- Hey guys, welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here, my name is Ali,
I'm a junior doctor working in Cambridge.
And in this video, I wanna share three books
that have really changed my life over the last few years
and I'll be sharing some of the lessons that I got from each
of these along with some quotes.
Before we get started, I just wanna say a big thank you
to Blinkist, for sponsoring this video.
They're a fantastic app, that lets you read summaries
of popular nonfiction books so you can learn the lessons
from them and at the end of the video I'll talk about
the value that I derived from Blinkist and how it fits
into my life as a doctor slash YouTuber.
But yeah, let's just get started by talking
about book number one.
This is THE 4-HOUR WORK WEEK by Tim Ferriss, subtitle;
Escape the 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich.
Essentially, this book is the author talking about his story
but also giving some tips about how you can,
if you want to, you can quit your job
and set up businesses
with automated streams of income, and essentially creating
a system whereby your businesses are generating you money,
without you having to physically do work for that,
and then you're able to travel the world and live this sort
of lifestyle that everyone thinks is just the exclusive
domain of rich people.
Like for example, when I was growing up,
I just had in my head this vague notion that one day,
it would be cool to be rich.
And if I were to really examine that, I would have thought,
oh well, I guess 'cause if you're rich,
then you can like, travel and stuff and then you don't have
to work and stuff.
And the idea that he talks about here is that, actually
a lot of this whole life of a rich person i.e.,
you know, just the idea of being able to travel,
live on a beach in Thailand, all this sort of stuff
is available surprisingly cheaply.
Like for just a few thousand dollars per month,
you can live like a really really really rich person
in places like Thailand and like Argentina
and other cool places like that.
Rather than you know,
do this whole thing that we all get trained to do,
i.e., work really hard, go to a good university,
get a fantastic job, work super super super hard
and then make loads of money so that when you retire,
then you can be happy.
Rather than doing that, instead it's more about you know,
why are we, why are we working to retire when we're in
our 60s and we've got osteoarthritis in both our knees?
Instead, why don't we take those 20 years of retirement,
and spread them out throughout our life.
So, he he suggests that we all try this thing
of mini retirements, where each year you take a few months
off, and you go travelling while running your business
remotely from your laptop or whatever,
which sounds all scammy and stuff.
But if you have even a passing interest in entrepreneurship,
or setting up your own business or if the idea of being able
to travel the world, while your businesses generate money
while you sleep, if that seems even remotely intriguing
to you, then you should definitely read this book,
to be honest you've probably read it already.
But, the impact it's really had on me, is that this has been
the book that has pretty much single-handedly allowed
me to set up my business.
So I set up a company while I was in medical school
six years ago, 2013, six years ago now.
And we've run courses for medical school applicants,
then made like an online question bank,
and some online courses and all this stuff.
And that company's been doing really well,
it's done six figures in revenue,
pretty much every year since it started,
with five figure corporation tax bills,
thank you Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
And I was able to run that company alongside,
studying medicine at Cambridge and doing reasonably
well in my exams,
because of the stuff that I learned in these books.
All the productivity tips and tricks,
things like outsourcing to remote workers,
that was a big reason as to why some of our question banks
are really successful, a big reason as to why my own
mental health wasn't completely destroyed by you know,
the challenge of running a company alongside
being a medical student.
So this was all the stuff that I learned from this book.
I'll stop waffling all about it, but yeah, any interest
at all in entrepreneurship or anything like that definitely
give this a read and check out his podcast,
The Tim Ferriss Show, is absolutely wonderful.
So yeah, let's move on to book number two.
Alright, this is a tiny book called,
SHOW YOUR WORK, by Austin Kleon and this has been another
book that has been really pivotal to my life.
It's really small it, took me about half an hour to read
it on Kindle.
And actually I only I only bought these physical copies
so that I could show them off in this video,
but yeah, I'm gonna have this around the house now I'm gonna
be revisiting the lessons in it whenever I pick it up.
