#21 The HUSTLE: 700,000 subscribers in 18 months with Founder and CEO Sam Parr

Welcome to the Unleash Success Podcast, where we break down the secrets of success to give you real tools and strategies that get real results. And now here's your host, Corey Korpodian. Thanks for joining us at Unleash Success. Today's guest is the co-founder of The Hustle, a a company that does a lot of media, email subscription lists, and an event called the HustleCon for business owners and entrepreneurs. The Hustle gives over 700,000 ambitious people all the business news and information they need to start their day. As one of America's fastest growing media brands, in the last 18 months they've gained over 700,000 subscribers and grown incredibly fast. So today, please help me welcome Sam Parr. Welcome, Sam. How are you doing?

Hey man, good. Nearly 700,000. Nearly 700,000.

Nearly 700,000. Still quite nearly a huge number. And I want to go into a little bit about your backstory and how you've grown this business so quickly and where it all started for you.

Yeah. So we launched originally as a conference called HustleCon, like you said earlier. Basically what happened was I had another company that we had a small exit for, and I was looking for something new to start, and I ended up hosting a conference called HustleCon, and the idea was like a TED Talk for entrepreneurs. And I selfishly did it because I just wanted to meet other founders and hopefully partner with someone. And in order to make the event popular, I created a newsletter where I would talk about each speaker, and one thing led to another, and the conference got quite popular. And so in like 7 weeks, it made like $60,000 in profit. I thought that was weird. And so I did it again a little while later with my co-founder, John, and we made close to a quarter of a million dollars in like 80 days all through email. And we're like, well, goddamn, that's pretty amazing. And around this time, I had read the biography of Ted Turner, the guy who started CNN, and I thought that it was incredibly inspiring how he built something that changed culture. And I thought, you know, this guy doesn't seem a lot smarter than I am, and he was able to build this great thing. Maybe I can build the next CNN. And so we launched on the idea that we want to help push our generation of builders and makers and doers. We want to help push these people forward and we're going to start with news. And so we launched originally as a blog where we just blogged and did a lot of crazy experiments and got a lot of traffic. But on April 19th, 2016, we completely pivoted to be email only. And so our product that we're known for now, it's actually only going to be 2 years this April.

And what exactly was kind of the point where you said, I'm going to go through email though to hit all these different customers?

Well, I knew email was incredibly, incredibly important because with HustleCon, that was like the main thing. Like you had to enter your email in order to buy a ticket or even learn more. And so I knew that email was incredibly powerful. And I also have done a ton of research. I knew that a lot of businesses are built on the back of email, like Groupon or Thrillist, um, large companies built on email. And so I knew that it was a really powerful way to start. And then pair that with what's going on with Facebook and Google and the ecosystem of getting eyeballs to websites, it was just crazy that some of these businesses were building these massive infrastructures on the backs of Facebook and Google and ultimately on the backs of rented real estate. And it seemed to me that email was one of the last pieces of intimate attention at scale. And so once we saw our numbers and I saw how like Google or Facebook's reach for pay, if you have a lot of likes on your Facebook page, once I saw those reach, that reach was going down significantly, It was like, there's no way that we're gonna be able to build a big business off of this. And so around April, we were like, what if we just like switched only the email? Because when you're looking at content on your phone, if you're doing it in the Mail app or in Safari, like who gives a shit if it's what app you're, like who cares where you're looking at it? It all is gonna like, the same information's gonna get across. And the only difference is that when someone subscribes versus visits our website, we get to talk to them every single day for years. And so it just made total sense to do.

And when you started the HustleCon event, how many emails did you start with?

About 200 of my friends who I just kind of added to them and I spammed them out there. I spammed them to like tell them that I was launching the event. And then I had this system where I would turn the emails into blog posts and those blog posts would get traffic and then that traffic would turn into subscribers. And it was just like a flywheel. Like it just kind of converted, you know, every email got more traffic and got, which got more subscribers. And so by the end we had maybe 10,000.

Wow. And was that using any kind of like Facebook marketing you were talking about?

Not one cent.

Not one cent. So you're just sending out these emails and you're using them as blog posts so that people can, what, share them to their social media feed or their friends?

Exactly. Yeah. But I didn't spend one penny on marketing. Wow.

Okay. All right. That's, that's actually incredible. And so then you built this up to 10,000 people. And I remember there was a story about when—

We probably didn't spend any market. I mean, we probably got like, I don't remember exactly, but we probably got to $150,000 or $200,000 without a cent.

Wow. That's incredible. So what was your strategy exactly?

Create a lot of content that would get traffic, create word of mouth buzz, which is hard to do. We continued doing events and that got the word out. And then we also created a really cool ambassador program that helped us grow significantly. But the main driver was just word of mouth. And word of mouth means we created a ton of content. I mean, I don't know what we're doing now, but like, I mean, we were, we, within our first 2 months in business, we got probably maybe a million unique visitors to the website. I mean, we got a lot of visitors right off the bat and now we probably still get 20 or 30,000 people a day coming to the website. So, I mean, we got a lot of traffic and we just got really good at converting them into subscribers.

