The $20 Million/Year Personality Quiz 89% Of Fortune 100s Swear By

Shaan Puri

Now, the grit score goes from 0 to 10. I want you to guess my grit score.

Sam Parr

10 is super gritty.

Shaan Puri

**Gritty as it gets.**

Sam Parr

I would say I would put you at 667. You're pretty gritty.

Shaan Puri

I appreciate your faith in me. I scored a 2.5 on this grit test. Bro, did you just take it again? Out of 10?

Sam Parr

Alright, Sean, you're back! How was the trip?

Shaan Puri

My trip was great! Ben and I went to Phoenix, and I'm not gonna share all the details, but it was a **dope** life experience. I think one great thing to share, by the way, is... when's the last time you had a dope life experience? Something you didn't have to do, but you did anyway?

Sam Parr

Probably Camp MFM two years ago.

Shaan Puri

Don't let that happen. Don't let too much time go by. I think like every three months or so, try to do something that's a little extracurricular. If you know what I mean, just something that's outside of the routine, outside of what you have to do. So, I did that. Anyway, we went to Phoenix because Matt Ishbia, who is the owner of the Phoenix Suns, the basketball team there, we had gotten in touch with him. He was like, "Hey, if you guys ever want to come check out a game, come hang out." So, we go down to Phoenix, and we meet Matt, we meet the team, and we get to sit courtside. We get to live life as an NBA owner, which is awesome because I always dreamed of doing that. Now, what I want to tell you, though, is not about Matt. What I want to tell you about is actually much more in the weeds. So, here's a little in the weeds story. I think Ben emailed him when he bought the team and was just like, "Hey, congrats, buddy." And then I was like, "Thank you, thank you, Ben Levy. Goodbye." And that was the first touch.

Shaan Puri

**Second touch.** We invited him to Camp FM. We're like, "Hey, you!" He used to be a college basketball player. Now he's a multibillionaire who owns an NBA team. Well, that's a mix of basketball and, you know, entrepreneurship. That's who we try to invite to the camp. So we invited him, and he was like, "Oh, I'd love to come!" Unfortunately, he couldn't make the dates. But his kind of make-good was, "Listen, sorry I couldn't make it, but if you guys are ever in town, let me know. We'll hang out, we'll check out a game." Hey, what do you know, Matt? We're in town! When are you in town? Because that's when we're in town. So we worked with his assistant to figure out when we should be in town, and we did that.

Sam Parr

So, this is the **rule of reciprocity**. By the way, you offer someone something, and regardless of whether they take you up on it or not, they now owe you. We should just post events that aren't ever going to happen. We make sure we follow the person online, like, "Oh, they're out of town that date," or "They're already busy." Let's ask them.

Shaan Puri

We're hosting a charity event honoring you. So, yes, we did that. Now, the funny thing is, the background here is that... what's the randomness here? Ben used to be a diehard Phoenix Suns fan. He loves the Phoenix Suns more than you love your child. He loves the Phoenix Suns with a deeper passion than Romeo loved Juliet. He was a ball boy for four or five years, so he literally was with the team every day. He was a volunteer ball boy, basically just to give you a sense of this guy. Every year, when there's an All-Star game, the way it works in the NBA is the fans vote on who gets to be named an All-Star. So, Ben, supporting his guys and being the loyal, supportive guy that he is, takes literally 100,000 ballots home. He forces his family every night to sit there and punch the ballots to vote the Phoenix Suns guys in and himself. Over the course of a couple of months, they churned through 100,000 ballots to try to support the team. The players didn't care; they didn't know about this. He just did it because he's that big of a diehard fan. So, that's ridiculous. Ben obviously does a lot for me, and I was like, "What's a way I can make a Ben appreciation weekend?" That's what this was. This was to go and kind of let him live a childhood dream out. So, he goes down there, and we watch the game. It's all good. One of the cool things was... this happens all the time, by the way. You think you're there to meet the famous person, but it's actually this other thing that's really interesting and more accessible that ends up being the fascinating thing. You wouldn't have known it until you showed up. So, similarly, we go and have this great conversation with one of the guys in their kind of data department. It's like analytics data, which has become a big part of sports. Ben is grilling my guy. The guy came down to say nice to meet you, and Ben's like, "Cool, I have 1,000 questions for you. Have a seat." He's like, "In the year 2013, you picked this guy. Why? I'd like to know what was telling you that." And he's like, "What are the metrics that matter right now for us when we play a game, obviously besides the score? You know, what leads to the score?" He's asking all these detailed questions.

Sam Parr

And when Ben asks questions, sometimes I've noticed the person won't even finish. He's like, "I got what I need, next!" I was just like...

Shaan Puri

And he's great because everybody needs a place where they're shameless. Like for me and you, I'm shameless about it. I'm a monologue, okay? I have something interesting to say. I know that's not how this is supposed to work, but I just need to get this off my chest. Trust me, you're going to like it by the end. Your thing is like you'll just ask a blunt question. You'll just be like, "Well dude, you keep saying this, like what is it? How much? What's in your pocket right now?" And they're like, "I guess nobody's ever asked me that." Here's the answer: Ben's thing is that he's like, "Oh, we're supposed to be at dinner. I'm going to ask you all of the questions. My curiosity is endless." He doesn't care what the social situation is. Like, we'll be playing basketball, and he'll be guarding a guy, and he'll be like, "So, like, what's revenue like nowadays?" I'm like, "Dude, Ben, you gotta let it go for this moment in time. Just give it a rest." But he doesn't. He doesn't do it. Anyways, we're doing that with this guy, and one of the fascinating questions that he asked was, "You're the data guy. What's the data you wish you had that you don't currently have? What data would help you do this?" Because he's showing us these cameras in the gym where, if you're just shooting around, there are cameras now that will do facial recognition. It'll track, "Okay, Sam is shooting in the practice session." It'll record the length of the session, the number of shots, the exact arc on every shot, his exact field goal percentage, without anybody having to be there to keep track of stats. So, cool tech, right? Now, his answer was very interesting. He was like, "You know, we test for everything you've ever done on the court, but what we've learned, what everybody knows who's been around sports, is that the difference between the Michael Jordans and the Isaiah Riders, or the Kobe Bryants versus the Lenny Brooks, is what's up top—what's in your mindset. The guys who are completely obsessed, with extreme discipline, they're able to work harder than the next guy. They don't take those days off. They're receptive to coaching, and they're going to improve on their weaknesses. They're going to double down on their strengths. They can keep their confidence even when something goes bad. It's all about the mental, right? Every great athlete would tell you how much of the sport is mental, but they have no way of measuring the mental." So we said, "Interesting. What would be the way that you would want to do that?" He's like, "Grit." "What do you mean, grit?" He's like, "Well, there's this book that came out. I don't know, have you ever read this book, 'The Grit'?"

