https://www.listennotes.com/e/2ec4277489054f9eb3f3685468c44cee

All I cared about was hitting that number. And frankly, I think that was the right thing to do. I think that it's a little bit soulless, but I basically felt like I paid the price. I paid a price in my early 20s so I could relax, not even relax, so I could have no financial pressure for the rest of my life.

Biggest mistake is it's so easy at a very early stage once you get traction to think that that is what you want. Welcome back to Unfucked My Startup. Today's guest is one of our inspirations at Unfucked My Startup. He's the founder of Hustle, which he sold to HubSpot. And he's currently the founder of the exclusive CEO community Hampton, which we will talk more about. And just for fun, he's the co-host of the massively successful My First Million, which we just found that you also sold the HubSpot. Am I saying that correctly? and he knows firsthand how to build audiences, how to build wealth and currently how to do it with purpose. We're excited to be joined today by Sam Parr. Sam, welcome to the show.

What's up? What's going on?

Happy to have you, Sam. So what we do, Sam, during the first segment here is called our pitch slap. So we're going to bring somebody up from the audience. We have people actually submit beforehand before everyone asks how they can be a part of this section. audience, I'm talking to you. Producer@rb2b.com, I'm dropping it in the chat. Today we are going to call up Martin from Send to Win. Martin, if you could please raise your hand, we are going to, there he is, John's going to call you up. I'm going to drop in the Send to Win URL into the chat here. And what we're going to do, we're going to run a poll. Now, I need to call out the audience here. For some reason, as soon as we launched the poll in the beginning of the pitch, like 20 people say, no, they don't want to buy the thing. I don't know what this joke is. I don't know if it's been a big lead up to April Fool's, but we're going to give it about 30 seconds. We're going to let Martin pitch a little bit and then we're going to drop the poll. That poll is for you to vote whether you would buy it, not buy it. At the end, we're going to have everybody drop into the chat if they want to book a demo with Martin and check out Send to Win. And there he is, Martin. How you doing? Hey, Pete. I'm doing well.

Thanks for having me. Hi, Adam.

What's up, Martin?

All right.

I loved your April Fool's post today, Adam. That was awesome.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, that was a real banger. Sam, I announced that- oh, I saw.

Yeah. Sequoia and a16z. I know.

And they were hiring this guy that I got into a LinkedIn fight with last year, and I just accused him of selling one dollar- What did I accuse him for?

Selling $2 for $1.

$2 bills for a dollar for burning money at outreach. Anyway, that was the whole joke.

Yeah, A16Z and Sequoia, both congrats. So your company is sendtowin.com?

That's right, yes.

All right, I'm with you, brother.

All right, I'm gonna also, just while you're talking, I'm going to share my screen so I can just do a quick scroll through. And then John, our producer, he's going to throw two minutes on the clock. And whenever you're ready, Martin, you can start telling the group about Send to Win, and then we'll get some demos booked with you at the end of this thing.

Awesome.

Well, it's great to meet you all. I'm Martin McGuinness, co-founder of Send to Win. We're a team of all ex-Google, ex-Databricks, Stanford MBAs that left to build a high-performing outbound program for B2B companies. And we do all the work ourselves. so we handle everything end to end from strategy, custom list building, personalized messaging and execution across email and LinkedIn. All the warm replies go directly to.

Your team to close.

A big differentiator for us is deliverability. Part of our team was actually involved in the Google team that built the spam filters. So we know exactly how to craft the emails that actually land in the inbox. Something that's gotten much harder to do lately. So far, we generated about 1.6 billion in pipeline and over 150 million in revenue for over 250 companies. from pre-seed or bootstrapped early-stage startups to companies backed by Sequoia and A16Z, like Adams as of today, to many global enterprise teams and Fortune 500s. So if you're looking for a team that can help you scale your outbound without hiring a big in-house team of SDRs or having to work with a fully outsourced agency, come talk to us. We'd absolutely love to work with you.

Fantastic. Well, Martin, you're getting a ton of yeses above 66%. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna send you a swag box first of all. I know that's part of this, but audience, please drop into the chat. Just write demo in all caps. Drop demo into the chat. Martin is gonna drop his calendar link. Look at that. Oh my gosh. look at that. Maybe this should be its own business. What do you think about this? This is a lead gen business. Should we just.

Let's just.

I mean, have you ever seen anything like this, Sam? We're just, like, making money.

Right. For this guy right here. I've heard of this company called bni.

Bni. Burlington Northern.

No, nice try. I actually don't know what it stands for, but basically it's. You go. It's like for people who owned, like, companies that, like. are realtors or garage door opening businesses or HVAC. You go to these meetings in your neighborhood with all local businesses and you trade leads. And that business does like $200 million a year in profit.

Oh my gosh. This is why we have you on the show.

Yeah, that's a great story.

Trying to get inspired. So I think we booked Martin 21 demos on the show, which is a record. Our next best showing was 17 demos. Yeah, this is great. I just- BNI, what was it? BNI is Business Network International. It was what Sam just described, 200 million profit for sharing leads around.

Yeah, it's insane. so, Martin, how much do you charge per demo or how much does one demo cost you?

In terms of how much.

Sorry.

How much.

How much do we price for our. For our clients? You're saying.

No. To get them demos when you're advertising or trying to grow, how much you charge for a demo? Like you're willing to spend a thousand dollars for a demo. Oh, it.

You know, we don't have a.

So the price.

It probably depends, I'd say. probably like $200 demo.

