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Hello friends, welcome back to the channel. This will be a small update about my life. We make videos like this about once or twice a year. This is a video with updates for 2026. We'll talk about life, work, and a few thoughts. So, let's go Well, being a dad is much more interesting now than it was a year ago. My daughter is already walking. She wanders everywhere she can. I found a great routine: we go for a walk every morning. We often go to the coffee shop. I drink coffee. And she drinks bebicino, which is actually frothed milk. She also started to say a few words. For example, he says "mom." Says "dad." Can say "more". When she asks for more, we say "more, please" and she says "please", it's so sweet. And
I'm starting to feel much more of what parents describe as the joy of raising a child. Honestly, when the baby was 4 months old, she was like a " potato." Not much happened. I thought: well, there's nothing much you can do here. But when she became more active, from about 8 months, I felt: oh, this is really getting interesting. She learns new skills almost every month. She can now almost independently go up and down stairs. Although it still needs a little help. She attends various playgroups, such as Montessori, to learn. Overall, having a baby has been a very enjoyable experience lately. We live in Hong Kong. So childcare here is very, very cheap. And a big part of what really changed our lives was the childcare situation. For example, we have a
24/7 nanny, which is just incredible; it allows us to do things that parents simply cannot do without a nanny and help. We, for example, can go on a date once a week without worrying about it. And if we are, for example, in the office, we can ask the nanny to take our daughter to play classes or something like that. So, this definitely made the experience of raising a child very different from our friends in the West who don't have professional childcare to take care of an infant. The biggest challenge for us was a month in London in the summer, when we didn't hire any professional house help or a nanny because we thought, "You know what?
We'll be present parents, it'll be a peaceful, zen experience, we won't work and we'll just be completely there for the baby." But then the baby got sick, Izzy got sick, I got sick too at different times. There were a lot of work issues, we had to "put out fires" in the business, so Izzy and I had to work a lot, and we realized that it was very difficult to take care of a baby and do work at the same time And now I appreciate all the complexities of parenthood even more. If taking care of a child was all I did, I would say, " Okay, cool. I can do it, I can handle it." It's not that difficult on a global scale. But if you're trying to do anything
else-working, cleaning, laundry, or just keeping up with the pace of life-the only real time to do it is when the baby is sleeping. And then you have a window of time when you just want to relax, but you have to do everything else: laundry, cleaning, cooking, whatever. And now, living here in Hong Kong, where we have many parent friends with children of all ages, they are all literally provided with nannies and childcare support to the brim. They all say that if you go on vacation without a nanny, it doesn't feel like a vacation at all because you're constantly on duty with the child. And at a certain point, of course, it depends on the age of the children and other circumstances. So, this was a major
life change: we chose to build a business that generates income to afford professional childcare 24/7 when needed, because it made our lives much easier. And also just having the freedom to move to a country like Hong Kong. I knew nothing about the childcare situation when we moved to Hong Kong. This was a pleasant surprise for us. But now that we've been here for 2 years, we went back to London for a month and realized that Hong Kong is actually cool. So we just signed a new apartment lease for another 2 years. In addition, and I will discuss this in the work section, we rented a new office for 3 years, so we are currently in the process of furnishing the entire office. And
the flexibility of this kind of work, where I actually create videos, is really good because I can set my own schedule. Here's what I do now: Izzy and I wake up at 7:00, and from 7:00 to 8:00 we have time for exercise. This morning I swam and then from 8:00 to 8:30 I was in the sauna. And from 8:30 to 9:30 I took a little walk with my daughter. We drank coffee, and she drank bebechino. Then I took her to the office because it's very close to home. Around 9:30, the nanny came, picked her up from the office, and took her to playgroup. This way I can spend an hour alone with my daughter in peace in the morning.
I come to the office and start my workday while someone else takes care of the child, and it's very convenient. The only thing I feel a little guilty about is the question of how much time should I spend with my child? After all, it's not necessarily 24 hours a day. We can all agree that being with a child 24 hours a day is probably too much. And we can all agree that zero hours a day with a child is probably not enough. So it's clear that there's a "golden mean" when it comes to how much time you want to spend with your child. This is the question I now ask every parent I meet.
