Ali Abdaal talking with Matt Gray on The Matt Gray Show:
Matt:
These businesses, at a glance, you know, one person building a business at like, a 98% margin can sound really great — and be great — for so many people.
But for others that, at some point, kinda want to be able to remove themself more from operations, maybe have, you know, less work reliant on them — more of a team around them to help them scale it out — makes more sense. And so—
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting, like, at a face value, some of that stuff, I’ve found, kind of looks really sexy, but in practice, like, when you’re making all that profit, you might as well be building a team around you to kinda help you out a little bit.
Ali:
Yeah, and it’s also more fun that way.
Like, I think about this a lot. I think, like, whenever I see Justin’s Twitter, or anything like that, or even Dan’s stuff, I think, ‘Would I want a 1-person business with the 98% margins?’ And the answer is, no.
There’s a 1-person business case to be made for some deeply introverted types out there who’s idea of a great day is one with approximately zero other humans in it.
I actually get that, falling near the category, myself, in the context of business. I love to hang out with people — but, work with them? Day in, day out? Hard pass.
That said, there are very few successful YouTubers in the world who wouldn’t rather upload less, and live more.
A team can help you do that, and add fun to your life as a creator in ways you might not expect.
Are you one of us mighty introverted types? Make one of your first hires a coordinator or creative director. Choose someone sharp enough for you to imagine them in a future general manager role, similar to the one Ali has on his team.
Ali, later, at minute 32:47:
…in the early days of building a team, I was managing people, and it was such a drain (exactly as you said).
But, thankfully, on the other side of that, like, I had a few business mentors and stuff who were like, ‘What you need to do is, you need to hire a general manager,’ — and so we ended up promoting one of our team members (Angus) to general manager — ‘…and you need to get them to do all the managing.’
And so now I don’t manage the team.
And people ask, ‘How do you manage a team with 13 people?’ And the answer is, I don’t. Angus does.
And I just swan around the world, writing books, doing interviews, and speaking to other creators.
And then, once a quarter, we’ll get together with the team, and I’ll come up with all these ideas, but the ideas go in the bucket list.
And every six weeks, we’ll have a review and we’ll see which of these ideas do we want to take forward.”
(That’s how you have fun as an introvert working with a team.)
—Tang
Ali Abdaal’s owned platforms are: Feel Good Productivity and AliAbdaal.com.
Matt Gray’s owned platforms are: Founder OS and MattGray.xyz.
