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My First Million10 Lessons We Learned From Filming 131 Episodes of My First Million In 2023
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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Seven hard-won lessons from 131 My First Million episodes in 2023
- Shaan and Sam review performance metrics from 131 episodes in 2023, explaining how views split across YouTube and the podcast RSS feed and how their top episodes differed by platform.
- They argue that effective content often starts with clickable titles and delivering on the promise, and they describe how explicitly asking viewers to subscribe created a noticeable subscriber-growth jump.
- Shaan reflects that steady, consistent output (“base hits”) beat his preference for sporadic “home run” virality, and he highlights the importance of being able to name specific lessons instead of vaguely claiming growth from failure.
- Sam describes learning to negotiate by tolerating discomfort and focusing on details, while Shaan shares a late-year realization that taxes required more attention and that real estate participation created both returns and tax benefits.
- They discuss strategic choices about public persona and audience direction, including avoiding being a “loose cannon,” resisting the temptation to go downmarket for views, and recognizing that even highly successful people still tend to want more.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasDirect calls-to-action measurably increased YouTube subscribers.
They note a clear inflection point in subscriber growth when they began explicitly asking viewers to subscribe, which surprised them because it felt “cringe” but proved effective.
Make necessary “cringe” parts of content fun via creative framing.
They describe turning typical creator tactics into bits (like the “gentleman’s agreement” and “Thrill of the Shill”) so it’s enjoyable for them to do and less annoying for the audience.
Consistency and base hits outperformed occasional virality.
Shaan contrasts his sporadic viral Twitter approach with others’ repeatable posting routines and concludes that steady, repeatable output beat occasional “home run” moments—similar to the podcast’s steady growth.
Interrogate lessons explicitly to avoid learning nothing (or the wrong thing).
Shaan recounts a dinner comment from Chris (Andrew Wilkinson’s business partner) challenging people who claim they “learned a lot” from failure by asking “Like what?”—and how it pushed Shaan to verify whether he extracted the right lesson.
Negotiation rewards the person willing to endure discomfort and sweat details.
Sam says he learned, during their HubSpot contract renegotiation, that being willing to sit in discomfort longer matters, and he credits Shaan’s detailed, persistent approach as effective despite initially feeling “rude” or excessive.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesIf you wanna stay being a broke idiot, don't listen to this video
— Shaan Puri
So it's like the, the basic business model is do interesting business shit, so, so invest in businesses, create businesses, talk to interesting people, and then the p- pod is just distill the, you know, the, the most interesting 10% that you're allowed to talk about and go talk about it.
— Shaan Puri
And I kinda looked up at the end of the year, I was like, "Huh." Like, the people who did the consistency thing got way further and had, and did way less, like, uh... They didn't have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to do it.
— Shaan Puri
It's financially irresponsible to not at least spend 5 to 10% of your time on this.
— Shaan Puri
You will always want more accomplishments, more achievements, and that is okay. That is totally okay, and that is normal.
— Sam Parr
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SPEAKERS
Shaan Puri
hostCo-host of My First Million; entrepreneur and investor focused on startups and internet business.
Sam Parr
hostCo-host of My First Million; founder of The Hustle, which was acquired by HubSpot.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
