Level Up Your Life In 2026 | Shaan Puri

Shaan Puri

"The biggest risk you have is spending your life trying to do a really good job at the wrong thing. Yeah, **mediocrity** is the real thing."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Yeah. For any person with high potential, it’ll **sap** you: **sap** your will, **sap** your time, **sap** your resources, **sap** your energy, and **sap** your belief in yourself.

Wouter Teunissen

**This is Sean Purrie.** He sold his company to Amazon and Twitch for millions. He now runs one of the most successful business podcasts in the world, with millions of listeners.

Shaan Puri

I know this because I spent ten years doing things only for... "Oh, if this worked, it'd be amazing." **The work has to be the win.** The win can't be some future, hypothetical payoff. Because you enjoy it, you do it all the time. Because you do it all the time, you get really good at it. Because you get really good at it, you do get the results.

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

"That's the **flywheel**."

Wouter Teunissen

In this episode, we talk about: - what it takes to be **successful**, - how to **work smarter, not harder**, and - how to *live a good life*.

Shaan Puri

I think hard work is over; it's probably maybe the fourth or fifth most important variable. ... You know, I think the very first one is— **Today's a special episode because I'm the guest of today's episode.** Normally we have guests on and we ask them all about their life, their philosophies, how they work, how they did it, how they made it. But this time I'm the guest because my former intern, **Walter**, created his own podcast. He used to work for me when he was—I don't know—18, 19, 20 years old. He was in college, and he's gone on to create a cool podcast. He asked me to come on, and so I went on. I'm one of the first episodes of his show, and I watched it and I was like, "This is actually a really good interview." The reason why is because it's a lot of information about before we ever made any money. It's how I was thinking when I was in my early twenties: the ups, the downs, the indecisions, the uncertainty—do I go this way or that way—and how I thought about it. I think it's going to help a lot of people, specifically people who haven't quite made it yet. Maybe you're young, or maybe it just hasn't all clicked for you yet. I think there are some very useful philosophies in here. So I hope you enjoy this—an episode where I got interviewed by my former intern, Walter.

Wouter Teunissen

You had a great life, seemingly. So why did you end up moving, and what was that year of being *"strategically broke"* like?

Shaan Puri

Yeah — *"strategically broke."* That's what I called it. Most people just call it unemployed, you know? Why not; I put a luxury brand on it. Basically, what happened is: I graduated from college and I did a great job. I got a job paying me $120,000 a year to go work in a boring industry that I knew nothing about and didn't really care about... I kind of stumbled into a job that I thought was too good of money to pass up.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

So I went to work for this guy, and sure enough, I was pretty bored. I thought, "I can do this job, but I'm fairly bored." It was a fork in the road. Before I took that job, my friends and I had a business idea. The idea was to create a sushi restaurant chain called **"Sabi Sushi."** It was supposed to be the *Chipotle of sushi*. The way you have Subway for sandwiches and Chipotle for burritos, we wanted that for sushi. We won a business-plan competition. On one hand, we got $25,000 in prize money that the three of us would live on. On the other hand, I could take this job for $120,000. I took the job. Within a month I thought, "This is lame." I looked at my life and realized I had made a lame choice.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

The good thing about me is I don't really make great decisions, but I make great *reversals* of decisions. Once I realize that I have made the wrong decision, I'm not one to linger in it — mostly because I just can't tolerate it anymore. If I was dating somebody... I remember I was dating this girl and realized, "alright, she ain't the one." I just called her and broke up with her. Ten minutes later, after thinking about it, I was like, "what am I supposed to do? If I go hang out with her now, this will be unbearable." Now that I've seen what I can't unsee, I *can't unknow what I know*. So I'm pretty quick to cut things off when they're not working. I quit my job after a month and a half and I told him, "hey, I'm gonna go work on my sushi restaurant." He's like, "what?" Okay, so I fly back and I meet up with my friends and so we got $25 [unclear phrase: "free people"], so we're basically $88,000 each.

Wouter Teunissen

For a year.

Shaan Puri

For her to live for a year? Yeah. And I was like, "I don't know that. I don't know how much — I don't even know how much life costs. I'm a college kid, right? When you're in college, everything's just provided for you. You swipe this thing and things just happen." My parents paid for the dorm or something — you pay up front. I just didn't understand what it's like to pay rent and bills and laundry and all that stuff. I like how I threw laundry in there — it's like a dollar, a dollar twenty-five a week or something. So I don't really even know how much 8,000 is, but I know it's low, right, because all of my friends got good jobs and nobody's making $8 a year. So I decided: okay, I'm either going to wake up every day and feel worried and shitty about money... or I'm going to commit and say I'm going to try to spend this year *strategically broke*. Instead of being— I looked at my friends, like investment bankers, and they were money-rich, time-poor.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

I was *money-rich, time-poor* when I had taken that job. So I was like, "Okay, if I'm gonna be money-poor, I'm gonna make a choice to be rich in other areas." It's like I need freedom and flexibility in my schedule... so I'm gonna be *time-rich*. I'm gonna be *adventure-rich* — I'm going to travel with my friends; we're gonna do fun stuff. I'm gonna be *learning-rich*. So it's like, how do I learn if I'm making 10 times less, 12 times less here? I gotta be learning 12 times more than I would on the job there, right? Now, the good news is that's not that hard of a bar. You don't learn that much in your entry-level jobs, you know. Or, if you excel, you learn kind of the same tasks.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

You're not learning a wide breadth of stuff, right? Whereas with the business that we were doing, I'm learning about sushi and restaurant operations—how margins work and what a **P&L** is. I'm learning to pitch investors. Then we're negotiating a lease and I'm figuring out how real estate works. I remember we went to the city area and we were looking up liquor licenses. While I was there I learned that if you have a liquor license, your lease is on file. So I found where we were negotiating. I found one place with a liquor license and I knew how much they were paying. I went back to the negotiation and I said, "We're only going to pay this." She was like, "We could never do that." Then, "You're doing that in these four locations — I know you could do that for us." She was blown away. So we were just learning all these little things—little core skills: **sales, marketing, brand building, design**. We were editing videos; we were doing whatever it took. We were blogging; we were doing just random stuff but **high, high action**.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

And we just decided to have a shit ton of action and do **DIY** — just do it all ourselves: hiring, firing, learning as many lessons as I could. So that year, "strategically broke" was about learning how little you need to live on... like sleeping on an air mattress. I put up photos, so you've seen them, yeah.

Wouter Teunissen

"Yeah, could we pull one up there?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah. It was like—we didn't even have a garbage bag. We just hammered a garbage bag onto the wall with a nail; it was just hanging there. We would drink out of this Gatorade cooler that we had gotten for free from some gym. To make some side money, I would coach basketball at this school for autistic children, and I would tutor kids and tutor college students nearby in stats. I was like, cool — I'm learning and then teaching them, and I'm making, you know, $25–$30 an hour. But I had calculated the minimum amount I needed to earn in order to have maximum freedom. Looking back, that was actually a very smart thing to do, even though I was pretty dumb at the time. Dharmesh—who came on our podcast, the founder of HubSpot—said the same thing about his first business. He said: > "I did all this random stuff for my first business not knowing anything." > "Then in my second business I thought, 'Well, now I know the proper ways to do things,' and then I screwed up that second business." > "Just because I was ignorant doesn't mean I was wrong." So just because you don't know what you're doing—you're making it up as you go—doesn't mean you're wrong about everything. You might actually get a bunch of things right. One thing I got right was realizing that money is a tool for *freedom*. Instead of trying to stack as many dollars in the bank as possible when you're young, the better thing to do is optimize for freedom — optimize for learning, optimize for adventure and fun — and just calculate the minimum amount of money you need to be able to do that. I still do that with my companies: I calculate the minimum amount of funding we need just to get to that next... get to that thousand customers who love [trails off].

