Name: Brutally Honest Truth On How To Get Rich
Uploaded: 2026-03-07T21:36:54.000Z
Duration: 17 min 26 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Okay, I would like to start off this video with a little story related to a video game.

Gerund

Bear with me for a second for the story, because I promise it relates to making money.

Now, as you may or may not know, I used to be addicted to a video game called World of Warcraft, which I've been playing on and off for the last, like, 15 years.

And there is a guild in World of Warcraft called Team Liquid, which is like the best World of Warcraft team in the world.

And they compete in, like, the competitive esports and all of those arenas.

I don't know his real name is, but that's his, like, video game name.

And he also happens to make YouTube videos.

Now, I watch a lot of Liquid Maximum's YouTube videos because as someone who's interested in this video game, and

there's always been a part of me that's been like, huh, I wonder what it would be like to be a professional video game player.

And so I was watching a video from Liquid Maximum where he was talking about what the difference is between like, top 0.001% professional level players in this video game compared to even people who are in the top 1% or people in the top 10%.

And one thing he was saying is that it is very hard for normal people, like the average video gamer to even fathom just how much better someone who's playing in the top guild in the world, just how much better that person is like, compared to their own skill level.

And then there was one thing he said in this video that made so many things click into place for me.

And this is where it relates to the art of making money.

He said that if you think about what it takes to get into this guild, Team Liquid, like the top guild in the world for this video game.

It was like, basically every single person who is in the guild has spent the last 15 to 20 years of their life spending eight to 12 hours a day, every single day, purely devoted to the task of trying to get good at this one specific video game.

You know, he's not saying that that's a good thing or a bad thing or like they're morally better than you or morally worse than you because they've just spent loads of time devoted to this one thing.

But the way he put it was like, hey, these guys have spent all this time just doing this one specific thing, and

you have spent the last 10 years of your life just doing something else instead of you spending the last 10 years of your life grinding away in World of Warcraft, you might instead have had a real job.

You might have been playing sports, you might have been watching a bunch of tv, but

you were doing something other than just single minded devotion to this one specific video game.

So what he's basically saying is that if you look at the people who are in this top guild in the world, in World of Warcraft, they just sunk way more hours than you can even fathom into this video game.

Specifically, of course there are other factors, like I'm sure there's like skill and talent and all that kind of stuff, but

like, if you wanted to be one of the world's best players at this very specific video game, you would have to sink loads and loads and loads and loads and loads of time into it.

And then with the time that you're sinking into it, you would have to then actively try and actually improve at the game rather than just playing the game for playing the game's sake.

Now what does any of that have to do with making money?

Well, there is a pattern that I've seen amongst people that I know who make a lot of money and people in my audience and people who come up to me and ask questions and workshops and stuff and for of mine even who want to make money but are not really making as much money as they would like.

In general, all else being equal, the people who make more money are spending way more of their time actively trying to make money.

The people who make less money are probably spending less of their discretionary time actively trying to make money.

Now in this video, I'm not going to get into the conversation about privilege and about like unfair advantages and about like all of that kind of stuff.

All of that stuff is definitely important in terms of how rich you can get and also how easy it is for you to get rich.

But the key point I want to make in this video is if you are trying to make more money, then you probably need to spend more time actually doing that.

So if you're still with me at this point in the video and you haven't switched off yet, then I'm assuming you have the goal of making more money.

And I'm assuming you're not quite making as much money as you would like.

So I would like to pose a question to you.

If you imagine how you've spent your time over the last 10 years, how much time would you say you have devoted on average every week to something related to trying to make more money?

Unless your vehicle for making money is specifically in your day job.

Like let's say you happen to be a super highly paid algorithmic day trader working at Jane street or something like that, and

that's your vehicle for getting super rich, then sure, okay, that can counts.

That, you're probably not watching this video.

But like in General, of the 168 hours that you've had every week for the last 10 years, let's say you spent 56 of them sleeping, let's say you spent 12 of them, like eating and going to the toilet and stuff, you've got 100 hours left.

You had 100 hours of time that you could play with every single week over the last 10 years.

