Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en [Music] i think i could build it to sell it which what i want to know from your perspective is that even a good plan building to sell so part of me is like yes it’s clear path to make money another part is like it’s kind of lame though yeah well i think where you’re at now let’s take three three options build to sell that which is basically optimizing for like oh is there a sort of like a flip is there a is there a buyer on the other side of a business like this another one is build to win which is basically like um for example when i talk to these bankers what i’m trying to figure out is what which of these businesses is like not a special snowflake where it’s like oh that’s actually like a rinse and repeatable model like i didn’t like that founder didn’t like catch lightning in a bottle at the perfect time and it’s their perfect background and they got really lucky about this one thing it’s like oh those i don’t want to emulate i want to emulate the one where it’s like hey i think somebody could start that same business today and do equally well or do do just as well in this one adjacent space and like you don’t need to be a genius with that and so that’s the second part of it which is like build to win it’s like optimizing for something that’s gonna work and then there’s the last one which is sort of like you know build for fun or build for mission which is like go for something that like you something you would never want to sell that you’re willing to do even if it’s low likelihood of success i think we all know the answer is to do that bucket right like i think the question is like how many how much security do you need before you go do the thing you know you should do well or it could be a combination of all three uh like it could be like you enjoy winning or you enjoy this space and you want to make it successful but there’s a great clip from you and uh what’s uh free what’s what’s uh all in david freeburg there’s a great clip that i shared that you and him had where he basically said that founders always sell themselves short and they go for these small ideas because because they think it’s more reasonable but when doing that they kind of screwed themselves because it’s actually easier sometimes to do much of grander bigger ideas because that attracts the crazy types of people who you want to work with um you can interact competitive because nobody else no not every joe is going to try to you know do it like you know going and trying to you know start a railroad business or whatever versus an fba business it’s like well they’re both going to take all your time so that’s equal money well you’re going to have to go raise money from investors one will let you just raise you’re still going to get the money you need from investors just one you maybe raise more at a higher valuation and the other one you’ll raise less at a lower evaluation right like but did you agree do you agree with him i i do agree with him and i’ve thought this for a very long time i remember uh back in the day did you ever hear about this thing called the unreasonable institute i don’t even think this is around anymore that’s a great name it’s sort of like the same guys who did summit it’s not it’s not actually the same guys but it’s the same it was like the same idea it was like right the unreasonable institute was basically this like it was based on this one word unreasonable in the way that the hustle is built on this one word hustle and uh trans is built on one word trends and so the unreason was it was exactly that it was like it’s going to take unreasonable people to do unreasonable things for the world to move forward and it was like very inspiring and then they met with all a bunch of you know a bunch of people who did that the sort of elon musk types who went and did unreasonable things and then you start to look at it and you’re like you know all things equal you know i guess like your inputs are sort of the same it’s just your time and energy and then like the outputs can be very very different because the inputs aren’t the same because it is possible to build something pretty cool and not work that hard but it’s kind of impossible to build something huge and not work very hard all right who do we know and let’s do real examples i’m not saying it’s not true but who do we know that’s building successful awesome businesses without working too hard well how about suli i actually don’t know what’s his schedule does he grind constantly he works hard yes he works hard so then no one you don’t we don’t know anyone but you and me like maybe i’ll give you one nuance on it he got there faster than the normal person so it looked like it came easier but that’s just because he was better it wasn’t because he worked like he he wasn’t putting in a tenth of the hours he was putting in the same number of hours and getting there 10 times faster which is i just think that like there’s a world where you have business a and it doesn’t grow nearly as fast and you’re working 40 hours a week and then you have business b that’s growing significantly faster and you have to work 100 hours a week like that that is a reality yes that’s true that’s what i’m talking about i’m not talking about like very little i’m talking about normal versus not normal there’s also things like this podcast or like people who have like newsletters or blogs or something like that where it’s like or they teach a course it’s like you know like let’s take your buddy neville right so neville i don’t think you and me well because i’m doing multiple things right so it’s like on each one i’m not putting in as much time but like overall i’m working harder and if i didn’t do those other things that one thing would just expand in time i would just do more i would say how often are you working now a day normal work hours uh not normal hours but i work like a the equivalent of eight hours a day got it just not all to it not not all continuously all right but back to what was the original point so my my point was like uh is it is this really true that you can kind of like chill and win and like no i didn’t mean to say i mean chill less or sorry chill more work less okay so then bro if you agree with friedberg which i think i do why are you not going after like one big grand thing like i started a newsletter that’s not exactly like you know that’s not like world changing entirely it’s neat but i would i would put it on a six out of ten in terms of like maybe a five in terms of like big ideas right yeah i i agree with you the reason why is because to me it’s not a bigness contest it’s a do i have a clear picture of what i want like my life to be and then can i like do i have a crystal clear picture and then can i make that happen and it’s like knowing what i want and then getting what i want and so what i wanted was not to work the hundred hours right even though i even though i agree that’s cool it’s fun and if i did do it i do think there’s all these extra benefits you’d get amazing talent to come join you you’d make a bunch of money you’d uh have a bunch of fun like there’s there’s great benefits if i did the big one the the big big big one but i decided that like what i wanted yeah yeah what i wanted more was more like the 40 hour a week but hours spent on doing these types of things like i love teaching teaching’s not the most it’s not the most like world-changing unreasonable institute style you know like let’s go land a rocket on mars type of idea but i have the most fun doing it so i’m just optimizing for like a different thing rather than bigness i’m optimizing for like you know my own enjoyment and so that’s why i’m not going after that so i need things that are sufficiently interesting so that i’m interested and big enough so i don’t feel like i’m wasting my time but like it’s not maximally big you