How to find your thing

Sam Parr

"Dude, when you use the word **stack**, I get all fired up."

Shaan Puri

Dude, why don't we just describe our podcast that way: **Us Founders Acquired**. It's the most potent stack up to doctor boosting for founders. Yeah. Alright, so, Sam—I was in Austin last week and I was at a restaurant. We're sitting down at the table, a guy comes up and he's a fan of the podcast. He says hi and he was like, "Oh yeah, I loved episodes of you and Sam, blah blah blah." I asked him, "What's one thing you want us to talk about?" We're almost 1,000 episodes in, you need a little inspiration. So I said, "What's one thing you want us to talk about?" He goes, "Well, I don't know what other people want, but here's what I want." He told me he's 24 years old. He's like, "I know I'm smart. I know I'm hardworking. I just don't know kind of which lane to go in. I'm ready to swim, but I don't know which lane to go in." What he said was basically the generic advice is like, "Oh, just follow your passion." He basically described this problem, which is like: "I've been in school—my teachers, my parents—like, told me what to do. You gotta take these classes, you gotta take these tests, you gotta get these marks." It's super structured. All of a sudden he graduates and now he's just on his own. He went from super structured to completely unstructured. He's like, "I know that I should be doing something. My friends are all doing this. I don't think I want to do that—banking, consulting type of jobs." His question was basically: they say *follow your passion*, but how do you actually do that? It's like, what would you guys actually do if you could go back? So that's what I wanted to talk about: why I think that *follow your passion* is terrible advice and what you should do instead.

Sam Parr

Great. I think I—mostly, based on your one-line response right there—I might agree with you on everything. First off, I want to hear what advice you gave him. But you told me that you wanted to... you also looked at the history of "following your passion," is that true?

Shaan Puri

Well, I have a historical kind of reference. I was reading this thing by Joseph Campbell—he famously came up with the *Hero's Journey*.

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri

The circle that explains how *Star Wars*, *Harry Potter*, and all the great stories work— they sort of start with the same structure. This guy Joseph Campbell gave a lot of interviews about his philosophy, and he had a phrase that I think is a little hokey but useful. He started off by saying, "Don't follow your passion—follow your bliss," and later changed it to "follow your blisters." He explains that, for himself, the way he arrived at this Hero's Journey idea was because, when he was a kid and a teenager, he was obsessed with studying indigenous tribes and Native American stories and myths. He got really into all these different myths—first as a consumer, then he started to wonder, "How are all these myths the same? Why do I love these so much? What's the structure of these things?" That's how he discovered the story shape that became the Hero's Journey. When he's talking about "bliss" he basically makes a couple of points. Let me first break down the problem with "passion" and then why I think the "bliss" (and "blisters") framing is better. Alright—here's my case for why "passion" is maybe the wrong idea. First: raise your hand if you know what your passion is. Most people—over 90% of people—do not know their passion. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

I’m going to cite *Mark Manson* a lot in this conversation because he had a podcast called "What Should You Follow Your Passion or Not," and I listened to it two weeks ago. I’m 36 years old. Some people might regard me as successful, but I still don’t know what my passion is, and I think about it all the time.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm with you. I'm always trying to figure it out. I'm perpetually reinventing myself, starting from scratch and questioning what's going on. Reinventing myself—for better and for worse—has been the source of some amazing changes in my life. But it's also a place of great uncertainty, and sticking around in that fog of uncertainty sucks. It feels shitty when you're doing it. Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who didn't question anything—who just picked a thing and did it for fifty years. But that's not who I am. If you're someone who's been in this fog of uncertainty, this will sound familiar. What ends up happening is you follow what's familiar. You do what you know: what you've already done, what your parents do, what your friends do. A lot of us mistake the familiar for what actually *lights us up*. So even if you want to do something and you don't really know where to look, while you're searching it can often feel like you're lost. Even though you're supposed to be searching, you feel like you're doing something wrong. So what do you do instead? He has this *bliss and blisters* concept. Basically, *bliss* is not meant to be just pure joy or euphoria. What he means by *bliss* is: what are you enthusiastic about doing? Use enthusiasm as your guide. His criteria: you're naturally drawn to it, it's of interest, you feel alive when you're doing it, it's often irrational, and you lose track of time when you're doing it. You do it in your off hours—you'll do it during the hours when you're normally seeking pleasure or relaxation. The stuff you find yourself doing that others would see as work is an important signal. He said that people took this the wrong way. He said, "Follow your bliss," and everybody just looked for something that made them happy all the time—instantaneous pleasure. He goes, "Oh man, I've made a mistake; it's not that at all." He kind of offhandedly said—or it's attributed to him—that he wished he had said, "Follow your blisters" instead. What he means by *blisters* is that there will obviously be hardship. Following your bliss most of the time leads you on an unfamiliar path. You're leaving a safe place; you're going to face dragons, cross bridges, pay tolls—pay the price. But it's deeply satisfying along the way. Blisters are like the ones on my hands right now. I've got them because I've been training for this *Murph* and doing pull-ups all the time, so my hands have blisters. If you think about blisters, they're a receipt—evidence of a price paid, over and over again. You couldn't force yourself to do it by willpower alone; you had to be pulled to doing it. If you find evidence that you suffer pain willingly, that's probably a very good signal: you're so drawn to doing it that you're willing to endure the hardships that come along the way. That is ultimately what you're looking for. This idea has been echoed many times. Paul Graham wrote a long essay—"How to Do Great Work"—that covers similar ground.