Wouter Teunissen

Us. Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri

Or, you know, there's a lot of things I could be doing right now to make more money, but I don't do them because I'm not trying to optimize for that. I'm asking, *what's the amount I need where I feel really good but I get the most time* I can have with my kids, on my projects, working out, and doing fun stuff I like to do. Yeah, and I think that principle has really stuck with me. I've talked before about the way I know how to make money, about how to build a money-making skill, and about how to leverage your time and energy. The team at **HubSpot** actually went through the video where I explained all that and turned it into a free downloadable cheat sheet on my four rules of how to make money. Now, this is not *get-rich-quick* advice. It's just core, foundational principles about building wealth—things I wish I knew when I was just getting started. So if you want to download it, it's in the description below. It's totally free; you can go get it. Thanks to the folks at **HubSpot** for doing the research, making this document, and making it available to all of you. Alright, back to this episode.

Wouter Teunissen

I love that so much. I think you mentioned—where you reverse decisions very easily. I think that's a very hard thing to do. Most people consider that there are **"two-way doors,"** but I think there actually aren't that many. It's because it's hard for most people—myself included—to actually reverse a decision once it's made. So figuring that out early on... what do you mean by that?

Shaan Puri

Like, what's...

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah... so have.

Shaan Puri

"You found it hard to reverse decisions."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, **definitely**. I think so... if you commit to something, or...

Shaan Puri

Give me an example.

Wouter Teunissen

So, I think—moving to a place, right? I lived in San Francisco for a month a year ago. I know that I want to move out of Europe. I even know it now, *deep down inside*. But because I've got family—these are the reasons I tell myself. My family is at home, my friends are there, and it's hard to get a visa. Things like that keep me from moving. Now that I've got a place in the Netherlands—I'm renting—it's all of these reasons not to go that are really just *excuses*. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, but I think it's harder to reverse those decisions.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it is. I just wonder why... *you know.*

Wouter Teunissen

In your case, I don't think this is a therapy session.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it doesn't seem like you're trying to reverse a decision. It seems like you have — I think you probably have made the decision about where you want to be. But you probably have some fears holding you back... I don't know what the fears are, but maybe it's fear of leaving family behind, or how you're going to afford to live in a really expensive city, or not knowing anybody. I don't know what it is, but it's almost always **fear**.

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

Like, if you just ask "why" often enough, you'll end up with *"I'm afraid."* We try not to say we're afraid, but we are. Adults have all these code words for fear—like *"stress."* You're allowed to say, *"I'm stressed out,"* or *"That's really stressful."*

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

But if you say, "I'm afraid," it's like—are you... you're growing your baby, what's going on? But of course, *stress* is just the code word for *fear*, right? What are you... what are you stressed out about? Things going wrong? Things not happening? Okay—then what?

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Then people won't like me. What then? What — you're just... there's no reason. You're afraid. You're afraid of rejection. You're afraid of embarrassment. You're afraid of humiliation. You're afraid of failure. It's one of those things that's always underneath it. So, I think, you know, that **fear** is what holds people back more than anything else. Yeah, I think that's also why people don't reverse decisions, right? Because they're afraid of looking stupid. Or — yeah — looking stupid. Or like, "What if I quit this job and the other thing's not better?"

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

What if I break up with this girl, but there's nobody else? Or the next person's not better—right? Or then I'm alone, and that's gonna suck. I don't want to feel that. *I'd rather live in pain than...*

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Then go towards an unknown. You know—take a *known pain* versus an *unknown*. I think people get trapped up in those too much. I'm happy that's not one of my weaknesses. I have my own, but that's not one of them, at least for me.

Wouter Teunissen

No, I love that. Yeah, I think *Tim Ferriss* has said, "People would rather live in discomfort than uncertainty," which I think is exactly what you just described. I... I think.

Shaan Puri

And I'm the opposite, by the way. There might be others who are just like, **"discomfort sucks"**—like, "Oh no, what if this sucks? Take me out of the pain." I'm not saying I'm tougher. I'm saying I'm actually less tough. I have less tolerance for pain, so I just make a decision: **"All right, maybe the uncertainty is less painful,"** and I go there.

Wouter Teunissen

But you're just honest about it, and that's hard. I think what's really interesting as well is with you moving to San Francisco — and this is something the more I talk to people like yourself, who I think have *made it* because, you know, you've set out in life and asked, "What do I want out of life?" — you're sort of just going for that. I love that. I think the benefit of moving to a place like San Francisco is the *proximity* you get with other people and the *blueprints* you're seeing. I think that's a big reason I want to do this. Selfishly, the reason I want to talk to you is that you seem to have figured out the way you want to, and I just want to learn from you. I think you've mentioned that proximity can do that for you — it can give you these blueprints. So talk to me a little about that. I also want to hear you tell the story about one of your classmates — you said this before — whose father, you know, had a great job but never saw his daughter.

Shaan Puri

*Yeah.*

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah. Tell me about how we can learn from other people, especially under the idea of figuring out what you want to do in life. What do you actually notice? What do you get energy from? How do you pick up on that?

Shaan Puri

Well, I think what you're talking about is this phrase: **"proximity is power."**

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

I got this from **Tony Robbins**. I went to a Tony Robbins event — it clicked for me, and he was talking about himself. He said, "We all heard these phrases, like, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." Very true, by the way. For example, let's say you hang out with a bunch of people who are super into working out. It doesn't matter if you didn't work out before.

Wouter Teunissen

You're gonna be.

Shaan Puri

You're going to end up working out, right? You're not going to end up hanging out with them that much. It's very hard to resist that flow. It's like—in a biological cell, osmosis: the water will just cross the membrane. It'll flow in that direction. So I like *pull*, not *push*. Push is hard. Push takes energy: I have to motivate myself to go work out every day. I have to convince myself to do it. Or I'm pulled into it because all the people I like and respect do this. We hang out all the time. This is what their normal schedule looks like. It's almost easier for me to just do it than to resist everything. That same principle is true no matter what your pursuit is. When I wanted to get good at playing poker, I looked around and the people who got good all lived in a house with five other people who were equally obsessed with poker. Some were better, some a little worse, but they just immersed themselves among those five people. They literally lived in a house together, and that was all they did. They ate, slept, and breathed poker. They would talk poker over dinner, review hands—they did all of that all the time—and they got better way faster than people who did not. It's like learning Spanish: you can learn on Duolingo, you can learn with a tutor, or you can move to Mexico and live there for three months. Which one's going to work better? *Total immersion.* *Proximity*—getting near the thing you want—is ironically an easier way to get what you want. It's the easiest decision you can make to move the needle the furthest on your progress bar: get around other people who are already doing the thing you want, have the thing you want, or are also chasing the thing you want. That's the principle. That's why I moved to San Francisco. I wanted to do startups. I was living in Australia at the time.

Wouter Teunissen

Not many startups.

Shaan Puri

There's not a lot of startups up there. I asked the guy, "Hey, who's the most impressive founder you've met?" They were like, "This guy." I said, "Cool — can I meet him?" He said, "No, he doesn't live here anymore." He added, "That happened three times." I asked, "Where are all those guys? Where'd they move to?" They said, "Yeah, they moved to San Francisco. Of course — that's where the people who are serious about startups go, right?" I thought, "Oh, what the hell am I doing here?"

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

And it feels weird to move. I have to break a lease. I don't know anyone there — where am I going to go? It's all unknowns. But it's like, alright: am I serious about this or not? Yeah, I decided to be serious about it. I *want to do that*. So I literally changed my phone number to a San Francisco area code. "You committed. **Mentally commit.**"

Wouter Teunissen

"Yeah."

