3 Core Actions To Master To Get Rich, According to Ali Abdaal

Building wealth doesn’t have to be complicated. Ali Abdaal, a doctor-turned-entrepreneur and author of “Feel-Good Productivity,” believes that getting rich comes down to mastering just three core actions.

Contents

Action No. 1: Doing the Work Action No. 2: Selling the Work Action No. 3: Administering and Maintaining the Work How To Get Better at the 3 Core Actions

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“In our economic system, every single economic unit — i.e. individuals and businesses — are really just doing these three fundamental actions,” he said in a recent YouTube video.

Here’s what they are.

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Action No. 1: Doing the Work

Anyone who makes money has to do some sort of work to get it.

“For example, a software engineer is doing the work of writing software, a doctor is doing the work of treating patients, a teacher is doing the work of teaching kids,” Abdaal said in the video. “This is what we previously referred to as a ‘value creation.’ It is doing the work to create the value.”

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Action No. 2: Selling the Work

In order to turn your work into money, you need to sell your work — a value exchange.

“If you’re a software engineer working for Google, you are doing the work of writing software, and you are selling the work to Google as your employer,” Abdaal said. “Google is the one giving you money in exchange for you doing the work for them.

“If you’re a doctor, you are doing the work of treating patients, but you’re crucially selling the work to your employer, which is probably a hospital,” he continued. “The hospital itself is then making money from insurance companies and the government, but you as an individual doctor are fundamentally selling your work to your employer.”

Action No. 3: Administering and Maintaining the Work

To continue making money, you have to keep doing the work and ensure that your skills and qualifications remain up to date.

“As a doctor, you are doing the work of treating patients, you’re selling the work to your employer at the hospital, and you’re administering or maintaining your ability to do the work by keeping your professional qualifications up to date and filing your taxes and not getting struck off the medical register, for example,” Abdaal said.

While these three actions may seem simple, they really are the keys to building wealth.

“When it comes to the game of making money, it’s really, really helpful to understand that these three things are basically the only actions that are ever being done in the game of making money,” Abdaal said. “If you would like to make more money, it is worth understanding that these are the three actions, and [you can make more money by] improving your skills at doing the three actions.”

How To Get Better at the 3 Core Actions

While “doing the work” is an essential first step to getting rich, not all work provides equal returns. Abdaal recommended focusing on work that gets you “close to the money.”

“Whatever your job is … figuring out how to get closer to the sales side of the business that you’re working in is very, very important and very, very useful,” he said. “If you can learn to build and learn to sell, you’ll be unstoppable, and you always have a job for life.”

That takes you to action two — selling your work.

“The building stuff’s not the hard part — the selling stuff is the hard part,” Abdaal said. “Learning to sell is literally the most important thing. This is why a lot of people say, build a personal brand. Your personal brand is your professional reputation. If, in whatever industry you’re in, you’re able to build a strong professional reputation, you are way more likely to be able to sell yourself.”

To build your personal brand, it’s essential to network.

“Networking is particularly important because you’re getting yourself known, you’re getting yourself seen, you’re hopefully adding value to other people,” Abdaal said. “The person who adds value to someone else, even if they’re not in your company, even if they are different companies, that person gets known as someone who’s helpful. And people want to work with other people who are helpful.”

Another way to get better at selling is through a side hustle. This is particularly useful if you currently work for someone else in a non-sales role.

“What starting a side hustle does — whether it’s baking cookies and trying to sell them in the local school fair or setting up a lemonade stand — is that, ultimately, the point of the side hustle is to teach you to sell,” Abdaal said. “Maybe the side hustle can grow to the point where it replaces your income. Fantastic. You’re winning at life.”

Once you find a way to sell to make money, do the work to maintain that income.

“The nice thing about that is that’s under your control,” Abdaal said. “You can do something about it — you can learn a high-income skill, you can increase your personal brand and your professional reputation.”

If you’re willing to stay dedicated to the three core actions, you will build wealth, Abdaal said.

“All of these things require work,” he said. “Getting rich is not something that happens without any work. It’s something that is hard; it’s something that takes a reasonable amount of time. But if you have the goal of making enough money that you’re able to do what you want … that kind of lifestyle requires you to put in quite a lot of work. And that, ultimately, is the game of getting rich.”

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