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My First Million

The $20 Million/Year Personality Quiz 89% Of Fortune 100s Swear By

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Shaan PurihostSam Parrhost

Mar 15, 202454mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Grit test cold open: Shaan’s surprising score
The episode opens with Shaan teasing a “grit score” and asking Sam to guess his results. Sam expects a relatively high score, but Shaan reveals he scored far lower than expected, setting up a broader conversation about personality and mindset tests.
- •Shaan frames the grit score scale and asks Sam to guess his result
- •Sam estimates Shaan is moderately gritty
- •Shaan reveals he scored a 2.5, which shocks Sam
- •The reveal tees up skepticism about what these tests actually measure
Phoenix courtside trip and the reciprocity play
Shaan recounts a trip to Phoenix with Ben to experience a Suns game from an NBA owner’s perspective. He explains how a casual sequence of outreach and invitations created an opening, and Sam explicitly labels the dynamic as reciprocity.
- •Shaan describes going to Phoenix after connecting with Suns owner Matt Ishbia
- •The trip is framed as a “dope life experience” and a reminder to plan experiences regularly
- •Shaan tells the backstory: congratulatory email, Camp invite, then an offer to host them at a game
- •Sam describes the interaction as the “rule of reciprocity” and jokes about exploiting it
Ben’s extreme Suns fandom and relentless curiosity
Shaan paints a vivid picture of Ben’s devotion to the Suns and how he approaches conversations with intense, shameless curiosity. The story transitions from fandom to how Ben’s questioning unlocked an unexpected, more interesting conversation than meeting the team itself.
- •Shaan explains Ben’s long-running Suns obsession, including being a ball boy for years
- •Shaan describes Ben’s effort to vote Suns players into the All-Star Game with massive ballot volume
- •Shaan contrasts different types of “shamelessness” in social settings, including Ben’s style
- •Ben’s nonstop questioning becomes the gateway to meeting someone in the team’s analytics/data group
Sports analytics: measuring everything—except mindset
The conversation turns to how modern sports teams track detailed on-court performance using advanced camera and recognition systems. The analytics staffer explains the big missing piece: quantifying the mental traits that separate top performers from everyone else.
- •Shaan describes tech that tracks practice sessions, shot arcs, and percentages automatically
- •Ben asks what data the team wishes they had but doesn’t
- •The analytics perspective: the biggest differentiator is “what’s up top” (mindset)
- •The missing metric is mental measurement, which the staffer summarizes as “grit”
Myers-Briggs origin story and why these tests feel persuasive
Shaan shifts from grit to a broader fascination with personality tests, starting with Myers-Briggs. He recounts the test’s early origins and why the broader industry can feel “hand-wavy,” including the psychological mechanism that makes vague descriptions feel personally accurate.
- •Shaan asks Sam about Myers-Briggs and introduces skepticism about test validity
- •Shaan tells the story of Isabel reading about workplace “people sorting” in the 1940s
- •The test is framed as branching people into categories that lead to 16 types with flattering labels
- •Shaan describes the Forer effect: broad statements that feel uniquely true to individuals
Myers-Briggs as a machine: licensing, practitioners, and corporate adoption
Shaan explains how Myers-Briggs became a scalable business through licensing and a certification funnel. He shares figures mentioned in the episode about test pricing, practitioner certification costs, and how widely the test is used by major institutions and companies.
- •A publishing company acquires licensing rights and markets the test to businesses
- •The model includes paid tests and a paid certification requirement for practitioners
- •Shaan describes it as resembling a multi-level distribution structure
- •Shaan cites widespread adoption: federal agencies and a large share of Fortune 100 companies
Grit theory and Shaan’s critique: pop science vs measurement
After hearing grit framed as the missing metric in sports, Shaan dives into the grit concept and attempts to measure it. He explains the book’s framing, then argues the underlying test is too shallow and self-reported to deserve confidence.
- •Shaan recaps a formula-style framing: ability, zeal/passion, and hard labor/perseverance