Nice. You owe these guys, what, like $5,000?

I'm gonna be wearing this swag. I'm getting married soon. I think I'm just gonna wear the swag, you know, ceremony at this point.

She'll love it.

There we go. I think they'd rather have the $5,000.

We're brand guys. We'd rather have the content.

I know she'll love it. Did you know you can resolve 30% of your anonymous web traps? She's just gonna be, It's gonna be delightful.

No, I'm not dropping that.

When are you getting married, by the way?

In June. Congrats, man.

Wishing you all the best, Martin. Thank you so much for coming on. I will send you a message. Connect with me on LinkedIn. We'll get the swag thing figured out. I dropped your calendar link. Guys, book demos with Martin. Thank you for coming up. Again, folks, if you would like to be a part of this segment next week, email producer@rb2b.com. I dropped it into the chat. And now, Sam Parr, let's chat, man. This is why we brought you here, not to hear other people pitch you. So my first question for you, Sam, I've been binging the My First Million podcast. You've talked to countless founders in your community, Hampton, along with your podcast guests on both Moneywise and My First Million. So I'm curious of your thoughts on how early stage founders build their startups. We've all heard these stories of the founder who's raised a bunch of money, but only has, you know, 5K in their bank account. What are some key principles or maybe strategies that you found for maximizing profitability or achieving wealth when growing a business?

I think that, you know, I tried to raise funding, but I just couldn't. No one wanted to invest in me. And that actually was a blessing because I made, you know, I owned most all my company when I sold it. I think that raising money is appropriate when you're really going big. Like when you're having a business, like when you take funding, you better be willing to go on this train ride where you only owned 10% of something that's massive. And the likelihood that that works is incredibly low, but it's still low, but much more likely to own 50 or 100% of a company that gets to 10 million in revenue by year five or 10. And that is worth probably a significant amount more to your net worth than raising funding. And I think in general, if you raise, this is a huge generalization because a lot of companies need funding. Like an Uber cannot bootstrap. I invested in a robot company called Figure. It made the guy a billionaire. He can't bootstrap. But in general, for most people, if you are not already wealthy, it's significantly easier to get wealthy by either raising zero to a million dollars and selling your company for $50 million than anything. That's like generally, I think the more likely than not path or owning a business outright and growing it and paying yourself $500,000 to $3 million a year after a year 10. That's generally speaking, significantly easier way to get wealthy.

Yeah, I just want to hear, do you have a story at each end of somebody that you know that had a huge exit and made no money? And then on the other hand, some silent killer that's just absolutely printing dough and nobody knows who they are.

Yeah. So I've got a friend who sold the business for one billion dollars. He had three or four other partners and when all. And he raised a lot of funding. And when all was. When all said and done, he made, I think, 2.5 or three million dollars.

That is crazy.

And that's before taxes. I imagine that you gotta take taxes.

Well, that was before taxes. Yes. so netting two million dollars. So basically, you know, if you worked on that for, I think it was 10 years, so 10 million divided by, let's say, 3 million, what's that? 300 Grand a year plus his salary or probably another 200 Grand. He made 500 000 a year. Am I doing that math right? Five or 300 to 500 Grand a year in salary, basically, was what he made for 10 years of work. And he had way more stress than an average employee. Yeah, it's not worth it. I mean, and then in terms of, and by the way, like it is worth it. I said it's not worth it, but it is worth it, right? Like if there are some ideas where you have to raise capital for, you just have to know that this is the game that you're signing up for. And you better be mission oriented because that is probably the only thing that you're going to make out of it, which is feeling good that you tried to do something hard.

And I think the thing that I.

See.

The biggest mistake is it's so easy at a very early stage once you get traction, to think that that is what you want. And then you get on the treadmill, and then two or three years later, you realize that's not actually what you wanted. 'Cause your business is not what you thought it was when it went from one to three million really quickly and everyone started throwing money at you.

And now that I've had an exit, I would raise money for a startup. If I had a big idea and I was like, I know that I'm setting up for a game where I'm gonna go bankrupt, or I'm going to get on the series ABC like train in the next five years. It's only those are the only two outcomes. I would do that if I had an interesting idea that I thought could be huge. So I'm not fundamentally against it. But in terms of wealth creation, bootstrapping is way better. I mean, and you look at my story. So, you know, I think you guys said that I sold for 20 or 27 million. It was more than that.

And I don't know where we got that. I'm sorry.

No one has ever known the right number, but whatever you see online, nine, it was more. And I had qsbs, which qsbs means the first 10 million is tax free or 10 times your cost basis, meaning if you are an LLC and you convert to a C Corp, let's say you're worth 30 million and you sell for 300 million, you get 270 million in tax-free gains. So qsbs is huge. I had qsbs. And then also when I made my money, I made it in February 4th of 2021. I put almost all of it into the S&P 500. And then I also owned HubSpot stock, who bought my company. I believe the index is up something like 46%. So I kind of knocked it out the park and I sold for a, I didn't even sell enough. My company did not barely sold for enough that it made any headlines. Right. It only made headlines because I was a media company. And the definition of a media company is you have to have lots of eyeballs. So, like, it was kind of a high profile deal, but In actuality, it wasn't even on the blip of worthiness for a Wall Street Journal to talk about, if you know what I mean.

Yet that billion dollar story was probably all over.

It was all over.

Yeah.

