This Mindset Made Me A Millionaire By Age 29

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Shaan Puri

What's up? It's Sean, and it is **1 Question Friday**! So, we are taking one listener question and answering it on the spot. Hopefully, it will take about 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes. Let's see how this goes. I'm going to play this audio recording that Ben sent to me. I haven't heard it yet, so let's hear it together.

MFM Listener

So, I was having a cold the other day, and I was thinking about this question: **What do you do differently that allowed you to succeed, that you think other people who had similar circumstances to you did not? Where did you succeed where they did not?**

Shaan Puri

okay good question very broad question right so we could take this a bunch of different ways here's how I wanna take it what are the common answers that you think people would give to a question like this so what do you do differently that helps you succeed well some people will say you know let's break it into groups there's the overly humble the overly humble will say you know all credit to god I've been blessed I was really lucky and you know I just kind of kept putting one foot in front of the other and worked hard and and I you know I'm just fortunate to be born in this great place with all my my limbs and my brain and all this right okay there's that path all true things but not that useful to somebody listening so let's let's kick that out also that applies to many other people who didn't have the same result as you so that certainly couldn't be it okay second thing hard work right hard work is the next thing that people love to say I think because hard work feels like you earned it and it feels like you're not saying you're better than everybody else it feels like you made better choices than others that were available to them too and who can argue with hard work but the reality is I really don't work very hard or at least I don't feel that way the thing I would say is I actually do work a lot but I only work on stuff I like and so I think hard workers you know like a janitor works hard a line cook works hard you know a single mother works hard you know and so I I don't really put what I do has you know pretty much no physical strain no emotional strain small emotional strain I guess and you know honestly it's fun like I do it because I enjoy it I'm not doing it because I kind of feel like I have to do this in order to get what I want that is not at all how I think about things and there are many areas where I'm like oh man if I worked harder I'd get a better result I can't bring myself to do it I'm lazy in that way the reason I work a bunch is because I really like it feels like play to me it's like watching somebody play a video game you you don't have to tell them hey sit down and focus on this for 3 hours it's like what are you talking about this is call of duty of course I'll play this as long as I can and so it's not hard work so what is it then well you said something in your question which was what's different about you than like what what did you do differently than like others like you in similar situations to you okay that's a good way of asking the question let's take my college right here I'm wearing this shirt I went to duke and there's a bunch of super smart people who went to duke in fact at duke I was a very mediocre student middle of the pack maybe slightly below average and you know whatever it's a good school a lot of smart people a lot of hard workers okay I do think that I've had probably more success you know by kind of a traditional definition but also just more fun than 99% of the other people who graduated in my class I could be wrong no way to really know but I believe that to be true from from what I've seen so what is different what I would say is that most of my friends from college most of the people I went to school with played it safe and is it really safe that's the question and because to me safe is good if you can get the outcome you want with the least risk possible safe is awesome right like I don't wanna you know go to war because the outcome I want is to be alive and like I can just stay at home and that is way less risk than going to war but I also don't just stay at home and not drive places because I wanna go see them I wanna go to a movie or I wanna go to the grocery store whatever I have an outcome I want but I'll take the least risk risk possible I'm not gonna you know drive a motorcycle I'll drive a car you get the idea so to me safety is when you get the outcome you want with the least risk taken what I saw was most of my friends from college took what was what you would call a safe path if you wanted that outcome the reality is that I definitely did not want the outcome that those jobs led to so the jobs the most popular tracks were doctor kind of like lawyer consultant or banker those are like the kind of like high achiever paths that I would say most of the smart smartest people in at my school did and I guess the other one would just be like corporate manager of some kind okay cool so the problem with that is when I look at what success looks like for a doctor for a lawyer for a consultant for a banker or for a corporate manager none of those by default would get me the outcome I wanted right I was like dude I wanna make tons of money I wanna have fun every day I wanna have action creativity I don't wanna just be doing the same thing over and over right like I shadowed a doctor because I was pre med I took the mcats I was planning to go to med school until I shadowed a doctor and I went to shadow him to figure out can I do this but by the end of it the answer I walked away with was I don't want to do this because it was extremely repetitive what was happening every day and you're helping people which is awesome but I could not stand the repetitive nature of seeing patients and having the same you know it was an orthopedic guy oh yep you have torn meniscus you have a torn ligament you have joint pain and there's nothing we could do for you that is that's what it was over and over and over again and so I didn't want the winning path of that so financially some some paths I was like oh man you work how hard and you make how much and like is there a path here where I could have like I don't know $50,000,000 like what if I want $50,000,000 right you don't have to want it but let's say I do want it because I do right and I'm not afraid to say it I'm not ashamed of the things I wanted I was like that sounds awesome if I could choose between less money and more money I'm choosing more money right that was very obvious to me at the time and when I looked at how much you could make in a certain amount of time the first let's say 10 years of your career I was like wow okay finance I might be able to get there but not really these other paths okay maybe I can do it in finance or consulting but what do I have to do to get there oh man I gotta grind 80 90 hours a week kind of as the low man on the totem pole and I'm just like an excel monkey and I'm like you know I'm not building I'm not creating anything new and I'm not building my own business I'm like just this kind of like middleman that's what it felt like or corporate management that's cool but like I gotta go to an office every day 9 to 5 wear a certain thing and talk a certain way and spend a bunch of my days doing you know like you know certain meetings that I didn't wanna do like you know count talent calibration and like you know employee onboarding and all this bullshit right so I didn't find that fun and I even saw people who were playing that game at a high level so for example when we got acquired by twitch I saw well what does the ceo of a multibillion dollar company do every day and what does you know the vp of product do and what does the cto do what what do these people do everyday if I look at their day and I don't want it then why am I in this track so I would say the first the most important thing I did differently was get clear on what I actually wanted how I wanted my life to go and then I looked at the quote unquote safe tracks and I realized pretty quickly that those don't get me to that thing I want so in that sense they're not safe at all they're extremely dangerous to my goals right are you following that like if you if you look at what you want if you have a clear picture of what you want and then you look at the safe path and you say does the safe path get me to what I want and the answer is no then it is not safe it is extremely risky because it's putting my dream at risk and knowing what you want also takes a little bit of work so take some time take some imagining take some sampling I would go and meet a bunch of people and be like so what's your life like you know okay you have this much money what how does that work you have this work schedule how does that work oh you never see your kids okay that doesn't that doesn't sound like a win right like my buddy dated a girl in college my my roommate was dating a girl in college and her dad was a high you know whatever partner at whatever deloitte boston consulting whatever whatever it was and you know she was just like yeah growing up like he was home thursday through sunday and then he would fly out or thursday through saturday he'd fly out sunday and he'd be at a client site from you know sunday through thursday every week and he'd fly back and he was super tired and that was the first 18 years of my life so I immediately could cross that safe path of consulting off because if that's how the the top of the top do it in that field then I don't wanna do it and of course there are outliers in every in every industry every track there are some outliers but then I'd have to be really clear that hey am I betting on being an outlier in that path if so then I gotta be willing to make that choice so for example I chose entrepreneurship what I knew was that the day to day of an entrepreneur sounded really fun I get to build a product create a product from scratch maybe invent a new product I get to sell it that sounds interesting marketing I always found fun and you know I get to go on this ride where I'm sometimes I'm pitching to investors sometimes customers sometimes I'm putting out a fire over here that sounded really fun to me and I tried it out and I actually really enjoyed it and I knew that okay most entrepreneurs don't make it but I thought well if I really enjoy this then I'm I'm probably gonna be willing to do it for 10 15 years and what I saw was that most people would quote these statistics that 90% of businesses fail or that this individual idea has a very low chance of have a very low chance of success and that is true most individual ideas and businesses do fail and the way the quote I heard was that yes startups fail but entrepreneurs don't what that means is that if you look at any great entrepreneur any entrepreneur who sticks with it who's really tries hard and actually has some skill over a 10 to 15 year?

