My First Million - #3 - Making Millions off an Email Newsletter?! Sam Parr from The Hustle Tells All

Episode Date: July 9, 2019

Sam Parr (@theSamParr) is the founder of The Hustle - a simple email newsletter that has surpassed 1M daily subscribers and will be north of 8 figures this year. Sam walks us through how he built The Hustle from scratch as well as his adventures starting a hot dog stand (7min), selling booze on the internet (13min), meeting celebrities on the street and convincing them to hire him (11min) and how he would get rich if he was 21 again! (33min)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A big CEO of a huge media company that you know of told me this business will never make more than $2 million a year. And it wasn't until like six months ago where I was like, man, there's like a path to make literally $100 million a year in revenue. All right. We are here with Sam Parr, the founder of The Hustle, the big daddy of the publisher of the podcast. How does it feel to have a podcast on your network now? Well, I'm excited and I hope people will like it. We have to wait and see the numbers first. That's what I'll be excited for most. I know, I know. So for those who don't know, The Hustle is a daily newsletter. out to about a million and a half readers. Is that right? Million and a half? Yeah, we could say that.

And we're growing every morning. So people like to start their day with it. It's, the way I think about it is like you get an email and it tells you the news. And I like the way you describe it, which is it's like you know, you're no BS friend just explaining it to you. So it's a simple way to understand what's going on in the world without spending a whole lot of time doing the research yourself. It's like we did the research for you. Yeah, as if I'm, me, Sam Parr, are going to tell you, Sean, the news each day. Right. And because you spend five minutes on in the morning, you save an hour of doing that, you know, reading and research and finding out what's important yourself and what to make of it. And then, you know, you're at work, you're at the water cooler and you sound smart.

Yes. And we have more stuff coming out, but that's our big thing now. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And something that launched today, I believe, right? A little beta launched yesterday. Okay. All right. So we're going to get to that in a second. But let's start with the question we always start with. Sampar, how did you make your first million? By starting and selling multiple companies, which the biggest one being a news operation that emails millions of people a month and tells them the news they need to know each morning. All right. You said starting and selling multiple businesses. So a different way of looking at

it is when did you know you wanted to make a million bucks? Not for a very long time. My mom and dad are entrepreneurs. I thought that that's just what you do to make a living. I didn't really think about money a lot other than I knew that I wanted to start businesses because that was like my hobby. Like when you were a teenager, you mean? Yeah. But then when I got older, only like a year or two or three years ago did I realize that money was something that's nice to have a lot of, but it's like not as nice as I thought. So for years, I was just doing this because it was fun and exciting. And it just so happened. The output, the result was income.

Okay. Like a lot of people say that. They say, you know, I'm not doing it for the money. The money is sort of a byproduct. And I like that. I think that is a great way of looking at it. But I also know you. You're my friend. You think about money a lot. You ask about money a lot. We talk about money a lot. We talk about it. But when I ran, I talk about it all the time. But I was a track and field athlete in college. I talked about that all the time, too. It was just whichever the career I have or the vocation that I have at the time, that's what I'm obsess. about. And so to me, money is, it's kind of like bench pressing 300 pounds. Once you get past a point, which is lower than you think, it's not really that important to be able to bench 350 pounds, but it's just like you're obsessed with it. Right. Because you, as my buddy, can bench 400 pounds. So it's like, man, I want to, I want to beat you. I want to compete with you and I want to compete with myself. Gotcha. And when did you like first start doing business? Was this, you know, Are you a kid? I had a lemonade stand type of thing.

I was selling stuff on eBay. Track and field shoes, my old clothes, I would sell them on eBay, and then I would sell stuff on Craigslist. And you were doing it because you came up with it yourself. You saw somebody else selling on eBay. I came up with it myself and I thought it was a really cool adventure. It was just like a, I have an addictive personality and this was my adrenaline rush. I started YouTube channels that got millions and millions of views like the first year, two, three years that YouTube existed. and that made money, and I just loved scheming.

What kind of channels? So this was in 2009. I don't know how old YouTube was around then. Yeah, I think YouTube started maybe 2004, 2005. So it was like the third or fourth year of YouTube of an existence, and I noticed that when you would type in a certain phrase on YouTube, it would auto fill, and I would just look at all the words that would be auto-filling. And I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but I will.

but if you typed in like street fights it would be like street fights and it would auto fill with like black guy beats up white guy or street fights white guy fights black guy and so I would was kind of scammy and I would create these videos with these clickbait titles and the thumbnail would be the only image that existed so it was a video with just

because YouTube didn't have that filter to like catch that so the video was nothing yeah it was nothing but if you I can go and find it somehow and it probably has 10 million views. And then I would charge bands money, $10, $50 a month to have their music as the background. And so you didn't even have a fight. Because I used to search for these.

I used to watch Kimbo Slice. Yeah, the same stuff. Like street fight. Like big black guy knocks out little white guy. I have a video that's titled that has 5 million views. And don't you remember on YouTube years and years ago when you would click these certain videos and you'd hear these horrible electronic music?

music. Yes. So those people paid me money to put my ads or put their music on the background. So how old are you when this is going on? I was a senior and freshman in college. So it was like sometime around 2008. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you started the kind of keyword arbitrage. Because since then, I actually learned this from you. I went to one of your workshops that you and Neville did. And for those who don't know, Neville is a good buddy of yours. Neville's the best man in my wedding. is one of my best friends, yeah. And he's kind of famous for this copywriting course, right? So talk a little bit about that because I think this is something that's extremely underrated.