So I'm just a Joe Schmo and liquidity is value to me. And I have it. And my friends who raise lots of money don't. In general, this is a huge generalization. So to answer your question in one line, raising zero to $1 million and growing a business for an exit or cash flowing a company is definitely the way. I mean, my goal was to make $20 million liquid by the age of 30. And in my head, I was starting at 22. I was like, okay, so I could either create something that cash flows, something like, I would need a cash flow on average 30 or, sorry, $3 million a year and to get to that number, or I could build a business that gets to 10 or 20 million in revenue and sell it, and then I could hit my number. And I thought the second one was more likely. I.

So I've been, like, pretty much binging clips of my first million audience. If you've not checked out my first million, it is like, it's really what we aspire to be at some point years down the line. Definitely check it out, but. Sam, you've had a ton of people on My First Million. You also interact with a ton of founders on Hampton. There's a lot of episodes that are just these incredible stories of founders who really live at this great intersection of creativity and capitalism. So from the episodes you've done, and not necessarily even the people you talk about, 'cause I know you'll tell stories of businesses, is there a story that stands out to you as the most clever display of building wealth? It doesn't have to be the most clever. It could just be anyone that you're like, I can't believe these people could buy a hundred laundromat, you know, whatever it is.

You know, I was really inspired by Rob Dyrdek. Rob Dyrdek, everyone knew him as the guy from Rob and Big, that TV show. And he was portrayed kind of goofy, but he's super savvy and he's kind of crazy. Like, if he told me, 10 years ago, what he wanted to do about how he wanted to invest in all these companies and have this incubator. I would have been like, Rob, you're like, what are you talking about? You're just a skateboarder. What the hell do you know? And he'd be like, oh, I'm gonna be a billionaire by doing this. I would think you're crazy. But he did a really good job of defining his path, and that path that he defined was very different from the norm, and he executed it. And so I appreciate him, and he had a lot of fun along the way. what are some other clever or interesting ways?

I saw a thing with Rob recently, too. He was like, he basically took America's Home Videos and, like, made it for the YouTube era.

So it's like, yeah, and he sold that company for, for, I think, 250 million dollars.

And if you flip to the TV, I don't know if people flip to TV guides anymore, but, like, literally MTV is just Ridiculousness over 24 hours a day.

Ridiculousness accounts for something like 20% of MTV's programming. And he owned the production company that made the show and it was sold for nine figures. And that's how he made his first initial amount of money. Rob Dyrdek did. Now he owns a lot of things, including this thing called Nitro Circus, which is like a dirt biking show that goes in stadiums. It probably does like 50 or 100 million a year in revenue. Like he owns all types of crazy stuff. Have you guys heard of Momentous Protein? He helped start that. He does all types of crazy stuff. He just does wacky things, but he's way savvier than you think. But he has a shitload of fun while he's doing it. And so I really am envious of him. Who else have I talked to recently? The founder of Loom. So we had the founder of Loom on. Sorry, what were you going to say?

I want to actually get into that. This is a perfect time. So yeah, I watched that. You had the founder of Loom on. It was Vinay Hiremath on my first million. So I'll do the setup for you if that's okay.

Yeah.

But he, so he sold Loom for a billion dollars, made somewhere between 50 and 70 million personally, and then he walked away from an extra 60 million that he would have gotten for staying another four years post sale. Totally wild, interesting story. He actually tweeted, quote, I am rich and I have no idea what to do with my life. And this got me on this theme of like finding purpose within sort of wealth creation. So I want to hear your, a bit about that. But I'm also curious, like, you know, a lot of, a lot of the videos you have is, is these stories of, you know, successful people finding purpose. Why is purpose so important yet so often ignored? And, like, does that increase your chances of being successful in building wealth?

I think it gets ignored. So I think that there's, there's two. Okay, so some people are freaks. So I've got a friend named Brett adcock, who claims he doesn't care about money and he's, I've seen him bet tens of millions at a time on a variety of his own projects. And now he has a company called Figure that is worth tens of billions. And he's like the Elon Musk. So there are crazy people like that, but if you're listening to this, just assume you're not that person. And then there's the other two types of people, which is pre-liquidity and post-liquidity. So pre-liquidity, Sam, all I cared about was getting to that threshold number. I was broke, I'd had nothing, and I wanted security. And I made up a number where I basically talked to a bunch of wealthy people and I said, How much money do you spend per month? And then I took the highest number that I found and I multiplied it by 12 to give me their annual burn. And then I found out what number is that 3% of. So for example, if you wanted to spend 300 grand a year, You would need $10 million. If you want to spend $600,000 a year, you need $20 million. And I decided that for some reason, a rich person who I liked, he told me he spent 600 grand per year. I was like, I'm going to aim to spend that amount. Therefore, I need $20 million. I don't spend 600 grand a year, by the way. But I just thought that was some cool, that was the highest number that I'd heard. And so basically, until I hit that number of 20, There was no purpose. All I cared about was hitting that number. And frankly, I think that was the right thing to do. I think that it's a little bit soulless, but I basically felt like I paid the price. I paid a price in my early 20s so I could relax, not even relax, so I could have no financial pressure in my, for the rest of my life. And after I hit liquidity, Now I do feel like where I just don't care about making more and everything that I do, it has more of a spiritual purpose. I mean, I guess I do care because it's just not the number one, the number two or the number three thing. Like, you know, you always care, but it's just like before it was, I don't, before it was like, I'll do anything that helps me get there as long as it's legal and ethical. Now it's like, I just don't feel like doing that or that doesn't jive with the story I want to be known for. And so I do think that having some type of security definitely changes your perspective. And I've seen this over and over again, by the way, people say money doesn't make you happy. It does. It makes you happier. It absolutely makes you happier. That $70,000 study that was misinterpreted, you can go back and look at the numbers. The graph still goes up. It just doesn't go up as steep after 70 grand. And the reason, and it kept going up. They talked to people that were making a lot of money, but they ran out of people to talk to. It kept going up. It will make you happier. But once you have it, you do need to seek something, I think, other than money to be fulfilled.

