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

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 6 months ago where I was like, man, there's like a path to make literally $100 million a year in revenue. I need a dollar, dollar, dollar. That's what I need. Hey, hey. Well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar. That's what I need. Hey, hey. Said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar. That's what I need.

Alright, we are here with Sam Parr, the founder of The Hustle, the big daddy of the, the publisher of the podcast. How does it feel to have a podcast on your, 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, goes out to about a million and a half readers. Is that right? Million and a half?

Yeah, we could say that.

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, your 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, uh, and because you spend 5 minutes on it in the morning, you save an hour of doing those, 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, 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 are, we're going to get to that in a second, but let's start with the 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 different, uh, 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 it. I talk about it. I love talking 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 obsessed 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 wanna, I wanna beat you. I wanna compete with you and I wanna compete with myself.

Got Gotcha. it. And when, when did you like first start doing business? Was this, you know, are you a kid? I first started 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 cuz you, yeah, 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. I just, 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 2, 3 years that YouTube existed and that made money. And I just loved scheming.

What, what kind of channels?

So it, this was in 2009. I don't know how old YouTube was around then.

Yeah, I think YouTube started maybe 2004, 2005, but.

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, that has 5 million views.. And don't you remember on YouTube years and years ago when, um, you would click these certain videos and you'd hear these horrible electronic, like, 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 like, it was like sometime around 2008. Yeah. Okay. All right.

So you, uh, you started the kind of keyword Yeah, 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 at my wedding.

He's one of my best friends. Yeah. And he, 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 persuasion. Copywriting is—

it's meeting a girlfriend. It's talking to a friend and trying to let them know you care about them. It's, it's trying to sell something. It's, 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.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So per— 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, what's the slogan?

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, we got Southern Sam's. Wieners as Big as Your Baby's Arm. Yeah. The best name. I started a restaurant too, but it was nowhere near, uh, the 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 a $1,000 day. With like 50% margins. Most days I would make between $100 and $500. 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. In 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, 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 yeah, well, what do I really believe? 'Cause 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 think you should do.

Fantastic. Yeah. 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, 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. Mm-hmm. 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, a redneck like kid. Right. And so I just did whatever and I just, 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 Zuckerbergs. I will never— I don't understand how they think. I'm much simpler. Right.

And so when 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. Because the hot dog stand was, 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 Wolfe. Have I told you this? No. Have you seen this TV show American Pickers? Yeah. Mike Wolfe 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 a shop stop up. And so I did.

Okay, hold on, pause. I went up to him to ask to take a photo with him and I became friends with him. 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'd never heard anything about me. I heard 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, uh, like next week. Can I borrow your office for, 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, this gift of befriending people kind of out of the blue. So tell me what actually happened when you met him on the street.

And that's how it happened. Right. At that point he's like, okay, it's gonna take more effort to get rid of this kid. Yeah. Yeah. To just give him what he wants. Yeah.

So that's kind of how that happened. But anyway, uh, while working there, I like met all these amazing people cuz 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, 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. Hmm. And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. And because I worked at Mike Wolfe's store, I knew that like Americana and vintage stuff was really popular. Mm-hmm. Moonshine is Americana vintage, all this kind of like— It was a trend.

Shout out to—

Yes, we have 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 guy told me about, it's called Popcorn Sutton's. It was— it's legal. 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 novelty whiskey, and I started selling it online. Wow. And how was it doing?

I mean, I— It was awesome. Do I even need to ask? You sold alcohol online, probably did pretty well.

Yeah, I mean, I would be in, like, finance class, and my— this was— I had PayPal on— I don't even know if I had an iPhone, but it would go ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, and I said to my finance teacher, I'm like, I just made $1,000 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, so the Moonshot Online didn't last long. Okay.

So the, so the BlackBerry with PayPal installed had to, had to go quiet for a bit.

Yeah. And so he was like, uh, yeah, like you gotta 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 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. And, 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. Gotcha. 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 moved. I went back home a few days later, sold the limited possessions 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—

because there's a lot of people right now that— nothing would have happened.

Nothing, nothing would've happened differently or nothing would've happened at all.

I would not be where I am. Hmm. What would you be doing? Um, working at hot dog stands or started a lawn company, or was it obvious to you and others at the time?

Like when you were saying, hey, I'm gonna go out to San Francisco, it seems like that's where the internet was.

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 in other people's homes? I was like, yeah, there's other company called UberCab 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, I'm doing this guys. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm doing this. And they, they gave me, I sold my car. I, 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 they 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. But 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 and 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. That's cool. 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 risks because when you grow up wealthy, you kind of know what there is to lose and all this 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, this, this is no big deal. Or the worst case scenario is I go and like sell bottled water on the corner. Like I can make it work. Like the downside is, 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 gimme like $300 so I can get, I can just come stay in my room?

