How To Build A Following Of 10 Million +: Mrwhosetheboss

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I was just this lanky Asian nerd who played chess.

Aaron Maini. He's one of the UK's most successful ever YouTubers.

I was getting some sort of sick thrill out of seeing the numbers go up. So I made one video every single day for at least six months. It drove me to the point where one time I just broke down crying on camera. I never published that, but I have a photo which I sometimes look back on to remind me of what it took.

There are some things about you that you can't fix. I think you just have to be very mechanical about them and be like, "This is me. I have good things and I have bad things, but the bad things I can't change." I'm going to lean on the things that are good about me, fix the things I can fix, and the rest is life.

Emotionally, physically, just exhaustion. I think that is how I would put it—very, very tired. It was actually a bit of a pivot point in my career because I sat down and realized this isn't actually what I wanted. It was a realization that my channel is growing, all these metrics are looking up, but this isn't my brain. Not many people know this, actually.

Aaron Maini is a creator and entrepreneur with over 8 million subscribers. His story is unconventional: a young kid from the UK who was bullied in school, and whose path to escape that reality would turn out to become his dream, his purpose, and his meaning.

But as Aaron will tell you, he made the critical mistake so many of us make when we're chasing our dreams. He became obsessive. He sacrificed too much—things that mattered more. And at some point, that would lead to him having a breakdown.

That breakdown was a moment of inflection. He's figured out that all-important balance of striving while knowing that you are already enough at the same time. And that, I guess, is the ultimate goal of all of our lives.

So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

Aaron, tens of millions of followers and subscribers later. When I read through your story and your journey, I could see this real fundamental, obsessive, ambitious guy under there. It made me wonder about the scaling of your channel and hypothesize that there must have been something that happened in your early years that gave you that bug—that insatiable desire to be successful. Have you identified what that is?

Yeah, I should probably preface this by saying that I'm very aware I'm a very lucky person. I actually just got off from my brother's wedding a couple of days ago, and I was just looking around at the family and friends thinking, "Damn, this is it."

But there was one thing. When I was growing up, I had a very supportive family, but I didn't have a great school life. I was just this lanky Asian nerd who played chess. That was me, basically. And I think there was some part of me that did seek approval.

It all really happened when my brother got me my first smartphone. That just became my outlet. On one hand, I had this school life that was very mediocre, but then I had this piece of technology in my hand that could do all these things. I just became obsessed with it. Like, this was my life.

Your escape?

Yeah, I guess. I just poured everything into it. I learned everything about this phone and how to do all these things on it. I think it just got to the point where I was like, "Let's make a video."

How old were you when you described yourself as a lanky Asian kid that got a smartphone for the first time?

Fourteen, probably.

And the school you went to, why did people typically get bullied? You alluded to being bullied in some interviews. Typically, people get bullied because other kids think there's something to bully them for.

There was plenty. I was a nerd. I wasn't very pretty, to be honest. People would regularly just call me ugly. I think there was also some sort of subliminal thing about being Asian not being a "cool" thing. It wasn't a particularly Asian area. A lot of things added up into you just being a bit sidelined.

Was it a predominantly white school?

Predominantly, yeah. I did have Asian friends, but the majority of them, yeah.

So you get given this phone, and that becomes your world. What about your immediate family?

They're amazing. There was obviously a little bit of questioning at the start when you're sitting in your back garden shooting earphones when you should be revising. It’s like, "Son, what are you doing?" But as soon as they saw the potential in YouTube, they've been just all for it.

Did they understand what it was?

Yeah, I'm quite lucky. My parents are very entrepreneurial and modern. They've done it themselves; they're also business owners. So they get it.

And were you an entrepreneur from an early age outside of the obsession with tech?

Yeah, I've done the usual—selling sweets in the playground. I did Young Enterprise as well. I was the managing director in our school for our Young Enterprise team. I had this big idea that we were going to create a stylus that we would pitch to Tesco and sell it to them.

We created the stylus and the packaging. It was beautiful, looking like an Apple product. But I think I was the only one with the vision, and I didn't do a good enough job of getting my team to believe in it. One man can't sell a product to a company like that, especially not a 16-year-old boy at school.

You were trying to pitch to Tesco at 16. Your family, in terms of money, how were they?

Reasonable. When I was growing up, it's not like we had everything. I couldn't just ask for what I wanted, but we had enough. I can't complain. To be honest, I think there is a benefit to having things somewhat held back from you. I think it makes you appreciate when you do have things. You've had the same, right?

Yeah. And you cite that search for validation as being one of the real driving forces. It’s the same in my life. That feeling like I didn't fit in created a feeling of being a spring pulled back. It made me fly off into the world as an adult trying to validate myself through material things, followers, or social approval.

I think that was the springboard, but I think it's very different from that now. I'm no longer insecure about who I am. I'm confident in myself. I'm almost immune to people telling me that they like what I do. It doesn't even register because I'm internally quite self-aware about it. Now I do things because I want to do them.

So you get given that phone. Tell me how that leads to YouTube.

Well, it wasn't a great phone. it was pretty low-end. My goal in life at the time was basically to get it to score a certain amount on a benchmarking app. I did everything I could to this phone. I was trying to overclock the processor and all these kinds of things just to get it to hit this score.

Because in my head, that was the sign you had a good phone. It led me to customize it in ways that people probably wouldn't have gone to extreme lengths for. Through that, I just gained knowledge. I understood it and was fascinated by it.

Pretty smart kid if you're playing with the processor of a phone at 14. How were you academically?

Pretty good, actually. Without blowing my own trumpet, every exam I've sat, I've got the highest mark in.

What topics were you particularly interested in when you were younger?

I was quite mathematical. I did math and further math as two of my A-levels. To start with, you can feel a bit lost in those presentations when you're getting taught, because if you miss one line of reasoning, you lose the whole thing.

But when it all comes together and you finally understand mathematics, there's nothing quite like it. It's its own rule set, and you can prove things in ways that are completely indisputable. I just love the language.

A lot of my background is actually economics. I went to do an economics degree. I think that completely changes the lens through which you view the world. You see things in black and white instead of grey areas. "Oh, this is why that person is doing that thing. Oh, this is the next logical step for my business."

And so you go to university in the pursuit of what career?

I was about to become a consultant at PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers). I did an eight-week internship there during uni and got the job. But probably the turning point was actually when I turned down that job. I had to write up this little email saying I had a great time and really enjoyed it, but actually, no.

YouTube had been building up in the background since the age of 14 or 15. Throughout uni, I was still doing it, but it was not at a stage where it was a comfortable career path. But it was an exciting career path. I had these two crossroads I could have gone down: either the traditional route or the YouTube route. One side was just fascinating to me; it was this whole new world where the sky was the limit. I thought it’s got to be that one.

When was the first time you made a video? Was it when you were 14 and first got that phone?

Pretty much, yeah.

Take me through that growth journey. What was the first video?

Oh gosh. It was "How to Optimize the ZTE Blade," which was the phone I had at the time.

Is that still online?

Yeah.

How did that video do at the time?

If you looked at it now, it probably has a couple of hundred thousand views because of people who've gone back and looked. At the time, I just remember being blown away by the reception. Even a thousand people watching it was unbelievable. If I thought about my circles at the time, I was thinking in terms of single people. So when you see a number like a thousand, you're like, "Oh my god."

How long did it take before you hit that point where you thought, "This is going really well"?

I thought it was going really well when my first video hit 5,000 views. I remember showing my friend at his house, and he was like, "That's not you. Come on, behave yourself." As in, there's no way you got 5,000 views.

I guess maybe part of that whole "having no validation at school" meant my bar for what counted as validation was pretty low. When people said they hit 100,000 subscribers and I'd watch other YouTubers, I never dreamed of that. I never even thought that was an option. I was just kind of doing YouTube to get a few thousand clicks.