Sam Parr

**Book:** Angela Duckworth

Shaan Puri

Duckworth? Yeah, exactly. So I went down this rabbit hole after that. That was just my segue into me going down this rabbit hole on these mindset tests. First, I actually want to tell you about a different test, which you've probably done in the past, and that's the Myers-Briggs test. Have you done this test? Do you know the backstory of this? You know where this came from?

Sam Parr

No, but is it even real? Are horoscopes real?

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. Are palm readers real? There's a lot of **bullshit** in this industry, which is why I'm fascinated by it. So, let me clarify: I'm not saying it's completely **bullshit**, but there's a lot of hand-waving stuff. Here's the story: There's a woman, and her name is Isabelle. In 1942, I think World War II is going on, and Isabelle's reading *Reader's Digest*. She reads in *Reader's Digest* this article about "people sorting." Basically, it's how companies are using tests to do people sorts. So, she reads that Lockheed, the aircraft company, was using it to locate possible troublemakers. They were like, "We need to do some screening so that we can identify who's going to be a troublemaker, who's going to have some mischief in them." Another company was using it for finding—you'll appreciate this one—**henpecked husbands**. The argument was that if the man is under the thumb at home, then he'll easily also be submissive at work. Fascinating, right? People were legitimately doing this. They were trying to figure out, like, "Who's got that alpha? Who's got that dog in them?"

Sam Parr

Alright everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. This one's easy because I'm going to show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say "I," I mean not my team; I mean I'm the one who actually made it. I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out at **joinhampton.com**. It's a community for founders, and one of the ways that we've grown is by creating these surveys. We ask our members certain questions that a lot of people are often afraid to ask. So, things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these interesting questions. We put it in a survey, and I went and made a landing page. You can actually see the landing page that I made at **joinhampton.com/wealth**. The hard part with Hampton is that we are appealing to a sort of higher-end customer, similar to brands like Louis Vuitton or Ferrari. So, I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates—that's what we use. We just change the colors a little bit to match our brand. It's very easy. They have this drag-and-drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. Once it's made, I then shared it on social media. We have thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. I can then see over the next handful of weeks how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. I can track where the revenue came from—Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever. I can actually go and look at it and say, "Oh, well that worked, that didn't work. Do more of that, do less of that." If you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it! You can check it out; go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. Alright, now back to MFM.

Shaan Puri

So, she writes to her mom, Catherine, and says, "This is fascinating! Companies are doing this, blah blah blah." She's interested in psychology. Her mom writes back and says, "You should make your own test and you should do it. You're always telling me about that guy Carl Jung. You should do it on those principles." So, she ends up creating... and their last names are Briggs and Myers. She ends up creating the... I forgot what it's called, the Briggs-Myers Type Indicator or something like that, right? That's how this test started. She creates a test, and basically, he had this theory. The psychologist had this theory that people branch out in this decision tree. It's like you're either a thinker or a feeler, so you're a perceiver or you're a judger. If you just go down the tree, it ends up with 16 possibilities. They gave each of the 16 kind of a positive affirmation name, so there's no bad score.

Sam Parr

Yeah, they gave you a fortune cookie. Everybody gets a trophy.

Shaan Puri

And so they were like, "Oh, you are an executive, you are a caregiver, you are a scientist, you are an idealist." They just had all these labels for the 16 categories. Now, of course, the funny thing is if you end up taking the test, you'll get one score. On average, if you take the same test weeks later, 50% of people will end up with a completely different label. So, yeah, I don't know how reliable these things are. People who criticize it say this takes advantage of something called the **Forer Effect**. Have you ever heard of the Forer Effect? It's basically the same thing that astrologers, fortune tellers, and other pseudoscientists use. They kind of cold read something general about you, like, "You're the type of person who doesn't let everybody in, but when you get close to somebody, you really open up," or "You're the type of person who, sometimes when things get hard, you're able to really stand up and make it happen." It's like, "Oh no, I do have a little bit of that in me, you know? You're right! How'd you know? Here's some money." So, anyway, they create this test. It's not that popular at the beginning, but it ends up getting picked up by, you know, fast forward many, many years, it gets picked up by a company called **CPP** (the Consulting Psychologists Press). They picked up the distribution rights and said, "Hey, we are going to market this to American businesses. We are going to tell American businesses about this."

Sam Parr

When you say "picked up Dubean," was this a publication that promoted it or bought it?

Shaan Puri

It was a publishing company, and they buy the licensing rights to market it. Isabelle and her mom are just going to get a royalty. Basically, right as she dies—she dies at 82—sales start taking off. By 1983, almost 1,000,000 people are taking the Myers-Briggs test annually. Is it free? No. So, the way it works is it's kind of a brilliant business model. To take the test, it costs somewhere between $15 and $40. So, everybody who takes the test, you get, you know, let's say on average $30 from them. But then, you can't just take the test; it has to be given to you by a practitioner. The practitioners have to pay $2,000 to become certified. That's the only way you can take this test. Last year, they enrolled 5,000 practitioners who each paid about $1,500 to $2,000 each. That's $8 to $10 million in revenue off of just the practitioners. Each of the practitioners then distributes the test and they get paid for distributing it. It's kind of like a multilevel marketing team, right? The practitioner makes $30 a test, and then the extra royalty—the extra $10 on top—goes back to the parent company, to the publisher. They don't know the revenue because it's still private. It's been private since the '80s. They once said their number was over $20 million in revenue. I suspect it's higher than that. There have been millions of people who have taken this test. Myers-Briggs is that company, CPP; it's their biggest earner. It's their cash cow.