I added it to my arsenal. Copywriting is the most important skill set anyone can have because copyrighting is not writing. Copywriting is understanding how other people think and feel and how to use words to get them to do what you want them to do, specifically the written word, but it can translate to anything. Right. Copywriting is sales. Copywriting is persuasion. copywriting. It's meeting a girlfriend. It's talking to a friend and trying to let them know you

care about them. It's trying to sell something. It's just the idea of understanding other people's perspective and then trying to figure out if you could solve that or empathize with that and communicating that you have the tool to fix their problem. Okay, so perfect example. The first business that I knew that you did. I didn't know about the YouTube street fights. I didn't know about the eBay stuff, but I did know about the hot dog stand. Yeah, Southern Sam's. The name of the hot dog stand is not just Southern Sam's. What's the slogan? It's Southern Sam's Wieners as big as a baby's arm.

So a hot dog is a commodity. Like they pretty much are all the same. I mean, little variants, but I bought them Vienna sausages, which a lot of people buy. And it was like, how do you just stick out? How do you stand out? And I thought that would be a funny slogan. And the idea was if a parent put their baby's arms, one of my buns, and we put mustard on it, and we take a photo, they get a free.

thing, a free sausage, and that was like the schick. Was this like pre-social media? This was in 2010 to 2012, so it was around. But if Instagram was around, it was barely around. Okay, so we got Southern Sam's Wieners as big as your baby's arm. Yeah. The best name. I started a restaurant, too, but it had nowhere near sort of the fame or appeal as that.

So I love that. How did it do? So I just tweeted about this today, actually, because someone would ask me if I had to make money today with $1,000. I started it with $500. I was only able to afford the first day's ingredients. And the first day, it did okay, but it took me about a week to get $1,000 day with like 50% margins. Most days I would make between 100 and 500 days.

If I would go and work all night or go to a concert, I could make $1,000 to $5,000 a night. It was really hard work. And Nashville in the summer, it's 110 degrees some days. It was horrible. It was really hard, but it was really fun. But it paid, like, I got paid. And you were the one manning the stand? For a long time.

And in the beginning, I was there all the time. But then I hired friends, my friend Carly, my friend Rydell. I would give them an hourly, like a minimum wage. You know, I was thinking on my way over here, I was like, what should I say in the intro? And I was thinking, I was like, oh, what do I really believe? Because when I started doing this podcast, the beginning, I would do like a radio host intro, which is not me. It's me playing like a radio host. Like, hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Yeah, doing what you? You think you should do it. Fantastic. And now I'm like, well, what do I, what would I actually say about you? Like, if I was just explaining this to myself, what would I say? And I was like, the thing about you is if this was Lord of the Flies, I haven't even read the book, but I understand the premise. We all get dropped on an island and sort of, we're all starting from scratch, just us and our bare hands. If you took everybody I know in San Francisco, a lot of great entrepreneurs, investors, successful people.

But if you put us all on an island and it was like, here's a race to $10,000, I think you'd win. Oh, thanks. I think you'd win the $1,000 Lord of the Flies, Silicon Valley edition. And so the hot dog stand is like the perfect example of this, which is just like very straightforward, fundamental thinking. I have this much money. I can, you know, I want to get my money back quick. What do people want?

What do people need? Where should I stand? Oh, I should go to the concert. That's where people, you know, are drinking and want a bite to eat. And just doing the basics and not trying to be sort of the genius inventor. Is that a good characterization? That's my mental model of you. Is that how you see it too?

100%. So I'm from Missouri. I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. A lot of people think I grew up as a hick. I kind of did, but I grew up in a city. My parents started a fruit stand that eventually became a produce brokerage. My father's not educated. I was not that good of a student.

I was just like a redneck like kid, right? And so I just did whatever, and I will do whatever. It just so happened that I learned how to use the. internet. So I would say I'm basically like a Midwestern small business owner that just learned how to use the internet. Right. The internet is your corner instead of your neighborhood corner. Right. Versus like this idea, like the Mark Zuckerberg's, I will never, I don't understand how they think. I'm much simpler. Right. And so when you're, you're doing the hot dog stand, hilarious name, good results, you know, paid the bills for a period of time. At some point,

you jumped onto the internet. Yeah. The hot dog stand was more like the kid in Missouri. and the stuff you do today is a lot more like the kid in San Francisco. Yeah, and so what I was doing in the evenings after selling stuff, so I worked for this guy named Mike Wolf. Have I told you this? No. Have you seen this TV show American Pickers? Yeah.

Mike Wolf was my boss. So when I was in college, he was, I loved that TV show, American Pickers. I saw him walking down the street. I thought he was cool. I was a huge fan, and I walked up to get my photo taken with him, and I just became friends with him, and he asked me to run his store in Nashville or to work there and help set his shop up. And so I did.

Okay, hold on, pause. I went up to him to ask to take a photo with them and I became friends with them. This is a Sam Parr thing that you do and I want the people listening to know how the hell you do it because that's how we became friends. You literally emailed me being like, Hey, Sean, heard great things about you.

You had never heard anything about me. I had things about you? Probably not. We had never met. The point is you just reached out cold and you were like, hey, I got this big dinner. I need to host for like 80 people like next week. Can I borrow your office for free?

It's going to have all these awesome speakers. You're going to love it. You can attend the dinner. And I was like, yeah, sure. And we became really good friends since then. And so you have this gift of befriending people kind of out of the blue. So tell me what actually happened when you met him on the street. I call it the gift of gab.

That's what my parents called it growing up. Let's see. I had my dog, Sid, with me. Mike's a big dog guy. I walked up to him, asked for a photo. He started talking about my dog. I go, oh, yeah, thank you. Like yaddy out of dog stuff.

And I'm like, by the way, what are you doing here? Oh, I'm opening up this shop. Amazing. Who's going to run it? I'm still looking. Mike, I'm your guy. I know we just met, but I'm your guy. Like, let me do this.

I probably said it in that exact tone. And he was like, yeah, like, I don't know, maybe. And I just started heckling him and just like, joke him with him a little bit. And he's like, yeah, okay, well, here's my wife's number. Call her. Right. And so I called her. And then I found out that the place that I met him at, it was a jeans store.

