 million, or 9 million versus 1 million? You know, at a certain point, you're making a living, it's your business, you're comfortable. And so you have to kind of separate yourself from that you can't tie yourself to a number that you have no control over. Ali Abdaal 30:59 I agree wholeheartedly. But you were doing that at start? Yeah.Because so at the start, it was like, I was very much thinking of it in terms of like that conversation I had with my friend where we're like, oh my god, 10,000 people, that's so many people, let's try and get to that goal, okay. But it's very much after passing like a million subscribers, for example, which in my head was this inconceivable number, that it was like, Oh, if you pass a million, you're just like, you're a celebrity, you know. And it's when you pass that and then you have this point of internal reflection, where it's like, I have just achieved everything I ever set out to and more. Why am I not elated all the time? That you're like, Okay, well, actually, this isn't as important as I thought it was. So it sounds like the numbers for you were motivating in the early stages, with like, the numbers on the wall, and the subscribe accounts and things like that. Arun Maini 31:50 Yeah, the reason I do it now, like the reason I've got this pin tweet saying we want to hit this, this and this is, is partly as a kind of a bit of a challenge, like a fun thing to do. But a lot of it is just to get other people on board, like my followers on board with kind of where my head's at. What I'm aiming for, it gives him something to kind of like, aim for as well with me. Ali Abdaal 32:11 So you're you're setting this goal for yourself as a bit of a challenge. But at the same time, you are also detached, like you're trying to detach your personal sense of self worth, from the hitting of the goal. Arun Maini 32:21 Yes, I'm not going to be upset if we don't hit 10 million this year. Ali Abdaal 32:25 I've been thinking a lot about goal setting. Because I am writing a book themed around productivity, where the core message is that really the secret to productivity is to enjoy, enjoy yourself. Because if you're enjoying the journey and having fun, then productivity takes care of itself as like, the general theme. And the first chapter, which I've been working on a draft of like, in the last two weeks is about setting goals. And my personal philosophy on goal setting has always been that I've not really been a fan of goals led that these had that are outside of my control. And so when I started the YouTube channel, the goal was one or two videos a week for the next five years. And that's it, that's all I'm gonna, that's the goal. Because I actually have that fully within my control of being able to do that myself. It's like an input goal. Whereas if I were to think, like, like, for example, in, in writing this book, at some point, my goal was, I want to publish a book that hits the New York Times bestseller list. And whenever I would think of that as being a goal, it would be very demotivating. And I would end up procrastinating and not doing anything because it would feel like everyone I write now has to be a best selling word. And the I really ramped up the stakes, and I wasn't enjoying the process anymore. And then I shifted the goal to To be honest, I just want to write a book I'm proud of. And I like writing, I like reading and I'm probably going to keep writing books for the rest of my life. So hey, there's just no one who gets it, I just want to write something I'm proud of, all of a sudden was like, damn, this is just immediately makes it so much more fun to to try and go towards this goal. And I still got the New York Times list in the back of my mind, because, you know, it's like any actor wants the Oscars any any stretch goal. It's a stretch goal. Yeah. But I try not to think about it. Because for me personally, like leads to sort of sadness and deamidation. What what's your what's your take on that. Arun Maini 34:13 Pretty similar to yours. I think to start with, I was very much of the opinion that if I tell myself to make one or two videos a week, then the lazy part of my brain is going to try and make two bad videos a week because you can still achieve that goal while putting in less effort. But then, as the channel grew, it was like I always trusted myself a bit more. It's like, if I tell myself, I'm going to do two videos a week, then I know that I'll make sure they're good videos. Ali Abdaal 34:39 So the goal was kind of a quality bar for you as well. At what point did you decide I want to be the UK's biggest tech YouTuber? Presumably it wasn't at the age of 15. Arun Maini 34:49 No, no, it was towards the tail end of uni. I've actually worked out quite well because, you know, I was busy at uni. And to be honest, it was some part of it. was frustrating because it was like, I had this vision. But I also had finals. And finals are not easy. So it was kind of like very much like a flurry of like, like a whirlwind of just running around completing various tasks. And then the second unit ended, I felt so. So like on it, I just had every hour of my waking day to just spend on YouTube, it was so liberating. And I use them all on YouTube. Ali Abdaal 35:27 What was your sort of PwC saga? Arun Maini 35:32 So I say to people, when they younger, try as many things as possible. Because if you don't, you will end up down some sort of path. Right? It's just not necessarily the path that you want to go down. And I think that's where I was, because I was kind of, you know, I was good at maths. I was good at writing essays. And so I was just kind of, you know, I picked the subjects that I was sprung up, and that funnels you into economics, and then that funnels you into a certain job. And so I was kind of sitting there in my Price Waterhouse internship, which is quite, you know, it's fairly prestigious. But I was not having a good time. Like, I didn't get on that well, with the people. I just thought the work was mind numbingly boring. And I was like, I was sat in my office sketching YouTube ideas. Yeah, Price Waterhouse. Don't tell them. But but it was definitely a realisation of like, oh my God, I've got to change something. This can't be my life. I got offered the job appeared at PWC. Yeah. And then at that point, after really thinking about an evaluating it, I turned it down, which makes the whole saga seem entirely pointless. Like, why did you go to school to go to uni to go to, you know, to get this job to then quit before you started. But I think all those things needed to happen for me to realise that YouTube was an option, and it was a better option. Ali Abdaal 36:51 Oh, this is interesting. This says this mirrors a good my my exact kind of train of thought of the last few months. Because a year ago, I took a break from medicine, as one does. After two years working as doctor, it's very standard to take a gap. I'm sure you've got friends who are medics. And I was intending to like travel the world and stuff. And then the pandemic happened. And it just so happened that during the pandemic, the YouTube channel really started to take off for probably pandemic related reasons, people are home quite a lot. Everyone wants to be more productive, have a side hustle, all of those things that I was talking about started to do really well. And it's only in the last few months that I've really been thinking, because I always have in the back of my mind that YouTube is my side hustle, and I do medicine as my main gig. And then in the last probably few weeks, I tie kind of admitted to myself that I'm probably never going to be a doctor again. And that was that was like really scary. Because you know, there was there was the element of sunk cost. But you know, having read a lot of Daniel Kahneman stuff was like a sunk cost fallacy. Like, who cares? It doesn't matter that I spent six years at uni and two years working. To get to this point, there was also an element of fear. And that, but there were two aspects of fear. One was, what if I, what if what if I get cancelled and everything disappears, then at least I'll be able to be a doctor again as like a fallback backup option. But the other element of fear, which I think we're stronger was that I built my brand off the back of, hey, I'm a doctor went to Cambridge, bloody blah, blah, blah. Here is a video about productivity. If I now stop being a doctor, will people think that I am I quote, just a YouTuber? And does my kind of internet career now? And now? Is that going to suffer as a result of losing this badge of this badge of prestige? Arun Maini 38:42 It's like, what are you then? Ali Abdaal 38:44 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like, how do I how do I describe myself and someone else? What do you do is like, well, I make videos on the internet. Yeah. Did you have any of those thoughts as you were leaving a fairly traditional prestigious career that you'd worked for years to get to. Arun Maini 38:57 The backup thing was definitely, in my mind, like having a backup option. I think YouTube definitely felt like a risk more. So at that point, when it was like, you can jump, you can make this leap onto this new thing than it does looking back now. I think when you look back, it's always easier to be like, oh, yeah, of course, I made the right decision. And it was obvious and yeah, but it wasn't at the time. Ali Abdaal 39:19 Yeah, I remember having having that thought process when I was in my final year of