My $0 to $1 Million Guide - How I Would Start Over in 2024

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All right, today, I'm going to answer the question that I get the most often, which is that if I was starting over again from scratch and I had no money in my bank account, I didn't have any special skills or network or people that are audience to use, how would I do it? How would I make myself successful? How would I make my first million if I was starting over from scratch again? I'm 25 years old and it's 2024 What would I do today?
And I'm going to answer this question. I will give you an answer to this question. I'm worked up, as you can see, because I got an answer to this question.
I want to give you an observation about this question because the question is actually, I think we would all agree, it's a money question. It's a success question. How would you make it? That's really what people want to know, but they always add this, if you were 21 years old again, if you were 25 years old again, they add this age component to it, which is sort of funny because I don't care if you're 21, you're 31, you're 41 If you're broke, you're broke. If you're not successful, you're not successful. It doesn't matter what age you are, it is your day one. You can't go back in time. So really it doesn't matter how old you are. The reason I think people say if you were 21 again or 25 again is because they're like, if all the possibilities were on the table, if you had all the hope in the world again at that age, and the reality is one thing you should take away from this is you should always have that 21 year old mindset. You should always have the belief that my whole world is in front of me, that my best days are ahead of me, that anything is possible, and that I can reinvent myself right now.
I could today on the spot reinvent myself and to decide I'm a different guy now. I do a different thing. I do things a different way. That old guy, he's gone. He's the old me. And so I think the first thing to do is to free yourself of the time constraint, the age constraint, which only adds pressure and doubt and anxiety to the equation, which none of that helps you be successful. I remember when I was 29 years old and I had this like existential crisis because I was like, oh, I thought I was going to be Forbes 30 under 30 And I thought I'd be, you know, I have a million dollars in my bank account right now. And I didn't have any of those things. And then I was like, all right, well, guess that didn't happen. Moving on. And I just continued on. And by 30, all of a sudden I sold my company and had a whole bunch of breakthroughs. And a big part of that was just getting the weight off my shoulders of feeling like I'm behind or playing catch up. Instead, I wanted to be playing offense.
And so my answer to this question is it comes from a place of offense. So let's take the age out. Let's think of it like it's karate. We're white belts again. If we started as a white belt and we wanna make our way up to a black belt in the game of success, what would we do?
Hey, let's take a quick second to talk about our sponsor HubSpot. You know it, we know it. Next year is creeping up quick. And if you want to win inside your niche in 2024, you need tech that puts you in the pilot seat. You can collaborate on every inch of the customer journey inside HubSpot's new sales hub with a comprehensive prospecting workspace and powerful sales analytics tools. Your data is connected across your teams. So your leads never slip through the cracks. HubSpot's sales hub lets you accelerate every facet of your sales operation with precision with over 1400 integrations and tons of ways to mix in new features. So finish your Q4 strong and gear up for the next year with HubSpot sales hub. Learn more at hubspot.com/sales. All right, let's get back to the podcast.
So let's break this down into smaller chunks. The best metaphor I have or our best framework I've heard for my career was that everybody goes through three phases in their career. And the three phases are number one, learn, earn and legacy. So this learn earn legacy framework that your career will go into those chapters. The beginning of your career is generally the learn period. This is when you got internships or you're just starting your first business, you're making a bunch of mistakes, or you go work at a bigger company just to see what it's like and you're getting your experience. That's the learn phase of your career. What's most important in the learn phase of your career is what you optimize for. So one job offers you an extra $15,000, the other job offers you $15,000 less. Which job should you take? Most people take the one that pays them the extra 15K a year, which is like 9K after taxes or something like that. And even though the other job would have been a far better learning experience for them, that they were gonna get way more hands-on experience working with way smarter people on more interesting projects, which in the long run would have paid off in a much bigger way. So why is it important to know you're in the learn phase? Because you know what to prioritize. Your key KPI is how much learning per month am I doing? How much am I growing per month as a person? I'm building me as a product right now. That's the learn phase. Earn phase is now I've built myself as a product, I have the skills, I know what to do, I understand the market, and I can actually go and I can reap what I've sowed. So I can actually extract some value. Now I have cash in the bank, which lets me get to the ultimate point of financial freedom, where your money works for money and you work for you. That's where your investments generate enough income, you don't need to be doing any job. So that way you can just work on whatever you're most interested in, whatever you're passionate about, whatever you love. And so the earn phase comes next. And then there's the legacy phase, which is where you see a lot of people get to when they want to go to Mars, and then they want to buy this newspaper company to keep, or start a foundation, or go back and teach at their college or whatever it is. Legacy is how you give back, it's how you remember for doing something that's beyond yourself contributing. I think this framework is a good framework for a career. And I think it is the natural evolution of a successful career. That's the first thing I would keep in mind. So those first 10 years, and I say 10 years, because 10 years sounds like a long time, but what's the phrase? We overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we can do in 10 So true. The first 10 years, you are in the learn phase. You are actually just dabbling. So we are told that we should stick to it, be determined, do blah, blah, blah.