So it's that layer.

What is.

What.

What is that for you?

What makes me happy? Yeah.

Like, what.

What do you.

What is fulfillment?

Right.

Like, I mean, we can guess because, like. You're doing podcasts and stuff, but like.

Well, I'm not going to say the cliche thing of children, but in family, but that's number one. So I'm going to move past that. I really love finding undervalued young people, like young people who don't realize how special they are and giving them a job and letting them have a place to fulfill their potential and knowing that they're probably going to quit and start their own thing eventually. I get a lot of joy from spotting young talent. Part of it's like an ego where I'm like, ah, I knew it. But it makes me proud to find young people and give them an opportunity. And basically, when you have a company, I do Hampton and I do podcasts. I don't actually care entirely about those topics. What I care about is having a platform, which my business is a platform. to do fun and interesting stuff with fun and interesting people. So like for example, we just got an office and we're building a studio there. That's really exciting for me. It's a really small, like not important thing, but it's just like kind of cool to have like a mission and like I have all this energy. It's like I am directing it this way. I just, I enjoy that. It's not big needle moving stuff, but like, I don't know, there's just something I enjoy about a project. where there's a beginning and a middle and a net, and I get to do it with fun people who I care about. So that's fun for me. I also think that, like, I think I'm just like a dog chasing after a car. Like, I just enjoy the pursuit.

So I wanted to actually pose a question to Adam on this, because it's like there was this. So. And I'll set it up. Adam had told me. this was years ago during, I think when you started retention.com, somewhere around 2019, it was growing, it was growing, everything was great. And Adam for years had been telling me like, I just want to get to like a 10, you know, a 10 million ARR company. Like that is my goal. And then retention got to about 13 million, so achieve that goal and, you know, and some. And then, but it stalled out. And I remember Adam calling me and being like, I'm miserable. And I don't know, not miserable, but like, I used basically this epiphany of like, actually the fun and the fulfillment was in the growth, not in the, not in the result of the thing. And I'll let you expand on that, but yeah.

Well, yeah, you kind of explained, oh, I'm sorry, my perspective in, in how you asked the question. I mean, you know, my journey, and this could just be the virtue of being a founder of what are high churn SaaS products with high churn product categories and buyer personas, which, by the way, I'm trying to fix, but. It's just been a constant struggle of getting stuck and getting unstuck forever and ever. I have not yet hit my Sam Parr number. Ironically, it's a similar number as yours was. But this vehicle that I have now should get me there. I'm pretty public about our numbers. you know, I just think having something, you know, it's, it's now to the point where I just, like, think what we're doing is really interesting. I think it, you know, our, we have things that we can do that could make it a lot bigger. Even if it doesn't grow, whatever, we're just going to keep trying to push it. The team is super talented, so I'm, like, getting to spend my time with people that I really respect and. My kids are two and a half and six months old, and my wife's dad quit working when she was 10 and she had two younger sisters, and she thought that was horrible for her family. So it's not even an option to just sell this company and do nothing for me. So I have try to keep the infinite game going attitude towards what I'm doing. every year that has gone by, what I've done that year has been completely different than the year before for the 12 years that I've been doing this. Like, this media thing is new to us now. Like, posting on social was literally a brand new thing for me 24 months ago, you know, so. Or 18 months ago. I don't know how long it was.

So.

So, yeah, that is my Approach. Fortunately, I think I've got myself in this perfect situation where, like, I'm slowly, hopefully going to achieve these financial goals while having this thing that I love working on because I think there's a lot of satisfaction that comes from that.

Before we get into the unfuck my startup section, which Sam, it's our namesake section. It's great. I want to ask because there's a lot of people who start, I always say the long game is like three to five times longer than think it's going to be. So, Adam, when did you start your first business? How long is this entrepreneurial Journey be?

Launched the first product January 2014. So 11 years now.

And Sam, when did you launch the hustle? Was the hustle your first business?

No.

Like, my first, like, you know, I used to sell stuff on eBay in high school. My first legal business where I, like, got a license and I paid taxes was 2010.

Okay, so 10 and 11 and 15 years, respectively, for your entrepreneurial Journeys. And I think it's easy for people, maybe in the audience, to look at you guys and be like, man, I got to get there by the end of the month or by the end of the year. And I think that this idea of the infinite game is something I really love.

Yeah. But I still think, like, I don't want to give people a false idea here because I do think that, like. Sometimes telling people they have to have patience, that's like mental masturbation. Like I want you to like move fast, super, like super fast. I think it's better to say you must have a daily sense of urgency, but a yearly like patient mindset.

I like that a lot. Cause you're right, then you'll just push everything out. It's like, well, it's gonna take you 10 years anyway.

Yeah, like basic in general. A general rule of thumb is the people who are wealthy have a huge sense of urgency. Most, not all, but most wealthy people on a daily basis appear very inpatient.

