#120 - These Are the Frameworks Every Entrepreneur Should Learn

This episode we are partnering with Square! Square makes it easy for your business to accept payment, and so much more! Check out this week's sponsor at square.com/go/hustle! Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) aka the King of Frameworks shares his favorite ten frameworks: 1. Intro (1:38) 2. Your TO-Do List is Killing You (2:25) 3. How To Kickoff a Project (5:16) 4. Big Mario Marketing (8:41) 5. Getting Un-Stuck (11:40) 6. Having an Audience is Like Steroids (20:05) 7. All News is Good News (21:54) 8. Work Like a Lion (23:31) 9. Don’t Sell Saddles (24:47) 10. Cold Emailing to Close Sales (26:46) Get the PDF version with illustrations at www.shaanpuri.com. Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Hey guys, Sean here. I'm gonna try something different for this episode. This is gonna be 10 of my favorite frameworks. As you guys know, I am the framework Don, the framework king, the prince of frameworks, and really just a nerd about frameworks. And so, over the years, I've tried to take all the lessons I learned building businesses and turn them into little nuggets that I can remember, little principles, philosophies, or frameworks, whatever you want to call it. And so I put 10 together and I recorded myself reading it. Actually, this started as a PDF that I made with custom illustrations and all kinds of crazy stuff for my email list. If you're not on it, I'll put the link in the description. It's just seanpori.com.

• 0:45Shaan Puri?

  And so I had this email list where I always share kind of my under the hood stuff that's going on in my business and, you know, frameworks that I'm using, tactics that I'm using. And people loved this PDF. And they asked, "Could you do an audio version of this for the podcast?" And so that's what I did. So that's what this is. So I hope you guys enjoy it. These are 10 of my favorite frameworks. If you hear something that doesn't make sense, it's because I'm talking to people who are on my email list and maybe, maybe there's some context you're missing out, but don't worry about that. The frameworks can apply to anything. So, hope you guys enjoy 10 of my favorite frameworks.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back.

• 1:39Shaan Puri?

  This is the 25-day recap of the All Access Pass, AKA the 12 biggest takeaways that I hope you remember from all this content. You know, in the last 30 days, I've sent about 25 emails out. That's a lot of content. And even though the open rate is pretty high, it's like 86.4%, there's no way someone could read and remember all of that stuff. It's just hard to retain that much information. Now, not every email was great, but there were some nuggets of gold in there. So Ben and I sat down and tried to distill the 12 biggest takeaways from the All Access Pass so far. This is like when Lucky Charms released the marshmallows-only version of the cereal. It's just the best stuff. There's four techniques, four frameworks, and the four best philosophies. That's 12 total. I hope you enjoy.

• 2:25Shaan Puri?

  Your to-do list is killing you. I used lists for years and I love writing the list, but as soon as I put the pen down, anxiety would start. And the longer my list went, I would just start collecting dust. It would just serve as a guilt trip for all the stuff that I didn't do yet. So even though lists feel good in the moment, they're not the best way to be productive. One of the problems with lists is that they bury the headline. In your day, there's probably one or two things that are way more important than everything else. If you just did those things alone, your day would be a success. It's that old 80/20 rule. I call that my one big thing, or OBT for short. Instead of making a list,

• 3:09Shaan Puri?

  I asked myself, "What's the one highest impact thing I could do today?" Take note, my friend, I said, "Impact," not difficulty. Don't confuse the two. And sometimes the high-impact thing is just a 15-minute phone call, or it's that one conversation I've really been avoiding with my key person. That's it. And if I do my OBT, the rest of the day, anything else I do is just gravy on top. I have zero guilt once I've done my OBT. It's a simple daily productivity technique that has made me way more productive and way less stressed. And by the way, those two things go together. And I know what you're saying. You're gonna say, "But what about all those things that I need to do?" Okay, well, even with an OBT, you sometimes have to write stuff down so you don't lose

• 3:53Shaan Puri?

