Hasan Kubba

How @AliAbdaal became a published author. A case study and in-depth guide. Enjoy: hasankubba.substack.com/p/th…

One of the lifelong journeys I’m on as an entrepreneur is to focus on offense rather than defense. Not to be penny smart pound foolish as we say in the UK

Pickleball taster session today. I get the hype. It’s so fun and accessible that’s the most important thing. Loved it

Getting Astra to audit all my systems and business to see what it would recommend to improve and grow…

Feels good to nail a book concept, complete the proposal, and meet with the client to show them and they love it 🥰 Honestly concept development and persuasive writing is my fav thing

I wrote a book about working to your strengths… then went against my own advice. I tried to systemise posting and put myself off it for over a year. On a call yesterday, @dvassallo helped me see what I was doing: Trying to grow a palm tree in Alaska. You can do it, but you need a greenhouse, artificial heat and constant attention. Anything goes wrong and the tree dies. Or you can plant it in Florida, where it will naturally thrive. For me, it was schedules, content pillars and all that crap. I thought I was making posting easier. Instead, I’d taken out all the fun. Daniel was saying that even setting himself a Friday newsletter deadline makes him want to rebel against it. Even though it was his own idea. So rather than force himself into a schedule, he lets posting fit into the gaps in his day. He shares something he’s doing or thinking about, gets into conversations, enjoys it. It doesn’t feel like another job. I’ve got that same rebellious streak. Apparently I don’t like being told what to do (even by myself). I’ve never really built a habit of posting here, but I’d like to start. Daniel’s practical tip: Share a thought while it’s fresh, chat to people, have some fun with it. Don’t turn it into homework.

Pleasure being on the At Work With podcast. We talked unfair advantages, publishing, and what success actually looks like: youtu.be/nmQvQaJih6s?si=t6j1…

Standing ovation 👏

Absolutely love this

Unfair Advantages build one on top of another and have a SNOWBALLING effect. They don’t just add together, they multiply together. The more Unfair Advantages you can stack up in life, and the earlier in life you can develop them, the stronger they will be. Malcolm Gladwell refers to this kind of virtuous circle in his seminal book Outliers. In it, one of the examples he looks at is that of Canadian hockey players, who are registered in youth leagues based on their birth year. Those born in the earlier months of the year tend to do better because they are older and more developed, so tend to be bigger and stronger than those born in the later months of the year. This leads them to get selected for more coaching and practice, purely based on the luck of which month of the year they were born in. This has been shown to have continued effects and has led to more people born in the first three months of the year becoming professional hockey players. It is also an observed effect in football and baseball players. This is referred to as the ‘relative age effect’ and has been shown to be true in academic success as well. [excerpt from The Unfair Advantage book] Just one small example of an Unfair Advantage which you're likely to have never thought about. Do any others come to mind for you? Please share in the comments below 👇

In an ideal world, I should only be doing one of two things: 1. What I’m great at and enjoy doing, something which creates value for others, and for which I am financially rewarded. Being totally immersed in it. For me that’s writing and teaching. 2. Unplugging completely from that work, and not consciously thinking about it. Time for leisure, family and friends, and overall rejuvenation and relaxation. The closer I get to this ideal in my life, of separating these two distinct times, the happier I would be. And of course it’s one of those ideal things that’s not practically strictly possible. But the closer I get the better. I’m not going to let perfectionism ruin this for me. Mixing the two is a recipe for stress and anxiety, plus a lack of real progress in the work, and a lack of real rejuvenation and relaxation. A reminder to myself: Be either on or off. Don't be half working half relaxing.

Time management is nonsense. You can’t ‘manage’ time… it’s ticking away regardless. You can only manage what you do during that time. So rather than thinking ‘I need to manage my time better’, try managing your attention and your energy better. Where you are in your career or business a year from now is all based on how you spend your attention and energy each day. Beware of: 1. Distractions – they hijack your attention. 2. Wallowing in negative thoughts and emotions – they sap away your energy. 3. Negative people (‘Energy Vampires’) – they’ll sap away both. (By the way, don’t automatically ignore negative emotions, they’re often a signal that something is not quite right. Figure out what it is and take action to solve it.) Ultimately, ‘time management’ is really about managing ourselves.