Sam Parr

Years ago. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

It's like—it takes you two days to read this goddamn blog post, but it's great. In it he has one phrase I remember: *"Let enthusiasm be not just the motor, but the rudder of your boat."* So basically, enthusiasm obviously provides fuel—your motor. It's going to get you to go. But let it also be the thing that guides you, like a rudder that steers your direction. His take was that it leads you to the frontier of any field. For example, when you got really into fitness, you started maybe at the 50th percentile of knowledge on health and fitness. Is that probably correct? And then the interest is often irrational, because—dude—you're married, you're already healthy. Like, why do you want these abs so damn bad, right? But something drove you, correct?

Sam Parr

Yeah, and *frankly*, I don't even know what it was.

Shaan Puri

You didn't question it. You don't have to know what it is; you just have to not doubt it. It's the kind of trick. How far did it take you? You were injecting stuff in your butt, doing the NFL Combine as a civilian, measuring every calorie and body fat. You went to the *frontier* of how to do this thing — best-known practices plus some experimental stuff. *Am I right?* Paul Graham basically says, "Let enthusiasm be the engine and the rudder." It'll guide you where you need to go; it'll take you to the frontier. At the frontier you will notice some gaps. When you were at the frontier, Sam, didn't you notice a gap? The gap you told me about has turned into one of our most profitable investments. There's a male epidemic of low testosterone. People are going to want to take exogenous testosterone — it changes the way you feel, and it's extremely sticky. I don't know if I want to build that business, but I know it would be a *gangbusters* business. We both invested in Hone Health, which is now over nine figures in run rate. It's doing great — it's a wonderful business. So it's only when you're at the *frontier* that you notice gaps. There wasn't really a trusted brand for doing this, or we didn't really know how to do it. But if somebody figured it out, that would be really valuable. You told me about Ozempic before Ozempic was even called Ozempic — you said, "I'm taking semaglutide." We didn't act on that insight at the time, but when you go to the frontier you notice the gaps, and those gaps are where the opportunities are for anyone who wants to do great work.

Sam Parr

First of all, **great spiel** — you got me fired up there. Second of all, it sucks that I take drugs... I'm kinda paying the price of your making here. [Meaning: I'm suffering because of what you're doing.]

Shaan Puri

"Or you could be friends with someone who's *gonna* do *all that shit*."

Sam Parr

Alright, so this episode is all about **excellence**. A while back I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life, and the team at **HubSpot** turned it into a **thirty-day operating system** that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that have taken me ten years to figure out and shows exactly how I use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So if you want to build a good life, scan the **QR code** or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show. I'm going to tell you something that sounds academic and a little woo-woo, but I'll make it super practical. The idea of **"blister versus bliss"** is actually really interesting. Do you know the etymology of the word **“passion”**? The word comes from the idea of **suffering**. It always seemed weird that *The Passion of the Christ* is the story of Jesus being nailed to the cross — why is it called that? Because it stands for suffering. So the contrast of **bliss versus blister** matters. *Blister* is a significantly better word in this sense, because **following your passion** literally means following your suffering: something you love so much you're willing to endure a lot to follow through with it. You're basically called to do it. What's interesting is that up until recently, "following your passion" didn't mean what it means today. Now a lot of people interpret it as **"follow your bliss,"** which is actually a great phrase — something you're enthusiastic about and want to do.