  track of it. But not on a list. Instead, use what I call the power box. I think other people have different names for this, but I invented it for myself, and so I named it for myself. A power box is a, imagine like an X and Y axis. This is a little bit easier if you just look at the diagram, but I'll try to describe it. On the Y-axis, you have impact. High impact on the top, low impact on the bottom. And from left to right, you have not urgent to urgent. And anytime I think of a task, like let's say, you know, I need to get a haircut. Low impact, but might be getting urgent, you know, depending on the situation. Or if it's, "I need to find a tax accountant because I gotta do my taxes in a month." That's high impact and it's high urgency. Maybe I have a big

• 4:38Shaan Puri?

  pitch or big sales presentation I need to do. High impact. And if it's tomorrow, it's high urgency. If it's two months from now, I'll put it in the low urgency bucket. You get the idea. It's like a list, but it maps every task based on what matters. Time sensitivity, or urgency, and impact. And when it comes to do it, when a new thing comes up, I just quickly triage it into one of these boxes. It's very, I don't know, stress relieving to do that. Then you know where it stands. You know when to, when to get to it. This is a powerful way to organize your day.

• 5:17Shaan Puri?

  Whenever I start a new project, I make a kickoff doc. And there's four parts to any kickoff process that I do. Number one, I define winning. Number two, I set my anti-goals. Number three, I back of the envelope. What does it take to get there? And number four, I figure out how to get one hour of momentum. Notice what's not on this list. I didn't say research, or asking other people if it's a good idea, or worrying if it's going to work or not, or coming up with grand vision statements. You know, those come later. Let me give you a breakdown of each of those parts. So defining winning. I like to set clear measurable goals.

• 5:57Shaan Puri?

  So you know, you can say, I want to achieve financial success and not stress out about money. It's not a great goal, because what is success? And by when, there's no time. So you could also say, I want to have 5 million in liquid assets by the age of 35. That's a good, simple goal. It's measurable, it's time bound. So now you can actually act against that goal. The trick is to see, could I fail this? If you can measure it, then you can fail it. So how ambitious should you be with your goals? Should you shoot for the moon or be realistic? Trick question, do both. I like to set two goals. There's a good goal, like if we hit this goal, then things went well. And then there's what I call the fuck yeah goal.

• 6:41Shaan Puri?

  That's pretty self-explanatory. Some people call it a stretch goal, but I prefer my lingo. This is what you, this is the goal. If you hit it, you'd be excited about it. You would say, fuck yeah. All right, part two, setting your anti-goals. There's an old saying when it comes to deal making, which is you pick the price, I'll pick the terms. Basically, even if you get the price you want, if the terms are screwed up, you'll be screwed up. So let's say your dream was to become a musician. And guess what? You did it. But while you're touring the world, you gain a bunch of weight, you get addicted to drugs, your marriage is in shambles, your kids don't recognize you. See, you won the battle, but you lost the war. I stole this idea from my friend Andrew Wilkinson. It's called setting anti-goals.

• 7:25Shaan Puri?

  These are the things that you don't want to happen along the way. Write these down. So now you've got your goals and you have your anti-goals. So step three, time to back of the envelope. How might I get there? I'm a big fan of running quick numbers on things early on. Even when I have no clue how to achieve the goal, doing a quick calculation will show you some of the options. Let's say I want to make a million dollars. I can make a $1 app and sell it to a million people, or I can create a $100,000 product and find 10 customers. The back of the envelope is meant to walk through some of the scenarios and identify which numbers seem hard to hit, the ones you're worried about. That becomes my focus. Okay, that seems hard to do. How could I do it? How might I get there? I start to brainstorm strategies to get to that number.

• 8:09Shaan Puri?

  The last piece is getting one hour of momentum. It's the most important step. You never want to leave the scene of a decision without taking action. So I end the kickoff by brainstorming things that I could do in an hour, not researching or planning, things like, can I talk to a customer right now? Or could I make a prototype in an hour and show that to somebody? The whole process for this whole kickoff should take about one to two hours, and it creates a ton of momentum. Give it a shot.

• 8:41Shaan Puri?