I ask, "How do you determine how much time to spend with your child?" Especially when you have the freedom to spend as much time with her as you want. For example, in my case, because of the way this business is structured, I do n't actually have to work. I could just become a stay-at-home dad, not work, live off investment income, and spend literally 18 hours a day with my baby, except for when she's sleeping-about 11-12 hours. So, literally spending 12 hours a day with the child. I do n't really want this. It's not that fun to spend 12 hours a day with a 16- month-old. Have fun with a 16 -month-old, maybe an hour or two a day. But when it goes on for longer, it's
not so much fun anymore. So there's a part of me that asks myself: Should I spend more time with my child? After talking to various parents-and I'd be interested to hear in the comments if anyone has found an answer to this question-I realized that there's no need to worry. The fact that you're asking such a question probably means that you're simply adapting over time. Especially as your kids get older, you start to want to spend more time with them, so don't worry too much-that's the general impression I've gotten from parents who are older than me and have more experience with kids. But it still comes to mind. This morning, for example, I went to the office, and at 9:30 the nanny picked her up
. And for the first time she said, "Dad, dad," and she cried because she was shouting, "Dad, dad." And I thought: nothing like this had ever happened before, that she would cry for me. She usually cries, "Mommy, mommy," but for the first time this morning, when I left her with the babysitter, she screamed, "Daddy, daddy." And suddenly I felt a certain guilt, asking myself: should I have left her at the office? Should I have just gone with her? Although, it is probably natural for a child who is attached to their parents to cry when they are separated. So I don't know.
It's a little tricky because if I didn't have the freedom to do whatever I wanted and I had to go to work, I might say to myself, oh, I have to go to work. I have to be in the office because, of course, I do it to provide for my family. But to be honest with myself, I don't do it to support my family, but because the work is truly satisfying. So, what is the optimal amount of time to spend with your child? I have no idea. So if anyone has any thoughts on this or any methodology-let me know, because I would really like to hear the answer to this question. So the question is: is it worth maximizing quality time when you are completely focused on your child for a short period of time? But it's also worth
saying something about the amount of time, because this, of course, affects the formation of a connection and attachment. They arise simply because you are nearby, even if you are not spending time together in the format of "quality leisure." This is one of the key issues in my life right now that I haven't faced before, but now it comes up every time I choose work, hanging out with friends, pickleball, or anything else over time with my child. I guess this is something all parents deal with, but this is actually the first part of my news. By the way, a short advertisement: we are currently having a promotion for this very beautiful and cool pen, created in collaboration between
me and the Baronfig company. This is the Liminal Squire Hex Pen. "Liminal" means the space between: the space between ideas, the space between distraction and deep work. The story is this: a few years ago I was at a retreat where James Clear, the bestselling author of Atomic Habits, was present, and he gave me a pen. I started using it and it was the best pen I've ever held in my hands. The only thing I didn't like was that it was black. James Clear then kindly introduced me to Joey, the founder and chief designer of Baron Fig. And I said to Joey, "Dude, I really like the pen you did with James Clear. Can we make the same one for me, only white, in " light mode", in my color scheme
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Izzy and I have noticed something that I never thought we would do: when we go on dates, we often just look at a picture of the baby and talk about it, which is a little. It's cute. This is a real vibe. I recommend having children. Especially if you can get help with childcare. I hope that when we record this update in a year, she will already be talking, because right now she can't yet. But I saw two- year-olds, four-year-olds and I was like, " Wow, these kids can talk." It's much more interesting when you can communicate with them and they ask questions. And I'm like, "Okay, I'm looking forward to this next stage of life."
And I also try, you know, they say, to enjoy every moment, savor these moments and not try to rush things, because these moments only happen once. We are currently looking at playgroups and schools, I have attended open days at Montessori schools, at a few different settings and they seemed great. It was great to visit these open days, wasn't it? Because I don't know if it's noticeable, but at school I was a real "pie boy." In elementary and middle school, I was a model student who was paraded around at open houses to impress my parents. And now I understand what they were doing. Because when I came to these open days and
talked to the children: 5-year-olds, 7- year-olds, 10-year-olds, I was amazed. I thought, "Oh my God, these kids are just incredible." Um, and it made me feel, like, "Okay, school, I see the value of school." Because I used to be very much in favor of homeschooling, because, you know, especially Montessori or Waldorf, and other alternative teaching methods, I understand why they're good. And, man, seeing these really impressive 5- to 10- year-olds, I thought, "Holy [__], is our kid going to be like that someday? Wow. That's pretty cool." So, that's where we'll probably stop in terms of learning for now. I would like to have another child sooner rather than later. I would say my wife is the limiting factor here, so
we'll see, we'll see what the timeframe is going to be in that regard. Now I think we should have.I want to aim for five children. I think five is a good number to aim for. Um, but of course, I'm easy to talk to, so when I talk to Izzy about it, she says, " You know, we'll take it one at a time, we'll see." Okay, let's move on to other things besides the baby. So, we've been living in Hong Kong for about two years now. And we will be here for another three years, because we have a three-year contract for renting an office. And I definitely see Hong Kong as a place to live long-term. It has many advantages. The weather is wonderful here. There is something to do here.