Shaan Puri

And I started telling people, "I'm moving to San Francisco." I had no plans yet; I didn't know anything. "I'm moving to San Francisco." I started job-hunting only in San Francisco. I started looking at places, signed a lease — you know, I found a place to live. I just flew here on a one-way ticket and said, "This is where I want to be in order to make that happen." So I think that's the kind of *proximity's power* idea — the principle of proximity's power.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, I think you touched on something else as well — where, if you want to go to San Francisco, your boss is telling you, "That's where all the serious people are who are interested in startups, who actually want to do it," and you're asking yourself, "Am I serious about this?" I think that's *very underrated*.

Shaan Puri

Most people are not serious. No — this is actually, like, a really important point. Yeah, most people are not serious. I'll tell you two stories around this. At that Tony Robbins event, they play this little game. They do these little warm-ups before Tony comes out — just trying to get the crowd active, get you vibed so that you're ready to go. Sometimes they'll hit a beach ball around and people are bouncing it; sometimes it's music, whatever. So then this guy comes out and he's like, "We're gonna play a game of Simon Says." Just to set the scene: we're in an arena. There are 10,000 people in this arena — it's like a basketball, an actual basketball arena — it's full. So 10,000 people are all gonna play Simon Says, and he's Simon. He says, "Stand up." Alright. He's like, "The winner is gonna come up on stage and get something special." Alright, cool — one winner out of 10,000 people. So he starts. He does the first one: "Alright everybody, you know, stand up." Everybody stands up. Like, "Didn't you say 'off' — you're off?" And then he keeps going and he's just eliminating tons of people really quickly. By, you know, within ten minutes it's down to the last five people. He's like, "Come up on stage," and he gets the winner. He's basically like, "Alright, the final five — you're the five out of 10,000 people who are at the end here."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

He asked, "Did you think that you were going to win?" Their honest answer was, "You know, I didn't. I didn't know if I was going to win, but I was definitely going to try. I really wanted to win." Some said, "Yeah, I thought I was going to win." One guy was like that, but four of them were like, "Yeah, I actually — I really wanted to win, so I was going to try." He then turned to the audience and asked: > "Raise your hand if you actually believed you were going to win." Almost nobody raised their hand — maybe 50 people out of 10,000. Then he said: > "You know, the five people on stage — it looks like you're competing with 10,000 people. You're not. You were actually only competing with these 50. You had a **one-in-ten** chance of getting on stage, not a **one-in-ten-thousand**." I remember that really stuck with me. By the way, there are those loser YouTube-comment–type people who are like, "But actually…" — forget it; that was a story. It's a...

Shaan Puri

Shut up. A lot of life is like that. Things seem really hard, really unlikely, really challenging—but most people are not serious. Most people are not trying to seriously do anything. If you are serious, you're already in that final, like, “five out of fifty” type of format. You’ve got a one-in-ten chance, so your odds are much better than you think. I'll give you a second story that supports this. We've become friends with Jimmy Donaldson, who’s **MrBeast** on **YouTube**. When you're hanging out with him, he meets a lot of people. In fact, at his headquarters and studio, all these YouTubers show up—almost like a mecca, like a pilgrimage—to just see him. They come up and they're always like, “Jimmy, hey, got a few minutes? I'd like to just talk to you about my channel. Can you give me any advice? How do I grow my channel? Any advice on how I could be successful on YouTube? Please, Jimmy, please tell me how I could be successful on YouTube?” And it's so funny because, first of all, all of his videos are public.

Wouter Teunissen

I can see what it.

Shaan Puri

In secret, right? So everything he's doing is visible to you. Every single video is **public**. Yeah, but—okay. Beyond that, and by the way, that's from the beginning of time: you see all...

Wouter Teunissen

Of ten his years ago.

Shaan Puri

Yeah. Ten years ago you can see his videos. So we said, and he says the same thing every time. He goes, "Here's what you wanna— you wanna win, you wanna be successful on YouTube?" "Yeah, absolutely." "Okay, here's what you're gonna do: you're gonna make **100 videos**." They're like, "100 videos?" "Yeah, you're gonna make **100 videos**, one at a time. Right? Make a video. Then when you make the next video, pick one thing you're gonna do better... a better intro, a better caption, a better outro, better music, better pacing, better editing—whatever. One thing every time for **100 videos**. Just do that." "...And when you're done with the **100**, come talk to me. I'm gonna tell you exactly what you need to do next." I'm like, "Great. Jimmy, does anybody ever come back to you? What do you tell them when they come back?" He's like, "They never come back." "What do you mean?" "Well... nobody is willing to do **100 videos**."

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

They all want to be **MrBeast**. They don't want to be Jimmy — the guy who started doing videos when he was 12. At 13, nobody watched. At 14, nobody watched. At 15, nobody watched. At 16, is anyone ever gonna watch? At 17, still nobody watching. At 18, "oh my god, a couple of people watched." At 19, finally somebody watched. Seven years through hell, right? Nobody's willing to do even **100 videos**, let alone stick with it for seven years. And for the very few people — the kind that 1% who are serious and do it — by the time they get to **100**, they don't need me. They're flying. They've forgotten all about me. They are so full of stuff to do because they have so much *momentum* — because they made 100 videos and tried to make one thing better every single time. That idea — the rule of **100** — applies to basically any pursuit, not just YouTube. The funny thing is, nobody's serious, so nobody does it. So if you just decide, "I'm serious about this," and actually commit, you're already ahead of the game.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah. You're only committing with those 50 people, so pull from examples — from how you did this, right? I think *proximity* is one thing. If you're seeing more lifestyles or activities that people are doing in and around the subject you find interesting, you'll be able to follow more blueprints and figure out what you're actually going to do a hundred times over. But in someone's daily, regular life: what things can people do, or what things did you do, to figure out how to lean more into my *inner nerd*?

Shaan Puri

Well, one thing is other people are very good at spotting it before you are. I remember Naval, who's one of my favorite people to learn from — follow whatever he says. He told a great story: "When I was a kid, I wanted to be a physicist. I thought, in the apex of awesome people, physicists were on top — physicists, scientists, inventors." He said that's what he was going to be and he told everybody that. His mom was like, "Nah, you're going to be a business person." He responded, "What are you talking about? Business is cool, but I want to be a physicist." She said, "No — you're naturally a business guy." He said, "What? I never talked about business. I never told you that. What do you mean?" She replied, "Well, you're always talking about it. You never say 'I want to be a business guy,' but you're always thinking about business." She gave examples: "When we used to walk by that restaurant, you would always point out things they were doing that they should be doing to make more revenue or be more profitable, or how they should change their menu. You're always trying to figure out how to fix or improve a business. It comes very naturally to you." She asked, "Does physics come naturally to you?" He said no — "it's brutal. I want it because I think they're so cool." But he wasn't naturally inclined, so he realized that and leaned into business. I've seen this many, many times. If you just talk to other people who know you well, you can ask them a couple of questions that are good at sussing this out. One such question is: **"What's my superpower?"** — what do you see that comes easy to me, naturally, that is harder for other people? Is there anything like that you've seen? Podcasting, telling stories, whatever it is. Another question to ask yourself is: Where do I spend time doing things that, for me, feel fun but to others would feel like a grind? It's play to you, work to others. For me, I'll be up at eleven or twelve at night, Google-searching and randomly reading. Today, before we got here, I was literally reading the annual report from the State of Nevada about the revenues and expenses of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip for 2024 compared to 2023.