  This is one of my favorite frameworks. It's called Big Mario Marketing. And the day you understand this framework is the day you basically know marketing. If you're considering going to business school to learn marketing, let me save you two years and about $200,000. It's just one diagram. And I know you can't see it, but I'll describe it. So on the left side, there's a little picture of Mario, Mario when he's small. And this is a, you know, a potential customer of yours. And then the customer, you know, little Mario is running along and finds this item. Right? The item is in this case a fire flower. That's your product. And when little Mario picks up that item, he becomes big Mario and can shoot fireballs and kick everybody's ass.

• 9:22Shaan Puri?

  Right? And the big mistake that most people make, and these are, you know, smart people make this mistake. Uh, is they get so obsessed with their product, the thing they're building. It's the company, it's the thing they work on every day. That when they go to tell customers about it, they go to market their company. They talk about their product, right? They talk about the fire flower. But you have to understand that people don't care about you. They don't care about your fire flower. They care about themselves. They care about themselves going from little Mario who's weak and can't really do anything. To big Mario who can run around, shoot fireballs and kick everybody's ass. And so I don't care what you're doing. Let's say you're selling breakfast bars.

• 10:07Shaan Puri?

  You could tell me about the granola and the bar and the carbs and all this good stuff. But instead you should tell me how this bar will save me 20 minutes in the mornings because I have a grab and go breakfast now. And how I'll lose weight because you made this delicious bar with no carbs and no sugar added. I repeat, nobody cares about your product, literally nobody, even your mom. Your mom doesn't care about your product. Your mom cares about you and customers care about themselves. Everybody cares about their own quality of life improving. So that's what you should do. You should describe how their life will improve if they use a special little item of yours, a special product of yours. And then you back it up with evidence and social proof and explanations for why it works.

• 10:49Shaan Puri?

  So I'll give you an example. I have this thing called the all access pass. It's where I blog about, you know, businesses that I'm starting. And the reader, you know, little Mario in this case, is somebody who wants to build a successful business, but it's not sure how to do it, right? They have ideas, but they've never really been successful as an entrepreneur before. So they're unsure. And big Mario is that version of them that's confident, that knows they can build a successful business, somebody who's seen it firsthand, how to do it. And now is armed with a toolkit of tactics and a blueprint that they can follow to be successful. So that's what I provide. I give you a way to go from unsure to confident. And you're confident because I showed you how I did it. And I gave you tools and I gave you tactics and a blueprint to follow. That's it. Now you know marketing.

• 11:40Shaan Puri?

  So I have a little playbook that I use to get unstuck. And it happens, right? You get stuck. You have a setback. You face an obstacle. You hit a wall. We have all these words for this. It's just you trying to move forward and it's not easy. And it can feel draining. I call these plateaus. And when you're in a plateau, you feel stuck. When I was younger, I used to overreact to these types of situations. I would hit a plateau and I would just feel worthless. Like, why can't I make this work? And then I moved to Silicon Valley and I got on Twitter and now everywhere I looked, I just saw people, you know, crushing it. And it made me feel even more worthless. Like, wow, these people are crushing it and I'm sitting... Over time, I've learned that there are three ways to handle plateaus. I learned this from Tony Robbins.

• 12:24Shaan Puri?

  He says, "You can be, number one, a dabbler. A dabbler hits a plateau and gives up, moves on to the next one, right? A dabble in this, a dabble in that." The second type is what you'll encounter, what I encountered a lot of at work, or I went to a Goodyear diversity, and these are called stressor achievers. So a stressor hits a plateau, gets stressed, chugs some coffee, loses some sleep and tries to plow through it. They try to work their way to the bone to try to make it work. This is the person cramming for an exam.

• 12:59Shaan Puri?

  It works, but it's painful. You're not going to enjoy the journey. You're not even really going to enjoy the destination because you'll be so worn out by the time you get there. The last option is a master. And a master hits a plateau and it greets him like an old friend. Right? A master says, ah, Mr. Plateau, I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Because a master knows that plateaus are inevitable. They're a part of the growth process. Why would you stress over the inevitable? That's like stressing out every time the sun goes down each day. So if you're trying to grow, you know, plateaus are gonna happen. So a master creates a playbook or a recipe for how to break through, and I'll tell you mine. So step one of the plateau breakthrough recipe.

