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.

Okay, but I All right, we're here with Sam Par, the founder of the Hustle, the big daddy of 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 to see the numbers first. And that's what I'll be excited

for most. I know. Uh, eso for those who don't know, the hustle is a daily newsletter. Goes out to about a 1,000,000 1/2 readers that

right 1,000,000 1/2? 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 on I like the way you describe it, which is it's like you know you're no B s friend just explaining it to you. So it's a 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 Part are gonna tell you show on the news each

day, right? And because you spend five minutes on in the morning, you save an hour of doing the that reading and research and finding out what's important yourself and what to make of it. And then, you know, you're at work at the water cooler. You sound smart.

Yes, and we have more stuff coming out. But that's our

big thing now. Okay. Okay. Something that launched today, I believe, right.

Ah, Little Beta launch yesterday.

Okay. All right. So we're gonna get to that a second, but let's start with the the question. We always start with Sam. Poor. How did you make your 1st 1,000,000

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. Different way of looking at it is when Did you know you wanted to make a 1,000,000

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 toe 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 toe 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

talk of. I love talking about it. But when I ranch, 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. Once you get past a point, which is lower than you think, it's not really that important to be able to bench £350 but it's just like you're obsessed with it, right, because you assed my body can bench £400.

So it's like, Man, I want toe. I want to beat you. I want to compete with you and I want to compete with myself.

And when did you like first start doing business? Was this you know you're a kid. I first started 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 cause you you came up with yourself. You saw somebody else selling on eBay.

I came up with myself and I thought it was a really cool adventure. I just It was just like a have an addictive personality. And this was my adrenaline rush. I started YouTube channels that got millions of millions of views, like the first year, 23 years that YouTube existed and that made money. And I just love scheming.

What kind of channels?

So this was in 2000 and nine. I don't know how YouTube was around

then. Yeah, I think you two started maybe 2000 14,005.

So it was like the third or fourth year of YouTube 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 auto fill fill with like black guy beats up white guy more street fights white guy fights black guy. And so I would was kind of scam me 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 thing because YouTube didn't have that filter to, like, catch

that sense that

there was nothing. Yeah, it was nothing. But if you could 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.

So you don't even have a fight cause I used to search for these. I used to watch Kimbo

slice. Yeah, the same the same stuff, like street fight like Big Black Guide knocks out little white guy. I have a video that's titled that that has five 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 like music? Yes. So those people paid me money to put my ads or put their music on the

background. So how old were you when this is going

on? I was a senior and freshman in college, so it was, like, some time around 2008.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So you you started the kind of keyword. Yeah, the word arbitrage. Because since then, I actually learned this from you. I went to one of your workshops that you and Nevil did on. For those who don't know, Neville is a good buddy

of you'll. Nevels, the best man at my wedding is one of my

best friends. Yeah, and he he's kind of famous for this copyrighting 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. Copyright is

the most important skill set anyone can have. Because copyrighting is not writing. Copyrighting is understanding how other people think and feel and how to use words to get them to do what you want them to dio specifically the written word. But it can translate

to anything, right? The writing is sales. Cooperating is persuasion copyrighting.

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 try 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. OK, 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, The name of the hot dog stands not just Southern saying, What's the

US led Southern Sam's Wieners as big as a baby's arm? So hot dog is a commodity like they pretty much are all the same. I mean little variants, but I bought um, Vienna sausages, which a lot of people by, 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 ah 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 stick.

Who is this like pre social media

This was in 2000 and 10 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, sort of the fame or appeal is That s so I love that. How did

it do? So I just tweeted about this today, actually, cause someone would ask me if I had to make money today with $1000. I started it with $500. I was only able to afford the first days ingredients and the first day did OK, but it took me about a week Teoh $1000 day with, like, 50% margins. Most days I would make between 105 100 days. If I would go and work all night or go to a concert, I could make $6000 a night. It was really hard work and national. The summer it's 110 degrees. Some days it was horrible. It was really hard, but it's really fun. But it paid like I got paid.