Do you think that your YouTube journey has given you—because you said now that you feel like a confident person—do you think YouTube has done that?

Yes, but only because I've been quite proactive about it. YouTube is a really incredible thing in the sense that in no other career path can you get such immediate feedback. When I post a video, within one minute, there might be 10,000 people watching it. There might be a thousand comments or 500 comments. Every single one of these data points—how many likes and dislikes—is a piece of data that tells you how you're doing.

So you can grow so quickly as a person as well as a channel if you know how to harness that data. Companies would kill for it.

It sounds emotionally dangerous for the crowd to be giving you feedback on who you are.

Potentially. You develop a thick skin as you go through it, providing you have the right mindset. As long as you can filter out the negativity, there is data hidden in those comments. You almost have to strip away a layer and just take what's useful.

That sounds easier said than done, to avoid the negativity. Most of the guests I've had on the podcast, even super successful celebrities, still admit to being triggered more than they should be by that 1% negativity versus the 99% praise.

I think it depends on if it's something you're insecure about. If I'm insecure about the shape of my face and someone makes a nasty comment about the shape of my face, it's going to sting a little. But because over the years I've grown confident about most aspects of myself, I think I stop worrying about the negative comments because I'm okay with who I am.

I did a question tag on Instagram this week. I said, "If I could write a book for you, what would it be about?" One of the most popular things was confidence. What advice would you give to people listening that are low in confidence about how to build it?

I think you have to make it input-based rather than output-based. You can't pin yourself to a certain number of followers or anything so that you are confident. You have to make internal peace with yourself.

I look around on the street at all the fans that come up to me and they're like, "Can we get a photograph with you? You're incredible. I love your videos." I look at them like, "You're incredible as well. Look at you. What are you doing? You've got a camera, you're snapping photos of buildings. That looks incredible." Everyone has their own story and their own great things about them, and people struggle to see it in themselves, but they can see it in others. There's no person on this planet who I would look at and couldn't see good in them and couldn't see something great.

If you were that young kid again that was lacking in confidence at 14, and say you couldn't do YouTube—it didn't exist—knowing what you know now about how your confidence has been built, what else could you have done to reach the same outcome? I'm trying to get to what it is that made you come to peace with yourself.

I think I'm quite a proactive person. If there's something about me that I don't like, I will try and fix it. Not many people know this, but when I was younger, I used to have a crooked nose. It bothered me a lot. I used to only sit at certain angles from people and hide myself in the corners of rooms so people couldn't see the other side. Eventually, I was just like, "This is a solvable problem. Why am I worrying about this?" So I just got surgery done and fixed it.

I think there are some things about you that you can't fix, and you just have to be very mechanical about them and be like, "This is me. I have good things and I have bad things, but the bad things I can't change." I'm going to lean on the things that are good about me, fix the things I can fix, and the rest is life.

On that point of having a good or bad nose—who was to say that your nose was bad?

People would laugh at me. So I guess, others.

Society says this is not good about you. Is there a risk in changing to please them? I feel like that might be a slippery slope.

It is a slippery slope, but you just need to know your limits. You just need to set the boundaries. Maybe that's easier said than done. I really wonder about cosmetic surgery these days generally. If someone gets one thing done, then there's always a new "worst" thing about me. Why don't you then go and get that thing changed, and that thing changed?

I've seen it too. You're right. But there's also an element of: if something bothers you to the extent where you're having to have this whole other layer in your mindset of, "I can have a conversation with this person, but I'm going to do it from here," and you can fix it fairly easily, then you should do it. If the next thing then becomes, "Oh, well, I'd quite like my chin to be longer," you're not really solving a fundamental problem. You're just having fun. That's personally where I would draw the line.

One of the reasons I was asking that question about confidence is because I reflect sometimes on a lot of the stuff that I say. I think I put out there that I did this internal work and suddenly I found my confidence and the insecurities faded away. But I can't get away from this idea that I did also make myself mega-rich and successful and get millions of followers. That might have played a role in me being able to shrug off the insecurities easily.

What awful advice it would be to give to a 16-year-old kid to say to him, "Oh, you're lacking in confidence? Well, just go and build a multi-million-pound business and get 10 million subscribers on YouTube and then you'll be fine." Is it the achievement and the validation from the achievement that helps the insecurities fall away, or is it some other type of internal work?

I think actually gratitude plays a big role in it. I've spent a lot of time recently trying to wake up each morning and just remind myself. I feel like we are hard-wired to focus on the bad things because prehistorically those used to be the more urgent matters. I think gratitude fixes a lot of these insecurities because it's like, "Okay, yeah, I don't have the best skin, I've got acne everywhere, but hey, I can breathe. That's incredible." That is something I've been doing a lot of, and I think a lot of the personal growth I've seen has come since then.

What does that look like practically, in terms of practicing gratitude?

One thing I do is when I wake up—I told myself I was going to write down a few things, but I end up just thinking them. But that's enough. I think of three things that I'm just grateful for in that moment. Oftentimes you end up saying the same things again and again, but that's actually okay. It's fine. You don't need constantly changing mechanisms to keep you happy.

I've found that recently with some of my friends that have been not so well. I've just had this tremendous gratitude for my health. Watching one of my friends that's younger than me have a really serious illness. It's crazy. They say this about hospital wards: if you walk through a hospital ward, you'll suddenly feel this tremendous sense of gratitude for your health. How do you practice that on a daily basis without having to have someone fall ill or go to the hospital?

I make a conscious effort, but I don't remember to do it every day. Music does it for me sometimes, which is really strange. I’m very fortunate that I think naturally I have these waves of gratitude that come over me. I'm very aware that I am currently—and I said this in my live show—the vast majority of this audience, you're currently living a dream that you once had, but you're not appreciating it because your current self is telling future you that you'll be happy when you get three times more than you have now.

That's typically up and down the income and wealth spectrum. What people say they need to become a 10-out-of-10 happiness is 3x what they have right now. And it's that idea of: you'll never therefore be happy because you're always... for me, that really centers you and says, "Fuck me, like 18-year-old Steve, this is what he dreamed for." Like I wanted to be financially free so that I didn't have to steal Chicago Town pizzas and nick chicken bones from takeaways. And look at me. I'm 28 years old and I'm free.

You get this a lot on YouTube because of how numerical the platform is. I distinctly remember moments where I would look at my statistics and be like, "Oh, imagine 100,000 subscribers. Imagine 500,000 subscribers." I would dream of those numbers. And you almost don't quite realize as you toddle past those numbers in reality because you're already ready for the next thing. You're so focused on making it even bigger, even better, getting that phone even earlier before launch. You have to stop yourself.

Do you stop yourself? Be honest with me. Are you successful in that?

I'm really happy. I'm a really, really happy guy. So I'd like to think yes. I didn't used to be, even three or four years ago. When I graduated, I had this pent-up energy from YouTube because I'd been doing it throughout but I was also juggling it with my studies. I wanted to get a first, and I also didn't want to have a terrible social life.

So I was doing all these things and it was kind of this crazy whirlwind of activity—jumping between filming to lectures to homework to nights out. So when I actually graduated, I was like, "Right, I'm going to give everything to YouTube." I made one video every single day for at least six months. And it drove me to the point where one time I just broke down crying on camera. I never published that, but I have a photo which I sometimes look back on to remind me of what it took.

Why were you crying?

It was a lot of things that had sort of come to the fore. It was exhaustion in the moment because it was really hot and I was just kind of like... my hands hurt, my voice hurt, my throat was cracking. But it was also this kind of long-term build-up that led to it. It was actually a bit of a pivot point in my career because I sat down and realized this isn't actually what I wanted. It was a realization that my channel is growing, all these metrics are looking up, but this isn't my brain.

