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My First Million

I chose to be broke for a year

09 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 4.957 Shaan Puri

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

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Chapter 2: Why did Shaan Puri choose to be broke for a year?

4.977 - 5.177 Unknown

Yeah.

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5.397 - 23.799 Shaan Puri

Mediocrity is the real risk. Yeah, yeah. For any person with high potential, because it'll sap you, sap your will, sap your time, sap your resources, slap your energy, sap your belief in yourself. This is Sean Puri. 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.

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24.079 - 30.368 Shaan Puri

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.

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Chapter 3: What fears hold people back from pursuing their goals?

31.389 - 37.058 Shaan Puri

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.

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Chapter 4: How can you determine what you truly want in life?

37.299 - 58.31 Shaan Puri

Because you get really good at it, you do get the results. 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 fourth or fifth most important variable. I think the very first one is I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to.

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59.336 - 77.329 Shaan Puri

I put my all in it like no day is all. 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, created his own podcast.

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77.369 - 89.64 Shaan Puri

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.

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Chapter 5: What does it mean to be 'down' and why is it important?

89.66 - 108.209 Shaan Puri

And the reason why is because It's a lot of information about before we ever made any money. So, you know, how I was thinking when I was in my early twenties, 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 going to help a lot of people, specifically people who are, you know, you haven't quite made it yet.

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108.569 - 109.271 Shaan Puri

Maybe you're young.

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Chapter 6: Why did Shaan sell his company to Twitch and Amazon?

109.331 - 118.125 Shaan Puri

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 an episode where I got interviewed by my former intern, Walter.

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118.713 - 125.14 Walter

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

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Chapter 7: What lesson can we learn from Elon Musk about time management?

125.601 - 146.644 Shaan Puri

Yeah, strategically broke. That's what I called it. I think most people just call it unemployed. But why not? I put a luxury brand on it. So basically what happened is I graduated from college and I get a great job. I got a job paying me $120,000 a year to go work in a boring industry that I knew nothing about, didn't really care about. Mm-hmm.

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147.113 - 152.42 Shaan Puri

Kind of stumbled into a job that I thought was too good of money to pass up.

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152.541 - 152.721 Unknown

Yeah.

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153.462 - 158.289 Shaan Puri

So I go and I work for this guy. And sure enough, I'm like pretty bored.

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Chapter 8: How does location impact your opportunities for success?

158.309 - 169.164 Shaan Puri

Actually, I'm like, oh, you know what? Like I can do this job, but I'm fairly bored. And it was a fork in the road because before I took that job, me and my friends had had this business idea.

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169.456 - 188.98 Shaan Puri

The idea was to create a sushi restaurant chain called Sabi Sushi. It was supposed to be the Chipotle of sushi. So the way you have Subway for sandwiches and Chipotle for burritos, the idea was we were going to do that for sushi. Okay. And we win this business plan competition. So on one hand, we get $25,000 of prize money that the three of us are going to live on.

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190.482 - 213.79 Shaan Puri

Or I could take this job for $120,000. So I take the job. Within a month, I'm like, this is lame. I just looked at my life and I was like, I made a lame choice. The good thing about me is I don't really make great decisions, but I make great reversals of decisions. Once I realize that I've made the wrong decision, I'm not one to linger in it. Right.

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213.922 - 229.747 Shaan Puri

Mostly because I just can't like tolerate it anymore. Like if I was dating somebody, I remember I was dating this girl and realized like, all right, she ain't the one. I like just called her and broke up with her. Oh, you know, 10 minutes later after thinking about it, I was like, what am I supposed to do? If I go hang out with her now, this will be unbearable.

229.787 - 249.789 Shaan Puri

Now that I know what, I can't unsee what I've seen. I can't unknow what I know. And so I'm pretty quick to cut things off when they're not working. So I... I quit my job after a month and a half. I tell him, Hey, I'm going to go work on my sushi restaurant. He's like, but, uh, okay. So I fly back and I meet up with my friends. And so we got 25 grand, three people.

249.929 - 269.158 Shaan Puri

So we're basically $8,000 each for a year for to live for a year. And, um, I was like, I don't know that. I don't know how much, I don't even know how much life costs. I'm a college kid, right? When you're in college, everything's just provided for you, right? Like you swipe this thing and you get meals. Yeah. Things just like happen. Uh, I like my parents paid for the, for the dorm or something.

269.639 - 286.606 Shaan Puri

You pay up front. I just didn't understand. Like, you don't know what it's like to pay rent and bills and laundry and all that stuff. So I, um, I like how I threw laundry in there. It's like a dollar, dollar 25 a week or something. Um, so I don't really know even how much 8,000 is, but I know it's low, right? Cause all of my friends got good jobs and nobody's making eight grand a year.

287.287 - 308.188 Shaan Puri

So I just said, okay, I'm either going to every day wake up and feel worried and shitty about money. Or I'm going to commit and say, I'm going to try to spend this year strategically broke. So instead of being, I looked at my friends, like investment bankers, and they were money rich, time poor. And that's what I was when I had took that job. I was money rich, time poor.

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