And you with 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. Right now, I would give them a now early, like I 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, What do I really believe? Because when I started in 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, gentlemen, welcome to the show. You doing what you think you should domestic? And now I'm like,

Well, what What would I actually say about you? Like, if I was just explain this to myself for what 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, sort of. We're all starting from scratch, just just us and our bare hands. If you took everybody I knew 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 toe, $10,000 I think you'd win. Thanks. I think I would win the The $1000 Lord of the Flies Silicon Valley addition and and so the and the hot dog stand is like a perfect example of this, which is just like, very straightforward, fundamental thinking. I have this much money I can. I want to get my money back quick. What people want, what people need. Where should I stand? 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 use. That is how you see it to

100%. So I'm from Missouri. I'm from ST Louis, Missouri. Ah, 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. Ah, 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 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 Zuckerberg's I will never I don't understand how they think I'm much simpler,

right? And so when you're, uh, you're doing the hot dog stand hilarious name good results, you know, paid it. Paid the bills for a period 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 temperatures.

Yeah, and so what I was doing in the evenings after selling stuff. So I work for this guy named Mike Wolf. Have I told you this? No. Have you seen this TV show? American pickers Mike Wolf was my boss. So when I was in college, he was I loved that TV show. American pickers. I saw him walking on 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 work there and help set a shop up. And

so I did. Okay, hold on. Pause. I went up to him to ask, take a photo with him, and I became friends with him. This is a sample thing that you do, and I want people listening to know how the hell you doing, cause that's how we became friends. You literally email, maybe. Like, Hey, Sean heard great things about you. You've never heard anything about me. I had things about your Probably not We had never met.

The point is, you just reached out cold, and you're 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 gonna have all these awesome speakers you're gonna love it, You can attend the dinner. And I was like, Yes, 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?

I call it the gift of jab. Okay, That's what my parents call the grown up. Let's see, he I had my dog said with me, Mike's a big dog. I I walked up to him, asked for a photo, he start talking about my dog, I go. Oh, yeah, Thank you. Like you got it out of dog stuff. And I'm like, What are you doing here? I'm opening up the shop.

Amazing. Who's gonna 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. Probably said it in the exact tone. And he was like, Yeah, like I don't know, baby. And I just started heckling him and just like joking with him a little bit. And he's like,

Yeah, OK, 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, Ah, jeans store and I like jeans a lot. And he was were going. We used to go to the same store the next day. I was. I went into the gene store and there was a guy who worked at a matinee. Go Matt. Mike Wolf was here the air day. When's he coming back? And you as well?

He's got some clothes that he's gotta pick up tomorrow, so I go. OK, here's $50. Text me when you think he's going to come in tomorrow. I'm gonna 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 read this thing. Let me let me help you set up. All right. Five year it. And that's how

happened. Right? At that point, he's like, Okay, it's gonna take more effort to get rid of this kid. Yeah, 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, cause Mike's a celebrity, and he would get all these cool people coming in and Kid Rocks Manager or something like that came in. I started just just messing around and talking to him. He said that there's this new law that allows small time distillers and Tennessee to create whiskey in the same way that in the nineties craft beer was allowed to be created. And I was like, Oh, that's kind of interesting And because I worked at Mike Wolf store, I knew that, like Americana and vintage stuff is really popular. And moonshine is Americana vintage. All this kind of like

there was a trend shadow, too. Yes, we have a new product

coming out called trends, but it was like moonshine was like popular. There's always like moonshiners shows, and it was basically moonshine means illegal whiskey. This was that kid rock, so I told me about it's called Popcorn Sutton's. It was illegal. They could sell it in stores, but they only would make it and small batches. And so what I did was 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 I was doing it was awesome. Do I even need to ask? You sold. We sold alcohol. I probably

did pretty well. Yeah, I mean, I would be in, like, finance class and my this is pay I pay pal on. I don't know if I had an iPhone, but ago coaching kitchen could change. And I said in my finally a teacher, I'm like, I just made $1000. 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 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 this is 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 is like, Ok, 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 e mailed the founders of Airbnb. I asked for a job. They said, Can you come to our office next week? It's 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 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 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 hap that was sold after 10 months for a tiny amount of money. And then I started that my

current company, and how important was it to get out here like what happens if you don't move? It is 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?