Wouter Teunissen

"Like, who's doing that for fun?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, nobody's doing that for fun. I was doing it for fun. I was really curious. I was like, "Are we in a recession?" I wonder... there's this thing where the Vegas strippers know first. Do they know first? Well, I should probably be able to check Vegas revenues last year versus this year, and that might be a leading indicator. Oh wow, this is cool — this is a PDF download. A PDF. Searching through the things, making my notes for what... Dude, nobody asked me the question, you know? The teacher didn't call on me. This wasn't my assigned assignment, but I'd always been like that.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

I have always been doing things like that. Before, I didn't really notice that it was a thing. I didn't see how that could be special or useful. It just seemed like... going down random little business rabbit holes, these little detours. Then, when I did the podcast — and the podcast is us shooting the shit about business — suddenly I had this giant library in my head of little factoids, stories, and nuggets. That knowledge was very, very useful on the podcast. So I found a fit for it later. I think other people are good mirrors. Look at what you do in your *five to nine*. You have your *nine to five* — that's your job — but what's your *five to nine*? What do you do? Specifically, in your *five to nine*, what do you do beyond what's rational?

Wouter Teunissen

Right, a normal person.

Shaan Puri

It's gotta either look like a *work* or a *grind* to other people, or it's gotta look like, "Oh, yeah, I like video games too," but you're practicing your aim on this aim simulation for four hours a day. That's different. That's, you know, now you're in this other territory — you're not just... For example, I used to play this game, "NBA 2K." You played too?

Wouter Teunissen

Of course.

Shaan Puri

I never actually played the games. I just went to *Franchise Mode* and started simulating. I'm the *GM* — I'm scouting players and building the franchise. Literally since I was a kid, sixth grade, fifth grade, I was doing this. And it's like, well, guess what: that's being a manager. I was literally practicing being a *CEO*. I was upping the concession prices, scouting the players, and making trades. I got more joy out of managing the franchise than playing the game.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

So, you start to notice these oddities about yourself. Instead of pointing at them, hiding them, or trying to fix them because "they're broken," say, "oh, *interesting* — what **superpower** does that give me? Where does that let me thrive? In what scenario would this be extremely useful or valuable?"

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah. Well, it turns out the one you're in right now... I'll... [trails off]

Shaan Puri

Give you another example: my wife.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

My wife's kinda OCD and artsy-craftsy. Since she was a kid, she loved arts and crafts. Her OCD drives me nuts — if a wire is out and crooked, she has to get up and go fix it. She can't do the podcast until it's straightened. She started, for herself, as a boredom, girly thing to do — like *bedazzling her phone* when she was in high school. She got really good at it. She leaned in; she didn't shy away. She got curious. She started buying Swarovski crystals and trying to arrange them perfectly. She looked to see if other people did this and how she could make better designs. Suddenly, celebrities started hitting her up. She was a freshman in college, and celebrities were asking her to make custom pieces for their parties in Hollywood. She was making thousands of dollars a month as a college student.

Wouter Teunissen

That wasn't an option if you'd... [trailing off]

Shaan Puri

Ask, right? That's the— that's her pushed out, yeah, right. So that is it. It didn't even seem like a thing. In fact, it seemed like this kind of useless waste of time, but for her it *wasn't*. It looked like a grind; other than that it was fun for her, so she found a way to make that useful over time.

Wouter Teunissen

That’s an amazing story — I love that so much. I think that goes back to what you mentioned earlier about leaning into your own curiosities. I think you said this somewhere: "the only voice that actually matters is the one inside your head." Talk to me a little bit about how you block out external noise when you’re going through life. For example, you have this sushi restaurant and you’re picking things up as you go. You were working at a job in Australia before that — how do you learn and adapt as you go when you’re really unclear about the next step? How do you focus on that inner voice and really be true to yourself?

Shaan Puri

I think that takes time. I don't think most people—at least, it took me time. I don't think most people could do that right away. You know, you gotta ask yourself a question: **"Who's the most important voice in my life?"** Is it my mom? Is it my teachers? Is it my boss? Is it society? Is it the media? Whose voice do I care about—who's number one?

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

And in reality, the voice that is most shaping you is the *little voice* in your head—the one nobody else can hear. It is the **director** of your life's movie. It's the one that tells you where to stand, what to say, what to do next, and how to react in a situation. That's what the director does. You have a little director in your head right now. Once you realize that, you say, "Okay, I want Spielberg up there, right? I want Scorsese. I want Tarantino. I want this to be a great movie."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

You know, what type of movie is this going to be? A tragedy? A thriller? A romantic comedy? What kind of movie am I trying to have right now, and how do I tune that voice in my head? That's what I meant by that comment. I think what works when you go internal is you decide that **"my opinion of myself matters more than anyone else's opinion of me."** Easier said than done, for sure. But if it's true, that's a weak muscle worth working on. Do I believe that the most valuable opinion in my life is my own? Alright—well, what is my opinion? What do I admire? What do I think is not cool? How do I develop that taste for how I want to be, and then practice being that way? Notice the moments where other voices say X but my voice says Y. I'm going to go with Y. I'm going to do it here. It might be uncomfortable, but I'm going to do it. That's me getting stronger—becoming that dude for whom that is the default. You just do that over a number of years.

Wouter Teunissen

Did you remember anything specific? Any moments in time when there was a lot of resistance between what that *inner voice* was saying and what the *outside voices* were telling you?

Shaan Puri

Definitely quitting to go to a sushi restaurant. I remember that — that was...

Wouter Teunissen

Were your parents not on board with that? Or were you...? I mean, all your friends are getting high-paying jobs, like...

Shaan Puri

I mean, everybody thought it was a little bit silly, but they didn't really care. It's not their life, so they're like, *"whatever,"* right? "Yeah, do it." It's like a friend at a party: "Yeah, put your foot in—put your foot in there." I don't know, *whatever*. You just want to see somebody, like, you know... wreck themselves. You want that.

Wouter Teunissen

Their own entertainment.

Shaan Puri

Of the people who cared—my parents. My dad, to his credit, had a *great dad moment*. He said, "I think you should do it." I asked, "You think the sushi thing's a good idea?" He replied, "I think it's a terrible idea. Why do you think I should do it?" Then he said, "Because, look at you—you're so *switched on* now." He continued, "I've seen you your whole life. You never used to be this way. You never used to just wake up and have this drive, this motivation, this burst of energy. Look at you: you're working all the time now. You used to be lazy. You're really excited about this. I can see you developing your speaking skills. I can see you developing skills."

Wouter Teunissen

I could.

Shaan Puri

See, you really seem switched on—you seem energized. He had this great phrase. He said: > "A lot of times in life we want to have the right direction first. Wouldn't it be nice if we knew exactly which way to go? But life is not like that. It's like you're standing on a beach; it's foggy outside. You want to get to paradise, but you don't know where it is. You can't see through the fog. > > So you have two options. Either you just stand there and wait for the fog to magically clear, and then suddenly you can see—oh, paradise is that way or that way; or you take your little crappy boat and start paddling. As you get out there you might see, 'Oh, it's not this way; it's actually that way.' > > And guess what? *Once you're in motion, it's a lot easier to change direction.*"

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Like, people think it's really hard to change direction. No — you have momentum; you can actually shift course very easily if you see a better place to go. So he said, "You know, sometimes life is about *motion*, not *direction*." And he goes, "I don't think this is the right direction per se. I don't think you're going to create the next Chipotle."

Wouter Teunissen

"Getting in that boat."

Shaan Puri

"I don't think you should be going into the **restaurant industry**. Yeah, but I can see so much motion that I'm sure you'll figure out the direction at some point."

Wouter Teunissen

"It's better off than..."

Shaan Puri

Standing there, he was totally right: that was a really wise thing for him to do.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, that's a *beautiful phrase*. I think most people probably... Actually, I think, in life, the scariest thing is standing there and then realizing, eighty or ninety years later, "shit, I didn't move at all."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. I'm just... I just sat down, actually, and, like, you know, I just stayed here.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah — so you enjoyed the sand. Yeah. When you were selling your company, when you were selling *Bevo*, was that, you know, a little bit of a change or not a big change in direction? How did you go about that process? I imagine that would be quite hard. You're making a pretty big decision to try and sell a company. You maybe realized you don't want to be doing this specific project anymore. When you're working on a project and you start to feel like, “Okay, it's time to change direction,” what was that process like for you? What sort of things happened to make you come to that realization?