💷 Focus on your strengths for your career/business. 👪 Focus on your weaknesses for your personal life. Success in your work life is all about how you can add the most value, so you should be focusing your career around your strengths. Double down on your natural talents to develop them into your Unfair Advantages. Success in your personal life, however, is all about being well-rounded to build harmonious relationships and a happy healthy body and mind. Focusing on your weaknesses helps you to build better relationships and healthy habits, such as learning to be a better listener, and eating healthy and exercising. So let's say you're very introverted and are not very comfortable with networking, or with public speaking. The wrong thing to do would be to choose a career path that centres on people skills just to 'push yourself outside your comfort zone'. Yes sometimes you will find that you do need to work on a weakness as it is a peripheral skill that helps with your job (e.g. communication, emotional intelligence, etc). However the core of your job should be centred around your strengths 💪🏼.

Later on in his life Dr Stephen Covey, author of the classic bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, was asked: 'Stephen, if you could only have one principle from everything you've taught, what would it be?' Stephen Covey replied: 'Seek first to understand, and then to be understood'

A lack of willpower, discipline and motivation isn't the issue. If you want to change your outcomes, the trick is to change your environment. Actively design and architect your environment to change your life. This includes your physical environment... but even more importantly it is also who you spend time with and what kind of influences you have in your life. We're all social creatures and we're highly affected by who we have in our peer groups, and who we follow, and whose content we consume. You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Spending time with someone can also include watching their TV show, their YouTube channel, listening to their podcast, or reading their book. Design your environment and influences consciously

I used to hide at networking events. If I went at all. I would drift toward people I already knew. Or wait for someone to approach me. Sometimes I would push myself to start a conversation but it was effort every single time. I am an introvert. This stuff does not come naturally. But here is what I noticed. The people with the strongest networks were not working the room. They were not collecting business cards. They just seemed genuinely curious about whoever they were talking to. So I stopped trying to “network.” I just tried to be interested in people. Wherever I met them. Reaching out to share an article. Asking how someone is doing. Not when I need something. Just because. It is not some grand strategy. It is just nicer. For everyone, including me. And weirdly, it works better than the thing that is supposed to work.

Just saw my Bulgarian book cover for the first time. And I have to say, it looks very cool. There’s something about the design that really works. Especially that arrow built into the letter. It’s such a small touch, but it gives the whole cover a fresh energy. Moments like this remind me how far a simple idea can travel. Seeing the book take on new forms in different languages is something I don’t take for granted.

Over 100k copies sold of The Unfair Advantage. $0 spent on ads. Here’s how we went viral organically (twice): 1️⃣ Start with a killer concept, not a campaign. You can pour any budget you like into a book, but if the core idea isn’t fresh and compelling, it won’t travel. The real engine is the concept itself. That’s the core of my consulting work with authors. When my co-author Ash Ali and I wrote The Unfair Advantage, we knew getting a deal would be hard. Usually you need to be famous already or have a huge audience. But we still got multiple offers from publishers – because the idea resonated. 2️⃣ Use creator marketing instead of traditional ads. When the book came out, we didn’t spend on paid ads. Instead, we sent copies to relevant, up-and-coming YouTubers and creators whose audiences we knew would care about the idea. Because the concept was strong, we were betting they’d genuinely love it – and that their audience would too. And it worked. Ali Abdaal’s video (2.9M views) and Ruri Ohama’s video (3.8M views) took the book viral, organically, twice. That led to bestseller status, awards, and translations into multiple languages (Japanese is out soon). The ideas keep reaching people I’ll never meet. That’s why, even as a marketer, I believe product > marketing – especially with books. If you’re working on a non-fiction book and you’re not 100% sure your core concept could do this for you, that’s the part to fix first.