The atmosphere is simply incredible. It's like you're in Karachi, it's part Dubai, part Singapore, part Sydney, and part London. There is simply a huge variety here, tightly packed into one place. So if you need nature, if you want beaches, it's all here. Now we live, so to speak, in the very center of events. I would like to eventually move somewhere closer to the suburbs if we stay here for a long time. I like the idea of living near the beach, that would be cool. What I started doing recently is creating a men's group. So, we have a group on WhatsApp, and right now there are 12 people in this men's group
. And they are all entrepreneurs or business owners that I have met over the past couple of years while I was here in Hong Kong. And every week we play pickleball and then we go out to dinner. So, for example, tomorrow is pickleball night with dinner, and that was nice. We also have a lot of couple friends, because once you get married and have kids, you end up really making friends with other people who are also married and have kids. Yeah, that's pretty cool. We often go on double dates, often visit someone's home, or invite people over. Our lives have definitely become much more social than a year ago, when we didn't have any friends because we were new here, but Izzy and I have made a bigger effort to meet people more often
and prioritize friends and socializing over work. Hmm, sometimes the weekend comes, some plan comes up, and we think: do we really want to go somewhere? And then we say to ourselves: no, it's worth the effort, because we're still new here and we still want to make friends. And we are always glad we made these efforts. So yes, the issue with friends is resolved. As for health, I work out with a personal trainer several times a week. I probably could have worked better on this. I started doing some exercise every morning: running or swimming, and it's great. So overall, things are going pretty well in my personal life. The challenge arises: how much time should be spent with the child at a minimum. Another challenge is a
bit of health, because the work is very interesting and intense. And things with the child are in the morning, then communication with Izzy, meetings with friends, and in the midst of all this, finding time for regular training and visiting the gym has historically never been possible But just a couple of days ago, I decided that this morning block of exercises would be without discussion. We traveled a little. We travel more often for business than for leisure, because, frankly, even with a nanny, traveling with a 16- month-old baby is a hassle. So the inconvenience of leaving our comfortable lives, where everything is
familiar, for the sake of traveling often seems like it's not worth it. So when we travel now, it's usually for business events. We often combine this with team outings and events for our Lifetime Business Academy students, or with family weddings, events, and family reunions. We didn't often just leave the country solely for the sake of traveling. One cool thing is that mainland China is very easy to get to So we spent a couple of days in Shenzhen, a couple of days in Guangzhou-which is the city where my wife's mother is from. The coolest thing about mainland China is the 24-hour spas. These spas are just incredible, aren't they?