• 13:43Shaan Puri?

  First, relax. Plateaus are always a part of any growth process. It's normal. Number two, get in the right state of mind. You know, you make better decisions. I know I do. I make better decisions and I'm more creative when I'm feeling loose, when I'm feeling confident, when I'm feeling happy. And when I'm frustrated or tired or stressed, I make bad decisions. It's just that simple. So how do I change my mental state? How do I change my state of mind? I use the three Ms. Music, which is easy. Put on music and you're already, you'll start to, your foot will start tapping and you'll start to feel a little different. Movement, this is a big one. A lot of people try to change the way they feel through their brain.

• 14:28Shaan Puri?

  And that's like, you know, trying to open up a door, you know, using your fingernails rather than the key. It's a very painful, slow way to do it. So movement is a faster way to change your mindset. You could do pushups, you can go do some wind sprints, you can swim, you could do jumping jacks. Two to five minutes of any kind of high intensity movement, physical movement. And you will change the way you feel. You could even just do a quick ice plunge or, you know, splash some cold water on your face. It will change the way you feel. And the last one, now we go into the head, is meaning. It's putting a different meaning on what's going on. So instead of thinking shit, this isn't working, you reframe it, right? Maybe you reframe it as, alright, this is an opportunity to try

• 15:10Shaan Puri?

  something new. Or, okay, this is a signal, it's pushing me, I gotta get more creative to solve this. Or, alright, let me roll up my sleeves, this is a chance to sharpen up my skills and learn more. It sounds a little corny, but the meaning you give something will totally change your response to it. When you think you're getting screwed, you'll get angry. When you think you're being challenged or tested, you might rise up. If you think the world is giving you an opportunity, you will approach that situation in a very different way. My favorite one of all is, no matter how bad it gets, I say, this is gonna make for a hell of a story later. And just putting that meaning of this is a hell of a story in the making, changes my own experience. In two

• 15:54Shaan Puri?

  minutes, I can change my state of mind. And when I'm in the right state, I start asking questions. I don't look for answers, I ask questions. I say, what does the data tell me that's happening? What's the evidence? What is the evidence telling me? Number two, I'll say, what's the stupidly obvious thing I haven't tried yet? Or, what would a friend or mentor of mine do in this situation, right? What would somebody who's awesome do? Another question is, what's a 20% tweak I could make? What's a little change that would make 100% of a difference?

• 16:26Shaan Puri?

  Another one is, who's already successfully doing this? And what the heck are they doing differently than what I'm doing? Lastly, who are three smart people I could talk to on the phone to help me solve this? As a little sidebar, the name I use is Suli. My friend Suli is probably the best entrepreneur I know. And so I always ask, what would Suli do? I've never seen him stay stuck for long. He's always positive, he's always thinking, he's always taking massive action and finding a way to win. In fact, he literally texts me in the morning about five times a month, just saying, let's win, win, win today. All caps, win, win, win. I don't even know what he's talking about. He doesn't even know what I'm working on. That's just his mindset. So whenever I get stuck, I start to feel that energy draining out of me, I think, what would

• 17:09Shaan Puri?

  Suli do? And just asking that question makes me 20% more creative and determined to win. You don't even have to know the guy, just ask yourself that question.

• 17:18Shaan Puri?

  Okay, the final step of getting unstuck. Patience. I'm an impatient motherfucker in general, right? I used to take pride in that. I'm patient. Who wants to be patient? Patient people just wait around doing nothing all day, right? I'm not patient. I take action. You see, I viewed action-taking and patience as opposites. But then one day, like, you know, the modern day Buddha that I am, I figured it out. I got wise and I said, okay, I need to be impatient with action and patient with results. I'll say that again, slower this time. Impatient with action, patient with results. This is the yin and yang of entrepreneurship. Follow this and you will win, win, win. Like Sully says, it's just a matter of time. Building an audience first.

• 18:03Shaan Puri?