Shaan Puri

Don't love your job. You know what I mean?

Sam Parr

So, up until—like, you've heard of the **Gilded Age**. In the Gilded Age, that was where this idea of *leisure time* first got popular in America, and it was a sign of class. Meaning, if you were rich then you would spend your days in a state of leisure — a "man of leisure." Have you heard that phrase? That phrase was invented in the late **1800s** in America. This idea that "no one has leisure"—that idea of passion and leisure—is the notion that leisure is only afforded to the rich. Up until that point, your trade or skill set was given to you by your father or mother. It was, "My father was this thing; therefore I will become this thing." Do you want to know something interesting? I think people were probably happier then, but there is a middle ground. And so, up until the **1930s**, there was no vacation or defined work weeks or work weekends. Did you know that?

Shaan Puri

"Up until when?"

Sam Parr

Like the 1930s, do you know who popularized the weekend?</FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Isn't it like **Henry Ford** with the factory system?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so Henry Ford — his company was so big at the time and they employed so many people — he was thinking, how do we get the most out of our workers? He actually determined, through a bunch of research and some scientific data, that if we give people weekends off and create a standard workday — which for him was twelve hours, not eight — and if we institute things like a minimum wage, we're actually going to get more loyalty and more productivity. The idea of workweeks and vacation didn't really exist until the 1930s. Then the Great Depression happened, and World War II followed, so those ideas sort of went away while people worked really hard to make things happen. Post–World War II — between the years of 1950 and '26 [unclear date] — was peak leisure. This is when the idea of baseball, bicycles, and vacations really took off. It was the golden age of leisure because so many American soldiers came back from the war, the economy was booming, and they got this thing called the GI Bill. [GI Bill: benefits for veterans that, among other things, helped pay for college.] All these young guys were like, "I was in Germany fighting for my life; now I'm in college." The economy was booming, they could get jobs and buy a house in Dayton, Ohio, afford two cars, and purchase appliances — an oven, a stove, a car. That was the golden era. Up until recently, the idea of *passion* as something you must follow for work wasn't really a thing. Now, we actually work harder — I believe the data will show that we work significantly harder today than ever before — and in our leisure time we focus more on *passion*. It's this weird dichotomy: we work really, really hard all the time, and somehow we think that following your passion is what you have to do for work. Because of that — and because the economy is booming — there's an idea that if you obsess about your happiness and your purpose on earth, it can actually make you more unhappy. There's an amazing book called *Bad Therapy* in which the author argues that people who are constantly asking themselves, "Why am I not happy? Why am I not following my life's work? Why am I not following my passion? This should feel better — it doesn't," — those people are often significantly more discontent with their lives.

Shaan Puri

There was a Cal Newport who wrote *Deep Work*. He had this line where he said, **"passion is a byproduct of mastery."** If you extend that, well, then where does mastery come from? I would say mastery comes from an **enduring enthusiasm**. Yesterday I had a piano lesson in the morning, and then in the evening—before bed—I was tired. I was walking to bed and I passed the room that has the piano. I thought, "Ah, let me get in here and play a sea shanty, like I'm a pirate on a boat." I played this song with basically half my eyes open, but I got a little bit better. I got one step closer to mastery. The only way you can get yourself to do enough—the whole *10,000 hours* type of idea—to achieve mastery is through enduring enthusiasm. So, if you think that maybe the chain is: enduring enthusiasm leads to mastery, and mastery is a deeply satisfying thing that leads to passion. There's also this idea of looking for the evidence of suffering—the "blisters"—because you're enjoying what you're getting out of it. Now can I give you my riff on this? I liked the idea, but I asked, "How do I actually do this? How do I use this?" I had this observation: I used to pick projects based on industry. It was like, "Oh, I'm going to do healthcare because I'm really passionate about healthcare," or, "I'm going to start a clothing business because that sounds fun—let's do fashion, let's do apparel." That sounded more fun than the other option.