You pay the equivalent of $30 or so, get a day pass, and there are jacuzzis, cold pools, saunas on one floor, where everything is separated. So you're there, I'm there, in a circle of a bunch of naked men. And upstairs is a crazy buffet with every possible fruit and drink imaginable. You can pay a little extra to get access to the main buffet with incredible food. There are private bedrooms upstairs that you can book for around $50 per night to get a cool private room to sleep in . You can book a massage therapist at any time, he will come and give you the massage you want. Private massage rooms can be booked. It's just incredible and very affordable. Listen, China. Now I understand. We want to explore China a little
more. Until now, we have only traveled to mainland China for the 24-hour spas, and I want to make it a monthly trip. Like you go on Saturday night, come back on Sunday night, or something like that. You can even do it on a weekday, because there are significantly fewer people there, and, of course, with the flexibility of our business, we can afford it. But yes, I want to explore mainland China, especially when the little one is a little older and can obey during the flight. I heard that after two years it's not so difficult anymore. Then, you know, we would like to travel more in Southeast Asia. We have friends in Japan whom we can visit. I would like to see a little more of
Thailand, you know, go to Indonesia, to Malaysia. The topic of male company, in my opinion, is interesting. A few months ago I read a great post on Twitter. It was about how if you're a man, especially if you're over 30 and married, you're at high risk of experiencing male loneliness. And I'm like, "Wait, what is this even?" The main argument is that when you're over 30 and married, especially with a child, your wife usually controls your social life because they're more sociable and take care of the organization. And I noticed that I had fallen into this trap of inertia: I didn't organize anything myself, and all our meetings were either in pairs or together with the children. And the point of that tweet was that as a
man, you will lose friends if you don't take the initiative and start organizing everything yourself. Because in reality, all the men you know want to date too. It's just that no one wants to be an organizer. So I thought, "okay, that's interesting." I sent this article to my friends' AI agent and asked it to make a plan and come up with ideas for men's leisure activities. We settled on pickleball-it's a very accessible sport. You don't have to be a master at it to have a good time. And I would like to do more things together when our group becomes more cohesive: for example, going on a men's weekend to a spa where we can relax, or organizing a joint work trip, say, to Bali, to work on our business projects together. I think that would be really cool.
I'm glad I overcame my fear of organizational routine, because otherwise nothing would have worked out, and it has brought a lot of benefits to my life. The only downside to living in Hong Kong is that it's very far from most of my friends and family. If anything would make me return to the UK, it would be family and friends, because my brother lives there, his wife too, and they now have two children. So, we, um, stayed at their place while we were in London, and it was great. It would be great if cousins grew up knowing each other and spending more time together than just in the summer. But a lot of my friends in Britain are entrepreneurs who are also gradually leaving the country or constantly traveling, so I saw my
entrepreneur friends surprisingly often, even though I wasn't in Britain, because our paths crossed, or they were passing through Hong Kong on their way to, I do n't know, Thailand or Australia or somewhere else. I was surprised at how much Hong Kong has become a stopover point for people flying to different places, which is also quite nice, but I miss my British friends and family, with whom I now spend very little time because I am on the other side of the world. Right now, for the most part, life is actually pretty good. Hmm, everything works. Everyone is healthy. The wife is beautiful. The child is cute.
What is there to complain about? The work is flexible. We have enough money to do what we want. It's just too easy. It's like playing at the easiest level. Let's say in 5 years. What is my plan for 5 years? So, I'm 32 now. I'll be 37 . It would be nice to have a few more children by then. It would be nice to have a bigger house. We just moved into a smaller apartment. We moved to a three-room apartment in Hong Kong. There's a cool place in Hong Kong called Repulse Bay, it's very expensive and incredibly beautiful. And I would like to live in a penthouse in Repulse Bay. It's like mine, it's on my wish list.
The problem is that renting a penthouse in Repulse Bay costs around $50,000 per month. Like, what kind of [__] is that? Um, right now, at this point, we can't afford $50,000 a month in rent. But it seems like a good goal to strive for. I would like to be in much better shape in 5 years than I am now, because I would, I don't know, find a daily exercise habit that I would stick to consistently, and not give up on a diet or anything like that. It would be nice to be in that situation. You know, I hope our marriage will still be thriving in 5 years. Actually, there's nothing special to say about life. This looks like a pretty normal, everyday life. Every day is a little bit similar to the next, but I like that. There is enough variety in the days
There is enough variety in the daily routine. There is enough freedom and flexibility that we can go anywhere we want if we want. And we have enough friends around in Hong Kong, so we now feel very comfortable here, which is really nice. So, we're finishing up lunch here, and then we're going to head over to the new office, because I'd like to give you a little sneak peek of what's going on there. Then we can talk about all the work stuff. Okay, there's a lot of news on the work front. I feel much more excited about work now than I have lately, especially for the first 6 months of 2025. It was like the baby was on the way and then it was born, and I felt a certain stagnation in my work. The only real product we sold was our YouTuber Academy course
. I'll be honest with you guys, I've been teaching this course since probably 2020. And the reason why people want to create a YouTube channel is because they want to make money. But I do n't really think that creating a YouTube channel is the best way to make money. I stopped caring about giving YouTube advice to beginners. So I was in a bit of a crisis of meaning at work. So for a good part of last year, I felt like I was just going by inertia, because, well, I was making money, sponsors had to get spots, videos had to come out, and then I talked to one of my mentors, Ali Richards. He helped me figure out what I really wanted to do.
