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Working with maximum security can sometimes resemble a maximum security prison. This is me at CUHK Business School here in Hong Kong, giving honest advice to a packed room of students and professionals on how to start and grow your first business. You want to start a business, but what the hell kind of business should you start? And we got a bunch of questions from the audience. For example, a question like: what kind of business should I start? How do I even make my first sale? Who should I sell this to? And most importantly: how do I find time to build a business when I have a full-time job? It all started as an informal conversation, but pretty quickly I asked for permission to use the whiteboard.
Oh, there's a whiteboard there. Class. And in the end, I've broken down all the key tips I would give to someone who wants to start a business today. So let's start with lesson number one, the lottery lesson. When I was in my first year of medical school, I was about 18, and I thought: yes, this is what I worked so hard for. I would come to the hospital and talk to other doctors who were five to ten years ahead of me in their careers, and they all seemed kind of miserable. They didn't seem to really like what they were doing. And these were doctors in Cambridge. I thought: why are they unhappy? So I asked doctors, talked to them, and I wasn't too worried about medical matters. I was wondering: does this bring a
sense of self-fulfillment? Do you really enjoy your job? And I stopped at this question. If you won the lottery, would you remain a doctor? And half of them said: no, I would resign immediately. And the other half answered: yes, I would remain a doctor, but I would work part-time. In all the years I've been asking this question, I've never met anyone who said they would continue to work full- time. And I'm like: um, that's interesting. Then my next question to those who would stay in medicine was: okay, what's stopping you from going part- time? And the answer always came down to money. They simply didn't have enough money. They have mortgages, children, children's tuition fees, this, that, and so on. So they needed money, and that's what
kept them in medicine full-time. I later realized that the happiest doctors I knew worked part-time. They solved the money problem, usually because their husbands or wives worked in management consulting or something similar. So they did n't have to make money from medicine, and they could work three days a week. Then, after entering medical school, I set myself the goal of finishing my studies and becoming a doctor so as not to fail the exams, because, of course, I still wanted to be a doctor. But my goal is to work three days a week, because that's how the happiest people seem to work. This is a great position for a doctor. So I thought: okay, I need to earn a few thousand pounds
more. My target was £3,000 a month and I was trying to figure out how to set up a business while at university to make it happen. In the first year we probably made about 6,000 pounds, something like that. In the second year, it was 80,000 pounds, of which about 30,000 was profit. And next year-150 thousand. Thus, I managed to achieve my goal of about 3,000 pounds per month while still studying. This became what grew into my YouTube channel and business, which eventually allowed me to leave my career as a doctor. But it all started with the original question: look at the people 10 years ahead of you and ask yourself, do they have the life you want? If not, then, you know, we probably have to do something about it. I still
find this to be one of the most useful questions, because if you evaluate your current career, it's easy to think that everything is fine right now. But if you look at people who are 5 or 10 years ahead of you and are following the same path, you actually see your own prediction for the future. And if you like this forecast-that's great. But if you don't like this forecast, you might want to consider an alternative path. Now you might be thinking, well, that's fair, but at least my job is safe now, and security is good, right? This is where we come to the second lesson: the golden cage. When I was in school and people talked about careers, it was all about money, security, and status. But I think for many of our parents,
stability and security are the most important things, right? Stable and reliable operation. Therefore, for my mother, moving to the UK was solely about stability and security. But then she created a foundation that made me realize that I didn't need to worry so much about safety. I get it: if you're looking for maximum security, working in the highest security level can feel like a maximum security prison, right? You've become so focused on security that you've created this prison or cage around yourself, regardless of your career. Now I teach people how to start their own businesses. That's why I talk to a lot of lawyers, consultants, financiers, doctors, developers, software engineers. And many of