Anyway, this has been a really pivotal book in my life,
because, for a long time like ever since I started
medical school and started running this company, 6med,
I'd been sort of toying with the idea of setting up
a personal blog and kind of writing about some
of the lessons that I gained and you know book reviews
and things like that and I'd never been able to get
over the fear of personal, like self promotion.
That you know, it's people are gonna judge me people
are gonna think I'm an arrogant narcissistic twat for having
the audacity to have a blog you know, with my domain
like aliabdaal.com I mean who's got their own name
as a domain name unless you're like super rich
and super famous blah blah blah.
I used to have all these negative thoughts about this whole
stuff and then in January 2016 I read SHOW YOUR WORK,
by Austin Kleon and that completely changed
the game for me.
It made me realise that actually,
even if you're not an expert in anything,
just the fact that you have done anything at all means,
that you can then write about that experience
and there will be people somewhere in the world
who'll find that helpful.
So for example, setting up a company in med school,
like you know, it's it's not a very common thing
and it's a sort of thing a lot of people would be interested
in, therefore if I just write about it,
and I can share the lessons that I've learnt
and just kind of help people.
And that's the main idea, that this book says is that,
by sharing your work, with the world you are working
towards helping people,
and that is gonna be an inherent good.
So after reading this, I started my own blog,
I started writing a few posts that year and I think
if it hadn't been for this book, I wouldn't have even set up
this YouTube channel because, starting that blog
was the small step, that made me comfortable with the idea
of putting myself out there.
And you know, I've had so many messages from people
asking advice for starting a YouTube channel,
and oh how do you get over the fear?
And there really isn't a way to get over the fear,
but I think you know, taking small steps reading this book,
lets you see that actually there isn't really much to be
afraid of, and sharing yourself and your work with the world
is only really gonna a good thing if the message
that you're sharing is positive.
So yeah, I've now had in the realm of like over over
2000 messages and comments from people all around the world
who've been inspired or have been you know have learned
something from the content that I've put out from the work
that I've shared, I've shown and I think if it weren't
for this book that I read three years ago none
of this would have happened.
So, thank you Austin Kleon for encouraging me to become
more okay with the idea of putting myself out there.
If this is something that you ever you ever thought about,
if you have something to say, if you think you might
have something to say, if you like the idea of maybe
writing stuff and sharing it with the world,
even if you don't if you're any kind of if you'd make
any kind of content at all,
if you're if you're an artist if you're a painter,
if you're a writer, any anything like that,
you're really really benefit from reading this book,
because it's it takes like half an hour to read,
there's no time at all.
You can buy on Amazon, I'll stick a link in the description
below, and you'll love it, it will change your life
like it did mine, I hope.
And last but obviously not least, is ANYTHING YOU WANT.
This again really tiny book by Derek Sivers,
that takes like half an hour to read as well,
40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur.
And yeah, it's got the word entrepreneur in the title,
but even if you're not an entrepreneur,
I think you can still gain a lot from this book.
Pretty much anyone everyone everyone should read this book,
because it's a lot of lessons for life,
not just for entrepreneurship.
Anyway, this had an enormous impact on me as well,
and I can honestly say that this really changed my life.
Derek Sivers is a guy, he set up a company called CD Baby
many years ago, grew it to like an 80-man operation,
with millions and millions in revenue, then sold it for like
$20 million and you know, gave that money to like this
Charitable Trusts for musical education stuff like that.
Anyway, in this book, he talks about his story of how
he got started with the company,
but also, a very counterintuitive approach to business
and also to life i.e., not chasing growth all the time,
and actually just trying to make something that you enjoy
running and you enjoy the process of, that you're having
fun and that you're helping people.
Now that's such a novel thing in the world you know,
where every startup is just aiming to get
that billion-dollar valuation aiming for growth at all costs
but this was like a very nice very nice thing
and for me this is a book that I'll always hold really dear,
because when I was in my fourth year, approaching the end
of my fourth year of medical school, I'd been running
my company, 6med, for that for like three years
at that point.