of uni, where the YouTube channel I think, had not even hit 1000 subscribers at that point. I was I was on like, video number 35. I was on like, 400 subscribers. And I was thinking, Okay, I've got finals coming up. I could take final seriously. Or I could take YouTube seriously. And I was like, Okay, I'm pretty confident that based on my current medical knowledge, I could pass finals just not do very well. And I'm pretty confident that I'm out of the running for a distinction because of the way the numbers worked out. So I was okay, every percentage point I get above a pass mark is therefore kind of wasted efforts, presuming there's no correlation between performance of the doctor and performance have written exams, which most people said there wasn't. So I threw everything into YouTube at the time. Arun Maini 40:05 Since you're in a position where with very low effort, you could get a pass with extremely high effort. Ali Abdaal 40:10 Potentially maybe probably not even paid be in the running for distinction, right? So I thought, let's go YouTube all the way and ended up kind of just scraping a pass in Britain finals, and then thinking, okay, cool. So that works out let's let's take it seriously for the clinical stuff, which actually, but in hindsight, that was like, obviously the right thing to do. But at the time, it felt very much like, Uh, huh. I'm not sure this YouTube thing has legs, but I know I'm going to kick myself if I don't give it a go. Arun Maini 40:37 Yeah, you never assume that your channel is going to be like the one to hit a million. Ali Abdaal 40:41 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I think I think at the time, I was thinking, Oh my God, if I can hit 4000 subscribers, then like, that's like, the best thing ever. that I had. That was like 10 10k, sub 10k. Just naming numbers gives you like access to the YouTube space, oh, my gut. And it just like the numbers just stop, stop meaning anything after a while when you stop being able to visualise them? Because like, 10,000, it's like, well, my school hole could fit 1000 people like 10 schools, that's a lot of people. But beyond that, it's just really hard to imagine the number. Arun Maini 41:11 It is, as soon as you get to six digits, it's I don't think we have any grasp of it. We can't. Ali Abdaal 41:16 So you did the internship, you decided to turn down the job offer and now you're going full time on the YouTube thing. Can you remember what what were your stats at the time I was your sub count? Arun Maini 41:23 What was the 250k subscribers? The revenue wasn't amazing. I think it was just a bit more than the PwC job like the entrant kind of job. Because ad revenue wasn't as much then there was no sponsorships at all. Because it is partly because I didn't know how to get them. Yeah. And also the infrastructure wasn't there, like, you know, 567 years ago, where brands were kind of hopping on and agencies were approaching you. Ali Abdaal 41:51 Okay, so you're on 250 k subs, kind of making a living, but not like a baller living? Like? What did your what what did your life look like that like 24/7, YouTube, or what was the was the vibe. Arun Maini 42:05 So as soon as I left uni, like I said, I had this kind of like, I was relieved from the pressure of having to juggle many things. So I felt free. But also at the same time, I pushed myself really hard. I think there was this thing in my head of like, YouTube is one of those platforms, who knows how long it's going to be. Therefore, while you've got this opportunity run with it. So I made a video like every single day, it was just me and my back garden, just getting tech investing and stuff to then cover to then try and sell and make a bit of a loss on and all that kind of stuff. Ali Abdaal 42:35 Yeah, a video every single day. How long did you keep that up for? Arun Maini 42:39 About six months ish? Yeah. Ali Abdaal 42:43 What did your like day in the life look like then/ Arun Maini 42:46 Because in one day, you've got to do everything, you've got a scripture video in the morning, you've got to film a video in the afternoon, you then got to edit your video in the evening. So it's very much a case of like, complete day packed. You don't have much time for other things. If you take a day off to go see a friend, then it's two videos the next day. Yeah, it was nuts. And it did take me to a sort of a breaking point, I guess, where I, I was like, Okay, this isn't sustainable. I'm going to try a different strategy. Ali Abdaal 43:13 Or how did you realise that this wasn't sustainable. Arun Maini 43:17 So there was one point was like a really, really hot day. And I was kind of like, I was falling on my camera, but I was like, kind of like straining my skin her. I was like, super tired. And some reason I just started crying. I'm not a crier, but I just started crying because I was in so much like pain from the kind of like long term exhaustion and the exhaustion in the moment. And it was at that point that I was like, I can't I can't finish this video. I just physically, I just couldn't do it. And then I was like, okay, it's fine. I'm not going to post a video tomorrow, I'll figure it out. Even though I was horrified at the thought of like, not seeing that uptick in subscribers and be like wasted opportunity. But then when I found out that it was okay, you know, my channel was still alive, then I was like, Okay, maybe I'll do one every two days or one every three days. And I think when you give yourself that space to be able to take your time with things, you can do them better. And that was actually a really important moment, to be able to kind of like, make better videos. If I hadn't given myself that space, I might still be doing one video a day, and they'd be terrible. Ali Abdaal 44:18 So you start off with the quantity thing, because you're thinking that, you know, this is what the algorithm needs designed to get any need to feed the machine. Yeah. And then you have a moment where you're like, Okay, maybe quantity is now no longer serving me and let's switch to quality. Is that fair to say? Arun Maini 44:32 I think also you can actually you can enjoy the process of it more. When you take time with things, like doing things like just to a strict schedule all the time is really just tiring. And it means you don't get any time to be creative. Or you know, do anything fun. Ali Abdaal 44:47 Yeah, I had this moment a couple of weeks ago where, you know, there was the there was there was a video we put out on the channel maybe last month, which you know, ended up getting Like a tonne of dislikes were very click Beatty kind of title was like all the comments were like, oh my god, I can't believe what your channel is turned into, like, this is awful sought out. I was like, Okay, this is actually all these are all very reasonable comments. People have a point here. So I deleted the video and that kind of led me on the soul searching mission of like, Okay, how did we get to this point where I put out something that was objectively shit for the sake of I don't know what and I did like I had a few hours on it on a Saturday, I think it was about two or three weeks ago in here where I was just sitting in the in the communal spot by myself for like five hours. And I was intending to film a video, but I thought you know what, I'm just gonna open up Apple notes and just do some journaling and figure out Hawaii, I'm feeling a bit weird about this YouTube stuff. And I realised that I'd been drinking the consistency kool aid for so long that I just assumed we have to put out two videos a week. And yeah, we've got a sponsor every week. So we just have to put out a video every Tuesday and every every Sunday, it's just one of the laws of physics that has to be done. Yeah. And then I started, I realised that a big part of why I've been feeling a bit disconnected from the channel recently is because this a drive for a video, like two videos a week on the topic of like, kind of productivity, personal development stuff, where I've kind of said the stuff that needs to be said, and now it's like, we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to come up with ideas meant that we were putting up videos that I wasn't happy with. And then I thought, Okay, what if I just don't stick to that schedule anymore? And I did the kind of Tim Ferriss fear setting exercise, you know, what's the worst that could happen? What are the worst case scenarios, and wrote them all out in detail, and realised that actually, these are all these worst case scenarios are pretty unlikely. And, you know, having done this for now, for four and a half years focusing on quantity, we can shift to focusing on quality and not being wedded to an upload schedule or not being wedded to this video has to come out at this certain time to appease this particular sponsor, because if we want to drop the sponsor and like it doesn't matter, who cares. And then that felt like ridiculous deliberating. And as I was doing one of these, I think, as I was doing one of these Tim Ferriss exercises of like, what's the worst case scenario? I was like tearing up a bit thinking like, Oh, my God, like, all of this has gotten to this point where I can be like, You know what? Like, I can take a step back, and it's not going to be the end of the world. Arun Maini 47:11 Yeah, it realisation that you have control. Ali Abdaal 47:13 Yeah and the thing you said, where you're almost, you know, I can't go to a friend's wedding because I have