And I like jeans a lot. And he was, we used to go to the same store. The next day, I was, I went into the jeans store. And there was a guy who worked there named Matt. And I go, Matt, Mike Wolf was here the other day. When's he coming back? And he goes, well, he's got some clothes that he's got to pick up tomorrow. So I go, okay, here's $50.

Text me when you think he's going to come in tomorrow. I'm going to show up. And so he did that. And I just waited on the couch for him. And I go, Mike, what's up, man? Look, here's the deal. Let me run this thing. Or let me help you set it up.

He goes, all right, fine, you're it. And that's how happened. Right. At that point, he's like, okay, it's going to take more effort to get rid of this kid to just give him what he wants. Yeah. So that's kind of how that happened. But anyway, while working there, I, like, met all these amazing people because Mike's a celebrity, and he would get all these cool people coming in.

And Kid Rock's manager or something like that came in. And I started just messing around and talking to him. He said that there's this new law that allows small-time distillers in Tennessee to create whiskey in the same way that in the 90s craft beer was allowed to be created. And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And because I worked at Mike Wolf's store, I knew that, like, Americana and Vintage stuff was really popular. and moonshine is Americana vintage, all this kind of like... It was a trend. Shout out to...

Yes, we had this new product coming out called trends. But it was like moonshine was like popular. And there's all these like moonshiner shows. And it was basically, moonshine means illegal whiskey. This whiskey that the Kid Rock's guy told me about it. It's called Popcorn Sutton's. It's illegal. They could sell it in stores.

But they only would make it in small batches. And so what I did was I created an online store called moonshine online. And I would try to get customers from all over. like places that weren't the South that weren't used to this, this novelty whiskey, and I started selling it online. Wow. And how was it doing? I mean, I was awesome. Do I even need to ask you sold, we sold alcohol online, probably did pretty well. Yeah, I mean, I would be in like finance class and my, this was PayPal on, I don't even know if I had an iPhone, but to go, kaching, kaching, kaching, and I said my finance teacher, I'm like, I just made a thousand dollars while I was sitting here

in class. Like, what do I do? Right. And so it was good. It was making, what did they say? They're like, well, he was like, you need to talk to a lawyer because I don't know if what you're doing is legal. So I talked to a lawyer and they're like, yeah, you're kind of breaking some laws here. So the Moonshot Online didn't last long. Okay. So the Blackberry with PayPal installed had to go quiet for a bit. Yeah. And so he was like, yeah, like, you got to like jump through all these hoops.

And I was like, okay, well, I don't know if I want to do that. But I Googled like where in the country do internet companies live? And online, it said San Francisco. So I emailed the founders of Airbnb. I asked for a job. They said, can you come to our office next week? I was like, yeah, I'm here already. And so I bought a ticket and flew out here.

I interviewed there. But while I was here, I met a really cool guy named John Havel. And he had started a business because I stayed on his Airbnb. That's how I met him. And I was like, I was like, this is so cool. There's people my age doing cool stuff. I'm coming out here. And so I went back home a few days later, sold the limited possession.

that I had left school and I moved out here. And we started Bunk, a roommate matching app that was sold after 10 months for a tiny amount of money. And then I started my current company. And how important was it to get out here? Like what happens if you don't move? It is this a lot of people right now. Nothing would have happened. Nothing, nothing would have happened differently or nothing would have happened at all? I would not be where I am. What would you be doing? I'm working at hot dog stands or started a lawn company. And was it obvious to you and others at the time? Like when you were saying, hey, I'm going to go out to San Francisco.

It seems like that's where the internet is. It was not. I told my mom about Airbnb. And at the time, 300 people or 200 people worked there. So it wasn't like small, but it wasn't well known. And she was like, is this a scam? What is this Airbnb thing? You stay at other people's homes.

I was like, yeah, there's another company called Uber Cab. And it's kind of like that. But like with cars. And she's like, what are you talking about? Do they offer health insurance? That's all I care about. And I was like, I'm doing this. guys, I'm doing this. And they, they gave me, I sold my car. That gave me $5,000. And then they gave me

$1,000 to, as like my, I hadn't graduated college yet, but as like my graduation gift. And they go, all right, come, we'll help you do it. And I gave me a grand and I moved out here. And so they supported me, but they, they didn't know what I was getting into. You don't even know this. Our stories are so, they're very different, but they're like parallel, parallel tracks. Everything you're saying, I literally had a moment like that in my life, which it's for another day because I want to, this is your story. Having supportive parents is like a really unfair advantage. Absolutely. Also, having a level of like, you got to have a little fuck it in your system.

And you had enough fuck it to say, all right, I'm just going to go out there. I don't know. I don't have the whole thing figured out. I'm going to go. I'm going to figure it out. I know enough that that's where I need to be. Tony Robbins has this really good phrase I like, which he says, proximity is power. which is just like, if you know nothing else, just get close to the stuff you like.

Get close to the people you like. Just hang with them more. The proximity has its own power. Go to the place you want. Just be near it. Proximity is power. And I've seen that play out many times for myself. Your story reminds me of that.

Well, the thing is, is that you and I both have a lot of buddies that are really wealthy. Their children probably aren't going to be willing to take a lot of risk because when you grow up wealthy, you kind of know what there's to lose and all the stuff. But the way I grew up, like, I was a little bit of a wild man. And, like, sometimes I would get kicked out of my house. and I would literally sleep outside. Yeah. So it's like the worst case scenario is like I just sleep outside.

It's like, this is no big deal. Or the worst case scenario is I go and like sell bottled water in the corner. Like I can make it work. Like the downside is really, really low. Yeah. Or the worst case is I call my mom and be like, hey, I don't ever want you to support me. But like, can you give me like $300. I can just come to stay in my room.

