The Secret to Building Companies That Last for Generations! w/ Sam Parr

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: Airbnb, Airbnb, Hampton, copywriting
2. 10:00 – 20:00: The Hustle, newsletter, Airbnb, Airbnb
3. 20:00 – 30:00: newsletter, Podcast, Morning Brew, My First Million
4. 30:00 – 40:00: newsletter, Indeed, Indeed, Podcast
5. 40:00 – 50:00: Hampton, Blue Collar, The Hustle, AI-powered Personal Trainer App
6. 50:00 – 1:00:00: copywriting, Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, HubSpot
7. 1:00:00 – 1:01:56: Craigslist, differentiation, HubSpot, HustleCon

Notable quotes from "The Secret to Building Companies That Last for Generations! w/ Sam Parr"

• From running a cheeky hot dog stand in college, to later founding the Hustle, a business newsletter that sold for multiple millions to HubSpot, all before the age of 31.…

  about newsletter · at 0:18

• Creators and founders scale profitable businesses. In this conversation, Sam gets real about how copywriting, sobriety, and community building shaped his entrepreneurial path.…

  about copywriting · at 1:32

• I grew up in Missouri in St. Louis, Missouri. You weren't raised in America, were you? Were you born in New Jersey?

  about Missouri · at 2:40

• It, I left school and tried to join an early stage startup called air airbed and breakfast but now Airbnb and that was kind of my start in the internet world.

  about Airbnb · at 4:01

• That was my big thing from the hot dog stand was a I don't want to be outside doing blue collar work all day.

  about Blue Collar · at 5:41

• At Airbnb led you to become a real entrepreneur, right? You then started HustleCon and the hustle and everything like that. And you started Hustle with a community-driven event called HustleCon.

  about HustleCon · at 12:27

• Going to go talk to her. And I met all of them via my book club. and my book club. I created an ad on Craigslist and on I think I bought where did I put it? I put it like on…

  about Craigslist · at 15:19

• Things. And so we got lucky. There was no competition. It was us, Austin Reef at Morning Brew, who's now one of my best friends, and the founders of the ski. We were the only…

  about Morning Brew · at 19:41

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Sam Parr — Person · 3 mentions · first at 0:10
  Sam Parr, he's the co-host of the hit podcast My First Million, and he's the founder of Hampton, an exclusive community of top entrepreneurs. Sam went from running a cheeky hot dog stand in.
• Dan Henry — Person · 1 mention · first at 5:51
  One of my favorite quotes is from Dan Henry, who's actually gonna come on the show soon, and he goes, Sell what everybody is selling, but say it better. which I just.
• Andrew Warner — Person · 1 mention · first at 16:39
  This guy named Andrew Warner was that guy to me and Andrew Warner had this website called mixerg.com where he would interview entrepreneurs and I would watch that every single day. It was like.
• Mark Zuckerberg — Person · 1 mention · first at 17:38
  Would click the articles and go to their website. But over time it started decreasing the reach. Zuckerberg would kind of change the algorithm. And I learned I was learning…
• Chris Martinez — Person · 1 mention · first at 29:10
  And I had sold the first ad to this guy named Chris at Wealthfront. Chris Martinez. You probably haven't heard of me since then. Thank you for buying my first ad. And I think I made up the number. I think I said, How does $20.
• Gary Vee — Person · 1 mention · first at 51:34
  My favorite interview that I've ever had is Gary Vee.
• Grant Cardone — Person · 1 mention · first at 53:14
  Yeah. Somebody who I interviewed recently. this is my second time interviewing him, Grant Cardone. Even though a lot of people like he gets so much like slack online, I love…
• Austin Rief — Person · 1 mention
• Ben Lerer — Person · 1 mention
• Daniela Lily — Person · 1 mention
• Hala Taha — Person · 1 mention
• Jeffrey – Pagano, Joe — Person · 1 mention
• Master Dr. Shah — Person · 1 mention
• Robert Cialdini — Person · 1 mention
• Shaan Puri — Person · 1 mention
• Will Guidara — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

• Unreasonable Hospitality — Book · 1 mention · first at 52:36
  Most recently we had Will Gera on. Will wrote this amazing book called Unreasonable Hospitality and he used to run this restaurant called 11 Madison.
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Hampton — Company · 13 mentions · first at 0:14
  Sam Parr, he's the co-host of the hit podcast My First Million, and he's the founder of Hampton, an exclusive community of top entrepreneurs. Sam went from running a cheeky hot…
• The Hustle — Company · 13 mentions · first at 0:21
  Community of top entrepreneurs. Sam went from running a cheeky hot dog stand in college, to later founding the Hustle, a business newsletter that sold for multiple millions to…
• HubSpot — Company · 6 mentions · first at 0:24
  College, to later founding the Hustle, a business newsletter that sold for multiple millions to HubSpot, all before the age of 31. Newsletters are like a pirate ship and every…
• Airbnb — Company · 6 mentions · first at 4:07
• Craigslist — Company · 3 mentions · first at 15:24
• Morning Brew — Company · 3 mentions · first at 19:45
• Indeed — Company · 3 mentions · first at 31:23
  Projects slow down, workloads pile up, and frustration sets in. That's why when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Other job sites make it tough to get noticed, but…
• Reddit — Company · 2 mentions · first at 23:47
  Spending one cent in marketing. It was all through writing blog posts that would go viral on Reddit or Hacker News.
• Mercedes — Company · 1 mention · first at 6:31
  Like is one car particularly better than another car? I'm not sure but we definitely perceive a Mercedes to be of higher quality than some other type of brand and so I think it's better to be different than it is better in my opinion.
• MixerG — Company · 1 mention · first at 16:43
  This guy named Andrew Warner was that guy to me and Andrew Warner had this website called mixerg.com where he would interview entrepreneurs and I would watch that every single…
• Thrillist — Company · 1 mention · first at 16:55
  A bunch of people on who had started newsletters. One of them was Ben Leer who started a company called Thrillist which went on to become like Group N.
• Hacker News — Company · 1 mention · first at 23:47
  Spending one cent in marketing. It was all through writing blog posts that would go viral on Reddit or Hacker News.
• Wealthfront — Company · 1 mention · first at 29:10
  And I had sold the first ad to this guy named Chris at Wealthfront. Chris Martinez. You probably haven't heard of me since then. Thank you for buying my first ad. And I think I made up the number. I think I said, How does $20.
• Mattel — Company · 1 mention · first at 32:49
  Of US e-commerce, helping millions of businesses from startups to household names like Gym Shark and Mattel. They handle everything from website design to inventory management…
• Industry Dive — Company · 1 mention · first at 34:27
  So much more profitable than everything I ever done. So I would copy this company called Industry Dive. Have you ever heard of Industry Dive? Industry Dive is a B2B newsletter…
• Informa — Company · 1 mention · first at 34:33
  Ever heard of Industry Dive? Industry Dive is a B2B newsletter business that sold to this company called Informa for maybe $800 million, I believe. and so what I would do is I…
• Vistage — Company · 1 mention · first at 45:58
  Business or who own real estate companies and that's wonderful that's great and then there's Vistage. Vistage is a company in our space they probably do 800 million a year in revenue.
• The Bear — Company · 1 mention · first at 52:47
  The best restaurant in the world. It's like one of these you know the TV show The Bear how they have like a fancy it's like they looked up to Will in that show in order to see…
• Air Bed and Breakfast — Company · 1 mention
• Eleven Madison Park — Company · 1 mention
• Group Nine Media — Company · 1 mention
• Gymshark — Company · 1 mention
• Southern Sam's wieners as big as a baby's arm — Company · 1 mention
• TED — Company · 1 mention
• The Skimm — Company · 1 mention
• YPO — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