work. I found myself thinking in those terms, these last few months, especially as our team has expanded now, and we've got like, 1620 people ish, depending on how you come full time, and part time. But I found most of my time being spent on being a manager and sort of zoom call after zoom call meeting after meeting after meeting and no time for actually thinking about videos and filming content and stuff, which is the thing that I love doing. And one of my friends who was I was like I was, I was living with his doctor working in a&e, where his schedule was, like, ridiculously absurd. And he was like, right, I've got a day off. Do you want to grab dinner? And I was like, God, no, look at my calendar. Sorry, I've got 20 minutes of time between like 10pm and 10:20pm. And then I have a call with someone from the US at 1020. And he was like, Dude, what are you doing? Arun Maini 48:13 IYeah, that's bad when you realise your schedules worse than theirs. Ali Abdaal 48:16 Teah. So now we're like, okay, take a step back, I'm gonna focus on the content. And this is gonna kind of manage the business side of things, and try to find more of a more of a middle ground there. But it sounds like that's similar to experience you had on the whole, like, quality quantity thing? Yes, back then. Arun Maini 48:31 Yeah, I think I still need to do work on it internally. But more and more, I do want to focus on the things I'm good at, and the things I'm needed for. So I never want to veer away from not being the presence on my channel, I don't want other hosts and things like that. So if it means having less staff and having a smaller operation overall, that's, that's fine by me, because I love doing the core parts of it. Ali Abdaal 48:56 So we're at this point, you've done a video every day for a whole six months. And then you decide, okay, we can take the foot off the pedal on quantity and focus on quality. What happens next on the channel? Arun Maini 49:08 There wasn't some sudden miraculous kind of like, oh, this, this worked. This was the secret. But I think, you know, I did an economics degree, I'm very data driven as it is. So I guess it's this kind of like slow, but measured level of improvement from video to video, as you're kind of like looking at retention graphs and being like, oh, you know, loads of people dropped off there. I'm not going to do that again. And kind of like from video to video, when you're still doing content regularly. There's so much information available about what works and what doesn't, you know, I don't think any other company or creator gets what you do as a substantially size YouTuber in terms of like metrics to evaluate yourself with companies that pay ridiculous amounts of money for data, but like that, yeah. So if you know how to use it, it's extremely powerful. Ali Abdaal 49:57 How do you use it? I don't Look at my metrics at all. So I would love to learn from you about like, what can I be doing? How much time do you spend in the YouTube Analytics? Arun Maini 50:06 I look at it for every single video that I post. So two days after it's gone live, I'll kind of I'll spend a good half an hour just going through it being like, what countries did this hit? How long did these people stay on for? When did the majority drop off? Was there a significant spike or a significant dip? Did certain parts make people go back? Things like that? Because you can see all of it. It's like, why wouldn't you? Well, you don't. But I think you should. Ali Abdaal 50:30 I really think I should as well. Arun Maini 50:32 Yeah, so I found things like, for example, if I ask people to subscribe really early in the video, it was detrimental, because you'd get a drop of like 20% of viewers potentially. But they wouldn't be subscribing they just be irritated by the fact you've asked them to subscribe without showing them why Yeah. Because at the start of a video in the first like, 15 seconds, people are very, very easy to lose. It's at that point that they decide whether they're going to, you know, full screen you and kind of invest in this video, or whether they're going to you know, click on one of the 30 that are kind of grabbing their attention from the side. Ali Abdaal 51:06 How should I start? If I if you're like, if you were like kind of my YouTube, mentor, whatever, like how would you advise me to start looking at retention graphs and analytics bit more? What's the what's like a good a good starting point, Arun Maini 51:19 I would look for troughs. So look at kind of points where you've got viewers that are stable, and then when they go down, and try to identify why they've gone down at that point. So for example, on the other things I found was like, I would do a round off at the end of a video. And at the point where you start rounding off a video, anyone who feels like they've got it, they're like, Okay, I'm done. This is the end of the video. And so instead, what I started doing is the second I finished the key content. I'm talking about the next video. So it's literally like, and that's what happened to Samsung, okay, for the video on this, that's there for the video on this, that's there. And I found immediately that like, the amount of clicks I was getting on my end cards to lead to the next video will like be tripled. And so my outro now has my face in it, it didn't used to have my face in it. It just used to be this kind of blaring music. Yeah. But now it feels like a continuation of the main content itself here. And I'm kind of being like, look over there, look over there. And you can see me pointing to videos. And I think actually, I think you said this one's not that long ago, actually, the people who watch till the end of the most valuable audience members, because they're more likely to follow through, right? Ali Abdaal 52:29 Yeah. So the the endcard thing is something that we started doing as well about about a year ago. And it worked really nicely. But kind of beyond that, I didn't really, I don't really look at the numbers, because it's scary. It's yeah, it's scary. It also feels like I don't know if this is a relic of my kind of olden days of like, just I think I have to drink the consistency Kool Aid way too much where it's like, once you've made a video, then forget about the video on to the next one. And the kind of 1% improvements over time, I think I've been doing from my own gut of like, oh, it would be cool if the next video had this thing. And especially when I was editing my own videos, that was a lot easier to do now that there's like a layer between me and the video being edited. It's actually harder, especially because our editor Christian is in Romania, it's it's a lot harder to affect change. Even with the whole remote thing, even with like frame IO and all this, all this other stuff that I'm now even thinking to the point of like, let's get Christian to switch to Final Cut Pro. So you can send me the project file and I can I can do the final cut myself. So that I can then have more finely tuned control over what's going on in the video. Arun Maini 53:38 I can understand that. Like I've not still fully handed off stuff that I probably should have handed off. Because it's your baby, right? It's your face. It's your voice. It's your it's your name. So I understand that. But to be honest, I've actually benefited a lot from having two people. It's not a big team, but two people who are specialists in their area and who like I can hand things to and I know they'll do them better than I would. Ali Abdaal 54:01 What does your team look like right now? Arun Maini 54:02 So it's editor, camera guy. Okay. It's very, very basic. But it's my camera guy, my editor, they're very, very good at their jobs to the point where I'm like, if I've got any piece of graphics I want doing, I will consult them because I know that they'll know better than me. Ali Abdaal 54:17 How long have you had those guys? Arun Maini 54:20 Editor for about three years camera guy for about a year? Ali Abdaal 54:23 Do you do any of the editing yourself? Arun Maini 54:25 I do as a last resort. If there's like something really urgent, which there does tend to be a tech like you know, if Apple does an event you want to react to it. You're editing that video. Because you can't ask your employees to stay up all night although they do that actually, voluntarily via ask them via so I'll do it if I have to. Ali Abdaal 54:43 And like one thing that really strikes me about your videos is that basically every second there is something going on. And I can't help but continuing to watch it. And then the better part of me is thinking, Ah, I love like all of these different things that are going on to make me encourage and encourage me to keep on watching this, and the content itself is very valuable. And so I think one thing that we dwell on this on on my channel is that the content is broadly valuable. But we do basically nothing when it comes to the visual side of things. And it may as well be a podcast. Yes. And I think like that, anytime I see one of your videos, I feel like ridiculous inspired like, Oh, my God, like the amount of post production has gone into this. It's insane. Arun Maini 55:22 It's kind of the the way I describe it is a an aggregation of micro refinements. So it's like, all that stuff hasn't happened overnight. If you kind of go back through the channel and watch one video every year, you see a few new things each time. So like, the day that I decided, Okay, I'm going to spend more time on music and