Um, working and hot dog stands O R. It started a long company and 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 not. I told my mom about Airbnb, and at the time, 300 people or 200 people work 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 as a cat. There's other company called Uber Cab, and it's kind of like that. But, like with cars and talking about, do they offer health insurance? That's all I care about. And I was like,

I'm doing this, guys, I'm I'm doing this and they gave me. I sold my car that gave me $5000 then they gave me $1000 to as like, I hadn't graduated college yet, but I like my graduation gift and they go All right, Come. We'll help you do it and 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 wanna This is your story. But having supported

working parents is like a really unfair advantage.

Absolutely. Also having a level of like, you gotta have a little fuck it in your system. And you had enough fuck it to say, All right, I'm just gonna go out there. I don't know. I don't have the whole thing figured out. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna figure it out. I know enough that that's where I need to be. Tony Robbins says is really good phrase it like, which says proximity is power, which is just like, if you know nothing else, just get close. That's cool. The stuff you like,

you close to the people you like. Just hang with them or the proximity has its own power. Go to the place you want. Just be nearing Proximity is power. And I've seen that play out many times myself. Your story reminds

me of that. Well, the thing is, is that you and I both have a lot of bodies that are really wealthy. Their Children probably aren't gonna 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. So it's like the worst case scenario is like I just sleep outside like Thing is no big deal or the worst case scenario is I go in, like, sell bottled water in the corner like I could make it work like the downside is really, really low or the worst cases I call my mom and be like, Hey, I don't ever want you to support me, but, like, could you give me, like, $300?

Get I just come to stay in my room. Yeah, there's a get out of jail free card. Did you ever You know, I remember when I was doing my very first start up. I was living in Colorado, kind of a similar situation. I won't do the whole back story, but I got into a spot where we had 1 30 grand of just prize money cause I would just go pitch in these business plan competitions and amazing pitching. And so I just win the business plan competition. We rolled up 30 grand in, like, a month of prize money. And then my dad was also like, OK, if you're going to do this, not gonna go to med school.

I took the M catches. If you're not gonna go, let's take You know, some of that tuition and he gave me like a member was 20 grand or some like that. He's like, That's gotta last you the year. So I got 30 grand from this 20 of this, and this me and to to co founders.

That's like such a good dad.

Oh, yeah, it was you. 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 situation, but yeah, but you're you're actually waking up and doing something every day without anyone telling you to do. 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 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. Problem is, from where you're standing, you can't see where the elements You just think this island is just gotta move. So you gotta go. 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 you know,

he's like it's much easier to move a boat when you actually have some momentum. You could just put your paddle in the water and you'll actually turn and you'll start going on 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. And you're Mr Frugal eso 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. Everything we would need we would buy and return. So it's like, Hey, we need a camera for this Photo shoots and their menu pictures still tell you, Yeah, it's like Best buy 14 day policy, but you don't need this,

you know? So we would go by this DSLR camera, return it for days later, 10 times, and, uh, I remember we would sleep on air mattresses and we knew that Target had a 90 day return policy on air mattresses. I remember going and returning my air mattress so embarrassing of like, Damn, I am this poor that I'm just like

your your parents, poor or their 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 gotta have a little sense. I go to a bank. It's like you gotta have a down payment of some kind of successor moment. I feel you at this point, I didn't feel like I had my down payment of I know what I'm doing looked 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 I 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,

you know, I grew up kind of poorer, that 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 $5000 up enough 1 50 truck. But it's not like I was, like, pulled up from my bootstraps, like from nothing, right. But I've never The $1000 gift that I got from graduating college was the most money that they've ever that I've ever like Yeah, And that, to me was like $1000. 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 this time 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 when you were starting up the hustle. Tilove, tell us about that, cause 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 gotta you gotta live that sporting lifestyle tell