• My First Million — Product · 5 mentions · first at 0:12
  Sam Parr, he's the co-host of the hit podcast My First Million, and he's the founder of Hampton, an exclusive community of top entrepreneurs. Sam went from running a cheeky hot dog stand in college, to later founding the Hustle, a.
• HustleCon — Product · 4 mentions · first at 12:32
• Close AI — Product · 1 mention · first at 10:59
  And when you finally log off, Close AI steps in, taking calls, logging notes, and even qualifying leads after working hours. It's like having a 24/7 assistant that never sleeps. Quo is offering my.
• Tinder — Product · 1 mention · first at 14:22
  It was basically like a room like a roommate matching app but it was set up like Tinder where you would swipe which is obviously really dumb because I should have just launched…
• Soylent — Product · 1 mention · first at 24:12
  Example, we knew that a lot of people who were in I don't know if you remember do you remember what Soylent is? Do you know Soilent?
• Trends — Product · 1 mention · first at 26:44
  Different paid newsletters and paid communities. And that's what we did. We owned this thing called Trends that I totally screwed up. I charged $300 a year for. I should have…
• AI-powered Personal Trainer App — Product · 1 mention · first at 40:52
  Like that. It's hard work. Yeah, you're funny. okay. So, let's let's do the next one. An AI powered personal trainer app.
• Airbnb Co-Host Network — Product · 1 mention
• Quo (formerly OpenPhone) — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• newsletter — Concept · 24 mentions · first at 0:23
• Podcast — Concept · 11 mentions · first at 0:12
  Sam Parr, he's the co-host of the hit podcast My First Million, and he's the founder of Hampton, an exclusive community of top entrepreneurs. Sam went from running a cheeky hot dog stand in college, to later founding the Hustle, a.
• Blue Collar — Concept · 6 mentions · first at 5:44
• copywriting — Concept · 4 mentions · first at 1:36
• Yap Gang — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 1:07
  What's up, Yap gang? Today, I'm sitting down with one of the most scrappy and creative entrepreneurs in the game, Sam Parr. Sam went from running a cheeky hot dog stand in college to later founding.
• sobriety — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 1:38
  Businesses. In this conversation, Sam gets real about how copywriting, sobriety, and community building shaped his entrepreneurial path. He also breaks down his playbook for…
• differentiation — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 6:11
  Easier to be different than it is better. and so like I really learned the effects of differentiation.
• Community Building — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:38
  Businesses. In this conversation, Sam gets real about how copywriting, sobriety, and community building shaped his entrepreneurial path. He also breaks down his playbook for…
• B2B Newsletter — Concept · 1 mention · first at 34:31
  Company called Industry Dive. Have you ever heard of Industry Dive? Industry Dive is a B2B newsletter business that sold to this company called Informa for maybe $800 million…
• Conference — Concept · 1 mention · first at 37:02
  And so that's what I would do and then I would layer in a paid community and a conference and I'm pretty certain that I know for a fact I can get to 100 million in revenue because other people have done it.
• CPM (Cost Per Mille) — Concept · 1 mention
• Mastermind — Concept · 1 mention
• Roll-up — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

• Missouri — Place · 3 mentions · first at 2:40
• New Jersey (Jersey) — Place · 2 mentions · first at 2:44
  I grew up in Missouri in St. Louis, Missouri. You weren't raised in America, were you? Were you born in New Jersey?
• San Francisco — Place · 2 mentions · first at 15:30
  Book club. I created an ad on Craigslist and on I think I bought where did I put it? I put it like on the San Francisco newspaper and I was like I'm starting a business book…
• St. Louis, Missouri — Place · 1 mention · first at 2:40
  I grew up in Missouri in St. Louis, Missouri. You weren't raised in America, were you? Were you born in New Jersey?
• Nashville — Place · 1 mention · first at 11:31
  Interviews, speaking gigs, and podcasting events. And this fall, I'll be heading to Nashville and then LA for some exciting podcast interviews. I love that traveling gives me a…
• Los Angeles — Place · 1 mention

Sponsors

• Airbnb — Sponsor · 6 mentions · first at 4:07
  It, I left school and tried to join an early stage startup called air airbed and breakfast but now Airbnb and that was kind of my start in the internet world.
• Indeed — Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at 31:23
  Projects slow down, workloads pile up, and frustration sets in. That's why when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Other job sites make it tough to get noticed, but…
• Shopify — Sponsor · 2 mentions · first at 32:39
  Can't do it alone? I want you to turn those whatifs into why nots and help your business soar with Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind over 10% of US e-commerce…
• Quo — Sponsor · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Podcasts are one of the best ways to have influence. Once you capture someone in their ears for 50 or 100 minutes a week, you have real influence over them. Sam Parr, he's the co-host of the hit podcast My First Million, and he's the founder of Hampton, an exclusive community of top entrepreneurs. Sam went from running a cheeky hot dog stand in college, to later founding the Hustle, a business newsletter that sold for multiple millions to HubSpot, all before the age of 31. Newsletters are like a pirate ship and every newsletter subscriber you get, it's like a little bit of a wind in your sales.

0:34 What makes you want Hampton to be more of a business that you have forever? Huge growth and huge money. If you do it right, it should compound. And so a business like Hampton, I think there's an overemphasis on breath of knowledge and not depth. I think depth is where real value is created. It's far better to be an expert at a very narrow thing than it is to be a generalist at a bunch of things. What are some of the big tactics that you use to grow your initial newsletter?

0:59 We grew to 100,000 subscribers without spending one cent in marketing. One of the easiest ways to get popular for a newsletter.

1:07 What's up, Yap gang? Today, I'm sitting down with one of the most scrappy and creative entrepreneurs in the game, Sam Parr. Sam went from running a cheeky hot dog stand in college to later founding The Hustle, a business newsletter that sold for multiple millions to HubSpot, all before the age of 31. Now he's the co-host of the hit podcast My First Million and the founder of Hampton, an exclusive community for top entrepreneurs. Sam is redefining how creators and founders scale profitable businesses. In this conversation, Sam gets real about how copywriting, sobriety, and community building shaped his entrepreneurial path. He also breaks down his playbook for growing newsletters and building companies that can hit the $und00 million mark. And if you're new here and you want to level up your entrepreneurial game, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode of Yap. Sam,

1:57 welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. What's up? How are you? I am so excited for this conversation. You're somebody who I look up to as a podcaster, as an entrepreneur, as a creator entrepreneur, and I know you've built and sold, you know, a a multi-figure company. you now are running Hampton, which I'm really excited to talk to you about. But before we dive into all of that, I I want to understand your upbringing because from my understanding, you were an entrepreneur from a really young age and you did a lot of fun things before you actually launched some of your more serious businesses. So talk to us about why you were such a young entrepreneur, what inspired you to be an entrepreneur, and some of the early projects that you did.

2:40 I grew up in Missouri in St. Louis, Missouri. You you you weren't raised in America, were you? Were you born in New Jersey?

2:45 I was. I was born in New Jersey. Yeah. Oh, you're born in New Jersey. For some reason, I thought you said that you had immigrated at a young age. Um, so then you But honestly, even if you're from New Jersey, you probably still don't know anything about Missouri.

2:56 Yeah, I don't. Uh, I knew about I I knew as much about New Jersey as you probably knew about Missouri uh growing up because Missouri where I grew up very bluecollar and uh um my parents owned a fruit stand and that is how I learned about entrepreneurship. But back then they didn't call it entrepreneurship. It was just like making a living, you know, that's just what people did. And so for years I thought that I was going to own like a landscaping company or something like that. Uh like some type of bluecollar thing. But when I was in college, well really maybe starting in high school, I started learning about the internet. I started selling stuff on eBay and then in college I started like a couple e-commerce stores and I was like this is so much better than bluecollar stuff because in college I started a hot dog stand. It was called Southern Sam's wieners is as big as a baby's arm and it uh was really hard

3:49 work. I worked my butt off and it was so hot outside. It was awful. And then I started like selling stuff on the internet and it was so much easier to be in the AC and I could make money in my sleep. And so um when I learned about it, I left school and tried to uh join an early stage startup called air airbed and breakfast but now Airbnb and uh that was kind of my start in the internet world.