So you talk about you produce a lot of content, but how does that—

Relatively speaking, yeah.

So, I mean, there's so many people producing content and just kind of, you know, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, the stories, they're just constantly, you know, producing all this content or writing blog posts. How did you grab attention from all these other competitors?

Well, I think there's a few things going on there, which is, yeah, there is a lot of content out there, but most of it's really bad. And so because of that, if you're good, or what I prefer, different, then you're gonna stick out. Most people are not talented at content creation. I mean, you know, it's like sales. Like maybe everyone has the ability to sell, but some people just are better than other people because they've studied it longer or they just have a lot of talent. But most people either aren't good at, are not good at content because they're just not talented or they don't actually study it and they don't actually, trying to see what makes things work. And so I had just been studying it for a long time. I'd been doing it for many, many, many years, not in the form of blogging, but well, I have been blogging for years, but I've been telling stories and kind of had to get the gab at a young age. And so it just kind of carried over. And so what made us stick out was that we were, our voice was very interesting. Like we, I'm not a trained writer. My co-founders are not trained writers, but I know how to write engaging copy. And we were pretty controversial. Things that we said were very controversial. The topics that we wrote were very controversial. Lots of people hated us when we first launched. And we were not trying to build a vanilla brand. We were trying to make a certain group of people love us. And we didn't mind if that meant a certain group of people wouldn't like us. And some of those people who didn't like us shared a lot. And it found us new subscribers. And the people who really loved us, loved us even more because we were more polarizing.

Very, very interesting. So what kind of content, you know, what kind of examples of what you were using to gain this? And were you just going for shock value or was it just like, how'd you come up with the content yourself?

Well, I think there's a few things we did, but if you look at, you know, I've studied this for a while, but if you look at what emotions get people to do certain things, we just figured out what those emotions are. And that's not like something I invented, you know, everyone knows, or not everyone, but this is like a well-regarded thing. or a reputable thing that certain emotions get people to share or whatever. And you just figure out how do I evoke that type of emotion from a reader. And so for us, our very first series of blog posts, the very first week we launched, it actually almost ruined the company. But what we did was I knew a guy who wrote— well, he plagiarized books on how to sleep with women. And I thought that it was really sleazy because he was not like a player. And he would just find bestselling books on picking up girls, and then he would send it to the Philippines, and he would get someone, someone to like not quite plagiarize, but like rewrite it, basically all the same thing. Then he would slap on a sexy cover from Fiverr, get fake reviews on Amazon, and then he would make about $60,000 a month doing that. And then he would call himself a bestselling author and get consulting gigs and things like that. And I thought that was a horrible thing to do. Um, and so we wrote about that. Then the next week, one One of my co-founders, John, became a best-selling author using his tactics. And we just so happened to use the romance novel category because that had the most liquidity and movement in Amazon's book category. And so we did exactly that and we became a best-selling author by plagiarizing this one famous author.

No way.

And because of that, the romance novelists who are mostly women, middle America, middle-aged women, They, because of the way I look and because of the way John looks, they thought that we were mocking them, which we weren't exactly mocking them. We were just using their category as an example to prove that this whole Amazon Kindle thing is mostly nonsense. And you know, if someone calls themselves the best author, bestselling author, you should be very suspicious.

But anyway, right now, I mean, that's crazy. $60,000 a month as a bestselling author. That was all fake, right?

And so we did this and these women wrote like, we had dozens and dozens of blog posts about us. We had lawsuits about us. We made a big splash. And if you Google the Hustle Kindle, you'll see people blogging about it, you'll see the articles, and it made an initial splash. And we basically did a whole bunch of stuff like that for the first 3 or 4 or 6 months, and that's kind of how we got our initial following.

I absolutely love that. And making a big splash like that, you create a lot of enemies, but how did you focus in on the people? 'Cause what's your core audience exactly?

Well, our core audience, originally it was dudes. It was a bro audience. Audience. Now it's nearly— it's getting quite close to 50/50 men and women. But our core audience is people who want to put their debt in the world and ambitious people, people who have a sense of humor and people who are incredibly smart. And so it's almost like the Wall Street Journal's audience, but like, you know, a little bit younger. And so people who live in big cities. And so it's people who understand that this is like a funny joke, but it's also serious enough that you can get educational value from it. Totally.

Ever since I've subscribed, I'm always kind of shocked when I read something and I'm amazed at how much information you guys put in the emails themselves and just the commentary too. It's kind of funny. I'm trying to think of the one I just read the other day, which was the CEO of Uber. And I'm like, oh my God, like this guy just invested $150 million into a real estate company. I was— and I posted it to Facebook saying, hopefully he invested in CEO and leadership training. You know, it's like, 'Cause you kind of didn't do such a good job the first time.

