Shadowing Practice: The Cost of Getting Rich - Learn English Speaking with Video
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In this video, we're going to be going through seven habits
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that made me a bunch of money when I was in my 20s.
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They were all unhealthy in one way or another.
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Yes, it's very good to become financially free and make all the money
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and stuff and it is also good to have a balanced life
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and not be sacrificing the things that are more important than money en route to getting there.
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Oh by the way if we haven't met yet, hello my name is Ali, I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur
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and on this YouTube channel since 2017 I've been documenting the
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journey from being a broke ass medical student to then working
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full -time as a doctor to then becoming a multi million dollar entrepreneur
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and best -selling author and my goal with this channel is to document the lessons
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that I've learned and the lessons I'm continuing to learn partly as a reminder for
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useful on your own journey of building a life you love.
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All right, habit number one is what I like to call the zero downtime habit.
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to this day.
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I carry this laptop bag, this camera bag everywhere I go.
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And I've been doing this for years, so much so to the point that when my wife and I started dating like many years ago, she referred to it as my safety blanket because like a child, I had to carry my safety blanket everywhere I went, otherwise I would feel weird.
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And the reason for this is that in particular, while I was in my 20s and grinding away on building my business, I would not allow myself to have any downtime.
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Anytime there was a spare moment
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or where a normal person more likely would take out their phone and like scroll Instagram or TikTok or whatever, I would instead bust out the laptop and I would try
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that time and almost like play this as like a challenge
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or a game with myself where I'm like squeezing out productivity
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and efficiency out of these like minutes of downtime here and there.
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There was almost no moment that I gave myself
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when I was sort of in the build phase of building the business of like actually allowing myself to chill out.
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Now the obvious benefit to this is
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that you actually just end up with way more time to grind on the thing that you want to be grinding on.
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One of my friends, Matthew Dix, he's a great writer and a teacher and he tells the story of how like whatever you're trying to do,
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you probably don't have huge amounts of free time on your hands to especially if you're trying to, like, if you've got a day job and you're trying to do a side hustle at the same time, like trying to build your business or, I don't know, write a book or whatever.
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And so actually squeezing out productivity
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and efficiency out of those tiny ass moments of time here and there that we get throughout the day, instead of using that time scrolling or using that time merely enjoying the taste of a cup of coffee,
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that time actually does make a difference in how much progress you're able to make in your business.
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And it does genuinely add up.
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As with all of the habits in this video, this kind of habit comes at a cost.
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The cost is obviously you lose some sense of presence, you lose some sense of like dancing through life
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and actually just being able to take a moment to rest and reflect and like just be present in the moment.
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And what it results at least for me, and speaking to a lot of my entrepreneur friends, is you end up training this muscle to the point that it genuinely becomes difficult to switch off.
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I now have to set rules for myself where I'm like, Ali, you're not allowed to work on the weekend.
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And then I get around those rules to be like, "Well, it's not really work if you consider it fun, right?" So then I literally change the rule for myself, so I'm like, "I'm not allowed to do anything on the weekend
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that would look like work to someone else." So I'm not judging what work is.
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An impartial, reasonable, objective observer is judging, does that thing actually look like work?
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And I find that rule to be very helpful because I'm like, okay, well, that means I can't do quite a lot of things I would wanna do.
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Okay, maybe I'll read some Harry Potter fan fiction or I'll like, I don't know, go for a walk without my phone or something like that.
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Should you adopt the habit of having no downtime into your life?
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I don't know, this video is not a advice.
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It's not a video about whether you should do anything or not.
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I'm just giving you the information to be like, this worked for me when I was in my 20s.
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And it also had some, shall we say, unhealthy implications that I'm trying to unlearn now.
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And so up to you, you can take it or leave it.
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Now we come to habit number two.
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Habit number two is the habit of constant consumption.
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This is a habit that really helped me when I was, you know, in the first like many years of building my business, which is that if I was in a situation where I physically couldn't get out my laptop and work,
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I was always consuming something, related to work or related to the business.
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So I'd be listening to podcasts about business, I'd be listening to audiobooks about business, I'd be listening to YouTube videos at double speed about business.
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If I was in bed, I'd be reading books on my Kindle about business and about how to make more money and how to grow YouTube channels, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
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And so for absolutely years, I basically didn't have many moments of like rest.
