Ali Abdaal's Head of YouTube is All In on Opportunity-Maxxing

- What can I post that literally nobody else can post about? - And now you've gotten to the point where you're apparently getting reached out to by anthropic. - I'm sort of learning six times faster, because. - What unique value can you bring to the platform? - The moment it felt worth it was Hi, I'm Becky Isora, and I'm currently the head of YouTube for Alley Updall. - Okay, Becky, you have a podcast, you have a newsletter, you just started creating your own short form content on your own Instagram page. And all of this has happened in the last, like, 18 months, I think, like, you were not even a part of this industry just over a year ago. Tell me about your philosophy with connecting with other people in the space. - I need to talk to people who are managing channels that are at least, like, 10 million subscribers, 'cause I cannot grow Alley's channel if I don't speak to people who are, like, a few steps ahead of me. I realize, like, oh my God, all the YouTube records are for, like, beginners, like, people who are just starting other channels. So the only way to get to be good at my job is to start learning from people who are in the industry. And that's when I started reaching out to a bunch of people. - What's the best way to connect with someone who's ahead of you? - My favorite way of connecting to people is not, like, asking stuff from them. It's, like, being in the vicinity of them. And I think that's also part of why I like to be on LinkedIn and social media is I'm just trying to pop up, but not in, like, a very creepy way. Not trying to, like, message me, like, hey, hey, hey, hey, like, this is who I am, and this is what I do, blah, blah, blah. And, like, I want this from you. - So, let's play out a scenario. Let's say I am someone who wants to connect with you. Are you suggesting for people to find you on Instagram or LinkedIn or email, like, what's the approach? - I've been getting a lot of inbound recently because Ali's hiring for, like, I don't know, a dozen roles in the company. And I've just been getting messages about how to get hired or, like, can you pass my name on and all of that? And to be fair, that was kind of how I got in, in a way. But I've just found all of them to be a little bit too much. Like, they've all just been, like, hey, can you pass my name along? With no contact, no nothing. Okay, I think starting off with, hey, I really, really love what you did. It's actually a great point. And then not immediately follow it up with a mask. Not immediately follow, but, like, oh, my God, can we grab, can I grab, like, 30 minutes of your time? I think, I think to immediately send that message after, like, one of the others a bit much. I think a message, like, hey, I really love this video and this thumbnail that you did. Really love, like, the information that was shared there. I hope to enter content creation one day and I really admire your work and I just want to stay in touch. I think that would have been like, oh, my God, yes, of course. - I'm so glad that you brought that up because it is kind of my approach as well or it has been my approach in the past. I remember a few years ago when the published press first launched, this was called in Simier's newsletter. I was reading it and there really wasn't anything out there that was very similar to this and I was just so impressed with the work. So I reached out to the editor, Hannah Doyle, and I just said, this is excellent. Like, the work that you're doing is appreciated. Thank you so much. And I think that was the message. It was like a Twitter DM, that's all it was. And she responded, thank you, appreciate it. And then that was the end of the conversation for a good 30 or 60 days. You know, time went by and I continued to say, oh, I like this particular episode or this particular article. It wasn't overkill, but anytime that I found something like uniquely good, I just wanted to praise the person who put the energy in to make it. Eventually, there became a time where I wanted to either get featured in the published press myself or get the person I was working for at the time Mark Manson featured in the published press. Like, as a value add is an employee for him. That's when I made the ask. I was like, hey, here's my value as a video editor at the time. Do you want to do a piece on what it's like to be a video editor working in the creator economy? And she said yes. - This goes for all industries that the world is really, really small and everybody knows everybody. So if you're known for just taking, taking, taking without giving, I think this people will know. - So I think to that point, one of the things that I've been impressed with knowing you over the past five months is that you are building those relationships and you're understanding that nothing happens kind of immediately. You're extending these time horizons and you are just opening doors in the future not really knowing where they're going. I want to pivot to this personal brand that you're building for yourself. One thing that I'm observing in the creator economy is people who have been working in this