Sam Parr

And so insane.

Shaan Puri

Dude, it's used by the government. It's used by 200 federal agencies. You know, just the EPA itself, they use it on a quarter of their 20,000 employees. I think 80% of the Fortune... no, 89 of the Fortune 100 use this test. 89% of the Fortune 100! Is that insane?

Sam Parr

There are a few things that are insane about it. 1. To create something... When did she create it? In 1942. Yeah, so we're coming up on 80 years now, and we're going to be close to 100 years soon. That's amazing! To create something that lasts that long... I mean, that's such a reputable brand. Even though I think it's nonsense, many people think it's reputable. It's an annuity, so you just have predictable revenue all the time. We talked about Gallup polling, and they own CliftonStrengths, which is famous for StrengthsFinder 2.0. I tried to find how much revenue they did, and I could not find anything. I believe Gallup... We did this two years ago, so I don't remember. I believe Gallup does something like $1 billion a year in revenue, or $100 million. But if you go to the StrengthsFinder website and look at their traffic, it's huge! It's a huge, huge, huge thing, and it costs the same thing: $20 or $40 for one of these tests. I loved this business because the test business is so fun. You're desperate to know... like when you're in a hard time, you're desperate to know. You just want affirmation that things are going to be okay. I loved it! I loved it! I used to do these all the time, and I would even game them. I'd be like, "Well, that's not right. I should take it again. I probably answered a few wrong."

Shaan Puri

So, check this out. I read about that, and now when we meet this guy and he tells me about the mental makeup, the grit, the mindset being important, I'm like, "He's totally right. The mindset thing is super important." And so I'm thinking, "What was that book, 'Grit' by Angela Duckworth? What was that all about?"

Sam Parr

I believe you could put off desire. What's that called? Or you could put off reward.

Shaan Puri

**Delayed Gratification**

Sam Parr

Delayed gratification is like the...

Shaan Puri

I think that's a part of it, but the ones I think they had is basically it's ability. So, like your talent, basically your ability times zeal, which is like your passion or enthusiasm about something, times capacity for hard labor is the formula for success. With grit specifically, it's around zeal and perseverance. So, it's basically your enthusiasm, your passion times perseverance. Okay, so here's what's interesting about this thing. He tells me about this, and I'm like, "Alright Doug, like how's my grit score? Let me go assess it now." The grit score goes, I think, from 0 to 10. I want you to guess my grit score.

Sam Parr

10 is super gritty.

Shaan Puri

**Gritty as it gets.**

Sam Parr

Who's a 10?

Shaan Puri

David Givens is a 10.

Sam Parr

I would say I would put you at a 6 or 7. You're pretty gritty.

Shaan Puri

I appreciate your faith in me. I scored a 2.5 on this grit test. Bro, did you just take it?

Sam Parr

It again.

Shaan Puri

Out of 10, I am in the bottom 10 percentile of grit.

Sam Parr

So, what were the questions?

Shaan Puri

You showed... check this out. I'm going to read you some of the text, and this is why I was like, "This is bullshit." Why is this bullshit? Okay, so here are the claims. She writes this book and becomes a bestseller. You see Keith Rabois, and they'd be like, "Oh, grit is the most important thing." All these CEOs are saying, "Grit is the most important thing." They're not wrong; it's just that, like many of these bestselling books, it's like pop science. The principle's not wrong, but the depth of the evidence is actually quite shallow. So here's what it says. She starts off by saying, "Well, showing up... you know, what's that old quote? 80% of success is just showing up." People realize, "Well, yeah, I guess if you give up, that almost guarantees failure." If you give up, they looked around and said, "Well, 50% of soldiers quit the army during this selection process. 50% of marriages end in divorce. 25% of students drop out of high school. In sales jobs, 50% of people will turn over every year." And they noticed that... what's the counterpoint? Because the counterpoint is basically what they looked at was West.

Shaan Puri

And I don't know if you know much about the school, West Point, but it has a pretty high bar. It's like being a guest on this podcast; it's a high bar. So, what they do is say that to get into West Point, you don't apply when you're a senior in high school. You apply when you're a junior, in 11th grade. You don't just apply with your test scores or whatnot; you have to be nominated by a member of Congress to get into West Point. To do this, you have to hustle your way to get a Congress member to vouch for you. In order to do this, you have to do a leadership interview and a fitness test. Out of 14,000 applicants, they'll select about 1,000 people to come join this program. Even after they filter through all that, you have to run through walls to get here. About 20% drop out during the 7-week orientation, which is called "The Beast" at West Point.

Shaan Puri

Free? I don't think so.

Sam Parr

So, you gotta pay money to do all this and then go to the army.

Shaan Puri

Like all the best things in life...

Sam Parr

Life. Alright, alright.

Shaan Puri

The beast is a rotation of calisthenics, marching classes, weapons training, and athletics. You go from 5 AM to 10 PM with no breaks, no weekends, and no contact with family or friends. You also have to be subscribed to this YouTube channel in order to get in. So even if you're not going to do all the other things, you should go to YouTube right now, search for "My First Million," and subscribe to our podcast. Alright, so basically, grit was a higher predictor of success than your SAT score, than your high school rank, than the leadership interview, and all the other things. So anyways, I thought, here's the grit test. I can even just give it to you. Here are some of the questions they ask on this thing: 1. "New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones." Basically, do you get distracted by new ideas and projects from your current one? Is that very much like me, mostly like me, somewhat like me, or not at all like me? That's guess what? That's very much like me. 2. "Setbacks don't discourage me. I don't give up easily." 3. "I set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one." 4. "I am a hard worker." Come on, this is not science. This is what I call nothing. That's what this tells to the no.

Sam Parr

There's some stuff here. I finish whatever I begin. So, for example...

Shaan Puri

Do you trust people's self-assessment of this?

Sam Parr

No, do you have any unfinished LEGO sets in your home?

Shaan Puri

I don't even have a LEGO set. No, but I would if I did. I've got a box of unassembled furniture right over here. I have a half-written book over there. Yes, of course... yes, I do fail this test.