Sam Parr

You're a big clothing guy, I... [trails off]

Shaan Puri

I picked things I thought sounded fun. I picked industries or products that I thought were fun. What I learned along the way was that the time you spend on the actual product or industry—the industry almost fades to oblivion. The time you spend on a product is very minimal. How much time would you say? And, whether it's Hampton or The Hustle, how much time per day would you say you spent actually working on the product?

Sam Parr

Well, none, because all the time is spent on *people stuff*.

Shaan Puri

Right

Sam Parr

You start a company because you love to *tinker*. Then, after six or twelve months—if you're really successful—the majority of your time is spent **managing, leading, or organizing people**. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

And even when you're organizing them, you might be leading them, managing them, or organizing them partly around product. But a huge amount of it is around **growth**. You spend most of your time selling the thing, not making it and marveling about how great the thing is. What I realized was: when you decide to start a company, you're inherently saying, "I'm going to make this thing successful." To make it successful, it has to grow. To make it grow, you'll spend most of your time on that really hard problem of making it grow. Part of making it grow is the product, but that's only a small part — a minority percentage. Not more than 50%. I would say closer to 15% than 50%. Most of your time is going to be spent on building the team, managing the team, and working on core **growth and sales**. So I simplified it and thought: I don't need to pick an industry I love or a product I love. I need to pick a **sales motion** that I love. Because if you have a product, it doesn't matter what the niche is. If it's grown via enterprise sales, most of your time will be spent doing enterprise sales, hiring enterprise salespeople, and managing an enterprise sales team. If it's built on Facebook ads — if it's e‑commerce (I have an e‑com brand) — most of the time is spent running ads to landing pages and sending emails. If I want the thing to grow, that's the thing I have to get better at.

Sam Parr

Yeah—do you want to work with *spreadsheets*, or do you want to work with guys who wear bright brown shoes and sports jackets and call themselves the regional VP of the Southeast region?</FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Exactly. Do you want to take people to dinner and then promise to "circle back," or do you want to sit behind your laptop, orchestrating? There are a few of these options. If you're an **SEO** game, then you're going to play **SEO** — that's what you'll spend most of your time doing: improving your **SEO**. That's the main growth channel. So I realized, "Oh, I should actually just figure out what type of sales or growth mechanism I like," and that's the constraint.

Sam Parr

"What do you like, by the way?"

Shaan Puri

So, for me it's **content**. I was like, I like making content, and so I should pick things—games—that rely on content as the main way to grow. My second favorite is **ads**. I like ads, which are also content, but they're the more pay-to-play, scalable version of content. The things I like the least are **viral growth** and **sales**. Those are my two least favorites.

Sam Parr

Dude, I distinctly remember a time. So, **The Hustle** was a media company. We had a couple of seven-figure deals and a bunch of six-figure deals, and that required a little bit of wining and dining. There was one distinct day I had to go to New York City. I wore these stupid, bright brown shoes — a joke that all the salespeople would wear for some reason. The outfit was blue jeans with a sports jacket and those ugly brown shoes. I distinctly remember a trip where I took the shoes off post-meeting, threw them in the trash can, and got in the cab without shoes on. I said, "I'm never doing that again. These shoes are done."

Shaan Puri

"It's a dude version of taking off your bra after a long day."

Sam Parr

"Dude, I was... I'm just like..."

Shaan Puri

Out of here.

Sam Parr

"Sucking so much d in this meeting. I'm like—I'm like, 'The truth doesn't matter when you talk to these people. It's...'"

Shaan Puri

My least favorite is the world of influencers. We did a streaming — the company we sold to **Twitch**. It was a streaming app made for people who livestream on **YouTube** and Twitch. The number of absolutely shitty meetings... I'm metaphorically on my knees with this, you know, some 19‑year‑old streamer who's not looking up from his phone. His manager — who is, you know, his girlfriend — is sitting next to me. They don't ask a single question. They're making more money than they know what to do with: millions and millions of dollars sitting in Toledo in their bedroom, and you're trying to pitch them on, like, your product. I just remember thinking: I actually met with one of my biggest competitors that night for dinner and we were both just commiserating. He literally told me, "I'm so tired of sucking." He said, "I'm just not gonna suck anymore." And then... my first meeting with this guy, it's like two