try to create moods with what I'm saying, the day I decided to put my face in a circle. So I'm visible at all times. And we've tried these experiments, looked at those graphs seen that they worked and then realised, okay, these are mainstays. Ali Abdaal 55:53 Is it like you have a gut feeling that when I put my face on the thing while showing overlay, it'll work? And then you act? And then you look at the data? Arun Maini 55:59 Yeah exactly that so you have a gut feeling. You try it. It works, or it doesn't work. And then you action it. Ali Abdaal 56:05 How can you tell like you adding your face versus not adding a face. It's not like you're releasing the same video face, no face. So you have a control. Arun Maini 56:13 It's tough. But like, I think when you spend so much time with the data, you have a gauge on how well a certain video will keep people. Okay. So for example, I know that if I make a camera comparison, they don't have good retention, like an average camera comparison might have 45 50% retention, okay, right. And so if you do a camera comparison, and it gets 55%, you're like, that is an outlier. Or if I do an unboxing, or a top 10, if I do a top 10, that's going to get really good retention. And so you'll know what to expect. Ali Abdaal 56:41 And in your top 10s, you start up or you start from number 10, rather than number one, always. And you go something like you know, and it starts off, it starts with A and then becomes a B and then becomes positively see. And it's like it's also, it's just so clever. Arun Maini 56:56 I spent a lot of time on the scripts. And the other thing I do actually is when I'm scripting, I'm thinking of three different people. Okay, so those three people I know in my life have different levels of I guess, tech enthusiasm. And so with every line, I've almost reached the stage where I'm scanning it being like, is this interesting to all these three people when they watch this when they watch this, but they watch this? Will they understand this? Is this funny to them? All that kind of stuff. And I think when you do that you end up with a script that is a little more broadly appealing than it would otherwise be. How much time do you spend on scripting? That's, that's most of what I do. Ali Abdaal 57:32 Okay, so like for a standard, let's say for a kind of Google Pixel versus iPhone 13 Pro camera comparison. 22 minute long video. Arun Maini 57:40 So that would is it 20 to 22 minutes? Yeah. Yeah, that was your toilet. Right? Ali Abdaal 57:45 That was my toilet break yeah, watching that double speed, obviously. Arun Maini 57:49 Oh. I think that was probably three and a half days of scripting. Ali Abdaal 57:54 Three and a half days. Are we talking eight hour days? Arun Maini 57:58 No, we're talking like 14 hour days. Ali Abdaal 58:00 We're talking like 42 hours spent on scripting a single video? Arun Maini 58:05 Ages and ages, because I do the initial kind of like, what I think is going to happen. Yeah, then I test the phones and kind of like it because remember, like what I'm saying, I am having to create my own findings. I'm not taking things and like doing, you know, passing them on. Yeah. So you have to make sure for every single thing you say it is correct. And that that is one thing that I almost wouldn't I wouldn't trust anyone else with because it's my name and my source as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I know how to test these products, but it takes time. Ali Abdaal 58:37 Bloody hell. What about for like a stunt? Like, see? So you did a video that was ways in which tech is bad? Or? I'm worried about him? Yes. Yeah, that was that was a bit of a departure from your anyone's life? Arun Maini 58:52 Yeah. You're not gonna like it's took about eight days of scripting? I think. Ali Abdaal 58:58 So about 100 hours of scripting. Arun Maini 59:00 Something like that. Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't keeping track. But as a long time. It is the kind of time that like, the practical part of me is thinking like, is this time well spent. But sometimes I kind of like I get carried away thinking about how viewers are gonna think, you know, I'm thinking about these three different categories of viewers and and then sometimes scripts get away away from you. It's like, okay, this should be a 12 minute video, and then you actually try and do it and you're like, Oh, my God, that's 2526 minutes. So sometimes things add up out of your control. And I don't tamper them because sometimes I'm like, It's okay. This is going to be a big project. This is going to do really well over time. It's going to hit the YouTube criteria. It's fine. We'll spend more time on it. Ali Abdaal 59:42 I was watching once watching an interview with Penn and Teller. You know, the magicians. Yeah. Where they were, it was it was at some kind of magic convention of some of some sort. Because that was super cool and interpose that magic back in the day. Arun Maini 59:55 I love close up magic. Ali Abdaal 59:58 exchanged some tricks sometimes. I actually have a few decks of cards in here that someone gifted anyway. Some someone asked like they did some, like ridiculous special on like David Letterman or something. And pen was describing how they did it. And they were like, I mean, we literally hired a cockroach firm, to put 10,000 cockroaches in this tank, shipped it across the Atlantic to the David Letterman Show, like three months before our appearance, built some stuff into the thing and just like a really elaborate process, and he said, and, and they said something like, often, magic is spending more time than anyone thinks is reasonable on doing the thing. And that was kind of what I'm thinking when you're like 50 hours of scripting for 20 minute camera comparison. 100 hours of scripting for a listicle about ways in which you're worried about tech like, yeah, that's just insane. They don't say that. Arun Maini 1:00:55 Maybe I don't maybe there's a lot of yeses, because I like you're doing your factual pass, you go through and you're like, Okay, I said that the pixels camera was better than the hyphens in this. So when you're checking that, you've then got to go take these phones out and just like take loads and loads of photos to make sure it's right. Yeah. And then you're doing like a fun pass other in a fun bit. And I'll be scattered in the right places. Like we plan a lot of the jokes we're going to make and like the things that are going to be thrown at me during the video and stuff like that, like, because we want to make sure that there are points of respite, because obviously, it's a tech video, right? It's going to be very heavy on information. And no one wants to sit through 25 minutes of pure, like, this isn't uni. Yeah. So you have to kind of think about these things. And you end up doing all these passes. And that adds so much time to it. Ali Abdaal 1:01:40 And yet, you're still making like two, sometimes three videos a week, sometimes more than that. Arun Maini 1:01:44 It's not three, it's probably a video a week right now. The goal is two videos a week or two really good videos a week, but I think I need more people to be able to do that. Ali Abdaal 1:01:52 Bloody hell. Okay. And then when you're testing the cameras, for example, you've got your camera guy who's like, filming you testing the cameras and stuff? Arun Maini 1:02:00 Yeah, our processes are efficient, given that we only have two people, but it could be more efficient if we had five. Yeah, I think I want to be in a position where I'm only doing the things that I want to do and the things that I need to do. And so right now, there are still a few situations where I'm not doing that. But I'm getting there. What I don't what I wouldn't want is like a huge corporate structure. Ali Abdaal 1:02:21 Yeah 20 people would like middle management. We've got a few of them. Absolute ball ache. Tell me more about your, about your process videos. Like I'm gonna I'm going full selfish mode. I just wanna I just want to learn from you here. Arun Maini 1:02:38 So before, I think most YouTube is, when you reach a certain size, you start planning videos backwards. So when you think about a video thinking about thumbnail title, would people click on it? And then from there, you're like, Okay, what's the content gonna be like? Is it engaging? Is it delivering value? Will people finish that video thinking, Whoa, I like this guy. And then at that point, then you're thinking, you take a step further back, it's like, Okay, what's the storyline? What's the subplot? How you keeping people throughout that video, engage, and then you work all the way back. And then that's the point where you've got your content, you know what your next step is, the way the normal the trigger point is either an idea I've had embed, or some past video that did really well that people really enjoy it. And they're like, can we have a part two? Or something someone else has done? That I think that's a really interesting idea. What if I applied it to phones or, you know, gadgets or whatever. Ali Abdaal 1:03:32 I really got a sense that there was a storyline because you were like, I'm gonna tell you about this product. But there's like, but there's a question here, like, who's it for? And it was like your you kept on that was like a thread going through going through the content. And all that stuff is the stuff that you do in your kind of multiple passes of going out. It's almost like writing a book. Arun Maini 1:03:54 It was