Would you believe me if I told you a YouTuber from London who is twenty years my junior changed my life?
His name is Ali Abdaal, and his impact on my life goes beyond the productivity tips he discusses on his YouTube channel. His golden rule, “Journey before destination,” taught me to fully embrace my content creation journey. The journey that led me to finding my tribe.
First, let me tell you about Ali. He is a YouTuber and podcaster who recently quit his job as a doctor to pursue content creation full-time. Abdaal began coding at the age of 12 by building websites then went to medicine and started a YouTube channel about how to study for exams.
Eventually, he managed to make multimillions in profit through his various content creation businesses, including YouTube, his online academy, affiliate marketing, and other ventures.
His content revolves around productivity, making money online, and living a healthier, happier, and wealthier life.
Your vibe brings your tribe
I have been experimenting with creating content in different formats for almost two decades. I have been on Twitter since it first started in 2006, and I have amassed close to 10 K followers and a verified account, but for a long time, Twitter had been a source of immense frustration for me, mainly because I couldn’t find my community.
I struggled with defining my tribe; who are my people? Are they journalists, authors, people from the Middle East who share my heritage, parents, working moms? Who dwells in my internet village?
Except for a few ones, most of my tweets hardly got any engagement, and I mainly was tweeting with little or no engagement. Crickets, crickets, all the way.
But that slowly started to change when I was introduced to Ali through a friend of mine. I started watching his YouTube videos, and I slowly got hooked. I heard him talk about productivity, books, how he remembers everything he reads, how he listens to books on audio at an accelerated speed, and how writing online has made him a millionaire.
As I watched his videos suddenly, things started clicking for me, and I reminisced on my career and my writing journey that began when I was in elementary school. Writing online is what I enjoy the most. I was meant to do that full-time. After working on and off for employers for over twenty years, I recently took the plunge and became a full-time content creator, with writing as my focus. Ali played a major part in this decision. He showed me that it’s doable. That if you focus on the journey, the benefits will come later on, and that consistency and passion are all it takes. Writing and creating content became my vibe, and that eventually brought my tribe.
The formation of my internet community
Through Ali and his content creation machine that comprises of videos, a newsletter, a podcast, and others, I was introduced to other creators, like David Perell, Thomas Frank, and Matt D’ Avella.
I started following them, enrolled in some of their courses, met other online creators, connected with them via Twitter and other social media platforms, and found myself belonging to a community of engaged, helpful, creative creators.
My connections snowballed, and I built my internet family of creators who were on a similar journey as me. We are all figuring it out as we go. We are all trying to navigate this brave new world, the creator economy with its gambles wins and quirks.
What I love about this newly adopted tribe of mine is how positive and supportive they are and how generous they are with their time, dolling out information and helpful advice to share and benefit others.
I’m also in awe of the fact that they stay away from controversy or discussing politics and contentious current affairs and just focus on the content creation journey. I have seen so much vitriols on Twitter and witnessed bullying and shaming within other communities that I contemplated shutting my Twitter account, but after meeting this community, I breathed a sigh of relief.
This community is different. It’s a haven for intellectually curious, goal-oriented creators who are pursuing their passion. Positivity and reaping benefits from your hard work is their mantra. They don’t get jealous of other creators; they get inspired by each other’s successes and cheer and learn from them.
When I found out that about them. I immediately declared my allegiance. They are my internet people. After more than a decade of searching, I finally found my long-lost tribe.
My content creation machine
Encouraged by Ali’s Sunday Snippets newsletter, I created a newsletter and resumed my dormant blog. I also created my own podcast on the reading and writing journey.
I even took things a step further and signed up for his part-time YouTube academy, created my YouTube channel, and started dabbling with affiliate marking and sponsorship.
I started my own media creation machine, and I’m doing it full time, and I couldn’t be happier
Also, through him, I rediscovered my love of journaling and learned about storytellers like Mathew Dicks who encourages everyone to journal every day through his homework for life manifesto.
I finally feel like I have arrived at my destination. I found my raison d’etre and got embraced by my long-lost tribe.
You never know how what you put on the internet can change someone’s life. Keep sharing your ideas with the world, and hope for the best. And as Ali says, journey before destination. Thank you, Ali, for the inspiration! Keep creating.