Shaan Puri

Well, I was lucky. I have a very good friend, my buddy **Suli**. We were out at a casino down here in **South San Francisco** — you go to, like, a Chinese casino. Basically it's a bunch of degenerates playing *pai gow* or something. There was us and we were playing, and then we were like, "Whatever — this is done." We went to the buffet area and were just sitting there at, like, **1 a.m.** He said to me something — he just said it, and I forgot how we got there — but he goes, "I don't get what you're doing." *Mhm.* And I was like, "What do you mean?"

Wouter Teunissen

It's pretty clear.

Shaan Puri

"He's my very good friend. He knows exactly what I'm doing. I talk to him about this all the time." "He said, 'No, I just... I just don't get it.'" "I'm like, 'What do you mean?' He's like, 'No, I still get the whole thing.'" "I was like, 'What? What?' Not just one part of our strategy—the whole thing. On the surface, what I had looked really great." "This is kind of one of those inner-voice versus external-perception things. We had probably the nicest office in San Francisco because my main funder—the guy who was basically funding the lab—was a billionaire. He had the nicest office in San Francisco. We had a private chef, a masseuse on Fridays, and a bar built into the office. We had everything you would want. It was designed by this guy, Ken Fulk, who is this fancy guy. So if you walked in, you'd be like, 'Wow, these guys are super successful. This is going great.' Who wouldn't want to work here? It's **paradise**." "All my coworkers were super smart, so I had a great team—great office, great team." "People would say, 'Well, you must be constrained or not letting your wings fly.' I would say, 'No, no—freedom.'" "'Well, you must not have the resources or funding. You're strapped, right?' 'No, no—blank check. Fund as much as you want. What's the problem?'" "And so I'm like, 'Do you mean you don't get it? I have **paradise**.'"

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

"Well, what don't you get?" And he's like, "Well, you've been there for six years and the project you're working on right now... it just seems like it's not gonna hit in the way you want it to hit. It's also not gonna fail where you'd be like, 'this is an obvious failure.'" And he's like, "I just don't get why you're working on something that's okay." As we started talking, he was basically just like, "You came into this wanting one thing..." *mm-hmm* "...and now you're so far in you're doing this other thing, and I don't think you would be doing that thing had you not already been doing it." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "In physics there's this concept of inertia: the object in motion will stay in motion unless there's a force to resist it." He was that force that night. I had just been this object in motion, staying in motion. And he goes, **"Inertia's a bitch, dude — you will keep doing it because you're already doing it."** Thought experiment: "If the lab closed tomorrow, is this business idea so good that you would tomorrow pick up the phone, call these same people you're working with, and say, 'Let's do this same thing'?" I said, "Yeah, of course we're going to keep doing this — this is the best thing we could be doing. It's perfect for us. It's the juiciest opportunity. I don't want to be doing anything else." And I was like, no way. I would call the same people — I like the people — but we would definitely not work on this. So then he asks, "Why are you doing it?" Because you're already doing it. It's like, "Oh, this is silly." And you know, this is not a perfect test. You might not always be like, "This is the best opportunity out of all the trillions of possible things I could be doing in life" — that's a little overwhelming. But if you know, like, "Nah, I would probably say no and I'd probably try to find something else..." then, you know, you're doing the wrong thing. So I realized I was doing the wrong thing. How do we get to sell the company? The next day I told him, "Quit; cutting this off." Next day I go and I talk to my cofounder. I say, "I think we should call it. I think we should try to sell the company, and if you can't sell it, I think we should end the company." He's like, "End the company? What are you talking about?" I'm like, "I just think we should be doing something else. I don't know, something else. I need to shake it up." I didn't know anything more; I just knew I needed to shake it up. A long time had gone by — six years. I gave it a long run. We've done ten different products, right? Some of them were doing good, some of them were doing bad, but I had a lot of time trying this model with these people in this space. I told them, "This idea that we're doing — we're only here because we just pivoted, pivoted, pivoted. I don't think this is the idea I would do tomorrow if I wasn't already doing it."

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

So, I don't feel right about it. I don't want to just pivot again for the *eleventh* time — I'd rather just get a *clean slate*. I went to the investor and I said, "Hey, give me 30 days to try to sell this company. Or you can just have it — I'll walk away. You can take all my equity; you can decide what you want to do with it." He said, "Okay." We ended up selling the company 45 days later, which was absurd. You don't — well, there was still diligence afterwards, but 45 days to a signed definitive agreement is pretty, pretty fast. Once I had that intention, you know, I really went for it.

Wouter Teunissen

I think that's — you know — I think **Steve Jobs** famously asked himself every day, looking in the mirror, and said, "If this were my last day, would I still be doing this?" If there were enough days in a row where he answered no, he'd make a change. It's sort of similar to the question **Sully** asked you: "What... you know, what are you doing?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. Would you be doing this if you weren't already doing it? Yeah, I think that's just a very simple way of looking at it. Yeah, you know... and I think if that answer's not a — I think it should be a **hell yes** as the ideal. Maybe you say — maybe you're just a couple tweaks away — like, "yeah, it would be a **hell yes**, but I hate my commute," or "it would be a **hell yes**, but I want to stretch my wings and start growing this other way too."

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

That's fine.

Wouter Teunissen

Those are tweaks.

Shaan Puri

Well, whatever the answer is, it's the answer. Yeah. But I think asking the question is the more important thing. You know, Elon has this thing about, like, "How do you do it, dude? How do you—what's your engineering process? How do you build such rockets and electric cars and giant super‑GPU clusters, blah, blah, blah?" And one of his core principles is: **"The biggest waste of time is doing something well that needn't have been done at all."** I think that's true for everybody's life. The biggest risk you have is spending your life trying to do a really good job at the wrong thing—something you don't even want to be doing or shouldn't be doing in the first place.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah. That's sort of bringing me to this thing where, you know, being okay—or having this place in life where you've got a business that's okay. It's kind of not where you'd want it to be, but it's not the end of the world. That is potentially **more dangerous than anything else**. I talked to Ben Wilson about this. You'd rather [unclear: "blame out"?] than burn out. You would rather **go all in**, go for the thing you really want to do, than burn out. How did you... you know, you've talked a little bit about this?

Shaan Puri

Mediocrity is the real thing.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

"Yeah. For any person with high potential, **failure is not the risk**. The risk is you get stuck in something that's just okay."

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

For too long it will **sap** you — sap your will, sap your time, sap your resources, sap your energy, sap your belief in yourself. Over time, failure is a quick and painful thing, but it's over and you bounce back. It preserves your most precious asset: **your time**.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Still at your disposal. It's the thing that's just... *okay*. That is going to *take all your time away*.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

"You don't want that."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, no. It's, again, your *inertia*. Like, you know, usually the thing that is mediocre — you're in it just because you're doing it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, or put differently — someone (I forgot who said this) said, "For anybody who's sufficiently smart, the biggest cost is *opportunity cost*."

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

So, once you know that your biggest cost is not your taxes or your expenses, it's your **opportunity cost**. Then you have to think about that.

Wouter Teunissen

"Yeah, yeah. When you're—when you're choosing to do a project now, you know you're optimizing it for a lot more, a lot more different things than earlier on. What sort of trade-offs are you looking at... like *opportunity cost* — what do you look at now? And, yeah, I have a very..." [sentence trails off]

Shaan Puri

**Simple rule:** Now—am I doing this for a result, or am I doing this because I like doing it? ... So I no longer will do something for an "ex" [unclear: meaning of "ex"] for some future payoff.

Wouter Teunissen

Mmm-hmm.