And it immediately made me change mindset from hard work to smart work. I suddenly started thinking, "Which tasks do I need to be there for, and how do I make sure I'm only doing those tasks?" Also, it made me take a step back from, "I'm not doing a video every day." I've got to look at the data, look at these retention graphs, find out how to maximize the click-through rates—all these kinds of things. It allowed me to take a step back, breathe, and focus on how to utilize my brain to its best ability.

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In terms of mental health, you tapped your head then when you said you'd optimized for YouTube performance but you hadn't optimized for your mental well-being. At your lowest, what state was your mind in?

I've never been depressed, I would say. I think I'm quite resilient as well as being quite lucky. But I got to a stage where emotionally, physically, just exhaustion—I think that is how I would put it. Very, very tired. To the point where I didn't have time for friends, for family. By the time I'd finished, everyone was asleep. I'd kind of screwed myself into a little hole, and that hole was my bedroom where I'd film.

So I think that's what people call burnout typically.

Yeah. But I wouldn't let myself stop because I told myself that this was my dream and that one video a day was the way to achieve that dream. And so there was just something inside me which was like, "You can't stop now. You're there. This is the runway, just run."

What did you tell yourself your dream was?

I would look at other YouTubers when I was a kid and just, they had like a million subscribers, for example. And they were getting all this tech through the door and their entire job was to just test it and learn about it. And I remember just being like, "That's the best thing in the world." I'm fascinated by technology. I would love to be able to just see all this stuff. Because when I was younger, I didn't get to play with the latest stuff. I wasn't the kid who had the latest Game Boy or anything like that. So I guess that really appealed to me.

So your idea of happiness when you're younger was getting sent amazing technology and being able to just do what you love, talk about it. So you set yourself this plan of making a video every single day in the thought that that would lead to your dream. And you realized at some point that your strategy was unsustainable.

Yeah. Good way of putting it.

You still wanted the same goal, but your strategy in terms of getting there was just unsustainable. I relate to that so much in so many different ways. And I think a lot of people don't realize that you have to set up your goals as marathons, not sprints, if you want to achieve them, right?

I've never heard it described like that, but that's it, yeah. You've got your whole life to do these things; it doesn't need to be today.

And potentially the intensity of trying to do it today is actually the biggest risk to it ever happening. Because if your mental well-being had been adversely affected—more adversely affected than it was—you might not have ever come back to YouTube. It couldn't have been enjoyable. At that point when you were doing that crazy "sacrifice everything" stage, was it fulfillment or was it something else?

I was getting some sort of sick thrill out of seeing the numbers go up. But when it comes at the cost of yourself—I think you've been there as well—you're not enjoying it, really.

And it’s that thought in your mind that "I can't do this forever."

Yeah, but it took until a kind of breaking point for me to realize.

And it seems to for a lot of people. It seems that a lot of people hit some burnout, some explosive moment. I mean, Tom Blomfield sat here on the podcast, CEO and founder of Monzo, and talks about the same thing—just waking up in the morning with a sense of dread and sleep actually being the peaceful escape. And those three seconds when he woke up and he didn't realize he was the CEO of Monzo just being amazing, then that crushing weight. But it seems to be the case with a lot of people that they get so caught up in this hamster wheel chase for their dream that they don't realize it's unsustainable and the cost it's having on other things that are fundamentally conducive to living a happy life.

People. I think we are complex beings, but we are also quite simple in what we need. And that's social interaction and people who are close and who actually want us to succeed. And we don't need many of them. We definitely don't need 10 million.

Tell me what you thought you needed before and after that moment.

I think before it was very much a numbers thing. I was a kid who thought that the answer was just to just keep growing for the sake of growing. But afterwards, it's very much been about... I still want to grow. I still want to be the best tech influencer on the planet. I want to be synonymous with the word "tech." But it will be mindful growth. One of the factors in that growth will be not just monetary, but will be: does it work with this? Does it still make me equally or more happy? No decision will go forward if it doesn't, if that makes sense. So the goal hasn't changed, but the approach has.

It’s fascinating. I think a lot of people can relate to that in their lives in a lot of ways because they're potentially sacrificing a little bit too much and trying to win a sprint. But these big goals—the goals that you have, the ambitions you have—they are marathons.

They are. I'm very aware that if you want to be the best in the world at something, you've got to give something. You can't spend all your time with your friends just having beers. You have to let it go sometimes. And so I'm very careful with how I spend my time, but I make sure that there is quality time with the people that I do care about.

So let's talk about that point then: hard work. A lot of people say that hard work is toxic, etc. What do you say to that? The whole "wake up at 4:00 AM" kind of attitude?

Yeah, I don't think that's the way forward. If anything, actually, I think sleep is a really practical, productive thing to be doing. If anything, I wish I was better at it. I actually struggle a lot with my sleep. I'm really trying to improve. I've actually got your episode with the sleep expert on my watch later list.

No pressure. She says some really important things.

I'll watch it on the way home. So I'm not of that opinion. I think there is a time and place for really hard work, but it has to be for a cause that has to be for the greater goal.

My general thinking on hard work is that when you're doing something that you consider the reward of doing it meaningful and worthwhile, then hard work really is important. I actually listened to Elon Musk this weekend talk about this. He said the exact same thing. He said when you believe that you're doing the correct thing and it's a noble or meaningful goal, then hard work is really, really important and it also will help you avoid burnout. But when you're doing hard work for a task that you don't think is meaningful—like working in a factory for 14-hour days and it's not stimulating your mind and it's just hard work for minimum wage—burnout is inevitable and it's just around the corner. And that for me is like, oh god, that's my idea of a nightmare. Hard meaningless work is the definition of insanity.

I think I'm very lucky in that sense, in that I've found my calling. And I think we're in a world where a lot of people just don't. I'm not saying that there's one true goal for each person, like no one's going to have their dream job, but I think a lot of people find out quite late what they really enjoy. And I think we're in a system where people have to decide very quickly and with not a full information set what career path they want to go down.

What advice would you give to people that are trying to find their passion?

Try as many things as you can while you're young. I had a really close friend who's 18, and she decided she wanted to do pharmacy, but then did two weeks of that course and was like, "Actually, I don't really want to do that anymore." Then she was like, "Oh, maybe I should do medicine." So she dropped out of pharmacy thinking about doing medicine, and then she might drop out of that, decide she wants to do business studies.

It's like, if you just spend two weeks in as many different careers as possible, that's when you know. A lot of kids are lazy, and I think there's this kind of short-sightedness that you have to just kind of find a way to overcome just for your long-term future's sake. That time is so pivotal when you're deciding—sat at that crossroads and you're looking down all these different paths. Given the systems we have in place, you have to spend that time well finding out what these paths actually look like.

And the system, as you say, is set up at 16 years old. They give you like brochures and they're like, "Pick! Pick which subjects you're going to do." And then you're locked into those subjects. Then they go, "Which university and which course?" and you have no idea.

The medical and the law courses are particularly bad because they're so specialized. If you do a medical degree, you're not really qualified to do a lot of different things; you're probably going to be a doctor. And you can very quickly find yourself in a position where you feel trapped. I have another friend who did medicine and then did the whole thing, but then was like, "Actually, no, I want to be a journalist." So that whole five years, they didn't need to do it.

How did you find your calling then? What is it about you that when your calling showed up, you had the whatever to say, "That's it, I'm going to go in that direction"? Because a lot of people wouldn't see playing around with mobile phones as a possibility.

Light in the dark. It was very obvious to me because of what the alternatives were. I think a lot of people follow the path. And the path basically dictates that the subjects you are strong in, you study a degree that is similar to those subjects. And then those degrees usually have a next stepping stone and a next stepping stone, and you'll just kind of shoot down unless you veer off. You have to actively veer off that path.

And so I was very much going down the kind of "I'm strong at math, therefore I'm going to do an economics degree. I'm doing an economics degree, so I'm going to be a consultant." I was going down that path. And I'm just lucky that I was also doing this other thing which excited me so much. Comparing the two, when it became clear to me that actually YouTube could be a career as well, it was just an obvious choice.