Um, you know, that was a funny GIF. Did you see the GIF on for the header of that, of them like pointing him out of the office? Yeah, it was funny.

And that kind of information though, I enjoy reading and I know a lot of other people too who are in the entrepreneurial world and business world really, really enjoy it. Um, and speaking of just like bad leaders and maybe good leaders, you know, obviously you've grown this company. You guys have 17 employees, is that correct?

Um, we're going to be about 20 in the next couple of days. Wow.

Fantastic. So you guys are constantly growing. What are some qualities you think all good leaders should have?

Well, I wouldn't— I certainly wouldn't put myself in the good leader category yet. So I don't want to say that I have these qualities because being a good leader is something that I've been having to learn on the job and it's a huge challenge. Um, so I think a good leader, uh, is able to, uh, not be selfish. That's hugely important. And most people are selfish, so it's very hard to put that aside. I think that a good leader is able to have restraint and can hold back. And I also think the most important thing for a good leader is that they can hold certain types of emotion and don't— and aren't allowed to get swayed too easily. Yeah. Starting a company is a very, very, very emotional process.

Totally. Um, it's funny because I talk a lot about emotional intelligence and emotional fitness, and actually they show, you know, leaders in companies, if they're emotionally intelligent enough to be, you know, aware of themselves and also at the same time, uh, aware of other people's emotions and can control that, they actually perform 20% better, not just in the job, but also performance in their area of the company. So financially.

Yeah, no, I believe that for sure. Um, so I totally believe that.

Yeah. And it's, it is an emotional experience growing a company. And what are some, emotional experiences, maybe some failures you've had along the startup process here?

Well, you know, I think that early on there was a lot of confidence issues. You know, we aren't media people. I was not a writer and I was trying to start a media company in San Francisco, which is a tech world, and New York, it's in media. And so there was a lot of times where it's like, you know, we're not good enough, we're nobody. That was like, we had that for a long time, or at least I did. Additionally, some ups and downs have been I've hired the wrong people a whole bunch and we had to fire a bunch of people when we first launched because I made a lot of errors. I hired the wrong people. I also think that a lot of like my major ups and downs, I mean, I think that my team's been very patient with me and they're willing to accept apologies from me when I like get pissed off or when I like make some crazy decisions because I can be emotional. And so I think that's like the biggest ups and downs have been just on the day-to-day of having to keep everyone happy while also trying to hit our business objectives. We've been fortunate enough that we've never been like close to bankruptcy or anything like that. We've always run a really good business, but just like having the courage to make big hiring decisions and hire people better than you, just that kind and take risks that are more, that are riskier than you're maybe a little comfortable with. Just like that constant battle and that constant pressure is usually like causes my day to have ups and downs all day.

Yeah, definitely. You know, you said just the self-doubt early on. So many people starting a business or even just in the startup phase of business and beyond struggle with that too. What did you do to get over that?

Well, there's a story that I think about on a regular basis. I think there's two stories. One is when I was a sophomore in college, I remember taking a speech class, a public speaking class. And there was this— I looked up after not paying attention for a while when someone was speaking and this woman was crying. And I thought to myself, like, A, like, man, she's been crying for like 5 minutes. I didn't even notice. And she was like speaking and she was embarrassed. And then second of all, I was like, wait, why is she embarrassed? This is not a big deal. Who cares if she messes up? And then that kind of changed my perspective to where, A, most people don't give a shit about me and they don't care about me. And so therefore it makes it a lot more— it makes it a lot easier to do stuff. And second of all, Even if you fail, it's embarrassing, but most people on the outside are like, "Oh, they took a swing and they missed, but, you know, that's okay. That's what happens." Like, most people are pretty forgiving. And so when I remember that story and think about how I felt when I saw this woman crying, that's kind of how I think about failure right now. And so that's why I'm not that nervous all the time, and I've been able to overcome a lot of self-doubt. I think the other thing has been that I've met a lot of my heroes. I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of my heroes, a lot of our mentors. And my investors are people who I looked up to, you know, like folks like Tim Ferriss. They're like, he's one of our investors, but he's like a friend now. And I looked up to this guy for years. And after getting to know guys like him and other of our investors and other just peers that I've been out in Silicon Valley, you know, I've met billionaires, I've met these young prodigies who have billion-dollar companies, is I'll sit and I'll talk to them and I realize that like, this person is not much smarter than I am. Like maybe sometimes they're a little bit smarter than me. Sometimes they're actually not as smart as me. But like, they're not that different. And so it just kind of made it realize that— it made me realize that like, I was kind of putting my peers or my heroes on a pedestal and that wasn't the right move.

And what's the difference between you and the quote unquote smart person then?

