How I Went From Intern To CEO In 6 Months (My First Startup Gig)

Shaan Puri

And just to give you a sense of this, I'm 24 years old. I'm the youngest person in the company and the newest hire. Six months later, I got named CEO.

Sam Parr

prodigy

Shaan Puri

That's pretty good, right? And the way to do that is, you actually welcome to a new segment that we're calling... it's like a Q and A, but we're not calling it a Q and A. We're calling it **Questionable Advice**.

Sam Parr

Does that mean that someone shouldn't follow the advice, or that we're just answering questions and giving advice?

Shaan Puri

It means whatever people need it to mean. It's people asking questions and us giving advice. The advice is a little bit questionable as well, right? Because we're not telling you what you necessarily should do. We're saying what we've done that works for us. It may or may not work for you; it may or may not be the best way. It's just the only way we know. So today, the question we want to answer is actually different than usual. Normally, we're always talking about starting companies, starting businesses, being a CEO, being an owner, being an investor. But today, it's about what happens if you're not there yet. What happens if you're inside of a big company? How do you stand out inside of a big company? How do you become a superstar employee? How do you become an employee that is just god-tier and that opens up a whole bunch of doors for you inside of a company?

Sam Parr

how many employees have you had like that

Shaan Puri

At every company, there's always one or two individuals who stand out. What I did was basically pluck the things that they do. What are the things I remember that they did that stood out to me? As well as a couple of things I tried after we got acquired and went to Twitch. What are some things that I felt worked? You know, I had to spend two years inside of a bigger company for the first time in my life. I experimented and tried a whole bunch of things. I'm not going to talk about the ones that failed because those were embarrassing or not useful, but I will share the ones that worked.

Sam Parr

Dude, what's crazy is let me add two things—backstories to our perspective on this. You had someone who worked at Monkey Inferno and all the other companies that Monkey Inferno started. Well, you actually had a few interesting people. The first interesting person was **Steve Bartlett**, who's famous for his agency and his podcast, *Diary of a CEO*. I think the second person, who's even more interesting, is **Farhan**, a guy who started a company that's worth tens of billions of dollars. I was shocked that this guy would consider you a coworker. That was an amazing get. The second thing I want to add is that you probably had a few other people, like **Jason Hitchcock**. You had a few other people who are wildly successful. One of the best compliments I've received from you in the last probably 60 days is when you texted me and said, "How on earth did you get **Steph Trong** and I forget who else you named? How on earth did you brainwash them into working for you for as long as they did?" So, we've each had a handful of superstars. I don't ever use the word "work for me" because oftentimes it doesn't... I hate that. It's not that; we work together on something, and I'm only going to be able to have them for a short amount of time.

Shaan Puri

That's principle number 1: **you work with, you don't work for**. It's actually a pretty big mentality shift. Working with somebody is a partnership; it's an agreement, a mutually beneficial thing. On the other hand, "I work for you" implies a dynamic where there is a dominant person and someone who just takes orders and does whatever they have to do based on the task list. You never want to be in the position of "working for." That is essentially being a servant, whereas working with someone is a partnership.

Sam Parr

But it's okay to have to be that for a little while, actually, for someone who's interesting. If, like, Sean Perry doesn't have a specific need to be "it" done and some kid is like, "Dude, I will... I'm competent. I would do exactly what you say," for a little while it's okay to do that. But I agree, in general, you don't want to be that person. Yeah, working *with* is how I consider it to be done correctly.

Shaan Puri

I hired a Chief of Staff just now. This kid basically had a job at, I think, JPMorgan. He was like, "Hey," and he just emailed me, emailed me, emailed me saying he wants to do stuff. He's like, "I can help you with this. I can help you with this. Is there a reason you're not doing this?" Then I'd be like, "No, not really. I should do it." He'd say, "How about I come do it for you?" I was like, "I don't know about you." But he was like, "Here's an example. Here, I'm doing it, blah blah blah." Finally, he did it, and I was like, "Cool, you're gonna quit your job?" He said, "I guess I can go quit right now. If you say I'm in, I'll go quit." I said, "Okay, bet." Then he went and talked to his boss and he quit his job in banking. Now he's my Chief of Staff. Even for him on day one, I told him this: "We work with each other. You don't work for me." I actually want somebody who's going to treat themselves that way because they're going to get way more done. They're going to be more productive. They're going to be a higher caliber person if they think that way. It's a mindset shift.