them feel this golden cage, because they earn a good income, but they don't feel satisfied. And there is no magic pill for a sense of self-fulfillment. But most entrepreneurs I know are quite accomplished, and most employees I know are not. So I think even if you don't become an entrepreneur forever, it's worth a try, because for me it's a path to autonomy, mastery, purpose, and growth. You can work on what you truly love, and there are no limits to how much money you can make as an entrepreneur. If you have a job, there is a certain limit. You know, there are salary scales, there are levels. For example, you are not allowed to earn more than X, because otherwise the corporate restructuring would have blah
-blah-blah. If you are a doctor, you are not allowed to earn more than a certain amount because that is how the system is set up and it is funded by the state. But when you have your own business, you create a product or provide a service, solving people's problems, there are literally no limits to how much you can earn, and there are no limits to what you can do with your business, because you are free to do whatever you want. And there are no limits to the freedom and flexibility you can have. Of course, sometimes finances have to be sacrificed for flexibility, but you are in complete control of the situation. That's why I'm so passionate about entrepreneurship and why I love giving lectures about business and helping people
get started on this path. When I was in medical school, I didn't even realize it was possible, and it wasn't until I read Tim Ferriss' book "The 4-Hour Workweek" that I and many of my friends my age-I'm about 32 now-discovered the world of entrepreneurship and realized it was real. So if my content or anything I do can help people get a little bit further along this path, which you can do even while you're in college-you don't have to quit your job or drop out -you can learn the skills to build a business and solve people's problems without asking anyone's permission. This is exactly what I strive to help others with. Okay, just to be clear, I'm not against paid work. Many people love their jobs
. I hope that everyone on my team loves their job to some extent. My point is that stability has a real price, and you often don't notice it until you find yourself completely locked in that "cage." And the longer you stay in this safety cage, the harder it seems to get out of it. Also, and very importantly, you don't need anyone's permission to try a little experiment on the side. By the way, here's something that most people never pay attention to. If you have any kind of online audience, it's worth looking at where they actually live. This becomes important the moment you start selling something, because your customers may not be from the same country as you. And here comes the Stan service, which kindly
sponsored this video. Stan is essentially a digital showcase for content creators. You can sell digital downloads, online courses, or consultations without any programming knowledge. This is, in fact, the platform that we have been recommending to all our students at the Lifestyle Business Academy for a year now. The coolest thing is that a new feature that Stan recently added allows you to support 12 different languages depending on where your viewers are from. They support these multilingual features both on your storefront and in emails. So now the person buying from you won't have to read all of this in their second or third language. They also opened up registration to authors in more countries, such as Mexico and Croatia. And because
artificial intelligence is very good at translating languages, you can create a checkout page and a series of email newsletters in your native language, for example, English. And then you can bring in AI to translate it into those 12 different languages. This means that if someone from a country where English is not their native language is watching you, they have the opportunity to see your content in their native language, which is great and better for conversions. So if you're trying to create something online and want a digital storefront that's as accessible as possible without any coding knowledge, follow the link in the video description and you'll get a free 30-day trial of
Stan's Creator Pro plan. You can literally open your store while the idea is still fresh. So thank you very much Stan for sponsoring this video, and we're back on topic. Now let's move on to lesson number three, and this is the million dollar question that host Desmond asked me. So can you talk a little bit more about how to find your first product and how to make your first dollar from that product? Okay, yes, that's the million dollar question. You want to start a business, but what the heck kind of business should you start? Sell t- shirts? Should I try, I don't know, selling or starting a jewelry brand? You're passionate about, say, cooking, so
should you open a bakery, coffee shop, or restaurant? People say restaurants are constantly closing. Okay, you're interested in technology, AI, should you start an AI startup? But there is a lot of competition there. Should I start a YouTube channel, or go on LinkedIn, Instagram or TikTok? There are so many different options. Building a personal brand is probably a good idea, but where will you find the time for all of this? How do you know where to start? In my opinion, business comes down to three things. I call it the "Holy Trinity" of business. If I had a blackboard, I would draw it, but it doesn't matter. Man from the decision. Is there a board there? Oh, there's a board there.