And we'd been growing in terms of revenue every year,
in terms of student numbers, it was taking up more and more
of my time.
But then around 2016, our growth started to stagnate
and even dip a little.
I'd never really experienced anything like that before,
where you know, you've grown something and it keeps
on growing and then suddenly it stops and then you're like,
oh wow, it's on the decline.
And this made me really really sad during
the summer holidays of my fourth year and I can remember
kind of lying in bed awake thinking you know,
whatever you know what have I done?
Where I've gone wrong?
Have I screwed up my life by throwing away this fantastic
opportunity I had?
And then I came across this book.
There's one quote in particular that I wanna share from here
and it's on in this chapter, yeah okay.
So in this chapter he's talking about how sometimes
MBA types you know, people with MBAs
Masters in Business Administration would ask me,
What's your growth rate?
What's your retained earnings rate as a percentage of gross?
What are your projections for your company?
And he's talking about his own company, I'd just say,
"I have no idea.
"I don't even know what some of that means.
"I started this as a hobby to help my friends, and
"that's the only reason it exists.
"There's money in the bank and I'm doing fine,
so no worries."
And then he goes on to say, and this is probably
my favourite quote of all time and a quote
that I return to many times a month whenever
I'm feeling down or whenever I am feeling like explain
in a minute here's here's the quote.
"Never forget why you're really doing what you're doing.
"Are you helping people?
"Are they happy?
"Are you happy?
"Are you profitable?
Isn't that enough?"
And this is just like, if there are if there are three lines
like you know, any time I read this,
it just makes me feel infinitely better,
because like doing stuff like running
a business, where you're aiming for growth in revenues
and profits and stuff and also now this thing of having
a YouTube channel having this like social media following,
having an email list, and everything that I'm now doing
in my life with the exception of my you know,
full-time job of being a doctor.
All these other things, are all geared towards making stuff,
and then trying to grow the brand or the your subscriber
count or the revenue or whatever.
And that can be quite I don't wanna say stressful,
I don't like the word stressful, it can be quite
a it's it's it's something that that often plays on my mind,
and I know from speaking to other people doing this sort
of stuff that it plays in their minds as well,
and the idea being that whenever you're relaxing
or spending time with friends or family and stuff,
you're sort of in the back of your mind you're thinking,
you know, I could be making a video right now,
and if I you know, if I don't show now that that video
this week, then you know the algorithms is not gonna rank
my channel highly enough or you know, I could be writing
a blog post for 6med about how to get to into medical school
right now and then that'll rank us highly for search engine
optimization then more people are gonna find out,
of course and then we'll get more revenue,
and you just kind of go down this spiral where anytime
you're not working you feel super super super guilty for it
and you can't really enjoy life because you have
this amazing thing that you've somehow you know,
by the Grace of God you've got this YouTube channel
or this company and you know you have to keep putting work
into them to make them grow but you also wanna live a life
on the side.
And just this this quote it's just it's just amazing like,
"Never forget why you're really doing what you're doing.
"Are you helping people?
"Are they happy?
" Are you happy?
"Are you profitable?
Isn't that enough?"
So, whenever I find myself thinking, oh you know,
I should make another video so I can something
about ad revenues or oh, my ad revenues have dropped
this month 'cause I haven't made an iPad video in a while,
or any anything like that.
I just, you know, open this book on my Kindle,
find my highlighted quote and just read that,
because it just makes me appreciate that you know,
the revenue isn't important you know,
I'm enjoying what I'm doing which is fantastic.
I've got this amazing thing going on the side
and in addition to my full-time job which
I also quite enjoy.
It's making a reasonable amount it's making an incredible
amount of money actually, and it's not an amount of money,
that I'd ever dreamed I could have been make especially
at this age.