Now, whether you've had to go to school, whether you've had a job, maybe 40 to 60 to 80 of those hours disappear.

Of course, if you've got responsibilities like kids and families and you're caring for people or any of that kind of stuff, again, some of those hours disappear as well.

I'm just curious, of those 100 hours in the week, how many have you actively devoted to attempting to make more money?

Whether that's improving in your job, whether that's learning new skills that lead to more income, whether that's starting or growing your own business, how many hours have you spent doing it?

Now, as I mentioned, the main pattern that I've seen amongst the people I know, including myself, who are sort of wealthy or financially free or, you know, whatever you want to call it, is that they've just spent more of their time actively working on the thing.

You know, I go to the gym a few times a week and I see people who are way more jacked than I am in general.

All else being equal, assuming they haven't taken steroids or whatever, it's a pretty reasonable guess that if someone is more jacked than I am, it's because they've spent more time going to the gym and probably more time caring about their nutrition than I have.

That would be a pretty uncontroversial take.

I have friends who are way better at cooking than I am.

Probably fair to say that they have spent more time actively learning how to cook and improving their skills at cooking recipes and stuff.

They just probably spend way more time cooking than I do.

I have a bunch of friends who are amazing at the guitar or amazing at the piano.

Sure, there might be some level of like innate talent involved.

But like, for the most part, if someone is way better than me at the guitar or the piano, they've just spent way more time than I have working on the guitar and the piano.

And the reason I'm making this video is because it sounds obvious, but

I don't think it really is that obvious that if you want to make more money, you got to spend more of your hours every week actively trying to make more money.

In a video I made about how to get rich last year, I told the story of my friend Jane, who has been wanting to become a millionaire for the last 10 years.

And her key goal in life is to become a millionaire so that she can be financially free and so that she can retire her parents and like pay off the parents mortgage and all that kind of stuff.

And outside of her day job, when I ask her, how many hours a week do you actually spend actively trying to make money?

She had never even thought about the question.

She just had this goal of becoming financially free and becoming a millionaire.

But for some reason, for a lot of people, like, the goal of making money doesn't feel like a goal.

Like, I don't know, trying to get better at running or trying to get jacked or trying to become a professional video game player where obviously you have to put a lot of time into it.

Because money is sort of like, sort of, I don't know, woven into the fabric of society in some weird way.

We treat monetary goals often not as in the same way that we treat other kinds of goals, which means for a lot of people, it's not actually obvious that if you want to make more money, you actually need to spend a bunch more time than you probably are currently actively trying to make more money.

By the way, if you are enjoying this video so far and you are interested in making more money on the Internet, which, you know, we all are these days, One service that I find super helpful that I've been recommending to everyone for ages now is called Stan, who are very kindly sponsoring this video.

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So if you go to join Stan Store slash Ali Abdaal, you can redeem that to get the trial or you can click the link in the video description and that will get you the trial.

So thank you so much Stan for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it now.

What counts as actively trying to make more money if you're just starting out?

Even like reading books, even watching YouTube videos, even listening to podcasts, all that kind of stuff about money, about entrepreneurship.

But the rule I would suggest is that that only counts for the first, let's say three to six months.

If you've been spending longer than about three to six months, where the only work you are doing on trying to make more money is reading books about it or watching YouTube videos about it, including this one, then I would say that those hours stop counting after around about month six.

Beyond the six month point where content consumption perhaps counts, I would say what counts beyond that point is how many hours per week are you actively building either the skills or a product or a service that helps solve problems for other people who are willing to pay to have those problems solved.

So either that's improving your own skill at your own job and trying to get better at solving problems within the context of your job so that you can negotiate for a raise.

Or more likely, if you're trying to get rich quicker rather than slower, it's about building some kind of product or service in the context of your own business.

That product or service solves some kind of problem for people who are willing to pay to have that problem solved and so you make money as a result of that trade.

How many hours are you spending per week actively working on that?

Now I would like to show you some data here because for the last few months I have been running an online business school called the Lifestyle Business Academy.