- •West Point is presented as a core example where a grit score purportedly predicts success
- •Shaan reads sample grit test prompts and calls them “nothing” as measurement
- •Shaan questions whether self-assessment can be trusted and jokes he’s “high in honesty”
Live grit scale: Sam takes the test and gets an average score
Shaan administers the grit test to Sam in real time, question by question. The result undercuts the segment’s intended contrast: Sam lands around average, while Shaan remains far below, and they both dismiss the test’s usefulness when the outcome disappoints.
- •Shaan walks Sam through the 10-question grit scale using quick responses
- •Sam answers about distraction, persistence, finishing what he begins, and setbacks
- •Shaan calculates Sam’s score as 3.5 out of 5 and explains the percentile implication
- •Both react negatively to the result and joke the segment didn’t “work” as planned
Cognition Labs and “Devin”: the math-competition founders behind the product
Sam introduces a founder he admires and connects past startup experience to a new AI product. The discussion focuses less on product details and more on the founders’ backgrounds—elite competition performance, a small team, and an arresting personal anecdote from a profile article.
- •Sam recounts the founder’s earlier company and how it raised significant funding
- •Sam describes Cognition Labs and its product that builds software from a prompt and a checklist
- •He highlights the team’s competition pedigree and small headcount
- •Sam shares an anecdote about a co-founder allegedly hiding his Harvard enrollment status from his mother
“Be willing to walk backwards”: reinventing yourself and risking comfort
After referencing a recent conversation, Shaan explores the idea that top performers are willing to return to beginner status and take financial or status risks. He connects the idea to reinvention, personal safety nets, and how hard it is to abandon a path after investing years into it.
- •Shaan recounts the concept “willingness to walk backwards” as the key differentiator he heard
- •Examples include starting over in a new domain and risking previously earned capital
- •They discuss the idea of keeping only a small “safety net” rather than preserving everything
- •Shaan adds a related framing about realizing you’re on the wrong trail and choosing to restart anyway
Speedrunning as the opposite strategy: replaying the same playbook faster
Shaan contrasts reinvention with “speedrunning,” borrowing a term from gaming to describe repeating a familiar path with mastery. He connects the concept to founders who purposely re-run the same business model because they now know the shortcuts.
- •Speedrunning is defined as repeating the same “level” to achieve a faster, more perfect run
- •Shaan compares it to mastery rather than novelty, and Sam offers an analogy about repeating a craft
- •Shaan introduces the RXBAR founder’s return with a new protein bar brand as an example of running it back
- •They react to the new product’s positioning and stated nutrition numbers
Three anonymous founder “speedrunners”: repeating e-commerce success at scale
Shaan tells stories about three unnamed entrepreneurs who re-executed nearly the same business playbook after big outcomes. Each story emphasizes how confidence, market understanding, and operational fluency can compress timelines and increase profitability the second time around.
- •Founder #1 starts a similar e-commerce company and quickly reaches high monthly revenue
- •Founder #2 repeats a previous nine-figure outcome by staying in the same category with a small twist
- •Founder #3 is motivated by arrogance observed at another company and builds a lean competitor
- •Shaan notes results like major annual personal profit and no external capital raised
Explore vs exploit debate—and the RXBAR bootstrapping lesson
Shaan and Sam debate whether repeating the same game is “lame” or simply a valid way to maximize happiness and results. Shaan then shares the RXBAR origin story as a concrete example of execution over fundraising, including the founder’s early sales focus and rapid revenue ramp before a major sale.
- •Shaan argues for “walking backwards” as growth; Sam argues people don’t owe the world anything
- •Sam explains his own motivation comes from proving something to himself across different models
- •Shaan recounts the RXBAR founder being told by his dad to stop talking and sell bars first
- •Shaan shares the bootstrapping emphasis: consignment, relentless selling, and a fast growth curve leading to a large acquisition

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