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Even when I was doing things like commuting to work or like on the toilet, I would always have my AirPods in and always be listening to something or other,
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like constantly getting like injecting all of this business advice and stuff into my veins.
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Now the benefit of this is that, especially if you're a new to the world of business like I was back in the day, you actually end up leveling up quite a lot by learning from other people that have been on the journey before.
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That was super, super, super helpful in drastically leveling up my knowledge of business, not my skills because skills require practice, but at least my knowledge of like stuff.
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It was also really helpful because then I was able to do all of those things without actively making time for them.
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It just sort of happened while I was doing all these other things.
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But again, the downside and what makes this feel slightly unhealthy, especially now that I'm looking back on it in hindsight, is that A, it's not a particularly present or mindful way to live,
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where you're constantly injecting information through your AirPods at like 3x speed.
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It's very easy to miss any kind of nuance
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and to really like reflect and engage deeply with what you're listening to
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when it's like just a firehose of information into your brain.
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The other downside, which is something that I'm now realizing, is that more information does not actually result in more progress.
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For many years while I was in my 20s, I thought that like the thing that was stopping my business from growing was that I just didn't
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or the more podcasts I would listen to, maybe there would be this magical idea out there that I just hadn't come across before.
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Even if I was thinking about the business, thinking about what is the bottleneck right now that's stopping us from 10Xing the business, and then just thinking about that for an hour, rather than listening to an hour worth of audio book,
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that probably would have actually resulted in a greater
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a greater impact on the business rather than me listening to the 500th audiobook about business, like, you know, that decade.
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Oh, by the way, if you're at this point in the video, then you're probably very intelligent, you're probably very good looking, and you're probably serious about leveling up in your work and in your life, which is where the sponsor of this video comes in, and that is Skillshare.
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Skillshare is a wonderful online platform with thousands and thousands of creative classes taught by real people, including me.
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I've been teaching on Skillshare since 2019.
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I've got a really good class on video editing, if I say so myself.
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I have a class on how to get started
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into drawing because I decided I wanted to have more things that were like less productive.
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And so I took the how to draw class by Brent Everston.
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And it's been a nice way to get started with learning how to draw
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and like doodling in the evenings and sort of sketching things out.
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And that has been a very nice way of switching off from screens
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and sort of reconnecting with my soul and my creativity and stuff.
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Skillshare is nice because it genuinely is humans connecting with other humans.
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And they don't just teach you the skill.
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They also give you a class project that you can work through alongside learning the skill.
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And then you can share your class project with other people
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and you can see what other people's projects are and you can learn from them.
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So if 500 people to use the link in the video description, you'll get one month completely for free.
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So thank you again, Skillshare for sponsoring this video
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and for being the place that I've been putting my online classes since 2019.
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So it's been a very long time.
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Anyway, thank you, Skillshare.
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And let's get back to the video.
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Habit number three is the habit of constantly thinking about your work.
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For me, the way this manifested was in a few different ways.
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Firstly, I'd be thinking about work all the time.
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I'd be thinking about it in the shower.
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I'd be thinking about it while and when driving to my actual day job.
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I'd be thinking about it on my lunch breaks.
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All of those things are fine.
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But Where it became more unhealthy, shall we say, was when I would be thinking about it while spending time with friends and family.
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A lot of the times I was physically present, but in hindsight I was not actually present, either I was thinking about work,
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or I was literally like busting on my laptop on the dining table on the kitchen table, rather than hanging out with my mom and grandma.
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And if you decide to incorporate this kind of habit into your life, the benefit you'll get is that basically the more time you're spending consciously
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or subconsciously thinking about the thing that you need to do to make money, your business, whatever the thing might be, that level of focus often results in interesting ideas.
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Most people will have breakthroughs in their business, not when they're sitting on the desk, but when they're maybe in the shower or maybe driving to work.
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But obviously the cost of this is that it can often cost something in your personal relationships.
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And this is a difficult habit to break.
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I am currently trying to unlearn the habit of constantly thinking about work stuff.
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I have some friends and mentors who are also entrepreneurs and who have kids that are older than mine.
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And so they've been they've been parents for longer.
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And one thing they've advised is that like, you know, having a kid is
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that is like a very good like reason to try
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and actually learn the habit of being present and not just having the subroutine of like, what's the next thing to do in the business and running all the time.