Steeply. My God, we're at university. Of course, there's a board there. Incredible. Wonderful. Good. Boom, boom, boom. The person, the problem and the product. I will write "product" there. I didn't even realize it was the three "Ps." These three "P"s are the "Holy Trinity." What is business? Business is just a tool with which you solve someone's problem and get paid for it. Today, when we drove here, I had no idea how long the road would be. I didn't know it would take about 45 minutes in traffic, oh well, whatever. And by the time we arrived, I was already hungry. So I asked Shaan, Nicole, and my team, "Guys, is there a
kebab place around here?" They asked, "Have you heard of Ebenezer's?" And I'm like, "What the hell is Ebenezer's?" I've never heard of it. And they say, "Oh my god, you have to try Ebenezer's." I was that person, this is about me. My problem was that I was hungry and wanted a kebab. And as luck would have it, Ebenezer's, this business, sold me a chicken doner kebab that solved my particular problem. Now, how much did I pay for this particular product? 50 Hong Kong dollars or something? Because this problem wasn't very painful. Yes, it was a bit unfortunate that I got a little hungry, but I wasn't starving. If I hadn't eaten my kebab at Ebenezer's, I would have been fine. So feeding someone a kebab is
n't such a painful problem. Therefore, they can only charge around $50 per kebab, which means they need a huge volume of sales to make a profit. They have to sell hundreds and hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of kebabs every day to break even, and then thousands more to make a profit. The mistake I see a lot of students make, especially new entrepreneurs - and that was me for the first five years of trying to build a business, which is why I completely failed - is starting with a product. This is a mistake. There is a pejorative expression in the world of entrepreneurship: "a solution looking for a problem."
Yes. The problem with starting out like this is that you think, " I should build an app, or sell a course, or write a book." It all starts with a thought about a solution. And that's usually the wrong order of things to do, because you end up doing what destroys most businesses: you create something that no one really needs. You've seen all these people "vibe- coding" AI junk, right? If you look at the app graph, say, during Chinese New Year 2026, when everyone is discovering Claude Code, you will see the number of apps in the App Store just explode. But if you look at the actual number of downloads, it has remained unchanged. Lots of people create a bunch of random apps, but customers don't use them. This is what happens when
you start with a ready-made solution. Instead, I would advise you to think about it differently: start with this. Start with the problem. Keep a list of issues in Apple Notes, Notion, or any other note-taking app. And every time you communicate with someone, ask them to complain about their problems. People love to complain about their problems. This is something we do all the time. As an entrepreneur, you have to become a magnet, a magnet for problems. You need to understand what problems people have, because they only pay money to solve problems. And the more painful the problem, the more money people are usually willing to pay to solve it. So, that's the basic model of this whole video: person, problem, product. A mistake that
almost everyone makes is to start with the product. We get too excited about a product, brand, logo, app, or something similar. And then we look for someone who might need it. It's like a doctor saying, "I have an amazing new pill, who wants one?" Instead of starting with a problem that really bothers the person in front of you. So if you want to take away just one thing from this video, I recommend that you, if you haven't already, create a list of problems on your phone. And whenever you interact with people, ask them about their problems. And while they're talking, just write down these problems in your phone. But here's the catch, and this is what took me a lot of time: it matters whose problems you're writing down. And that brings
us to the fourth lesson. Another problem of being a student: do the people you interact with have a lot of money or not? Most likely, not much. If you talk to people who don't have much money, they will tell you about their problems, and then you will start creating products for those who don't have much money. It's the age-old problem: "I'm going to create an app for students." Students constantly complain that it is very difficult to find out what events are happening at CUHK at a given time. I have heard about this problem many times, probably from hundreds of students. And I'm like: great
, I'll create an app, a directory of all the events happening at CUHK. How much would people actually pay for this? Probably nothing. Maybe $1 a month. Maybe 0.1% of people will pay you. Since the people you're talking to don't have money, the problems you can solve for them don't cost a lot of money. That's fine, but then you're playing a volume game. You have to sell a lot of products to build a viable business. It's kind of like a "price-number of people" spectrum, right? Let's say you want to earn 100 thousand a year. How to earn 100 thousand? Well, you can sell something for 100 thousand to one person. It's called having a job. You
can sell something for 10 thousand to 10 people. You can sell something for 1 thousand to 100 people. You can sell something for $100 to 1,000 people. You can sell something for $10 to 10,000 people. You can sell something for $1 to 100,000 people, right? We see mathematics. All these options add up to 100 thousand. A mistake I've made before and one I try to warn others against. This is a dangerous area. If you sell things for $1, $10, $100, we don't like that price level. The reason we don't like these price levels is that they require huge sales volumes to be successful. If I create an app and try to charge $9 a month for it, I need hundreds of thousands of people to buy my app and subscribe to it every month so I can make some decent money,