  You know, my audience is like steroids. If I was you and I was somebody who watches me do what I do, I would think, I would think, man, this guy, he's able to do all this because of his audience. It makes everything easier. When I don't know something, I ask Twitter. When I want to spread the word, I mention it on my podcast. Having an audience gives you optionality to build many future businesses. When I started my podcast, I had no idea I would be doing other businesses based off that. I raised a startup fund from listeners. I created a paid newsletter that makes tons of money. And I could have never seen that going. But once I created this audience, I had all these options. And that's with my teeny tiny audience. Imagine if I was actually famous, you know?

• 18:45Shaan Puri?

  I can't even imagine how easy it is for Joe Rogan or Naval or Kylie Jenner or, you know, these YouTubers to launch new projects or get their problem solved. They could snap their fingers, they could tweet something out and people would come out of the woodwork to help them get where they want to go. It took me one year to build my audience and that was in my spare time. If I had focused, I think I could have done it in about half the time. If you don't know what to, you know, exactly what you want to build or what company you want to start, I recommend building an audience first. Building an audience in a topic area that you care about or, you know, building an audience of a group of people that you know really well, that can be a great place to start and it can give you options when you do think of a killer idea. You can start with a newsletter or a podcast or YouTube channel, whatever medium is fun

• 19:31Shaan Puri?

  for you, because if this stuff takes time and it's not easy and you don't get instant results, so it's gotta be fun. You have to enjoy creating the content. Now, how do you actually build that audience? That's a topic for another day.

• 19:49Shaan Puri?

  All news is good news. There's two big mistakes that I've seen founders make and I've learned not to make these mistakes anymore. I make some new ones, but I don't make these ones anymore. The first is that bad news demoralizes them. And even worse is the second one. Because bad news demoralizes them, they therefore subconsciously avoid looking in places where there might be bad news, which sometimes might be your company bank account, or the metrics dashboard, or going out and talking to customers. But for us, all news is good news. If I'm working on something and it's works, good news, it worked. If I'm doing something and it's not working, good news, I learned something, I learned something from this.

• 20:31Shaan Puri?

  I try to always create a culture where I want to see the data, whether it's good, bad, or ugly. And the way to do that is to make it so that all news is good news. This creates a habit where people start to seek out the truth, they go look for the data, they go try to talk to customers and see what they'll say. Because no matter what happens, we're going to celebrate the finding. When the news is bad, we don't panic or get demoralized, we focus on the learning. What did this result teach us? This sounds obvious, right? This is a lesson I could teach a third grader. So why did I put this as such a big takeaway? Because in my experience, 98% of founders don't operate this way. They ride an emotional roller coaster based on good or bad news. You don't have to ride that roller coaster.

• 21:13Shaan Puri?

  Your entrepreneurial life will be more fun and more successful if you just adopt the mantra, "All news is good news." Work like a lion, not a cow. I stole this from Naval. I heard it and I loved it. Today, we are trained to work like cows. Cows stand on a field all day, slowly chewing weak and low nutrient grass. Every day, the same thing at the same slow pace. This is how we're trained to work, right? Nine to five, Monday through Friday, 50 weeks in a year.

• 21:52Shaan Puri?

  Go to work. Instead, we should work like a lion. A lion sits, waits, observes, looks for its prey. And when it sees it, then they sprint, hunt and catch it. Then they eat, they enjoy, they celebrate, and they hunt as a pack. And then they rest, they relax, and they wait for the next juicy prey. This is how winners work. It's high intensity and it's focused on the high value projects, the juicy prey. And then there's frequent breaks to rest and recover. You're not just grinding all day. You're not just standing there working all day. Your boss may not like this, but this is the way that winners work. Work like a lion, not a cow.

• 22:41Shaan Puri?