Sam Parr

did you actually say bet

Shaan Puri

dude he's 22 I gotta speak the language

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 afraid to ask. So, things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, and all these interesting questions. Then, we'll 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, and we had 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. The first subcategory, or the first category I think we should have, involves communication and writing. Do you want to name a few that you have under that category?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay, so I'll do one simple one. **Write an internal newsletter.** People know us as the newsletter guys because you created *The Hustle*, read by millions of people. I created *Milk Road*, which became the biggest crypto newsletter. The newsletter thing isn't just for external audiences. You could have 100,000 subscribers on a newsletter, but if you're inside a company, what you really want is 20 subscribers who are the 20 most interesting people in the company. So, what I did when I got to Twitch was there was a team—like Bezos has something called the S-Team. I don't know if you have Amazon, but it's like his 15 to 20 top lieutenants. Twitch, being owned by Amazon, had its version of this called the T-Team. I got put on the T-Team, which is like 15 of the top people in the company. I go to the first meeting, and it's a busy meeting. They're not really paying attention. They're like, "Oh hey, welcome Sean. We just acquired them. Sean, wanna say hi?" I say hi for over 2 seconds, but really, I don't know any of these people. So, what I did was create a newsletter for all of the T-Team. Anytime I'd meet somebody interesting anywhere in the company, I'd say, "Oh, by the way, I write this thing every week. It only goes out to a select number of people. It's fun; you'll like it. I'm gonna add you to the list." They'd be like, "Okay, cool. I'll be added, whatever." What I would do is copy James Clear's newsletter format. James Clear does something called 3-2-1. I did the 1-2-3 newsletter internally, which was basically like... no, sorry, he does 3-2-1; I did 1-2-3. So, I did one photo from my camera roll, two thoughts—which are just like two tweet-length things that I'm thinking about inside the company—and three links, which are just random things that I've seen.

Sam Parr

what type of photos

Shaan Puri

It would be usually something like, you know, not work-related. So, for example...

Sam Parr

culture building thing like I saw john brought in this funny mug

Shaan Puri

Not work with it at all. It would just be something about my life that's an interesting thing for my life. I'm not a big Instagram guy, but I kind of get the idea. A photo can say a lot about you and what you're interested in. It could kind of brag a little bit, like, "Okay."

Sam Parr

like my kid learned how to ride a bike this weekend

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly! I'm such a good dad. You know, like here's what I'm doing. For example, I did one photo that was this list my niece had made. She's 7, and she wrote her routine: "Ellie's Day." It was eat, play, sleep, eat, play, play, sleep. I was like, somehow the 7-year-old's got it figured out. What are the rest of us doing? Right? That's the life you gotta live. People loved it! They were like, "Oh yeah, that's so true," blah blah blah. So I would just do one photo, two thoughts, three links, and I would send that out every Sunday. I wrote, "Hey, the way I framed it, I go, you know, when I was a startup founder, I used to send this to our investors and board of advisers every Sunday. I'd write an update about where my head's at. Well, you know, old habits die hard. Even though I'm not a startup founder anymore and I'm working at Twitch, I still have this hour every Sunday. I'd like you guys to be my new board of advisers. You guys are my new mentors at this company. So I wanted to include you on this. If you're on this list, it's because I think you're one of the more interesting people in the company that I hope to learn from and get to know over time." That was how I started it. I wrote that thing, and dude, I can't tell you how much juice I got out of this! It took me about 45 minutes to write this every Sunday, but now I'm getting sort of like every single person's attention. They know about me, they learn about me, and they have an opinion about me. Not everybody loved it; I'm sure some people were like, "Whatever, I don't care about this." But it didn't matter. It got forwarded. There was a guy who's the VP at Amazon Prime who would email me and be like, "Dude, I love these Sunday things, man! I wish we got to work together." He wasn't even in the company; it got forwarded to him. He was like, "Dude, these are awesome! You wanna just meet? You sound awesome." That's the whole goal. You want to build a brand internally, and one easy hack to do this is the internal newsletter.

Sam Parr

And there's actually, I think, even more implications of this. One of the greatest people I worked with was **Steph Smith**. She's been on the podcast many times, and she's already doing great things. She is going to go on to do even bigger things. There's this thing with history I read a lot about. Oftentimes, the person who writes the most popular history book or writes history books actually controls what we think of history, even if it's fake. She did that, of course, in a good way where it was very tactical. She was the best Google Sheets maker and a really good Google Slides maker. She would dictate how the Google Sheet for the projects that she ran, and then eventually other projects, looked. That actually dictated what we tracked, which dictated what...

Shaan Puri

we did

Sam Parr

That we do, yeah. But she would make these... I don't know, did I ever sell you the sheet that we had for trends? Did I ever show you that? No? I'll just show it to you sometime. But she made this beautiful sheet. It auto-filled, and I was like, "Oh, thanks for doing this! This is amazing. You should do this for all these other things." But she basically controlled the information flow. So if anyone had a question or wanted to know anything, they had to go to her. She wasn't doing this for bad reasons, but she was basically a very powerful person because of that reason. So, you need to get really good at presenting your work. You need to be really, really loud about it. You have to be great at presenting your work, making presentations, writing stuff, controlling the Google Sheets, and making them look presentable and work well. That is incredibly important. Not enough people think about that.

Shaan Puri

100%... 100%! The winners write history, right? Also, the other thing is, you want to be a maker, not a taker. Most people in companies are just takers of plans. Somebody else writes the plan, somebody else makes the document, somebody else creates the dashboard, and you just sit on the receiving end of it. What I would do, you know, when I was at these companies, is I would always write my own versions of the plans. This was partly for practice because I wanted to be the CEO. Well, then I should get reps doing the things that the CEO is doing. He's writing an annual plan? Cool, I'm going to write one too. What would I say? You write it, and then you compare it to what they wrote. You see things that they did better, and you see there are some things that maybe they missed out on. So being a plan writer, being a proposal writer, being an update writer is going to be the thing that actually sharpens your skills. If you want to be a leader, what most people think is, "I'll wait till I'm promoted, then I'll start doing leader things." Well, that's not really how it works, right? You start doing leader things, and then you get recognized and promoted. So if you want to one day be the leader, you've got to be the plan maker, not the plan taker. You want to write your own version of all the key stuff: the annual plan, the quarterly update, the launch guide, whatever it is for a given project.