Do you ever reflect on what might have happened if you didn't have the conviction to go for it?

I think I would have become a consultant, which is terrifying. I wish I could say I wasn't, but that's the work experience I did, that was the job I was offered. So given there was no outside option, I probably would have taken it.

And a lot of people have done that in their lives. They've followed those sort of sequential steps and ended up somewhere and they're listening to this right now and thinking, "Fuck."

It's tricky because you don't want to just quit your job one day for a potential startup you might have with a 10% chance of succeeding. You can't do that, right? What advice do you give to people in that situation?

Well, this isn't about me. But I really do always say what you said at the start, which is about just increasing the amount of experiments you make as cost-effective experiments as young as you possibly can. Which is exactly what you've described, which means go to another country, spend two weeks and quit really fucking quickly. Rapid quit. The minute you're like, "I hate this," quit, move on, try... and I think people that are exposed to, as you say, the most data, the most information, are able to make more informed decisions about what they enjoy.

You can take that part of that job where you got to do this thing and mix it with this part of this job where you got to do that thing and slowly weave your way towards the thing that gives you the most fulfillment. But as we say, I know because I know the people that listen to this podcast, there's so many people right now in jobs where they've kind of like ended up there—working in KPMG or PWC in the city wearing a suit and tie—and they know that job isn't for them. They know it's not for them, but they just maybe are there.

But there is also an element, I think, of like... we live in a society where social media is prevalent and people log onto Instagram every day and see other people who are leading better lives than them, or apparently. And I think there is an element of gratefulness with the job you do have, because not everyone is going to find their dream job. And maybe the job you're doing is your dream job because it facilitates the life that you currently lead. Does that make sense?

It does, yeah. And that's like the practical approach. I'm not practical. And people will get mad at this, but look at my decision-making. I stopped going to school, I then dropped out of university after one lecture, started a company, quit it out of the blue, ran another company for seven years, quit it out of the blue. I make decisions based on how I'm feeling.

And practicality has always been secondary in terms of: well, what am I going to do about the... like dropping out of university in Manchester, never got a student loan, I'm shoplifting these Chicago Town pizzas, and I call my mom and say, "Mom, I'm dropping out." She goes, "I'll never speak to you again." I didn't care because I was just in this relentless pursuit of me, of what made me feel good every day. So I understand the practicality argument, but I find it dangerous because it hints of like: just tolerate it.

Yeah, but let's say, obviously I'm still fairly young, but I can imagine that if I was 50 years old with a family to support and a career that I'm not... you know, I'm on the fence of. I'm like, "Well, you know, it's fine, it's good." What can you do? You've just got to be happy with it, you know?

I do say to people you've got to be practical in those moments, but I don't think you've got to be happy with it if you're not. You shouldn't quit; you can look for outside options. But I think it's not one of those things to be impulsive about.

I agree. What we're describing here is this middle ground where you have to be practical because your kids need to eat. And so you want to be more strategic in how you make your move. However, I really don't want anyone at any age to find themselves in a place of misery and think, "Well, gotta be grateful and I gotta feed these kids, haven't I?" I just want better for people.

And I know it's hard. Like I know it's hard, or else everybody would just be living their dream. But I also know that it is possible for all of us, regardless of age or position we find ourselves in or how stagnant we've been for how many decades, to make the decision today that this is the start of like the rest of our lives and we're going to just give it a fucking go. I know that's true. The only thing that stands in the way of that is people don't believe it's true. They look at you and you seem so far away—10 million subscribers. You must be Superman, super genius that born with it, parents must be rich, you must be a genius. "That's not me. I'm a muggle." And I hate that.

Every YouTube channel had zero subscribers at one point and was cheering when they got the first one, and it was probably their mom.

The most inspiring thing I think I could show the audience is probably you when you were 14. They’d be like, "That guy?" Same with me. They’d be like, "That fucking guy?"

I had the camera presence of a vegetable. It was not good.

On this point of friends then, and relationships. How are you doing? And what are your tips? You're super ambitious, you're scaling this big business on YouTube. What are your strategies to maintain meaningful relationships amongst all this chaos? Because I struggle.

Yeah, I try and make sure it's quality time. So I think I spend less time texting and more time seeing people. Like if I spend two hours texting one of my friends, that is much less of a quality connection than two hours of seeing that person, of being able to have a fluid conversation and being able to see them and see their facial expressions and their gesticulations and all that. So I pretty much plan my time such that the minute I finish work, I am doing something in person with the people I care about. Whether that's a board game with my family or a night out with my friends, there's very little downtime, but in a good way.

Do you have to be somewhat of a contradiction in who you are to have quality relationships? Do you have to be a different guy? Professionally, everything is about return on time. If I spend one hour now, what am I getting back? Do you have to be a different guy to get the most out of your social life in terms of that time efficiency—"I'm the boss" and all that?

Yeah, it sounds very transactional to look at relationships like that. I think every person actually does view them in the same way, they just don't put the label on it. I think really we're all doing the same things as humans. We've got a set of ten decisions in our head, things we could do, and we pick the one that's best for us. I just attach a framework to it that allows me to think about it easier. So I think I'd be doing the same thing even if I didn't think about it in that way. I'm just... the way I think about it allows me to plan it better.

And you value those things. You now value those...

Oh, when I finish a day of work and I know I'm about to go see my friends, like my heart starts pumping. I get so excited. I just get off the station at St. Pancras sometimes and I just feel like a free bird. And like I know there's going to be a little adventure that weekend. And it’s those moments that make your life worth living.

Do you have a lot of friends?

Not many, but they're good ones.

Roughly how many? Like good friends, like brothers?

Six. And that's pretty much my entire circle. I think the only friends I have are good friends. The rest of them I've almost decided that realistically I'm not going to be able to make this friendship work. And it's sad. Sometimes it's even just geographical. Some of my friends after university, they moved to France or Indonesia or Hong Kong. And just the fact that they're in another country has meant that realistically our friendship with that person is just going to be a series of messages—"Hey, how are you doing?" "I'm good, how are you doing?" And even though I like those people, it just doesn't work.

That's not like a meaningful relationship, is it? You must have had the same thing as well. 100%. And it's really frustrating because they’re great guys, but you know... I actually struggle at the moment because my girlfriend lives in Indonesia. And so right now the border to get into Indonesia is closed. So you can't get in anyway. And I can feel that my relationship with her is like small talk. It's like, "Oh hi, how are you? I'm doing this. What are you doing today? I'm doing a podcast again and running my business. What are you doing? Yeah, running my business." And you can feel the importance of physical one-on-one time, which has been smashed because of the pandemic, but also because she lives literally 24 hours away. So I've got to like really reassess my life.

I'm assuming you've tried video calls and video messages?

Even then, it's like different time zones and... it's not the same. It's really difficult. But you come back to this point: if it's worth it, you're going to go to extraordinary lengths to figure it out, figure out how to solve the problem. For me, that means that I'm going to have to go there a lot. I'm going to have to fly to Indonesia a lot; she's going to have to fly here a lot.

So you see that being like a permanent long-term relationship?

Yeah.

Crikey. Good luck.

I know, right? She's not Indonesian; she's from France—French and Portuguese—but she’s out there. No comment. But if it's worth it, you've got to put in the work. And I reflect on all of my friends' relationships, and this is the thing that really makes me want to put in the work to make it work: all of my friends, even the ones that have had the most successful relationships, have been through hell and chaos at some point. They've had to overcome really, really remarkable challenges. And it's overcoming those challenges that have made them stronger. So I see this as one of those things—like a test. The border's closed, you can't get into the country... you know.

It's like that Rocky Balboa quote: "It's not how hard you get hit; it's how hard you get hit and can keep going forward."