Yeah, is in my head. Like, I never thought I'd write as much as I do. Like, when I was a kid, I thought I'll be doing something where I'm working on an Excel spreadsheet or something. It didn't occur to me that my job is basically video essays. Ali Abdaal 1:04:09 Video essays that's an interesting way of putting it. Arun Maini 1:04:12 I think I've always like I've moved into my own, like this tech YouTube and I do that yeah, but I think I'm moving more towards like the analytical side of things. Yeah, but I'm trying to break down things from an economics perspective. Ali Abdaal 1:04:25 Yeah, like you did a kind of Germany versus Samsung Samsung video, which was very interesting. He did like things he didn't know about Tesla but video was very interesting. This like kind of why why I have why humanity that way tech is destroying the world type. And I as seeing though that was I was just like really surprised was like, Oh, I wonder what this video is gonna be like, I was like Bloody hell. This was a really good video. Were you concerned moving away from the niche, inverted commas of phones into this more like analytical type stuff? Arun Maini 1:04:55 Yeah, I actually so at the start of my channel, the tech was very broad. And actually, so the focus was gaming consoles, because that's what I was interested in at the time. And then there was a point when I decided to focus on ferns, because I didn't want to have a fragmented audience, or what I was fine finding even early on is that because I was making videos on so many different things, I had 20% of my audience who wanted to see gaming consoles. 20% want to see headphones, 20% wanted to see phones. And that meant that every single time I posted a video, only 20% of people would like want to see that. And so I decided, actually, okay, phones, I'm interested in phones, there is, you know, reliable big recurring market. I'm going to focus on that. But then when you get to a certain size, being niche caps you Yeah, so I'm now starting to think about things like, I would like to cover laptops, I am interested in those two, I'll bring those in, or cars or other things like that. Do you use a teleprompter? I've started using a teleprompter two months ago. Ali Abdaal 1:05:55 What's that been like? Arun Maini 1:05:57 It helps. So I am obsessed with my videos, right? I script them to the word Yeah. And so if you're going to have that kind of production, a teleprompter makes so much sense. It reduces the kind of the stress on the day of filming. And it means you can get through it faster. And we've had scripts where for like, for some videos, I've sat there for four and a half hours straight, like just filming before the teleprompter, and that video you could do in like half the time with a teleprompter. Ali Abdaal 1:06:27 Wait a minute, you're filming for four and a half hours on a video? That's pretty scripted. Why does it take so long? Arun Maini 1:06:33 Because I start thinking about how I should be pronouncing certain things and what emphasis I need to put on what words and all of a sudden you start retaking your sentences again and again and again and again, and apologising to your camera man for having to kind of like redo the movement. And then also, it's like for these fun bits. So for example, I've got a video coming up where we're trying to make a phone levitate to just because I'm saying that the phone feels alive. And so at that point, we're like, okay, let's tie it to fishing wire. And let's lift it while I'm doing that. But that takes so much time to get right because you've got to get your inflection rates. And at the same time, you got to make sure that that's lifted, doesn't fall on you, the screen is facing the right way and add so much variables. And then we're trying to bring in like the cats every now and again for like in little breaks. And you can't control the cats very easily. So normally one once per video, I'm like going downstairs shouting Milo like several times, until he comes like a dig him up. Feed him. It just adds up. Ali Abdaal 1:07:31 Bloody hell. Okay, so you put an unreasonable amount of time and effort in scripting. And also it seems that unreasonable amount of time and filming to get all the things right. Yeah, yeah. And it's like how? I don't think anyone anyone watching your videos would would think that your 20 Minute video took four hours to film. Arun Maini 1:07:48 Yeah, yeah. Sometimes people like they leave comments like, sometimes I'll make a battery test video where I've got like eight phones on the table. And like, you can see their batteries run down. And people leave a comment like this man spent eight hours giving us this, you know, amazing video or something useful video. And what they don't realise is that eight hours was just the start of it to take to set up that table for that video was a four hour job in itself. Because you have to do things like have you ever seen these videos? So the camera is locked above the other battery ones? Yeah, well, it's like a time lapse of like Africa. So every single phone is taped to the table multiple times so that it doesn't budge. The camera, every hinge of the camera is taped together so that the camera doesn't budge. There's so many things that happen like we're using, like laser pointers to make sure it's perfectly vertical. Like you have to do image corrections to make sure there's no distortion. Like there's more, there's more to it, if you want it, because I'm quite perfectionist, like I want it to be a certain way. And when you're like that you're your own worst nightmare. Ali Abdaal 1:08:52 Presumably you weren't like this when you're making one video every day? No. Okay, when did this like kind of perfectionism develop? Arun Maini 1:09:00 Well, I always want I want to get better. Yeah. And so like, when you see an opportunity to get better, you take it and that's what leads you to having like, a lot of things to think about it. So like at the point where you decide, okay, my face is going to be in a circle throughout the video. Yeah. Then when you're filming you're aware of that and then you have to film in a different way you can't just like yeah, but if it makes the videos better you do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's Ali Abdaal 1:09:25 got to be done. Yeah, I mean, I I've had the same philosophy on like, I will I will basically do whatever it takes to make the video better. But I now I am now seeing just how much more there is to go in terms of making videos better because if I if I script for like two hours, I think oh my god, this is like ridiculously scripted scripted video. Two hours. Yeah, genuinely. Like my the videos. The most scripted video I've done was my first video that went viral, viral, which was on how to study for exams. And that was probably about six hours of scripting because it was like a literature review going over the game going on. Finding the studies finding the graphs, and then maybe an extra, like 20 hours in the Edit to animate the graphs and stuff for the first time. And I've never put so much effort into videos since then. Arun Maini 1:10:10 Unbelievable. There's hours just on comprehensible to me. Yeah. Ali Abdaal 1:10:15 I mean, you're just thinking, oh my gosh, like, I thought I was doing a good job in terms of trying to try to make the videos kind of, Arun Maini 1:10:24 I don't take this as me doing a good job. I take this as me not maybe using my time as efficiently as I should be. I don't think it's good. You know, when you're trying to like build a brand and stuff. Yeah. And do other things. I think you have to let go a bit. I think you said something to me actually about if someone else can do the job. 80% as well, you should let them. Yeah, it's tough for me to get to that. But I can see why. Ali Abdaal 1:10:46 Yeah, I think I've been thinking about that phrase a lot like, so. When I first made of what when I did my first kind of successful business at uni, helping people get into med school, I made the mistake of not delegating enough. And the advice I then came across a few years later was this thing of if someone can do the job 80% as well as you can, you should delegate it to them. Because your time is worth more, you can do more more things. And I think when it comes to growing a business like that, that makes a lot of sense. And I took that advice when it came to YouTube as well. Because my my philosophy on this in the past was, again optimising for quantity. And recognising that there is an algorithm to feed there is a beast to feed. I kind of felt that the value for my videos was not in the edit. It was not in a matt D Avella style cinematography, or Peter McKinnon stuff, cinematography, or Mr. Who's the boss 2021 style, like something happening every one second? It was in providing somewhat valuable information and doing it with some kind of like friendly, friendly kind of vibes. Yeah. And so that led to the that those axioms led to I think, okay, cool, I can then therefore outsource editing, because the editors, it's not that important. Background music doesn't really matter. We'll just slap whatever from Epidemic Sound, I've got a list of kind of songs that I like, I don't like drums call that that creates a vibe, and a few like tweaks here and there, where it meant that I can turn around a video with like, a lot of our best videos have had 20 minutes of bullet point scripting, and then me just spilling because I'm usually talking about stuff that I know sufficiently