compared to working at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, or wherever the finance bros work these days. I need a huge number of people. And the hardest thing in business is getting people to notice you and want to buy your product. Therefore, volume is much more difficult than price. If you want to make $100,000, this area is much easier. It's much easier to find just 10 people who will pay you 10k than it is to find 10,000 people who will pay you $10. But the problem is that we, as ordinary people, don't think in high-price categories because we are consumers, right? We think about £5 for a kebab, £20 for a hardcover book or a couple of hundred pounds for, I don't know, a Dyson Airwrap, or when a new iPhone comes out. Oh my God, that's
1,000 pounds, 1,000 dollars. We are used to thinking in precisely these categories. But businesses pay crazy, unbelievable money for random things they probably don't even need. If you go into the corporate world, you will see how they hire contractors and consultants and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars for advice. But most of us, when it comes to entrepreneurship, don't think like that, because we think like consumers. We communicate with people who don't have money, that is, our friends. We talk to them about their problems, and these problems, accordingly, do not cost much. And so we all end up building $5 apps, $10 t-shirt brands, $20 jewelry brands, or $10 coffee shops, or we play in a small sandbox with
these things. The biggest revelation for me and for most entrepreneurs I talk to who have succeeded has been the realization that when your worldview is limited to people without money, and the only problems you see are the problems of people without money, which is our friends, it's very difficult to start a business because you get into super-low-price territory, and students don't like to buy things, so your price stays at the bottom. But once you step into the business world or start hanging out with very wealthy people, for example, if you have friends whose parents are from mainland China, talk to your parents and ask them about their problems, and suddenly you'll have
business ideas that are worth tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars, not 5, 10, or 15 dollars. Oh, by the way, if you watch this before November 21st, I'm hosting a completely free masterclass on how to launch your online business by Christmas and get your first high-paying client by January. So if this sounds interesting, if it's something you've wanted to do for a long time but haven't had the structure to make it happen, you can find more information about the masterclass in the video description. So the initial question was, you know, how do you come up with an idea, especially when you're in university? Basically, I think the answer is to talk to more people, ask about their problems, preferably people with a lot of
money. So if you have very rich friends, talk to them about their problems. Your parents' friends, all your parents, are probably professionals in some way, right? Probably. Maybe they work in finance, maybe in some other field, it doesn't matter. They have friends, and you probably find their friends very boring, right? Why would you want to hang out with their friends? But your parents' friends are likely running billion-dollar budgets at their corporations, spending millions on contractors, consultants, and software that seem boring, but they have problems that cost a lot of money, which is why it's easier for businesses to sell to other companies than to consumers.
I'm not saying you should start a B2B business, I'm saying it broadens the scope of possibilities when you set a goal to have a list of problems and ideas, and instead of thinking about a product, instead of " I have an idea for an app," you think, " I talked to Dr. Desmond." Dr. Desmond is a Venture Advisor at CUHK. Ahem. Let me talk to him about his problems, because he probably has access to capital. Isn't that right? And if he has a problem, or, you know, let me talk to him and see if he knows anyone else I can talk to who's running a funded startup. And let me talk to this person and maybe invite them for coffee. Your advantage as a student is that people are more willing to talk to you than after graduation. As a student, you can walk up
to anyone and say, "Hey, I'm a student." "I'm doing a research project on X. I'd like to chat with you over coffee for half an hour to understand what challenges the managing partner at McKinsey is currently facing." McKinsey managing partners are very busy, but they will most likely agree if you ask politely because you are a student. When you stop being a student, you suddenly become a regular employee at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and good luck trying to get the CEO's attention . So, to some extent, as a student, you have an unfair advantage that you can use to become a kind of investigative journalist, detective, or scout, hunting down the problems of people who have a lot of money, because then you are
playing business on the easy level, compared to competing in the mass market, which is business on the hard level. I really wish someone had shown me this graph when I was starting out in my entrepreneurial journey, because my first instinct, like most people's instinct, is to sell something very cheaply in the hope that lots of people will buy it. But, as we said, volumes are very difficult. Volumes outweigh price. Getting $10,000 from 10 people is actually much easier than finding 10,000 people who will pay you $10 each. Now you might be thinking, "Yeah, but I don't know anyone who has money." And if you think you don't know anyone who has money, here's my answer to that. I have a bunch of friends
