MacBook Loss Sparks Millions

Ali Abdaal shares how losing $1,000 on a scam MacBook purchase led to starting his first successful business.

"From age 16 to 18, I was doing private tutoring, teaching people how to do well in maths and science exams. I saved up about $1,000 and thought 'I'm rich now, I can buy my first Apple product.'

I went out to try and find a MacBook Air and bought one from some guy on Craigslist. It turned out he sold me a model that didn't work - it was really old and I was a dumbass who didn't realize he was selling me a dead MacBook. This $1,000 that I'd spent years working for, every week doing private tutoring at $10 an hour, suddenly disappeared.

I needed to find a way to recoup these losses. I still have the Evernote file from 2012 when I was 18 where I wrote: 'What am I good at? I'm good at teaching, I'm good at med school entrance exams, I know how to make websites.' So I built a business combining all those things.

That business did 10k year one, 100k year two, 150k year three. I actually sold that business a few years ago to go full time on YouTube. My YouTube channel originally started as content marketing for that original business teaching courses on how to get into med school. In total, the YouTube channel and everything around it has probably done over 10 million in revenue.

So my $1,000 loss, which felt life-changing at the time, transformed into a 10 million dollar upside. At the time I thought to myself 'I'm going to find a way to turn this $1,000 loss into a really good opportunity' and that was when that first business started and took off."