space for a couple of years are realizing the importance of having even just a small personal brand. What opportunities have come up by being active on LinkedIn versus creating a podcast where you're expressing yourself? - One thing that's super helpful is people just know who I am because I'm in Hong Kong. There's pretty much no other YouTube producers in the city except for Corla's who I work with and it's also because she's working with Izzy Cili who is in the same office with us. And apart from that, I don't know anybody else. So being online is, this is my way of digital networking because I can't attend any of the industry mixers that I know are happening in New York, LA, London. But quite interestingly, two weeks ago, someone from Anthropic, message me, asking if I was looking for a job opportunity and it happened to be managing there. I know they're like YouTube channel for Claude. This is so insane. I think somebody in my network saw my name pop up for both Claude and YouTube and passed my name along. And I'm guessing at a notice for sure, but I'm guessing the hiring manager probably looked at my profile and was like, "Yep, she uses Claude and she knows YouTube." And that's why she sent me a DM on LinkedIn. If I didn't have an active LinkedIn profile, I don't think she would have messaged me or I don't think she would have like, she kind of knows what she's talking about. Okay, let me, she's worth a shot. The opportunity didn't pan out, but I just thought like getting a cold DM, being like, "Hey, I'm from Anthropic. And are you looking for a job opportunity 'cause we're looking to expand our YouTube channel?" It's insane. I couldn't sleep after getting that message. - Yeah, that's it. That's a wild opportunity. The fact that it came to you rather than you having to reach out as well is, you know, a testament to the work that we're talking about today. You are on LinkedIn, you are on Instagram very actively. You have a sub-stack that I forgot to mention. You've got a podcast. How are you managing all of this? Like, what are the tactics you are using to cover all of these places? - I think the stuff that I put on LinkedIn has no strategy. I know like a lot of people would do like these like well written out stuff. And I think I'm just a natural writer and I just like writing. I just like having opinions and expressing them. So I guess it's not just having thoughts, but actually like putting that thoughts out 'cause you just ever know who's also like interested in what you're interested in. The internet is a fun place. And you know, if it doesn't resonate with certain people, they would just scroll past it. - Let's explore LinkedIn. I personally think LinkedIn is a really hot spot for people who work behind the scenes of the creator economy right now. It was previously Twitter. Now it seems like LinkedIn is the place. - Oh my God, it's so wild. I only, like I'm on LinkedIn because I came from a financial journalism background. And I'm only on LinkedIn because all my sources were bankers and consultants and lawyers and therefore they existed on LinkedIn. So it was the only reason I'm there. So when I started working for a YouTuber, that was just where I naturally started posting. Not knowing that it was this hot news social media platform on the block 'cause that's like the most corporate place ever. - Yeah, it's new to me. Like new this year, I had a LinkedIn for many years. Literally never used it. This year I'm much more active on it. I'm much more excited about LinkedIn as well. Like I check it frequently, it's on my phone. Walk me through what tomorrow's post might be like. Do you have an inkling of an idea in the back of your head and you're just like, I just gotta express myself some way? And I don't know what it's gonna lead to. Don't know who's gonna comment on it if anything. How am I gonna write this? Give me the step-by-step. - Okay, so I know once a week we post a video on Ali's channel and I don't post a video before it comes out just because it's, I treat it as like an embargo. Like it's not published, I don't post anything about it. But once it, it's out. It's like public domain 'cause YouTube is a public video. So I'll try to write about it. I'll try to write about maybe it's a thumbnail contest. Maybe it's the hook that we wrote. Maybe it's like a BTS photo of the shoot. The way I try to approach my LinkedIn writing is like, what can I post that literally nobody else can post about? Because I can't philosophize about like some strategy or like, oh my god, these are like seven things you should do for a YouTube channel and stuff. So many people are doing that on LinkedIn and so my post would not stand out. But if I have like this unique thing that nobody else can post about, which is my position as Ali's YouTube producer, I can literally take a photo of Ali behind the camera and nobody else in the world will have that photo. I am so glad you said that. So, so glad you said that. Like what unique value can you bring to the platform? What are your unfair advantages? You're leaning into that. This is a huge unlock for me, by the way. This is me finally realizing like what your approach