Hello, my name is Samuel Bosch
I'm a PhD candidate at MIT, founder of a successful startup,
and former national champion in triathlon
13 years ago, I would have never imagined saying this sentence
Many people ask me what my secret to success is
So, I'm going to tell you my life story and I'm going to tell you what my founding principles are
I hope not just that you will understand how I got to where I am right now
But I hope that you will start thinking about where you want to go,
and how you want to get there
Now let's go back some 27 years
I was born in Germany, in Bavaria, in a small town that you've probably never heard of
My dad was a landscape gardener and hobby musician
And my mom had just finished working for different restaurants and hotels in Switzerland and France
According to my parents, I was a super hyper active kid,
always needing to do something at any given moment
By the age of 5 they made a huge decision
They decided to leave their small perfect little village in Germany,
in order to relocate to Croatia and start working for a small NGO
Nowadays, when you hear Croatia, you might be thinking about all the beautiful and sunny beaches
But trust me, back then it was a chaotic and xenophobic country
Recovering from a civil war and the collapse of Yugoslavia
Also, I lived far away from all of the sunny beaches
Knowing barely any Croatian language, I was thrown into a local public elementary school
As my parents just didn't have the money to pay for a private international school
6 years old me just didn't have the vocabulary
at that time to express that I really felt as an outsider
and really struggled finding my place there
Throughout the next few years,
school was definitely not a place where I felt happy or challenged
I was constantly mobbed for being the only foreigner in the entire school
even by some teachers who clearly hated me for it
In middle school, I developed huge behavioral issues
By the way mom, if you're watching this, please skip the next 20 seconds
My behavioral issues range from throwing stuff at teachers,
all the way to cutting one teacher's head
to cutting one teacher's hair and even blowing up several windows in my high school
at night with little self-made explosives
Okay, not these explosives. These were actual bombs from the war
It's almost a miracle that I still have all 10 of my fingers
Not surprisingly, I was asked to leave the 1st school, and the 2nd school, and the 3rd school
The headmaster of the 4th school also wanted to kick me out
but luckily she couldn't do so, because I was diagnosed with ADHD
and therefore I had an excuse for being a horrible child
I even had my little gang of – mildly put – "not very ambitious" friends
and we were all just encouraging each other constantly to do stupid stuff
You know, there is a saying that you become the average of the 5 people you spend most time with
Well, back then, that average was really, really, really low
Looking back, most of these fights with teachers were either because I was bored
or because they asked me to do something stupid, that didn't make any logical sense
and trust me, back then nothing made any logical sense
Everything was just based on pure memorization – even sciences
And they were just doing things the way they had always done them,
without ever asking themselves – why?
I just outright refused to do things that I found illogical
In a different educational system, they would have probably realized,
that I have quite a lot of potential and that I'm a really creative thinker
By the end of 8th grade, it was time to apply for high school
In Croatia, these applications are extremely competitive,
because there exists a clear distinction between good and bad high schools
One high school in the capital was, and still is, especially famous
With some combination of luck, last moment effort, and help from my parents
I somehow got admitted to this high school
Somehow, every single parameter was stuck in my favor
even though I was clearly not good enough for this high school
If just 1 out of the 100 parameters that determined who gets admitted to the high school
had been any different I would not have gotten admitted
anyways here was all of a sudden surrounded by Croatia's smartest kids and not surprisingly
I performed the worst in my entire class in the first semester
One thing that particularly stood out to me were all these smart kids
who won national mathematics and informatics competitions in middle school
as a result they got admitted to my high school
by pure coincidence, I got randomly assigned to the same class as them
One of them, who is now my good friend, Dominik, even appeared recently in my podcast
I always look up to them and admire them for being so intelligent,
but at the same time, I thought that I was just not intelligent enough to ever compete with them
The way competitions work in Croatia is for almost every subject there exists a school competition,
followed by regional competition, state competition, and a national competition
and from there you can maybe qualify to an International Olympiad
I felt kind of embarrassed to compete in math and
informatics because the others were just so far ahead of me
But physics had just started in high school so I thought I at
least had a shot at qualifying for a state competition if I worked really really hard
In the first semester, I got the equivalent of a C in Physics, which wasn't exactly encouraging
But at the same time I got super inspired by classical mechanics and by kinematics
and started to solve problems for many hours every single day
instead of going the usual route of first learning
about the problems and then knowing how to solve them
I tried to logically conclude how to solve
them without ever having read anything in books about them
As I started to do physics for many hours every single day something in my mind started to change
Instead of focusing my energy on causing trouble all day
I started looking at physics and the beauty of the most fundamental laws of nature
And this also brings us to the first out of three principles for becoming successful
Find something that you're really passionate about
I was so passionate about physics that it was a default thing my brain was thinking about
I didn't have to schedule my life in a way that I would find free time to do Physics
On the contrary, my entire life was scheduled around Physics because I was so excited about it
I know it may be very hard for you to find something that you're that passionate about,
but try nevertheless
And even if you don't manage to find something that you're that excited about
the next piece of advice might help as well!