Sam Parr

It's like two UFC fighters: when they get done fighting backstage, they're like, "We both lost."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah — exactly. That's how it felt. My least favorite is the wooing of divas, where you need influencers to back you for your product to succeed. That's the absolute worst. So my phrase for this is: you want to find a **loop that you love**. What's a loop? The loop is basically a repeatable pattern you perform in a job. I can break down any job into a pretty repeatable loop. I'll give you an example: the **healer loop**. This is a doctor or therapist. Someone comes to you in pain, you diagnose the root issue, you prescribe some solution, and you hopefully send them back out with less pain. That's your loop. If you're a doctor or a therapist, you're going to do that tens of thousands of times. I remember when I was in college, I took the MCATs. I thought I was going to be a doctor. Specifically, I knew my passion was sports medicine — to be an orthopedic surgeon. Before med school, I spent two weeks shadowing a guy who did the exact dream job I wanted. He was an orthopedic surgeon for an NFL team and had his own practice. Wow — it doesn't get any better than this. I went in and realized the loop he was doing, which was basically: somebody comes to you in chronic pain and he would say something like, "Well, it is what it is — you don't have any cartilage left in that shoulder or that knee," or, "Yeah, it's damaged or it's ruptured, and we're going to try our best to do surgery or give you a steroid injection, but it's never going to be the same as it was."

Sam Parr

Change your behavior and *like* you...

Shaan Puri

I remember thinking: "I'll do pain management for you or I'll do performance management for you." I'll send you back better than when you came in, but much worse than you want to be. That was what he did every single day — he did that for forty years. I realized that was not a loop I loved. It was extremely low creativity. You see people suffering all day. More power to him—he loved doing it. I didn't. I felt emotionally exhausted at the end of every day from dealing with suffering all day. I started wondering: do I have to do this just because I've been saying I would since I was 14? Maybe it sounded good to my parents or something. I'm not even sure where this came from. But this idea of a **loop** became really important to me. For example, the **founder loop** is: - You see the world as it is — the status quo of an industry or situation. - You imagine it better: "What if we did this instead?" - You build a product and sell the product. - You build the team that will build and sell the product. That's the loop you'll run as a founder. Initially it's mostly a building loop, then a selling loop, then a team-building loop. That's what you'll do on a daily basis for a long time. There are many other loops. A farmer has a loop that follows the seasons: you plant the seeds, you water them, they grow, and then you reap what you sowed. That's a loop you repeat every year for decades. If I were advising that kid who walked up to us at the restaurant, I'd say: you don't know what your loop is right now, but know what you're looking for. Look for the **blisters you enjoy** — the repetitive pains or challenges that, despite the hardship, you look forward to doing again and again. That will come from doing a loop thousands of times. You don't have to know upfront if you'll want to do it a thousand times. See if you're interested in doing it once or twice. Do you feel enthusiasm for it? As you do it, ask yourself: "Is this something I find myself doing more and more? Do I not feel tired doing it? Do I get energy from it?" There will be pain, suffering, and difficulty — I'm not saying it's without that — but find the loop you love. For me, I stumbled onto mine around age 30: the podcast. The founder loop was okay, but the loop I really love is this: I get curious about something, I dig in, I take the top 1% of what I find, and I enthusiastically share it with like-minded people. I like that they like it, and then I do it again the next day. Whether I'm writing books, doing the podcast, or running my YouTube channel, it doesn't matter which medium I use — that's the loop I love. I've been doing this podcast for about six years, and I'm still *fresh as a daisy*. I could keep going. Not everyone would enjoy the exact same loop — some people would be totally burned out and would hate it — but that's fine. Find the loop that gives you energy.

Sam Parr

Let's get really practical advice for that guy. But let me ask you something first: have you read this book? I read it, I think, five years ago. I told you about it when I read it. It's called *The Top Five Regrets of the Dying*.

Shaan Puri

I didn't know this is a book. I've heard the story: some researcher went and talked to people at hospice, right? Is that the story?

Sam Parr

I think it's *worth the read*. It's one of those books that—if I'm honest—I can tell you the **five points**, and that's definitely a lot of it. It's worth reading. Basically, I forget how many people she worked with. As a woman who worked in a hospice for decades, I think it was potentially 10,000 people, but for sure thousands of people who she... [trails off]

Shaan Puri

"She's *not* a researcher; she actually just worked there."