4:12 Yeah, I love that. Uh let's dive deep on this this hot dog stand. It had such a funny name. It seems like you were always like really good at marketing, really good at getting attention. What were some of the lessons that you learned from this hot dog stand endeavor?

4:27 Um, that's funny. Um, what did I learn? I learned that was what inspired me to get into copywriting because I I'm now like a copywriter. That's kind of my shtick. And I read all these books on how to sell, like how to sell to people when I had a hot dog stand because like hot dog stands aren't particularly like one isn't particularly different than the other. It's about who could sell it better. And so I learned like all these stickticks. Like we had a stickick where you would get a like a free hot dog if you put your baby's arm in um a bun and put mustard on it and let me take photo and post it on social media cuz the slogan was wiener's as big as a baby's arm. And uh like I would do all these stickticks like or I would just like riff with people like I would ask them questions and I would um like get them to laugh basically. It's almost like flirting a little bit. And uh and I like learned how to do that and I would

5:24 sell way more. And I was like, the cool thing about the internet is I can write a bit of copy one time and sell to an infinite amount of people, not just the amount of people that are walking down my block. How do I learn how to do that to an infinity amount of people? And that's why I got into copywriting. And that was my big thing uh from the hot dog stand was a I don't want to be outside doing blue collar work all day. It's very hard. and B, how do I learn how to sell but via the written word?

5:51 One of my favorite quotes is from Dan Henry, who's actually gonna come on the show soon, and he goes, "Sell what everybody is selling, but say it better." Uh, which I just

6:00 Yeah, I wouldn't even say I wouldn't even say say it better. I would say say it different. Uh, it's a lot better and easier to be different than it is better. Uh, and so like I I really learned the effects of differentiation. Not not not exactly even just being better because being better I mean it's all like all of business is like perception you know like is one car particularly better than another car? I'm not sure but we definitely perceive a Mercedes to be of higher quality than some other type of brand and so I think it's better to be different uh than it is better in my opinion.

6:40 Yeah, I love that. So, you know, there's a lot of young men listening in in their 20s. You know, I I did some research on you and I found out that you actually got let go from your dream job at Airbnb or they they didn't hire you because they found out that you got a DUI

6:58 and that set you on your sobriety journey and and you know, you got more discipline after that.

7:04 So, looking back at your 20s, what would you have done differently? And for all the 20ish yearear-old men tuning in right now, what's your advice to them?

7:14 It worked out well. So, I'm not I don't know if I would change too much, but I went through years of pain. So, basically um starting maybe around the age of 20 or 21. I developed I I think I was always born with an addictive personality and I started getting to uh like drugs and alcohol, mostly alcohol, but like I I definitely like to do some drugs or I did. And I kind of I kind of spiraled and um there was like a 3-week period where I got arrested like two or three times. I spent time in jail and it was awful and I lied to Airbnb or at least I thought I wasn't lying. I think like on the res or on the application they were like, "Have you been convicted of a misdemeanor or something like that and like I was in the process of going through court and I hadn't been convicted at that time or something like that where I was in fact wrong, but I was hoping I it was a gray area and they called me out on it." And so the day

8:04 before I was supposed to start at Airbnb, they were like, "We don't hire liars. We call you." And so I learned uh during that phase I think for a lot of young men you know I was 21 22 like you really you know women are a little bit different in that they women sort of had a have a different right of passage for a lot of young men there's not really a right of passage from when you go like there's no official period where it's like you were a boy and now you are a man. And when I was in my 20, like 21, 22, 20 years old, I was like, I still feel like a boy, but I'm supposed to act like a man a little bit. I don't know how to do that. And I felt incredibly not confident with myself, particularly when meeting other girls, which is like what every 21-year-old guy cares about.

8:47 And so, I used a lot of alcohol to like cover that up. And then I realized I had a lot of issues that I was still working through as a kid. And I used a lot of alcohol to cover that up. And so, uh, once I got sober, it took about 12 months of being sober to where I started to get very confident in my own in my own skin and confident in, uh, in myself and thinking that I'm good enough, uh, good enough to like be loved by like a girlfriend or good enough to like succeed and make money. Um, because I always thought I had some type of like special sauce that I was like, I have something in me, but I don't know how to express it, and I don't know how to like reach or fulfill my potential. Um, and I had all these demons that I would use alcohol to help cover up. And I just realized that being sober kind of forces you to face reality. I think that when I was um, you know, you kind of have like

9:33 beer goggles on where you like see the world blurry. And once you take those goggles off, you can finally see the world more clearly and you have to face stuff more head-on and more direct and face the consequences of your action. And you have to like look like a fearful. It could be as small as like approaching a girl and like a lot of times like you want to have a drink in your hand or something like that to make you feel cool or make you calm and like just like doing little things like that like talking to a stranger doing that sober got me to start flexing this muscle of being confident and facing my fears and it kind of made me feel fearless after doing it for a couple years. It it kind of became like a high.

10:06 And so for a lot of young men I think that they shouldn't they shouldn't um they shouldn't avoid fearful things. They should acknowledge that they are fearful of doing a variety of things and they should do it anyway. And I think that using drugs and alcohol is a great way to hide those fears and to make it so you're you have fake courage. But it kind of creates like a horrible cycle.

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10:59 And when you finally log off, Close AI steps in, taking calls, logging notes, and even qualifying leads after working hours. It's like having a 24/7 assistant that never sleeps. Quo is offering my listeners 20% off your first 6 months at quo.com/profiting. That's quo.com/profiting. You can even keep your existing phone number for free. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. Yep. Bam. One of the best parts of my job is that it takes me everywhere. I've traveled for interviews, speaking gigs, and podcasting events. And this fall, I'll be heading to Nashville and then LA for some exciting podcast interviews. I love that traveling gives me a chance to try new things, meet incredible people, and experience different cultures firsthand.

11:42 Along the way, I've booked some unforgettable homes on Airbnb that felt warm and welcoming the moment that I arrived. These experiences really inspired me to start thinking about hosting my own place while I'm away for travel. But here's the truth. I could really use some support to manage some of the details of hosting. That's why I'm excited about Airbnb's co-host network. A co-host is a vetted local expert who partners with you to make sure guests are always having an amazing stay. They handle guest communication, booking, supplies, and even add thoughtful touches to elevate your space. You don't need to be on-site or hands-on to host like a pro. Just team up with a co-host and make it happen.

12:21 Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host. This detour of of not actually working at Airbnb led you to become a real entrepreneur, right? You then started HustleCon and and the hustle and everything like that. And you started Hustle with a community-driven event called HustleCon.

12:41 Yeah. What made you think of actually launching first with an event? And were you always really good at building community and and did you have experience with events or was this kind of like the first time you ever did it? You know what's funny is my process of getting sober. Like I it keeps going back to like meeting girls, but I swear that's just like whatever that's whatever like a 21-year-old cares about. But basically like I wanted to meet people. I wanted friends, men and women friends. Um and I like read a book and the book basically like talked about how in order for a man to attract other male friends or potential girlfriends, you need to work on yourself and become like an interesting person and bring people along with you in your life. And that's like an attract and it was like this is how you be attractive. You become you become an attractive person by living an interesting life and like uh sort of

13:30 bringing others along and guiding them along this life that you want to live because now you will be associated with good times and and all that. And so I started hosting events for that reason. Um, and so like for example, I had a book club that would meet every week and I became the leader of the book club and all I had to do was read one book like a chapter in advance of the club and then like lead the conversation and I got you you get like power through that but really I got all these friends like I had all these people looking up to me and they came to me and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I am the center of attention and I get to pick and choose my friends and these people admire me. I finally feel loved and accepted and that's why I got into hosting events." The reality is is I'm pretty introverted. I actually like to be by myself a lot now, but um at that time I was like in order to meet

14:14 friends I want to host events. And so I had previously had a different startup that was like a roommate matching app. It was basically like a room like a roommate matching app but it was set up like Tinder where you would swipe which is obviously really dumb

14:26 because I should have just launched Tinder like Tinder for Tinder. This was like Tinder for roommates. So, it was like a much smaller market and I sold it and I made not not that much money, but I was like, I'm going to host this event called HustleCon, which is basically like a TED talk for entrepreneurs. I'm going to host that to kill time until I figure out my next big idea. And that's why I hosted the event. Um, I hosted it because I knew that events was a great way to become like the node of a network and to meet all these amazing people.