A few months later to my great surprise I qualified for the state competition in Physics
and then two months of day-night work later,
I qualified and won the national competition in Physics
It was this precise moment that I realized that maybe I wasn't so
much less intelligent than all these genius kids
In fact, I realized that the secret to their success may not have been their I.Q.
But, it was just a combination of really good teachers in middle school
and very supportive parents
who got them inspired to work very hard and as a result they became truly excellent!
The difference between having an average I.Q. and having a very
high I.Q. is at most having to put in a few extra hours of work here and there
It's not even nearly as important as people think
Back to my story. By the age of 15, I finished the first year of high school
I was still very passionate about physics
but something else started to happen in my mind for the first time in my life
I had tasted what success feels like. No, I felt what success tastes like
That's how I should have said it. And all of a sudden I started to dream big!
Before that I thought that my life's best case scenario is that I get an average job,
make enough money to live, maybe have a family and that's it!
And obviously there's nothing wrong with being average
But suddenly I realized for the first time in my life that I had a real chance
of doing something big whether this means winning a Nobel Prize or becoming president
The point is, that until that very moment,
I believed that this was a world reserved exclusively for someone else
Someone that I could never become. And all of a sudden,
I saw this opportunity to climb the social ladder
and get into a position in society in which I could create the most impact
In the next two years I started working my ass off!
I qualified for the International Physics Olympiad
and won a medal as the youngest contestant from my country ever
In order to balance my life a little bit I started doing triathlon
First as a hobby, but then I started being very competitive about it
By the age of 18, I won a national championship in triathlon for the first time
The second life principle here is if you want to become really successful
in something in your professional life you have to become a complete fanatic about it!
Staying average needs to become your biggest fear and enemy
Your friends and family will think you're insane. And, they'll probably be right about this!
You cannot really choose your family, but you can choose your friends
So make sure to surround yourself with the right people so they maximally encourage you
and support you on your insane journey towards success
Having said all of this, I do have to emphasize that this
is not a video about finding the key to happiness
You will have to work so hard that you will definitely pay a hefty price for success
If your only objective is maximizing the happiness in your life
this method may be a bit too extreme for you
But if your life goal is making a big difference for yourself
and hopefully also for others this is a battle you will have to fight
Back to 17 year old me. Just before I started my last year of high school,
I heard about MIT for the very first time
MIT was and still is the number one university in the world for science and technology
I felt that MIT was the only place on earth that could satisfy my high ambitions
I read everything I could online about the MIT admission process
and decided that I would do anything to get admitted
And I mean anything! And this was the point where I crossed the line between
just being very ambitious, and being just plain insane!
I had no plan B! For me the entire world became black and white
Either I get admitted to MIT, and succeed, or I'm a failure
If cutting off my own finger would have meant I get admitted to MIT,
I would have probably done it...Seriously!
I had already done everything I could for the Physics Olympiad
Sadly when I went for the second time there was a translation error
and I couldn't solve an entire problem and "only" won a bronze medal again
Two months before the application deadline I found out that MIT sometimes sponsored student athletes
I reached out to an MIT coach who gave me specific times
and requirements in order to gain the support
I started training like crazy in order to satisfy these requirements
I pushed myself through unbearable levels of pain and ended up injuring
both of my knees really badly and a few months later I got rejected from MIT
And there I was a lot of physical pain, disappointed and unable to pay
for physical therapy to heal my knees
with no plan B and insufficient money to start studying at another good university
my only option was to start my bachelor's degree at the local University of Zagreb
I wasn't very sad for a long time though because all of my
crazy efforts resulted in excellent final exams
I was all over Croatian news for several days as the best
high school graduate in the entire country
If you're curious about the study methods that they used to accomplish all of this
Let me know in the comment section down below
if you want me to make a video about all the study methods
that I used in the first few months of my undergraduate studies
I read the autobiography of Sir Richard Branson
For those who don't know, he's a British billionaire and entrepreneur
He founded companies such as Virgin Record Label, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Galactic
Also, he broke many world records,
including being the very first person to cross the entire Pacific Ocean in a hot air balloon
In his autobiography, which is ironically called Losing my Virginity,
he explains that he lives according to one life principle
you've gotta try everything in life at least once
and this is probably the most important principle that completely changed my life
In the last eight years, instead of just focusing on physics and
sports I decided to grab every single opportunity that life would offer me
I started a debate in philosophy club because I wanted to learn more about
the meaning of life and get better rhetoric skills
I started teaching coding at an orphanage in Kenya because I really wanted to help the children there
At some point a friend of mine told me about this hedge fund that pays
huge amounts for internships so I just went ahead and applied
I went to Denmark to work in climate research.