I think that's relationships. And the thing that keeps you going forward is: is it worth it? Is it worth it? At some point, the answer to that question might be no. Same with work. So your stance on this has changed, hasn't it? With relationships? Quite recently?

Which part? Which part of my stance?

So I remember reading that you had a relationship that you had to kind of end because you were so focused on your work.

Oh, I think the Daily Mail wrote that. But I mean, that is true. That is true with all of my previous relationships pretty much. Yeah. That was just a young, naive kid. That was like a super naive version of me that was miscalculating the priorities of life.

And what changed? Was it just finding the right person or was it an internal thing?

It was definitely both, but I'd actually say it was more the internal thing. This is why I asked you the question earlier about what you valued before and after your breakdown. Because before, for me, before I had my sort of turning point, I thought, as you said, the most important thing in the world was just getting rich, buying a Lamborghini and a mansion, and then having loads of infrequent casual partners. I thought that would be it; that would make me exponentially happier.

What I came to and I didn't think relationships mattered—friendship or romantic. What I came to learn through a variety of different stimuli—one of them being a TED talk I saw where they did a hundred-year study of men and they looked at men that had relationships and men that didn't have relationships. The ones that had relationships lived like ten years longer. Imagine that! Lived ten years longer. Made them physically healthier, were happier, everything. Everything that mattered was given to those that had meaningful relationships.

Then I read *Lost Connections* by Johann Hari. It shows that a lot of the reason why we're getting more and more depressed and socially anxious and all of these things is because we're not in our tribes; we don't have meaningful connections. And then I looked at what I'd been feeling myself. And I'd always been too scared to say I was lonely. I'd always been too scared to say that I wasn't feeling good either. But on reflection, now, I was lonely. I was really, really lonely. You can be lonely even if you're surrounded by people.

100%. I think actually there's a reason why a lot of people say that university is the best time of their lives. And I think it's because they're surrounded by friends. And the relationship people have with their friends is often healthier than the relationship people have with their families, because the level of expectation is removed. With families, people find that they fall into certain roles where they do the dishes and they clean the floors. Whereas at university with your friends, if you clean the floors, you're a hero. And I think that kind of attitude means that people want to hang out with their friends more and they enjoy that process even though they're fundamentally doing the same things; they're being appreciated more.

100%. And I think I try to apply that in my relationships. Like when my friends come to see me, just the fact that they've come to see me, I'm like, "Oh guys, come on. It's amazing."

There's also no hierarchy in friendship groups in terms of... in your family you have a hierarchy. You have the older brother and the older sister, then you have the mom and the... and then you also get to typically select your friends, which you don't get to do with your family. So you can wind up with a pretty nuts family and have to tolerate it because you are related. And I think the friendship, especially as you get out of school—because school kind of forces you together—but especially if you get out of school, you start to discover who you are, what music you're into, what interests you have. You then build a tribe around you that have shared values, and that seems to be the best tribe. Not to underestimate family though—I think when you have good family connections, no one wants you to succeed more than they do. And very few people have your best interests at heart apart from them.

What about romantic relationships? How have you found forming romantic relationships as an on-screen mega-YouTuber, ambitious guy, entrepreneur?

Nuanced is what I would say. When you have this whole YouTube thing, clearly people are into it. It's a cool job, if nothing else, it's just cool.

So you're saying women are into it.

Yeah. But I think you'll know when you've found someone who looks through it, looks past it. The only challenge then becomes time. Because YouTube is not just incredibly time-consuming, but it's also unpredictable. And so in relationships where people want stability, trying to offer that stability is not easy. You know, let's say someone wants me to come to a wedding in two weeks' time. "Aaron, can you definitely make it? Can you book that date in?" I can't, really. I'm not working a nine-to-five. I can't book days off. Sometimes an opportunity presents itself and it's such a great opportunity that I don't want to turn it down—like this chat. I really wanted to come see you as soon as I got the email. But had I said to someone else, a friend or a girlfriend or whatever, that I was going to be doing something with them this day, I'd have to do that. And that horrifies me. Because we're in a place where the sky is the limit, all these metrics are looking up, and so many people and opportunities are presenting themselves. I want to do them all.

So how do you balance it?

Quality time, in-person time. And I think you almost have to assign things in your relationships an importance level. And if something is really important to your partner, then you just be there no matter what. If things are somewhat negotiable, then try and make it, but don't commit.

And how important is it to find the right person? I'm guessing you've potentially tried a few different types, like I have. I've tried a few different types of people, maybe three or four, maybe five—different characters that either saw my work as a threat, or saw it as a really cool thing and were supportive, or were maybe way too supportive, or were maybe way too intimidated by work. How important has it been to find the right person?

So important. I mean, your partner is the person you're spending—you want to spend the rest of your life with. They are going to become you, effectively. You've heard that thing where you become the five closest people around you? Your partner is going to be your biggest influence for the rest of your life. And so them being on the same page and them being an inspiration to you as well as you to them, I think is the only thing you need.

Do you think you need a partner that is ambitious? I always find this really fascinating. I've had so many conversations with very ambitious entrepreneurs, and they tend to go one of two ways. They typically tend to believe that they also need someone who is side-tracked with their own dreams and goals. But I question that sometimes.

Start with your take and then I'll give you mine. When I was a little bit more stupid, like 18, I used to think that I wanted my partner to be like a philanthropist, has their own thing, and to just be taking over the world themselves. However, in reality, I've come to learn that I might be lying to myself, because if that were to be the case, then we'd probably never see each other. Because the likelihood is they'd be in another country doing massive things and it would just be texting.

And so I've come to learn, especially when I was in the height of my career at Social Chain and I was flying 50 weeks a year—sorry, 50 weeks a year—I couldn't have possibly had a meaningful relationship with someone that was doing the same. So it's made me question myself a little bit and start to reflect on the fact that maybe I need someone that is going to be a little bit more supportive of my job. And I thought... who gives a fuck?

I think where I am at with it is a little different. I think fundamentally the person you end up with has to see eye-to-eye with you. They have to be on your wavelength. And I think for people like us who are just so incredibly ambitious, we want to do huge things with our lives. It's not going to work out with someone who isn't like that because eventually you'll lose respect for them. So I think all these things about convenience of the relationship, they kind of all fall to the wayside if that person is right, if they see you like that.

I've been unable to form a romantic relationship with someone that doesn't have passion for something. And I'm not saying "take over the world"; I mean like be into knitting, love dog breeding, grooming—just be passionate about something. And I think what I'm looking for there is to come home and talk about you and your life too, and your hobbies, not just have it center on me, because then I don't get to escape. I don't get to relax and wind down.

No, you're right. It doesn't matter what they're passionate about, but they have to be passionate.

But what if they are? What if they're flying 50 weeks a year? How does that work?

I think in the same way that you have to compromise for the other person, they will also compromise for you. And I think it's okay if you make a million less a year or whatever it is, depending on what scale you're working on, if it means you can have this meaningful relationship. Because as we've established, as humans we need that. It's a core need and it's the easiest one to neglect because the feeling isn't as urgent as hunger or thirst, but it is there.

So true. I definitely have realized that if I'm going to have a romantic relationship and it's going to work, I'm going to have to leave millions off the table. Just like in missing meetings and having to compromise. And that's a really hard thing to do because you then try to quantify the value the relationship has as a return. And you say, "Well, if I'm probably going to lose—I reckon I'd lose like five million a year by having a romantic relationship, genuinely. Maybe even more." And you think, "Oh, fuckin' hell, they've gotta be worth it!" But then you reflect and you go, "Well, I don't need more money, do I?"

Beyond a certain point, what is money? It's just a bit of convenience, right? That's all it is. And potentially if you get too much, a pain in the ass. Some people, I know they spend a long time looking for things to spend their money on.

Oh god, that's the worst. That is a sickness.