Well, they're just a little— they're just better at things that I'm not good at. But that said, I bet you I'm a whole lot better than things that they suck at. And so it's just a matter of like strengths and weaknesses. But yeah, I mean, some people certainly do have a higher IQ than me. Me or any other people, I don't think I have a particularly super high IQ, so there are surely a whole lot of people who are incredibly a lot smarter than me, but there's also people who are a lot smarter than me that are losers, that haven't accomplished anything, that complain all the time. It just made me realize that in order to achieve greatness, I think you have to meet a threshold of IQ, and even if you are a little bit lower than other people, so long as you're really determined and you get a little bit lucky, and you get really skilled, you're really skilled at something, the likelihood that you can make it seems kind of high.

Yeah. So it basically comes down to not intelligence, but what you do with that and how hard you work.

Yeah. And you actually only need a certain amount. I mean, like, if you look at the Fortune 500 CEOs, like, many of them are just like normally sharp people. They're just like that. You know, we don't talk to them and you can talk to many of them and you won't be like, man, that guy's a genius. But you might be like, oh, that guy's pretty smart. Smart, but it's just like, you know, I agree with everything that person said. That's very common sense what that person said. It's just, you know, when you meet a lot of people, it's not necessarily like their high IQ that sticks out, at least not for everyone.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I feel the same way though. You know, it's amazing how people can be so book smart but not very successful in life. And then you've got this scrappy entrepreneur who manages to make millions of dollars and you're like, that guy was like flunking out of school. And that happens all the time. So I think it's just what you do with it and how much action and how hard you work. So I'm curious as far as leading your company and growing your company, you know, when you started out with just an event or two, you just hit up all your friends and then that grew. But what has kind of been the secret to go from, I mean, from 10,000 to nearly 700,000?

There is no secret. It like, I know that that seems like we've grown really fast and And, you know, I would acknowledge that, yeah, it has been fast, but it certainly doesn't seem fast when you're doing it every day. You know, the secret, I guess, is has been consistently doing good work. If you come into our office a lot of days, it's really quiet. It's not necessarily exciting, but we're just doing the work and we're going through the motions of what we know works. So we've figured out that there's like 3 or 4 levers that make us grow, which are word of mouth. And under word of mouth, it's content. And just people talking to their friends about us. The second thing is our ambassador program. So we have about 5,000 ambassadors who refer 18 people each. And the third one is marketing, advertising. So we know what our lifetime value is of a customer. And so we can spend money to go advertise and get new users. And so none of that, just like none of those things just took off. It's just been consistently like Right now we're adding, you know, 2 or 3,000 users a day, 2 or 3,000 subscribers a day. But like 2 years ago, I remember hitting 200 a day and like, yes, like amazing. And so it's taken us 2 years nearly, or nearly 2 years to like add to that. So it certainly has not been like, we found it, you know, it's just been like, it's just been consistently putting the work in.

Totally. Uh, consistency really does change the game, but still you've managed to tap into something that, you know, even with Unleash Success Podcast, we're working on doing as well, which is creating people that are excited about your content to come in all the time and really growing that brand. Um, and I know the ambassador program helps a lot, but is there anything else that you guys do? Like how do you capture their attention so much and make them want to share it?

You have to understand copywriting. Our company is based in basic copywriting techniques. I mean, that's what we use. And so when you study copywriting, you kind of understand how people think. And so you understand that, like, what will trigger someone to share, or what will make someone smile, and why getting someone to smile makes them laugh, and why laughter is a really good way to get people to share. And so a lot of it's just been basic copywriting techniques that I've learned. The whole reason I started a media company was because I took Neville Medhora's copywriting course. Neville's now my best friend and one of our investors, and I took his course when I didn't know who he was when I was 22, and that taught me copywriting. And learning copywriting, it pretty much just taught me how people think and how to use the written word in order to influence people to do certain things. And so when it's with sharing, you know, getting someone to share something, we just understood copywriting, and that helps us When we ask for people to share, they do.

Is there like, you know, a popular phrase or maybe a tagline that you guys use or have used in the past that was really successful?

I would say, how about first, there's a framework that we use. So for like, we have automation emails. So if you subscribe, you'll get automated emails asking you to share. And a lot of times in order to get someone's attention, we follow AIDA. Are you familiar with AIDA?

No, what's that?

AIDA is a very basic copywriting technique, but it stands for attention, interest, desire, action. So the way in which we get people to do things is we grab their attention by saying something kind of outrageous or saying something that piques their attention somehow. And then we get their interest and we do this through a variety of ways like asking them questions and getting them to agree and say yes in their head. And then there's desire, which is like listing facts and figures to get people to want whatever you have. And then there's action, which is explicitly telling them what you want, telling the user what you want them to do. And so that formula typically works well. That's a real basic formula that works wonderfully in order to get people to do stuff because it just, that's how the mind flows when they're examining what to do.