well. If someone asked me about time management or about productivity, or personal finance or money, whatever, I can just like talk about it. And that has gotten us to this point, but there is that thing of what's gotten you here won't necessarily get you there. And I think when you're when you're competing and like world class leagues, the whole 80% delegation thing. I wonder if that stops being effective. Arun Maini 1:12:43 I think there's also an element of I think the reason I don't personally adopt it, is because some part of me thinks, what's the goal there? Yeah, it's obviously created with this idea of like, earn the most money. But that's not really me. Like, I don't do things to earn money, I have enough. If you enjoy certain parts of the job, and you think you'll have a better output from it, you'll get better comments and better engagement. And I would rather do that even if it earns me less. Ali Abdaal 1:13:08 Yeah. that makes a lot of sense. What is your goal for for YouTube these days? Arun Maini 1:13:16 I think recently, I have started thinking about things like legacy, and like, what I want my brand to mean, and things like that, which is a very luxurious position to be in. I think I'm not worried about numbers or getting more subscribers, it'd be great to do. And I'm sure the day that I hit 10 million is going to be amazing. And I'm going to celebrate and yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. But it's a bit bigger than that, like I am thinking about things like books, apps, other things that I want to just try. Why? I guess I never would have thought I had the opportunity to and now that I do, it's, it'd be fun, it'd be different. I might be good at it. And I really enjoy it. It'd be a new experience, if nothing else. Ali Abdaal 1:14:00 So I was gonna ask you this, like, how do you think about your brand slash career is that let's say over the next five to 10 years? Arun Maini 1:14:06 It's tough, you know, because like, I think a lot of the growth has happened recently. So I'm still taking in the fact that I have a large YouTube channel. Now it's new to me. So I haven't had much time to think about these things. But I like to think of myself as a teacher. I think if I had to identify myself as one thing, it would be someone who educates people. And so I would like my brand to mean or be associated with a teacher. Okay, and so whether that means through books, apps, I'm not too sure what the mechanism is yet. But I have that kind of vision of like, being I guess, synonymous with technology or education. Ali Abdaal 1:14:46 When did you realise that, that's what you wanted to do? Arun Maini 1:14:49 Very recently, Ali Abdaal 1:14:50 How did you come to the realisation? Arun Maini 1:14:52 I have like, so I've got this new management team. And I think while I'm kind of stuck in the nitty gritty, they're very good at sort of seeing the bigger picture. And we have these kind of weekly calls where they're used to seeing the journey and the trajectory of YouTubers becoming businesses. And so they can kind of like impart a bit of that wisdom, or like, this is what has worked for this person, this person found this thing really fun, considerate. Okay. And so I have considered it. Ali Abdaal 1:15:19 So how did that land on teacher? Arun Maini 1:15:22 They asked me at one point like, what what do you see yourself as? And it was then kind of a moment of self reflection, where I was like, Okay, if you boiled it down, that is what I do. I'm trying to like, make tech fun. Ali Abdaal 1:15:35 And you see that as being like a teacher type role. Interesting. Arun Maini 1:15:38 I think like if I had, if I was put into a school, and someone said, you have a class to teach of, like, 20 kids, I think I do a really good job. And not saying that that is the job that I want to do. You know, you can obviously through my camera, I can teach millions. Yeah. But that that is actually what I like. Ali Abdaal 1:15:56 So I had similar realisation about probably in the last year, where I was trying to answer this question of what the hell do I want to do with my life? And one of the strategies I came across was the idea of asking yourself, what do you want written on your gravestone? And I thought, I thought about this, I was like, Okay, let's actually take this seriously, what don't want read on it on my gravestone, and I came very quickly, I was like, Okay, some combination of good father, good husband, and inspirational teacher. And I was like, Ooh, that's interesting. I hadn't quite realised that. Because at the time I was really thinking into, do I want to do medicine don't want to do medicine. And then realising that, if that's what I want read on my gravestone, and we were to work back from that, like, do I care about practising medicine? Or do I care more about teaching it? And I realised that all of the times I've had the most fun in hospitals, and a uni has been when I was teaching other medical students, rather than when I was doing the job. I was like, Oh, that's interesting. And then reflecting back on my life, again, he is doing like math, tutoring, when I was like, 14 Onwards and private tutoring, and like a bunch of teaching and med school and a bunch of teaching as a doctor, and YouTube is teaching as you figured out, I was like, Oh, this actually, you know, that's the thing that gives me fulfilment, therefore, let's try and do more of this stuff. Arun Maini 1:17:11 And that's actually changed your whole approach? Ali Abdaal 1:17:13 Yeah. Because now I'm, like, great, given that, that's like the end goal.. Arun Maini 1:17:19 To be dead? To be dead, having been a good father, good husband, and a good teacher. And then that actually simplifies my life a bit, because now I don't need to be wedded to, for example, practising medicine, I don't need to be wedded to for example, you know, we've been working with his business coach, which has actually been been very helpful, trying to figure out what's, what's the core focus of the business, and landed on the phrase that sounds kind of cringe, to help people live their best life by creating inspiring educational content. Okay, and yeah, the more the more times I say it, the more comfortable I become with with saying it, but that that focus kind of goes with the teaching thing that ultimately that's what we're trying to do. And it means that like, yes, it would be cool to, you know, we're launching a stationery line, it would be cool to make my own keyboard, it would be cool to have my own everyday carry bag. But that's those are all side quests. And I can recognise them as being side quests. And it's just a, it's just a little bit of spice. Where's the core focus? The main thing is, is related to teaching. I like the ideology. But I find it hard to, like, make my end goal, something that will only happen when I'm not here anymore. If you see what I mean, this idea of aiming for what's going to be on your gravestone, yeah, it won't matter to you, you won't be able to experience it. I think I prefer the idea of aiming for what do you want your life to be those kinds of things in 10 years? Because that is an end goal that I can experience. Ali Abdaal 1:18:42 Ah, got it. So I agree gravestone stuff, you know, what are people gonna say at your funeral? That kind of vibes is all very, very, very, like long term thinking. There's another another thing that I've been using recently, more, kind of short to medium term, which is, what does my ideal ordinary week look like, one year from now, five years from now 10 years from now. And that's a lot more about like, actually, I would go in on my calendar and fast forward to like 2026 and be like, alright, like, Let's block out the sorts of things I'd like to be doing. And through that, I realised Oh, cool. I like the idea of having one day where all of my kind of in person collaboration with the team as I was like, in person, right, let's build an in person team rather than a remote team realise that oh, I want to be doing like squash and tennis and badminton, like, you know, once a week Cool, let's block that in. Blocks of deep work deep work deep work deep work where the thing that I enjoy doing is reading writing and teaching Cool, let's block that deep work. Oh, just like focus blocks of work before where I'm not interrupted by calls and things like that. Arun Maini 1:19:44 That feels high pressure high pressure Ali Abdaal 1:19:47 High pressure? Arun Maini 1:19:47 Yeah, like telling myself that certain amounts of time are going to be deep work. Ali Abdaal 1:19:51 Oh yeah, there's a book by Cal Newport called Deep Work, which is what that references was basically like, like, if you want to do something well, you need to have an intro Two blocks of time to do it. It sounds like your calendar is fairly deep working by default. If you can have 100. Arun Maini 1:20:06 I'd feel intimidated if I sat down like right time to do some deep work. Ali Abdaal 1:20:13 Yeah. How do you think of what you want, you're kind of weak to look like that's a year from now. Arun Maini 1:20:20 The main thing for me is I'd like to have a little more control over my time, you know, this whole fear of like blocking off days and things. I think that's my one current barrier, which I'm trying to kind of get over. Because I have enough as it is, I am happy. I'm content, like I'm living a good life. And I think that kind of FOMO I get from like, missing out on potential things that could be happening, it won't