Sam Parr

She was a nurse. Yes—she was a nurse; that was her occupation. She saw thousands of people die and she wrote a book called *"The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,"* in which she put together a list of the five things that were most common among the people she worked with. I don't believe this book is scientific—it's purely observational—but her numbers list all five of them. The **number one** regret, by a huge margin, was: "I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." When she tallied this up, people realized, at the end of their lives, that they had been living the life other people expected them to live, rather than the life they truly wanted. The **second** regret was: "I wish I hadn't worked so hard." This was mostly said by men. They regretted missing family events and not being around for their loved ones. The **third** regret was: "I wish I had the courage to express my feelings." These were people who suppressed themselves. They wished they had told someone they loved what they felt, or had the courage to say, "I don't agree with you—can we please hash this out?" This is related to the first regret about living the life you want versus the life you think you should. The **fourth** regret was: "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." Many dying patients tried, in their final weeks, to track down old friends they had lost touch with and couldn't find them, which caused huge regret. The **fifth** regret was: "I wish I had let myself be happier." The idea is that happiness is a choice that people didn't realize they could make. They stayed in comfortable patterns, pretended to others and themselves that they were content, and feared change—right up until change was forced upon them. This book is really good; I should actually go and reread it. Telling the summary excites me because I felt awesome reading it in a very weird way. There’s this 96-year-old man in my building I talk with all the time. Gary Vaynerchuk has said he likes to talk to old people, and reading this book gives me a similar joy. I leave those conversations feeling better. Part of the reason you enjoy reading this is because you think you have wisdom, but you can also learn from other people's mistakes—a morbid but useful perspective. I think this book is great for anyone asking themselves if they should follow their passion, because the answer is almost always yes. But I would argue the answer is: you should follow your passion, but your passion doesn't need to be your job. I've seen many people make the mistake of turning their passion into their career, and that can be a massive mistake. So, to anyone listening: I don't think you should necessarily quit your job and start a business just because of what you see on Instagram. If you want to do that, try it—but probably save up six to twelve months of expenses first. Life is a lot better when you have financial security. Money may not make you happy, but a lack of money certainly will make you unhappy. I've seen many people follow their passion—often creative pursuits like art—and they don't make a good living at it. There's nothing wrong with keeping your passion as a hobby.

Shaan Puri

I disagree with one part of what you said, which was: **"You don't have to make your passion your work."** I get what you mean — that it can be your hobby. But I would say, probably as the default mode: would you accept that most people are not *lit up* by what they do for work?

Sam Parr

Yeah, most people are not.

Shaan Puri

Right. Most people don't get excited about Mondays. They don't wake up, sort of *tap-dancing*, into work.

Sam Parr

According to Bill Gurley's book, 70% of people do not like how they spend their days.

Shaan Puri

Right, and I think in that book he makes a point: you know, **24 hours in a day**. You sleep 8; that leaves 16. You work 8, so **half your waking hours**—essentially half your conscious life—you're going to spend at your job once you become of working age. So doesn't it make sense to find the one that you like to do? The one you actually enjoy? Because half of your life experience is going to be spent that way once you're of working age, once you're sort of in that *20–65 range*. I say way too many people accept "it is what it is" on something that's, to me, way too important to accept. Now, obviously, you're right that not everybody figures it out or makes it or whatever, but it still seems to me like the quest you should go on—the **fight worth fighting for** is to fight for that, to fight until you get that.

Sam Parr

Still, what I'm getting at is that *entrepreneurship*—it's a lot. Oftentimes, the answer is not entrepreneurship; it is having a job that... Oh, you totally...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, totally.

Sam Parr

"What sort of... what? I... that's what I mean."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, totally. I don't think it's entrepreneurship at all. I've even said for me it wasn't entrepreneurship, and I was an entrepreneur—that's what I thought my job was for a long time. I think it's finding that *loop* you love. If that loop is as a salesman, a marketer, a connector, or whatever it may be—there are many different loops—but figuring out one that actually gives you a lot of energy and makes you feel alive is worth doing. I want to leave you with one quote from when Isaac French came on this podcast. He was here to talk about his Airbnb business—he built a little seven-cabin Airbnb business and sold it for $78 million. I don't remember much about the Airbnb thing, but he said one phrase that stuck with me: > "Light yourself on fire and people will come from many miles away to watch you burn." I thought there was something poetic about the way he said it. I do think there's a test here: could that be used to describe what I'm doing? It's not a literal thing, but it's almost like what *level 10* looks like. You might not be a 10, but let's agree that somebody who's really lit up by what they're doing—that's how it would feel. They've decided they've lit themselves on fire with passion, and now people will come from many miles away to watch them burn. I would say that visually describes what that's supposed to look like.