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So these days when I'm like spending time with my daughter, I am trying my best to approach it with true presence
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rather than putting in the time without really putting in the sort of mental headspace, if that makes sense.
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before shirking your other responsibilities.
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in my case and as is the case for a lot of entrepreneurs I know who are now quite rich.
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It's very, very rare to have a fully, shall we say, balanced life while you're in the grind phase of building up the business.
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So for me, I started building my first successful business while I was in medical school.
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Honestly, I kind of half -assed medical school for six years
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because my mind was always focused on this other thing of building the business.
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Similarly, when I was working as a doctor, the discretionary time that I had at work, like in lunch breaks and after work and like on the way to work and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
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My friends who were really, really, really into medicine and who were whole assing their medical careers, they were using that additional time to boost up their CV
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or to do research projects or to do audits or to create like presentations for conferences and stuff.
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And I was sort of doing the bare minimum of that just to sort of tick the boxes.
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And I was spending all of the rest of that discretionary time working on the business.
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And to be honest, this is a pattern you see amongst any sort of outlier success in any field, whether it's entrepreneurship or sports or acting or music or anything like that,
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which is it's really, really hard to do something at a really high standard
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if you're focusing on more than just that one thing.
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it's probably something you're going to start out building on the
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side of your like main gig like whatever the things you're doing at university, whatever your career is.
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And so you kind of have to recognize that Probably.
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Unless you're particularly superhuman at this, because I certainly wasn't.
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Like your main thing is going to suffer as a result of you building your side thing.
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Whether you want to make that trade is entirely up to you.
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I'm personally glad I made the trade for myself, but also survivorship bias.
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It worked out for me.
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But if for whatever reason the business thing didn't work out or I did want to go back to medicine, I have I am behind.
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relatively speaking.
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All right, let's talk about habit number five, the health sacrifice.
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So when I was in the early days of building the business, actually for many, many years, I realized that shopping for groceries, and cooking healthy food were things that were taking up way too much time.
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And I decided that I would rather invest
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that time into stuff in the business rather than into cooking and eating healthy food.
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The benefit of this was that it saved me many, many hours every single week
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that I was able to then put into the business to grow the business and make more money.
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The downside obviously is that I then ended up living off takeaways for most of my twenties.
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And so there is a certain level of health sacrifice
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that I made in my twenties for the sake of grinding on the business.
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Now that I'm in my thirties, I'm trying, you know, I've got a personal trainer, and like trying to activate my glutes and my hamstrings
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because I never knew what those were because I was just like sitting and grinding on a computer all the time.
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My cardiovascular health is worse than it would have been had
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I sort of taken better care of like my arteries
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and stuff by not eating like fatty unhealthy foods when I was in my 20s.
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Do I think you have to make that sacrifice?
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I don't think so.
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These days there are a lot of like super healthy takeout options
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but for me when I was in my 20s it just wasn't really a priority.
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It wasn't really something I thought about.
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If I had my time again I would still do takeouts
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but I would find a way to really optimize the health side of the takeout
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so I wasn't living off of like kebab rolls and you know that kind of Habit number six that I developed, which was slightly unhealthy, is being okay with wasting money.
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So if, for example, I wanted to buy something, like a tech purchase or something for work or something for the studio or like whatever, instead of spending ages doing the research to figure out like what's the best thing that I would wanna buy,
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if it was below a certain price point, I would just order the thing without thinking about it, Then I would forget about it, then it would arrive in the post, and then I would try it out to see if it actually fulfilled the needs that I wanted it to fulfill.
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Now, quite a lot of the time, I would say maybe 80 % of the time, the answer was no, and I didn't end up continuing to use the thing.
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And so then I've got this tech which I've just bought that's just sort of sitting there doing absolutely nothing.
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And so I would either give it away to a charity shop, I had like a donations box where I would like drop things off to Oxfam every now and then.
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or I would give it away to a friend, or if it was something low value, I would just stick it in the bin.
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Now, the benefit of adopting this kind of attitude into your life is that, again, you just get very, very ruthless about how you are spending your time.
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And if you think something is not worth your time, then you don't bother doing it, which means that you probably have more time to be able to focus on like revenue generating activities in your business.
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The downside is that it ends up creating waste.
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It's probably bad for the environment, and it's probably not good for the soul to just be able to press a button
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and buy whatever you want and then try it out and then almost like discard it.