So I got this phone through the mail not that long ago, and it was a $170,000 iPhone—sorry, not an iPhone, it was a Samsung phone. But it was a phone with a gold brick attached to the back. And I was thinking to myself, "What kind of person actually buys this? Where would you have to be in your life to purchase this particular phone?"

Miserable bastard. You've got to be miserable. I can't imagine a world where someone that's buying a phone that has a gold brick strapped to it is living a fulfilled life. Everything I must... something must be wrong if they can buy a gold brick.

Do you want to know the funny part? Because of the gold brick on the back, the cameras don't work. Oh fuck, can't even take a photo of your dinner. Can't even take a photo! The way I reasoned it was that if you've got that much money, you've probably got someone to take photos of you.

True, yeah. Or you've got no friends because you're that miserable. What about money then? Let's talk about money. What role does it play in your life?

When I was growing up, like I said, I wasn't underprivileged, so I had everything basic covered, but there were definitely things I wanted. You know, I wanted the latest toys, I wanted the latest trading cards, whatever it was. So when I first started getting income from YouTube, I was very happy with it. I would buy things off Amazon and make myself short-term happy. Just fill those little gaps that I had in my childhood, I guess.

Would you go looking for things to buy?

Sometimes, I think I would. Same. It's that first initial feeling of freedom and it almost doesn't feel real when you can order things off your own card and they come to you and it's like, "I've earned this. This is my treat." But after a period of time, I realized that the things that I actually want don't cost very much. And so I actually—I've purposefully not bought myself a nice car because I actually am very aware that as humans, we adjust.

Slippery slope.

It's a slippery slope. And I know that even if, let's say 20 years in the future, I own a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, there's no point rushing to get there because I know from that point all I'm going to be thinking is, "What's next?" And so you might as well get a Polo first, and then maybe get an A-Class Mercedes, and then maybe get a nice Nissan. I don't know, work your way up. Even if you could get a nice car now, like, what's the rush? Just enjoy the journey. It's like I see it like a video game. Do you play many games?

Yeah.

So I always find myself when I play games, I am rushing to finish them. I want to get to that last boss, I want to beat it for the final reward. But then as soon as I do that, I just lose all interest in the game. And there's so many parallels between that and real life. What do you do when you have so much money that you don't know what to do with it? You just find things to do with it, and that in itself is just another thing to do.

It makes me feel sick sometimes that I still have these moments where I will glance at a mansion on Rightmove, and then I genuinely have this sick feeling in my stomach because I know what my life then means. It would probably make me miserable because I'd have to move out of London, which means I'm further away from friends and people can't come to me. And then I'm in this eight-bedroom house that no one can come to you anyway. And I feel that sickness. I feel the same way when I look at the Lamborghinis and the Rolls-Royces, which I always come back to: "I'm going to buy one." It's like the insecure kid shows up, and then I get that like belly sickness.

Tightness.

Yeah. It's like, "Well, Steve, if you do that, you know what this means. You know what treadmill you're on." There is some part of you that's pulling you, and you've got to be like, "Stop." And it's that insecure kid that's being influenced by society and social media to try and run at those empty things.

It's actually something that's been on my mind recently. Society. It's that thing, and through adverts and social media targeting, it's found its way into our lives in a way that is so close to us all the time. That you're being pulled in this direction. And it's no one's fault—it's not our fault—but we are becoming very materialistic at the expense of things that actually matter.

And it does come at the expense of something else. These apps are custom-built—every decision made with these applications that we use is built to use us, to extract from us. Every chime that goes on is custom-built to mess with the parts of your brain that are made to make you lose control, to make you think, "Oh my god, there's a notification, I've gotta check it." They are built like that. And that's terrifying.

So what do you do about that, knowing that?

I used to use a scheduling app. So I used to set my phone up so that all my notifications would come at one point in the day. Interesting! Yeah. But then I stopped doing that when I started missing important emails. So now I just kind of keep my phone on silent and look at it when I look at it.

I almost get mild anxiety if I've not checked my WhatsApp. I know what you mean. I used to really get it when I was at Social Chain because especially when I was living in New York City, I would wake up after the UK. So I would know the minute I woke up—and I'd usually wake up at 4:00 AM because my brain would wake me up because it was anxious—knowing that the minute I touched my phone and looked at all these offices around the world and all these people and all these employees and all these directors, my phone every morning would be 70, 80 messages.

So you'd wake up and then you go—like with one eye open—reach for the phone and look and just check there was nothing on fire. Like no major crisis. And doing that for... man, it takes it out of you. You don't want to get up. You don't want to do the job anymore. You don't want to ever have that again. It's awful. How did you get around that? I didn't. I quit the job eventually. But it was... up until I quit, like I was waking up with that constant... I was always, at the worst times when the business was tough and it would struggle, I wouldn't want to open my emails and I wouldn't want to open my WhatsApps. It was just because you knew it was bad news. Your body's conditioned—it gets a signal: "If you press this button, you get bad news." Why the fuck do you press the button then? You start avoiding pressing the button. Social media is designed in that way, for probably more so from the positive reinforcement you get from that dopamine hit of getting comments or likes or whatever. And as a YouTuber, you must feel that more than most.

Yeah, it is on my mind actually that what other things I do in my life going forward are going to give me the same amount of dopamine. Because if you post a video and it starts hitting trending and it's getting millions of views and so many likes and 10,000 people telling you you're great, what tops that? What am I going to do in my life that is actually better than that?

And I do sometimes—I've had to pull myself out of this mindset—but there was a point in my life where I would look at situations I was in, let's say bowling with my family, and I'd be thinking, "Is this making me as happy as getting a viral video?" It is a slippery slope because it's almost too good. It’s too good and nothing else can match it.

So what do you do about that? How are you able to enjoy other parts of life? With your partner who wants to just go shopping or have a picnic?

I think the key is detoxing every now and again. You've heard of the whole dopamine detox? Not really. So it's the idea of completely depriving yourself from all stimulation for periods of time. So no music, no phone, no internet, nothing. Just very simple pleasures. And so whenever I get the opportunity to do those, I will take them.

And so I have these periodic moments of complete release where I'm doing nothing stimulating, and they're quite difficult to be honest. The urge is definitely there to run up and check my notifications, but I refrain just because I know long-term I need to stop.

And how long are these periods of dopamine detox?

It's whenever I can afford to do them. I think in a best-case scenario, you'd do it regularly. But for me, it's more like if I finish a big stint of work and I'm just exhausted, I'll say, "Okay, next day and a half, I'm doing very little. I'm going to talk to people and drink coffee."

And what impact does that have?

I think it brings you down to earth again. It reminds you of the things that are important and it allows you to enjoy them. You only need a couple of hours, and I think you can very quickly start to appreciate things that you'd forgotten to appreciate before because you were caught up on social media statistics.

We talked a lot about the positive sides of this meteoric rise you had on YouTube and how it helped you be a bit more secure in yourself and understand yourself a bit better. But are there some characteristics or side effects of this that are probably irreversible now?

Irreversible? The only thing that comes to mind—I suppose you'd almost have to ask the people around me to get a proper answer—but the only thing that comes to mind is how cagey I am with my time. I think because of how much I plan it and because of how self-aware I am of how important it is, I very much find myself in situations where I'm like, "Okay, this was great, gotta go, bye."

And I do really enjoy these break times, but I do also cut them. And I think for other people who aren't as cagey with their time, they'd probably see that as a "Oh, he's got to go again, classic Aaron." Or rudeness or something. Maybe, yeah. I've been told actually a few times in the past that actually I start a conversation, realize I don't have time for it, then leave.

I used to do that at university because what would happen is, you go out your room, you're living with your friends, you talk to someone, and before you know it there's seven people in a corridor chatting. And even though I was the one who started the conversation, I'd have to go because I'm like, "Okay, it's 7:30, I've got to start scripting YouTube." And some people would be like, "Well, that was a bit rude." Which I can understand, but there was no other way I could have got what I needed to get done, done.