Sam Parr

I think that's a great quote. **Isaac's the man.** I want to preface this by—or not preface this, but I want to say—that this is really hard. For example: one of the best ways to kill passion sometimes is that I like to *apartment-shop*. I don't intend on buying an apartment anytime soon. </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Right.

Sam Parr

But today, or on Sunday, I looked at an $18 million apartment because it was in my building. It was the penthouse — it was fancy as hell, and I wanted to go see it. There were many other people there. I went from **"I'm happy"** to **"I need more."** It turned into: "I'm not enough. I need more, I need more, I need to do more podcasts."

Shaan Puri

"Screw down the elevator to your shithole. Oh my gosh—that loving home, now a shithole."

Sam Parr

Have you ever done that? Have you ever done "real-life Zillow," where you just go and— I always tell my parents, "I'm looking at an apartment," and they're like, "You're looking at that apartment?" I'm like, the word *looking*—I need a different word. I am flipping through a catalog. That happens to be there; I'm not actually going to buy this apartment. That's the easiest way to start... Comparison is the thief of joy. It's a way to kill the passion. So I think it's really challenging to fight *internal rewards* versus *external rewards*. What we have just said sounds really great, and what Isaac said is really great, but I also want to acknowledge it's incredibly challenging to pull off.

Shaan Puri

My analogy is this: I took my kids to the airport. You know those little airport trams—the tiny trains you take inside the airport from one part to another? My kids had never done that before, so they got on and were super excited. They were like, "Oh, we're on a train!" I said, "Hey, grab the bar." They asked, "Why?" because the train hadn't moved yet. They said, "No, I just want to balance—this is gonna be fun." I told them, "No, no, hold on to this. It's about to go." The train started, and my 30-pound daughter immediately went flying into someone's suitcase—right away she got rocked by the world. A lot of advice that falls into the "easier said than done" bucket is really the internal, soul equivalent of **holding on to the pole**. Trust me—the world's about to rock you, and if you're not holding on to something, you stand no chance. You will go flying into that man's suitcase. You do want to figure out what lights you up, what makes you feel alive—not what sounds good to others. You want an internal reward or a scorecard so that you don't go to the $18,000,000 penthouse and still feel like you need more when you walk out of there. So you need all this generic, cliché, goddamn advice because it's the equivalent of the pole to hold on to. If you don't have it, you're just going to get whiplashed by the world constantly. Holding on doesn't stop you from feeling it when the train jerks—you'll still feel it—but it keeps you from going flying.

Sam Parr

I call it **"braces money."** I had a friend who had this amazing job. He said, "I used to just sail. I would... like, I was like a $30,000 millionaire. I would save up $30 and then go and sail." Then he said, "I had a kid, and I realized I wanted to buy them braces because that was my passion more so than sailing. So I got this really great job so I could have braces money, because I realized I'm passionate about that as well—not just sailing."