us about that s so I do well now, but people are like, you know, you know, it's only been our company just turned three years old the other day. There's only been three years, and you're doing good. And I was like, Well, I grind instance 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 a well scraped together some money after selling something, and I rented a four bedroom house. I furnished the whole place,

but used or free furniture and 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 two 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 know, I have to say the specifics, but you know, what should we be thinking about when we think how is the hustle doing? 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 I think we'll get there. So it potentially may not be uber, but it'll be a nice sized business. It will be $100 million business companies like ours. I 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 raise money. But you raised it sort of from from the roller decks, in

a way, yeah, but they weren't in the role decks at the time. Tim Ferriss was like, looked on the block for 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 Belski, one of the early uber guys, loads of people like that all collectively put in some some between $3100 for meat, Sethi. And collectively, we raised about a $1,000,000.

And then you also raise from the community.

Yeah. So what we did we hustle start as a conference, a conference with the 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 in to 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 hours.

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And so we raise 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, like a text them and ask for advice. And that seemed like a cool

trade off, right? And with the community money, Was that worth it? Because most people don't do that

because there's looking back no issues that 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.

And, ah, just a second on the origin of the Hustle and Hustle con the conference. Really? Because it started as a conference before it was a newsletter. Yeah, and it started before

you somebody else. So I randomly met Eric Bond. Elizabeth the end, and these folks are successful entrepreneurs. Eric had a business called Beat the Guilmette that he sold for I don't know how much, But if I had a guess. Eight figures Elizabeth Yen had another business called Launch Bit that had a nice exit. And so a guy who introduced me to them and we 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 Hustle Con. It was kind of like a conference, but in reality it was like a meet up and 100 people came.

It made, like, $4000 or I forget some number like that. It's just basically a website, an email list of two or 300 people. Do you want it? Just do something with it and give me, like 10% of the prophet said in. So I launched. I relaunched Hustle Con on June 1st of two dozen. 14 hosted that conference six weeks later, and it made like 60 G's 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 Air coming?

And of course, they hadn't. They they weren't coming and they would say yes. And then we go to the other 15. Okay, you know, I would do the same right to stick with them, and they all started coming in. And then I became friends with him 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 talk about talk for 10 minutes in the next 50 minutes. I just wouldn't 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 and teaching myself how to be a copywriter. And so that first event in six weeks made about 60 G's, and I only spent eight grand 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 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. I think, Yeah, that's when I met you. That event did about quart of a 1,000,000 in revenue on 30 or 20,000 and expenses,

and then it was like, OK, this is cool, but I don't want to run a conference forever. I had just read the biography of Ted Turner and I started seeing it and I was like, That guy's Southern I'm kind of Southern He like It's kind of wild time 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 1st 6 months of the Hustle, which started in 2015. It was just a blawg,

but remember that it was just telling really great stories, but was like long

form, long form block stuff. And I would just blogged about, like, funny stuff or interesting stuff, like taking LSD or living on Stolen for 30 days. Just stuff like that. And it got loads a traffic, but it was clear that would not be a huge. That wouldn't be a huge business. So we re launched 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. It's about this whole thing on email and then became very clear that if you study the history of Groupon of daily candy of Thrillist, people may not even know what the last two are. But anyway, I was like,

Man, some of these, like $1,000,000,000 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 at the distribution channel. And I think we could build a $1,000,000,000 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! Yeah, this trend