Sam Parr

And so, you... but the thing is, I can think.

Shaan Puri

Of 10 examples where I'm not like that, I can think of 10 examples where I am like that. This is... you know what? I'm low in grit, I'm high in honesty. And to somebody who's like, "I'm really high on the grit score," I'm like, "Is this real? Is this an honest assessment?"

Sam Parr

I think your butt hurt. I think that change comes from within, brother. I think that you gotta be... you gotta.

Shaan Puri

I'm in denial right now.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you.

Shaan Puri

Know what I'm bargaining? Yeah.

Sam Parr

Is there like Grits Anonymous? You need to go through the 12 steps. My friend, you're at step number 1.

Shaan Puri

If there's anyone else out there, what's the opposite of grit, by the way? Just like, yeah.

Sam Parr

Just cream cheese.

Shaan Puri

**Soft. Damn.**

Sam Parr

Yeah, soft.

Shaan Puri

Just the... so is the word "alright."

Sam Parr

The marshmallow scale.

Shaan Puri

So, yeah, well, you know what? I want you to take this test. Actually, just take it right out. Let's take it together and see what your grit score is.

Sam Parr

Alright, new item: questions.

Shaan Puri

Okay, here we go. Alright, I'm gonna give you the grit test. Okay Sam, you have to just say true or false, basically. Yeah, very true or very false. "New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones." **False.** Alright, very false would you say?

Sam Parr

Not much like me. False.

Shaan Puri

Alright, not much like me. Setbacks don't discourage me; I don't give up easily. Is that very much like you? You don't give up easily or not really?

Sam Parr

I don't give up easily.

Shaan Puri

I often set a goal, but later choose to pursue a different one.

Sam Parr

Mostly like me.

Shaan Puri

I am a hard worker; however, I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take me more than a few months to complete.

Sam Parr

That's not much like me.

Shaan Puri

I finish whatever I begin very much. My interests change from year to year, not much. I am diligent; I never give up. Somewhat, I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time and later lost interest. Somewhat, I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge.

Sam Parr

Not much like me. I’ve not had that many setbacks.

Shaan Puri

I'm just so good. It just works.

Sam Parr

I just try easy stuff. Wow, that's a grit score of 3.5.

Shaan Puri

Correct. Okay, so you got a 3.5. I had it wrong; the scale is to 5. You're a 3.5 out of 5. You scored higher than 40% of Americans.

Sam Parr

What does that mean? I'm in the 60th percentile.

Shaan Puri

No, you're in the...

Sam Parr

I'm in the 40th percentile, right? I don't really know. I'm between 40 and 60%, so I'm not that good.

Shaan Puri

You're like above average. Yeah, alright. No way you have scored higher than only 40%. So, you're actually average to below average in grit.

Sam Parr

Yeah, that sucks. This stuff is stupid. It would have been a lot better if I was a 4 or something.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we... The segment needed you to be amazing and me to be terrible. Instead, you're pretty average and I'm way below average. So anyway, go back and take your grit score. You just go to... Just search Google for "grit score" and take this thing. Then post it in the comments on YouTube. I want to know who is the grittiest YouTube commenter of them all. It's probably the spammers that never go away, that keep impersonating us and being like, to everybody who comments, they're like "DM..."

Sam Parr

Me, me.

Shaan Puri

It's like, "Hey, that's not us. We're not telling you... we're not trying to sell you something like that. If we try to sell you something, you'll know it. Trust me, that's not the way we would do it."

Sam Parr

I want to tell you about someone who would score a 5 out of 5 on the grid score.

Shaan Puri

Can I?

Sam Parr

Tell you about this person.

Shaan Puri

Tell me.

Sam Parr

Do you remember a few years ago, in '16 or '17? I think there was this company called Lunch Club. It was basically like this social platform where you, I guess, meet up with people for lunch. I thought it was really dumb.

Shaan Puri

I used to do that. When I moved to San Francisco, that's how I made friends. I joined the lunch club and I would go get lunch with random stranger tech bros.

Sam Parr

I thought that was a stupid idea. I thought it was very stupid. I never used it, but I was not alone on that one, I think.

Shaan Puri

That a lot. When you didn't have setbacks, you're like, "I always have friends and I never have setbacks."

Sam Parr

Yeah, I scored low on this one as well. But here's the thing: not everyone else thought it was a dumb idea. In fact, they raised **$30,000,000** from Andreessen Horowitz and all these really smart people. I don't think it ever became that big of a company, but they raised **$30,000,000** at a **$100,000,000** valuation. I have no idea what happened to it today because it's not really relevant anymore. However, the guy who started it is amazing, and this is just proof that smart people sometimes have silly things that are just stepping stones until the real thing. The guy who started it, his name is **Scott Wu**, and recently, I think it was yesterday, he launched something that's pretty amazing. We're going to do another episode where we talk in-depth about what he's launched, but basically, what it is called **Cognition Labs**. That's the name of the company. The product is called **Devon**. The summary of it is: you just tell Devon, "Make me a website that looks like Yelp, except it's just for agencies," or "Make me a website that's like Airbnb, but for cars." What Devon does is it gives you a checklist of all the things it's going to do, and then it does it. It builds the website for you. This is like game-changing technology because it basically makes coders obsolete.

Shaan Puri

It's an AI software engineer or programmer.

Sam Parr

Yes, and many really smart people, like Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, are basically saying, "Alright, this is the first time I've ever seen anything like this actually be as good or better than a human." It's amazing. Whatever the product is, it's awesome. We're going to talk all about it. But what's more interesting to me is that Bloomberg did this article on the three co-founders. They have the main CEO, and his brother also works there. They did this amazing profile on the ten-person company that created this, and they are magnificent. Everything about these guys is beautiful.

Shaan Puri

The magnificent ten, should we call them?