Speaking of the urgency, have you heard this Elon Musk Colossus computer building thing? Have you heard that story? This would be a good, so we'll get into the section in a minute, but the Nvidia CEO was talking. So basically, Grok, which is the XAI chat bot, needed this giant supercomputer in order to process all of its compute. The CEO of Nvidia said, well, at that scale, it's going to take about four years. It's going to take three years of planning, then you're going to have to find real estate, and then you're going to have a year of implementation because you're going to need this cooling system and it's just so much infrastructure. And Elon Musk and the Grok team did the whole process in 19 days.

That's it.

Start to finish. Yeah, I mean, apparently it is, it's like the biggest, they have, I think they have over a hundred thousand GPUs with a like proprietary liquid cooling system. It's the biggest in the world and they're on track for two, it's a ridiculous story, but I think it just like really highlights this idea of urgency. Cause he was like, yeah, four years we're gonna lose, like we're gonna lose this game. We have to do it as quickly as possible.

Yeah, let's see, let's see if it holds up, but he's very urgent and urgency usually works.

Yeah, let's see if it holds up.

I.

Love following that. So let's move on to the namesake of the show, the Unfucked My Startup section. So Sam, what we do here, we call somebody up who's building something and they're stuck. And they're gonna tell us for about two minutes what they're doing and why they're stuck. Audience, by the way, this is your section. Please have it be something around the lens of something we've been talking about. You just listened for over a half hour of us chatting, but we're gonna call somebody up and then we'll spend about three minutes giving a panelist advice. I'm first gonna ask if, so we had Simon Yost submitted to the producer email. If Simon is here, Simon, please raise your hand. If not, I'm gonna call up a different audience member. We'll give one minute for Simon. Simon's coming up.

Yep.

All right, all right. oh, cool. And now this is to remind everybody, this is not the pitch slab. So Simon will not be pitching his business. This is where we can grab people who are in a different ICP selling to people who are not attending this meeting. And he can just get advice from, you know, seasoned entrepreneurs like Adam and Sam. And, you know, maybe if I have an idea or two, I'll jet it out.

So what's his company? Dude, what's it called?

Yeah, so Simon, if you could drop in your, I can pull it up, your URL into the chat here.

Twice now, so we're still waiting on.

You to accept Simon.

And in the meantime, I'm going to drop the URL into Simon's URL, into the thing. So this is senior AI. So Sam is trying to add some technology to the senior living world. So helping loved ones stay better in contact with their elderly loved ones through technology. So, yeah.

And he's still not up here.

All right. We might need to pick someone else. So, folks, if you can raise your hand, Simon, we will. We'll have you come up next week. Oh, there he is.

Oh, you know, there he is.

Good to go.

Simon, how you doing?

Hey guys, thanks for having me on.

Of course.

Well, Simon, we have that, let me share your website into the thing here. I'm going to share my screen so folks can see exactly what it is you're working on. And then in about two minutes, if you could just describe to Adam and to Sam exactly what you're working on and your problems. Most importantly, why are you stuck? That would be super helpful.

We're going from zero to one, and we're working on a voice assistant that helps older adults and their caregivers connect with existing vendor solutions for age-related services. The industry is really fragmented, and we've talked to a lot of family caregivers that have to go different directions to find different connections to different things. And we thought to choose the voice mode so that we can use the generative AI kind of power with a ubiquitous piece of technology.

Hey, and can you explain this simpler? So an old person uses you to do what?

Yeah, like if they are afraid of falling and they need a home modification, something like that.

Okay, so I'm an elderly person. I need a contractor to build something in my house, is that right?

As you age, you are kind of coming into the unknown of problems you never had before. And how do you find out who can help you with those things?

Okay, can you be super specific? So I am old. I have what problem?

It might be a health-related problem.

Be very specific. Don't say health, say exactly what the problem is.

I have what?

Okay, let's say that you recently fell.

I fell. Okay, cool.

And you could call to your kids and get them worried about it. You could do some Google searches about it, but if you really wanted to not fall again in your home, what would you do? And how, how would you figure that out? Get to point A from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

I don't, you, I don't know what point A to point B is. So it's like, can you be very specific? So I, I've fallen and I've hurt myself. I need to use you to do what? Yep.

We could help you find a service that would help you evaluate your home for safety concerns.

Okay, I understand.

And then do those repairs, for example.

Okay, I understand. Do you guys understand what I'm getting at here?

Specificity. This is something we, so I know, I mean, Sam Crows, they work with a lot of people on a community, but this idea of specificity is something we talk about a lot when we work with younger, early stage founders. So Simon, what's your issue you're running into right now?

We're trying to figure out if we should primarily go to market as a, to consumers directly or if we should do B2B path and have this hook up to existing businesses.

Interesting. And would the buyer be the senior or the buyer be the family?

Our idea is that the service is free to consumers and that it's like a customer acquisition play for the service providers.

So I have a hunch.

Basically Google Ads marketplace.

Okay, I have a hunch, but I want Sam and Adam to give insight on these. So Yousef and the Chassis Go partnership via hospitals or other professional services needed by seniors. you could do both.

Yeah.

I'm curious if Sam or Adam has an idea there. I agree with the B2B approach, but yeah, what do you guys think?

Look, Sam sort of alluded to this. I still think there's figuring out what you are.

Okay.

Before. Before go to market. Okay. You know, just. However you want to say it, niching down, getting more specific. In the very beginning, I love focusing on one super tight workflow, which is very obviously painful for one side of this to where you can kind of see it in their face. And then once you're there, you might think something totally different than you do now about how to go to market.