Totally. When I'm doing talks and everything, I kind of go through a process similar to that, but about getting their attention, building their interest, the desire, and then of course you gotta get 'em to take action because that's That's what we're all about. So why email subscriptions and why not go into Facebook Messenger chat, or are you guys exploring that as options?

No, we aren't. And I'm totally against that. Here's why. I think that a lot of large media companies like Mashable, which just went out of business, they built these huge infrastructures, these thousand-person staffs on the hope of getting traffic. If you have 1 million likes on Facebook, that means you have, as of today, if you have 1 million likes on Facebook and 5% of people view your content, which right now today is actually like 1, 2, or 3%, but for this, for math's sake, let's say 5,000 people view your content and 4% of people click through on it, click through, which is a totally typical number, you're going to have 2,000 people view your article of 1 million likes. That's awful. And it's getting worse and worse every year. And if you build your platform or if you build your brand on top of Facebook or anyone else, that's always gonna be the case. It will all, you're gonna build on something, it's gonna get smaller and smaller and smaller, and they're gonna go find somewhere new. And so because of that, you know, we look at brands as these large, leaky, and unpredictable ships. But the way that we view our brand, and if I was downstairs, you could see this, we have a big pirate ship painted on the wall. We view our brand as a pirate ship. And with every subscriber and every email subscriber, it's just like a little bit of wind in our sails because every email subscriber allows us to continue to be independent and not rely on a single platform. Email is one of the last pieces of attention that is not guarded by a platform. And so that's where we were dead focused on nailing that because I don't want to rely on Facebook or Google because whenever Zuck has a bad day and wants to make his daughter proud and set tell— he can tell himself that he wants to get rid of fake news or whatever he wants to do. I don't want to be one of the billions of dollars of value that's been decimated because of his opinion. Do you know what I mean? I don't want to rely on his goodwill in order to build my business.

Yeah, totally. Um, business pages for Facebook and Instagram— I mean, people were saying it's been dropping ever since he made that announcement of kind of stopping, you know, he wants to make it so that Facebook, you see your friends more often, but people have invested so much money into building their Facebook business and online business. So I really like that, how you're just focusing on email because then you don't rely on anybody. That's huge.

And I'm fine with that too. I think that's a smart move by him. I love Facebook. Facebook's my favorite website on earth. I'm just not gonna build, I'm not gonna have my livelihood rest on it.

Yeah, totally. You know, it's interesting is that you'd say that you guys have pretty, like a 4% click-through rate, but I know that when I saw you talk, you mentioned some phenomenal open rates. What are your open rates usually for emails?

They range between 40 and 50. You know, sometimes they'll get in the 60 range, sometimes they'll fall down to the 30 range, but on a, on a given day, they're usually between 40 and 50.

And what do you think? I mean, cuz I get bombarded. I probably have 20,000+ emails unread on my phone right now.

Oh, that gives me anxiety.

Um, for your business model, that probably is a little bit tough to hear. But what do you think is getting people attention so that they're like, yeah, man, The Hustle? I got to be honest, I get a little bit excited and I can tell you, but I'm curious what you think as well.

Well, I think that we've created a habit, so our users rely on us. We give them information that's utility-based, but it's surrounded by entertainment. So it actually adds a lot of value to your day. And because it's news-based, if you don't get your news, you kind of don't feel as intelligent that day. And so we've created a habit with that. Additionally, we have a bunch of really cool ways to reengage users. So we know if someone's not engaging, um, and we have like funny emails that get them back into the loop. Um, I also think our brand is really good. We have a thesis here that everything has to be content, whether it's the share buttons, the welcome email, the unsubscribe page, uh, everything needs to be content. And so people are kind of surprised when they see that even the smallest things that they didn't even realize, like the author's name, usually has something funny involved in it or something interesting. And that type of surprise is kind of people coming back, I think.

Very, very cool. Yeah, I got to tell you, it's, it's cool because I tend to find articles from you guys that I might not normally see, or maybe I do, but I actually really enjoy the kind of the comedic spin on it. You know, it's just like a fresh look at the news.

We kind of look at ourselves like The Daily Show, where it's not exactly breaking news, but it's, um, analysis and insight.

Right, right, right. Um, and do you actually write— you started writing all of your own copyright in the beginning, correct? But you don't do that anymore?

I used to. Now I only write more, uh, 1 or 2 articles, uh, 1, 1 time a week, really.

Wow, very cool. And, um, so building a company to, to 17 or even 20 people now that you said you got now, um, what is it like to manage all these people? It's a lot different than when you're just in the startup phase.

Man, it's so hard. It's just, you know, I'm a doer. I'm like a bull, a bull in a china shop. That's my personality where if there's a problem, I don't think, I just run through it and I can get it done. But when you're managing people, that's not the right way to do things. You know, I can't— you have to keep people's emotions intact. You got to be very thoughtful about how different personalities interact. Not everyone is intense like me or competitive like me, and that's okay. Um, but you have to have a lot of empathy and that's actually been a huge struggle with me is to do that. Um, and so, um, I am trying to learn on the job and it's very hard, you know, managing is not the same thing as starting. It's very, very different. And managing, just like copywriting, it's a skill set that you have to learn. And, uh, it's been hard.