And therefore, you know, it's it's helping people,
I get messages from people who are happy
because I've inspired them or you know, help them learn
something or helped them out with their exams or getting
into med school.
And I'm happy doing it, I think people are happy watching
these videos, I hope people have been watching these videos.
And that's that's enough, that's all we really need.
And a lot of burnout within entrepreneurship,
within YouTubers, within bloggers, within any anything
like this comes from people working too hard to grow
the numbers, to grow the audience, to grow everything,
and I think if anyone is stuck in that position
or even if you're not, this is just like a really good book
for general life advice.
Yeah, anything you want, Derek Sivers,
one of my favourite books had a big impact on my life,
because it's helped me, become more happy and at peace,
with this whole kind of running an online
entrepreneurship empire, I think empire is a strong word,
I don't mean empire, just like you know,
being an online, online person who tries to make money
online and stuff, just really really really good book.
Okay, this whole video has been a lot more waffling
than I intended but I hope you guys enjoyed it,
if you did, can you let me know in the comments
or if you didn't, again I'd love to hear some constructive
advice as to what you would do differently.
If you know, I do wanna do more book reviews and stuff
and I've read a lot of books over the years,
thanks to having a Kindle and thanks to Blinkist
which I'll talk more about in a second.
I've read so many books over the years and I do wanna talk
more about books on this channel and yeah so any kind
of feedback about the about the format would be great.
And before we finish I just wanna tell you about Blinkist,
which is a fantastic app.
And what they do is that they take all the important lessons
from thousands of non-fiction books and they summarise
them into these like 15-minute summaries that you can either
read or listen to.
So, the way I use Blinkist, is that if I ever come across
a recommendation for a nonfiction book,
I search through Blinkist and see if I can find it,
and I add it to my library this is a quick scroll
through, some of the books that I've read
on Blinkist, oh 4-HOUR WORKWEEK.
And essentially they've summarised the salient points
of the book in this series of like, I don't know,
15, 13 blinks that you can read through,
in about 15 minutes.
If you're like me and you find yourself strapped for time
and you have all these book recommendations being thrown
at you and you just don't really know where to begin,
this is a great place to start, where you can read a summary
of the book, get the most important essence,
and if that's all you need, then that's fine you can just
take that away or if you wanna find out more,
then you can actually buy the book and read it properly.
So yeah, 4-HOUR WORKWEEK, 4-HOUR BODY,
Seth Godin's marketing books,
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
that was one that I read on Blinkist, it's a massive book.
I've never read it in real life, but because I've read
it on Blinkist, I feel like I've got the main lessons
from it so I haven't needed to read it in real life
which has saved me about 100 hours of my life.
But yeah, Blinkist is pretty great and if you wanna try it,
then there's a link in the video description,
it's gonna appear over here and the first 100 people
to use that link, will get unlimited access to Blinkist.
The premium subscription where you've got access to all
of their library of thousands of books completely free,
for one week and you can decide if you like it,
then if you do like it, if you use my code, my link,
then you'll get 25% off a paid subscription as well.
I'd recommend it, I think there are a lot of lessons,
that you can gain from these non-fiction books.
I think the fact that they're all summarised in Blinkist,
means that it's very easy to access them,
and you know, it does cost a bit of money
for an annual subscription.
But if you're anything like me then you know,
ideas from a single book can completely change your life.
So you know, why not why why why not go for it?
But yeah, thank you Blinkist for sponsoring this video.
I think you guys are great, and I'll continue
to use Blinkist, whenever I get a recommendation to decide
if I then want to read the book.
So yeah, that brings us to the end of this video.
Thank you so much for watching.
This has been the first time I've tried doing
like a book thing on the channel,
but as I said let me know if you have any comments,
I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks watching, if you liked the video,
please give it a thumbs up, if you haven't subscribed
to the channel, then please consider doing so.
Have a lovely day,
and I'll see you in the next video goodbye.
(gentle music)