Sam Parr

The next thing I would say is, and this is actually challenging for a lot of people. I have a feeling it wasn't challenging for you because you're a very confident person. But it's important to be loud. And when I say loud, I don't mean that you have to talk a lot. I just mean you have to make sure everyone knows the cool things that you're doing. There's a fine line between being selfish, stealing other people's stuff, and taking too much credit, and then also being loud. But it's important to be loud to let everyone know these are all the amazing things that are happening. You have to present that in a really wonderful way where it shows progress. Even if you screwed stuff up, here are the swings we took. I think, oh, I always had this problem. I noticed it particularly among the women who worked for me. I would always have to encourage them. I'd be like, "Dude, you gotta speak up! You gotta be louder about this stuff. This is really awesome!" You are not inserting yourself into the conversations nearly enough. This is really, really talented, amazing work. So I think being loud is incredibly important to standing out within a company.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. You want to work in public. You want to present the things that you're doing, and like you said, it's not all bragging. For example, people would report in a format that's sort of like, "Here's what went well, here's what didn't go well, here's the screw-ups that we had this week, and some of the things we learned from that are what we're going to do to fix it." So, it doesn't have to be just, "Everything I did was great, and I'm the best, and I did everything." It's not that. However, you're totally right that you're really only rewarded for what people know about. If what you're doing can't be measured or isn't seen, it might as well have not even existed inside of a big company. For a lot of people, that's very uncomfortable to do. They wish the world worked differently, where it was purely merit-based and everything was equally visible. It's just not true. Like, if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there, right? You need to be able to highlight what you're up to and carve out 10% of your time to doing that. Let me...

Sam Parr

Tell you one more thing that's a bit unrelated but very controversial. It took me a long time, and I had to go through a lot of tough challenges to learn this: **titles matter**. Did you, I imagine, when you started your early companies—and maybe you still do this now—think, "Dude, I don't care about titles. You can call yourself anything you want; it means nothing to me. This is a flat organization." But titles actually matter for an employee. They matter because of the job that you have there, but also the job that you can get elsewhere.

Shaan Puri

So, give me an example because I would disagree with this. I don't think they matter that much. What's the example you're thinking of where it mattered?

Sam Parr

Okay, so if you want to be called the head of something, that's actually really important for the employee. It's actually scary for the employer because you want to set... if you give someone the title of Head of Marketing, you can't hire someone above them. If you do, there's going to be tension. However, for the employee, if they go and work at a new company, they're going to now say, "Look, I was already Head of Marketing at this company. I need to be CMO or I need to have something of equal seniority." Additionally, within the business, if it's "I'm the Head of [blank], I'm the Head of Marketing," everything that happens within that, I need to have my say or I need to have my finger on the pulse. Titles are actually a really important thing. They seem not important to an entrepreneur because you say things like, "Oh, it doesn't matter; we're all working together." But I actually think they matter for the employee.

Shaan Puri

So, I would say, in my opinion, the logos matter. There's a funny thing that happens where it's like, I bet you're guilty of this too. Let's say you're building Hampton now; it's like a community or membership-based product. If you see, "Oh, this person ran community or memberships at..."

Sam Parr

whatever ypo

Shaan Puri

You know, Soho House or whatever, there's this concept of known versus unknown brands. For some reason, we attribute all of the success of that company to the idea that "this person must be a winner because that company is a winner," even if they had very little to do with the winning of that company. That's the secondary step.

Sam Parr

At the hustle, I had a guy who worked at Facebook. He wanted to join us, and I was like, "Oh, you're in!" So we hired him. It was horrible, but I totally fell victim to that. I've done that... I do that all the time.

Shaan Puri

This happens to me with live streaming. People are like, "Oh, you worked at Twitch! We need somebody. We're doing live streaming, so it'd be amazing to have you on board because of your experience at Twitch." They don't know my experience at Twitch. They don't know what the hell I was doing there. I learned way more about live streaming at my startup. They don't know about that; I was actually building live streaming and working in that space. But if all I had was that unknown startup name, I would have gotten zero credit for being like, you know, the "live streaming expert guy." So I think logos matter a lot. Just getting a winner logo—unfortunately, that stamp is cool. The fact...

Sam Parr

That, than having Harvard or an Ivy League... An Ivy? Oh, if you're good enough to pass that bar, you're good enough.