I told him I wanted to build my own business school. And he's like, "Okay, so why don't you just do it?" At first, many things held me back from doing this. First of all, I didn't want to be seen as a scammer or anything like that, because if you're teaching people how to build a business, it's like teaching people how to make money, and the question becomes, "Are you one of those people who do online scams?" And I realized that this was a big limiting belief that I could let go of. But it took time to let go of that particular limiting belief. Em. So, last summer, we ran an event called the 1K Challenge, where we helped people make their first $1,000 online. This was our first experience with a paid product that
teaches people how to make money. And everything went extremely successfully. We have about 1,300 people registered. Our students benefited greatly from the course, and almost everyone earned their first dollar. Many earned their first $10. Some earned their first $100, and some even their first $1,000 online. Many of them talked about how this experience changed their lives, because for the first time they realized that they could earn an independent income on their own, without an employer. It was extremely motivating. I thought, "This is just cool. " I couldn't wait for the live sessions when we had them, and I could talk for hours, way beyond the allotted time, because it was so interesting. We have since
launched the "Lifestyle Business Academy " and my vision is to literally create the world's best online business school. Something better than an MBA from Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge. Since I decided to do this about a year ago, I wake up every morning inspired to work on the business because it's a worthy mission that I haven't had in years. Over the past 12 months, we have trained several hundred students at the Lifestyle Business Academy. Many of them earned a lot of money, started their own businesses, and were able to quit their jobs. This is very cool. Now we have, I think, 15 more
team members who work exclusively at the Lifestyle Business Academy. We have seven coaches and we are hiring a few more. By the way, there is a page with vacancies below, if anyone is interested. We have three admissions consultants and we are hiring quite a few more people. We have a sales director. We have a Director of Customer Success. We have a product manager. We have an operations manager. We have a marketing manager. Some of them are in Hong Kong. Most work remotely. This is very fun. This is simply incredible. I do live sessions about three times a week, and it's really fun. I love talking to students. A few months ago, we
held an event in London with a personal presence. We'll be doing another one in Austin in a couple of months. It's incredibly exciting, and it's a significant part of the business that has now become our core business. We have three areas of business. We have content, an academy, and software. As for content, it's, you know, creating videos for YouTube, posts on Instagram. We are going to hire a writer to better focus on LinkedIn, Twitter, and newsletters. We can hire a content operations specialist to distribute content on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, etc. I just like teaching. Content is learning at scale. I approach content creation as if I were offered a position at a university and every week I have to
give one or two lectures on how to build a life you love So today, one of these videos is mostly about personal development, and the other is about building a business. So, those are our two content areas: productivity, personal development, and business building. And both of them contribute to you building a life you love. Which also seems like a worthwhile mission. This is the content side. Then we have the academy, whose mission, as we said, is to build the world's best online business school. And we also have a software direction. We now have three applications. These are Voice Pal, Superfocus, and Creator Grid. Voice Pal is a great little app that works really
well; essentially, it's a "ghost author" in your pocket. You press record, speak, it transcribes everything you say, and then asks clarifying questions to help you formulate your thoughts. So far, I've transcribed what I think is over 500,000 words in Voice Pal and saved about 7 days of time compared to typing by hand. Next, we have CreatorGrid -a platform that helps creators learn, grow, and monetize. Currently, it is a marketplace for brand collaborations that connects creators with brands. And Superfocus is what excites me the most: we're trying to create a universal productivity app that helps you manage your time and achieve your goals. After all, to some extent, content is like teaching you how to fish, and software
is like providing a fishing rod. I'm especially excited about Superfocus because we now have about a thousand founding members, so every day real people are using the app, giving us feedback, telling us what they like and what they would like to improve. And every week, our team- designer, developer, product manager- makes changes to the app and makes it simply incredible. And yes, about 6 months ago I was a little ashamed of the app because it wasn't very good quality. But now I am sincerely proud of him. So I spend about one day a week on Superfocus, about three days a week on Lifestyle Business Academy, and about one day a week on content. I think this is a very good portfolio for doing business.