Yeah, there's a get out of deal free card. Did you ever, you know, I remember when I was doing my very first startup, I was living in Colorado, kind of a similar situation. I won't do the whole backstory, but I got into a spot where we had won 30 grand of just prize money because I would just go pitching these business plan competitions. That's amazing. And so I would just win the business plan of competition.

So we rolled up 30 grand in like a month of prize money. And then my dad was also like, okay, if you're going to do this, not going to go to med school, I took the MCATs. He said, if you're not going to go, let's take some of that tuition. And he gave me like, I remember it was a 20 grand or something like that. He's like, that's going to last you the year. So I got 30 grand from this, 20 grand for this. And there's me and two co-founder.

That's like such a good dad. Oh, yeah. It was huge. And he was not even trying to be helpful. He was like, you've been so lazy your whole life that like I finally see you switched on. I think this is a terrible idea. You're doing a sushi restaurant. Like that's a terrible idea.

But it's your tuition. But yeah, but you're actually waking up and doing something every day without anyone telling you to do it. And he, you know, he gave me this line that's in life. It's a lot more about motion than it is direction. So, you know, imagine you're on a beach and you want to get. get to this island. The island is where all the fantasies come true. And if you could see the island, you would say that's the direction I need to go. The problem is from where you're standing, you can't see where the island is. You just think this island is just. So you just got to move.

So you got to go, you got to get in the boat and start paddling. And then as you go, you'll realize, hey, actually, I see it. It's over there. And he's like, it's much easier to move a boat when you actually have some momentum. You can just put your paddle in the water and you'll actually turn and you'll start going in the new direction. And that's literally what happened to my life. So I give them credit for that. But I remember, we were living in pretty frugly. Frugal. You're frugal.

And you're Mr. Frugal. And so I want to get into that. I remember one time the way we were living, it was kind of embarrassing. It was three of us in a one-bedroom apartment in Colorado. And everything we would need, we would buy and return. So it's like, hey, we need a camera for this photo shoot to take our menu pictures. Costco's the best for that. I can still tell you, yeah, it's like best by 14-day policy, but you don't need this.

So we would go buy this DSLR camera and return it 14 days later 10 times. and I remember we would sleep on air mattresses and we knew that Target had a 90-day return policy on air mattresses so I remember going and returning my air mattress so embarrassing of like damn I'm this poor that I'm just like But were your parents poor or were they frugal? We were like middle class. Just normal.

It was just that I couldn't go to them with an ask because when you go with an ask you got to have a little, it's like going to a bank. It's like you got to have a down payment of some kind of success or momentum. No, I feel you. At this point I didn't feel like I had my down payment of I know what I'm doing. Look, it's working.

Just give me a little money. This was like, hey, I'm taking a leap of faith. You already gave me a little money. I need to stretch that dollar because I don't know if there is another dollar after this. Did you have any sort of, when you were living frugal, did you have any moments like that that were the sort of... No. I grew up kind of poor. Then my parents started a thing that, like, made a pretty good living for them.

And they paid my high school tuition. And I got a car that was $5,000, an F-150 truck. But it's not like I... was like pulled up from my bootstraps like from nothing right but I've never the $1,000 gift that I got from graduating college was the most money that they've ever that I've ever like I've yeah and that to me was like a thousand dollars yeah no it was so and then they gave me like a like a credit card that had like a $500 limit on it like they're like here's this for emergencies and I remember I cut it up right when I got here I was like I'm doing this I was like I'm going on the I was like I'm literally

going to be homeless before I ever asked for help. And so you lived pretty like a Spartan lifestyle for a while when you were starting up the hustle. I loved it. Tell us about that because I think people got to know what sometimes what it takes. Yeah. You don't have to sacrifice, but there are sometimes situations where before it builds up and gets big, you know, you got to live that Spartan lifestyle.

Tell us about that. Yeah. So I do well now. But people are like, you know, it's only been our company just turned three years old the other day. It's only been three years and you're doing good. And I was like, well, I've been grinding since like, taking risks since like 16, 17, 18. And up until a few years ago, like, I didn't have any money. And so for the longest time in San Francisco, I had a $600 rent maybe. And I did that because I was able to scrape together some money after selling something. And I rented

a four-bedroom house. I furnished the whole place with used or free furniture on Craigslist. and then I rented it off to people, like the other three bedrooms, and that ultimately paid for my rent, which means that on just living expenses, I was able to only spend about a grand a month. And so because of that, the first couple of years, my W-2 income was only about $15,000. And so that was the first couple years of the hustle. Yeah. And then let's give people a sense of the numbers today. You don't have to say the specifics, but, you know, what should we be thinking about when we think?

You know, how is the hustle doing? Yeah. So our business is very profitable. it makes eight figures in revenue, really fat margins. My goal is to get it to $100 million in revenue by 2025, and I think we'll get there. So it potentially may not be Uber, but it'll be a nice size business. It'll be $100 million business. Companies like ours could probably sell for any, in the huge number, the huge range of $20 to $60 million,

and we haven't taken any venture capital. Right. So you raised money, but you raised it sort of from the Rolodex in a way. Yeah, but they weren't in the Rolodex at the time. Tim Ferriss was like, lived on the block for me, and I became friends with them that way. So he ended up investing the founders of Bleachery report, the founders of nerd wallet, and loads of other people just like that, like 36 people, Scott Belski, one of the early Uber guys, loads of people like that all collectively put in some sum between $20,000 and $100,000 for meet Sethi,

and collectively we raised about a million dollars. And then you also raised from the community. Yeah, so what we did, the hustle started as a conference. a conference with a newsletter. And I realized the newsletter could be a way bigger business, but then I realized the newsletter could actually lead to an even bigger business. But in the meantime, let's use this newsletter to make profits. And once we hit 200,000 users, we said,

we always got emails of people wanting to invest. And we go, let's just let anyone invest. And so I thought that we would get $150,000 in 90 days. We ended up getting close to $350,000 in $48. Wow. All right, ladies and gents, if you want to make that first million, you have got to be organized. Our sponsor, Monday.com, is back to get you there

with a weekly dose of the Monday.com motivation. You know, keeping a clean desk, making to-do lists and using a calendar, those aren't just things that adults do. They're things that wildly successful teams do to hit their goals. In other words, being organized makes achieving your dream of swimming in that money vault that much closer. Visit Monday.com backslash pod, backslash million. That's right, two backslashes.

