My First Million
00:29:25 · Sam Parr, Bill Perkins, Shaan Puri
[00:29:25] S2: That's been, you know, people ask us, we've done almost a thousand of these episodes, people like, what are some of the commonalities of people who win? And I always say, well, the first thing is like, there's like, for every rule that you read about in business, like I can point to many examples of people who have broken that rules and are equally successful, and success is defined as, you know, they are where they want to be. But the other thing is that there's this like internal locus control amongst winners, which is like basically I can only control me, how I feel, how I react to this situation. It's all up to me. Those are probably one of the only two things that are true that we've noticed amongst successful people. But that attitude that you just described is one of the common ones. [00:30:05] S0: Yeah. Essentially, it's maximum accountability. Right? It's just like you are ultimately accountable. [00:30:13] S1: Do you you know... You're a poker guy. You know Daniel Negreanu? [00:30:16] S2: Yes. [00:30:17] S1: So Daniel came on the podcast and obviously I wanted to nerd out about poker, but we asked him one other question. We're like, what was an important turning point in your life? I thought he'd say some tournament win. And he was like, dude, I went to this self help seminar. [00:30:31] S0: You went to Choice? Yeah. I went before him. [00:30:34] S1: Oh, were? Okay. Maybe you were the guy you told me. [00:30:35] S0: Was like five or six classes after me.
00:30:35 · Bill Perkins, Shaan Puri
[00:30:35] S0: Was like five or six classes after me. [00:30:38] S1: He was like, Someone I really respect had done it. So I said, All right, fine. I'll go do it. He talked about this maximum accountability principle where you had to write a story of your life for something that went wrong, in some way you were wronged or something that went wrong in your life. And then rewrite the story instead of in the victim mindset, but with a 100% ownership of your part of that whole thing. And he goes, it was the most freeing moment of my life. And I... And it really stood out to me. I think of a... I think a lot of people would benefit if they just rewrote one story in their life with... From the point of view of maximum accountability. Did you do that same exercise? [00:31:10] S0: Yeah. I've done that and many more in terms of accountability and not being in a victim mindset. And it's a natural thing. I mean, we've taught it. It's in the culture. Your ego doesn't want it to be wrong, So, know, getting the maximum accountability aspect going is a constant practice, right? Like you never get to perfection. You just, you constantly have to practice that.
00:31:10 · Bill Perkins, Sam Parr
[00:31:10] S0: Yeah. I've done that and many more in terms of accountability and not being in a victim mindset. And it's a natural thing. I mean, we've taught it. It's in the culture. Your ego doesn't want it to be wrong, So, know, getting the maximum accountability aspect going is a constant practice, right? Like you never get to perfection. You just, you constantly have to practice that. [00:31:35] S2: Can I ask about living this life with a family? Because you guys, you were talking about like the white picket fence and stuff. And what's funny is I never wanted any of that. Then I had kids and I actually had to like retrain where I'm like, I actually do like being home at five and not going out at night. And I don't particularly love traveling that that much because I wanna be with my family. Like, wanted a more of a a boring life. And I actually think a lot of, like, young men in America probably need a little bit of... Where it's like, it's kinda nice to work forty hours a week and also have a family that you're with all the time versus partying and and going out. How do you live this pretty dope life when you have young kids? I think your kids are more grown now. But what were you doing when your kids were in school and trying to like live this life? Were you trying to be fulfilled?
00:32:22 · Bill Perkins
[00:32:22] S0: Yeah. And just trying to balance it. I mean, I have 11 old now. My kids are 22 and 19, and they definitely wanna come. Like, I I had a big party. My daughter's like, can I come? Can I come? I'm like, yeah. You can come, but you you can't you can't stay. I was like, look. You guys have 6th Street and all the partying. Was like, why can't us adults hang out and get our swerve off? Like, why you gotta come? But she wants to hang out. She's like, dad, you're cool. I wanna hang out now. Whereas before, I was like, dad, you're so strange. Like, why are you so weird? Like, why do you do this? Like, why do people know you? And now we hang out and we have a good time. And, you know, traveling, I take my kids traveling. We try and arrange a life. I like, listen. There's something very seductive about a bucolic life that I want later. You know, I ultimately want to be a farmer. And, you know, I've thought about how do I get everybody into life that I want to live and, you know, balance for me is like the pendulum, like how do you manage the pendulum swings because your life is not perfectly balanced for each time period. Right? It swings into I'm grinding really hard to I'm vacationing really hard. I'm partying really hard. I'm relaxing really hard. I'm I'm, you know, I'm doing spiritual work very hard. Right? It's a swing. Right? It's never the pie is cut evenly each day or even each month or even each decade. Right? Like, this might be the decade of, you know, learning all this shit, and then I'm a doctor, and then it's a decade of practicing. It's a matter of like getting buy in and enrolling other people in the vision and making sure it works. You know, there's people who are, you know, military parents, and their kids travel all around with them, and that's their life, and they make the best part of that life. There's some people that that's just who they are, they don't have an obligation to the United States government, they travel around with their kids and they want to live somewhere. My wife and I were like, hey, we want to live in Japan for a little bit, so we're going to pack up our little boy and and go to Japan. It's really about just making it the best ride. There's infinite rides. I don't think one's necessarily better than the other. It's really just a preference, and then designing the life that you want and and and and trying it out.
00:34:24 · Bill Perkins, Shaan Puri
You know? I I don't... You know, there's nothing wrong with people that just like, hey. I just want a nine to five. This is a job. I'm gonna join the rotary club, you know, get a nicer car, go on vacation two weeks a year, and then die. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not for me. [00:34:40] S1: Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Can you explain this idea of time buckets, not bucket lists?
00:35:12 · Bill Perkins
[00:35:12] S0: Yeah. The idea of, like, a lot of people think life is like, oh, I have a bucket list and, you know, like the movie, you know, a month before I'm gonna die, I'm gonna run around, do all these things, and I'm gonna be happy. Right? My life is complete. And the the main thing is is that each period of your life, like, don't have one death, you have many deaths. Right? There was the college you that died. There was a single you that died. There was you with young kids that died, you know, first job, first startup, etcetera. Right? And and and they're largely in age brackets, right, like for most people. And so each period in your life, certain experiences are optimal, depending on who you are, the arc of your life, in that time period and don't transfer well to the next time period, or they don't transfer at all. And so it's like, hey, if your life... Satisfaction... If a satisfactory life for you was like, I wanna go skiing in my life 500 times, well, the distribution of those ski trips are probably gonna come earlier. Right? And if it's skiing with friends, it's probably earlier. Right? Because they get married, they have life or whatever. And if you just kind of like, oh, have a bucket list ski 500 times, and those activities get shifted later into your life, well, you've kind of fucked it up, right? Like, because you're really not gonna get those 500 ski trips, right? And so life is like Tetris. You kind of have to get the order right in order to get the high score and fulfillment. And so... But what that requires you having kind of a a understanding of what you want out of life and thinking about like, okay, what I want out life with respect to my kids and my family and my job and my career, my own leisure, my own hedonistic activities, my own altruist activities, etcetera. You're not gonna know it all because life is discovery. Right? You don't know what you want, you discover what you want. But having kinda like a time bucket of each period of your life, maybe three to five year brackets and say, okay, what experiences, what choices do I wanna make in this period or in this period, and this period? And when you do that, you'll go, oh my gosh, I have this here, and it should be here, and this here, and it should be there. Right?