Snapchat I knew from Day One that would be a horrible idea. It's like I have always wanted to be independent, and I felt that building an audience in the back of Facebook was like building a business in 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 wind in our sails 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 like, So where's the profit come from? Well, if you do this like, I don't understand that that that that that doesn't really makes too fancy for me. Yeah, like that does not make sense to me and I don't want to do that. It's Ah, 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 is that who can

compete? There's the skin. I mean, they claim to have six or seven or eight million. They're pretty big. And there's a maybe a handful of one off things that aren't confirmed that 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 like I didn't know anything. I didn't know what, like basic words were like an RFP or man knew nothing, right? I knew. I don't know what CPM meant. I didn't know. I didn't know how like I was doing our accounting. I don't know the difference between cash flow and revenue like I

didn't know anything. And do know things now are you just hired people who know

things. I know a lot of things. Yeah, Yeah, I dio I know how to read a balance sheet and do a P and l statement. I know how to make money. I don't know how The out, huh? I don't know how to code. I cannot coat it all. And we've have a tech team, a nice sized tech team, and we built all Rome custom technology. I just I'm really good at being like, What's the simple solution? Like, what needs should exist them like,

Hey, guys, can you like it would be cool if this existed, can you? Do you want to make that happen? And they would just say, Yeah, I make 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, It's actually not just it's working, but this thing's actually gonna be really

big. Well, the first week of our existence, we got a 1,000,000 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 3000 concurrent users on real time analytics. Google Analytics Sounds like sick. That's awesome.

How good is it to watch this addicting?

It's addicting. It's hugely addicting. And then I was like, This is not gonna. 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.

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 like. Email is such a small thing. Like an email newsletter. A news like you don't even have a website like there's no way advertisers they're gonna want that. And I'm like, Well, but if you think about it, if you just look at how much they're gonna pay per click on all these other platforms who cares if it's on your email or on a website? Are like, Does it matter? As long as I get, like traffic to the stuff like who cares? And it's like, Well, it doesn't work like that was like OK, well,

and so I kind of believe 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 mild modelos after early on, they claim to have 25 million in revenue and 10 million and 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 They sold for 125 million to Comcast and Comcast screwed it up It shut him down,

Okay? And so let's play a little game called Remake. My 1st 1,000,000 if you had to remake a 1,000,000 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. Those I give you back that youthful energy and time. What would you work on? What would you try to do? You say you don't have capital, you don't have network. You don't have a lot of those pieces. Your you. But you're 21 What would you do again? Or would you do differently

this time? If I was 2122 I would try to get a quick win and try to get, like, a couple 100,000 or maybe a $1,000,000 in my bank by, like, starting a business that made 100 grand a month and try and 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 21. I'm listening to this. I say. All right, that sounds pretty good. Be more specific. What do you mean? What's well, because 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 blogged about what you learned. Do that every single day, every week for a year. Try to get 2 to 3000 people a day coming to your site through search. The way you find out what they're right about is you go to H A refs dot com and buy a subscription, and that would teach you what to write because it will tell you what people are searching for. Trying to rank for those words, build up an email list of 5000 people and then create a course and sell it to them

like you. And I like the looking up keywords like having the answers to the test. Here is what people want

to know. Yeah, just answer it. Just answer 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 ways to be the curious novice. And so

the 2nd 1 100%

works. A lot of people come themselves out because they just assume I'm not the expert, but in reality,

the only to be one step, Yeah, I just gotta be one step in front of your audience. And that one step could be you. Just you just read a book over the weekend, right? So if I was 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 national 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

and so you boring stuff, right? Well, it's not boring. It's like people don't like to hear the obvious, and it's almost the obvious is or is the basics

because the people are super fancy man like me and Ramon. Him and I have started or funded, like five or six companies that collectively make $10 million or something like that ends like the most simple shit on Earth. And if I told you that this company makes us 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 with the dog. Ran a dog ramp is when you have a dash hound or we have a dog idea like a 12

hour. I have a multiple, he said was for Weiner Dogs.

Yeah, is that

that's a dash. Okay, um, it's the fancy

work Salsa stock. Wiener dog. You when you have these small dogs and they want to get on your bed. They can't get up. So it's just like, Well, it is a piece of wood and it flips up like a ray up like a miniature handicap ramp and your dog can get up there, and that makes sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a day.