You don't regret that though, do you?

No, I don't. I don't regret it because I think the people who have ended up as my core friends, they understand.

I tend to also believe that the people that have reached fulfillment and success in their lives are really... they have like a high boundary set for the use of their time. At the end of the day, as I talk about a lot, it's the only resource we all have. Allocating it in a really efficient manner towards things that matter, I think is important. But a lot of people won't. They'll find themselves in that hallway conversation and they won't want to be rude because they're people-pleasing. So they'll end up spending like two hours talking about things they don't care about with people they don't really like. For me, that's just a cardinal sin of happiness. You can't... you've got to be a bit of a... you've got to be a bit rude sometimes.

I think a lot about that idea of becoming the richest man on earth but then being really old and wanting to spend all your money to buy another day or something. I think about that a lot, and it's a constant reminder of: stay in the right lane, focus on the things that matter, you don't have that long.

Do you think you're lonely now?

No, I don't. I did a few years ago, but I feel really good now. I feel like I know what I want and I've got it. And that comes from the balance of friends and family and romantic connections. Not many, but good ones.

You’ve grown this YouTube channel over the last, what, 10 years? From zero to over 8 million subscribers. In terms of your growth trajectory, what story does that tell? How quickly you grew, how exponential was that? Was it an S-curve? Was it slow then fast?

It's been pretty much slow then fast, somewhat exponential I'd say. So right now my channel is growing much faster than where it is proportionally. So the percentage growth on my channel is really high, one of the highest on YouTube. And I've only actually got a team of two people in total, to be honest. Wow! So I'm at a stage now where I'm thinking, "Okay, I need to get more help. I need to get more people doing the things that I shouldn't be doing right now." But I want to keep it as me. I'm very aware that I could probably get more numbers if I had people writing my scripts for me and stuff, but there are certain things that I just want to do because I like them and I think I'm good at them. And so I want to keep doing those things.

But in terms of that sort of exponential growth, give me the timeframes in terms of how long it took you to get to several different stages.

I've got a tweet actually, I can find it. It took me seven years to hit one million subscribers. It took one year to hit two million, eight months to hit three million, six months to hit four million, and then three months to hit five million. So there’s definitely been a sort of a curve. Hockey stick!

But I think people kind of misplace where that comes from. I think people have this idea that if you're big on YouTube, you'll just keep getting bigger on YouTube. But I think what actually happens is that you're big on YouTube because you're starting to understand what works, and therefore you get bigger because you're implementing what works.

Oh, 100%. I mean, that's applicable to every walk of life as well. As you were saying, I was thinking about everything. I was thinking about the gym and I was thinking about business and everything. It's interesting. Because there are a lot of YouTubers who get big and then stop. Like their growth stops. They build these big channels and then the tectonic plates shift, the algorithm says, "Okay, we want something else now," and they fall off.

I don't think a lot of these are actually algorithms changing. I think right from the start the algorithms have had a very simple goal and I think they've been able to achieve that. I think that's the creators losing touch. It's whether it's failing to keep up with the competition—because the bar for content is rising all the time—or whether it's just neglect of what their audience wants. Like sometimes I've seen creators who they get big and then they're like, "Oh, this is what my audience wants to see. I'm just going to keep doing that exact same thing the whole time." Or sometimes you get creators who one minute they're making a video about how they make cupcakes, the other time they're making tech videos. And you've got to keep your audience at the front of your mind.

Have you heard this saying that like: create what you want to create and your passion will show through and people will find you? I've heard it a lot and I actually strongly disagree with it because I think it makes the creators think that they're the prize, they're the customer, when actually it's the viewers. And it's a privilege to be able to create for them, but you can't be complacent about that. They're not going to come to you just because I'm making stuff I like making. There's too many people who are doing that for that to be the case. So you have to really respect people's time and really deliver value to them.

In order to be able to adapt to what your audience wants, it's got to be a two-way conversation. So how do you have that two-way conversation? I know how you have it one way, but I'm saying: how are you understanding what they want? What are the metrics you're looking at? Is it the comment section? These aren't just lessons for YouTube; these are lessons for anyone creating any product in the world that is looking to build their customer base, because it's the same in business.

So there's both this explicit and this implicit feedback. The explicit is someone literally writing, "Aaron, this was a great video," or, "Aaron, you should sit a bit further back because your face is too close to the camera." I've had that; that's very useful. But the implicit feedback is where most of it is. It's: what percentage of people who watched this video put a like on it? How many minutes of this 20-minute video did they watch and at what point did they drop off? That's an incredibly useful piece of information there.

And I used to actually, as soon as I changed my attitude from "work hard" to "work smart," these are the things I started looking for. It was like, "Oh, I said this sentence and there was a drop there. I'm not going to say that sentence again. Clearly that was doing something." And it was trying to understand what about that sentence made people drop off that allowed me to grow as a person and as a channel.

Are you really in the weeds like that? You're really looking at every video?

I'm obsessed with it. Yeah. It's my background as well—I'm a math student, I'm an economics student, I love the data. I think to some extent the fact that I pay so much attention to it is one thing that really helps me over other YouTubers.

I can tell. Because the answers are there. It's the same in business—your customers are usually telling you what they want or don't want. But we lead with our hypothesis and our hypothesis is attached to our ego, it's sometimes overly romantic. So we can spend years, as I think I did in my first business, trying to sell my customer a product that they didn't want. And when they told me they didn't want it because of their behavior, I tried to force them to want it! "No, motherfucker, I'm going to force you!" And then it was... actually when I started a Facebook group and realized that the Facebook group was fifty times, a hundred times more effective in achieving what I was trying to achieve with my website, that I was like: people want to do this behavior on Facebook. I'm trying to force them to do it somewhere they don't want to do it. Just go with what the people want. And that requires you to be low ego, low romance.

There is one caveat, which is that every now and again people don't know what they want. You know, like if you think about the first iPhone that came out? People at the time, if you'd asked them what they want, they would have said, "Oh, I want a flip phone with maybe a bigger keyboard." And they would have just kept saying that year after year. But actually the iPhone completely changed what they wanted. And there is a time and place for that as well in YouTube. Sometimes just you have this idea—no one's asked for it, but you just think, "Oh, that's a good idea, I'm going to try it." And you'll very quickly realize if it's the right thing to do.

It's harder to argue with the... well, I guess when you're creating something new, there isn't the data, there isn't the prehistoric iPhone sale. But that's why you've got to just do it, try. It's got to start with an experiment and then go into analytical observation.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions of you as a YouTuber that piss you off?

There's a big thing with tech YouTube where like if you say a good thing about a product or a company, the assumption is immediately that you were paid to say that. And I think it's an element of like I probably just need to communicate better how it works. Like I'm not paid every time I say a nice sentence about Samsung. They don't just like slip me a couple of bills. That's probably the predominant thing.

I saw somewhere that you send these companies an email when they offer to give you a product, letting them know that you won't accept the money, but you will review it if you like it.

Yeah, so a lot of the emails I get are actually, "Would you like to do a paid review?" And I can't with an honest conscience say yes to a paid review because it's a contradiction. A review is a piece that is meant to end with a recommendation: you should buy this or you shouldn't buy this. And having taken money for that piece, I can't be objective. No, I can't be objective. So there are cases where, yeah, a company says, "Can we pay you for a review?" I've said no. I'll do a review, but I won't take the money.

So how do you make money?

So you can do sponsors if you do sponsors in the right way. So what I think is the right way is I will take on sponsorship if I don't have to be conclusive about it, if I can be completely genuine about it. Like Huel, for example. I do sponsorships with Huel, but that is because I was drinking Huel before Huel reached out to me. So they actually spotted me wearing a Huel t-shirt in one of my videos and they're like, "Oh, okay, this guy already likes it. Would you like to talk about us?" And I said, "Yeah."

Why did you like Huel? You can do my sponsored...