Um, any tips that you've learned over the last couple of years?

Yeah, I think that just giving someone the opportunity to talk, and even if you don't agree with them, and embrace what they're saying is actually really relieving to a lot of people. Even if there's no action there, just letting someone vent to you and not interrupting them or trying to solve the problem seems to be quite productive, which it doesn't make sense to someone like me who's very action-oriented, but for 9 out of 10 people, just letting them know that you hear them, even if you don't do what they say, is really important. Another thing is, you know, there's a lot of small stuff that I didn't think were important, like for example, doing team bonding activities and team lunches. I always thought that that was like a waste of time, like we're hanging out with each other anyway, why do we have to do, like, why do we have to like take time away and do this kind of stuff? And actually team bonding where we go out to dinner or we go out to lunch or we have lunch delivered, or on Thursday we're doing a 30-minute Costco thing where everyone gets $50 and you get to run around Costco and buy whatever you want. Little things like that, that build up excitement for people, they're really important because someone like me who owns the company, I'm excited every single day just to build the company. But not everyone is motivated by that. You know, that, uh, the little small things like that, that people love that stuff. And not everyone owns— I'm the owner of the company, you know, and so I get excited by just seeing the company grow. But that's not exactly what motivates everyone. Um, some people love that. Other people just want to have a really cool job where they get to enjoy their— from 9 to 8 or 9 to 6 or 9 to 5. And that's okay. Um, and so you have to create an environment where they're able to do meaningful work.

Right. So you talked about building the culture at The Hustle. I mean, that sounds like an amazing, uh, time and also great for bonding and building. Um, what were some of the team members, the crucial team members you brought on early that really helped you grow the company?

Um, our managing editor, Lindsay Quinn, has been, uh, she basically took what was our voice, which was pretty good and made it very awesome, very, made it amazing and has scaled the team and she's created guides to train people and she pretty much manages the email on her own. Our head of sales, I went to high school with him. So when he joined us, it was like putting a match on gasoline. You know, our revenue just skyrocketed.

Nice. Wow.

Cara was our first hire. And just the fact that someone trusted us was huge and brought a little sanity to the company was huge because she's a pretty stable and hard worker.

So you got a salesperson. Yeah, you got a salesperson, someone to manage the email subscription. And did they fill some voids that you guys had or did they just make everything better?

Um, I think that the void was that we were, you know, me or John could do their job. They just were able to do it a lot better. I was the salesperson and I was selling ads, but they, he did it way better. John and I were the writers and Lindsay just did it way better. And Kara hosted events and she just did it better than we did. Yeah. I mean, I would say that I'm above average at most stuff, below average at a handful of things, but I'm not particularly world-class at a lot of things. And they are world-class at a few things that makes them far more valuable than I am.

I'm just curious on the timing too, is when did you decide to actually hire them and bring them on board? When was it time to grow?

Tara joined us in July of 2015. Lindsay joined us in November of 2016, and Adam joined right around there as well. Um, you know, we were making money all along. We've lost a little bit of money, you know, like in our first year of business we made $400,000 and we spent $500,000, but we lost $100,000 our first year. Not a lot of money, but, um, but we were making enough money to hire. And the reason we had that little— we were able to lose $100,000 in our first year is because we were growing and hiring before we were ready. And then I had raised just a little bit of money and we'd already made a lot of money from the conferences.

So you use the conference, the money you made from the conference, to fuel this email—

Exactly.

Subscription business.

Yeah.

Now, so a lot of people might say that email is kind of dead. You know, I've got 20,000 unread emails.

Yeah, they're, they're on drugs or they're stupid.

Ah, and you guys are actually making money. What's your strategy to, to monetize the email subscriptions?

We monetize it just like a website. I mean, we have a direct sales team. Um, and look, like, if I have nearly a million people's attention for 5 minutes a day every morning, that's valuable. And these people are really valuable. And so brands are willing to pay us a lot of money because whenever they advertise to us or with us, they make a lot of money. And so it doesn't matter if it's a website or an email. If you have the attention, you can build a business. And that's— and, and the email is the most predictable an easy way to do it. And so anyone who says email is dead, they're just on drugs. I mean, they're wrong.