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I would reason with myself.
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I'd be like, oh, I'm giving it away to a charity shop or I'm giving it away to a friend.
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And like, so it's not like fully wasted.
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But even so, there is something about that wastage that is Probably.
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Suboptimal for the soul.
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And so that was like the cost I paid for having this attitude of being okay with waste.
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It's something my wife and I clash about to this day.
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She's very anti -waste.
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I'm still struggling to unlearn the habit of like
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being quite wasteful when it comes to like buying things
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because I'm still ingrained in the mindset of like well why would I bother spending two hours doing the research
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if it's like it's not worth the time of doing the research you know you know all of
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that kind of stuff
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and then habit number seven relates to this point of is
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this worth my time now there is advice in the world of entrepreneurship
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that says that you should figure out what is your effective hourly rate
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or your aspirational hourly rate so
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if for example my hourly rate is $100 an hour
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and I've ordered a $25 thing
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but it would take me half an hour to like try
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and return the thing if I don't actually need it that half an me $50, but I'm only getting back $25.
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And so why would I bother?
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You know, that kind of idea.
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I thought this was great
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because I realized I figured out what my effective hourly rate
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was based on how much money I was making business at the time when it was in my early 20s.
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I figured out what my aspirational hourly rate was, which was a lot higher than that.
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And it gave me license to just to not do a lot of things
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and to be okay with like wasting a lot of money because I reasoned that it wasn't worth the hourly rate.
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The benefit of this is that you then actually delete quite a lot of errands
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and chores here and there that actually end up taking quite a lot of time.
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So for example, on this was why I decided to hire a cleaner fairly early on in my like professional career.
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However, as with all of these habits, it does come with a cost.
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And the cost is
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that it becomes very easy to start thinking of everything in life from this lens of what is the hourly rate.
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I tried my best when I was a wee lad to turn not over apply this particular razor, to not think about it in context of like French friendships or relationships or anything like that,
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because you really don't want to be starting to think of like, oh, you know, I hung out with my mate for two hours.
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That's 500 in those ways, but it is hard.
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It is something that you have to actively fight against.
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And it sort of runs the risk of turning time that you spend on anything into like, into a pure time equals money kind of trade.
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And then when you start running this calculation, you're like, is it really worth me, I don't know, reading a book for half an hour because like, "Yeah, that's 250 quid.
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Is it really worth me driving all the way to see a friend?" Because maybe the driving time.
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So can I be productive in that driving time?
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Do I really want to go?
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It's kind of far away.
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I could be working on the business instead to earn more money.
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And so even this is, I think, a good habit and I certainly wouldn't change it if I had my time again.
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Like with all these habits, it can be a double -edged sword that's worth keeping in mind
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if you're going to start adopting that kind of philosophy into your life.
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Now, ultimately for me, all of the habits that I've talked about here actually did end up serving me.
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They allowed me to build a business while I was in med school, and then later build a business, grow my YouTube channel while I was working full -time as a doctor, and all of that has allowed me to become financially free
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and be able to kind of do what I want and live a life that I love.
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So I don't regret any of that.
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However, one thing that I've realized is that these sorts of habits I think are useful for a season, but they're not very useful when you apply them to your whole life.
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And the habits that help you get rich seem to conflict from what I've learned, with the habits that actually lead to a happy, fulfilled and peaceful life.
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It's very useful to constantly value your time
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and never do anything that's beneath your hourly rate when you are trying to build a business.
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But man, if you're trying to run a household, if you're married and you have a wife and you have a child and like, Stuff in the household needs to be done, and you're running everything by that calculation of like,
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"Is this really worth my time?" takes you to places that you don't really want to get to in your relationship.
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When I speak to entrepreneurs who are much older than me, like in their 50s or 60s or whatever, almost all of them say that like, it's okay to take a break on the weekends.
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And in fact, it's a good thing because like, helps you come up with more creative ideas and it helps you rejuvenate you and rest and all that kind of stuff.
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No one who is in their 50s or 60s that I've spoken to about this says, even once you've made it, made it.
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You're still grinding away on the weekends and stuff, even while you have a wife and a kid.
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It sort of feels like the muscle of being productive and grinding away on the business is like, for me, that muscle has been over -trained.
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So it's sort of like unlearning that is not as straightforward as I would have thought it would be.