It fits in with my lifestyle. I care about my time. I’m not getting paid for this. No, I know. I am! Cheers. Yeah, go on, why don’t we? I think it's this idea of: a meal is sometimes for enjoyment, but it's also sometimes just because you need something to eat. And when you're very busy, you don't care about what it is, like you just need nutrition, and you don't want to be eating crap basically. You know, you want to just eat something that you feel good about. And that’s what this was. I had a friend who got me into it. He was actually using full-fat milk when he was doing it the whole time, and he was wondering why he wasn't losing weight. I was like, "Try it with water, just give it a go."

I don't even have the time to do the powder in the cup mix.

I used to do that, and then as soon as I started having the ready-to-drink ones, now I just have these. Because they're in the fridge, they're chilled, there's no washing up. Exactly. Have you tried the protein?

Yep. I like the strawberries and cream.

So as you, you've achieved a lot in business but also on YouTube. I've got a YouTube channel; I've got like 50,000 subscribers. Bear in mind like 90% of my audience listen off-YouTube. But if you told me that one day I'd have 8 million subscribers, I'd wonder where my motivation would be to try to get more. I'd think, "Well, that's... I mean nine, that makes no difference." 10? Like what is your motivation now? What does it come from?

I think it's this idea of like I feel like I have a message to share almost. Like tech is fun, tech is exciting, and it's one of the few industries that's moving forward really fast. I look at fashion and things just go round and round in loops basically, but tech is a straight line. And so I almost like the idea of just getting people on board with that idea. And so becoming synonymous with the word "tech" and becoming someone who's a teacher of tech and who's a fun place to learn tech, that's kind of where I'm at right now.

So I guess my end goal would be to be *the* tech person. So when someone says "tech," you think, "Oh, that's Aaron Maini, that's MrWhoTheBoss, you know, he's tech. Go look at him."

So one of your central focuses is becoming synonymous with the word "tech" globally on YouTube as a teacher and educator. What about the other facets of your life, your personal life? What are you aiming at?

I think to be honest, the things I actually want are fairly simple all things considered. It's not cars or money or gold brick phones; it's just good happy connections.

Well, if you're not using it then you can... I was going to ask if you still have that gold brick phone.

Yeah, I do actually still have it. They asked me to send it back initially, but then communications got mixed. I bet they did! They couldn't get a courier who could insure it! So we're struggling to send it back, basically.

Send it over here, I’ve got a good guy that sends phones back. Send it over here, I’ll take care of it. Best courier in Europe.

I watched actually one of your past podcasts where you talked about the idea of: we trick ourselves into thinking there's something on the other side, but this is it. And I'm very aware of that and I'm very happy about it. I don't need anything else. I'm enjoying the process and as long as I can keep having those times where my friends are over and we're playing video games together and we're laughing on the couch and I can spend good quality time with my parents going out for dinners... that's all I need.

But then going back to your professional goal about being synonymous with tech: if you were to achieve that goal, what would it do for you?

Put a smile on my face. Probably not much more, I'm going to be honest. I think goals like that, they're not meant to be achieved in a way. Just having the goal gives you a purpose. I already have the income I need to have the social life and the things that actually make me happy, and so this goal is something to give the rest of my life a purpose.

And it is a goal that you can almost not measure.

Yeah. Which I know is against all goal setting 101. I know you're meant to have like SMART goals and all that, but...

No, I think it's great. I think more people should have goals that are, I said this on my Instagram the other day, "incompletable," because that stops you from that sort of mountain-top moment where you then need another goal to find your orientation in life and to find your direction. So those big incompletable goals, I think, are the best. Where you can't ever measure if it came true. Which I think is amazing, but it is interesting that achieving the goal would basically do nothing for you. Which is crazy when you think about it!

But I'm loving the process. You know, like every time an article gets written about me or I get referenced or someone shares it, I look at it and I'm like, "Oh wow, this is a step towards my goal." So even if I never achieve that goal and even if when I do achieve that goal, or if I do achieve that goal, I don't care that much, it's created a structure such that I can really enjoy the process.

And that's probably the secret to professional happiness, I guess. It sounds nuts, it sounds crazy to have a goal you can't complete and that doesn't matter. But I think you're left with no other choice when you get to a point where you've ticked off those Maslowian needs of food, shelter, security. Nothing beyond that point really matters. There was a point when I was like, "Oh, if you get 100,000 subscribers, you've made it, you've done." And so when you've got eighty times that, there is a point where it's like, "This isn't... numbers don't make you happy." You realize that quite quickly.

Well, listen, thank you so much for being so honest and open with me today. I've had such an enjoyable, diverse conversation with you and it's an honor to get to meet you. And I was looking at your story and you... you are an anomaly in so many ways because you're incredibly self-aware and conscious now. Clearly that's not always been the case when you were in that pre-breakdown phase. Similar to me, I was a puppet driven by society—society was the puppet master and my insecurities from my childhood—but you've reached that point of self-awareness that you know those goals aren't going to matter and that you know why you're doing it. You know that balance is key and you're able to allocate your time in accordance with your long-term values, not any sort of external or insecure goals or desires. So I think that's remarkable. Thank you for your time. It is an honor to spend this time with you.

It’s been incredible.

I am really excited to see you become synonymous with tech across the world. And I think you're clearly on the way to doing that. It's remarkable what you've achieved. And as a small little irrelevant YouTuber, I'm going to need some tips from you off-camera about how I can continue to do what I'm doing. But to be fair, you've answered it for me. Like we enjoy it. And yeah, we celebrate the little wins and stuff, but we're doing this because meeting people like you and doing this is fun.

I'll give you one little nugget now, actually. I would try and add some structure. I think a lot of the people watching this podcast are very ambitious people who want the next thing. And I think your videos could potentially highlight what's coming and with some sort of ramping intensity to keep those kinds of ambitious people engaged. Have you watched Hot Ones?

Yes, the wings show.

And the reason it's so interesting is that you know the wings are getting hotter each time. And that structure allows me to just watch right till the end, no matter what they're talking about.

That's really, really good feedback. Because watch time matters so critically to YouTube and the algorithm. So incentivizing people in the first five minutes to stay till minute 55 by letting them know there's something spicier over there makes a lot of sense. I'm going to speak to Jack who's behind me and we're going to figure out a way to conduct that experiment. Any other tips?

One thing I've started thinking about recently actually is the Marvel films. I realized that these movies are self-contained episodes. So you can watch one end-to-end and you will get a character arc, you will get villains and heroes, and the heroes will beat the villains. But they're also part of a bigger picture. And it made me realize that every time I finished one of them, I wanted to watch the next one because it was all contributing to this bigger picture, this bigger universe. And so more and more I'm starting to think of my videos as contributions to a universe and how to actually link between them in ways that people feel like they need to watch all of them—or more like they want to watch all of them to get the full picture. So oftentimes now I will actually have inter-video jokes, things that actually span multiple videos. Like I've had one where I finished one video by throwing a phone up in the air and I caught it in the next one. I've had other times where between three sets of videos someone started throwing stuff at me during the videos with increasing intensity. And these kinds of multi-video storylines are actually really powerful.

Again, because of the algorithm, right?

Yeah, I mean it just makes people want to watch you more. It makes it feel not complete by just watching one video.

I met YouTube and YouTube said to me that when people go on a streak of watching multiple videos on YouTube, then the first video in that streak gets the credit, basically. So if you can create content that is episodic, then all of the videos will perform better. So what you're talking about there is kind of like interlinking narratives throughout multiple videos so that one video doesn't stand alone. That's really interesting.

But listen, thank you for your time. I've had so much of it and it's a huge honor and I know how busy you are. I really, really appreciate you. I don't have to tell people where to find you. Type in your name anywhere and they'll find you and your work on every social platform. Thank you, Aaron. It's been a huge pleasure.

It's been incredible. Thanks Steve.

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