I'll try to be very specific. Okay, so we're gonna go to seniorai.app. Your H1 is inbound, isn't what it used to be. Okay, cool. So you're gonna, we're gonna, this is a sales tech, some type of like AI sales tech software. Every missed call is a missed chance to care, but every call answered by a rush or unprepared team member might be even worse. this is not clear. What I think you should do right after this call, I think you should go to open AI and you should say, hey, open AI, you are a copywriting and marketing expert. I am struggling to hone in on my products offering and messaging. Can you do me a favor and help me write my landing page a little bit better? And before you do that, I need you to ask me all types of questions about my vision and what my idea is and tell me all those questions that you're going to ask. It's going to ask you a ton of questions and you're going to type it into the Google Doc and then you're going to upload it. And I need you to tell it. I am struggling to accurately and crystal clearly explain what my problem is that I'm solving, and hopefully it will give you a better answer because right now this is really not great the way that you're explaining it. And I think you probably have greatness in you, but I think yet you have to be crystal clear and your website should say, I don't know who, I actually don't know who you're selling to, but let's say you are selling to the elderly person. You would say, well, I don't even know the problem, but the average person falls this many times. And when you fall, or let's see, or the average old person gets scammed this often. We have vetted vendors that you can use to fix your home so you can walk better, be an in-house care provider. Like, you know, it's hard for me to give you the exact thing 'cause I don't clearly understand the offering, but in learning how to write and making your landing page better, that's just a landing page, which is not that important here. What's important is that it forces you to be crystal clear on what you're offering. Do you agree, Adam?

I agree. The number one cause of death in people over 80 is falling. You know, something very clear problems, David. Yeah, I completely agree. I feel like, you know, I say, I talk a lot about this in my content. We talk about a lot about this in our community. Sam, I love that suggestion of getting chat GPT to interview you. I've never thought about that. Have you actually done that before, Sam?

I do that all the time. I have a project called Life Coach and chat GPT. I've got a project called Business, a project called Fitness, and I will use it as coaches for each category of problems that I have. And I say, ask me as many questions as you need to fully understand everything about me. or everything about my problem. So I have a business coach and I'm like, so you, what do you, and they're like, all right, we need your financials. We need to see every web page on your website. We need to see, we need to talk to you about what your goals are. How big do you want this business to be? What are you willing to do? What are you unwilling to do? And ask all the questions. I would do that for this website where I would say, ChatGPT, ask me about all of my dreams. Ask me about where I want the business to be in five years. Ask me what problem I think I'm solving. and I need you to poke holes in all of it, or I need you to help me be super clear, because someone I met just gave me a hard time for being unclear, and I never want to do that ever again. And I bet you it will, like, be a very good spark, sparring partner, because I think that's your. Your biggest. That's what you need to address tonight. Okay. And I. And by the way, I am a hard ass on all this shit, so excuse me for looking like a dick here, but I hope hopefully I think this can actually have a really big impact. Thank you.

Well, Simon, we're going to send you a swag box for jumping into the gauntlet here. I hope this was helpful. And thank you so, so much for agreeing to come up, sharing senior AI, and we'll talk to you soon, man. Thank you for joining.

Thanks. I think Sam gave us the best unfuck my startup feedback we've ever had.

Dude, did I just like ruin the vibes? I'm sorry. No, no, no.

You get a swag box for that one. I guarantee you he found that very valuable.

Everyone did in the comments. I mean, this is like, and I'm glad you brought up the AI thing, Sam, because like there are many times where I'm trying to ideate on something and I'm super unarticulated on that idea. and I will do a voice input into my AI and I will just ramble. I will just, if he's, I mean, very uneloquent, but it can, it's an AI. It can pick up on all that. I don't have to be eloquent. And it helps me formulate that, those ideas. I love the interview thing. I'm going to start using that.

I think everybody. And by the way, this guy's got more courage than everyone else in the.

Comments for getting up here and doing this.

So nothing but love, you know what I mean? This is like a being a fat guy on the couch and make fun of, like, a boxer. Be like, oh, like, he should have, like, blocked otherwise you would have gotten knocked like, oh, fuck you. You don't know anything. So nothing but love for this guy for doing it.

Exactly. But by the way, like, I think.

He'S the love by the way in the sink.

Your five minutes of advice, if I were him, I would have paid $1,000 for that. Seriously. Seriously. If you went on clarity.fm, people would pay you $1,000 an hour at least to rip their landing page apart like that. for sure. Not that you need it, not that you want to do it, but like, that's what I'm saying. It's like, that is killer advice from an ultra qualified person with actionable insights.

Yeah, I just like when I'm around, I just, I think we owe it to people to be, candid.

Yes, I agree. It's, it's, you have developed the skill.

To do that.

It is. It's a good habit to be in. So Sam's got a bounce in five. So let's ask him. I can say till four.

I can say till four. Okay. I moved my thing. I moved my thing. Sorry. Four and 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

I always say to get advice.

People always ask for business advice from their friends and family. It's like, go to people who are not afraid to hurt your feelings. They're the ones who are going to help you the most. Someone who cares about your feelings is not going to get you to success. But, Sam, let's talk about audience building. So. do have like a pretty insane audience that you built online. Just to rattle off some numbers, over 320,000 followers on Twitter. The My First Million podcast has over 680,000 subscribers.

So we had 100 million downloads last year.

100 million downloads.

That's a lot of million.