14:52 And I wanted friends. Uh, as desperate as that sounds, that's the truth. Yeah. I mean, I always do things like that, like host events, like just so that you can actually meet the people that you want to meet. It's such a great like networking hack to actually be the event planner and the event host.

15:07 So, some of my best friends to this day, the guys who were in my wedding and the women who came to my like my my my best friends who are men and women,

15:14 in fact, the woman I was with, my friend Lily, when I met my now wife, I was like, "Lily, this girl is beautiful. I'm going to go talk to her." And uh I met all of them via my book club. and my book club. I created an ad on Craigslist and on uh I think I bought where did I put it? I put it like on the San Francisco newspaper and I was like I'm starting a business book club. Who wants to come? And I had 2,000 people over the course of a year sign up to like learn about the book club and I met all of my now best friends via that book club.

15:43 That's so cute. I love that. Uh, it reminds me of like when I started I started a hip-hop blog when I was younger and I I recruited all the girls from Craigslist and a lot of those girls are like still my friends to this day.

15:54 Yeah, it's the best. Yeah. Um, so then you started a newsletter called The Hustle and that was really like something that you really scaled big. You ended up selling it to HubSpot for like multi-ight figures. It became a huge deal. You sold advertising and things like that. What made you, you know, think of newsletters? I read that at the time people thought email was dead, which I was surprised because to me it was still like pretty early, but talk to me about how you envisioned and like the the hustle and and did it pan out how you actually planned it or did you kind of go organically and and see how it evolved?

16:30 So you and I um I don't know how old you are but like what what we are to like the young 20somes like people watch us. this guy named Andrew Warner was that guy to me and Andrew Warner had this website called mixerg.com where he would interview entrepreneurs and I would watch that every single day. It was like crack to me and he I noticed that he had a bunch of people on who had started newsletters. One of them was Ben Leer who started a company called Thrillist which went on to become like Group N. It's like a huge billion dollar media company. And I was like I'm pretty good at writing. This newsletter thing seems interesting. And it was a bunch of magical things that came together at once. The first thing was that a I liked writing. The second thing was I saw people talk about newsletters on Mixer G. And the third thing was um um at the time people were building these large media companies on the backs of

17:21 Facebook. And it was very evident that and if you're like 19 or 21 years old listening, you don't even know what I'm talking about. basically like BuzzFeed uh got huge because they would have a Facebook page that would get all these likes on Facebook and they would share articles on Facebook and a lot of people would click the articles and go to their website. But over time it started decreasing the reach. Zuckerberg would kind of change the algorithm. And I learned uh I was learning this and I made a very what I felt was an obvious prediction was that newsletters are like a pirate ship and every newsletter subscriber you get, it's like a little bit of a wind in your sales. And basically I can build this massive media company just doing email. And the model was so much better because uh and this proved to be true. I was like, I could have two writers reach millions, literally two, three, four, five million

18:06 people a day because all I'm doing is sending 1500 words in a newsletter and I could put and I could put ads in that and I think I can make a $100 million a year doing that. That was my math. I was like, if I get like five or six million subscribers, I think I can make $100 million a year and build a potentially keep going and build a multi-billion dollar but for sure a multiund million dollar company doing that. And so I did all the math and I went and told all these media people, these media execs who I I would call email. I told them this idea and they were like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Like newsletters are dumb. And I'm like I'm like, "Guy, why does it matter if I'm like looking if I'm looking at this phone? Who cares if I have to click the Gmail app and read the news versus go to Chrome and like browse a website? Like why does it matter? Your attention's there or it's

18:51 not. It doesn't matter." And they're like, "Well, advertisers don't want to advertise in newsletters and this and that." And I was like, "But why? This does not make sense to me." And so, um, in the first year, I got 100,000 subscribers to sign up to the hustle. The second the second year, I think, um, it went 100, 500, a million, and then like when we sold it was like I think 17 like 1.7 million, something like that. And then revenue went I think 300,000, 2.2, to five, 12, and then 18. I think we were going to do 18 million the year we sold. And along the way, we got really lucky on a couple things. One, all the people who said we were stupid for doing this, it it became true. PE subscribers were like listening or subscribing to these things. And so we got lucky. There was no competition. It was us, Austin Reef at Morning Brew, who's now one of my best friends, and the founders of the ski. We were the only three people in

19:50 this whole industry doing what we were doing. Wow. And so no one was catching on. It was insane. I'm like, are you are you guys watching us do this right in front of you? How do you guys not see us doing this? And then the second thing, advertisers started buying into it. And so now huge companies, they have this massive budget, you know, where they advertise all over the place. They they purposely deploy money now in newsletters. Back then they didn't do it. And so we had to convince them it was a good idea. And every year it got easier and easier and easier. And so we started just gobbling up all this advertising budget because they wanted to advertise in newsletters, but there was only three of us in the whole field.

20:25 And so like all of this like we captured this beautiful momentum. It was like we just grabbed this title wave and it was awesome. Um so we got really lucky in that regard. Um but we but it was so funny. Uh Austin, like I said, he's now one of my best friends. His company, they're doing close to 100 million in revenue now. I sold my business early so I wasn't able to like get get there but the premise was right. So but was funny is Austin lived in New York the ski they lived in New York and I lived in San Francisco. Us three we didn't know each other but we all had the exact same insight all around the exact same time and we all had the exact same predictions and those became true but very few people believed in us early on.

21:04 That's so exciting and like just so cool to hear. And now I know that you're in podcasting. I know Morning Brew has like a little podcast network going on. Do you feel like podcast is like the next evolution of what newsletters were or do you think of them differently?

21:23 They're way different in terms of skill set. So my skill set, I don't think of myself as a great podcaster. My partner Sean on the podcast MFM, he's fantastic. He is built for that. I am built for writing. I'm a great writer. Uh they're different skill sets. Um, and so but I do think that in order of like if I had to rank the order. So the power of a media business or uh like if you're like you know ran makeup or whatever that you know uh what's the uh Bieber who had the makeup business

21:56 uh I think road I think it's road road whatever sorry uh uh Haley Bieber I forget the name of your company.

22:03 I knew exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. If you're like her or you're a Kardashian, the Kardashians, if you're uh what I did with Hampton, the order of influence, like a most powerful channels in my humble opinion, number one is podcast because you're in someone's ear often times many hours a week. Number two is YouTube. Uh number three might be newsletter and then number four would be like a blog. Uh that's like the order of like influence because the equation for for media value is like the quantity of people times the power you have over them meaning how influential you are times their buying power. And so what that means is like if you have so like there's a world where like having low influence over 10 million moms who live in the Midwest is equal to having a newsletter that impacts 1,000 people who work in the buying department for the parts department at Boeing. Do you know

23:02 what I mean? Who buy like, you know, a billion dollar or $10 million deals for like parts. And so that's the equation. And so, in my opinion, podcasts are one of the best ways to have influence. It's also one of the hardest. They're like the hardest thing on earth to grow in my opinion. But once you capture someone and you're in their ears for 50 or or 100 minutes a week, you have real influence over them.

23:24 Yeah. I I love that breakdown. One more question about newsletters and then I want to play a game. So, a lot of the creator entrepreneurs that listen to the show, everybody's like hot on growing their newsletter. So, what are some of the big tactics that you use to grow your initial newsletter? What are some of your favorite tactics with that?