Sam Parr

Yes, a magnificent 10! Everything about this company is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. So check this out: it has 10 employees, and they've raised $21,000,000. Amongst the 10 employees, they have 10 gold medals that they've won from top coding competitions. Many people on Twitter, when they came out with this, said, "I remembered Scott. Scott was the guy who was winning all of the math competitions that I used to go to as I sat in the crowd wondering how on earth this guy did this." And this one guy named Bai Bai Fan tweeted out this thing. He goes, "I wanna show you all some tiger mom porn." It's basically this young guy—judging off his name, I guess Scott Wu—who I assume is Chinese. There's this video of him when he's like 12 or 13 years old, and he's at a math competition.

Shaan Puri

Hey Sam, we gotta do this... we gotta do this test. So I put... I have the thing. Here's the question: The question says, "If the pattern continues, what is the letter in the 2,010th position?" And it just says "mathlete mathlete mathlete" and... and it says, "What letter will be the 2,010th letter in this sequence?" And he goes, "A." It's just... dude.

Sam Parr

You know how, like in Jeopardy, how much...

Shaan Puri

He looks like he's 12 years old in this video, by the way. Yes, he's...

Sam Parr

He's a kid, and you know how in *Jeopardy* they show you the question as they're reading it so you can read along with it? He answers one of the questions where it's like, "What's 352 to the 4th power times 384 to the 8th power?" He answered the question before the announcer finished reading it. He literally hit the beat.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so Sam, the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 can be arranged to form many 5-digit positive integers with 5 distinct digits. And how many such integers is the digit 1 to the left of the digit 2? Two such integers include 14,352 and 12,534. Go ahead, just walk me through your thought process here.

Sam Parr

I feel like an integer is like an appetizer I ordered last night with a little...

Shaan Puri

A bit of Parmesan cheese on top sounds like an influencer mom on Instagram coming up with a cool name for their baby. It's like, "We have Bronx and Integer. They're going to math today."

Sam Parr

Sounds like an amazing roller coaster ride at Six Flags! I don't know what an integer is; I can't even answer this question. But these guys were crushing it at these questions, and there are three of them. So, listen to the third segment from the article. This guy named Ashlee Vance, he's the one who wrote the biography of Elon Musk. He wrote this article and he goes, "The third co-founder, who is currently the CPO, asked me not to explicitly say what his current status is. His enrollment status at Harvard is because he doesn't want his parents to fully understand what he's done." Basically, the CPO, the co-founder of this company that is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has yet to tell his mother that he's dropped out of Harvard, even though he's now worth tens of millions of dollars. He's too afraid to break her heart. In the article, the author says, "I just want to let you know you've raised a wonderful son, and this can work out wonderfully. It's okay if he may or may not be enrolled in Harvard anymore." This article, it's the greatest thing I've seen.

Shaan Puri

I just googled the guy's name, Scott Wu, and at the top, there is a Reddit post from 18 hours ago in the subreddit r/nextfuckinglevel, which is an amazing subreddit, by the way. I go there all the time; it's just next-level shit. He goes, "Here's Scott Wu, the CEO of Cognition Labs, in a math quiz 14 years ago." It's a clip that has 5,000 upvotes. The first reply is, "If anyone's wondering, here are the tricks that they use for question 3: the standard permutations of 54321, blah blah blah." Then, the top comment is, "It took me longer to read your explanation than it took him to actually do it and answer the question. It's ridiculous." (I just said "read," not even "understand" what you just said.)

Sam Parr

So anyway, these guys are ridiculous. It's just amazing that there are young people who are self-gathering into this. To me, it's truly like that Facebook movie, where they were just in the dorm room doing it. These guys are doing it right now. They range between the ages of 20 and 27. It was so inspiring to read about these guys, and I'm so happy that freaks like them exist. It was an awesome article about this company. The company itself is great, but the story behind these guys is even better. This is like the American dream to me.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I don't know if it's the **American Dream** or like the **robot dream** or like the **math wet dream**. I don't know what this dream is, but it's...

Sam Parr

It's a Chinese mother.

Shaan Puri

Mother... dream. Mom... dream.

Sam Parr

For sure.

Shaan Puri

Except for the dropping out part.

Sam Parr

Exactly. Yeah, they go, "You know, it's not too late, son. You can still go back." That's what they'll say after this article. Harvard should...

Shaan Puri

Launch a Tiger Extension School, which is: - You get to remain a student - You get to graduate - Or it's... it's dropping out by graduating early Because we're like, "You're done here. Your mom will be fine. We just get 0.1% equity in your company. Thank you."

Sam Parr

Yeah, and all they have to do is we get 0.1%. What you get, son, is you get a photo of you wearing that gown. We're going to go get one of our teachers to shake your hand.

Shaan Puri

Have this guy, Charles. He'll shake your hand; he looks like the dean. We have a green screen here. It'll look like you graduated, and it'll make your parents proud.

Sam Parr

This is the Harvard version of a fake ID of some guy running a scam. Anyway, I wanted to bring that up. I thought these guys are amazing. What do you got? You have the thrill of a shill right now, don't you?

Shaan Puri

Oh, I have something cool I'm doing. Okay, so this is not really a shill; it's just a thrill, to be honest with you. This is actually costing me a lot of money. It is not making me any money. So, I have an idea: wouldn't it be amazing if you like this podcast and enjoy listening to us? Maybe, Sam, you were at a meetup last night. That's cool! People got to meet you. Would anybody like to text with me? Because I got a number that you could text, and if you text me, I'll text you back. What I'm going to do is create a number. So all you gotta do is just text me. You just go 650-334-0790. I think we gotta work on that number, yeah. But if we do that, 650-334-0790, I'm just going to send out texts of stuff that we're doing that's cool. I'm going to share, like, you know, stuff that's on my whiteboard throughout the day—just random stuff that I think is interesting. The main thing I want to do, the reason we had this idea, was after every podcast. You don't know this, but after every podcast, Ben Levy is usually not listening to the recordings. However, he is usually really curious, like, "Oh, you guys had Gary Vee on! What did he say?" But he doesn't want the full hour-long podcast. He's like, "Can you send me a voice note of the 2 or 3 most interesting bits?" So I do that, and I've been doing that for like 3 months now. After every episode, I'm like, "Oh yeah, me and Sam talked about that company that's doing the AI software engineer and how that dude, the founder, actually is like a math genius." I also shared that Myers-Briggs does $20 million a year and how it's kind of bullshit. We did that, and I'll just give him a 2-minute voice note of the thing. He loves it! He's like, "Dude, this needs to be a thing." But we didn't know how to do it. Everything we looked into was like, "You could try to create a giant Telegram group," but not everybody uses Telegram. I was like, "Dude, I just want to do it the way I get it, where you just text me this as a voice note or as a photo."