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Still a journey that I'm trying to navigate because I do want to grow the business.
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It is super fun.
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And it does fund like the lifestyle that we have.
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And also, it's not the most important thing.
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I have a wife and a kid.
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I do want to take care of my health.
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I do want to explore more hobbies.
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So I guess maybe a takeaway from this video is that if you are actively trying to get rich, in general, the more time you spend thinking about and working towards the goal of getting rich, the more time and effort and energy and focus you spend on that,
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the more likely it is to happen.
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However, Time, energy, and focus are a finite resource.
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And so the more time you spend working on the goal of getting rich, the less time you're going to be spending on everything else.
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For me, I'm very glad about how I spent my 20s grinding away on the business and trying to maximize productivity.
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But at the same time, it does come with costs.
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And so either you're willing to pay those costs or you've actually Ideally, you find a way to grind a new business
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and get rich without having to sacrifice other things that you particularly care about.
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And I think ultimately, whatever game you're playing, whether it's the game of
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trying to build a business or trying to get forward in your career
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or trying to get better grades in school or trying to get rich or not.
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Like whatever game you're playing, one lesson that I'm learning right now is that there are different strategies that work for different seasons.
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And ultimately what I'm trying to remember for me, we're not optimizing for trying to maximize the dollars in the bank account.
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We're actually optimizing, like all of us, we're optimizing for peace, happiness, fulfillment.
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joy, all of that kind of stuff.
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Dollars in the bank account, yes it does lead to financial freedom, which can lead to time freedom and creative freedom, so it's amazing.
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It's fantastic.
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And it is also not the only thing that matters.
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Like for me, my 20s was like strategically imbalanced in favor of like making money
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and less in terms of like turning the dials down in terms of like health and relationships.
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But now that I'm in my 30s, I wanna dial down the focus on making of the money while still maintaining that and dial up the focus on health, relationships, joy, family, peace, fulfillment, all that kind of stuff.
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And if you go into this point in the video and you haven't yet seen my video about my 168 hours spreadsheet, it's basically about like how to make time for everything where the key takeaway from
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that video is that you cannot make time for everything.
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And so if you're interested in that one, that'll be linked right over there.
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Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
This engaging video titled "The Cost of Getting Rich" provides a unique opportunity for English learners to enhance their speaking skills. Hosted by Ali, a doctor turned entrepreneur, the video explores the habits that contributed to his financial success in his 20s. By practicing speaking with this content, learners can gain insights into business, motivation, and personal development while improving their vocabulary and fluency. This real-life context makes it easier to understand complex ideas and practice the corresponding language, making it a perfect resource for shadowspeaks enthusiasts looking to enhance their proficiency.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Ali employs several key grammatical structures and expressions that can enrich your English speaking. Here are a few notable examples:
- "I would not allow myself to have any downtime." - This structure uses the conditional to express a habitual action or mindset, emphasizing self-imposed limitations.
- "The cost is obviously you lose some sense of presence." - The phrase "the cost is obviously" serves as a way to introduce consequences, which can help you articulate cause-and-effect relationships in English.
- "It Genuinely becomes difficult to switch off." - This expression highlights the nuances of transitioning between states of being, ideal for learners looking to provide depth to their conversations.
- "I have to set rules for myself." - Here, the speaker uses a simple present structure that reflects habitual actions, which is useful for learners to describe their own routines.
Common Pronunciation Traps
When practicing speaking with this video, pay attention to specific pronunciation challenges that may arise:
- "downtime" - The 'down' syllable can be tricky for non-native speakers; focus on a clear ‘d’ sound followed by the diphthong 'au' in 'down.'
- "efficiency" - This word often trips up learners because of its multi-syllable nature. Break it down to 'ef-fish-en-see' for clearer pronunciation.
- "entrepreneur" - A common term in business contexts, it’s important to practice pronouncing it correctly: 'ahn-truh-pruh-nur.'
Enhancing your speaking skills through shadow speech and engaging with content like this video can significantly improve your fluency and confidence in English. For a more structured approach, consider utilizing various shadow speak techniques on a dedicated shadowing site to practice your pronunciation and grasp the language's rhythm effectively.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If I was in bed, I'd be · if you're interested in that one, that'll be |
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been documenting · I've been doing · I've been teaching |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't met · I've learned · have been |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | business, which is · downside, which is · life, which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.