23:42 We grew to 100,000 subscribers without spending one cent in marketing. It was all through writing blog posts that would go viral on Reddit or Hacker News. And so, one of the easiest ways to get popular for a newsletter is to make a decision on where your market already exists and what content can you get can you create that gets popular on that channel and then you siphon them off into your newsletter. So for uh for example, we knew that a lot of people who were in I don't know uh if you remember do you remember what Soylent is? Do you know Soilent?

24:14 No. Oh well uh is it food or something? Yeah. Yeah I I kind of like Slim Fast for nerds. It's like a meal a meal replacement for like engineers and uh my the hostel was a tech and business newsletter. So I was like well a lot of like nerdy engineers are going to want to subscribe because that's who I am and that's who I'm writing for. And so I wrote an article about how my friend I paid him $2,000 to live on Soilent and only Soilent for 30 days. And I was like, "Okay, so this is content that those types of people would like. It will go viral in the subreddit called Soilent on Reddit." And so I would create content that would go viral there. And that's how I got my first 100,000 subscribers. So if you want to kickstart, you have to find out where is the audience already living and what are they consume consuming and how do I break into their attention and bring them over to my platform.

25:02 Uh the second thing that works really well is we took an unserious game which is newsletters very serious and because of that we crushed it. No one at the time other than the ski and morning brew. And arguably, I know how Austin operates. It was really just him and I or our companies that were taking it the most serious because what we did was we calculated how much money each subscriber is worth to us and then we went and spent money on Facebook ads to acquire a customer to bring them onto our platform. And at the time, no one was doing that. And um so I would highly recommend if you can dial. So first of all, you should get to like tens of thousands of subscribers organically so you know that your content is good enough to keep someone. Then you make a um you do a bunch of calculations to figure out what's your customer worth.

25:47 Then you decide how much can I wait to get my payback from buying ads and then you go and buy ads anywhere you can that you can where you can acquire customer for the value that you have already predetermined. Does that make sense?

25:59 Yeah, totally makes sense. And then talk to us through how you know just for people who are unfamiliar in terms of how you monetize your newsletter like what were the different avenues that you monetized it?

26:09 We monetized we got our first probably 15 million in revenue from one source only ads in the newsletter. And my theory our theory was we could get to something like 40 or 50 million in revenue via ads in the newsletter. That was wrong by the way. The number is way higher. you could definitely get to like 100 million just on advertising. Um, and then I was like, once we get to like, I don't know, hundreds of thousands or a million subscribers, we can launch different paid newsletters and paid communities. And that's what we did. We owned this thing called Trends that um, I totally screwed up. I charged $300 a year for. I should have charged way more money. That's not a good pricing structure. And so, we were making millions through that. Um, but the first the year we sold, we were probably going to do 18 million in revenue. We were probably going to do 12 or probably 12 to 13 million just in

27:07 advertising and then like another six via subscriptions. Yeah, I know with podcasts, uh, it's really standardized in terms of the CPM, right? So, the average CPM is like$25 to $35 an We made no money by the way on podcasts.

27:22 Really? With with with the hustle or with So the hustle owns my first million. And so

27:28 you made no money. Do you want to know how much money my podcast made this year so far?

27:32 How much? Guess. How many sponsorships? How many downloads do you have per month?

27:38 400,000. Oh, I don't know. Seven figures maybe. Right. I made $1.2 million already this year in sponsorships just on my show cuz I have a podcast network.

27:47 Yeah. This year. This year so far. This year so far. Okay. It's that's that's really So you're killing it at monetization.

27:54 I'm really good at that. We were not good at it. So when I sold my So I I sold my first million to HubSpot.

28:00 Mhm. I think we were doing 300,000 downloads a month. Mhm. 370,000 I think we did the month we sold. Now we do many millions a month. We were doing something like $10,000 a month in sales.

28:13 Oh my god, that's so crazy. It's so crazy how you could specialize. We specialized in newsletter advertisements. We did not specialize on podcasts. And my team, we did not know how to do it. We still had to learn how to do it.

28:25 Yeah. It's so funny. I meet people like that every day where I'm like, you get this many downloads and you only make this much. Like to your point, you just really need to know what you're doing.

28:33 We didn't know. I didn't know. So, how is it? How are newsletters still? Just like out of curiosity in terms of is there like a standard CPM or because there was no competitors, were you guys just selling it flat rate and whatever you wanted? I at first, let me think. So, my first ad I ever sold. So, we basically like I was still doing HustleCon every year, but I started the the hustle as it is now in 2016 in April of 16. And um I think by that June, that was when I first started selling ads. That June I made 30,000 that month.

29:07 And I had sold the first ad to this guy named Chris at Wealthfront. Chris Martinez. You probably haven't heard of me since then. Thank you for buying my first ad. And I think I made up the number. I think I said, "How does $20 per 1,000 cents sound to you?"

29:23 And I said, like, if that doesn't work for you, I'll give you your money back. And that's what he accepted. So, for some reason, we stuck with $20 per 1,000 cents. And so, we had multiple um ad units in the newsletter. We had I forget what we called it, but the long I think we just called it a native ad. it was in the email

29:42 and that would be 150 words. I think we charged $25 to $30 per 1,000 sends and then we had other ad units that would be cheaper. And so each send I would have to do the math but each send each time we hit send maybe we were making

30:01 I don't remember $45 per 1,000 sends. And so on a million subscribers, you're looking at something like $45,000 every time you hit send.

30:12 And it's it's crazy. It's so similar to podcasting. It's like you got basically ad slots in your newsletter. And

30:18 it's the same thing. The difference is it's so much newsletters were so much easier to grow. Uh podcasts are very challenging to grow. Like if I said, "Hey, I need you to um create a new podcast from scratch and I need you to use you can't use your name and it has to be in a new industry."

30:35 It would be really hard to do that. It would It is. It's hard. Like my podcast, MFM, we're pretty popular. Every day I'm like, I can't believe this works. Like it still shocks me. Now, if we were to do that with a newsletter, if I if you told me you have to go do that with a different newsletter, I'd be like, "Yeah, it's going to take me six months and like give me like, you know, a quarter of a million dollars and I could like get to 100,000 subscribers like easy." Like, it's not that hard. It's very It's far more formulaic. Uh podcasting is often times,

31:02 in my opinion, a little bit magic in a bottle. It is. I feel like it's like right timing, uh getting on the right platforms, but now with YouTube, I feel like it's a little bit a little bit Yeah. What's up, Yap Gang? If you've ever had to hire, you know the stress of waiting too long to fill a role. Projects slow down, workloads pile up, and frustration sets in. That's why when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Other job sites make it tough to get noticed, but Indeed sponsored jobs helps you stand out and hire fast by putting your post right at the top where relevant candidates can actually see it.

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33:01 to sell globally? They help you sell in over 150 countries. Plus, their checkout is the best converting on the planet, so you'll never miss a sale. Turn those whatifs and keep giving those big dreams their best shot with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/profiting. Go to shopify.com/profiting. Again, that's shopify.com/profiting. Let's play a game called Path to $100 million. So, I know on My First Million, you're often like riffing with Sean on on hundred million dollar business ideas and past. So, I'm gonna give you um an idea for a business that an entrepreneur listening in might take on and you can say, is this scalable to $100 million or not? And then what your path to that hund00 million would be. Okay, I'm going to throw uh let's we're talking about newsletters. though a newsletter just for the construction industry.

