From the Vault: These Are the Frameworks Every Entrepreneur Should Learn

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, everyone, we have a quick ad for HubSpot, but I want to let you know, I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool, which is what this ad is for. HubSpot sales platform, it makes it just easier to sell stuff, to do it faster, to look at your pipeline, to see what sales are gonna happen. Just prospect to cold outreach and get more customers faster and easier. Plus, it's easy to learn and free to start. So you guys can check it out, hubspot.com/sales.

**Shaan Puri** (0:25)
And the day you understand this framework is the day you basically know marketing.
If you're considering going to business school to learn marketing, let me save you two years and about $200,000. It's just one diagram.

**Sam Parr** (0:47)
Hey guys, this is producer Ben.
Sam has been in Europe, Shaan has been in Hawaii. And so we are going into the vaults this week for an episode.
We dipped way back into the vaults this is from a couple of years ago. And it is Shaan laying out some of his favorite frameworks, favorite ways to think about entrepreneurship and how to start and run a business. And I thought it was really valuable. And because it's one of our early, early episodes, it has very few downloads compared to what we get now. So over 90% of you haven't listened to this before. So we thought it'd be good to reshare it. So check it out, Shaan's favorite frameworks.

**Shaan Puri** (1:24)
Hey guys, Shaan here. Gonna try something different for this episode. This is gonna be 10 of my favorite frameworks. As you guys know, I am the framework Don, the framework King, the Prince of Frameworks and really just a nerd about frameworks. And so over the years, I've tried to take all the lessons I learned building businesses and turn them into little nuggets that I can remember. Little principles, philosophies or frameworks, whatever you wanna call it. And so I put 10 together and I recorded myself reading it. This is like when Lucky Charms released the Marshmallows Only version of the serial. It's just the best stuff. There's four techniques, four frameworks and the four best philosophies. That's 12 total. I hope you enjoy. Your to-do list is killing you. I used lists for years and I love writing the list, but as soon as I put the pen down, anxiety would start. And the longer my list went, it would just start collecting dust. It would just serve as a guilt trip for all the stuff that I didn't do yet. So even though lists feel good in the moment, they're not the best way to be productive.
One of the problems with lists is that they bury the headline. In your day, there's probably one or two things that are way more important than everything else. If you just did those things alone, your day would be a success. It's that old 80-20 rule.
I call that my one big thing, or OBT for short.
Instead of making a list, I ask myself, what's the one highest impact thing I could do today? Take note, my friend, I said impact, not difficulty. Don't confuse the two. And sometimes the high-impact thing is just a 15-minute phone call, or it's that one conversation I've really been avoiding with my key person. That's it. And if I do my OBT, the rest of the day, anything else I do is just gravy on top. I have zero guilt once I've done my OBT. It's a simple daily productivity technique that has made me way more productive and way less stressed. And by the way, those two things go together.
And I know what you're saying. You're gonna say, but what about all those things that I need to do? Okay, well, even with an OBT, you sometimes have to write stuff down so you don't lose track of it. But not on a list. Instead, use what I call the power box. I think other people have different names for this, but I invented it for myself, and so I named it for myself.
A power box is a, imagine like an X and Y axis. This is a little bit easier if you just look at the diagram, but I'll try to describe it. On the Y axis, you have impact. High impact on the top, low impact on the bottom. And from left to right, you have not urgent to urgent. And anytime I think of a task, like let's say, I need to get a haircut. Low impact, but might be getting urgent, depending on the situation. Or if it's, I need to find a tax accountant because I gotta do my taxes in a month. That's high impact and it's high urgency.