Sam Parr

That's what I want. What did you use?

Shaan Puri

So we're using this app that will let you do it. It's really expensive, and so I kinda just wanna limit this. Maybe... I don't know exactly what the limit is. I'm thinking just like the first 1,000 people, I'm gonna cut it off. Because this is gonna cost me tens of thousands of dollars a month to do this, but I think it's gonna be great.

Sam Parr

The number is 650-334-0790.

Shaan Puri

That's right! I'll put it in the show description so you can just tap it and send a text. You just have to say "hi." It'll ask you your name, and then it shows me. So when you reply to me, I can see, "Oh, it's Jeff from, you know, Cincinnati," or whatever it is. I can see who it is, and I can reply back. So, I'm going to try this out. I want to try it with 1,000 fans. I'm looking for... don't do it if you're just super casual with it, like this is your first time listening to this. Don't bother. But if you're all about MFM and you've been listening to this for years and you know you're cool, do this!

Sam Parr

That's so funny. This cost me a lot of money, so please only do it if you really care.

Shaan Puri

Not only do like a thousand people do this, but I don't really want more than that to do this because it's quite expensive. But, you know, whatever. Leave it to me to cut it off at a certain point.

Sam Parr

Tell me about your friend walking back. You have on here walking backwards. Isn't speed running just sprinting?

Shaan Puri

no

Sam Parr

So.

Shaan Puri

We did a pod with Gary Vee yesterday, and it's not going to come out for a couple of months. I think it's going to come out when his book comes out or whatever, but he said something very interesting. I don't know if this stood out to you, but you had asked him a great question: "Gary, you started with like a family business, mom and pop... or actually, before that, you were just flipping baseball cards as a teen. Then you joined your family business, and it was like a family shop. And then as you started to grow your brand, now you have all these business owners who listen..."

Sam Parr

To you, but also your brand has grown.

Shaan Puri

So much... You now get to, you know, rub shoulders. Is it "rub shoulders"? I don't know what people rub. You're rubbing... you're rubbing chest to chest with a bunch of body hairs. What I want to know is: have you observed any difference between the guys and gals who end up making it to the highest tier of winning in business—the $1,000,000,000 club, let's say—versus the small business owner, the convenience store owner, or the solopreneur? What do you notice is the biggest difference? He instantly answered something that I thought was not what I would have expected. He goes, "The willingness to walk backwards." I'm like, "What? What do you mean?" He said it, and he didn't fully explain it, but he explained two things. He goes, "Number one, the great ones always reinvent themselves." You know, you can look at Elon Musk. Elon Musk starts out doing Zip2, and then he creates PayPal. He's like this internet entrepreneur. After that, he was willing to walk backwards and go back to zero. He was basically like, "Cool, I'm gonna now try hardware," which is a completely different game. It would have been easier for him to just stay with PayPal, keep growing that, or do another software company, an internet company. But he's willing to walk backwards. So he started a rocket company—something he didn't know anything about at the time. But he's like, "I'm gonna start from zero today. I can't tell you how to build a rocket." Then fast forward to today, he's got self-landing rockets that can go up and come back and land on themselves, right? It's kind of amazing. He was also willing to walk backwards financially, so he invested everything that he made from Zip2 and PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX.

Shaan Puri

Where it would have gone to 0 if those companies had failed, which they almost did. So, the willingness to walk backwards, both in terms of where you're at in the mountain. Can you go back to being a beginner? And the second thing is, can you go back? Are you willing to risk it? Gary told us that he has a safety net. You were like, "I have a safety net," some amount of money that I just don't touch. If everything else goes to 0, I always have that. He's like, "Me too." And you're like, "How much is it?" And he... I don't know. What did you expect that he would say? And what did he say?

Sam Parr

I expected... I mean, he seems pretty wealthy. I expected $10,000 or $20,000. He said $1,000,000, so he said he...

Shaan Puri

$1,000,000

Sam Parr

He said his safety net was **$1,000,000**, which, if I had to guess, would cover his life expenses for less than **6 months**.

Shaan Puri

Right, as for the current lifestyle... yeah, exactly. It's like a safety net. That's a safety floss, my friend. That's a thin thread you're going to land on. Obviously, it's a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but relative to his level of success and wealth, that's a lot less than I would have expected. But he's like, "That's all I need." He said, "That's all I need is safety. I'm willing to roll everything else." I thought that was very fascinating. Then I've seen... so I thought that was cool. Naval has said a very similar thing. He goes, "One of the hardest things to do is you start to climb the mountain." When you're in your twenties, you don't know anything, so you just start going up whatever trail you see. You start going up, and the problem is, let's say your ambition, your dream, is to get to the top of the mountain. But halfway up, you learn that the trail you're on is not the path that gets you there. So what do you do? He's like, "The reality is that most people, now you're 33 years old, you've realized that the path you're going on is not the lifestyle or the path that you want." But it is very hard to say, "I'm going to walk back to the bottom of the mountain and pick a different path." What most people do is they just settle. They say, "I guess I don't need to get to the top. I'll just... this is high enough." They're not saying it because they actually want that; they're saying it because the thought of starting over is so hard mentally. But the great musicians, the great actors, the great entrepreneurs, the great scientists—they reinvent themselves. They go into new fields, new studies, new beginnings, and they start again. I find that pretty inspiring. I've seen that so many times in the people in my life. People who aren't willing to walk backwards aren't willing to go back to being a beginner again. It's really tough.

Sam Parr

I've met multiple people who have started something and sold it, and then went back to college. Dharmesh being one of them. He started HubSpot in college after he had already made it.

Shaan Puri

Say the name, say the name you want to say.

Sam Parr

Say the.

Shaan Puri

Name you're dying to say.

Sam Parr

Brett Adcock did the same thing our friend Sieva did.