who are single and currently dating. In particular, my friends who are single and date often complain that when they go on a date with a guy, he only talks about himself and his work, and it's terribly boring. But when I'm talking to someone, I love asking them about work. I like to understand: what exactly are you doing? How does what you do make money? What does your boss think about your work? What key performance indicators, KPIs, concern your manager? How much money does your company make? 500 billion? What? As? How do they make that kind of money? Are they taking data and selling it to companies? How do they do it? So companies pay for data? Oh yeah, there are all these data centers that just pay for
decryptions, and it's amazing. Suddenly, just by untangling the thread of a boring guy who works in finance, you can understand how he or she makes money, how their business makes money, and what their boss cares about in the context of making money. Because when you follow the money, you find interesting business ideas. Trillions of dollars are constantly circulating in the economy, but most of it is money that some big companies transfer to other big companies. And for a financial bro on a date, when a girl listens to him and asks about his job, it's something he's never had in his life, because most girls don't care about that. So if you're a female entrepreneur here, and there's about half of you here
, and you actually talk to them about their work, first of all, they'll feel great, and second of all, more importantly, you can make money by coming up with business ideas, just by asking questions and understanding how money is made. I'm completely serious about this. Every person you know who has a job is literally sitting on a huge pile of problems that their company would happily pay money to solve. The problem is that most people simply never ask. So, here's the challenge. The next time you talk to someone, ask them three questions. First: What do you actually do all day? Ask them to tell you what their typical day is like. Second: how does
your company make money and how do you contribute to it? And third: what are the most annoying parts of your job? And then write down everything they say, and I guarantee it will help you come up with many more business ideas than you have now. This is what we have been teaching students at our Lifestyle Business Academy for the past 12 months. Our whole process is that instead of trying to come up with something in your head, looking for a niche and an idea, of course you can do that, but only give yourself two weeks to do it, and then take the idea to market-not telling people about your idea, but just talking to them about their problems. And our students, who are complete beginners, usually corporate
professionals, are making thousands, tens of thousands, and some even over $100,000 in the last 6 months-they're the ones who have had the most conversations with people, because those conversations lead to identifying problems, and any money is payment for solving people's problems. However, so far we have been talking about the "holy trinity": the person, the problem, and the product. At this point, the host asked a question about marketing, specifically about content. When I was at university 10 years ago, only one person in my law class was making videos for YouTube. Back then, content creation was perceived as: if you don't have any career plans, maybe you can try making content. But now it's also a way to
get some visibility, some publicity, and there are some opportunities to actually make money from content. If you were to give advice to students sitting here, or in 2026, if they're thinking about creating content, if they're afraid to create content, because the hardest thing is to start creating it, and the second hardest thing is to keep doing it, because no one is watching it, no one is paying attention to you, you're talking to yourself into the void. What would be your advice for them to get started and keep going for a long time? So, making money from content is very, very, very difficult, and I don't recommend it to anyone. However, making money from a business and then using your content to drive traffic to that business is
great, and I recommend it to everyone. It's kind of an old model from a decade ago, yeah, yeah, about 10 years ago, was to spend years and years creating content. Eventually, you will build an audience of people who know, like, and trust you. And then, in 5 years, when you have hundreds of thousands of followers, you can sell the product, and now you have half a million people listening to you and will buy your product. Today, this is no longer the world we live in. There is such an idea as the death of a subscriber. If you look at the YouTube app on your phone, they don't even show the subscriber count anymore. You must actively visit the channel to
see them. Instagram doesn't care who follows you. TikTok doesn't care who follows you. LinkedIn doesn't care who follows you. Twitter doesn't care who follows you. All of these platforms are so algorithmic that the number of followers you have has become almost completely meaningless. It's not completely pointless, but it's almost completely, meaning that someone with a million followers has to work just as hard for views as someone with 10 followers. There has never been a better time to be a content creator, because it has never been easier to become popular if the content is quality, but it has never been harder to succeed if the content is crap. Instead, I usually recommend starting with a problem, thinking