Why are people scared of these businesses, or do they just assume it can't be? You know, Bigelow,

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 $1,000,000 you have to work an equivalent amount of hours that in their head, they think is a $1,000,000. Or you have to have an idea that is the equivalent of a $1,000,000 idea, 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 a pretty good execution like 100% effort for a short amount of time, and that if you leverage it correctly, it creates significant amounts of 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 sandwiches always taste better than when you do it, cause you see also how simple it is.

You're like, Oh, this like, isn't that like, Yeah, this is like it's gotta be way better like the other people must do away different because this isn't that, like, this can be that easy. 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 I Q. People. I think the smarter you are, the more disadvantaged you are at some of the money that some of these like simple things. And it's also fear people are afraid.

PB and J businesses are can be great. Business is if you apply leverage, and that's the sort of difference where you're her same hot dog stand idea could have been a big business. If you're just a pride, more leverage, more stands, more locations. Yeah, guys it

out 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 use the Internet, and you realize, Well, I could 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 Ah, SAS company for

the SL remote. And I also wanna sass companies like a $30,000 month SAS 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 toe like a six. And that was it.

That's all we did You like? I can't code. But even I know how to do this.

Yeah, Most people don't price yourself effectively. We bought a company literally. All that was known was double the price and revenue doubled. The same amount of people sign up every day is super

simple. I love it. This is why I call you the Lord of the Fifth. You would find the way to make the money.

And if I What? I would like to do is buy more software companies and 10 x the price. I think that that's possible

as well. So you have all these experiments and head, but one experiment. You guys just launched his trends, and I want to hear about it because I like trends, but I don't fully get trends. Yeah, a lot of people,

only about it. A lot of people who haven't experienced. I don't think you're gonna get it yet, Andi. That's because

we heard what is.

Yeah. So basically, the idea is it's, ah, premium publication of 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 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 neck. 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 feel like everyone 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 could eventually become a wave or tsunami like it's just gonna the products will get pulled out of you, like just gonna 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 we interviewed the guy, started 1 800 got junk Brian, and he said, You have 1 800 got junk. Here's how it works. Here's the economics. That's amazing. Where they where else could this work? And those local irrigation services when we go awesome thinking. We went and interviewed a bunch of people and we got the data we shows All right, here's This is like a cool

idea. Nice. And so if trends works, the hustle becomes this thing that has 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 eighties early nineties Masa son, he started what was called basically the PC magazine of Japan. He started ah, publication.

That's a good example, right? PCs was the wave started the magazine,

the magazine. Then he started the conference, which is now called CS

and then created

See, you bought it. You bought it with the profits from the publication. And then he was also selling software. And then he started investing in companies that he saw that were advertising with him. So I just don't do that same thing, cause I think like working at stopping would be a really cool job.

Nice going after Softbank. Wow, You pick the big blue whale.

It seems like you, like, see his life. You like Oh, man, he gets a hand Cool people he gets to invest money like let's just

do that. Yeah, that's pretty good. Okay. So when you think about, like when somebody's listen to this podcast, Uh, let's talk with podcast for second. 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 my email list. If you're listening to this and you're one of the 100,000 just tweet it, Sam. So that he knows he knows you're listening. All right, So why do a podcast? 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. 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, ah, motion versus direction. And so when you said you were gonna do a podcast, I was like, Let's see if we could partner with him and we got to do that. I also think that podcasts in general are 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 you have today. Yeah. And I think that the good thing about what you guys do is that I think you guys captured just a fraction of the value you create. So given people the news every morning in a super simple, digestible way on you capture, you know it's free for them. And you capture just a tiny amount

of that value on average. Yeah. So what trends we're gonna have capturing a little bit more. And this is now another component that we actually get for freeing. Capture a little bit of the value and hopefully people will sign up for maybe 3% of people listening will send for our paid services.

Catch. Okay. Cool. Um and so I want to close it out. I want to do own a segment about money. Money. Okay. This is the money round. I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions related to money and you're gonna tell us about how much money were you making at age 21? 25. And I usually say 30 but you're 29. So we'll do. 29 2025 29

21. I had just I joined a company after we had a little exit. My salary was 50 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 say 25,000 on a 50,000 salary. 50 60,000 salary plus bonus.