Shaan Puri

That's right, and it was hard at the time when your whole friend group is doing one thing, when your own success does [another]. I mean, I've even felt it in the smallest ways. This podcast does pretty well. I know that if I come on here, we're gonna put out some content a lot of people are gonna consume it. The thought of doing TikTok, which: a) I didn't even know how to edit a TikTok b) I'm not like good at that style of content c) I got 0 followers over there But I was like, "Alright, well... I need to be somebody who can go back to the beginning."

Sam Parr

So, TikTok is like your Tesla.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. Now you get it. I'm just like Elon.

Sam Parr

So, what about these guys?

Shaan Puri

Then there's the opposite: the speed runner. I'm going to tell you about a story I saw involving three friends. The story I saw was about the founder of RX.

Sam Parr

Bar speed running is such a better term for sprinting.

Shaan Puri

For running, yeah, so speed running. What is speed running? Speed running is the opposite. Speed running is where you don't go back to that beginner's mind. You don't go back to the bottom of the mountain. You literally hike the same trail again, and now you know that trail so well you can do it so much faster. They do it faster and faster. It's a video gaming term. I don't know if you've seen it, but there are people who don't play the new video games. They don't buy the new edition of whatever, Fortnite or whatever. They play Mario that was released in 1985. They play the first level and they play it over and over and over again until they can flawlessly sprint through the level, hopping on all the Goombas' heads. They can finish the level perfectly in like 32 seconds, and that is like the actual fastest that a human being could do this. They do it. They're called speed runners, and people love to watch them because you're watching absolute mastery over something that has been around for a while. They can just keep replaying until they absolutely master it.

Sam Parr

Like that Jiro guy who just packed sushi for like 50 years and didn't change, right?

Shaan Puri

Right, exactly. He's not trying to make the new stuff. He's like, "Spicy tuna roll."

Sam Parr

Yeah, this is.

Shaan Puri

What we're going to do... So, I've noticed that I have friends who are the beginners and I have friends who are the speed runners. Let me tell you about the speed runners. First, I noticed that the RXBar founder, who built RXBar and ended up selling it for **$600 million**, came out with a new bar. It's called the David Bar. Did you see this?

Sam Parr

No, but that must mean that its non-compete ended right then.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. He sold his company in 2017, and so now it's... I don't know how many years. What year is it? It's been 8 years or something like that. He could start a new bar, so he started this thing called the David Bar. It's just like an epic protein bar that he's doing.

Sam Parr

**Protein.com** looks sick, by the way. It looks awesome!

Shaan Puri

Sick name! The macros are also pretty insane. Like, just look at the macros. Do you see it on there?

Sam Parr

No, 160 calories, 28 grams of protein, sugar-free. That's amazing!

Shaan Puri

Pretty nice.

Sam Parr

I'm in.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm in. So, I want to tell you a couple of things about this before we finish. Actually, I'll finish the speed running. I want to tell you about some RXBAR story. So, anyway, speed running. We have three friends, right? I think you know at least two of the three people. I can't say their names, but let's just call them eCommerce Friend Number 1, 2, and 3. eCommerce Friend Number 1 sold their first eCommerce company for, let's say, $100 million. Almost $500 million. Then they decided they're going to start a new company. Do they go into AI? Do they create a space company, a satellite company? No. They're like, "I'm going to start another eCommerce company in almost the same niche, and I'm going to do it again. I'm going to speed run the same level." Because the first time, I was an idiot. I didn't know what I was doing. I figured it out along the way. Now that I have all this knowledge, why not just do it again? So, they say they're going to start a new company. They are talking to somebody, and they go, "Yeah, I think if I started one today, I could hit $1 million a month in revenue in three months." The other person goes, "No way! No chance, dude. Bullshit! You think that, but that's not true." "Challenge accepted!" Only for that reason, this person starts a new company and then...

Sam Parr

How big are they now?

Shaan Puri

Month 2 hit $1,000,000 a month in revenue. You know, they're a couple of months in and they're going to do probably $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 this month in revenue. They're less than 6 months old.

Sam Parr

Can you... can't you even say the category?

Shaan Puri

Nothing. I can't say a word. I might even get shot just for saying what I said already. So, alright.

Sam Parr

That's the first one. Who's person two?

Shaan Puri

Person 2: E-commerce. Person 2 sold another company, also for 9 figures. Nine figures means $100,000,000 or more. [They're] doing literally the same company again, doing the same company in the same category. Obviously, there's like a... you know, 10% twist, but [it's] back to e-commerce, back to the same category, back to the same playbook.

Sam Parr

How big are they now?

Shaan Puri

Doing phenomenal again! Right off the bat, I don't have all their exact revenue numbers, but I know it's tracking faster than it was the first time. Friend number 3 was friends with person 12. They saw them run the levels and helped them a little bit along the way. Then friend number 3 had an experience that triggered them—a little chip on the shoulder moment. They were invited by a very successful company to come to their annual retreat. They went and were like, "Wow, this is really impressive." They went through the office and then to the annual company conference or something like that, and they thought, "Wow, this is really impressive." But the problem was that the people who invited them had a different approach. There’s a good faith way to invite someone, which is like, "Hey, check this out! You'll really enjoy it. I'd love to show you what we're doing," and then there’s the other way, which is more like, "Hey, you wanna see my car collection?" That’s what was going on. It was more about bragging than sharing. They were incredibly arrogant the whole time. My friend told me, "You know that scene in *The Big Short* where these bankers are talking about how they're giving loans and they don't have to do much of a credit check?"