Yeah. There's a get outta jail free card. Did you ever, you know, I remember when I was, uh, 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 pitch in these business plan competitions. That's amazing. I was good at pitching. And so I would just win the business plan 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's like, if you're not going to go, let's take, you know, some of that tuition. And he gave me, uh, like, I don't remember, was it $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 2 co-founders.

That's like such a good dad.

Oh yeah, it was huge. And he was, 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.

So you just gotta move.

So you gotta go, you gotta 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 in my life. So I give him credit for that. But I remember we were living pretty frugally.

Frugal. You were frugal.

And you're Mr. Frugal. I am. And so I want to get into that. I remember one time the way we were living, it was like kind of embarrassing. It was 3 of us in a 1-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, man. I can still tell you, yeah, it's like Best Buy 14-day policy, but you don't need this. And, you know, 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 your parents, 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 for— with an ask? Because when you go with an ask, you gotta have a little— it's like going to a bank. It's like you gotta 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 they, 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. 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 had. Like I've, yeah. And that to me was like $1,000. 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, I'm doing this. I was like, I'm going on the sh— I was like, I'm gonna, I'm literally gonna be homeless before I ever ask for help.

And so you lived pretty like a Spartan lifestyle for a while, uh, when you were starting up the hustle. I loved it. Tell us about that. 'Cause I think people gotta 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 gotta, you gotta live that Spartan lifestyle.

And so that was the first couple of 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?

Right. So you raised money, but you raised it sort of from, 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 from me and I became friends with him that way. So he ended up investing. The founders of Bleacher Report, the founders of NerdWallet, and loads of other people just like that, like 36 people. Scott Belsky, 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. Um, and collectively we raised about $1 million.

And then you also raised from the community.

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And so we raised a little bit of money from our users as well. Um, looking back, logistically speaking, I didn't need any of that money. Right. 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 him and ask for advice. And that's kind of like a cool trade-off. Right.

And, and with the community money, was that worth it? Cause most people don't do that. Cause there's 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, uh, just a second on the origin of The Hustle and the HustleCon, uh, the conference really, because it started as a conference before it was a newsletter. Yeah. And it started before you.

Somebody else started HustleCon. Yeah, so, um, I randomly met Eric Bond and Elizabeth Yin. And these folks are successful entrepreneurs. Eric had a business called Beat the GMAT that he sold for, I don't know how much, but if I had to guess, 8 figures. Elizabeth Yin had a, 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, 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 200 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, 2014, hosted that conference 6 weeks later, and it made like 60 Gs, and the whole idea behind it was I'm not trying to make money. I'm just trying to meet interesting 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, 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 just do the same shtick 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 And then 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 6 weeks made about $60,000 and I only spent $8,000 or some low number like that on the event. So, I was like, "Oh, that's cool." So, I took that money and actually, for 6 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, it, this time was 80 days. That's when I met, I think, yeah, that's when I met you. Mm-hmm. That event did about a quarter of a million in revenue on $30,000 or $20,000 in expenses. And then it was like, okay, this is cool, but I don't wanna run a conference forever. I had just read the biography of Ted Turner, the guy who 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, kinda. Like, I could start a media company. And so that's when we said, let's do a media company. And then the first 6 months of The Hustle, which started in 2015, it was just a blog. Yeah, I remember that.

It was, uh, you, 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 Soylent for 30 days, just stuff like that., and it got loads of traffic, but it was clear that would not be a huge, that wouldn't be a huge business. So we relaunched on April 19th, 2016, so that's why I say we're about 3 years old. Mm-hmm. 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, um, Daily Candy, of Thrillist, people may not even know what the last two are, but anyway, I was like, man, some of these like 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.

And I think that's paid off, uh, because now you have, I mean, this has got to be one of the biggest daily emails in the world.

Yeah, I think so. I think we gotta be up there. I only know of maybe 2 or 3 people that can compete. And who, who's that?

Who can compete?

There's the scam. Mm-hmm. I mean, they claim to have 6 or 7 or 8 million. They're pretty big. And then there's a, a, maybe a handful of one-off things that aren't confirmed that I, but I would guess.

And when you were doing this and it started to make money, that was also pretty counterintuitive. I mean, I, unless you really knew the email game, which I didn't.

By the way, I knew 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 knew— I didn't know what CPM meant. I didn't know. 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— I don't know how to code. I cannot code at all. And we have a tech team, a nice-sized tech team, and we built all of our own custom technology. I just— I'm really good at being like, what's the simplest solution? Like, what needs— 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 2,000 or 3,000 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 is not going to— 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 kind of believed him. 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 6 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 well? They sold for $125 million to Comcast, and then Comcast screwed it up and shut them down.

Gotcha. Okay. And so, uh, let's play a little game called Remake My First Million. If you had to remake a million bucks, so you take away your business as it is today, you can't do that again, that 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? You just— 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, 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 $100,000 a month and try to— would try to sell it and own all of it. And I think that that is significantly more possible than most people think. So, 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?

I like it. And I like the, uh, 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. And so the second one 100% works, right?