34:00 Oh yeah, for sure. So uh for that so my general answer is most businesses can get to 100 million in revenue. You just got to like tinker and and and you also have to figure out the right business model but also you have to figure out the right time length. So if you give it enough time almost everything can get there. Um, so for construction, uh, yeah, like B2B newsletters is, um, are so much more profitable than everything I ever done. So I would copy this company called Industry Dive. Have you ever heard of Industry Dive? Industry Dive is a B2B newsletter business that sold to this company called Informa for maybe $800 million, I believe. Uh, and so what I would do is I would start with construction. I don't know what the TAM is, but I would imagine I could I could create a daily newsletter that sends six days a week uh for construction companies. I would probably target people who are build uh I would have to

34:56 like research the industry, but someone who's like the decision maker that on buying products that equal I think tens of millions of dollars. So, for example, if you're um if you're building like uh if you own a company that like um builds like, you know, 500 houses or you like create like a subdivision or something like that, I would create a newsletter where I would act like it was a high school yearbook. And so, what that means is that that industry, I don't know how big it is, but I would make it feel very small. And my editorial philosophy would be name as many names and as many companies as humanly possible. I would be like almost like the yellow pages because in that industry they're not used to probably getting like a lot of clout or or whatever and they probably would want to see their friends or uh businesses or people who they recognized or themselves in this newsletter and so they would be

35:46 more often to tell their buddies and so I would create like it would make me feel like a high school yearbook where it' be like um um you know uh Derek in New Jersey who's like runs a 500 person company he has said the following about the current market and like I would get like a quote from him and I would probably have a 1500word daily newsletter on the for business owners of construction companies and I think I could probably get that business to 5 million in revenue and then I would create more newsletters that are tangentially related but not exactly the same thing. So instead of construction companies it would be like

36:24 plumbing or something. Plumbing. Yeah, plumbing is a great example. And the reason I would do this is because the vendors of those companies, so if I created an HVAC newsletter, the the vendors of an HVAC company, they have to spend a certain amount of money. So like the the people making the actual AC, they need more customers and there's not that many places that you can spend money to for advertising to reach that demographic. It's a very hard group of people to reach. So my business would be how which industries can I enter where there's enough people buying ads but it's really hard you they can't spend it on Facebook and so that's what I would do and then I would layer in a paid community and a conference and I'm pretty certain that that I know for a fact I can get to 100 million in revenue because other people have done it.

37:07 So we were just talking about CP that was really good really perfect exactly what I wanted. So, we were just talking about CPMs for newsletters and the hustle was like pretty broad. So, you had like a $20 CPM what you're talking about, but because this is niche, you might be able to charge like a Yeah. a couple thousand dollar CPM because they're getting exactly who they want instead of, you know, three out of the thousand people you're targeting on a broad newsletter.

37:33 It's very easy to do the math. So, the math is basically, I'm just making this up. I don't know anything about this industry, but if I had a HVAC newsletter that sent a daily newsletter that talked about the industry and news for the HVAC industry, I would imagine that like like my friend owns a HVAC business in Missouri that does 100 million in revenue. And I have to imagine he buys $30 million a year worth of HVAC that or air condition units that he installs into people's home. And so I would go to the advertiser that says, "I reach people like this. how much are you willing to spend in order to sell HVAC to a client that would potentially buy $30 million a year worth of your company or of your products?

38:10 And so that's why it's like so it's a no-brainer that you spend a million dollars a year to reach this audience, you know, whatever.

38:15 Mhm. Yeah. So good. Okay, so let's go to the next one. A car wash franchise. Um, well, I would want to have a stickick. So, in order to build that, I would have to say like who am I going after? Like, am I going after families that have children and their children are going to come and sit in the lobby? Am I going after um dads who have high-end like weekend cars and they want them super highly detailed? So, I would make a decision like that and then I would sweat through every single detail of the user experience. And so let's say that like my shtick is like this is going to be familyfriendly. So that means that when you come into the uh so I would I would paint the the car wash in a very uh colorful way and I would have chachkis I can't say that word. I would have stuff all over the place that kids could play with. I would have coloring books. I would make it like um a place where you

39:17 want to go because your children can sit and jump off the walls and like you know have fun for 30 minutes while you get your car cleaned. And then um the model for that would probably be franchise. So like get as many units as I possibly could, but I would probably sell founding or annual memberships in order to fund expansion to new uh cities.

39:43 Okay. And I know that you like blue collar rollups, right? So I don't like that. I don't like that. Oh

39:50 well. I mean I think it's cool. I think it's cool, but I think it's so much work. Okay.

39:54 I think it's cool. I love like even though you have to build a newsletter and make $100 million. Like

39:59 even though I'm a yepy, I do like find it very I think every like I think the grass is always greener. I think it's very romantic to hire blue collar guys because I enjoy being with the everyday man. But the reality is I don't probably want to be around them as much as I think I do.

40:14 Why? I did. I I didn't mean to ruin your your I want to hear the truth. I you know I thought you liked blue collar roll-ups but you're not Cody Sanchez apparently.

40:24 It's sort of like I like the idea of going out hunting but I don't want to go sleep outside in the cold like you know like it sounds romantic but in practice

40:34 it's way easier to sit on your laptop and write newsletters. Have you ever been around a bunch of blue collar guys? I grew up with them. They're a bunch of degenerates. I don't want to spend too much time with these with these morons.

40:43 Yeah, I hear you. They're hung over all the time and stuff like that. It's hard work. Yeah, you're funny. Um, okay. So, let's let's do the next one. An AI powered personal trainer app.

40:57 This is probably the hardest of all of them. I think this might be the hardest of all of them. Coincidentally, it's also not the least blue collar, but it might be the hardest of all of them. That's a hard space. Um, how would I get it to a 100red million in revenue? You have to have a co-founder that has a huge Instagram audience or YouTube audience who's a fitness influencer. So, you'd have to I would in order to make this work, I would have to either be the famous influencer, which I'm not the fitness influencer. I would that would be cool if I was like ripped enough to be a fitness influencer, but I'm not.

41:30 Uh, and so I would have to be the nerd who like actually creates the product and then you'd have to team up with like I would find someone be like, I need to give you I'll give you half the company. Um, but uh you to to get distribution for those um for an app, it's like the hard it's one of the hardest things I think uh to do. So, I would probably have to team up with someone.

41:51 Yeah. Cool. Well, let's uh I want to move on to talk about Hampton. And I also want to talk about you uh you know your your sale of the hustle. So, you actually built Hustle and Hampton very differently. Um, from my understanding, you really built the hustle to sell it, whereas Hampton um is more of a legacy business that you want to run for a long time. Is that accurate?

42:18 My my dream is that my daughter will work at Hampton. My daughter's 2 years old. My daughter is going to be two soon and uh my dream is that she'll work here.

42:26 That's so cute. What makes you want Hampton to be more of a business that you have forever compared to the hustle? So, my now current co-founder Joe, he's in the other room here. When I was um in my mid20s, he was the wealthiest person who I knew. And at that time, I I asked him how much does he spend every month. And he told me that I think he told me $60,000. And I like Googled, how much money do I have to have to be able to spend $60,000 a month and never work again? And I think the number was like 20 or $25 million, but I was like, I'm going to have a goal of can I make $20 million by the age of 30. And so I built the hustle in order to hit that goal. So I knew I was going to sell it. That was the plan the whole time. And I did. I I I hit the number by 31 cuz I sold it when I was 31. So I was off by a year. But um that was my goal because I grew up feeling kind of poor. I grew up like when I ran

43:28 the hustle for the first handful of years, I paid myself like two grand a month. Like I felt very poor going like along the way I I because of my alcohol stuff that I had prior I literally felt like a homeless guy some days like uh and I was like I want to not be fearful and I don't want to feel like like money is is I don't want to feel like insecure. So I built the hustle to sell. But what I noticed is the people who are my goal isn't really money anymore, but the people who are really wealthy, and when I say wealthy, I mean money, but I also mean like relevant or like largely impactful to the world, they do the same thing for many decades a lot of times.

