The 10% Edge

Hey friends,

This week I listened to the audiobook ‘Two Weeks Notice’ by Amy Porterfield. The book is a step-by-step guide to starting an online business that lets you quit your day job. Amy’s podcast Online Marketing Made Easy is excellent, and was one of of my most binged podcasts around 2019 when I used to drive an hour to and from work each day.

The book ‘Two Weeks Notice’ is mostly aimed at beginners to the game of online business, and it’s great for that audience. But even as someone who’s been doing the online business thing for 8 years, I found that there were lots of moments where Amy’s explanation of something made me think “huh that’s a really good way of putting it” and felt like I’d ‘upgraded’ my brain’s firmware when it comes to thinking about online business.

One of the ideas that most resonated with me was The 10% Edge.

The 10% Edge

When you’re trying to come up with business (or content) ideas, you ideally want to find something that’s in the sweet spot where (a) you’re good at the thing, (b) there’s a market for the thing, (c) there’s profit potential with the thing, and (d) you actually enjoy the thing.

But it’s that first factor – being good at the thing – that holds a lot of people back. It’s easy to feel like you have to be a certified expert in your field before you’re ‘allowed’ to make videos about it, or build a business around it. This is often the biggest thing that holds people back from starting their YouTube channel, or their business – the feeling that they’re not quite “good enough” yet to be taken seriously.

But, the crucial point Amy makes is that being ‘good at’ something, doesn’t mean you need to be an expert at it. It just means you need to have a 10% Edge compared to your audience.

If you’re 10% more experienced at doing the thing than the people you’re targeting, you’re absolutely allowed to help people with it.

This to me was very liberating.

Even having been in this YouTube game since 2017, I still feel imposter syndrome and worry about making content on stuff where I’m not an ‘expert’.

But, I’m pretty confident that I’ve got at least a 10% Edge over most of my audience in all those areas where my imposter syndrome is holding me back. Sure, the content may be fairly basic, and not be that relevant to the aficionados in the thing I’m talking about, but basic information is what 99% of people need.

Another reason I like the idea of the 10% Edge is because in our Part-Time YouTuber Academy (which is still open for enrolment: academy.aliabdaal.com 😉), loads of beginners are held back because they don’t think anyone will care about what they have to say if they’re not already an expert. But, if they don’t actually start creating content, they won’t get all the great benefits that come with being a YouTuber.

So, if you’ve been held back by any form of business, content creation or even starting a YouTube channel, then consider whether you’re falling into the trap of perfectionism. And consider whether, by lowering your bar to just needing to have that 10% Edge, you might get over your fear of not being good enough, and you might be able to get started.

Have a great week!

Ali xx

💻 My Favourite Productivity Browser

SigmaOS is the first browser that makes it easy and enjoyable to organise your life online.

I’ve been using SigmaOS as my main browser for a few months now and I love how easy it is to organise my tabs into multiple workspaces depending on what project I’m working on and the split screen function that lets me multitask like a pro. Plus my workspaces and pages are synced across all my devices, which is cool.

It’s also a WebKit based browser that’s compatible with Chrome extensions. This means you get the performance / privacy of Safari combined with all the great tools of Chrome. So it offers the best of both worlds 🎉

If you’re interested in upgrading your browser to SigmaOS, you can use Ali20 to get 20% off the annual plan: https://go.aliabdaal.com/SigmaOS​

Thanks to SigmaOS for sponsoring this issue of Sunday Snippets🙏

♥️ My Favourite Things

🎬 Video – Talking with Pokimane. I’ve been absolutely loving HealthyGamerGG’s videos recently. He’s a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who streams on Twitch and makes videos around mental health. I stumbled across a 3-hour live stream he did two years ago with Pokimane, one of the biggest streamers in the world. I listened to the entire conversation (at 2x speed of course) over the course of a 90-minute walk around London, and was blown away by (a) Imane’s openness and vulnerability, and (b) Dr K’s thoughtful and considered responses. Lots of areas resonated with me, like Imane’s relationship with her parents, and how she feels about expectations foisted upon her by those close to her, and also her online audience. One concept that particuarly stayed with me was how when we live life with too many “shoulds”, we end up with one of two things – (1) resentment, if we’ve achieved the “should”, or shame if we don’t achieve the “should”. Lots of food for thought, so if you’re interested in listening in to what’s basically a live therapy session, you might like to check out the video.

📚 Audiobook – Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. After finishing Two Weeks Notice, I started listening to Unreasonable Hospitality, on the recommendation of marketing and advertising guru Rory Sutherland, who I interviewed on my podcast a few days ago. I’m about 40% through the book, and it’s great so far. The author (and narrator) Will, once owned the number 1 ranked restaurant in the world, which is interesting because it gives you some insight into the life of a restaurant manager plus some more valuable insights on leadership and building a team. But also the idea of ‘unreasonable hospitaltiy’ as a philosophy for life really vibes with me and some of the stories genuinely moved me to tears.

📱 App – Waking Up: Beyond Meditation (created by Sam Harris). I’ve been dabbling with meditation on and off for years, but recently started listening to the lectures on Sam Harris’ Waking Up app. They seem to have a new feature where you can listen to the lectures, and enable background music (serene instrumentals, or forest sounds, or seascapes etc). There’s something about listening to deep spiritual insights with nice music in the background that makes it all much more engaging, and a fun thing to listen to at night time.

🎙️ Physical item – Sketchbook. I bought a really cheap, simple sketchbook from Amazon and I’ve started sharing some of my sketches on Instagram. So don’t forget to follow me 😜. I’m trying to be more appreciative and mindful of the present moment, so sketching is supposedly a pretty good way of doing this. It’s been a super fun, relaxing and mindful thing to do.

🎬 My New Videos

📖 Is The Kindle Scribe Worth It? – There’s a new e-reader in town, the Kindle Scribe, and it allows you to take notes on screen with a pen. So in this video I review the Kindle Scribe and share my thoughts on which Kindle is the best one for you in 2023.

🚀 My Favourite Mac Apps (2023) – I recently got the new M2 Mac Mini and had to download all of the apps that I use, so in this video I go through the 32 essential apps that I use on almost daily basis.

✍️ Quote of the Week

From Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat. Resurfaced using Readwise.