Yeah, plus bonuses. I think my bonuses maybe came out to be, like 80 grand. Like total compensation.

Okay, catch. That's good. 25

lower because I started a company when I was 25. The conference made 60 gram, about 50 grand profit. The second conference made some number of around $200,000 in profit. That all stay in the business other than a drawing I did of $2000

a month and then 29 year companies doing really well. Now what do you pay yourself?

I pay myself six figures. I pay myself some number 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 toe 100. And then I started getting myself meaningful. Bonuses based off performance. I make mawr income from my investments. So selling other businesses, rental income, things like that. I make more money that

way. And so, um, 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 had it. They've made it as of right in 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 Ah, an old guy who I love Stewart all stop. I don't know if you know him. He's a good friend. Um, he's a big time investors investment twitches. Seat investor

doesn't like being called an old guy who you

left? Uh, 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 the unit? And he goes 10 million. Hey, goes, you get one unit. That's when life changes. So 11 unit will make well where your liquid is. A big deal. It goes probably 10. And then hundreds. Like your set forever 10 is like Be cool. And you're fine,

right? Uh, don't go. Mike Tyson. Yeah, And you're fine?

Yeah, like hundreds. Your set 10 is like Like life is never going to be the same, but you could still ruin it if you like. I really do something

bad. So that's your number

right now. One unit. Ah. Unit getting liquid. That said, I don't think I will be happier with it. I know I won't be happier with that, right? You know, it could be happier with $10 million. I don't think

I think it would be. I think I think it's not so much happier, I think have Here's 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, Aziz Well, as the lifestyle. So I think money. I have this thing that money is just stored time. So? So when I give you money, I'd like to unlock some of your time to go do something for me on 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 to somebody else falls out, you get their time. And so their 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 could just do that with a lot less money than you think. I choose toe work. I could not work. I do it because I like

it always has 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 is not all my choice. There are several things that are things that I don't want to be doing in my time. So the day that I could 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

have money. It could be lower. It's a lower

number than you think. What's

the number? It depends 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

with prominent. Maybe when I hit 100 grand, I'm like, 100 grand Liquid. I was like, That's fuck you money. I was going to say Fuck you.

You live a fuck me lifestyle And you could have fucking money like, Yeah,

that's exactly right. If you're going to say, fuck you even a 10,000 or what does? Ah, 100 Grand Liquid made a difference. That's mine. That's the number. I'll give you 100 grand. Liquid made a difference, and I was going to say fuck off.

You know, I like this this segment the money around because money's this weird taboo thing. I remember when you message me on Facebook once, and you were like, Oh, you know, just like you were just like, how much you make on. I was like, you know, we knew each other, but like we had talked about it before

my friends. I'm very open. I'll be like, Here's how much cash I have,

right? And you ask me all these questions and I was like, This is kind of cool cause I was like It's first. I just admired the balls of hay, 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. 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. 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 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 his valuable thing that someone's gonna give me something for.

And even if you are taking money from somebody else, there's so many players in the game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, we can all win And so it should it whenever asked, People is never out of jealousy of like I wish I was lower than I wish I was bigger than I do. Wish I have more than then when I have sometimes. But it's not like I want you to be lower than me. It's like, Oh, man, what could

you teach me, right? Yeah. And I've learned from you. And you've for 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 hustle

dot co. Yeah. Goto trends dot ceo Trans Echo.

Sign up. What about you

personally? Where they personally don't email me? Because I won't reply. More likely than not but tweet at me and I will replied, The Samp

are awesome. Thanks, Sam. So much great episode. We're gonna do a Spartan race. Tomorrow's

Yeah, we're running 8.5. I don't know if we're gonna run or walk at eight

a half miles. Yeah, We get a long stroll tomorrow. All right. Good. Good stuff, man. Great talking to you.