It's Monday.com backslash pod, backslash million to get 10% off of money.com, and you can use their customizable templates that will help you get organized. It'll increase your workflow. It'll manage your workload and get you one step closer to hit your goals. And so we raised a little bit of money

from our users as well. Looking back, logistically speaking, I didn't need any of that money. We've always been profitable. It's huge cash flows, but Tim Ferriss gave me money. Now he's my friend, and I could text them and ask for advice.

And that's kind of like a cool tradeoff. Right. And with the community money, was that worth it? Because most people don't do that. Looking back, no. Issues. It was not worth it. Why do you say that?

I have grown to be much more private than I was in the past, and I hate having people that know my business. Gotcha. And just a second on the origin of the hustle and the hustle con, the conference, really, because it started as a conference before it was a newsletter. Yeah. And it started before you. Somebody had to start a hustle con. I randomly met Eric Bond and Elizabeth Yen, and these folks are successful entrepreneurs. Eric had a business called Beat the G-Met that he sold for, I don't know how much, but if I had a guess,

eight figures. Elizabeth Yen had another business called LaunchBit that had a nice exit. And so I met a guy who introduced me to them, and we just became friends. And I had like a really small exit in 2012 or 13, and I emailed Eric. I go, what do I do now? And he said, I got this thing I put on. I put on this thing called HustleCon, it was kind of like a conference, but in reality, it was like a meetup and like 100 people came. It made like $4,000 or I forget some number like that.

It's just basically a website and an email list of two or 300 people. Do you want it? Just do something with it and give me like 10% of the profit. I said in. So I launched, I relaunched HustleCon on June 1st of 2014, hosted that conference six weeks later. And it made like 60Gs. And the whole idea behind it was, I'm not trying to make money. I'm just trying to meet interesting things. people. And so I would cold email all of these speakers and I would say like, hey, do you want to speak? These other 15 speakers are coming. And of course, so they hadn't. They weren't coming. And they would say yes. And I would go to the other 15 and be like, hey, you know, I would do the same stick with them. And they all started coming. And then I became friends with them. And they would

teach me stuff. And I would learn stuff just hanging out with them. I'd be like, hey, I need to come by your office so we could talk about the talk. But I talked about the talk for 10 minutes. and the next 50 minutes, I just would ask them questions. And so I hosted this event, and the way in which I made it popular was by doing email marketing. And I knew that email marketing was effective because of just like studying it and teaching myself how to be a copywriter. And so that first event in six weeks made about 60 Gs. And I only spent $8,000 or some low number like that on the event.

So I was like, oh, that's cool. So took that money. And actually for six months, I drove my motorcycle around the country and camped and hung out. And then during that trip, I was like, let's do this again. The next time, this time was 80 days. That's when I met you. I think, yeah, that's when I met you. That event did about a quarter of a million in revenue on 30 or 20,000 expenses.

And then it was like, okay, this is cool, but I don't want to run a conference forever. I had just read the biography of Ted Turner. I think I started CNN. I was like, that guy is Southern. I'm kind of Southern. He, like, is kind of wild. Like, I am, I could do that. I'm already doing that, kind of.

Like, I could start a media company. And so that's when we said, let's do a media company. and then the first six months of the hustle, which started in 2015, it was just a blog. I remember that. You were just telling really great stories, but it was like long-form.

Long-form blog stuff, and I would just blog about, like funny stuff or interesting stuff, like taking LSD or living on soil it for 30 days, just stuff like that. And it got loads of traffic, but it was clear that wouldn't be a huge business. So we relaunched on April 19th of 2016,

so that's why I say we're about three years old. And that's when we decided, Let's go all in on email. Let's build this whole thing on email. And then it became very clear that if you study the history of Groupon, of Daily Candy, of Thrillist, people may not even know the last two are. But anyway, I was like, man, some of these billion-dollar companies all started with an email list. Like, let's do that.

Let's build up this huge email list and then start creating more products and use that as a distribution channel. And I think we could build a billion-dollar company that way, and that was the idea. And I remember pretty early on there was a temptation from not even really, you didn't seem tempted, but other people were tempted to say, jump on Facebook, jump on video, jump on this trend, Snapchat. I knew from day one that would be a horrible idea. It's like, I've always wanted to be independent, and I felt that building an audience on the back of Facebook was like building a business and a rented apartment where the landlord raises

the price every quarter. Like, that's a horrible idea. And so I called my email list, my pirate ship, and every subscriber was a little bit of winning our sales. Right. Because, like I said, I'm kind of a simpleton. I'm a simple guy. And if you look at like the economics of like building something on Facebook or someone else's platform, you're like, so where's the profit come from?

Well, if you do this, like, I don't understand that. That doesn't really make sense. Too fancy for me. Yeah, that does not make sense to me. And I don't want to do that. It's a, we didn't. And I think that's paid off because now you have, I mean, this got to be one of the biggest daily emails in the world. Yeah, I think so.

I think we got to be up there. I only know of maybe two or three people that can compete. And who's that? Who can compete? There's the skim. I mean, they claim to have six or seven or eight million. They're pretty big. And then there's maybe a handful of one-off things that aren't confirmed, but I would guess. And when you were doing this and it started to make money, that was also pretty counterintuitive. I mean, unless you really knew the email game. Which I didn't. By the way, I do nothing. Like, up until, like, I didn't know anything.