I went to Singapore and California to work on
research in quantum computing and artificial intelligence
And when a friend of mine approached me and asked me if I wanted to start a company
even though I was completely broke at the time and
couldn't afford to take any financial risk I just said screw it let's do it
and we started Assist-o, a company which nowadays has over 20 full-time employees
Coincidentally screw it let's do it is actually another book by Sir Richard Branson
A while after my viral appearance on Niklas Steenfatt's podcast
I decided I hadn't done anything crazy for almost a year
Therefore I came up with the idea of starting my own YouTube channel
I'm not very comfortable standing in front of a camera nor do I have
the right personality to really entertain people
But that's just what makes it more challenging! So, I said screw it let's do it.
If you're curious about how I had time to do all these crazy things
Just let me know in the comment section down below if you would like me to make a video
about productivity and optimizing your time
People kept telling me that all of these things were just a major
distraction from my career path and in some way they were right
I'm almost certainly not going to follow the linear path of becoming a university professor
but you know what that's totally fine
Anyways, a few years prior to starting at Harvard and MIT
I kind of got tired of my studies in Croatia
because I didn't really feel like it allowed me to develop my full potential
Therefore, I quit my undergraduate studies, started working with no clear plan
and after some time I started going around from university to university
asking if they would admit me to their master's degree programs
The only university that I could convince to admit me was EPFL in Switzerland
and turns out for the very first time in the history of their university
did they allow someone with just a high school diploma to enter a master's degree
They even gave me a full scholarship that paid me to study there
EPFL opened so many doors for me. At the end
I ended up doing my master thesis at Harvard University
and I got admitted around the same time for a PhD program at MIT. A real dream come true
This brings us to present day. I'm still a PhD candidate at MIT
Just like every person, I'm struggling with a million things happening at the same time
and I'm constantly looking for new challenges
So to recap, here are the three most key principles for life for professional success
The first principle is you should find something that you're truly passionate about
Because if you're excited about what you do
you do not have to constantly force yourself to focus and work on that
The second life principle is if you want to accomplish something huge
you have to become completely obsessed with it
Staying average needs to become your biggest fear and enemy
And the third life principle is try everything at least once in your life
Don't be afraid of going outside of your comfort zone if an opportunity
comes and knocks on your door. Just say screw it let's do it!
Now I want a little community engagement at this point
Pause the video and think about one thing and write it in the comment
section down below that you would like to do in the next 12 months
It can be anything as long as it's something that's either gonna challenge you
or get you outside of your comfort zone. So go ahead and hit pause.
I set a reminder on my phone to check every single
comment one year from now and ask every single one of you for updates
So in the meantime, here are a few challenges that I set for myself for the next one or two years
Challenge number 1: I want to participate in a
real bodybuilding competition for the first time in my life
Challenge number 2: I want to hit at least 100,000 subscribers on this channel
By the way, you can help me by hitting the subscribe button in the corner down here...or
there... or wherever it is
Challenge number 3: I want to start a new company with my friends and colleagues at MIT
And challenge number 4: what is challenge number four again... oh
yeah I want to publish my first paper in quantum machine learning at MIT
If you want to know more specifics about my PhD research
or you're just curious what I do on a day-to-day basis you can click over here or over here
And if you want to get admitted to MIT you can click over here
And with that I would like to thank you guys so
much for supporting me on this crazy YouTube journey
I cannot believe how fast this channel is growing I do my absolute best to answer
every single comment and Instagram message that I get
Thank you so much, take care, and goodbye!