It's 100 of them. That's insane. That is insane. And I can tell why too. Like, I go through your stuff and I just binge watch the clips and the videos. I mean, it's just so compelling. So, I mean, you just continue to grow. I really want to ask about some of the early days of audience building. So to start, when did you start building your online audience?

I've been blogging. I have a personal blog that I don't even share with people. It's the anti-MBA. I've been blogging since 09. And then I started building before it was called the Hustle. I had a conference called HustleCon. It was like a just a big conference thing. And I started that in 14 and I use email marketing in order to make that popular.

That's awesome. And then from there, did you go into Twitter or like how did that-?

No, I didn't start using Twitter until 2019. Oh, wow. So basically I started this thing called the Hustle. The premise was I think we could build a hundred million dollar a year company via email newsletters. And in the first year, we got 100,000 subscribers. The second year, 500,000 or 30 year million. The fourth year, 1.7 million. And then that's when we sold. And I saw Lydia on here. She actually was at the very first... Yeah, there she is. Lydia Sugarman. She was at one of our first events. And we got popular. So I didn't start spending on advertising to grow the newsletter until 2007. 18 at 500 000, 250 000, 500 000 subscribers. And we got to 250 000 subscribers in less than two years, all through blogging. And so I just blogged like crazy. So from there, then.

And then you said you launched my first million. Is it 2021? Is that when you guys. Yeah. So basically, the hustle had something like a million subscribers.

And Sean came to me. He was my friend. And he was like, I have this idea for a podcast called my first million. I'm gonna interview people to figure out how they got. million users or profit or revenue, whatever, can I can like the hustle like own it and be our publisher? And I said, yeah, that sounds great. And that was in September of 2019. And then like a few months after that, he was like, Hey, one of my guests didn't show up. Do you want to like come on to the pod and just like have a conversation? And I did it. And he was like, that was way easier than having a Guest, do you want to do it again? I was like, yeah, let's just make this the thing. And so we've been doing it together since September ish of 19. So how long has that been? Is that six years coming up?

Or five?

Five and a half, right?

Yeah. So we have, and we probably have done 700 episodes.

And was it like, was there a aha moment that picked up because these.

I don't know, dude. podcasts are the worst. Podcasts are so hard to grow. Okay, so the first episode got 60,000 downloads. That's a home run. But that's because the hustle was huge and it was like novel, whatever. But then over the next three months, it went way down to where it started averaging five to 10,000 downloads an episode. And it just like slowly after like six months, we just started crawling our way up. Like, Every month was like just a little bit better, like a little bit better, a little bit better. And we did all types of crazy shit, like, like I would just, we would play games, like we would say, like we have a gentleman's agreement. And the gentleman's agreement is that we provide value all day to you and all you have to do is you got to pay us, you got to pay us a subscribe and you got to subscribe right now on iTunes. And we did that, like we did all types of little like games and shticks like that. And eventually it started working. And then we didn't start really going hard on YouTube. I think now we have six or 700,000 subscribers on YouTube and we get, I don't know, two or three million downloads a month on YouTube or long form views. We didn't go hard on YouTube until, I mean, you guys can look at it until 21, maybe two years in.

Where's your, what platform accounts for the most downloads or listens, reviews, whatever?

We call it the RSS feed. So Spotify and iTunes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Got it.

And I have two questions. I know everybody, because I get asked this, I know everybody's thinking this. What if you're at zero today? What do you start doing?

So there's a few things before I give you advice on how to grow in general, podcasts that hit have one or more of the following three. This is one of the three angles that you could take. you can have a really unique point of view. For example, LeBron James talking about basketball. If you're a basketball fan, it doesn't matter if it's the worst audio ever, you're going to listen to LeBron James talk about that. The second thing that you can have is you can have amazing delivery. Typically, that's like comedians. So, you know, like if you're a fan of Theo Von, he could talk about anything and you're like, I don't care. It's just so, you're so funny. I'll listen to anything you, you talk about, whatever. the third thing is you need, or you could have, like, amazing production. So, like, money-wise my podcast, I decided to go into that one. If you listen to wandery or, like, business wars or a lot of, like, highly produced things.

So, like, Diary of a CEO or whatever that one's called.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not what I'm talking. I mean, that. Yeah, that could be on YouTube. Yeah. On YouTube. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. I'm talking about, like, highly edited. You are right. That would call this category, but I'm talking about radio. Yeah. Like, were you, like, are out interviewing? Like, you're like, it's like this, like, production. Yeah. For Diary of CEO, I would say that he's got really good delivery. He's got an amazing perspective. He's supposed to be, like, a successful business person talking about this stuff. And, yeah, he does have great production. You're right. With my first million, we have a, we have. B delivery, mostly because Sean is pretty hilarious. And we have a really unique angle and perspective, which is the first one, because it was people who have started and sold companies for tens of millions of dollars talking about stuff. You know, you have all in, which is like billionaires, like billionaires talking about, like, politics, which I don't like, but a lot of people like you. Yeah. Or whatever they are, you know, like, just high nine figure wealthy people, right? or you have, you know, that's like the unique perspective. So in order to make your podcast great, I think you need to go do one or two of those, you know, like which niche are we going to fall into? For me, for Moneywise, that's a very clear example. That podcast gets 40,000 downloads an episode now, and it's been a big driver for our business. The Moneywise podcast, look it up. It's called Moneywise. It's ultra high net worth people revealing their monthly income and monthly expenses and their assets. their portfolio allocation. Okay, so that's like the craziest perspective ever. You're telling me a billionaire's gonna tell me how much money they spend every month to live. So that's easy. And then I also wanted production to be like amazing high quality with like highly make it high edited. So that was like, I was like, I'm gonna choose. So I chose what to do in advance in order to help make it popular. So if you're starting from scratch, what do you do? And you've already done that. You, it helps to have an audience elsewhere because social media It's significantly easier for discovery. You don't discover a podcast on social media typically. You discover it through word of mouth or your friends or like you don't see an ad necessarily. Like it's real like podcasts don't have the best discovery engine unless you're on YouTube in which your discovery engine is beautiful. And so it helps to be popular Twitter, email, blog somewhere else and then promote your podcast there. or, or, and you buy ads on other people's podcasts or you show up as a guest on other people's podcasts because in, in medium transit transactions is like way better. So more like you talk about your podcast, you talk about your podcast on a podcast. That's like has a, that will grow it faster. So I just talked a lot. Sorry. Hopefully.