I didn't know what, like, basic words were, like an RFP or, I mean, I knew nothing. Right. I didn't know what CPM meant. I didn't know how, like, I was doing our accounting. I didn't know the difference between cash flow and revenue. Like, I didn't know anything. And do you know things now, or you just hired people who know things? I know a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I know how to read a balance sheet and do a P&L statement. I know how to make money. I don't know how the Alhub. I don't know how to code. I cannot code at all. And we have a tech team, a nice size tech team, and we built all our own custom technology. I just, I'm really good at because. I'm really good at, and like, what's the simplest solution? Like, what neat should exist? And I'm like, hey, guys, can you like, it would be cool if this existed. Can you, do you know how to make that happen? And they would just say, yeah. I'm like, all right, great.

Show me in a week and let's see. Right. And what was the first milestone where you were like, holy shit? This thing's actually, not just it's working, but this thing's actually going to be really big. Well, the first week of our existence, we got a million people coming to the website. And I was like, that's awesome. That is great. And we got on the front page of Reddit.

And we had like two or three thousand. and concurrent users on real-time analytics, Google Analytics. I was like, sick, that's awesome. How good is it to watch the real-time? It's addicting. It's addicting. It's hugely addicting. And then I was like, this cannot be big.

I thought that, and someone once told me, a big CEO of a huge media company that you know of, told me, this business will never make more than $2 million a year. We could do that in a month now. And what was that person wrong about? What didn't they get? They were a New York media person who was kind of fancy. And they didn't, they're like, email is such a small. thing, like an email newsletter, a newsletter, like, you don't even have a website. Like, there's

no way advertisers are going to want that. And I'm like, well, but if you think about it, if you just look at how much they're going to pay per click on all these other platforms, who cares if it's on your email or on a website or like, does it matter? As long as they get like traffic to their stuff, like, who cares? And it's like, well, it doesn't work like that. I was like, okay, well, and so I I kind of believed them. I didn't think that it would work. And then once we started growing, I was like, oh, this is crazy. And then it wasn't until like six months ago where I was like, man, there's like a path to make like literally $100 million a year in revenue on this. I kind of knew a little bit that it could be big. Daily Candy, the company that I modeled

us after early on, they claimed to have $25 million in revenue and $10 million in net income a year. So I was like, well, if we just do that, that might happen. And they're still around. They're doing it. They sold for $125 million to Comcast, and then Comcast screwed it up and shut them down. Gotcha. Okay. And so, Let's play a little game called remake my first million. If you had to remake a million bucks, so I take away your business as it is today, you can't do that again. This exact business, you can't do it again.

You're 21 years old, though, so I give you back that youthful energy and time. What would you work on? What would you try to do? Let's say you don't have capital. You don't have network. You don't have a lot of those pieces. You're you, but you're 21. What would you do again?

Or what would you do differently this time? If I was 21, 22, I would try to get a quick win. and try to get like a couple hundred thousand or maybe a million dollars in my bank by like starting a business that made a hundred grand a month and would try to sell it and own all of it. And I think that that is significantly more possible than most people think. So I'm, I'm 21. I'm listening to this. I say, all right, that sounds pretty good. Be more specific. What do you mean? What's sort of ideas do that? Well, if they're 21 today, start blogging. And when I say start blogging, I would say learn one new interesting thing each week and then just blog about what you learned. Do that every single day, every week for a

year, try to get two to three thousand people a day coming to your site through search. The way you find out what to write about is you go to hAREFs.com and you buy a subscription and that would teach you what to write because it will tell you what people are searching for. Try to rank for those words, build up an email list of 5,000 people and then create a course and sell it to them. I like it. And I like the looking up the keywords.

It's like having the answers to the test. It's like here's what people want to know. Yeah, just answer it. Just answer it. And answer it by learning on your own. and then just teaching people what you learn. There's two ways to teach or to create content. One is to be the expert.

And the other way is to be the curious novice. The second one, 100% works. Right. A lot of people count themselves out because they just assume I'm not the expert. But in reality, the curious novice works great. Yeah, you've just got to be one step in front of your audience. And that one step could be you just read a book over the weekend.

Right. So if I was a 21-year-old kid, what I would do is go on Yelp, find, pick a very specific niche, like irrigation services, scaffolding rental, lawn cutting service, pick some niche in a town like Nashville, Denver, something like that, and try to start a business that beats all the other people on Yelp. I'm quite obsessed with the idea of consolidating local businesses.

So boring stuff, right? Well, that's not boring. It's like people don't like to hear the obvious. And it's almost the obvious, or it's the basics. Dude, because people are super fancy, man. And me and Ramon, him and I have started or funded like five or six companies that collectively make $10 million or something like that. And it's like the most simple shit on earth. And if I told you that this company makes this much money, you'd be like, what?

That is so stupid. Ramon owns this one that I participate on a little bit as well that sells dog ramps. What's a dog ramp? A dog ramp is when you have a dash hound or what do you have? Like a chihuahua. I have a multi-pooh. He said it was for wiener dogs. Yeah.

That's a dash hound. Oh, okay. That's the fancy word for me. Sausage dog, yeah, a weener dog. When you have these small dogs and they want to get on your bed, they can't get up. So it's just like, oh, it is a piece of wood and it flips up. So like a ramp, like a miniature handicap ramp and your dog can get up there. And that makes sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a day. And why are people scared of these businesses or do they just assume it can't be, you know, can't be that big?