  We don't sell saddles here. Have you ever heard the memo that the CEO of Slack, you know, 18 billion dollar company, he sent his employees before they launched? If you haven't, you should check it out. It's called, "We Don't Sell Saddles Here." Go read that shit and come back. It's a must read, but I'll try to explain it in simple terms. If you're operating in a new or a niche market, you want to promote the lifestyle, not your product. So what does that mean? But let's put it differently. Let's say you're a company that makes saddles, right? Saddles, the kind of thing you put on a horse. So rather than talking about how your saddle is better than the other saddles and just marketing to people who already are in the saddle market and looking to buy a saddle, and they may already have one and they don't want to switch and they've never heard of

• 23:26Shaan Puri?

  your brand, they've heard of some other brands. Instead, what if you promoted the lifestyle of horseback riding to the masses instead? This is why the CEO of Slack explained, "We don't sell saddles here." Meaning, instead of just selling their chat app, they sold a dream of working without so much damn email. And if you sold that lifestyle of working without email being buried in these long email threads, he offered an alternative. You could use this live chat app. And we put this into action when we were promoting our course, right? We had a niche course, "Learning How to Buy Businesses." Not many people were in that market to try to learn how to buy businesses. So instead of selling the course, we started promoting the badass entrepreneurs who buy

• 24:10Shaan Puri?

  businesses, who have done it and built 100 million dollar empires doing it. So we ignored our saddle, which is the course, and instead promoted the badass cowboys who like horseback riding, like Chamath or Andrew Wilkinson. It worked way better. People love to learn about this new lifestyle and then they start to ask, "All right, I kind of want to go horseback riding. What saddle should I use?" And we were right there, ready to sell them our saddle.

• 24:41Shaan Puri?

  This is a tactic that we stole from Brex. You know, we like to say, "Good artists, copy. Great artists, steal." That's Pablo, you know, the big paint, Picasso. That's what he used to say. So like a great artist, we stole this sales tactic from Brex, which is a multi-billion dollar startup, grew really fast because they had tactics like this. And we used this tactic to close about $500,000 for our fund in two days. We used it for fundraising, but you can pretty much use it for any sales process that happens over email. So here's the tactic in action. I'll show you an example from Brex. So you have a, a, a sales agent from Brex who writes an email to a client and he says, you know,

• 25:22Shaan Puri?

  "Hello, client. You know, my chief sales officer asked that I reach out to you. See below." And below, he has an email from the, the chief sales officer saying, "Hey, check out, you know, the prospect name. Check out the prospect name. They're not on Brex yet, and I think we can help them. Can you start with a call to the, to the, you know, name of the person?" Offer to waive the credit card fees and get them on the accelerated rewards list if they're open to trying us out by the end of the month. It's like a private email from the chief sales officer to the sales rep, but the sales rep is sharing this with the client. And now the, the whole thing is, he says, you know, "My chief sales officer said I should reach out to you. See below. For context, Brex is a corporate credit card designed for companies like yours. We don't require a personal guarantee.

• 26:07Shaan Puri?

  We offer high credit limits and we have the best rewards program available on any corporate credit card. Do you have a few minutes for a call?" Now, this is genius because A, it feels special. It feels like you've been handpicked by someone with authority, right? That the chief sales officer had reached out to his own sales rep and said, "Go talk to them. They look interesting." It feels raw, right? You, you got a forwarded private email. You're not even supposed to see that email. So you feel like you're, you're seeing something real. And it's friendly. All the language of these emails is transparent, very friendly. It's not like a normal cold email where you just feel like a robot could be writing this. So here's our version. We would say, "Hey, blankety-blank, nice to meet you.

• 26:49Shaan Puri?

  Sean saw that you signed up for the fund waitlist and he wants to open up a spot for you. See below. I'm happy to share more details with you, but just so you know, to invest, you have to be an accredited investor. And here's a link to the deck if you haven't seen it. It'll walk you through all the key points. Give it a read and let us know if you're interested in jumping in." And then, you know, below that, there's an email from me saying, "Hey, Ben, I saw that blankety-blank signed up and his background looks really good for the fund. He helped do X, Y, and Z." This is just pulled from their LinkedIn. "Can you reach out to him and offer him one of the spots that just opened up in the fund?" Now, this little tactic closed about half a million dollars in two days. Great artists steal, and keep an eye out for the great tactics that other people are using and put your own spin on it, just like this one.