Shaan Puri

Not saying I don't want to make money in the future, or that those things can't happen. It's that: am I doing it—am I suffering today for some better future, right? Or am I doing today where the reward is *doing the thing*? *Reward is doing the thing.*

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Right. The **work has to be the win**. The win can't be some future, hypothetical payoff for work I wouldn't have otherwise wanted to do. Because if you do it that way, then you win by doing it. You for sure win by doing it, and you might win double, triple, 10x from some result. But if you do it the other way—just doing things opportunistically—I know this because I spent 10 years doing things only for, "oh, if this worked it'd be amazing." When it doesn't work, which is most of the time, it's like, "damn." That's kind of... not a total waste, but...

Wouter Teunissen

But it feels like that.

Shaan Puri

I wasn't—basically I wasn't enjoying myself to the extent that I could've been. Again, the **opportunity cost**: I could have just been working on something where the work itself was super rewarding. The act of doing it was the reward, not the future payoff.

Wouter Teunissen

Do you think if you had to focus on that earlier on, you still would have gotten to where you are now? Well, like, say you're doing the sushi restaurant and it ends up not working out, but then you pick something else. Consistently each time you're like, "I don't care what anyone else thinks—this is the project I'm doing because it seems curious," but it might not make any money or things like that. Do you still think you'd be in this position?

Shaan Puri

Or, *yeah*, I think it'd be further ahead.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, yeah. That's *awesome*—just because you would've figured it out.

Shaan Puri

You never know, right? Yeah, it's impossible to say. You don't—you don't have the camera and the *A/B test* on life, but...

Wouter Teunissen

Maybe, for a good... Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

Shaan Puri

"Yeah, I just... I mean, I think I still would be the guy I am today. I think I would just be — I think I would have found the things that are more enjoyable to me."

Wouter Teunissen

Earlier.

Shaan Puri

Which would have made it... it's a very—it's a **flywheel**, right? Because you enjoy it, you do it all the time. Because you do it all the time, you get really good at it. Because you get really good at it, you get the results.

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

**That's the flywheel.** If you don't really enjoy the thing, you only work on it to the extent you have the motivation, willpower, or energy to force yourself. Then you only get so good at it, and because you're only *so-so* good at it, you get a *so-so* result.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, there's *no* flywheel.

Shaan Puri

"There's no flywheel."

Wouter Teunissen

No, this.

Shaan Puri

I'm a believer in that *flywheel*. I think if I had just started doing that earlier... I did it at points in time—not never; I didn't do it zero—but if I had been all in on that, I think I would've been, yeah, further ahead.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah — you've written a blog about not working hard, like *"working hard is overrated."* Do you think, applying that principle backwards... I know, I know, we can't A/B test life. But just looking back, do you think if you had applied that principle you would have found those things quicker? Like the things where you pushed a few different ideas—yeah?

Shaan Puri

"Working hard is overrated." Mhmm. That doesn't mean it's useless, right? Alright — it's a big difference. *Overrated* means when successful people talk and they're asked, "What's the key?" they say, "Hard work." Why do they say that?

Wouter Teunissen

Sounds good. Sounds good.

Shaan Puri

It also sounds like we all had an equal shot — “I just worked harder,” right? It's a decision that you made. “Did they—yeah, my dad was a billionaire, but … it was hard work that got me there,” right? Like, you can use hard work; it gives you a lot of air cover. You can't—you can't disagree. Who can disagree with that? Yeah — me. Basically, I'm the only guy who disagrees with that. So, I think **hard work is overrated**. It's probably maybe the fourth or fifth most important variable. You know, I think the very first one is **project selection**. Choosing what you work on is far more important than how hard you work. I know this because I've worked in the restaurant industry. In the restaurant industry, it doesn't matter how hard you work — you're quite limited in your results, your outcomes, and what your life's going to be like. So, what you work on matters a lot. Who you work with matters a ton. Then I would say there's, like, the third, fourth, fifth factors: timing, luck… there are other variables of which hard work is one. So maybe it's three, maybe it's four, maybe it's five. Yeah, that's what I've seen.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, that's awesome. I do think, by the way.

Shaan Puri

The one thing **hard work** is good at is *developing skill*.

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

And it's good about being serious. So, when you're in your *twenties*, it's **easy to throw hours at the problem**.

Wouter Teunissen

Mhmm.

Shaan Puri

You don't have good judgment at first, so... spend more time. As you get older you have less time — you have kids, less energy — so your judgment has to make up for the lack of time you're willing to throw at a problem. Early on, I wouldn't have just done nothing. That's not what I mean by "hard work is overrated." Instead, I would have been really intentional about project selection and the people I work with. Lastly, I would work hard and focus on the *skill-building* part of working hard, because most projects fail but the skills stick with you. For example, my sushi venture failed, but while we were doing it we were blogging and making video content. I learned After Effects, iMovie, and Photoshop — "just enough to be dangerous." I'm not great at them, but those skills served me really well when I went to Silicon Valley. I could mock things up myself and then send them to the designer.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Like the skill stuck with me; the project had left me behind. Yeah, right. So I think *skill building* is really important.

Wouter Teunissen

And also, in that case, you can apply the *skills* to things that you would’ve been more naturally interested in doing anyway. Right? I think—like—you mentioned the skills you’ve built up.

Shaan Puri

Once I pick a better project, *right*, I've still got that skill. **Exactly.**

Wouter Teunissen

And you did this — you did this **exact same thing** when you applied to Monkey Inferno. You probably applied a lot of those skills in the way you actually got that job.

Shaan Puri

Totally, totally. And, like, you know... I think so. I think that's the— I forgot, somebody said this. I think it was... who— Derek Sivers said this. He goes, "I think **skills are the most valuable thing** because they can't be inherited, they can't be bought, they can't be taken away from you."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Like, it can only be earned, and Seinfeld kinda says the same thing. Basically, *skill is really the thing worth having.* Yeah—of all the things, **skill is the thing**.

Wouter Teunissen

Like, what could you choose? You want...

Shaan Puri

This—yeah, what could you choose? You could choose more resources. You could choose whatever. You could choose achievements. But **skill** is the thing. Mastery of a thing is the thing you really want. Yeah. It's the key that unlocks an infinite number...

Wouter Teunissen

Of doors, right? Right. I think there's also something to be said for *going that extra mile* and trying to acquire the skills. There's such a *surface area of luck* that increases when you do that. You can open up the ability to do something else you didn't even know was an option, just because you've unlocked that skill and interest.

Shaan Puri

Totally. We have this company we invested in. I don't know if I should say the name — maybe I should; I won't say the name. The founder used to work in e-commerce with small D2C [direct-to-consumer] brands you've never heard of. There are basically two worlds. One is tech/Silicon Valley, where you raise millions in venture capital, hire the best people, and go for a billion-dollar outcome. The other is e-commerce: you're on **Alibaba**, your mom is your warehouse at the beginning, you're drop-shipping, and you're figuring out Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and TikTok. Usually those two worlds are very separate. This guy hopped from one to the other. Like, you know — like *this is how COVID started: from the bat to humans* — that's what he did. He developed an e-commerce marketing skill set around paid ads. When he started this venture-backed, B2B software company, most of the people there were somewhere between 0 out of 10 to 6 out of 10 at paid ads. The people who are great at paid ads are affiliate marketers and e-com people — they are dialed in; they know how to do that. So he took that skill, scaled it, and transferred it. Just today they raised, basically, a $304,100,000,000 valuation within two years. The reason they're growing so fast is because he cut his teeth doing e-com digital ads — **Google**, **Facebook** — and brought that expertise over. He's like "shooting fish in a barrel": now he has a super-sticky product with a high price.

Shaan Puri

"You know... mmhmm. Instead of selling a widget for $20 in e-commerce, I'm selling a $20,000 recurring-revenue contract. Yeah—it's the same thing, and nobody here knows how to do paid ads at the level I do. Right? So this is great. And so, you know, that skill—once you apply it to a better project—can be a huge multiplier."