about the person who has that problem, and ideally creating a minimum viable product or service that you can charge money for from day one. And now, when you create content for a specific person with a specific problem-not just random TikTok dances, but meaningful content that helps solve a problem-that person sees you as an expert and is much more willing to buy your solution. This is the biggest change that has gradually occurred over the past few years. Subscriber numbers used to matter, but now every content platform has become much more of a meritocracy than ever before. For someone like me who has a lot of followers, it's really annoying because I have to work almost as hard as you do if you have a
few. But this is great news for you if you have few followers, because it means you can get views more easily than ever before. Again, provided you can add value to the person watching the video. Many people think that I started my entrepreneurial journey as a content creator. Actually, no. I started by helping people get into Oxford and Cambridge universities for medicine in the UK. A fairly narrow niche, but it happens. And in fact, it was about their parents. I sold services more to parents than to children. The problem was that
they couldn't pass the BMAT-it was an entrance exam. My product is a training course where I would come into a classroom like this or a lecture hall and spend the whole day talking about how to pass the BMAT. So when my YouTube channel was just starting out, you can scroll down to the very first videos: I was trying to make music videos because I thought I was going to be a music YouTuber. If you don't believe me, you can watch it right now. Just sort through the videos and you'll see several music videos there. My friend sings on several of them. My friend actually sings well. And then the first video where I sang was a cover of Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud." The video
has received three views and four dislikes. I'm like: how is this even possible? Three views and four dislikes. So my career as a musician on YouTube failed because no one was interested. I'm not very talented. I'm not some world-class person . It's so hard to make money from music. But once I started making educational videos for nerds, helping people pass sections one, two, and three of the BMAT exam, medical interviews, or writing a cover letter, it didn't go viral, but it helped specific people-applicants to Oxford and Cambridge in the UK-solve a specific problem: how to get into university with the help of my free content. And then some of these people bought my course. And that's what allowed me to earn
£3,000 a month, have £150,000 in annual income and £30,000 in profit a year while I was still in medical school. And that's exactly what was needed for the content to " shoot". When you create content, it is essentially a free version of your product, because people are still " paying" for it. They pay not with money, but with their time and attention, which is perhaps even more valuable than money. Again, the point is that the original question was advice for content creators. Yes, of course, you should just start making any chat videos on Instagram. It's like.well, you know, it's good to get your hands dirty so you don't have to worry about what other people think. This is an incredibly useful life
hack-just stop thinking about what others think. And yes, it will teach you something about content, but it will only start making money-your ticket to freedom-when you find a problem that someone has, and your content becomes part of the solution, and your paid service or product is an expanded, more serious version of that same thing If you take away one thing from this, it's to bookmark it or create a list of issues in Apple Notes, Notion, or somewhere else, and just keep adding to that list. Just keep adding ideas there. Whenever you meet someone, ask them about their problems, because it will give you ideas for products, services, and content, because ultimately it's the same thing if you're interested in making money. If you're not
interested in making money and want to create content as a hobby, it's a bit strange, because I, for example, don't get much pleasure from creating content. I like performing because it's communicating with real people. I know many people who have become multimillionaires thanks to content. None of them get any pleasure from this. We all hate talking on camera because it's just not that interesting. So, if you want to do content as a hobby, of course you can do whatever you want. Some people really enjoy it as a hobby. Personally, I don't. I do this for the money. I play guitar as a hobby now. I'm not trying to make money from this. I spend time with my wife and daughter as a hobby. I personally believe that if
you care about living life on your own terms, financial freedom, time freedom, creative freedom-don't think of content as a hobby. Think of it as a marketing channel for your business. An analogy that I really like, from one of my mentors, Taki Mura, is to think almost like a musician. You have singles, then a bunch of singles that make up an album, and then the musicians go on tour to play that album. And it is during the tour that they earn the most money. So when you build a business with a content, media, or marketing division, you kind of treat every piece of content as a demo or a single. The idea is that people "swallow" these singles, which means
they are more likely to want to buy your album, which could be your workshop, course, or whatever. And they are much more likely to want to buy tickets to your "tour," which is the full experience of the product or service you are selling. Okay, now we move on to another big category of problems that people always have: okay, let's say you're at this point in the video and you really want to start a business. First, you should check out our Lifestyle Business Academy. But secondly, how the hell are you going to find time for this if you're so busy?
