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My First MillionThe $20 Million/Year Personality Quiz 89% Of Fortune 100s Swear By
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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Measuring mindset: why tests, grit, and repeatable playbooks fascinate founders
- Shaan recounts a Phoenix Suns courtside visit that unexpectedly turns into a deep dive on what sports teams can measure—and what they still can’t—about player mindset.
- Shaan explains the origin story and commercialization of the Myers–Briggs test, while questioning its reliability and why it remains widely used in business.
- Shaan and Sam take and react to a grit test, arguing that self-reported questions can make the scoring feel unscientific even if the broader idea of perseverance matters.
- Sam spotlights Cognition Labs and its founders as an example of extreme technical talent and persistence, based on a recent profile they read.
- The hosts discuss a “walk backwards” concept (reinvention and risk tolerance) versus “speedrunning” (repeating the same business playbook), using founder stories like RXBAR’s growth and sale and unnamed ecommerce examples.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasSports analytics can capture performance data, but not the “mental” variables teams care about most.
The story about meeting the Suns’ analytics team emphasized that teams can measure almost everything on-court (shots, arc, reps), but struggle to quantify the mental side that separates top performers.
Myers–Briggs started as a homemade sorting test that later became a heavily marketed business product.
Shaan traced the test’s origin to Isabel Briggs reading about wartime “people sorting,” being encouraged by her mother to create a test based on Carl Jung’s ideas, and the eventual commercialization by a publishing/licensing company.
The episode frames Myers–Briggs as popular and lucrative, but questionably scientific and reliability-challenged.
Shaan argued the test gives everyone a flattering “type,” is unreliable (he says many people get different results when retaking it later), and benefits from broad statements people recognize in themselves.
The Myers–Briggs business model monetizes both the test-taker and the gatekeeping certification channel.
Shaan and Sam described a business model where people pay to take the test, but it must be administered by a certified practitioner who pays to become certified—creating recurring demand and distribution.
The hosts distinguish between a compelling concept (grit) and a weak measurement tool (the grit scale questions).
After Shaan scored low and then walked through the questions, he criticized the grit test as self-report “nothing,” while still acknowledging the underlying idea (persistence/zeal) is directionally important.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesDon't let too much time go by. Uh, I think, like, every three months or so you should try to do something that's, uh, a little extracurricular, if you know what I mean. Just something that's outside of the routine, outside of what you have to do.
— Shaan Puri
I appreciate your faith in me. I scored a 2.5 on this grit test, bro.
— Shaan Puri
Like, come on. This is not science. This is, this is what I call nothing. That's what this test is. This test is nothing.
— Shaan Puri
The willingness to walk backwards both in terms of, um, where you're at in the mountain, can you go back to being a beginner?
— Shaan Puri
Now that I'm a little bit older and I have a family, I think, "Fuck everyone. Do what makes you happy."
— Sam Parr
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SPEAKERS
Shaan Puri
hostCo-host of the business podcast My First Million and entrepreneur/investor.
Sam Parr
hostCo-host of My First Million and founder of Hampton (joinhampton.com).
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