Content, academy and software. The Academy is, you could say, our cash flow engine, it has a fairly high margin, as we have a huge team to support it. High-margin information courses with coaching, community, and curriculum, and it's very interesting. And software is what gives us monthly income and potential value for the enterprise. I don't think we would want to sell this product. I do n't think we want to sell software, but we want to build it with the operational discipline that we have to be able to sell it if we want to, because the way to build a company to sell is a very disciplined approach where you watch your margins, make sure everything is properly documented and everything is working properly. About a year ago, when I was just starting
this idea with an online business school, I was talking to one of my mentors and he asked me a simple question. He asked me to rate my attitude towards work on a scale of zero to 10. At the time, I said it was a six. And then he asked, "Okay, cool, what does it take to make this a seven, an eight, a nine, or a ten?" And then I said, man, I work from home most of the time now, but if we had a nice, atmospheric office where there were studios for me and Izzy to film, where the crew was on site every day, and it was just a great place to work that I could go to every day, that would be a ten out of ten. And since we had studios for filming at home, and since our lease was ending in another year, we decided:
okay, let's take a small office in a coworking space, because it gives us flexibility, we don't have to do renovations, and we can have a flexible monthly contract. Actually, that's what we've been doing for the last year or so. But then, as Lifestyle Business Academy began to grow rapidly, we realized we needed to hire more people, the team expanded, and our original office became too small for our team. This got us thinking: should we stay in Hong Kong, or try to find a cool office where we can film and work, where our students can come, where we can hold events and record podcasts. And that's exactly what we're literally doing right now. So
let me start by showing you what the old office looks like. So, this is what our current office looks like. This is an ultra-wide-angle lens, so it looks much larger than it actually is. Izzy sits here, I sit here, and Owen usually sits here . Usually Nicole is there, Anne is there, and Callis is there. We are already constantly jostling and barely have space to move around. Now let's move on to something new. So, this is what the new office looks like now. Greetings. Here we are. Greetings. My God This is Look at it all. This is a construction site. This is very, very exciting.
Work is in full swing. Walls are being built. Dude, last time we were here, nothing was built and we were just mapping out where the walls should be. It was completely empty up until then, we were just signing the lease, and all of this started happening literally in the last 7 days or so. And now everything, well, everything is just happening So there's no air conditioning here right now because there's all this construction going on, so the building administration turned it off so it wouldn't get clogged with dust and other debris, and so it's just unbearably hot here. They installed fans like this on the floor. They closed all the windows because, of course, the sun shines through them, so
it's impossible to fully appreciate the natural light when all the windows are closed. But once everything is ready, we will definitely create a lot of content, showing the entire renovation process from start to finish, which was very interesting. A lot of things I've never had to think about before in my life. So, yes, this will be the main part of the office. Here we have Izzy's studio. And here they are building my studio. We have walls and partitions separating them. We have a small meeting room over there. But we have a balcony there. There will probably be a kitchen-dining room there. So this man installs kitchen equipment. Hmm, I'm not sure what's going to happen here yet.
We'll probably hang a 75- inch TV on the wall. Um, and maybe some workspace underneath, and a few phone booths over there. And in my dreams, we would put a tree in the middle of all this. Yes, it seems absolutely crazy that everything is taking on this look. Uh, this business, I think, started a lot of what we have now, back in 2012, when I first started teaching courses in classrooms, helping kids get into medical school. And I started in our family living room, teaching first two people, then four. And then I booked a room at a local mosque, where we had seven students. Er, that was when I was a first-year medical student at Cambridge. And then that expanded to classes of 30 students, and
later to lecture halls of 150 students in many countries, mostly in the UK, but we also taught in Singapore and the Netherlands. And it was through this business that I created my YouTube channel in 2017, initially making videos to help people get into medical school. This was organic content marketing for business. Then in 2019, when my YouTube channel began to grow rapidly and my interest in the medical school admissions field faded, I sold the 6med company to a guy who became my friend and mentor. Since then, my business has been essentially a YouTube channel where I create content about productivity, personal development, and, increasingly, starting my own business. At first I filmed mostly in my