Wouter Teunissen

"Right, do you think *project selection* as a skill is also something that builds over time?"

Shaan Puri

If you're intentional about it—yeah. Of course most people don't, right? I don't think most people really even know the term *"project selection,"* to be honest. How many times have you even said that to yourself? Probably zero. People think about industries; they think about careers. But the atomic unit is a project—that's...

Wouter Teunissen

Like the...

Shaan Puri

One thing you're going to do: I think *picking projects* and *picking partners* both have a huge impact on your outcome. Very few people know anything about how to pick good partners. Very few people know anything about how to pick good projects. But you can, of course, learn to do those well—those are skills. **Pay attention.**

Wouter Teunissen

To it and learn if...

Shaan Puri

"You're *intentional* about it."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, I want to talk about two things that are interesting—well, interesting to me. I hope they're interesting to you. On the project-selection side of things: you once called me when I went to work with you again, instead of taking a sales job, to help you guys with clips for MFM and things like that. It didn't end up panning out, but the decision I had at the time was: go do this sales job and earn like $12 a month. I was 21 or 22 and thought that was an insane amount of money, but I didn't need it. I still remember what you said to me that day. I was outside because I'm eight or nine hours ahead and it was dark, and you said, **"No, dude — do you just wanna be another sales guy?"** I heard that and I was like, no. I don't want to be that.

Shaan Puri

"Just spitting on you." "Yeah. It's like, 'How dare you? I spit on you through Slack.'" "Yeah."

Wouter Teunissen

I felt it.

Shaan Puri

"I felt it."

Wouter Teunissen

And, you know, because of that, I don't know if we'd even be here now because of that decision, right. There are so many things downstream of that project selection that I think are so important. How?

Shaan Puri

How do you lean? Was that right? By the way, did that work out for you?

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, dude — I'm happy with that. **I'm loving it.**

Shaan Puri

Like you.

Wouter Teunissen

Know, I still don't know exactly where I'm going. I'm in such...

Shaan Puri

A mess. Your gut tells you, "I've moved in the right direction — 100%." It doesn't mean it has to have played out yet.

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

But still growing, right? You know, your *gut* is very strong at telling you that.

Wouter Teunissen

"Yeah, I feel like I would have been at that beach had I said no and stayed in that job. Now I'm out here doing things. I'm blessed enough to be able to talk to you guys here, and that's not something that would have happened otherwise. That's cool — so I appreciate that. You mentioned, you know, *project selection* is really important, but the other most important thing is **who you're doing things with**."

Shaan Puri

Yeah.

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

That was the mistake you made. *I offered you a role.* I was like, "You should come work with me — you're gonna learn a lot more; you can do more shit." You went on your own, which is always good for skill-building. You'd probably — I would say — build a wider set of skills, right? Because when you're on your own, you gotta do everything.

Wouter Teunissen

Right

Shaan Puri

But you didn't *opt into a network*, right? This is the other thing I've been learning a lot. Yeah — not to hijack your question.

Wouter Teunissen

But no... it's great.

Shaan Puri

We just did a podcast with **James Kreuer**. Did you know?

Wouter Teunissen

Him, yeah.

Shaan Puri

*Network of.*

Wouter Teunissen

"Maybe explain to..." "Sure."

Shaan Puri

James is like a Silicon Valley *OG*. He runs this fund called **NFX** — a $1.2 billion fund.

Wouter Teunissen

"Mhmm."

Shaan Puri

He has built multiple companies and sold them. Basically, he's never lost it all for investors in thirty years. Yep. So it's like, alright—great. He's somebody I learned a lot from, and he's someone I consider a mentor. He's big on **networks**. Everything he talks about is "networks, networks," and it's, like, *too much*—it's annoying. He's like, "James, I get it. Hey, can you pass the cheese?" and then, "Is it part of the network?" It's alright, dude—just give me the cheese. He talks about this with a very simple example: you know, where you choose to go to college—that's a network you're joining, right? You're not just joining a college, you're joining the

Wouter Teunissen

The alumni and...

Shaan Puri

Harvard alumni network — some networks are really powerful and some are pretty weak. When you move to San Francisco, you're joining the San Francisco network. You'll start to network there and connect with a bunch of nodes. Some of those nodes will lead to more opportunities. So you might say, "I don't want to move to San Francisco — the rent is $2,000 more." But being in that network is worth much more than that rent, or the taxes. He talks about how moving away just for taxes is a foolish decision. Yeah, you might save **10%**, but you lose out on **ten times the money** you would have made by staying in the **"white-hot center"** of the tech and AI network. That network is so much more valuable — if you're good.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

If you're bad, you're not going to get any value out of it. But if you're good, you should be in good networks. I think this is something I did wrong, and I think other people do it wrong — which I think you did in this situation. If you have a chance to **opt in to a better network**, it's almost always worth more than the incremental dollar, especially earlier in your career, because you're going to have more time for that to compound. The actual network value compounds. So I think that's a mistake I probably made early on that I didn't really recognize. As I've talked to James, I've recognized more and more how valuable that is.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, I mean—that, too. Our earlier conversation is probably a mistake I'm making now, even just being in Europe still. *No offense to Europe*, but, you know... yeah, it is much worse. Let's stay on this a little bit, actually, before going into, like, finding cofounders and things like that, because that's a little bit more...

Shaan Puri

By the way, we should say one thing: **you can win anywhere**. Right? You can win on your own. You can win in any industry. You can win in the restaurant industry. You can win at any time. We're knocking these not because that thing is so fatally flawed—it's just that you want to make things easier, not harder. You want to **increase your probability of success**, not decrease it. That's what we mean when we say "better or worse." Generally, it's just that it's more fun, it's easier, or it increases your probability. Of course, there are always outliers and exceptions. You could be one of them—and more power to you.

Wouter Teunissen

You, but it's... it's **trade-offs**, right? And it's true. Earlier, like, if you're surrounded by five people who go to the gym, chances are you're going to get ripped.

Shaan Puri

Increase your odds. Yeah, it's *not a guarantee.*

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

You could've, of course, done it surrounded by other people. Yeah, but why not **increase your odds**? Why not make things easier on yourself? There's no bonus points for doing everything the hard way — **100% for making your odds worse**. You know, like, why? I like it; good for you. But, yeah... what's the...

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah. What other things would being in a network affect? In general—I think being in a network and *self-selecting* for that is a function. For example, if there's a subreddit for a specific basketball team and you join it and are very active, then you're self-selecting into that community. It's similar on Twitter: what content you listen to and follow, as well as which city you go to, shapes your network. What are some other examples of that—outside of moving proximity-wise—that people can self-select into?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I mean—you just named it *your info diet.*

Wouter Teunissen

Right.

Shaan Puri

I know a lot of people who aren't on Twitter. I'm like, "Hey, are you opting out of that network?" or they're not on TikTok — whatever. These are networks you opt into. Within them, there are subnetworks, or subclusters. So, your **info diet** matters. There's an economic idea often stated as: "your income will end up being roughly the average of the five people you hang out with the most." It's the same thing for ideas or thoughts. You're going to dollar-cost-average into the thoughts of the network you're in. Whether it's the content you consume — if you consume the same content as everybody else, you're probably going to have the same thoughts as everybody else. If you hang out with the same people, you're going to end up with the same people. If you want to make changes or have some differentiation, you should probably **differentiate your info diet**. You should probably differentiate the people you hang out with or what you do with your free time. Those are the simplest things, and they're upstream of a lot of the results people want downstream.

Wouter Teunissen

Right. This is the *network selection*. Yeah, yeah—yeah, that's... that's a tough one. Why?

Shaan Puri

Is that?