Shaan Puri

They all win. Alright, they tend to win; the odds are in their favor. In a 10 to 15 year span, they do have a win. When they win, they win in an order of magnitude of $1,000,000. Okay, great. So even the one idea that I'm pursuing this year might not have the highest odds of success. However, if I just keep at this for 10 to 15 years, my odds of success go from individually very low to collectively very high over that time frame. I loved that. I loved the size of the prize, the likelihood of success, and the day-to-day journey to get there. This told me I'll probably stick with it long enough to hit a win. So that's how I chose what I wanted to do. In summary, what I think I did differently was get clear on what I wanted. I recognized that the safe paths weren't really so safe after all because they had a very low chance of getting me to the outcome I desired. In that sense, they were the riskiest paths of all. Whereas most people, I think, gravitated towards something that sounded good in theory or sounded good to their parents, aunts, uncles, peers, teachers, and whoever. They said, "Yep, this sounds good," and got onto a track that actually won't lead them to the lifestyle they want. I figured out the lifestyle I wanted first, then looked at what tracks could get me there, and I chose the safest among those. Alright, that's all. I hope that was helpful. Come on, I know that was helpful; it had to be! I put my heart into that one, so I hope it was beneficial. I hope I might have taken an idea that you already had and maybe presented it a little differently or brought it to the forefront of your mind, perhaps something that was buried in the back of your mind. That's a win for me. So, one question Friday in the books!