Shaan Puri

And one is enough. That's the key. I think one problem people can have is they go to local collecting. One is enough. If you got Harvard, awesome! You don't need to also get another MBA from some other place. Or if you have Facebook, you don't have to make the next one Google. You can make the next one a little higher variance because Facebook will carry the other thing. The other thing I'd say is that managers matter. When we got acquired by Twitch, we were getting interviewed by several people. They were supposed to be diligencing the acquisition, but I was also diligencing them. I was like, "Dude, I know that managers matter. People don't quit jobs; they quit managers." If you're stuck under a manager who doesn't have a lot of respect in the organization, you're not even going to get to see a lot of the interesting things that go on. Even if you do stuff, it's going to be buried under however much clout that manager has. So they first tried to put me under somebody, and I was like, "No, no, no, no. I'm not working for that guy." They were like, "What's the problem?" I said, "Nice guy, but I'm not working for him." I asked, "Is there anybody else?" Because, you know, maybe these two people I liked. They clearly were buds with the CEO and had more interesting projects. This guy was over here working on trust and safety or maintenance of something, or like, you know, plumbing under the bridge. I'm not trying to work on all those boring projects or with that guy. That guy has no respect in the organization. I think managers matter. Pick somebody you're going to learn a lot from, but also somebody who has some surface area that you can get things done with. And if you don't like where you're at, try to actively switch. Alright, I have a different one. Wait, hold on, dude.

Sam Parr

When I sold The Hustle to HubSpot, the plan early on was that I would be out of the picture and just do the podcast. But they were like, "Alright, how about being the VP of Marketing and you report to this guy?" I was like, "Yeah, can we give me a lower title? You can make Brad, who is my VP, the VP, and I'll report to him." It was just way better. I was like, "Yeah, let's break it down a notch. I'm not going to be a VP."

Shaan Puri

Alright, now there is something I call the **5% rule**. I learned this from Furkan. When we got acquired by Twitch, we were sitting there and we were supposed to work on project X. At that time, we were a taker; we got acquired to do this. I wasn't very motivated, and I said, "Dude, come on, let's try to do a good job here." I get it, it's not the same as when it was our company, and this might become the next big thing, but you seem totally checked out. He replied, "No, no, no, I'm not checked out with the company." He pulled up the overall company dashboard and said, "Look at this. Best case scenario, this thing that we're building—best case scenario—how much do you think any of these metrics change?" I looked at the key performance indicators (KPIs) on the dashboard and said, "Well, none of these go to page 3. There's subdivision, subdivision, and then this one." He said, "Cool, so let's say we change that one. How much do you think that changes the overall picture? Don't you think that we should at least, if we do a great job, make at least a **5% impact** on the company?" My ego got up, and I said, "Yeah, of course, 5%. That sounds low, actually." He responded, "Yeah, I just think we're capable of doing something that's going to at least move the needle 5%. I feel like if I did something and it didn't even... whatever we did, if we did a good job, if we succeeded, but it couldn't even move the needle 5%, I kinda feel like that was a waste of time." That's when I learned the **5% rule**. We immediately switched to something that would do that, and it was such a good decision. I wouldn't have done this, but in the same way that Naval says you want to place an absurd hourly rate on your time so that you value it, you also need to put a price tag on your projects within a company. You simply will not work on projects that can't move the needle for the company because if not, why am I here? What is the point?

Shaan Puri

And if you carry yourself as somebody who can actually move the needle for the company, it's sort of self-fulfilling. You will become that person who can do that. Simply put, you just raised your standard, and now that's what you do.

Sam Parr

dude you were you you were lucky to have furkan

Shaan Puri

of course

Sam Parr

Furkan, I don't know if he was the co-founder or one of the first hires at AppLovin. AppLovin is an ad tech company with a $15 billion market cap and $1.03 billion market cap. Amazing guy.

Shaan Puri

So, he joined the company before he was even Apple Levin. He was not one of the co-founders; he was just a random engineer that they hired. They had about eight people, and he was like person number nine. Within a couple of months, they were like, "Alright, this guy is the guy!" He stood out like a superstar. They went to him and said, "Hey, I think we kind of built this team wrong. Now that we see you and look at the other eight people we hired before you, who are above you, we realized we did this backwards. Can you fire all these people and rehire a new team of people like you?" He was like, "Okay." So, he did that. He ended up getting a co-founder equity stake in the company, and it eventually went public as a $20 billion company. Years later, the same thing happened when I hired him. I was looking for an Android engineer only. Above him, there was a Director of Engineering, above that was the CTO, and above that was me. Within a couple of months, I realized, "Oh, this guy is a superstar!" You know, calling him an Android engineer was simply the wrong title. I told him, "Look, you're going to end up in a different role. Just give me a month to figure this out." Within a month, we had switched it up, and he ended up becoming CTO. We basically rebuilt the whole team around him.

Sam Parr

He sort of has like a master sensei, that type of wisdom to him. For some reason, whenever he says something, I believe him. I think he is actually right a lot.

Shaan Puri

More importantly, all the engineers you'll ever hire will believe him. This guy is a leader of engineers, which is extremely valuable. Let me give you another principle. Alright, here's a simple one: **fix your Zoom setup**. Just don't look like "dog shit" on every call. In fact, you should look incredible on every call. It doesn't cost that much to do it. You could do it with an iPhone app. There's an iPhone app called **Camo** that you can download.

Sam Parr

that's that's what I'm recording on right now by the way

Shaan Puri

And you could achieve DSLR quality from your iPhone if that's all you have. If you want to get one better, just get a light—like a light off Amazon that's $50. That will set you in the top 1% of people at work in terms of how you look when you show up. Do that, and also buy a podcasting mic. Your mic can be a Blue Yeti microphone; if you need something even better, consider these Shure microphones. Just look good and sound good because, no matter how good your ideas are, if they're wrapped up in a "crap sandwich," it's going to come across poorly. It is the digital equivalent of dressing well, and I think people really underestimate this. I think you made this like a rule at your company, right?

Sam Parr

I mean, I try to make it a rule, and I'll get really tactical. I'm using a Shure, and I'm traveling right now. This is my travel kit: a Shure MV7 USB mic that's $200, an iPhone with a $50 camo subscription, and a $150 Elgato key light. That's my setup when I travel. So if you think this looks good enough, that's what it is.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's going to be better than most people's "up the nose" shot with the crappy audio and, you know, sitting in a closet somewhere. So, try on that.

Sam Parr

Well, FurCon actually is a great example of this, and a few other people really did a good job at this. I think that when you get into a group, whether it's work or any other type of group, oftentimes the most confident person is not usually the smartest person, but the most confident person wins. Confidence is displayed in a way of saying things like, "This is the path we're going to go down. This is what we're going to do. I have a 60% chance of certainty that this is actually going to work. My logic is this, this, and this, but this is the answer. At least, this is the answer for us to try." I think that at a company, when you work with a small company like any company I've run, you work with the CEO or the owner. At a larger company, you know, it'll go up to the owner somehow or the CEO, but it still matters with managers and VPs and stuff like that. The confident person that says, "This is the way," and they dictate the way and explain their reasoning, and they're confident about it, you start believing in them. You still have to be right more than you're wrong, but the most confident people I think typically succeed the most.

Shaan Puri

I agree I'll give you 2 things 1 the thing you just described is like I think it's called the mckinsey pyramid principle are you aware of this no so basically most people get communication wrong inside of a company because they bury the lead so what they'll normally do is they'll say beginning middle end like a story and then the end is the conclusion the end is the takeaway what we should do what's what what what we've decided whatever but busy people inside companies which are most of the leaders inside companies they don't like that format they want the opposite they what they want is to say my recommendation is we should do this for these three reasons number 1 number 2 and number 3 and I believe those three reasons because we have evidence underneath this this we do not have evidence for but we will but it's a reversible decision and this third thing blah blah blah right you stack the the main conclusion first and then you you like a pyramid underneath you support it with your supporting arguments and that's just a simple communication thing to flip another communication thing to flip that I learned was there's if you wanna become a more clear communicator use the what why so what framework emmett from twitch taught me this so basically it's what happened or what's going to happen so you know if it's past looking what happened if it's if it's forward looking what we're gonna do why it happened or why we're or why we're gonna do it and the last one is so what so you know let's just give an example what happened is the the metrics let's say you know revenue is down 10% this month why because last month we did this extra promotion so we kinda knew it would artificially inflate last month's revenue this month is actually normal if you look at the overall trend line nothing to worry about here so what so we're going to continue doing this and actually we're gonna consider doing those extra promotions every other month because they seem to probably provide a boost or whatever right like you just you get the exact idea what why so what just is a generically useful template or outline like you can write that on your paper before you figure out what are you gonna say in this email or how are you gonna write this document just write what why so what and you should be able to bullet.

Shaan Puri

Into that and then that's 80 to 90% of the material is already done at that.

Sam Parr

And I find what helps is if you put a confidence level in there. Because a lot of times, people think, "Well, if you're confident, you're saying that there's a 99% or a 100% chance that whatever you're saying is going to happen." You shouldn't do that. You should say, "Hey, I'm actually..." You should be really conservative and say like, "You know, 65% or 70%." Like, "I'm fairly certain." Or sometimes you're like, "I actually think there's a 30% chance that this works, but if it does work, the outside returns are quite huge. And if it doesn't work, it's reversible in these ways." So, I think you need like a little bit of a... I don't know how you would say it, like an easy landing if you fail.

Shaan Puri

Superstars do three things. **Number one**, they think in probabilities, not certainties. That's what you just described. **The second thing** is that they manage expectations, which is the second thing you just said. You don't need to overpromise and underdeliver. In fact, "underpromise and overdeliver" is a better mindset. I remember one time going into a meeting, and this is something I learned from my dad. We were going to a big partnership pitch meeting, and we thought they would get this huge yield with our technology—this huge result. The result was like 100 times better than their current solution. So I was like, "Oh, slam dunk! Put that on the slide: maybe 100 times better." We go into the meeting, and my dad puts up the slide. I noticed that he changed it, and it only says "three times better." I was like, "Dude, you messed up! What happened? Why'd you do that?" He said, "Did you see their faces? About three times better? They were over the moon! That other stuff is now my dry powder. If I could beat the three times, even better. If I said 100 times and we came in at 80 times better, it would be seen as we did not deliver on what we promised." He's like, "You know what? Forget the exact numbers here. The principle holds true: only sell to the amount you need to sell that gets them to agree to greenlight the thing or take action. But don't overpromise beyond that, even if you think it's capable. Because you'd always rather beat your numbers. Beating your numbers is how you exceed expectations."

Sam Parr

And it makes you trust them more. So here's an example. I'm looking at the deck now. So Google, whoever's listening, you guys can Google "Uber seed deck." In 2008, Uber was just getting started. They were raising only $200,000. On slide 20, they have a slide that says "Potential Outcomes." They say: - **Best case scenario:** Becomes a market leader with over $1,000,000,000 in annual revenue. - **Realistic scenario:** Gets 5% of the top cities and makes around $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 a year in profit. - **Worst case:** Stays a 10-car, 100-client services business and just saves some time for San Francisco-based executives. Versus when you see a slide deck from a pitch and everything is like "up to the right," you're like, "Right, dude, I don't trust you now." Because you are saying something outlandish and you're saying it with a huge high degree of certainty. So yeah, anyway, I think on the confidence thing...

Shaan Puri

On the confidence thing, people think confidence comes from answers. No, confidence comes through asking intelligent questions. Any leader knows that you can tell a person's quality of thinking by the quality of their questions. It always stands out if somebody asks you a question that's off or breaks the frame of how you're thinking about things. That person always stands out in a meeting, even though they didn't deliver some boastful, confident conclusion. An example of this would be: you're in a meeting and it's kind of messy. It looks like options A and B both suck. Instead of just saying, "No, we need to do A," or "No, we need to do B," somebody who asks a different question might say, "What would an easy solution look like here?" or "Hey, what's the simple thing we're missing?" They might just ask this out loud to see if there's an answer because if there is, that might be quite valuable to us right now. Or, they might say, "We've been saying this thing. I just want to say this out loud: is that true? Do we have the data to support that?" Somebody who's questioning assumptions or breaking frames with their questions might say, "We're trying to solve this problem. It feels like we're solving it from scratch. We're not the only ones who have this problem. How do other people solve this? Or how have we solved this in the past? What's worked for us?" Anyone who's asking questions like that, which cut to the answer faster, stands out. That's a different way of showing confidence versus just saying, "Me, me, me. I have the answer."

Sam Parr

Dude, I... the one question that I love that all my employees hate is, they'll give this like 12-month plan or something. I'm like, "Yeah, how do we do this in like 4 weeks?"

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

that question

Shaan Puri

and I know some

Sam Parr

people question

Shaan Puri

Some of the best people frame that question nicely. There’s this guy, Florian, I used to work with. He would always say, "I'm going to say something. You can beat me up if you think this is a terrible idea. Feel free to beat me up, but I just want to say it." Then he would say the thing. It’s such a disarming way of bringing up an idea that might be counter to the flow of the conversation. You’re always like, "Oh, Florian, we're not going to beat you up about this idea," but he would say that. Then there’s this other guy, Dan, who is now the CEO of Twitch. He would do this thing in meetings where he’d slow everybody down. He’d say, "You know, one thing we could say is A, B, and C." He’d lay out an argument real quick. Then he would say, "It’s one thing to say this; it’s another thing if we were going to say D, E, and F." He would frame it so slowly for everybody. Usually, it’s the person who can kind of synthesize the arguments. They would say, "What I'm hearing you say is A, B, and C. I just want to make sure that it’s A, B, and C and not actually D, E, and F." The person who would bring that clarity to the meeting was always the essential person. They’re the person who everybody thinks is on the way out because they actually help you figure out the solution when it felt like everybody was just talking in circles.

Sam Parr

what you wanna do 1 or 2 or 3 more

Shaan Puri

yeah okay here's a easy one let's say you're inside of a company today but you wanna go start a company someday you need to start creating your own version of the midas list which is who are the 5 most interesting people inside this company the people that you would wanna recruit later on what I did was I I just I said at the beginning I said while I'm here at this job here's what I want out of this by the time I leave these doors I wanna have the following I said and I wrote down a list 1 of them was like I wanna learn 1 or 2 things about leading a company that I don't know today because these people have managed bigger teams and do it better than I I'm sure that that I do it so I wanna at least have 1 or 2 key things that I could take away as a manager number 2 I wanna have the respect of the ceo I want him to be able to say dude if you leave here and you tell me you're gonna go start a company I want him to wanna write the first check I think that would just be a a signal that I did well when I was here would emmett do that for you yeah he actually slacked me one time he was like hey it was out of the blue he's he basically slacked me that exact same thing he was like I wish we're gonna I wish we'd be able to keep you forever I don't think that's gonna happen you know if you ever do decide to do something I'd love to you know you know I'd love to back you in that and I was like oh man what a compliment thank you that's actually I showed him actually I was like that was on my list of things I said I wanted out of this experience so that's a cool full circle moment the third one is you I I said I wanna walk out of here with 5 people 5 more people on my talent rolodex that I could reach out to if I ever needed to hire and and that's what I did I was like oh this girl in data science massively underrated like she's the real one who delivers the work she's kinda junior here but man she would be somebody I would poach right away or this guy over here on the sales team god that guy was smooth if I ever have a thing for sales I know who to who to contact and actually right now with one of our new companies I'm trying to fill a role and then those are the people I went to first to be like hey I have no idea if you're available but I made this list before of who are the 5 people I would love to work with someday and you were on it and hey that day is here you know what what are you up to now and let's let's chat and so that's I think another good thing if you ever wanna start a company like just pay attention to who are the hitters here because your talent rolodex is what kind of becomes a limiting factor as you try to build new companies right like I'm sure you have people that you know you'd love to speed dial and and bring on board to a new thing and I think you did this with hampton right like I noticed there's some people there that were at the hustle because that's the experience you had

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think that you actually asked, "What was it?" You said something like, "A really good question to ask yourself is if you're starting your... like, let's say your thing's only going okay. If you were starting it again, which you would have to ask yourself, would I hire the same people and do it the same way?" For many cases, you say no. I would change this, this, and this. Then your advice to them was like, "Well, just do that right now."

Shaan Puri

do that yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, but the other answer is, okay, well, when you do it again, now you have your list. I think, you know, in the mafia, they use the phrase, and then "Succession" kind of stole the phrase, where they say, "Oh, he's a serious person." A serious person means you call them hitters. In the mafia, the mob, like I read all these books on it, they say, "He's serious. He's serious." Yeah, that guy's serious. And so they'll say, "He's not a serious person. You don't want to mess with that person." So you want to find serious people.

Shaan Puri

I have two other little ones, real fast. One is finding a "paper cut" problem. I've noticed that a lot of people who do well in companies do this in the first two weeks when they join. They find something that's just been an annoyance that nobody's ever fixed or nobody's gotten to because it's not that important. It's never the most important thing, and they just go clean that up voluntarily. I call this the "paper cut problem." It's like, what's the thing that's just been giving us paper cuts? It's kind of annoying, but you're not bleeding out, you're not dying, and you don't have to go to the hospital. If somebody fixed it, you'd be like, "Dude, thank you for doing that!" It would actually stand out a lot. I know several people that did this. They go to a company and immediately identify, "Oh, here's some annoyance that two people have referenced. I bet this annoys everybody." They think, "Actually, I think if I just spent one Saturday working on this, I could fix it." And they did that, and it just boosted their stock so much. When I was in seventh...

Sam Parr

I had a job at a bakery where I would clean the floors and wash dishes. There was a corner shelf where we had to put these dry dishes, but the shelf was broken. We hired another janitor to work with me, and I remember I had worked there for about 8 months, and this shelf was always broken. It was a pain in the ass. However, within the first week, this guy fixed that shelf, and I immediately thought, "That's the way to do things."

Shaan Puri

that's the way to do things

Sam Parr

you did it right you did it right

Shaan Puri

And by the way, you get rewarded for doing the things you didn't have to do. Right? Like if you just do your job, that's called your job. You do not get extra recognition, reward, or any kind of bonus points for doing your job. See, by definition, you have to find something that is beyond your job or do your job beyond what was asked if you really want to stand out. It's a very simple, obvious principle, but take that and make it actionable by looking for it. Right? As soon as you start looking for it, you'll see it. It's a thing that the guy who's been there for eight months has been ignoring. He's just accepted it; it's become a blind spot for him. But for a new person, if you're noticing, you'll see it right away. And you just go fix that thing, and you get so much more.

Sam Parr

this guy's head janitor now I mean it worked out

Shaan Puri

It worked out, but honestly, if you're going to be a janitor, be the head janitor. Be the best janitor, the best goddamn janitor anybody's ever seen. I have one practical tip and then one fun one. The practical one is about the A+ problem. At any given time in any company, there is the A+ problem. It is the thing that keeps the executive team up at night; they're worried about it. What I did was find the A+ problem and I would only work on that. I would just focus on that. You know, I would do my main job, kind of like 70% is good, or 50% is good, or sometimes 0% is good. I would just put it on pause because honestly, it didn't even matter relative to the A+ problem. I took a little more risk than most people because I didn't care if I ever got fired. It was like, "Thank you, please fire me. Invest my shares; that would be a dream." But by the way...

Sam Parr

We had a friend who is at a company, and he said, "There were layoffs this week at our company, and sadly, I was not impacted."

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So finally, April's probably going to work on it. I remember, I think I've told this story before. I was at a company, and basically a competitor was attacking them. They were stealing their top customer, basically. I figured, well, that's probably the A+ problem. It's probably the thing everybody's thinking about. So I just did some analysis, wrote up a two-page document, and I sent it to the CEO. I was like, "Hey, you know, I have no idea who's working on this, but I was curious, so I dug in, and here's what I found." It immediately got text-introduced into a group chat. It's like, "Hey, Sean's in on this now." I think that that's really what you want, right? At least you want to be working on the interesting thing because that's what the highest caliber people are doing. It's where the highest impact is. You might as well, you only have so many hours in the day, so you might as well work on the higher impact stuff with the most interesting, high-caliber people. That's how you get better.

Sam Parr

what's the last fun one

Shaan Puri

The last fun one is you gotta create a brand for yourself. So, like, you have a little of the story, right? There are all these moments inside companies where it's like you do introductions or you're at some team off-site. You know, you have two choices: you're either gonna blend in or you're gonna stand out. The best way to stand out is to be yourself. But the way to be yourself is to just remove the filter.

Sam Parr

your brand

Shaan Puri

so I think there's been a couple

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Like when I was at Monkey Inferno, just to give you a sense of this, right? I'm 24 years old. I'm the youngest person in the company and the newest hire. Six months later, I got named CEO.

Sam Parr

prodigy

Shaan Puri

That's pretty good, right? The way to do that is to actually make an impact, but you also have to build some sort of brand for yourself. So mine was that I was going to be sort of like the action guy. Basically, I would take massive action on everything. Whatever the thing was, I would say, "Alright, cool, I'm going to take action on it immediately." I would do the stuff that nobody else wanted to do. For example, if we had to do something and we didn't know if people would like it, I would say, "Cool, give me the prototype. I'm going to go talk to some people." I would go to the mall, talk to people, get feedback, and come back with written feedback. It was just the stuff that nobody else really wanted to do. This built the idea that I was going to consistently take action. I was going to have a higher bias for action than anybody else. I would talk about that. I remember this one guy did an introduction, and he said something that stood out to me. He stood up and said, "I don't know anything about art or politics. Hell, I don't even know where the remote is in my house." But he added, "The one thing I know is how to structure deals, and today I'm going to tell you about how to structure deals." I thought, "Wow, what a fantastic intro!" As much as your brand is going to be that you're good at X, Y, and Z, you could also be honest about how bad you are or how little you know about other things, and almost poke fun at yourself. So I would tell people, "Look, I have the least experience of anybody in this room. That's obvious. I have never worked on any of this stuff before. I don't know how to code, I don't know how to design, but I'm going to make myself useful." The way I'm going to do that is by helping you get your product into people's hands, getting feedback quickly, and iterating from there. So I'm going to go crazy on that. Alright, what you guys are going to get in the next six weeks is me going crazy on that. Sound good? And they were like, "Great!"

Sam Parr

It's like Warren Buffett says: "Look for partners who have a high IQ, who are ethical, and have a lot of energy." I did the same thing where I was like, "Well, I actually don't know if I'm high IQ."

Shaan Puri

2 out of 3 ain't bad

Sam Parr

Yeah, I don't know. I definitely am ethical, and I have a **ton** of energy. My wheels are spinning fast. If you guys just want to put me in the right direction, I'll go ahead, and the car will run. It'll run quickly, and I'll get you what you need. I have the exact same brand as you.

Shaan Puri

And when we got acquired, I just thought, "Hey, I'm a startup guy inside this big company." I've only ever worked in startups; I don't know anything about a big company. Honestly, I'm probably going to make some mistakes that are obvious things you should do at a big company. But the thing I hope to bring to the table is that I'm just going to keep working the way I know how as an entrepreneur. I'm just going to do that here, and you guys can tell me what parts of that are working for you or what are not. That's part of the brand. But the other part is to stand out a little bit. I remember sitting in an off-site where everyone was asked to share how things were going. Person 1 said this boring thing about their work and immediately went into work mode. They were like, "Here's what I'm doing, here's the problem I'm having, here's what I'm doing, here's the problem I'm having, I have this employee who's doing this." Everybody was just kind of complaining and telling a very bland story. I decided that when it was my turn, I didn't know what was going to come out of my mouth, but it wasn't going to be that. So, I told a story that was more funny, poking fun at myself about a mistake I had made recently. Instead of blaming my team or whatever, I shared where my head was at. They weren't saying, "Give us a team update." They were just saying, "Let's all be present to share what's on our mind and how you're feeling right now." So, I did that, and it stood out. During the break, everybody was like, "Dude, I love that story." The lesson there is really to take a bit of a risk and not take yourself too seriously inside companies. I think there's a tendency to try to button up and blend in, but I would say that's not what the best people do. I don't think that's how the best behave.

Sam Parr

We have this guy at Hampton named Doug. Doug is a very stereotypical engineer; he's very black and white. Because of that, he's done a very good job of just being honest constantly. So if someone's trying to bullshit me, I'll just be like, "What's Doug think? Doug, what do you think?" And he'll just say, "That's stupid." Or he won't say it that way; he'll be like, "I don't think that's the right way. I think this is the right way for these reasons." Or he'll say, "I don't exactly understand branding, but I think that a lot of people like this, this, this, and this, and they like it for these reasons. Therefore, that way is or is not the right way." I just always want to know, "What's Doug think about this?" He's very analytical and he's very honest. Because he's, you know, like a normal engineer, he doesn't exactly understand what's hurting my feelings or what isn't hurting my feelings, and I love that about him. I love that. I'd always want Dougs in my life—people who just don't bullshit me. They'll say something like, "That's stupid," or "That's not stupid," and I appreciate that. That's his brand.

Shaan Puri

So those are our tips on how to become, I don't know, a superstar inside of a company. How to stand out and make a name for yourself within a company.

Sam Parr

And if you're listening on iTunes or Spotify, go to YouTube and subscribe because we're about to cross 400,000 subscribers. Also, comment with any other questions that you have for the new segment, "Questionable Advice." If we get any good questions, we'll address them.

Shaan Puri

but like you said the youtube that's how my dad says it too that's cool go to

Sam Parr

The YouTube... yeah, when I look at, when I hold my phone to take a picture, I use two hands as well.

Shaan Puri

I'm always going to do this. Yesterday, I know I'm posting. I'm trying to post a TikTok a day, and I love doing it because...

Sam Parr

saw what you said yeah that was great

Shaan Puri

Every time I post a TikTok, I feel like I reverse my age by one month. I'm just getting younger, just by TikTok. If you want to be young, you do as the young people do.

Sam Parr

You gotta, like, squint your eyes. You're gonna hold your phone with two hands and look down on it. That's how it feels right now.

Shaan Puri

turn the damn thing off

Sam Parr

all right that's the pod