44:09 Um, a lot of times they do. And so I realize that like huge growth and huge money, if you do it right, it should compound. And so a business like Hampton, I think that it can last 50 to 100 years. And I think that if I love something enough, which I do, then I should never want to sell it. I should want to keep on doing it for a long period of time. And so it was a combination with Hampton. I want it to last for so long because a I think like I said, I I I'm not motivated by money, but if you want to make money, like you have to be able to do something for many decades. B I want my children to work here because I think it'd be so exciting to like be able to have an excuse to spend time with them. Um um and the last thing see is that I just want I like doing it. I enjoy this. So if I enjoy doing it, I should build I think too many people they don't think that they're like my company the way that I

44:58 set it up, it's just an excuse for me to have fun and be around people who I love and like co-workers who I'm inspired by. And if I do that right and make this my playground, I don't want to get rid of it.

45:08 Yeah. I'm actually a member of Hampton and so I joined about a year ago. I've absolutely loved it. Um I thought it was such a genius idea um when I came across it and I couldn't believe that there was there's other things out there but not at the scale um and the quality that you're doing it. What did you feel was the gap or the need for entrepreneurs in terms of community because there's so many masterminds and conferences out there. What did you want to do differently?

45:34 Well, thank you for being a part of it and thank you for saying that. It's really nice. Um the gap was basically there's um there's YPO which is a company that um does what we do or we do what they do and they probably have 30,000 members but the majority of members are a little bit more bluecollar not blue collar but old school so it's people who have inherited a family business or who own real estate companies and that's wonderful uh that's great and then there's Vistage. Vistage is a company in our space they probably do 800 million a year in revenue.

46:04 They're huge. Oh wow. It's massive. It's a massive company and they do what we do or we do what they do and they um are mostly for blueco collar. So like someone who owns a plumbing or HVAC business and what I noticed is that for the internet space a lot of the these communities they were a little borderline scammy or they were borderline like a lot of them are like kind of broy which I didn't particularly identify with. Um, and I just thought that there was nothing for people who were in the internet space who were young or at least young thinking and who already were past survival and now so more thinking about thriving. So someone like you, like no matter what happens, you're going to go somewhere. You're going to kick ass in life. But you've probably been building this business for a handful of years and you had your head down for 3, four, 5 years, however long, and then you looked up all of a sudden

46:51 and you're like, "Oh my god, this is amazing. It's kind of working. I still feel scared that it's that I can go out of business or I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing, but it's working. And the unfortunate situation is after years of having my head down, I finally have looked up and I've realized I've outrun all my peers and there's no one around me and I need other people who are like me. Otherwise, I'm making 5, 10, 20, $50 million decisions all by myself. And that's when like mediocrity tends to creep in. That's because you don't have anyone to push you. You you talk to your team and your staff, but they're not going to be honest with you.

47:24 They don't want to be fired. Your spouse, your husband, your boyfriend, your wife, your girlfriend, they don't really know everything about your your business. They know about your personal baggage, but not about your business. And the people who know about your business who you work with you, they don't know too much about your personal baggage cuz you don't want to you don't want to mix that. And so, you're making all these decisions by yourself without anyone to push back. And so, the gap was we wanted to solve that problem for this very particular internet um type of young thinking entrepreneur.

47:51 Yeah. And I know that there's like specific requirements to get into Hampton. So what made you want to put those requirements in place and how do you make sure that people are engaged in the community through their journey of joining Hampton?

48:07 So we put requirements in place because we just wanted to like it it kind of stinks but like because I have to turn people we turn people away all the time. Like we turn away more people than we let in. way more. We we actually turned way more people away than we let in. But um you have to have requirements um in order to make it great. We had a rule early on was we will never trade off cool. Meaning I don't want Hampton to be something people want to join because it's cool. I want them to be something that they join because it has utility.

48:37 Talking to one another. A lot of women know this and they've been trying to convince men for years. Talking about your issues helps. that makes that makes you feel better and you could actually solve problems and it feels good to get it off your chest. We want people to come to to Hampton because they're they're we're solving that problem. So, we're helping them make more money or we're helping them build a better business or feel better about their life. Now, how do you get people engaged? Um, when I first started the company about 3 years ago, I was like, I don't want to build a business off of my reputation. I want to build the business with like so it could grow without me.

49:12 And about 6 months ago, I kind of kicked myself in the head and I was like, that's the stupidest thing ever. Like, what what just use use my brand? What am I doing? And so lately, I've been leaning in way more to where it's sort of like a cult. And you need a cult leader, unfortunately. And I'm a little bit of that leader. And so to get people more engaged, we've noticed the more I lean in with my personality, the more people get bought in. And so we're kind of leaning in on that more than we ever have to get people engaged. But the really one way we get people engaged is every single person who applies to Hampton who fits our requirements. We spend a lot of time interviewing them.

49:45 And what a lot of people don't realize, you could I don't know if this is going to be big on YouTube, but let's see. What a lot of people realize is back here we have our staff. They're actually watching all of the interviews and then we have a meeting at the end of the week to talk about like who we want to let in, who we don't want to let in. So, we go through this huge vetting process.

50:02 Oh, wow. So, when I was interviewed, other people were watching that at the same time.

50:06 Yes. We record all of them. And we tell you, we record it. I don't know if you I don't want people think we don't tell.

50:10 No, no, no. I didn't feel like I knew that people were reviewing it. I thought you meant live like watching it or something.

50:15 No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not live. But me and my co-founder, we have watched we've had tens of thousands of people apply. We have watched 100% of all the interviews.

50:25 Wow. 100%. I'm not exaggerating. 100%. And we and we have these meetings over here in our office over here where people like we like debate like should we let this person in? Should we not let this person in? What's the situation? uh this person seems I I'm not I don't entirely understand their business. Let's Google it and like research it to figure out if it's legit. Like we do that for everyone. And because we do that, I think people um I actually think we need to tell that story better about how much work we do on every single person we invite. But um once they realize all the work we do, I think they take it a lot more serious.

50:56 Yeah. And quality control, I mean, it's helpful for people in the community because it's like everybody that you're engaging with is somebody who's really, you know, done a great job in their business and and has value to share. So, that is awesome. All right, so um let's talk about I know we don't have that much time left, so I'm actually going to end the interview with two questions that I ask all of my guests, and you can answer from the heart. Um,

51:23 can I ask you a question really quick? Of course. Who's been the best person you've ever had on?

51:28 The best person that I've ever had on the show ever. My favorite interview that I've ever had is Gary Vee.

51:36 Yeah, he's cool. because I interviewed him in person at his office and when probably about a year ago and awesome um

51:45 because I'm a marketer we just had so much to riff on and it's somebody that I've like really looked up to.

51:50 So just Gary was a was an awesome interview. Yeah. You know who's your favorite?

51:56 You know Gary I I've only hung I've probably hung out with him three or four times. I'm not friends with them. I would say we're acquaintances but I admire the hell out of him. like I like I get starruck when I'm I've had dinner with him a couple times and I am like starruck when I'm with him. He's he's amazing. So I would say he's one of my favorites. Um

52:15 um Jesse Sler was really special to me. He's he's pretty cool. Um Daresh, who's the founder of HubSpot, he's a multi-billionaire. He's

52:24 Oh, I got to I got to try to get him. Man, Dash is a special human being. Dash is a person who I admire through and through. Uh like all facets of life. Um, most recently we had Will Gera on. Will wrote this amazing book called Unreasonable Hospitality and he used to run this restaurant called 11 Madison. It's one of the most um it was awarded the best restaurant in the world. It's like one of these um you know the TV show The Bear how they have like a fancy it's like they looked up to Will in that show in order to see how to run run a restaurant. I had him on recently and I loved talking to him. He kind of blew my mind um and changed my opinion that my business and everyone else's business should be all about hospitality. And so that was that was really good.

53:05 That sounds so interesting. I'm pretty sure he's on our list of of coming up. So I'm excited about that. Yeah. Somebody who I interviewed recently. Uh this is my second time interviewing him, Grant Cardone. Even though a lot of people like he gets so much like slack online, I love him. He's always so nice and he's so smart and he just always makes for such a great interview. So, it's just funny how sometimes people just get a bad reputation online, but then in reality they're like amazing humans.