Sam Parr

They’re able to give strippers like 5 houses.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. The main character is like, "Why are they confessing?" And then his friend goes, "They're not confessing; they're bragging." He responds, "Short this! We need to short mortgage-backed securities." My friend had the same feeling. I walked out and was just like, "Why are they bragging about all this?" He just got turned off. He's like, "Okay, you showed me exactly how big this market is. You showed me exactly how lucrative this is. You showed me how arrogant you are. You showed me how bloated your company is." I will come out with a lean, mean fighting machine doing the same thing. That company gives him $10,000,000+ in profit a year—personally, just $10,000,000 in profit in your bank account every year. And this is in less than 5 years, raised no capital, raised no external capital, all that stuff, right? Amazing, amazing story. When I was talking to this person, I was talking to one of the friends, and I said, "This is amazing, number one, but it's also kind of lame." They were like, "What do you mean?" I said, "You're playing the same level of the game again. Yeah, you're so talented; you could do anything. It's fun to win, and I get that, but it's also fun to grow. I feel like you opted into fun to win with no growth, but you're so talented that you could get the growth and win." That was kind of my argument, but I might also just be... then they're like, "Cool, my broker friend, thank you for the advice." So, I wanted to get your take. Are you a walk-backwards guy, or are you a speed-run guy? Where do you land in the philosophy of this? I'm curious. I asked you for all the listeners; I really want to know because both ways can win. But there's almost like a political opinion on this. I have a political opinion and a belief that walking backwards is the right way to do it in your life, not the speed run at the same level again.

Sam Parr

For years, I thought you owe it—if you have talent, you owe it to the world to be a steward of that talent. You owe it to the rest of us because you're so special to exploit your ability to the max. Now that I'm a little bit older and I have a family, I think, "Fuck everyone! Do what makes you happy." Make your kids proud of you and just whatever you think is exciting and fun—do that. You don't owe anyone anything.

Shaan Puri

So, not explore, exploit. Basically, like you're not... don't wander out.

Sam Parr

Just no. What I think is, if you... so, like for example, I will name drop him again: Brett Adcock. I was like, "Brett, why are you doing all this complicated stuff? You don't have to." And he's like, "I just think this needs to get done and I should do it." I love that attitude. I also love the attitude of, "Well, I'm just gonna do the same thing over and over again because I get joy out of it, and this is awesome, and I just love it." I think that is also a total win. I think both are wins, and I don't think that you owe it to the world to do anything unless you choose to owe it to the world.

Shaan Puri

So, let's say we're not telling other people what they should do. Where do you land on that? Let's say you could have started another newsletter right after The Hustle.

Sam Parr

But it's not like I'm starting something huge, like a world-changing project. I'm just starting new things. I'm doing new things because I have a chip on my shoulder to prove myself in multiple industries or business models. However, I don't want to risk everything, and I'm not willing to do that.

Shaan Puri

Isn't that so funny? Like, prove yourself to who? Who cares? Is there any way?

Sam Parr

To yourself.

Shaan Puri

Sam's successful, but only in one industry. I don't know what to expect until he lands in industry two. Like, nobody has ever even had that thought besides you. Isn't that crazy?

Sam Parr

Oh, you don't know anything about e-commerce, bro. So for me personally, I would say that I don't feel like I owe it to the world to explore. I don't owe it to someone who's less talented. Not that I'm... I mean, I think I'm mildly talented, but when I see someone who's really talented, I'm like, "You owe it to me because you were gifted this."

Shaan Puri

Well, let me ask you this: would you run it back? Let's say you were the RXBAR guy. Would you run it back into another bar company?

Sam Parr

So, I think when I run back newsletters, no, because that bores me. The RXBAR, I think, is pretty dope. I think it was great for the world. So, yeah, if I'm him, I would... and there was actually an article written about him. How he was retired and he was bored, and he had nothing to do. They had a picture of him, but they made this photo for the article really great. It was him by himself on a lawn chair, like in front of his mansion, and he was lonely. They talked about his... you know what I'm talking about? That famous article that was...

Shaan Puri

Captured rock bottom... yeah, recliner in front of a mansion.

Sam Parr

Well, it was like in the middle of the day, and he was just by himself. The whole article was about how he's looking for this next thing. For someone like that, I'm like, "Just do it again, man! That was exciting, that was cool. I think that's awesome." So if I'm David, would I redo it? Yeah, I think I would.

Shaan Puri

But also, I don't know if his name is David. I think his name is Peter. So, by the way, the RXBar story... He's obsessed with CrossFit. Do you know this story or no?

Sam Parr

No, so he's obsessed with CrossFit.

Shaan Puri

He's like, "They don't sell any snacks that are like paleo." At the time, this was 2013. He goes to his dad, and this is the best part. This is the whole reason I only wanted to tell the story, just to drop this one line. He goes to his dad and he's like, "Dad, do you know any investors? I want to start this bar company." His dad literally says, "You need to shut the fuck up and go sell some bars if you want to start a bar company." He told him, "You need to sell a thousand bars." So he's like, "Okay." He talks about how he was in school and he was not very good at it. He says, "When I was failing with this business, I was comfortable. I was used to eating shit. I had been a failure; it was not foreign to me. I'd been a failure already at school." So he thought, "Oh great, I'm bad at that, I'm bad at this." He just kept going. He didn't doubt himself or second-guess it because he was so comfortable in that failure mode that every company starts with. His first business was in high school selling weed, by the way. Alright, let's see the next one. His next thing was, "I thought raising money would solve my problems, but actually it was such a blessing that we didn't raise any money." They sold for $600 million. I don't think they raised any money; they bootstrapped the whole way. He said it was so good because they were forced to focus on the one important thing: selling the bars. That was the only way to continue the business. He said, "We would just sell. I would email, I would call, I would give bars out on consignment. We would do anything to try to sell more bars." In the first nine months, they did $600,000. In the first year, they did $2 million. Year two, $6 million. Year three, I think they did $36 million. Then in year four, they did $161 million. Finally, they sold to Kellogg for $600 million.

Sam Parr

Wow, is that... and then there's an article that's amazing. There's an article making fun of the article I've referenced. It says, "Michigan company pays guys $600,000,000, but he's kind of bored now." This guy is awesome. The article was called, "What Happens When You Become a Millionaire Overnight?"

Shaan Puri

**2nd headline: That's amazing.**

Sam Parr

It was just like a **shitty** radio, a local radio station. Because I guess David, or whoever this guy is, he lives in Chicago. So, like, a local radio station made fun of him. It's pretty funny. That's a good dude. This guy's awesome. We should get him on the pod, right?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Peter, come on the pod and tell the story.

Sam Parr

Alright, I gotta run. That's the episode. Good one!