No, that was fantastic.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

It's like, it's like which one, which one are we? Kind of unique point of view. Not, I mean, I think the delivery gets entertaining with this live stuff, you know, and then we're definitely not high production.

Yeah. So you got to like pick, you got to like pick like a, pick a lane and you have to be very specific. It's just like having an ICP, you know, what's that?

Right.

And something customer profile, your, ideal customer profile. Yeah.

Yeah.

Like the startups that do best are like, clearly defined as like, this is the niche that we are fulfilling.

We had a great question in the chat from Mauricio and the AI bots are crushing the channel, but I'm gonna get to it. There we go. It says, hi, hey Sam and Adam, when it comes to making content consistently, what kind of mindset actually helps? Are you always thinking about ideas or does it come in waves? And are you pretty structured about tracking them or is it more loose and intuitive? so just like, I mean, you know, we're talking about four year journeys of cranking out 700 episodes. So what does that, that, you know, creation consistency look like?

Am I allowed to share my screen?

Yes.

Yeah, please. We'd love for you to.

All right, hold on. So typically what I do is, like, I'm out talking to people, and then I write a note, and I will show you what my notes look like. I write a note. and then one hour before every pod, I flesh out the note. But when I'm laying in bed or just, like, talking, I'm, like, thinking of the angle. I'm constantly thinking of the angle. But I call that more, like, ruminating. I don't think I have the access to.

I don't think I could share my screen.

There should be a green share arrow. Oh, you're right, you're right, you're right. That's 250 pages, and that's, like, my third or fifth one or something crazy.

It says two, but I think there's this current, I think, but I've had a bunch. so you're always just adding ideas to this, just stacking up until it's too big, basically, where you have to create a new one. Yeah.

That's why I created new one, because it breaks.

And then, Adam, I know you have a similar process, so we.

Yeah. Yeah.

Of us.

I'll share. I'll share my notion doc next week, but. But, yeah, I kind of like. It's not this detailed, but I like. For posts, I keep a notion doc of ideas and then I have a LinkedIn consultant and we flesh out the hook in the essence of the post once a week for like an hour. And then I try to sit down and write three or four posts in one sitting, being able to choose between 10 options or whatever. So, you know.

One thing I think you both do just incredibly well is this, are the hooks. I mean, whether it's Sam, your, you know, podcast titles or clips or Adam's headlines, those initial hooks to get you in. And I mean, honestly, the best in the world of this, in my opinion, is Mr. Beast. So if anyone wants just a master class, check out some of his clips channels. But it gives you, you have to see it. You know, like, oh, and Sam posted videos.

By the way, that's really easy to do. That shit's formulaic. If you just go and read a book and study how to do it, I could teach a dummy how to do it. I have taught a dummy how to do it. There's a, like my friend, there's this guy named Chris Pronger. Chris Pronger was like the third or second largest, most paid NHL player. And he like reached out to me. He was like, help me get popular on Twitter. I want to get popular on Twitter because I want to get a contract with ESPN to be like a commenter. And I was like, okay, cool. I'll just write four posts for you. And he's like, it's that easy. I'm like, dude, you're the third highest NHL player of all time. Tell me five stories and it's going to be the easiest shit on earth. I'm just going to show you how to format this. Like you've lived a life. so easy for me to talk about it. And so he did, and I, and he was like, well, we did this, we did this, I'm like, just tell me like where your a hundred million went. He was like, what? I was like, just imagine that headline. I made a hundred million dollars. Here's how much I ended up keeping. I'm like, this is just so easy. You know what I mean? Like it's super formulaic. And now I taught him, now go look at him. He's got hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and Twitter because he didn't know shit. And I just showed him the very.

Simple stuff and he's great at it now. that's incredible.

That's a pretty good place to end, I think, because Sam's got a, I think you got to catch a train.

Yeah, I got to get a, a 410 train. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks, man. Last question. Asking for a friend, let's say somebody bootstrapped 25 million ARR and are going to do 14 million profit this year. How would this person maybe get on my first million?

Send me an email. I need a good story. that's a good story. Come on, money wise, too.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'd love to. I love doing these guest slots. Dude, thank you. This was incredible, amazing insights. We don't want you to miss your train, so go hop to it. People know where to find you. You're Sam Par. Everybody knows who you are. How do you create the quickest awareness? If you look at other people's jobs and lives, you know, these like very public figures, their life seems exhausting to me. Always on the road speaking, whatever. The reason companies fail is because people.