really matter in terms of my end goal. So I just need to get better at kind of like separating that, and I'm good. Ali Abdaal 1:20:50 Being more kept being okay with like, signing up to a friend's wedding. Yeah, yeah. Even if it means saying no to a helicopter trip. Arun Maini 1:20:56 Yeah, yeah. Ali Abdaal 1:20:57 How do you how do you think about money? Arun Maini 1:20:59 Mostly, I use it just for convenience. So like, it might mean that I could take an Uber instead of walking, or it just allows you to live your life in the way that you want to live your life. You could order in food one time, instead of like, needing to cook yourself, these kinds of things. I don't buy a lot of possessions. I get sent a lot because of my work. But I personally like very irregularly. Because I mean, the things that I enjoy, and things that I look forward to are basically just all experiences, like this weekend is worth more to me than any like MacBook. Ali Abdaal 1:21:33 Yeah, you know, there's this this whole idea of hedonic adaptation that once you hit like, Whatever, whatever you gain, you become accustomed to that thing. And then you, then you need more of that thing to, to satisfy yourself. I find that for me, the more money I make, the more the goalpost shifts, the more the bar for how much money I need to be comfortable starts to suddenly rack up. And it's like, oh, you know, I thought I was actually pretty happy in 1000 pound a month rental place, but 4000 a month gets you a really nice rental place. And so I'm only going to look at what 10,000 A month gets you like that level of stuff. Yeah. Do you? Do you find yourself doing that as well? Arun Maini 1:22:12 Yeah, it's actually like, I think about hedonic adaptation a lot. And I actually try not to do it, because I think it leads you to a life of like living in a huge house with a enormous suite of cars, on your own. Feeling like you can't even hang out with normal people, because your life is so far removed from theirs, that you're different. So I don't think it's a good path to go down. It's really hard to separate yourself from it. It's like, if you could afford a Lamborghini, why would you not buy a Lamborghini? That those are internal conversations that I'm sure like most top YouTubers will have with themselves. But I mean, the way I like look at cars is like, Okay, I'll get a crummy car. And then two years later, I'll get a medium car, and then I'll get a slightly nicer one. It's like a nice one. Like, there's no rush to get to that end goal. Ali Abdaal 1:23:01 And so even if you could theoretically afford a Lamborghini, you're like, working up to the buying of a Lamborghini, potentially, if that's what you're into? Yeah, rather than just going straight for it, because you can. Arun Maini 1:23:09 Yeah. And I also like, the way I see houses is like, a big house. You can only be in one room at any one time. I didn't like I didn't see the point. Yeah, I quite like the idea of less time spent hoovering floors on you know, like three different stories, and more time just doing things I want to do. Ali Abdaal 1:23:28 I mean, the value of the big houses and being able to host people, I think, yeah, but Arun Maini 1:23:31 then it's very easy to like, get an Airbnb and just do the same. That's what I'm doing tomorrow. Oh, yeah. And actually, that way, you can have different locations, every time you have a party and have more different experiences. Ali Abdaal 1:23:44 Do you think about that, like other than the car thing? Do you think about the hedonic adaptation in other aspects of Arun Maini 1:23:49 Yeah, I think about it a lot when it comes to tech. So I made this video, right, I'm worried about humanity. And the underlying theme is that we are choosing ways of life that our highest stimulation, right? Yeah. Everything around us is becoming higher stimulation. Did you see the meta, Facebook rebranding as meta because they're trying to build a metaverse. Okay. Yeah, I think Facebook has changed names to meta, right. And the idea is they're trying to build a world where everyone has almost a real life experience with people from their homes, where you can put on glasses, for example, connect with people in a way that you've never connected before, to the point where it's indistinguishable from actually being with these people. And the point is, we're moving towards higher and higher levels of stimulation. But hedonic adaptation means that we will adapt to those levels of stimulation. And so we won't be happier because of it, but the only thing we will feel is let down by other people. So the more the stimulation level rises, the more that relative to that the people around us for. Ali Abdaal 1:24:56 Is it kind of like when you're used to listening to things at 2x speed and you realise people don't talk at 2x speed and there 's a part of you that feel like urgh hurry up? Yeah. 100% I forced myself with my friends with some of the friends I really care about to listen at one time speed for that reason. Why don't you move to London? Arun Maini 1:25:13 I was born in Nottingham, I've grown up in Nottingham. It's like my hometown. One day, I want to move to London. But I want to do it for the right reasons, not because I'm like, tied to my friends, because they've got jobs, they're busy. It's not like, I'm going to come here. And then all of a sudden, my social life is gonna like rocket forward. I'll do it when it feels right. Ali Abdaal 1:25:31 There was something you said in a video you said, YouTube is a privilege of a job to have, but can also breed an attitude that creates relentless unhappiness. What do you mean by that? Arun Maini 1:25:41 He quoting me to myself, I think is yourself. It's a privilege of a job to have in that you can work from anywhere, and you can pretty much do anything. And how many people can say that. But at the same time, it's almost like that whole stimulation thing, the dopamine hit the hedonic adaptation in that, like, you very quickly adjust to that. And then you start thinking about what's next. So you become comfortable with the fact that you have such a great lifestyle and flexibility that you do. And you start aiming for higher and higher numbers, because it's so metric driven. It's that idea. And it's a trap that I think most YouTubers at some point fall into. And I think it leads us to making content that we're not proud of like your clickbait video. Yeah. Because you're not even thinking at that point about viewers, you're just thinking, Oh, I've got to get more subscribers. And the way to get more subscribers is this, this works. This is a data driven, I'm just gonna do it. Ali Abdaal 1:26:34 How do you feel when you get a video that's like tanking relative to your stuff? That's like 10 out of 10 on the on the stats, like what goes through your mind when, if that ever happens? Arun Maini 1:26:45 To be honest, recently, I've been pretty good at like, knowing when a video is not going to do that. Well, I haven't been surprised for a while actually. I used to be very tight to it. I used to be like, it would ruin my day. And I felt only as good as the last video i'd uploaded. So that's a YouTuber thing. Yeah. But more and more now, I'm pretty much like, I'll post a video and I'm like this will get a million in first day, this will get 2 million in the first I'll know like, roughly. Ali Abdaal 1:27:09 There's another thing I want to put to you, which I thought was interesting. He said, As as the channel was getting bigger, it felt like this continuous race to remain relevant among some of the most creative, hardworking people on the planet. And that, that really struck home with me because I feel this continuous pressure to remain relevant. When I was starting out on YouTube. It's like, you know, I felt like that scrappy startup, you know, just just kind of having fun. Oh, my God, oh, my god, things are working. Now that I'm a reasonable size, I am now the incumbent like the old school Boomer guy, who is like struggling, I feel struggling to remain relevant. What do you feel like you're at the top, I don't feel I'm at the top top. But I feel I'm sort of in the in the major leagues with people who are in this sort of personal development type space, other than in tech. There are very few YouTubers who are big today who were big 10 years ago. And all these thoughts of, you know, what if my videos stopped becoming relevant, people would have noticed and people stopped caring? What if my whole kind of this internet career falls down because of the fact that people stopped watching my stuff? Because it no longer identify with what I say? Do you worry about that kind of stuff at all? Arun Maini 1:28:10 I think I'm really lucky in the genre I picked. Because I think we're tech like by its very nature, providing you're covering the latest tech, you are relevant. And so as long as your videos are interesting and informative, and people trust your opinion, you will continue to remain relevant. And other than taking it for granted. But like, I still wanna make every video better than the last. But if the next iPhone comes out, and I cover it, I think it's safe to assume that people will watch it. Like I I sympathise with gamers, you know, like gamers can build up like millions of subscribers for one game like Minecraft. And then when interest with Minecraft falls, their entire channel just falls apart. Yeah. And they have to switch game and pretty much like start audience from scratch. That's horrific. Ali Abdaal 1:28:51 