The Jordan Harbinger Show
1095: Ali Abdaal | The Hidden Economics of Creative Success Part One
Tue, 24 Dec 2024
Feel-Good Productivity author Ali Abdaal breaks down the real keys to sustainable success and authentic relationship building! [Part 1 of 2] What We Discuss with Ali Abdaal: High performers commonly experience imposter syndrome, but awareness that it's universal and building genuine professional competency helps manage these feelings over time. Relationships and "winning work" often matter more than technical skill. When starting a business, keep your day job until your time becomes the actual bottleneck — don't "burn the ships" prematurely as this creates unnecessary pressure and can lead to poor decisions. Help others without attachment to getting anything in return, but do it in a scalable way (like making introductions) — even if 99 percent never reciprocate, the 1 percent who do can create outsized opportunities. We share powerful insights about following genuine curiosity versus chasing metrics, and balancing passion with practicality — with more valuable perspectives on financial freedom, happiness, and building a sustainable career coming in part two later this week. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1095 And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What is the hidden economics of creative success?
Got another friend who's in town from Miami this evening. So we're going to do a pod and just have some dinner. And maybe the conversation's too niche for it to go viral or whatever, but I don't really care because it's just a cool conversation that I would have wanted to have anyway.
I appreciate that. And two, I agree with that. Turning, it's funny because in my notes to talk with you about I had turning your hobby into a job, I almost always think that is a mistake. Because, and again, with podcasting, I happen to be really, really interested in it and love the conversational element. You can tell there are a lot of podcasters that really, they're not that curious.
They just want a lucrative business and they are really good at social media or something like that. That's fine. That works for them. But it's definitely work, and you can tell. For me, it doesn't feel like work, which is so fortunate and lucky. But I don't, again, I do not think that's a strategy most people can replicate.
I think a lot of people rush to turn their hobby into a job, and they ruin it. They ruin it. If you love painting, the last thing you should do is try to make a living being a painter. Sell your paintings. All you want. Once you quit your day job and you have to paint and they have to sell and you have to market them, you're going to enjoy 10% of that job. There's a lot of bad advice out there.
Again, I won't throw anyone under the bus, but you see these influencer guys being like, go all in. Quit your day job and then you burn the ships and then you have to have your business succeed. That is a terrible piece of advice. Because what happens is you then have to do whatever it takes to quote unquote succeed. But what that usually means is pay your rent.
Now you have to either cut corners, maybe do some sheisty sales stuff, sell a product that's not ready. There's absolutely no reason to burn the ships and go all in. If you're starting a business, and I'm wondering if you kicked off this way when you were a
If you're starting a business, you should outsource everything possible that you cannot do yourself, and then and only then, once your time is the bottleneck on the business, should you even think about resigning your actual day job. What I see is a lot of folks that they quit their day job, and then they're like, okay, I guess I gotta do social media now, and they spend all their time
tweeting and doing, and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Someone else could have made all, you're editing these little videos. What are you doing? You're spending three hours editing TikTok videos. You can outsource that crap and you could have kept your job designing semiconductors that paid you $400,000 a year. No, now you're struggling to make $40,000 a year selling sheets on the internet.
What did you do that for? You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show. This is me with Ali Abdaal. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Shopify. Take ShopPay, for example. It's not just fast and seamless. It can boost conversions by up to 50%, turning hesitant shoppers into take-my-money customers.
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