And so would you say, um, you know, having someone's attention and the brands are willing to pay for it. Um, do you guys look at brands and say, that's a good fit for our audience? Or how do you manage the—

100%. Yeah. We have a, like a, we have our sales team and sales teams are incentivized to make sales. So it's not exactly up to them to decide who we're going to work with, But we have it because the incentives aren't aligned. So we have another committee, like an ads committee who reviews who we want to work with and they'll kind of say if it passes the bar. And we have about 4 or 5 like rules, like would we want our mom to use this product? Would we want to tell our friends to use this product? Do we use their competitor and why? Is this something that's illegal or is this unethical? I mean, we like have these like rules. So like fantasy sports, we had a long debate whether we're going to do that or letting pot companies advertise with us or nicotine companies. And so we've actually had these decisions made and they're fluid. You know, as the culture changes, rules change. And as the society changes, our rules change. But we definitely have had— we think seriously about this. Yeah. Like ICOs. Are we going to let ICOs advertise with us?

Right, right, right. And so when somebody else is trying to build their own list and they're trying to make money, I mean, you guys had the event, which you were lucky enough to be able to monetize quickly, but how do you propose the strategy is? Do you think that, you know, you should try focusing on making money from day one? Um, building an audience from day one? Where do you put your energy and focus?

If you have, uh, once you get to 100,000 subscribers, I think you can make money. Before that, you can make money, but it's going to be hard. You just, yeah, media takes a little while to scale. If you have preexisting relationships, which I did not have, then you could probably make money at 30 or 40 or 50,000 subscribers. But typically if you have 100,000 subscribers, you could probably make $50,000 a month if you're pretty good. Wow.

That's actually pretty, that's pretty good. So curious that you have to email like every day and you have to have a good sales team and good content.

Yeah. Yeah.

Very cool. Well, so getting to 100,000 though, I mean, we've talked a lot about different strategies, but, you know, you got 10,000 subscribers. What were you doing? You said you raised money. Is that right?

Yeah. So we raised about $1.2 million in total. We've been— we've made— we've always made money. And so we didn't need to raise the money, but we did anyway. Because we wanted to get a key, a few key investors involved. And so when we first launched, we had about $500,000, which a lot of it came from conferences, and then a small amount came, like $200 grand came from some friends and families who wanted to invest. And then we raised about another million a year later, um, and that was kind of to accelerate what was already working.

Gotcha.

Um, but yeah, so we raised a little bit but not a lot.

And why, why a media company? You know, you said you started, you started the event because you wanted to be around these people, which I totally get. I mean, I'd love to have a, uh, like a mastermind group of people where I'm just sitting here chit-chatting with you the whole time. And that's kind of why I started the podcast. But why build a media company?

Um, because it just seemed like a really cool way to have a big difference in the world. And I also love reading about Ted Turner. I love reading about, uh, Hearst. I love reading about Rupert Murdoch. And it just seemed like there was a— well, one, media just seemed cool. I like creating content, just seemed cool and fun. But there seemed to be something like where these guys who I was— who I looked up as my heroes, they were all— they all owned the media in some regard, whether they invested in it or started it. And I just thought it was cool. You know, I just thought that I was inspired by the people who I I look up to, really. And additionally, I also saw just a huge opportunity. I thought we could build a big business here.

And you certainly have, that's for sure. Um, and speaking of just building a big business to scale, I talk a lot about like kind of the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of our results come from 20% of our actions. Um, a lot of people spend a lot of time doing multiple different things and never get anywhere. Um, so what are some like of the biggest actions you think that, you know, we could take if I'm sitting here and I've got 1,000 subscribers, what should I be doing on a daily basis?

I would figure out what the lifetime value of a subscriber is and figure out how much, how fast that subscriber makes you money and figure out what your LTV is and your payback cycle. And then if that gives you margin to go out and advertise to grow faster, I would spend every single cent you could get your finger on or your hands on in order to grow faster. Um, that could be through Facebook or Outbrain or Twitter, but whatever it is, build that machine as quickly as possible and then just put the pedal to the metal. Um, I think that content marketing will get you a strong foundation, but you can really accelerate that through paid marketing if you understand what your lifetime value and payback cycle is.

Yeah, totally. No, that makes great sense. So you recommend doing, you know, Facebook ads? Is that like kind of the main one that you guys do at all, or Um, yeah, we do Facebook, Twitter works, can work well.

Um, and Reddit can work really well. Um, if you don't have a lot of money, then I would create content that can get really popular on Reddit.

Interesting. Yeah. That's something a lot of people talk about.

Reddit has a lot of traffic.

Yeah. Is it the traffic that goes through Reddit, right? Is that like, I haven't actually heard a lot of people say, talk about Reddit, but I know that the forums are, are huge, but you think for growing content and helping spread it.

Yeah. Hell yeah. I would write stuff just for Reddit. Yeah. I mean, if I get on the front page of Reddit, I get a million views in one day. Wow.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean, 100% try to get used to Reddit. Now Reddit's hard, but if you can crack the code, which it's definitely doable, um, then yeah, you can build a massive business off of Reddit. I mean, there's so much traffic.

That's fantastic. I like that. Um, The other thing too was, what if I don't know the lifetime value of my customer? What if I'm kind of just getting started and I just have no idea how much money I'm going to make off these people? How do I grow then?