Here's why. I think about this all the time because I struggle with my team. They don't understand leverage. So they think that in order to make, let's say, a million dollars, you have to work an equivalent amount of hours that in their head they think is a million dollars. Or you have to have an idea that is the equivalent of a million dollar idea. Right. When in reality, you could just have really good execution, which is not tied to the amount

of time in which you spend on something. You could have pretty good execution, like 100% effort for a short amount of time. And that, if you leverage it correctly, it creates significant amount. that's the value. And so they overthink stuff. Also, I think they feel guilty. It's like, guilty how? Like, the way I compare it is like when your mom makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it always tastes better than when you do it because you see how simple it is. And you're like, oh, this like isn't that. Like, yeah, this is like, it's got to be way better. Like, the other people must do it way different because this isn't that, like, this can't be that easy,

can't it? And that's kind of like the idea. And people like overthink stuff. I also think that we hang out with a lot of high IQ people. And I think the smarter you are, the more disadvantaged you are at some of these, like, simple things. And it's also fear. Right. People are afraid. PBMJ businesses are, can be great businesses if you apply leverage. And that's the, that's sort of the difference where your same hot dog stand idea

could have been a big business if you're just applied more leverage, more stands, more locations. Yeah. And the way you create leverage is like, you just have to like set things up in a very particular way. So like you just hire key people. or you use the internet and you realize, well, I can do the same thing, but I just put two zeros on the back of my ad spend. It's like, wow, I just, I'm not doing any extra effort, but I'm getting like 10 times the amount of money. I think you had a business that you bought a SaaS company or for those. Yeah, so, Ramon and I also own a SaaS company.

It's like a $30,000 a month SaaS business. And all you did was raise the prices. Is that correct? Yeah. All we did so far was just went in and changed a three to like a six and that was it. That's all we did. You're like, I can't code, but even I know how to do this. Yeah, most people don't price their stuff effectively.

We bought a company. Literally all that was done was double the price and revenue doubled. Same amount of people sign up every day is super simple. I love it. This is why I call you the Lord of the Flies, man. You would find the way to make the money. And what I would like to do is buy more software companies than 10x the price. I think that that's possible as well.

So you have all these experiments in your head, but one experiment you guys just launched is trend. and I want to hear about it because I like trends, but I don't fully get trends. Yeah, a lot of people... A lot of people who haven't experienced it, I don't think are going to get it yet. And that's because we aren't... What is it? Yeah, so basically the idea is it's a premium publication, a paid publication, a paid weekly email, and we have hired a team of analysts as well as myself, and we crawl the web and look at millions of bits data,

and we also talk to people like you and other experts, and we just explore very... various industries and we do deconstructing of various businesses and we just show like where are cool opportunities and where's the white space and loads of different industries. So it's if I'm somebody who is looking for my next opportunity or my next idea. Yeah. The way that we explained it is like, look, if you start a company, you can make it win or at least be mildly successful with enough effort. Like you could probably, if you like, are willing to spend 20 years on something, you could probably get a little bit of success out of it. but if you start something on a small ripple that can eventually become a wave or a tsunami,

like it's just going to, the products will get pulled out of you. Like, it's just going to push you down this hill and life will be a lot better. So it's just like, let's explore some of these waves while they're still kind of small and what they're doing. Gotcha. So you guys are trend spotting early, these business opportunities. As well as looking at interesting companies and saying like, well, here's how they work. What if you applied that to this thing? So like we interviewed the guy who started 1,800 got junk, Brian.

And he said, yeah, 1,800 got junk. here's how it works, here's the economics. We're like, oh, that's amazing. We're like, where else can this work? And he goes, local irrigation services. And we go, awesome. Thank you. We went and interviewed a bunch of people, and we got the data, and we chose, all right, here's, this is like a cool idea. Nice. And so if trends works, the hustle becomes this thing that it's got the daily newsletter. We tell you what's going on. You got trends, which tells you about the big opportunities that are coming. I'm trying to steal soft banks playbook. So in the late 80s, early 90s, Masa Son, he started what was called basically the PC magazine of Japan.

He started a publication, started a conference. And that's a good example, right? PCs was the wave. Yeah. He started the magazine. Start the magazine. Then he started the conference, which is now called CES. And then with the-

He created CES? He bought it with the profits from the publication. And then he was also selling software. And then he started investing in the companies that he saw that were advertising with them. So I just want to do that same thing because I think, like, working at SoftBank would be a really cool job. Nice. Going after SoftBank. Well.

You picked the big blue whale. It seems like you see his life. You're like, oh, man, he gets to hang out with cool people. He gets to invest his money. Like, let's just do that. Yeah. That's pretty good. Okay.

So when you think about like when somebody's listened to this podcast, let's talk about the podcast for a second because this is a new product, essentially, that is being published on the hustle by the hustle. Yeah. Hopefully there's 100,000 people listening to this right now. now that came from our email list. If you're listening to this and you're one of the hundred thousand, just tweet at Sam so that he knows, he knows you're listening. All right, so why do a podcast, I guess, why didn't you do a podcast earlier is a better question? Because I didn't know

anyone that could do it well. And you and I shoot the shit all the time. You're very successful. You're amazing at asking certain questions. You're also amazing at like saying these weird phrases. Like when you were just talking about your father and talking about like motion versus direction. And so when you said you were going to do a podcast, I was like, oh, let's see if we could partner with him and we got to do that. I also think that podcasts in general are a horrible business, if that's your only stream of revenue. But since we have all this other stuff, it's like, yeah, let's do that. Yeah. It's just sort of, it's found money on top of the existing audience that you have today. Yeah. And I think that the good thing about what you guys do is that I think

you guys capture just a fraction of the value you create. So giving people the news every morning in a super simple, digestible way. And then you capture, you know, it's free for them, and you capture just a tiny amount of that value on advertising. Yeah, so with trends, we're going to be capturing a little bit more. And this is now another component that we can actually give for free and capture a little bit of the value. And hopefully people will sign up for maybe 3% of people listening will sign up for

our paid services. Gotcha. Okay, cool. And so I want to close it out. I want to do bonus segment about money. Money. Okay. This is the money round.