is. - Yes, yeah, it's not like how to, it's like how I, 'cause it's, one thing is strategy but also like your point of view is so unique. It's probably something you tell your clients is something like we always try to bring up and tell people like, hey, you should like lean into your stories, your angles, your experiences 'cause nobody else can do it for you. And another thing is sometimes I just like to post about relatable things. So if a video is an eight of 10, which in the YouTube world is just like a totally failing video, like sometimes I would post about that and I would be like, ugh, like Mondays, right? Or something like that. It's just funny, it's like so unrelated. Like nobody who's, people who are not here would not know. But then people who are in the industry would be like, oh my god, yes. So it's also just like inside jockey stuff, unique point of views, stories, I love telling stories. This is not like YouTube related but I find that whenever I talk about money and my family situation, I get a lot of DMs from people because they just, they're like, oh my god, I never knew this about you and actually my, I experience the same thing with my dad and that just builds like a different layer of connection. I think I'm always just focused on like, what can I share that literally nobody else can and how do I make it engaging? How do I make it funny? How do I make it relatable? And then there's all sorts of tactics like hooks and making sure that the first line is catchy and making sure it's not like 10 blocks of paragraphs or anything. - I mean, it's very similar to the stuff that we do for creators, you're just turning it on yourself. - Yeah, and doing it in like a lightweight 'cause I'm not making a long-form YouTube video every single week, I don't have the skill set or resources to be able to do it. be able to do that. But I can write a post every single day, like it's just a couple minutes. It's like a photo. Is that your target once per day? It kind of is. Yeah. I just realized that I have so many things to say. But apparently, LinkedIn advice is you should post once every 24 hours. Otherwise, it kind of realizes your previous post. So what I do is if I have like five ideas in a row, then I just schedule it for like five days ahead. So I would have these bursts and I would literally schedule them. Okay. So you're posting once a day. And a lot of the time, it's stuff that you have an unfair advantage about things that only you can know and can share. How long have you been doing this for? And how long did it take doing it consistently before you actually saw any kind of ROI in terms of like making stronger connections with people or becoming an emerging thought leader on the platform? Yeah. The short answer is I've been doing it for a year. The long answer is I've been creating content for eight years. I count writing news articles and then writing LinkedIn posts about it as like my first, I guess, five years of journalism. And I did that. I had a YouTube channel where I was posting every single week about art videos that I don't think anybody watches. It's a small channel is two thousand subscribers. But that gave me the discipline to show up every single week. I then abandoned it for a substock newsletter that I've been writing every single week for three years now. So the benefit of that is that I have this massive backlog of content that I can just go back on and like resurface and I just bring up that like one story. I think storytelling has just been really, really important to me. It helps me make sense of me as a person, not to be super self centered. But it's just really, really interesting to process everything that's happened in my life. And then to be able to take those stories and tell those stories in a really engaging way, which is also a big skill for us as people who work for creators. Storytelling is becoming a really, really big skill that apparently like people in the tech world are like paying six figures for as well. Yeah. Also like the skill of repurposing content and all of that. Like these are all skills. Again, like you said, like exists in this like creator world, but also being able to do it on myself gives me the reps that like, okay, if I only do repurposing content and storytelling for Ali's stuff, then that gives me what like once a week to practice. But if I do it on itself every single day, then I'm sort of learning six times faster because I'm doing in the reps in a much more, I guess, sandbox environment, because like who cares if I get canceled? Like I just don't want to lead it get canceled because of the way I if I spawn this story wrongly, that kind of thing. Interesting. Okay. So by doing it every single day, by using yourself as kind of like a sandbox for experimenting, you are leveling up the skill set that Ali is actually paying you for. Yeah. It's a it's a nice way to practice and also helps with the personal brand too. So it's a it's a win-win. Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that really impresses me about you is just the rate of becoming excellent. I remember like the first time I met you, which was not that long ago, four or five months ago, you were you were like expressing yourself as someone who's learning as quickly as possible. And now you've gotten to the point where you're apparently getting reached out to by anthropic and you are a thought leader in this creator economy BTS space. Like you are learning at a rate that nobody else is learning at. And so seeing you post every single day and hearing the philosophy behind it, I think is helping me understand how you are emerging so quickly. How long did it take before it felt worth it to you? Presumably there was a period of time when nobody was reading the content. You are probably measuring yourself with views or reads in a way that everybody in this industry measures themselves. Like how do you push through when you make 40 linked in posts and collectively they get seen by 37 people. The moment it felt worth it was when people started messaging me, being like, Hey, I really love your writing on LinkedIn. That was not evident in the numbers at all. But I think if people message you about something that they've seen, I think that's a really, really big signal. I think Colin and Samir said this once were like, now instead of views, what they tried to gauge on is like when they show up to an in-person event, what videos people are telling them about. So it's a similar thing when I when people started reaching out to me and they're like, Hey, your post about X was was really, really cool. That's when I was like, Oh, okay, I'm on to something here. And I think I guess the thing with posting on social media is you just never know what's going to pop off. It's always like we have all these best practices, we have all these things that we know are going to work, but you just never know what's going to hit with people. And I think it's when I started posting about using cloth and YouTube. I think it's when I suddenly found this like magic rocket ship where my posts were just getting shared and people just started reaching out to me. And when I show up in like group chats, they're like, Oh my god, you're the person that like does all this cloth stuff on YouTube. And that's when I was like, Oh, I hit something here. If you are looking ahead like four or five years, do you see yourself as a front facing person on the internet? Like, are you just building your personal brand so that eventually you stop working for somebody else and yourself employed just kind of like creating your own stuff? Or is there a world where you still continue to work for somebody else, but you're just supplementing your, I don't know, your resume with a personal brand? Oh man. Ali was telling me today that you're the kind of person who I could tell from day one just wants to do her own thing. I've been employed my whole life and I honestly really like it. I really like working together towards a goal with a group of people and growing something together and building something together. The stuff that I share online is just because I love learning and I love sharing what I learned because that results in interesting connections and meeting a bunch of new people and also more learnings in return. Ideally, I would love to just like share on the internet for the fun of it, the way like people used to make videos because it was fun to upload on YouTube that you were doing something cool in your backyard. Ideally, I would never get famous. I would hate to be like recognized on the street one day. It doesn't seem fun. I would like to have a bad day and nobody come up to me when I'm having a bad day. Right. I think about this sometimes as well. The philosophy that I have around this is I want to be the shovel to the gold rush. Like everybody wants to be a part of the gold rush and the companies that manufacture the shovels. Like nobody outside of that industry knows the name of the company that manufactures shovels. But to the people who are participating in the gold rush, they know the name of the shovel. And so that's kind of like the area that I'm trying to land in. I'm trying to be the person who can go to VidCon and a very small group of people can come up and say, hey, I appreciate your work or hey, I've learned this from you or hey, here's an opportunity, would you like to do it? But then outside of that, I have no interest in anything beyond that. How did you get connected with Ali Abdul? By the way, can you tell that story? Oh my gosh. Okay. I was working in a bank and I was moonlighting for this writing course by David Pearl called writer passage. And when Ali Abdul moved to Hong Kong, I knew that David and Ali were friends. I also got a rejection email for applying for one of Ali's jobs. And I replied to that person being like, hey, thanks so much for the rejection letter. And then she replied saying like, hey, your profile looks like you're a good writer. And we're actually having a writer really, really soon. So I took that information. Ali just happened to be hosting an event that day. And I kind of be aligned to him being like, hey, I'm Becky. I heard from staff number that you're looking for a writer. I used to work for David Pearl. I have a permanent resident status in Hong Kong and don't need a visa. And