Don't spend any money, that's for sure. What I would do is I would just start— I would probably go to Crowdtangle.com or I would go to SEMrush.com and I would start finding keywords that I could rank for or through Crowdtangle. Words that I can get, uh, article ideas that are already popular with my target market or my target demo. Then I would start launching or writing content that gets my target group really excited, and I would create those articles, and I would ask all my friends to share every single article that I'm writing. And then I would have email boxes on the website in order to get lots of email subscribers, and then I would start emailing my subscribers every time I write something. And I would do that every single day and just create a cycle. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do. I would use CrowdTangle. If you just Google CrowdTangle, you'll see. Or I would use SEMrush and find words that I can rank for.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's a perfect strategy just to get started. I really like that. So what— I'm just curious, like, what are some daily things that you do to stay focused at work and keep this business growing?

I love listening to classical music throughout the day. I like opera and I like classical music. Okay, cool. So I have that going real loud all the time. I also like taking walks. I'm a big walker. What else do I do to stay focused? I usually will work for like 30 minutes straight and then I'll take 10 minutes and I'll walk around and talk to people and then I stick I stick to that pretty well.

And that just kind of helps free your mind a little bit.

Yeah. And I make a lot of lists. I'm a big list maker.

Okay. Um, you know, when, when you make lists, I don't know, some people get overwhelmed by their list. Do you have anything that you do to keep it tight and just, you know, a little bit more?

Yeah. Most of my lists will only have 3 things.

Oh yeah. There you go.

Yeah. A lot of stuff on there, you know, um, don't, yeah, I don't do a lot of stuff. Um, it just doesn't seem productive to have 10 things on there because Most days I can't accomplish 10 important things.

I'm the same way, man. I started doing this maybe like a couple years ago where I got tired of to-do lists and I, so I just put 3 to 5 things down that I was like, if I get, you know, these 3 things done, then I'll be significantly further ahead and closer to my goals. So I'm curious, is there any kind of like phrase or quote that has just had a big impact on you? Something that you are reminded of?

Yeah, it's if you think you can or if you think you can't, you're probably right. Boom. I think about that all the time.

Dude, so right. And that just goes on to beliefs of like whether you believe you can. So many people don't even believe they can and so they don't even try, which is just crazy to me.

Yeah, it is wild.

So I absolutely love that. I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm curious if you could leave us with maybe what's the number one thing or your favorite thing that you use to help grow grow your email subscription list and your business?

Okay, to grow my email subscription, I would say making sure your homepage is just an email inbox. And you can do that by using SumoMe or this thing called Welcome Mat. Um, grow business, I'm gonna say reading biographies of people I really respect and just copying what they've done and not making the same mistakes that they've made.

Yeah. Learning from their mistakes is huge, definitely. Do you have a favorite biography or one recent one?

Yeah. One of my favorites of all time is John Rockefeller, Titan. I think that he was really cool because he was one of the richest men to ever live, but he was also a really good family man. And then I also really love Joseph Kennedy's biography. He was a little bit evil, but he was a really good dad. And his idea was to get as rich as possible so he could allow his 10 children to dedicate their lives to public service. And I thought that that was really cool because he was scrappy and kind of made some deals happen and no one quite understands how he pulled it off. And so I thought that was kind of cool and a very adventurous story.

Yeah, that's awesome. I actually just started getting into, uh, biographies a lot more recently with, uh, Elon Musk and then, um, Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin. And so those are—

Walter Isaacson book, right?

Yeah. Yep. Ashley Vance. That one Man, that's nuts. Like, learning about him through that book was pretty wild. He's just kind of, uh, insane, but he's changing the game. He's changing everything the way we do it.

Yeah, that's just crazy.

Absolutely. So Sam, uh, let us know, where can we find you online?

Uh, you could— I, I use Facebook a ton, so if you search Sam Parr on Facebook, you'll see me. My Twitter is @TheSamParr, and, uh, other than that, um, Um, you know, you could just, uh, go to the hustle and type in your email and hit reply. If you reply to one of our emails, uh, and you say my name, it'll route its way to me.

Awesome, awesome, man. Uh, so thank you so much for coming on the show. As our final question, I'm just curious for you, what is your next level of success?

Next level of success? Well, probably to grow headcount, to employ 100 people. That's my next level goal.

That's awesome. Is there a reason you want 100 people?

When I started the company, my goal was to get to 1,000. So if I can get to 100, then I'm just a little bit closer to 1,000.

I gotcha. Is that to help grow your company or are you trying to support people and their families or what's the motive there?

I'm really interested in job creation. I think that if you can create as much opportunity for as many people as possible, then, you know, the world's a better place. And so I'm really motivated by creating as many jobs as possible.

That's a fantastic mission. I really appreciate you coming on Unleash Success. Thank you so much, Sam Parr.

Okay, well, see ya.

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