I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions related to money. and you're going to tell us about them. How much money were you making at age 21, 25, and I usually say 30, but you're 29, so we'll do 29. So 21, 25, 29. 21. I had just, I joined a company after we had a little exit. My salary was $50,000 to $60,000 a year with a bonus that was nice-sized.

I was able to save $25,000 with that salary in San Francisco. You saved $25,000 on a $50,000 salary? $50,000,000 salary, plus bonus? Yeah, plus bonuses. I think my bonuses maybe came out to be like 80 grand, like total compensation. Okay, gotcha. That's good. 25.

Lower because I started the company when I was 25. The conference made 60 grand, about 50 grand in profit. The second conference made some number of around $200,000 in profit that all stay in the business other than a draw I did of $2,000 a month. And then 29, your company's doing really well now. What do you pay yourself? I pay myself six figures. I pay myself, something around between six and seven figures, below seven figures, above six figures.

I didn't pay myself six figures from the company until last year. For a long time, it was, it ramped up from like 40 to 60 to 100. And then I started giving myself meaningful bonuses based off performance. I make more income from my investments. So selling other businesses, rental income, things like that. I make more money that way. And so last question, a lot of people have a number in mind. This is the number that they want, the number where they feel like they've hit it.

They've made it. And the number can move. I think when people hit their number, they make a new number. But right now, what's your number? I think that an old guy who I love, Stuart Alsop, I don't know if you know him. He's a good friend, but he's a big-time investor. He invested in Twitch's seed investor. Does he like being called an old guy who you left?

No, but he's like 70 years old. I just like calling him that. I don't know. He's a good guy. He told me that the first unit you make makes life different. And I go, what's a unit? And he goes, 10 million. He goes, you get one unit. That's when life changes. So one unit where your liquid is a big deal. It goes probably 10. And then 100 is like, you're set forever. 10 is like, be cool and you're fine. right don't go Mike Tyson yeah and you're fine yeah like 100 is your set 10 is like

life is never they're going to be the same but you could still ruin it if you like really do something bad so that's your number right now one unit a unit

getting liquid that said I don't think I'll be happier with it I know I won't be happier with that right you're not going to be happier with $10 million

I don't think I think I think it's not so much happier I think happier is kind of the wrong word. The money won't make you happy. It's the fact that you did it. The fact that I did it as well as the lifestyle. So I think money, I have this thing that money is just stored time.

So when I give you money, I'd like to unlock some of your time to go do something for me. And when you give me money, it's because you want some of my time. And that's sort of how money works. Money is just time frozen into a piece of paper. And when you give it to somebody else, it thaws out. You get their time. And so the thing, you know, if I had a unit, that would make sure that I'm the one unlocking other people's time. Nobody's really unlocking my time unless I'm choosing to do so.

Yeah, you can just do that with a lot less money than you think. I choose to work. I could not work. I do it because I like it. As long as it's the choice. What I'm saying is that most people, and I put myself in this bucket right now, I don't dictate how I spend every hour of my day. It's not all my choice. There are several things that are things that I don't want to be doing in my own.

time. So the day that I can do sort of what I want, when I want, where I want the way I want, that will be sort of the ultimate freedom. I agree with you. I don't know if money unlocks that? It could be lower, it's a lower number than you think. What's the number? It depends on how much you spend, but like, I don't spend a lot of money. I could say fuck you to everyone in balance

and be fine. I'm a spender, that's a problem. Man, maybe when I hit 100 grand, I'm like, 100 grand liquid, I was like, that's fuck you money. But I was willing to say, fuck you to... Yeah, you live a fuck me lifestyle and you can have fuck you money at 100K. Yeah, that's exactly right.

If you're willing to say, fuck you, even at 10,000 or what thousand, a hundred gram liquid made a difference. Yeah. That's the number I'll give you. A hundred grand liquid made a difference. And I was willing to say, fuck off. Yeah. You know, I like this segment, the money round, because money's this weird taboo thing. I remember when you messaged me on Facebook once and you were like,

you were just like, how much you make? And I was like, you know, we knew each other, but like we hadn't talked about it before. No, amongst my close friends, I'm very open. I'll be like, here's how much cash I have. Right. And you asked me all these questions, and I was like, this is kind of cool because I was like, it's, at first, I just admired the balls of, hey, you know, just to ask.

But the second thing was I was like, this is how we can kind of help each other get ahead is information. Can we unlock some information so that you understand how people are playing this game? Because the pie is very, very big. And so the weird thing. It's not a zero-sum game. A lot of people think that, like, if I make money, that means I took it from someone.

It's like, no, that's not exactly how it works. Like if I create a piece of art, I didn't take this from anyone. I just created this valuable thing that someone's going to give me something for. Right. And even if you are taking money from somebody else, there's so many players in the game. Yeah, as long as they, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, we can all win. And so it's whenever I ask people, it's never out of jealousy of like I wish I was lower than,

or I wish I was bigger than, I do wish I have more than what I have sometimes. But it's not of like, I want you to be lower than me. It's like, oh, man, what could you teach me? Right. Yeah. I've learned from you and you've learned from me in that regard. So, all right, Sam, where can people find you aside from subscribing to The Hustle? Subscribe to the Hustle.com.

Yeah. Go to trends.com. Sign up. What about you personally? Where do they find out of you? Me personally, don't email me because I won't reply more likely than not. But tweet at me and I will reply, the Sampar. Awesome.

Thanks, Sam, so much. Great episode. We're going to do a Spartan race tomorrow. Yeah, we're running eight and a half miles. I don't know if we're going to run, but we're walking eight and a half miles. Yeah. We've got a long stroll tomorrow. All right. Good stuff, man. Great talking to.