Shaan Puri

I want to leave one other point. Which is, if you accept that the trick to figuring this out is following your enthusiasm—especially things you're enthusiastic about that others are not, and especially things you're willing to suffer for (the blisters)—then there are two kind of takeaways. **1) Name the blisters.** It's really easy when you go into something to only focus on the outcome: "Oh yeah, I'm going to start working out because I really want to be in shape, I want to be fit, I want a six-pack, I want to be jacked." Name the blisters. The blisters are the sacrifices and small annoyances, for example: - "I'm going to be waking up at this time." - "I'm going to be going to the gym on days that don't even feel like it." - "I'm going to have to push myself when I'm there." - "I'm not going to be looking at my phone." - "I'm going to be pushing myself to failure on a bunch of different sets." - "I'm going to have to watch what I eat." You have to decide if you're okay with those. It's the blisters that more often decide whether you're going to like it or not—much more so than the rewards. When you're looking at what loop you like, the blisters are actually pretty obvious; you can know what they are and then decide if you're good with them. So be upfront about those. **2) The art of noticing.** You have to learn to notice in yourself where you have some weird, irrational, disproportionate enthusiasm—where you're willing to go further than most people—or the mastery you're enjoying picking up. That mastery doesn't always have a clean label that other people have told you about. Sometimes other people will notice it for you. I'll give two examples. Naval [Ravikant], who I think we both admire, tells a story about when he was a kid: he thought being a scientist was what he was going to do—he thought scientists were the highest calling, the truth seekers, the inventors. His mom was like, "No, I think you're going to be a businessman." He said, "Businessman? I never said anything about being a businessman." She replied, "You never said it, but you're always doing it." Every time they walked into that pizza shop, he would tell her how they were doing this wrong, why they should do that instead, what that company should do. She spotted it when he couldn't. And I don't know if you saw Adam Neumann from WeWork went on Rick Rubin's podcast a bunch of... yeah, people are saying...

Sam Parr

But you—Austin Reif, who I think told you (or you saw his thing). Yeah, Austin kept saying, "It's like one of the greats. Adam gets a lot of hate, but he is really worth listening to here."

Shaan Puri

Yeah. Austin was the one who kept talking about it. He's like, "Dude, he's a **master storyteller**. I can't believe you're not more obsessed with him." And I was like, "What?" and we kind of reverse-nag: "Okay, I'm interested, so I watched it." He tells a story about WeWork where he had actually been working on a kid's clothing brand before WeWork, and it wasn't working—he was failing at it. He was asking, I think his girlfriend at the time, "Well, what do you think I should do?" and she's like, "Real estate." He's like, "I've never done real—where did that come from? Random. I've never done anything in real estate." She goes, "I think you should do real estate because whenever we're walking on the street..." She says, "A man's eyes can go in many places. Walking down the street in New York you can look at the woman who just passed you, you can look at the dogs, you can look at the food—you can look at all types of things. But your eyes go up. You're always looking at the buildings and what's in these buildings and how they could work, and what this building could be for, not what it is for." She goes, "I think you should be in real estate." And, like, okay... this honestly, this story sounds a little bit like reverse in

Sam Parr

Dude, I've heard... no, I've heard—I think her name's **Rebecca**. His wife is **Rebecca Newman**. I've heard five to ten stories, and the Newmans are storytellers, so it could all be fake, right? I've heard five stories about Rebecca being "the one." You know, whatever they say: "Behind every successful man is a woman pushing him." I've heard, like, five stories of her being the "Adam whisperer" and pointing him in the right direction. Adam would be great. I would like to have her on.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, everyone needs a *Rebecca* in their lives.

Sam Parr

That's awesome. What did you learn from the pod?

Shaan Puri

You know what? My wife has never listened to this podcast. Isn't that hilarious?

Sam Parr

"You want to talk shit? Say something bad about it **right now**."

Shaan Puri

"It’s not my *safe space*. This is the only place I could say anything. I know she’ll never find it."

Sam Parr

Yeah, talk trash about it right now.

Shaan Puri

"What else you got? You wanna talk about anything else?" </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

No, I do, but I don't think it... I think we're good here.

Shaan Puri

Okay, I think that's...

Sam Parr

Is that it? Is that it? Who's the guy's name—Douglas?

Shaan Puri

Douglas.

Sam Parr

"Shout-out, **Douglas**. Was he shirtless in Austin? Because that's, like, what everyone does — you walk around *shirtless and barefoot*."

Shaan Puri

"Everybody in Austin has a mustache."

Sam Parr

**Hybrid athletes, baby.** That's when you're buff and you run — that's the move in Austin.

Shaan Puri

I'm trying to figure out how to brand the *"hybrid athlete of business"* — where you have success but you don't subscribe to the grind-culture, suffering mindset. You know, the Goggins/Hormozi approach (e.g., David Goggins, Alex Hormozi): it's just about pain — that's what it is — and you need to not see your family, not do this, not do that. I don't know, man. I'm doing this another way, and it's working pretty well for me. I don't know what to call it, but it's sort of like—you could be jacked and run. That makes sense to me.

Sam Parr

Yeah, everyone in Austin's that way. Alright—that's it. That's the pod.