that was my pitch. And he immediately gave me his phone and was like, I need your number. And that's kind of how I got connected with Ali in a couple of months later. I got an interview. Well, well, so wait, so you took his number, you texted him and then things went quiet for a couple of months. He took my number and didn't do anything with it. But to this day, I'll remember that story. And he would tell that story to people to be like, oh, if you want to get a job, like, this is how Becky did it. Yeah, I do feel like in this industry, if you just submit your resume, it's not enough. Like, you do need to go above and beyond in some capacity. There's just too much out there, too much noise. So finding a creative in, I think, is the play. It's what people call like the third door opportunity where the first door is like the resume, the second door is, you know, somebody who knew somebody and third door is just like where you just have to crack your way in. It's already a creative industry to begin with. And a lot of people, I think, who try to get hired by creators are fans, which is great. But then a lot of the times, people just want to get hired because they're fans and don't have anything to offer being able to show your work or show at least like an understanding of this industry. I feel like it's important. Tell me about the interview itself. How did that go? Oh, I met up with Ali at a coffee shop and he immediately was like, hey, since you're trialing for a ghost writer, which is the position that I was hired for, let's go take a few laps around this park that we happen to be in and just interview me and then see how much of that is like useful for you to write newsletter articles or whatever you can think of. So I regrettably wasn't heels because I knew Ali was a tall person and I'm a short, short, short person. But I was like, all right, we just got to do it. And I just kind of turn on my journalist brain and was like, all right, how do I ask Ali as many questions as possible? And that was like the interview. It was just like us walking around a park multiple times, me asking questions and me like holding up my phone to his face because I knew my phone had a voicemail function. And then I submitted I guess the newsletters I had written by hand because I did not use AI before working with Ali because I didn't know how to. That was the interview before I joined full time. We did do a trial. So I took a week off my day job and I worked a week for Ali just to see that if he likes me and if I like the work. And I guess it was like a trial period for both of us where we were just trying to figure out is this actually a role that he wants and is this a company that I actually want to work for? What do you think got you the job? So I didn't learn this until much later but because I had mentioned that I worked for David Pearl, Ali texted a friend that he knew that worked on writer passage and was like, "Hey, Becky applied for this job. How would you vouch for her?" And this guy said, "Yes. This guy is Will Manon, who you may have also seen around the internet world, helped build writer passage and build a second brain courses." And out of the blue Ali message him, and Will was like, "Yeah, this great would vouch for her." And that was what got me the job because I didn't have any experience in the creator economy, but he had a recommendation that he trusted. That's kind of full circle because I think one of your unique advantages is that you have become so well connected with everybody in this industry because of your efforts by reaching out to them and just telling them that you like their stuff. And now, hearing how you got the job with Ali, it's because of that exact skill, which is super cool. So I imagine that if you continue to do this, you will probably become President of the United States at some point, or CEO of the world. I don't know. You just got to keep networking. I just want to work your way to the top. Yeah. That's it. Who is somebody on your radar right now in the creator economy? Oh my God. Have you seen Dominic Hart's videos? He's like this guy from Australia who makes these like quirky fun videos about journaling analog habits. I think he had a journaling video that blew up last year. But his videos were just so fun. He's just like making fun scenes, very filmmaking-esque, but also just very like making fun of himself. I know him. I don't know him. I'm talking as if I know him. But I'm happy with that. Have you reached out and told him that you like his work? I have. I comment on his stuff, and I would post below his Instagram to be like, I really, really like this frame in the video. That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for watching or listening. If you're new here, please consider subscribing or leaving us a review on the audio platforms. It helps us out really, really much in these early, early days of the show. If you're a producer, creative director, head of content, and you manage a channel that has over a million subscribers, reach out. We would like to interview you and hear your expertise. We put a new episode out every Thursday, so we will see you then.