My decision-making framework for which ideas to chase

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Today's episode is about one word, excellence. Whenever I hear these stories about people who are excellent or what it took to become excellent, or what it took to make something happen that was truly excellent, it makes me want to run through a wall for the rest of the day. So that's the gift to a listener. If you're listening to this in the morning, you're going to want to run through a wall after you listen to this.
Sam, it's morning time. Would you like some FOMO pancakes? Because I'm about to drizzle some FOMO pancakes right in front of you.

**Sam Parr** (0:32)
For some reason, when you say the word drizzle, I ought to, I'm out.

**Shaan Puri** (0:36)
You're out. I've never been able to pull that word off.

**Sam Parr** (0:39)
Yeah, I don't think anyone has.

**Shaan Puri** (0:42)
We, as you know, we're hosting our annual event. Me and Ben host this annual event called Hoop Group with MrBeast, and we're hosting it in about a week. And I was just catching up with Ben. Ben takes the charge on like...

**Sam Parr** (0:55)
Everything in your life?

**Shaan Puri** (0:57)
Yeah, yeah, doing the things. And I just like keep lobbing in ideas. And then I'm basically the most annoying guy. It's like, he says, hey, here's everything we got. And I'm like, can't we just make it better? He's like, okay, well, how? I'm like, I don't know, just think big. And I say generic things like that. And I'll be like, you know, I just got off the podcast with this guy. What would he do? And then he's like, I don't know. What did he tell you about? Like, I don't know, go listen to that. You'd get inspired. But it is level-

**Sam Parr** (1:21)
By the way, you call it lobbing ideas. Someone, I said that to my coach the other day, and she goes, that's called swooping and pooping. Yeah, when you fly in and you just leave a bunch of crap.

**Shaan Puri** (1:32)
Exactly. They've been working hard and then you just swoop in and you poop. But I do it in the name of high standards. And that's how you get away with anything. That's how you get away with being an asshole. You just say, no, I'm not an asshole. I have high standards. But my standards have been exceeded by what Ben has pulled off with this event. I just need to tell you some things about this event. For those who don't know, for the last few years, every year, we host a basketball camp. So it's kind of like a basketball camp for billionaires was the idea, the dream. There's lots of different conferences. There's lots of different networking events. And I hate conferences and I hate network events. And despite me talking a lot on this podcast, I'm actually kind of an introvert. I don't really enjoy going to events. And we wanted to do something, but the idea of just creating yet another thing that was very much like everything else that existed was not appealing.

**Sam Parr** (2:18)
Well, are you guys just sitting around? Our conference is dumb.

**Shaan Puri** (2:21)
Well, it started with, we should do one, man. We have a big audience. We know all these interesting people. What if we hosted an event? And it's like, great, like a networking event. Yay. It's like, no, no, it could be like, I don't know, like people come and talk. And we're like, oh, a conference, yay. And so then I learned this on my first business. This guy told me like, irritation leads to innovation. So back then it was a restaurant business and he was telling me, I was saying how much I hate food delivery. And he's like, well, that's the opportunity. Make food delivery, that doesn't suck. And suddenly you'll take something that's really bad. And just by like making it not suck, the gap between where it normally is and where you are is really big. And so similarly, the idea with this was, well, what would be a conference we would want to go to? And so we just started spitballing with like a, you know, childlike energy where it was like, I don't know, like instead of icebreakers, like what if you just, like what if it was based around sports? We love sports. What if we combine two things we really love, meeting interesting, inspiring business people, but then basketball? And so the idea became, we play basketball all day. What if we got an NBA trainer to come train us like a fantasy camp? And we invite people who are really, you know, successful and interesting, but they love to hoop. And so we all, first we play basketball. It's the ultimate equalizer, icebreaker. People get to know each other. And then at night you talk shop in the kind of like, we all stay in a couple of houses and we all talk shop there. And you've been to two of these that we've thrown. So you kind of get the idea.