Wouter Teunissen

I feel like that's back to your earlier point about your role. You're going in this direction out of *inertia*. You're only doing it because you're doing it. If you're really honest with yourself: which networks do you want to select into? And I think probably you...

Shaan Puri

Know.

Wouter Teunissen

If you stop—bad example, maybe—you stop listening to TikTok, or you stop watching TikTok. Right? And everyone you know is telling you, "Hey, Sean, I just saw this new TikTok." You're like, "Oh, I don't watch TikTok, man. I don't know about that." I think that plays into lots of other aspects of your life, where you have to be very intentional about it. Otherwise you're going to get overwhelmed and sort of not make that decision. So I think it plays into your life in more ways than one might think—your *info diet*.

Shaan Puri

"Yeah, yeah—it's true. I mean, I'm... and look, if you love a thing, **do it right**. But it's like, if you don't... yeah, or you're just, like, you're *open-minded*."

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Maybe you like reading books more, right? Maybe you prefer doing certain other things. Or maybe you pick up a different hobby that opts you into a different network. I know a lot of people who do *jiu-jitsu*. Jiu-jitsu is exercise, but it's *different* than the elliptical. You're going to work out a different way and develop a skill. You're going to be part of a community, build your toughness, learn mental resilience, learn about leverage — you'll learn so many things out of that same hour of exercise. So some people try that because it's going to get you a different result than, say, that hour on the elliptical.

Wouter Teunissen

**Level seven in yourself** — *just to you and yourself.*

Shaan Puri

Yeah. Yes, you, and...

Wouter Teunissen

"Exactly. Yeah—let's talk about the final thing in terms of *network*. You've mentioned, in part, **project selection**—we've talked about how that's very important—but also **people selection** and **partner selection**. You've often referred to Warren Buffett's sort of framework for this, and you have a strong framework as well for choosing who to work with and potentially just doing projects with. So, if you have Company A and Company B that are exactly the same but have different people working there, how do you figure out what types of people you want to be around? Talk to me about your selection framework for that."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay. So, you know, Buffett has a great one on this, which is—you know—"you select for **energy**, **intelligence**, and **integrity**." Those are the three legs of the stool. If they have the energy and intelligence but no integrity, great: they're a smart crook, and the stool falls over. If you have the energy and the integrity but no intelligence, you're not going to really get anywhere. So you get the idea. I learned for myself there's a fourth thing that really, really mattered, which is having somebody who's *down*. I don't know a better word for this; I just called it "down" because that's the way I would describe them: "It's great — he's down." And "down" meant a couple of different things. They're down to try it. They'll take a half-baked idea and be like, "Yeah, let's give it a shot." I need that. I think great things come from being around people who are down. I think they're down for adventure, so when we could choose a safe path or a more interesting, story-driven path, they're down for that and will lean that way with me. I think they're down to buckle down and just grind — to do something that's hard for a while. They're not going to run away from pain or difficulty. So "down" means a bunch of different things to me, and the best way I can explain it is: having somebody who's down for me is almost the highest-priority bit. Everything else is sort of secondary to that.

Wouter Teunissen

"Yeah. You've talked about when you met **Ben**—your current partner—when he had a **SaaS** business doing, I think, **$1,000,000 a year** in profit. He was in an objectively great position, and yet he was willing to join this random side project with you. Is there anything you can tell us about Ben and *bring those three aspects you just mentioned to life*?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Ben's the most "down," right? You said it perfectly. He had a business making $1 million a year in profit at the time, and I was like, "Hey, you wanna spend your time doing this random, unknown thing with me? I think it's gonna be pretty fun. I think it could be interesting." He said, "Yeah, yeah, I'm down." "Alright, okay, cool. I don't really know exactly what it is — I have this rough idea. You down with that?" He said, "Yeah, I'm down. I'm down to not — I don't need it all figured out." We ended up doing this thing that for **90 days** was really intense. It was full on. He was down, and he just carried on. Then we switched and did the next thing, and the next thing. We've done probably five or six different things together — maybe more, seven at this point. Every single one of them has been super fun. Every one of them has worked. It's been a pleasure to work with him, and that's a big reason why.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, that's so amazing. Let's start wrapping this up a little bit. In terms of your story—let's talk about **2025**. On the podcast you guys have talked about this thing called "**misoji**." Can you explain what that is, and then tell me: do you have one for 2025?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, sure. *Masoji* — I think it's this concept Jesse Itzler came on the podcast and talked about. It's: every year, be a little intentional with your time. So it's very easy for one year to blend into the next. Time flies because you're in a routine, and that routine is often filled with inertia. It's filled with Zoom calls, errands, and weekly stand-ups with random people. That's going to happen by default. If you want anything else to happen, you have to do something about it. I agree with him, and he has this intense way of planning out your year. We did a podcast with him — you can go see it on YouTube. So I'd have a big 2025, and one of the central things is this idea of a *masoji*: **one grand challenge for the year** — a year-defining thing that you will do. It should be both hard and rewarding, memorable and meaningful to you. For some people that's an Ironman or climbing Everest, or whatever their thing is. So that's the idea — that's the concept.

Wouter Teunissen

*Mm-hmm.*

Shaan Puri

Mine this year is to—it's not, doesn't sound like Everest, but it is important to me. I wanted to learn how to *jam out* on the piano. I was like, I want to learn a new skill—more specifically, the piano. I want to be able to jam out, meaning I want to be able to play the songs I want. I want to be able to play in, like, a "dad band" with other people. I just think that would be a really fun aspect of my life to work into. I want my life to be fun and interesting. I thought, "Look, I'm never going to just have the time magically to do this..." But I decided that would be the year I learned how to play the piano, and I could do that for the rest of my life. Now, you know, when you're old—I could be 80 years old and still be playing the piano. So I thought, "Oh yeah, that'll be the year to find it. That'll be the year I decide to do that." And I made it happen.

Wouter Teunissen

"Yeah — is it... is it going well?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's going great so far. I'm doing my thing.

Wouter Teunissen

That's amazing. I want to wrap up by saying this: I recently reread Paul Graham's *"How to Do Great Work."* He says—it's similar to his phrasing for finding startup ideas—don't look for it; just do things you're naturally interested in. Do something where, at the end of it, you'd say, "That was pretty cool. I did that." I think that's a great way to choose your *mission* as well.

Shaan Puri

I think he says, "Let *interestingness* be the filter."

Wouter Teunissen

Yes.

Shaan Puri

So, is it **interesting to you**? If it's interesting to you, then it's worth doing. You'll be excited while you're doing it. It'll be worth doing just because it's interesting. But also — *interestingness*: what's interesting to you is not interesting universally. He talks about this as a good strategy because nobody can copy your **taste profile**. So, if it's interesting to you, it's not going to be interesting to everybody. It's already going to self-select and filter out a bunch of other people. Secondly, if it's interesting to you, you're going to do it all the time. Same with that **flywheel** I talked about: you're going to do it all the time — the **rule of 100**. Therefore you're going to get good at it. When you're good at it, you're going to get a good result.

Wouter Teunissen

"Yep."

Shaan Puri

So it's like—*that's why he says, "Let that be the guide."* Yeah, because that will lead you to the most interesting place you can. And if the first one doesn't work, it doesn't matter. You'll have so much fun doing it that you'll just keep doing it, and it'll eventually land in a good spot.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah, *in and of itself*, it'll still be fun.

Shaan Puri

Right.

Wouter Teunissen

Yeah — I love it. I think that's it. I had a couple of *hot fire* ones, but honestly, leaving it on such a high note is perfect. If I were to listen to this, I'd keep it on repeat. I think people are going to be jacked up and ready to change their lives after hearing that.

Shaan Puri

Alright, let's do it.

Wouter Teunissen

Awesome. Alright, thanks, **Sean** — appreciate it, mate. Thanks, man.