Okay, this is going to be a controversial opinion. Depending on how academic you are, you will consider this to be absolute heresy. So, I apologize in advance. But I will give an example of students. When I was a medical student at Cambridge, in my first year I was very anxious about exams. In my second year, I was very worried about exams. And then I somehow realized: what's the point of worrying so much about exams? Yes, of course , you can get a diploma with honors. I graduated with honors in my second year. I received some kind of award in my third year. But it doesn't matter. Does anyone even need this? When I talk to doctors who are 10 years ahead of me, has their fate changed
because they got 98% instead of 97 %, 88% or 64% on their exams? If they got 12% on the exams, they would be kicked out of medical school. So don't get 12% on your exams. This is a bad idea. But everything in life follows a curve of diminishing returns. Here's the effort, and here's the value you get from it. The path I took when I first entered medical school was the path of a maximizer, a " grade maximizer," as they call it, or whatever. I tried my best to get the highest percentage in the exams. But it's a pointless game if you're aiming for general goals like satisfaction, self-fulfillment, and freedom, which is what I personally wanted to strive for. I don't know about you. We play this petty game when we worry about our grades.
We compete with other people in this arbitrary struggle to see who will get a diploma with honors, who will get some kind of certificate, who will be able to write on their resume at the very bottom, in the education section that no one pays attention to after graduation, that "I received honors in such-and-such a year." In the end, no one cares. I spent so much effort, so much mental and intellectual energy trying to play this game. And that's when you start to think: what's the goal anyway? Is my goal really to get a diploma with honors or 100% on exams? And if so, why? Why is this a goal? I asked myself this question when I was in my third year and became the best at something. I think: why did I spend so much time on this? The only good thing that
came out of it was that I was able to make a YouTube video called "How I Got First at Cambridge University," and it went viral in 2019. That's the only benefit I ever had from coming first at Cambridge. And it was only on one exam in one year, so it was a bit clickbait. So if you're trying to maximize your exam scores, it's very difficult to find time for anything else. So, the somewhat controversial idea is that you can do the minimum necessary to reach an acceptable level on the diminishing returns curve. I don't know, maybe this is a good moment to stop. Or you can work twice as hard and get a little more. Or you can work four times as hard and get a little more. But here you are competing with those who want to stay in science, which is
perfectly fine if that's what you want. However, most of us crave satisfaction, fulfillment, and freedom. And if you talk to scientists, many of them don't have satisfaction, fulfillment, and freedom because they're stuck in the publishing cycle -- "publish or die" and all that. They play their own little game, competing with their colleagues to see who can get published in the most prestigious journal. And if you want to play this game-please do. But if I've learned anything through my years of entrepreneurship and other experiences, it's that you have to decide for yourself what game you want to play. Isn't that right? I made the mistake of defaulting to the
game that society imposed on me in my youth and early 20s. Of course, I was a " nerd" in school, so of course I tried to optimize my grades. And of course, I wanted to get into Cambridge, and of course, I wanted to optimize my grades there. And I think it's good that you're currently studying at a prestigious university. This is indeed a pretty prestigious university. This is a wonderful place. But graduating with a CEHK with honors is not much better than a second class degree or any equivalent on the GPA system. I'm not sure what the system is here. You've already ticked the "prestige" box by being here. You don't need to keep playing the prestige game because it's what you've been used to playing since you were a kid, at least if you're like
me. I grew up playing the prestige game. I won this game. And, fortunately, in the middle of my six-year study, when all my non-medical friends had already graduated, I realized: wait, I was playing the wrong game, because I'm interested in pleasure, freedom, and fulfillment, not continuing the game of prestige. For me, striving to get only high grades was useful at the age of 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. But when I was 21, 22, 23 years old and I was still trying to play the game called "get good grades," that game mostly just kept me from doing other things that were more important to me than grades. So whatever your situation, whether you're a student or not, I would ask this question: what game am I playing, when did I
start playing it, and do I want to keep playing that game? First, you can do things any way you want if they don't serve your purpose. And then, actually, the question arises, how to be productive? It's just a matter of putting things on your calendar. That's literally everything. I have been promoting calendar time planning for ten years. The best productivity hack I've ever found is the Perfect Week Method. This is basically when you create a new Google Calendar or something similar and just decide what your ideal week should look like. Class. On Monday I work from 9:00 to 17:00 or from 8:00 to 20:00, or whatever you do there. Okay, cool. Wednesday will be date night. Saturday will be a time for going for a dim sum with the family or
something. And then I have all of Sunday, two hours on Monday, Tuesday morning, three hours on Wednesday, Thursday morning, and a lunch break on Friday. And this is where you carve out time to build your business. And then, when the business becomes successful enough or if you live with your parents, you can just quit your job. Then you'll have plenty of time to continue building your business, if that's what you care about. But my main idea is that your calendar should reflect your goals. If your goal is to one day become financially independent and live the life you want, then your calendar probably shouldn't be filled entirely with studying, because a lot of studying is unlikely to lead you to financial freedom. Probably not. But building a
business can lead you to your goal- financial freedom. If you know that your path to financial freedom is to become a partner at Goldman Sachs, then of course, education is probably not on the list of priorities anyway, because they don't really care about it. Probably networking or whatever bankers do would be much higher on the list. I think of it this way: goal, plan, system, GPS. Define a goal. This is what I like. What is the goal? Why is this important to you? And, uh, I quite like the idea of anti-goals. What don't you want on the way to achieving this goal? Once you have identified a goal, make a plan. What three to five steps are most likely to lead me to my goal?