53:35 I've never met him, but I do agree. He does not have a wonderful reputation. Yeah, you're like, "No comment.

53:41 I've never met him." If you met him, I feel like you'd change your mind. That's that's kind of how I feel about him.

53:46 I I haven't met him, so I can't say what it's like um what he's like in real life. But that's cool. I'm happy that you um get to talk to him again and get to meet meet people you admire.

53:56 Yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to ask you two questions. You can answer them however you like. It doesn't have to be about anything that we talked about today. So, what is one actionable thing our young and profits can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

54:09 And this is people who have a business or who want to start? Yeah, most of my listeners are entrepreneurs. So, like what is one thing they can do to become more profitable tomorrow? One thing,

54:20 the your biggest piece of advice. I have to say two. That's fine. The more the marrier.

54:26 I think the first one is to pick a good spouse or or partner. I picked or she picked me a little bit, but my wife is just like that was like the most it sounds this sounds um like it was a financial decision. It wasn't, but she was the most profitable thing that I ever that I've ever done. Like picking a really good partner, a life partner. Um it's not a financial decision, but it it's the greatest financial decision I ever made. Um because she's kept me on track and uh kind of like helped me up when I wanted to quit, which was uh often. Uh so that's really important.

54:58 But the second thing um I would probably a mistake that I made, I read a lot. I read a ton of books. When I was younger, I tended to read one book over and over and over again and I would master the the techniques and I think that's a significantly better way to consume information. And so if you're listening and you tend to read a ton of different business books, I would stick to only three or four classic ones. So like Robert Chowini's his book influence and a few others like that. And I would master them and I would consume no other books. It's like I wouldn't read any extra stuff. I would just master the one or two books every single year that could really move the needle for my business. So good that you could teach it back to someone.

55:48 That's like really really good advice. I like reflecting on my past of like how I've consumed books. The ones that I've read over and over again are the ones that I've actually like implemented in real life in terms of the advice that I read that actually like sticks.

56:01 Yeah. I think that like there's an overemphasis on breath of knowledge and not depth. And I think depth is where real value is created. And I tend to read for entertainment. So I justify that breath is good. But the reality is is that it's far better to be an expert at a very narrow thing than it is to be a generalist at a bunch of things. And so um I think that you should not follow your ego and read to read lots of books, but read to master one or two topics.

56:30 Yeah. So smart. Okay. What is your secret to profiting in life? And this can be beyond like business, finance, like what is your secret to just having a wonderful successful life?

56:42 I set goals in um these categories every year. Family, fitness, finance, and fun. And if you're religious, you can add a faith. You can do faith. Um but I I get pretty intentional about setting goals in those uh those categories. And I meet with my wife once a month where we talk about them and to figure out like are we on track for what we wanted to accomplish this year? like we said we wanted to like for example I love uh guilded age architecture and I was like I really want to go on a tour uh of this like let's make a point to like do this or I really wanted to visit uh uh this region of the country and I wanted to see this one like monument like I've always wanted to do that we have to schedule it and we have to do it but then like you know there's finances um and then there's fitness and so I have those four categories where I create goals uh and I and I'm pretty relentless about getting after it and

57:34 like hitting hit hitting those goals. Um I think that an issue a lot of people make is they don't write down goals and if they do they don't write them down um the right way. Um a goal needs to be time bound. It needs to be achievable and it needs to be um um super specific. And uh I think that writing down goals is sort of like um it's sort of like if you went to a trainer and you were like I want to be fit. The trainer wouldn't just tell you what to do. They would say like, "Well, do you want lots of muscle? Do you want to be able to do the front splits? Do you want to be able to run a fast 5K? Like, what do you want to do?"

58:10 Because if you tell me what you want me to do or what you want to do, then I can create a plan and we can get you to where you want to go. But I can't optimize for a goal that doesn't exist. Um, and so I don't think people um do goal setting the right way, but I think they should.

58:23 Yeah. I also think that that consistency in terms of like meeting with your wife once a month about it and kind of going back to a lot of people set goals but then they never go back to them

58:33 well because a oftentimes people set too many goals um and they don't remind themsel enough of them and the reason um and and they aren't focused and I think a lack of focus you know I tell my team um distractions are loud really loud you can't listen to them and goals allows you to put blinders on and focus on the one or two things that you set and It's like you don't go to a grocery store while you're hungry. You can't like look at new opportunities and stuff like that and and while you're like scattered and like you have to be focused. You have to be focused. I think focus is um a huge underrated trait. I think uh that's a challenge that I have in my life. Um but I'm like all about focus and patience.

59:14 Yeah, Sam, this has been such an awesome conversation. Thank you so much. I feel like I've got so much to cover with you. I'd love to have you come on another time and just talk about all the I had like 20 other questions to ask you.

59:25 I like talking with you. If if I'm invited back again, I would love to do this again. You're um you're you um you make me feel very comfortable. You're really good at that. You're a very good podcaster. It's hard to find people who do that. So, uh you're you're very talented.

59:38 Thanks, Sam. Thank you for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you.

59:43 You know, yap fam. I knew that Sam Parr was going to be an amazing interview, but that totally exceeded my expectations. Now, in this episode, we focused a lot on entrepreneurship and his journey and I hope he comes back on because I really want to dive deep on copywriting community networking and all that good stuff with Sam. When I think about this conversation, one of the biggest takeaways that I have is be different. He talked about differentiation. He talked about how he believes it's better to be different than just better. And that's a testament to his own journey. He launched an email newsletter when everybody told him it would fail. He got really good at it and he scaled it so big that HubSpot bought it for multi-millions of dollars, like $30 million. He won by zigging when everybody was zagging. The other lesson that I learned from him is that you've got to be the node of your network.

1:00:31 Being the node of your network gives you power. He built community with HustleCon and he also built community through a book club that he launched via Craigslist. And he did this for a silly reason. He just wanted to make friends. Later, that book club generated almost all of his best friends, he told us. And so, it's just so powerful to think about being the node of your network. And lastly, one of the most important lessons I think from this conversation is that when it comes to being an entrepreneur, you don't need to just build for an exit. So many of us feel like in order to be a successful entrepreneur, you've got to exit your company. You can build to sell, and you can also build to run. You can create a legacy company that you just love to run forever, one that you can pass down to your kids generation after generation.

1:01:15 You do not only need to sell your company to be considered a successful entrepreneur. And I just think that's such an important thing for us entrepreneurs to hear because so often we feel like our success is tied to our exit. Well, that's it for today's show. Yap fam. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you listen, learned, and profited today, make sure you drop us a review on Apple, Spotify, or Casbox, wherever you listen to the show. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And be sure to drop us a comment. Give me your favorite takeaway from today's episode in the comments. I'd love to hear from you. This is your host Pala Taha aka the podcast princess signing

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "The Secret to Building Companies That Last for Generations! w/ Sam Parr"?

In order: 0:00 Airbnb, Airbnb, Hampton, copywriting; 10:00 The Hustle, newsletter, Airbnb, Airbnb; 20:00 newsletter, Podcast, Morning Brew, My First Million; 30:00 newsletter, Indeed, Indeed, Podcast; 40:00 Hampton, Blue Collar, The Hustle, AI-powered Personal Trainer App; 50:00 copywriting, Gary Vee, Grant Cardone, HubSpot; 1:00:00 Craigslist, differentiation, HubSpot, HustleCon.

What is mentioned in this Young and Profiting episode?

76 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including newsletter, Hampton, The Hustle, Podcast, HubSpot, Airbnb. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Secret to Building Companies That Last for Generations! w/ Sam Parr"?

The episode runs 1 h 2 min; the transcript is about 13,060 words in 147 timestamped sections.

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