Well, it's not boring. It's like people don't like to hear the obvious and it's, it's almost the obvious or it's the basics.

Dude, because people are super fancy, man. Like, me and Ramon, him and I have started or funded like 5 or 6 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 dachshund or what kind of dog do you have?

Like a Chihuahua? I have a Maltipoo. He said it was for wiener dogs.

Yeah. Is that—

that's a Dachshund. Okay.

And why are people scared of these businesses or do they just assume it can't be You know, can't be happy.

People are afraid. These PB&J 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 had just applied more leverage, more stands, more locations.

Yeah. Franchised it out. And the way you create leverage is like, you just have to like set things up in a, 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.

And that— I think you had a business that you bought, a SaaS company, or for those that don't know—

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 3 to like a 6, 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.

This is why I call you the Lord of the Flies, man. You would find a way to make the money. And if I—

what I would like to do is buy more software companies and 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 Trends. And I want to hear about it because I like Trends, but I don't fully get Trends.

Yeah, a lot of people— tell me about it. A lot of people who haven't experienced it, I don't think are going to get it yet. And that's because we are— 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 of data, and we also talk to people like you and other experts, and we just explore various industries, and we do deconstructing of various businesses, and we just show like where are cool opportunities and where's the white space in 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 explain it is like, look, if you start a company, you can make it win or at least do, 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 gonna, the products will get pulled outta you. Like, right. It's just gonna push you down this hill and it's good. 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 in what they're doing.

Gotcha.

So you guys are trendspotting 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 SoftBank's playbook. So in the late '80s, early '90s, Masa-san, 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.

Started the magazine. Then he started the conference, which is now called CES. Mm-hmm. And then he created CES. He bought it. Okay. 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 wanna do that same thing cuz I think, uh, 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 like see his life, you're like, oh man, he gets to hang out with cool people. He gets to invest this money, like, let's just do that.

Yeah, that's pretty good. Okay, so when you think about like, when somebody's listening to this podcast, let's talk about the podcast for a second, 'cause 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 that came from our email list.

If you're listening to this and you're one of the 100,000, just tweet at Sam so that 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 gonna do a podcast, I was like, oh, let's see if we could partner with him and we gotta 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 in advertising.

Yeah. So with Trends, we're going to be capturing a little bit more. And this is now 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.

Um, and so I want to close it out. I want to do bonus segment about money. Money. Okay, this is the money round. Uh, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions related to money and you're gonna 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, $60,000 salary plus bonus? Yeah, plus bonuses.

I think my bonuses maybe came out to be like $80,000, like total compensation.

Okay, gotcha. Uh, that's good. And 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 stayed 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 6 figures. I pay myself somewhere between 6 and 7 figures, below 7 figures, above 6 figures. I didn't pay myself 6 figures from the company until last year. For a long time it was, it ramped up from like $40,000 to $60,000 to $100,000, 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. As of right now, the number can move. I think when people hit the 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— he was Twitch's seed investor.

Does he like being called an old guy who you love?

Don't go Mike Tyson. Yeah. And you're fine.

Yeah. Like 100 is you're set. 10 is like, like life is never 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 gonna be happier with $10 million. I don't, I don't think.

I think I would be. I think, I think, uh, it's not so much happier. I think happier is kind of the wrong word.

The money won't make you happy.

Yeah, you could 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 a 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. Uh, there are several things that are things that I don't want to be doing with my 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 and bounce and be fine.

I'm a spender.

That's the problem, man. Maybe when I hit $100 grand, I'm like, $100 grand liquid, I was like, that's fuck you money. But I always wanted to say fuck you to—

yeah, you live a fuck me lifestyle and you could have fuck you money.

Yeah, that's exactly right. If you're one to say fuck you even at $10,000 or $1,000, uh, $100 grand liquid made a difference. Yeah, that's mine. That's the number I'll give you. $100 grand liquid made a difference. And I was willing to say, fuck off.

Yeah. You know, I like this, 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, oh, well, we were just 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, 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. Cause I was like, it's at first I just admired the balls of, hey, you know, 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 gonna 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 he, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we, we, we can all win. And so it should, it's whenever I ask people, it's never outta jealousy of like, I wish I was lower than, or I wish I was bigger than. I do wish I am, have more than, 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. And, and I've learned from you and you've learned from me in that, in that regard. So, all right, Sam, where can people find you aside from subscribing to The Hustle?

Subscribe to The Hustle. TheHustle.co. Yeah. Go to Trends.co. Trends.co. Sign up.

What about you personally?

Where do they find you? Me personally, don't email me because I won't reply more likely than not, but tweet at me and I will reply. @TheSamPar.

Awesome. Thanks, Sam, so much. Great episode. We're gonna do a Spartan race tomorrow.

Yeah, we're running 8.5 miles. I don't know if we're gonna run. We're walking 8.5 miles. Yeah.

We'll get a long stroll tomorrow. All right. Good stuff, man. Great talking to you.