Having determined this, ask yourself about the probability of success in theory and in practice. I mean, for example, let's say my goal is to get abs. Why? I don't know. Maybe I'm single and want to find a girl, and I mistakenly think that girls pay attention to the press, it doesn't matter. Plan. What are the three to five steps to abs? Well, okay, uh, probably eat less than 2,100 calories a day, probably 180 grams of protein, probably strength train three times a week, probably 10,000 steps a day, weigh yourself every day, and eventually I'll get some abs. Okay, cool. That's good. What is the theoretical probability that this plan will actually lead me to my goal? Okay, I feel pretty confident about this. Well, you know, I talked to AI about this
. The AI thinks this is smart. Uh, I have a friend who is a personal trainer, and he says: yes, that's quite right. The plan works in theory. 90% probability. But what are the chances that I will actually stick to this plan? In my case, zero, because I will not follow this plan. And this leads to a problem. The goal we supposedly want- abdominal cubes-and the plan we have chosen is not the plan we will ever follow. So, we have a mismatch between goal and plan. Therefore, we either change the goal or change the plan. For myself, I realized: now that I know what is needed for the press, I don't even want it. And then I can relax knowing that I'm not even chasing that goal. Instead, unhappiness and suffering
arise when your goal, plan, and system are out of alignment, when you want something but don't take steps to get it, or you want something but your actions don't lead you to the result. This is where burnout often comes from, when someone wants thing X, say financial freedom, however you define it. But the plan you are following will lead you to work as a social worker, for example. There's nothing wrong with working as a social worker, but it won't lead you to financial freedom. So, either change the goal or change the plan. And the last thing is the system. What do we need to do daily and weekly to make sure we are actually
sticking to the plan? This is where the idea of focus comes in: you just put something on your calendar and do it. This is where time management comes into play, when you actually use your calendar. It's also the idea of accountability when you have a friend, colleague, loved one, app, ChatGPT, or whoever to point out to you when you're not following a plan. I have a video about all of this in much more detail, but essentially, any goal can be achieved by simply doing something consistently, right? All my goals are achieved this way. So the only question is, do you want to achieve this goal? If so, will the plan you are following really lead you to her? If so, what can we do every day to stick to the plan? In this context, this, combined with the
time freed up by not worrying about getting the best grades or increasing your chances of getting the next promotion-if that's not your goal-frees up quite a bit of time and headspace to work on your business, if that's what you want to do. If you don't want to start a business, that's perfectly fine too. In fact, one of my favorite things is we have an online business school, we teach people how to start a business, and about 20% of our students go through that process and decide that entrepreneurship isn't for them. And we celebrate it. This is incredible, because at least you won't die regretting not trying. Now you know that entrepreneurship is not for you. Perfectly. You can go back to your main job happy that you at least
tried. That's why, going back to entrepreneurship, I so strongly advise it to everyone, especially while you're a student and have a lot of free time compared to when you're working at work. Try it. Ask people about their problems, see if you can create a product or service, preferably a service, to help solve them. Don't worry about money in the beginning, because by consistently solving people's problems with your content, products, and services, you are almost guaranteed to become rich if you just don't give up. I hope you got something valuable out of this. And if you want to learn more about the master plan for exactly how I would build a six-figure business
if I were starting from scratch today, the link to it is right there. Thanks for watching, and see you there. See you later.
