Book Review: Do Epic Shit By Ankur Warikoo

Note: I read the book “Do Epic Shit” three years ago on my son’s recommendation.

Ankur Warikoo (he has more than 600k followers on X and I’m one of them) is a prolific Indian YouTuber, entrepreneur, and author of three books. He is the former CEO of Groupon India, and co-founder & former CEO of Nearbuy. After quitting Nearbuy, he decided to make use of the knowledge he had acquired over the years and got into content creation. He did not take up content creation with any set goal. He did it because he enjoyed it. Soon, he went from being extremely busy as a CEO to someone who had the time to be with family. In 2021, he published his first book Do Epic Shit (translated into Hindi, Tamil, and Marathi for now), and subsequently Get Epic Shit Done.

The Do Epic Shit is a compilation of Ankur’s social media posts, mostly reflections and experiences. They are grouped into six chapters under Success (or Failure), Habits, Awareness, Entrepreneurship, Money, and Relationships. His writing style is in the first person and no-nonsense self-help book. Readers can pick chapters in no particular sequence.

These are my top 10 picks from Do Epic Shit:

1) The content game magically helps you when: you are creating content at regular intervals and you do not have to be someone else.

2) The difference between professional and amateur is pro simply showed up every day.

3) The biggest roadblock to learning is ego, from asking questions to those younger than you.

4) Don’t place the burden on one person to be your mentor. Rather have multiple mentors for different aspects of your life.

5) Success and failure are merely outputs. What you carry in your heart to reach that destination is conclusive.

6) Habits hire us forever and take us higher, where as targets tame us and leave us clueless after we achieve them.

7) To start the habit of reading books, read books that you will enjoy. Not books that the world thinks you should be reading.

8) You don’t procrastinate because you are lazy. You procrastinate because you are scared.

9) How you treat someone who has nothing to offer defines your value system. Your values don’t help you grow, But it times of shit, they hold you together.

10) Respect doesn’t come if you are a founder, manager, or senior. Respect comes from what you do and who you are. And you don’t need any title to get there. What you do become your title. How you treat others is your business card.

The key takeaway from this book is that three relationships define almost everything that happens to us in our lives — the relationship we have with money, the relationship we have with time, and the relationship we have with ourselves.

Gopal