bedroom, and later in the living room of the apartment where I lived with my friend Molly, and then with my friend Shin. In 2021, we moved to London, where we rented an office in a coworking space for the first time, and it was a wonderful time. Then we moved to another office-it was a residential apartment where I lived with my brother and his wife, where the team came every day, and it was incredibly fun. After getting married and moving to Hong Kong, we initially worked from home, but we had never dared to sign a lease for as long as 3 years before. We spend, I think, about $200,000 on renovations. This is a serious investment in time and money, but now is the time for it, and it's so exciting to finally have our own space
that we can decorate however we want. Izzy and I eagerly discuss every night what our new office will look like. If you had told me in 2017, when I started making videos in my dorm, that it would grow into my own office with a team of 25 people, 10 of whom work offline, I would have had a heart attack, hernia, and stroke all at once. But it's cool that we're here. The problem is that as a business expands, overhead costs inevitably increase And as overhead costs increase, so does the pressure on the business to continue operating. In the past, we have had periods when costs were rising and the business could not grow, so we had to say goodbye to part of the team and significantly reduce costs. But this time it's different. His
last words are famous: "This time it's different." We currently have two products that I am very excited about: Life Project Academy and Superfocus. Um, as an entrepreneur, I 've learned a lot over the years, trying to do this and making a bunch of mistakes along the way. We have world-class mentors who have done similar things before and are helping us every step of the way. Um, we have a great team. Angus, our general manager, has a wealth of experience. We brought Izzy into the business, she is now something like the CEO of the company. Angus is our COO, if you will. I'm a " vibe guy," I don't need to do much other than create atmosphere, shoot, and content, which is my area of genius. And we now have an
incredible team, because for the first time in the last few months we have hired managers for different departments. So, we have a head of customer success. We have a sales manager. We have a great guy in marketing, he's not very experienced for his age, but he understands everything perfectly. We have a product manager. Our hiring philosophy used to be to hire young people in their twenties who were on the same wavelength, and we would figure everything out together. Now that business is becoming a bit more professional, and we aspire to be the best business school in the world, the hiring philosophy has changed: we need department heads who already have the experience to bring outside expertise, rather than just making things up on the
fly. We're still learning along the way, but we're already realizing how helpful it is to have experts in customer service, product, sales, and marketing-it's been incredibly helpful and has lifted a lot of weight off my shoulders, as well as Angus and Izzy's. So, yes, costs are rising, the team is expanding, and I'm confident we'll make it Yes. We'll see what the update about our lives will be in 4-6 months, whether it will remain relevant, but I'm very confident in this. I think it will just be fire. So, if you've made it this far, you're part of the reason we're here, because if you're watching our content, you're the main reason. Maybe you've watched my content, subscribed to my newsletter, followed one of our sponsored links, purchased one of our courses,
or even become a student of our Lifestyle Business Academy. The revenue we generate from all of this-and it all started with me simply making free videos online, teaching people how to apply to medical schools-now supports a team of about 25 people, an office in Hong Kong, an audience of millions, and tens of thousands of students who have taken our courses around the world. And all this happened because in 2012 I thought: I need to start earning money. What am I good at? Okay, can I make money doing what I'm good at? Okay, cool. Could I make money teaching medical students how to pass the BMAT entrance exam? It all started with this thought back in 2012. So, the last thing I want to say is: Lifestyle
Business Academy strives to be the best online business school in the world, and our app is perhaps the best productivity tool in the world that helps you manage your time, energy, and focus. We have a world-class team that is very pleasant and fun to work with. The team is growing, so if you are looking for a job, we have both remote and office-based positions available. I don't know why I'm showing it here, but there are links to remote and office jobs at the bottom, so go to alial.com/jobs. And yes, if you are interested in timely updates, be sure to subscribe to my Instagram or to our newsletter. They will also be linked below. And yes, thank you very much if you watched this
video to the end, because most people do n't. I don't know how long it will take while I'm filming, but it's probably quite a while. But it was an interesting video Here, everything is banging, drilling, sawing, and clogging at the same time. So hopefully we can move in a few weeks. We can move into the office. Anyway, if you enjoyed this video and are interested in a playlist of my life update videos over the years, we've compiled them into a separate playlist here, just for history and interest. So, I've been documenting this journey since 2017, when I was a medical student, then became a doctor, and then accidentally went full-time on this YouTube channel, became the "final boss" of selling courses, and now, a person who sells courses and
software online, and also has his own book. So it's all in this video with updates on my life over the years. So thank you very much for being a part of this journey. Thanks for watching, and see you next time. See you later.