Yeah. Yeah, that's really tricky. I guess Tech is one of those nice things where as I think you also tech age as well in that in that as a as a creator Mark has is like more of an authority on tech than he was 10 years ago. Whereas in other things like I've talked about in the student market as a student you're less of an authority 10 years after graduation then you were at the point of graduation where you had all this like wisdom about what it's like being a student. Arun Maini 1:29:16 I never thought of that. No, you're right, you're right. The ceiling the age ceiling is very high. Ali Abdaal 1:29:22 I often get messages from one of the youtubers like new YouTubers starting out people Instagram people on Tik Tok, asking for kind of how how to become more confident on camera. You come across as very confident on camera and this sort of like four hours of filming if we ignore that side of things you do seem seem pretty confident on camera, which strikes me is probably not how you were when you first started out. What would be your kind of top tips for someone looking to become more more camera confident? Arun Maini 1:29:50 I think like It's the scariest thing but you have to just try it. And I think try it almost ready to receive criticism and then unmask that criticism into some useful feedback. So it's like to start with like, when I first put my face on, I knew that there was going to be some comments there that I wasn't excited to read. Yeah. And it was horrifying that that thought, but I was like, well, there'll be useful. So they'll people, like, you idiot, sit further away from the camera. And if you take away, you idiot, that's actually a really useful feedback. And then I did that. And then it's like, get your microphone out the frame. And I'm like, okay, and then I research where do you put microphones? Oh, underneath. Okay, great. I'll do that. And slowly, but surely you start to move towards the quality that you're actually proud of. But you've got to accept the fact that to start with it won't be? Yeah, because you're watching people who've been doing it for 10 years, for example. Ali Abdaal 1:30:41 Yeah, a lot of artists talk about this about how if you're starting out with drawing, it feels very demotivating. Because you know what good looks like. And you know that that's not what you're doing. And other than that, there was this book I was reading a couple of days ago called the gain and the gap. And how, essentially, if you're, if you focus on measuring the gap between where you are and where you want to be, that can be very demotivating. Whereas if you focus on measuring the gain, like where have Where are you compared to where you were, you can still keep where you want to be in mind, but you don't fixate on, you don't fixate on the gap, I guess, like the the advice I usually give to people is also you will suck at the start. And that's okay. A like no one really cares. Like, it's a it's not the end of the world. And you have to you do have to kind of put in your reps to get better at the thing. Yeah, and you put in your rep for your kind of 300 videos before, or kind of like a video every single day for six months. And once you've put in the reps. And if you're thinking about marginal improvement over time, you just naturally get very good at doing the thing when you've been doing it for long enough. Arun Maini 1:31:41 Yeah. And if you feel like you're still not sure all you need to do is to look at the creators at the start providing the Hammond delete to the whole video. Yeah, everyone will have been bad. Ali Abdaal 1:31:52 Yeah, I think that's, that's often quite one of the videos we show in our YouTube of course is Marquez is like 100th video where he's like, right video number 100. Yeah, yeah, I want to give a good shout out to my 74 subscribers. This has been fantastic. I'd love to end with some like quick, fiery type questions. Okay, so quickfire. Um, what advice would you give to your younger self? Arun Maini 1:32:21 It'll be okay. Ali Abdaal 1:32:25 Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your career? Arun Maini 1:32:27 Probably Marquez. So MKBHD he was one of the tech channels. I watched when I was younger than when I was kind of with my friends. And we were talking about being a YouTuber and getting 10,000 subscribers and things like that. So from a very early age, I kind of He provided a framework for what, how it could work. Ali Abdaal 1:32:45 What's one tip for someone who's looking for success? Arun Maini 1:32:48 Start with something you enjoy, and that you're passionate about, and that you'd want to be the best at. Ali Abdaal 1:32:53 What does the first and last hour of your day look like? Arun Maini 1:32:55 So both of them more recently, without phones. So my entire waking day is with phones. And the first two are like, get out of bed first. Start your day and then turn off aeroplane mode. And the last hour of my day is normally like just lying in a dark room somewhere. Okay, it's the thing about sleep. Like I've had a lot of problems in the past with sleep. Yeah. And one of the piece of advice that's really helped is trying to sync your life with the real life cycle of the sun. And that involves the brightness of the rooms you're in. So I look like a bit of a freak. But if someone calls me for example, like when I'm about to sleep, I will just be sitting in darkness. Ali Abdaal 1:33:39 And that helps you asleep. What material item item under 100 pounds. Could you not live without slash has added disproportionate value to your life? Arun Maini 1:33:48 It would be under 100 on eBay. Okay. The ember mug. Oh, really? So I drink a lot of tea. Yep. And when I drink my tea, I like the reassurance that it's not going to go cold. I enjoy it at 62 degrees. Yeah, so my Ember mug allows me to kind of drink it out. That's fair play. Ali Abdaal 1:34:08 I had an ember mug for a few weeks. And I never found myself using it. It would always like go cold on the wire and like heating up. Arun Maini 1:34:14 So I like having one mug because then it says washing up. Yeah. So like, every time I've used this mug, I'll just rinse it there and then put it to the side. So that means that there's no loads of mugs piling up, for example. So it's a two in one. Ali Abdaal 1:34:28 Yeah, they recently released a white one which I was thinking of getting because I prefer white vibes than Dr. Ideas. Oh, yeah. What book would you recommend to anyone? Arun Maini 1:34:38 I actually really enjoyed Steve Bartlett's book, Happy Sexy Millionaire. Ali Abdaal 1:34:45 If you lost everything. Let's say YouTube channels gone. Famous garden. money's gone, but you still got all the skills. How would you start from scratch? What would you be doing? Arun Maini 1:34:54 I think what I do is like, jump straight back in after my mourning period. I would probably, I mean, algorithms now are very favourable to people who know how to make good content. So even if you'd like to start a brand new channel, if you make a great video, you're very quickly be categorised into this channel makes good videos. And so you have lots of situations where like big creators will start second channels, and those channels will very quickly catch up or get a surge in subscribers because of that. So even though I feel like I've got loads of capital that I built up, he wouldn't be lost. Because the main asset is the skill set. Ali Abdaal 1:35:29 What quote, or mantra do you live by? Arun Maini 1:35:31 I actually don't love quotes. I feel like they sacrifice practicality for sounding cool. Not at the time. Ali Abdaal 1:35:41 And finally, journey or destination journey. Nice. Alright. Aaron, thank you so much for for coming on. It's been an absolute joy been amazing. I've learned so much about YouTube and stuff. And I feel like I'm not going to go into hold and be like, Oh my god, like I need to reassess if I thought two hours of scripting was a long time to spend on a video. Arun Maini 1:36:01 I need to reassess because 100 is not okay. Ali Abdaal 1:36:04 That's how magic happens. You spend an unreasonable amount of time on something that other people wouldn't, wouldn't do. And yeah, I'd say that's a big part of why you're why we've gotten here. But yeah, thank you for being so honest. Thank you for being so transparent with everything it's been really great. Arun Maini 1:36:18 Thank you. Ali Abdaal 1:36:18 And we'll put links to all of our and stuff in the video description for whatever that's worth your scale, but hopefully a little trickle a little trickle of people can find can find your channel. Right that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this episode. As much as I did links to all the things we talked about including Aaron's YouTube channel and all the All That Jazz will be in the show notes or in the video description. If you're watching this on YouTube, and wherever you're watching this, please do please we'd love for you to leave a review on Apple podcasts. That's where the reviews matter. Even if you don't use an Apple device even if you're not listening on Apple podcasts, you will find a review link in the show notes. And we'd love for you to give the show give the episode give the the podcast preferably a five star review and some comments as well because it helps more people discover the podcast anyway. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great evening and I'll see you hopefully in the next episode. Bye bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai