I chose to be broke for a year

The biggest risk you have is spending your life trying to do a really good job at the wrong thing. Yeah. Mediocrity is the real—

Yeah.

Yeah. For any person with high potential, because it'll sap you, sap your will, sap your time, sap your resources, sap your energy, sap your belief in yourself.

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

I know this because I spent 10 years doing things only for like, ooh, if this worked, it'd be amazing. The work has to be the win. Yeah. The win can't be some future hypothetical payoff because you enjoy it. You do it all the time because you do it all the time. You get really good at it because you get really good at it. You do get the results, right? That's the flywheel.

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

I think hard work is overrated. It's probably maybe the 4th or 5th most important variable. Mm-hmm. You know, I think the very first one is I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. All right, today's a special episode because I'm the guest of today's episode. Normally we have guests on and we ask them all about their life, their philosophies, how they work, how they did it, how they made it. But this time I'm the guest because my former intern, Walter, uh, created his own podcast. He used to work for me when he was, I don't know, 18, 19, 20 years old. He was in college. And he's gone on to create a cool podcast and he asked me to come on. And so I went on, I'm one of the first episodes of his thing and I watched it and I was like, this is actually a really good interview. And the reason why is because it's a lot of information about before we ever made any money. So, um, you know, how I was thinking when I was in my early 20s, the ups, the downs, the indecisions, the uncertainty of do I go this way or this way and how I thought about it. I think it's gonna help a lot of people, specifically people who are, you know, you haven't quite made it yet. Maybe you're young, maybe you just haven't, it hasn't all clicked for you yet. I think there's some very useful philosophies in here, so I hope you enjoy. This is an episode where I got interviewed by my former intern, Walter.

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

Yeah, we can put one up there. Uh, yeah, it's like, like we didn't even have garbage Garbage bag.

Hammered a garbage bag onto the wall, like, with a nail, like, just hanging there.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, we would just drink out of this Gatorade cooler that we had gotten for free from some gym. Um, you know, and then to make some side money, I would, like, coach basketball at this, like, school for autistic children, and I would tutor kids and, uh, tutor college students nearby in stats. And I was like, cool, I'm learning and then teaching them, and I'm making, you know, $25, $30 an hour. But I only— I calculated, like, the minimum amount I need to earn in order to have max freedom, which, like, now that I look back, that was actually a very smart thing to do, even though I was very dumb at the time. And Dharmesh, who came on our podcast, the billionaire founder of HubSpot, he said the same thing about his first business. He goes, I did all this random stuff in my first business not knowing anything. Then in my second business, I thought, well, now I know the proper ways to do things. And then he, like, screwed up that second business. He's like, the first business was more successful than the second. And he realized, he goes, just because I was ignorant doesn't mean I was wrong, right? So just because you don't know what you're doing, you're making it up as you go, doesn't mean you're always— doesn't mean you're wrong on all of them, right? And you might actually got a bunch of things right. And I think one thing I got right was realizing that money was some sort of tool for freedom. And instead of trying to just stack as many dollars in the bank account when you're young, the better thing to do is optimize for freedom, optimize for learning, optimize for adventure and fun., and just calculate the minimum amount of money you need to be able to do that. And I'll still do that, like, with my companies. I'll calculate the minimum amount of funding we need just to get to that next, like, get to that 1,000 customers who love us. Or, you know, there's a lot of things I could be doing right now to make more money, but I don't do them because I'm not trying to optimize for that. I'm saying, how— what's the amount I need where I feel really good, but I get the most time I can have with my kids and on my projects and working out and doing fun stuff I like to do? Yeah. And I think that principle has like really stuck with me. I've talked before about the way that I know how to make money, about how to build a money-making skill, about how to leverage your time and energy. And the team at HubSpot actually went through the video where I explained all that and turned it into a free downloadable cheat sheet on my 4 rules of how to make money. Now, this is not, you know, get rich quick advice. It's just core principles, foundational principles about building wealth, things that I wish I knew when I was, you know, just getting started.. And so if you want to download it, it's in the description below. It's totally free. You can go get it. Thanks to the folks at HubSpot for doing the research, making this document, and making it available to all you guys. All right, back to this episode.

I love that so much. I think you mentioned a point where, like, you reverse decisions very easily. I think that's a very hard thing to do. I think most people consider, like, that there are two-way doors, and I think there actually aren't that many because of how hard most people, myself included, have it to actually reverse that decision. So figuring that out early on.

What do you mean by that? Like, what's—

Yeah.

So have you found it hard to reverse decisions?

Yeah, definitely. I think so. Like, you know, if you commit to something or—

Give me an example.

So I think, you know, moving, moving to a place, right? Like, so I lived in San Francisco for a month a year ago. I know that I want to move out of Europe. I even know it now deep down inside. But because I've got family— or these are the reasons I tell myself, right? Because I've got family at home, my friends are there. You know, it's hard to get a visa, things like this that keep me sort of from, from moving. And now that I've got a place in the Netherlands, you know, I'm renting, like, you know, it's all of these reasons to not go that are really just excuses. Yeah. So I think maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, but I think it's harder to reverse those decisions. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it is. I just wonder why, like, you know, in your case, I don't think you're—

it's a therapy session.

Yeah. It doesn't seem like you're trying to reverse a decision. It seems like you have Yeah, you've, you've, I think you probably have made the decision where you want to be. Um, but you probably have just like some fears holding you back. Like, I don't know what the fears are, but like maybe it's fear of leaving family behind or how you're going to afford to live in a really expensive city or not know anybody. I don't know what it is, but it's almost always fear, right? Like if you just ask why often enough, you'll end up with like, I'm afraid. Um, we try not to say we're afraid, but we are, right? Adults have all these code words for fear, like stress. Like you're allowed to, you're allowed to say I'm stressed out. Yeah. Or that's really stressful, right? But if you say I'm afraid, it's like, what are you doing? You're growing your baby. What's going on? But of course, stress is just the code word for fear, right? What are you stressed out about? Things going wrong, things not happening. Okay, then what? Yeah, then people won't like me. What? Then what? You're just afraid. You're afraid of rejection. You're afraid of embarrassment. You're afraid of humiliation. You're afraid of failure. It's one of those things. It's always underneath it.. And so I think that fear is what holds people back more so than anything else. I think that's also why people don't reverse decisions, right? Because they're afraid of looking stupid or looking stupid, or like, what if I quit this job and the other thing's not better? Right? What if I break up with this girl but there's nobody else, or the next person is not better? Or then I'm alone and that's going to suck, and I don't want to feel that. I'd rather live in pain than go towards an unknown. Take a known pain versus an unknown. I think people get trapped up in those too much. I'm happy that that's not one of my weaknesses. I got my own, but that's not one of them for me, at least.

No, I love that.

Yeah.

I think Tim Ferriss has said people would rather live in discomfort than uncertainty, which I think is exactly what you just described.

And I'm the opposite, by the way. There might be others, which is just like, discomfort sucks. Like, oh no, if this sucks, take me out of pain. Yeah. I'm not saying I'm tougher. I'm saying I'm actually less tough. Like, I have less tolerance for pain. And so then I just make a decision. All right, maybe the uncertainty is less pain and I go there.

But you're just honest about it, and that's hard. I think what's really interesting as well is with you moving to San Francisco, and this is something the more I talk to people like yourself who I think have made it because, you know, you set out in life just like, what do I want out of life? And you're sort of just going for that. Like, I love that. I think the benefit of moving to a place like San Francisco is the proximity you get with other people and the blueprints you're seeing. Like, I think that's a big reason I want to do this, right? Like, selfishly, the reason I want to talk to you is like, you seem to have figured out in the way you want to, and I just want to steal and learn from you. And I think you've mentioned that proximity is something that can do that for you, right? It can give you these blueprints.

Yeah.

So talk to me a little about that. And I also want to hear you talk about a story about one of your classmates. You said this before, whose father, you know, had a great job but, you know, never saw his daughter.

Yeah.

Tell me about like how How can we learn from other people? And, you know, under the idea of figuring out what you want to do in life, you know, like, what do you actually— what do you notice? Like, what do you get energy from? Like, how do you pick up on that?

Not many startups.

Yeah, I think you touched on something else as well as where, you know, if you want to go to San Francisco, like, you know, your boss telling you like, that's where all the serious people are who are interested in startups, who actually want to do it. And you telling yourself like, or asking yourself that question, like, am I serious about this? Yeah. Like, I think that's very underrated.

Yeah. You're only committing with those 50 people.

Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book but then tearing out 4/5 of the pages. Point is, you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com.

Pull from examples from how you did this, right? So I think proximity is one thing where if you're just seeing more lifestyles or activities that people are doing in and around the subject that you find interesting, you'll be able to follow more blueprints and sort of figure out what you're actually going to do 100 times over. But in someone's like daily regular life, like what things can people do or what things did you do to sort of figure out how can I lean more into my inner nerd?

Well, one thing is other people are very good at spotting it before you are. I remember Naval, who's like one of my favorite people to learn from, follow, whatever. He says a great story. He's like, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a physicist. I thought like in the apex of, like, awesome people. Physicists were on top. Physicists, scientists, inventors. And he's like, that's what I'm going to be. And he was telling everybody he's going to be that. And his mom was like, nah, you're going to be a business person. He's like, what are you talking about? Like, business is cool, but, like, I want to be a physicist. She's like, no, you're naturally a business guy. And he's like, what? I never talked about business. Like, I never told you that. What do you mean? And she goes, well, You're always talking about it.

you never say, I want to be a business guy, but you're always thinking about business. He's like, when we used to walk by that restaurant, you would always point out things that they're doing that they should be doing to make more revenue or be more profitable, or how they should change the menu. You're always doing that. You're always trying to figure out how to fix a business or how to improve a business. It comes very naturally to you. And she's like, does physics come naturally to you? He's like, no. He's like, it's brutal. I want it because I I think they're so cool. Yeah, but he wasn't naturally as inclined. And then when he— so he realized that he's like, leaned into it. He leaned into business more. So I've seen this many, many times where, um, other people— if you just talk to other people who know you well, you know, you can ask them a couple of questions that I think are good at sussing this out. One such question is, um, what's my superpower? Like, what do you see that comes easy to me, naturally to me, that is harder for other people? Is there anything like that that you've seen? Podcasting? Yeah. So like, you know, telling stories, podcasting, whatever it is. Another thing that you might do is you might say, where is it that you might ask yourself, where do I spend time doing things that for me feel fun but to others would feel like a grind? So it's play to you, work to others. For me, it's like I'll be up at 11, 12 at night and I'll be Google searching and randomly reading. Like today I was literally before we got here, I was reading the annual report from the state of Nevada. About the, the, the revenues and expenses of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip for 2024 compared to 2023. Yeah.

Like, who's doing that for fun?

Yeah, nobody's doing that for fun. I was doing it for fun. I was really curious. I was like, are we in a recession? I wonder. There's like this thing where the Vegas strippers know first. Do they know first? Well, I should probably be able to check Vegas revenues last year versus this year, and that might be a leading indicator. Oh, wow, this is cool. This is a PDF. Download PDF. Searching through the things, making my notes. For what, dude? Nobody asked me the question. The teacher didn't call on me. This wasn't my project, my assigned assignment. But I'd always been like that. I have always been doing things like that. And before, I didn't really notice that that was a thing. I didn't really see how that could be special or useful. Just seemed like, I don't know, I just go on these random little business rabbit hole, these little detours. But then when I did the podcast, and the podcast is us shooting the shit about business, Suddenly I had this, like, giant library in my head of little factoids and stories and nuggets and this knowledge that was very, very useful on the podcast. So I found a fit for it later. And so I think other people are good mirrors. I think looking at what you do in your 5 to 9, like, you have your 9 to 5, that's your job. What's your 5 to 9? What do you do? And specifically in your 5 to 9, what do you do beyond what's rational? Right.

Normal person.

It's got to either look like a work or a grind to other people, or it's got to look like, oh, like, yeah, I like video games too, but you're like practicing your aim on this aim simulation for 4 hours a day. Like, that's different. That's, you know, now you're in this other territory. Or like, you're not just like, you know, for example, I used to play this game NBA 2K. You ever play 2K?

Of course.

I never played the— I never actually played the games. I just went to the franchise mode and I started simulating. I'm the GM and I'm scouting players and I'm building this franchise and like, I was literally like, since I was a kid, 6th grade, 5th grade, I was doing this. And it's like, well, guess what that is? That's being a manager. Like, I was literally like practicing being a CEO. It's like I'm like upping the concessions prices and I'm scouting these like the guys. I'm making these trades and I'm— I got more joy out of the management of the franchise than playing the game. Yeah. So like, you know, you start to notice these oddities about yourself, but instead of pointing at them or hiding them or trying to like fix them because they're broken, saying, oh, interesting, like What superpower does that give me? Where does that let me thrive? What— in what scenario would this be extremely useful or valuable? Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Well, it turns out the one you're in right now.

I'll give you another example. My wife. Yeah. My wife's kind of OCD and artsy-craftsy. Yeah. Since a kid, loved arts and crafts. Also OCD. Drives me nuts. Like, that wire is out and crooked. Like, she needs to— she can't do this podcast. She has to get up and go fix that wire, right? So she, um, she started, like, for herself, she started, like, kind of like as a just like a boredom girly thing to do, like bedazzling her phone when she was in high school or whatever. And she— but she got really good at it, right? She, like, leaned in. She didn't, like, shy away from it. She got curious about it. She started buying Swarovski crystals. She started trying to arrange them perfectly. She started seeing if other people do this, how she can make a better design. Suddenly celebrities started hitting her up when she's in college. She's a freshman in college. The celebrities are hitting her up. Asking for them to make custom things for their parties in Hollywood and whatever. And she's making thousands of dollars a month as a college student.

That wasn't an option if you had asked people, right?

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

That's an amazing story. I love that so much. I think that kind of goes back to what you mentioned earlier on in terms of just leaning into your own curiosities. And I think, I think you said this somewhere where the only voice that actually matters is the one inside your head. And talk to me a little bit about how do you block that out when, you know, you're going through life, you know, you have this sushi restaurant, you're picking things up, you know, you're working at this job in Australia before that. How do you pick things up as you're going along when you're super unclear on that aspect? And, you know, how do you sort of focus on that inner, inner voice and really be true to yourself?

Like, I think that takes time. Yeah. I don't think most people are at least took me time. I don't think most people could do that right away. Yeah. You got to ask yourself a question. Who's the most important voice in my life? Is it my mom? Is it my teachers? Is it my boss? Is it society? Is it the media? Whose voice do I care about? Who's number one? And in reality, the voice that is most shaping you is the little voice in your head, the one nobody else can hear. It is the director of your life's movie. It's the one that tells you where to stand, what to say, what to do next, how to react in this situation. That's what the director does. And you have a little director in your, in your head right now. And so once you realize that, you say, okay, I want to, like, I want Spielberg up there, right? Like, I want Scorsese, I want Tarantino. Like, I want, I want this to be a great movie.

Yeah.

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

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

Um, definitely quitting to go do a sushi restaurant thing. I remember that was—

were your parents not on board with that? Or when it was— I mean, all your friends are getting your high-paying jobs.

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

You want their own entertainment.

Like, at some point, at some point it's better off than standing.

And he was totally right. That was like a really wise thing for him to do.

Yeah, that's a beautiful phrase. I think most people probably, I think, I think actually in life the scariest thing is standing there and then realizing like 80, 90 years later, like, shit, I didn't move at all.

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

Yeah. So enjoyed the sand. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type, it's got a janky interface, it's built like a 2002 tax form, and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I gotta visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. Uh, after asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is 2 clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team. All from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies, and so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Callum A, and Evolve Bank Trust, members FDIC.

When you, when you were selling your company, when you, when you were selling Bevo, was that like, you know, when you— that was sort of a little bit of a change, not a big change in direction, right? How did you go about in that process? I imagine that would be quite hard. You know, you're, you're making a pretty big decision to try and sell this company. You know, you maybe you realize you don't want to be doing this specific project anymore. Sort of when you're working on a project and you're starting to feel like, okay, it's time to change direction to get to that path. Like, what was that process like for you and what sort of things happened to make you come to that realization?

I think that's, you know, I think Steve Jobs famously asked himself every day, like, looks himself in the mirror and says, do I want to— this is my last day, would I still be doing? And if there's enough days in a row where he said no, like, he'd make a change. It's sort of similar to the question Suli asked you, like, what, you know, what are you doing?

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

Those are tweaks.

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

Yeah. That's, that's, that sort of brings me to this thing where, you know, being okay or having this place in life, right, where you've got this business where it's okay, it's kind of like not where you'd want it to be, but it's, it's not the end of the world. Like, that's potentially more dangerous than anything else. Like, I talked to Ben Wilson about this. You know, you'd rather flame out than burn out. You would rather go all in, go for the thing you really want to do than burning out. How did you— you know, you've talked a little bit about mediocrity is the real— yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, it's again, to your point, like inertia, like, you know, usually the thing that is mediocre, you're in it just because you're doing it.

Yeah. Or put differently, some— I forgot who said this, some, whatever, someone said, uh, for anybody who's sufficiently smart, the biggest cost is opportunity cost. Right. So once you know that, that your biggest cost is not your taxes or your expenses, it's your opportunity cost. Um, then you got to think about that. Yeah.

Yeah. When you're when you're choosing to do a project now, you know, you're optimizing it for a lot of, a lot more different things than earlier on. What sort of trade-offs, to your point, like opportunity cost, like what do you look at now?

And yeah, I have a very simple rule now. Am I doing this for a result or am I doing this because I like doing it? So I no longer will do something for an X, for some future payoff. I'm not saying I don't want to make money in the future or that those things can't happen. It's that Am I doing it? Am I suffering today for some better future? Or am I doing today where the reward is doing— reward is doing the thing, right? The work has to be the win. Yeah. The win can't be some future, future hypothetical payoff of some work that I wouldn't have otherwise wanted to do. Yeah. Because if you do it that way, then you win-win, right? You for sure win by doing it. And you might win double, triple, 10x from some result.. But if you do it the other way where you're just doing things opportunistically, and I know this because I spent 10 years doing things only for like, ooh, if this worked, it'd be amazing. But then when it doesn't work, which most of the time things don't work, it's like, damn, that's kind of a— not a waste totally, but like—

but it feels like that.

I wasn't, you know, I was basically not enjoying myself, uh, to the extent that I could have been. Again, the opportunity cost, the opportunity cost. I could have just been working on something. That the work itself was super rewarding. The act of doing it was, was the reward and not the future payoff.

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

Yeah, I think I'd be further ahead.

Yeah, that's awesome. Just because you would have figured out—

you never know, right? It's impossible to say. You don't have the— you can't run the A/B test on life.

But maybe for good. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

There's no flywheel.

There's no flywheel.

No.

I'm a believer in that flywheel. And I think if I just started doing that when I was— I did it at points of time. Not like I did it none. I didn't do it zero. But if I had been all in on that, I think it would have been, yeah, further ahead. Yeah.

You've written a blog about not working hard. Like, that's actually— working hard is overrated. Do you think applying that principle back— I know we can't A/B test life, like, just looking back, do you think if you had applied that principle, you would have found those things quicker? Like the things that were— you push—

Yeah, that's awesome.

I do think, by the way, the one thing hard work is good at is it's good at developing skill, right? And it's good about being serious. So like when you're in your 20s, it's easy to throw hours at the problem. You don't have good judgment, so whatever, spend more time.

Yeah.

As you have less time because you get older, you have kids, you have less energy, whatever, your judgment's got to make up for your lack of time that you're willing to throw at the problem now. So I think early on, it's not like I would have just done nothing. That's not what I mean by hard work is overrated. I would have just been really intentional about project selection, about people selection, who I work with. And then lastly, I would work hard and I'd focus on the skill building part of working hard. Because most projects fail, but the skills stick with you, right? Like, my sushi thing failed, but randomly while we were doing that, we were blogging and making, like, video content. Like, I learned— I learned After Effects, learned iMovie, I learned Photoshop, just enough to be dangerous. I'm not great at it, but those served me really well when I went to Silicon Valley and I could actually, like, mock things up myself, send it to the designer. Yeah, like, the skills stuck with me. The project had left me behind, right? So I think skill building is really important.

And also in that case, you can apply the skills to things that you would have been more naturally interested in doing anyway, right? Like I think, you know, you mentioned those skills you've built up.

I didn't pick a better project, right? I still got that skill.

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

Totally, totally. And like, you know, I think so. I think that's the— I forgot somebody said this. I think it was— who's the— said the skill master? Derek Sivers said this. He goes, I think skills are the most valuable thing because they can't be inherited, they can't be bought, they can't be taken away from you. Yeah, it can only be earned. And, um, Seinfeld kind of says the same thing, basically. Like, skill is really the thing worth having. Yeah, of all the things, like, the skill is the thing.

Like, what could you choose?

You want— yeah, like, what could you choose? You can choose, like, more resources, you could choose whatever, you could choose achievements, but, like, skill is the thing. It's the mastery of a thing is, is the thing you really want. Yeah, it's the key that unlocks infinite number of doors.

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

Do you think project selection as a skill is also something that builds over time?

If you're intentional about it, yeah, like, of course, um, most people don't, right? Most, like, I don't think most people really even know the word project selection, to be honest. Like, how many times have you even said that to yourself? Yeah, probably zero. Um, people think about industries, they think about careers, but like, just the atomic unit is a project. That's like the thing you're going to do. And I think picking projects and picking partners both have this huge, like, change in like your outcome. And very few people know anything about how to pick good partners. Very few people know anything about how to pick good projects. But you can of course do those well. Those are skills and pay attention to and learn if you're intentional about it. Yeah.

I want to talk about two things that are really interesting. One, well, interesting to me. I hope they're interesting. On the project selection side of things, I— you once called me when I went to go work with you again instead of taking a sales job to go help you guys with clips for MFM and things like that. And it didn't end up panning out, but you know, the decision I had at the time was like, hey, go, go do this sales job, you know, earn like $12,000 a month, which, you know, I'm like 22, I'm 21. I'm like, that's an insane amount of money, but I don't need that money. And you said something to me that I still remember to this day. I was, I was outside because I'm 8, 9 hours ahead and it was dark. And, uh, you said, you know, do you just want to be another sales guy? And that I heard that, I was like, no, you know, like, I don't want to be that.

And spitting on you.

Yeah, it's like, how dare you?

I spit on you through Slack.

Yeah, I said I felt it. I felt it. You know, because of that, like, I don't know if we'd ever even be here now because of that decision. Right. So there's so many things downstream of that project selection that I think are so important. How, how do you lean?

Was that right, by the way? Did that work out for you?

Yeah, dude, I'm happy with that. I'm loving it. Like, you know, I still don't know exactly where I'm going, but like, I'm in such a good spot.

Your gut tells you I've moved in the right direction. 100%. Doesn't mean it has to have played out yet.

Right.

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

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

That was the mistake you made. I offered you a role. Yeah. I was like, you should come work with me. You're going to learn a lot more. You're going to do cool shit. Yeah. You went on your own, which is always good for skill building. You'd probably, I would say, built a wider set of skills, right? Because when you're on your own, you got to do everything right. But you didn't opt into a network, right? This is the other thing I've been learning a lot. Not to hijack your question. No, it's great. We just did a podcast with James Krieger. Do you know him? Yeah.

Network Effect. Maybe explain to—

Right.

Like the actual network value to compound. And so I think that that's a mistake that I probably made early on that I didn't really recognize. And as I've talked to James, I recognize that more and more how valuable that is.

Yeah. I mean, that to our early conversation is probably a mistake I'm making now, even just being in Europe still. Brazil. No offense to Europe, but, you know, it is much worse. Um, let's, let's stay on this a little bit, actually, before going into to find, like, co-founders and things like that, because that's, like, a little bit more—

by the way, we should say one thing. Yeah, you can win anywhere, right? You can win on your own, you can win in any industry, you can win in the restaurant industry, you can win it— anytime we're knocking these, it's not because that thing is so fatally flawed. It's just you want to make things easier, not harder. You want to increase your probabilities of success, not decrease them. Yeah, that's what we mean. Whether one is better or worse. Yeah. Uh, it's generally just like either it's more fun, it's easier, or it increases your probability. Of course, there's always outliers and exceptions, and you could be one of them, and more power to you.

But it's those trade-offs, right? And it's to your point earlier, where, like, if you're surrounded by 5 people who go to the gym, chances are you're going to get ripped.

Increase your odds. It's not a guarantee. Right. And you could have, of course, done it surrounded by other people.

Yeah.

Why not increase your odds? Why not make things easier on yourself? There's no bonus points for doing everything the hard way, for making your odds worse. You know, like, why?

Good for you.

But yeah, what's the point? Yeah.

What other things would being in a network and just in general, like, I think being in a network as well and self-selecting for that, it's like a function where, you know, if, if you're— even a small bad example, maybe like if there's a subreddit for a specific basketball team and you join that and you're very active there, you're self-selecting for a community. Sort of the same thing, um, on Twitter, or, you know, what content you're listening to and following, as well as which city you go to. What, what are some like other examples of that outside of like moving proximity-wise, like, that you can, they can self-select to?

I mean, you just named it your info diet, right? I know a lot of people that aren't on Twitter. You opted out of that network, or they're not on TikTok, whatever. These are networks you're opting into. Within them, there's subnetworks, right? Subclusters. So your info diet, right? Like, the same way, you know, there's these economic studies, right? Your income will end up being roughly the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most. Well, It's the same thing for ideas or thoughts, right? Like you're, you're going to average in, you're going to dollar cost average into the thoughts of that, that, that network that you're in. So whether it's the content you consume, if you consume the same content as everybody else, you're probably going to have the same thoughts as everybody else. If you hang out with the same people, you're going to end up with the same people, right? Like if you want to make some changes or you want to have differentiation of some kind, you should probably differentiate your info diet. Um, you should probably differentiate, you know, the people you hang out with or your, what you do with your free time. Like those are the simplest, you know, those are the things that are upstream of a bunch of the results people want downstream.

Right. This is the network selection.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's— yeah, that's a tough one.

Why is that?

I feel like that's back to your point earlier of like what your role— like you're going in this direction, inertia, you know, you're only doing it because you're doing it. Like if you're really honest with yourself, like which networks do you want to select into? And I think probably You know, if you stop— bad example, maybe, right? You stop listening to TikTok, you stop watching TikTok, right? And everyone you know is telling you like, hey Sean, I just saw this new TikTok. Like, oh, I don't watch TikTok, man. I don't know about that. Like, I think that plays into lots of other aspects of your life where you have to be very intentional about it because otherwise you're going to get overwhelmed and sort of not make that decision. So I think it plays into your life more in more ways than one might think. Like even your info diet.

Yeah, yeah, true. I mean, I'm and look, if you love the thing, do it. Great. But it's like, if you don't, or you're just like, you're open-minded, maybe you like reading books more, right? Maybe you like doing certain other things, right? Like maybe you just pick up a different hobby that opts you into a different network. Yeah. Right. Like, I know a lot of people that do jiu-jitsu, and jiu-jitsu, it's exercise, but it's different than the elliptical. You're going to work out a different way. You're going to develop a skill. You're going to be part of a community. You're going to build your toughness. You're going to learn the mental resilience. You're going to learn about leverage. You're going to learn so many things. Out of that same hour of exercise. Yeah. Like, so some people will try that because it's going to get you a different result than maybe, you know, that hour on the elliptical at, you know, level 7 in yourself.

Just do you and yourself.

Yeah. Yes. You and yourself. Yeah.

Let's, let's talk about the final thing in terms of network. You've mentioned, you know, project selection we've talked about is very important, but also people selection and partner selection. You've often talked about Warren Buffett's sort of framework for it, and you've got a good one for it as well in terms of choosing who to work with and potentially even just doing projects with, right? Like, so if you've got Company A and B that are the exact same, but they've got different people working there, like, how do you figure out what types of people you want to be around? Talk to me about, you know, your selection framework for that.

You've talked about when you met Ben, you know, your ultimate partner right now, where he had a SaaS that was doing, I think, $1 million a year in profit. He had an objectively great position and he sort of took— he was down enough to go on this random side project with you. Is there anything you can tell, you know, talk to us about Ben and sort of bring those three aspects you just mentioned to life?

Yeah, Ben's the most down, right? Like he's— you said it perfectly. He had a business is doing $1 million a year in profit at the time. And I was like, hey, you want to spend your time doing like this random unknown thing with me that I think, I think is going to be pretty fun. I think it could be interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I'm down. All right. Okay, cool. I don't really know exactly what it is. I have this rough idea. You down with that? Yeah, I'm down. Like, I'm down to not— I don't need it all figured out. Right. Okay, cool. We ended up doing this thing that for 90 days was like really intense. Like, this is full on. I'm down, right? And he just carried on. Then we switched. We did the next thing, the next thing. And we've done probably 5 or 6 different things together, maybe more, 7 at this point. Every single one of them has been super fun. Every one of them has worked. It's been a pleasure to work with them. And that's a big reason why.

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

Is it going well?

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

That's amazing. I think I want to wrap it up by saying there's— I recently reread Paul Graham's How to Do Great Work. And he says, you know, it's similar to his phrasing for finding startup ideas. Like, don't, don't look for it. Just do things you're naturally interested in and, you know, do something where at the end of it you'd say, that was pretty cool. I did that right. I think that's a great way to choose your misogi as well.

Like, you know, I think he says like, let interestingness be the filter. Yes. So is it interesting to you? And if it's interesting to you, then it's worth doing. You'll, you'll be excited while you're doing it. It'll be, it'll be worth doing just because it was interesting.

Yeah.

But also interestingness. Like, what's interesting to you is not interesting universally, right? So he talks about, like, it's also a good strategy because nobody can copy your taste profile. So if it's interesting to you, that's not going to be interesting to everybody. So it's already going to self-select out a bunch of other— filter out a bunch of other people. And secondly, if it's interesting to you, you're going to do it all the time. Same, same, that flywheel I talked about. You're going to do it all the time.

Rule of 100.

Therefore, therefore you're going to get good at it. When you're good at it, you're going to get a good result. So it's like, That's why he says let that be the guide. Yeah. Because that will lead you to the most interesting place you can. And if the first one doesn't work, doesn't matter. You'll have so much fun doing it. You'll just keep doing that. It'll eventually land in a good spot.

Yeah. In and of itself, it'll still be fun, right?

Yeah.

I love it. I think that's it. I had a couple of hot fire ones, but I think honestly, like, leaving it on this, such a high note. I think this— if I were to listen to this, I'm going to keep listening to this on repeat. I think people are going to be jacked up and, you know, ready to change their life after hearing that.

All right, let's do it.

Awesome. All right. Thanks, Sean. Appreciate it, man.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back.

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