Sam Parr built The Hustle newsletter from zero to over a million subscribers in 2.5 years by publishing multiple posts daily and running aggressive cold-email campaigns. He charges advertisers per open instead of per send, scaled to eight-figure revenue, and launched Trends, a premium research product. Parr's side-hustles started young: hot-dog stands, eBay shoe sales, a roommate-matching app.
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Welcome back to the Rhodes to Wealth Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Rhodes. Today's guest and interview is one that I've had circled on my calendar for a really, really long time. Sam Parr and I hit it off at an early, early date, coming from somewhat of the same blood in that I've heard him talk about just enduring and enjoying the grind, and that's something that just really gets me going. Sam Parr is a Division I track and field athlete, but more importantly, a really, really successful entrepreneur. He has a hell of a journey and has touched, I mean, just dozens upon dozens of businesses and ventures, everything from slinging shoes on eBay to a successful YouTube page. He even had a hot dog stand early in his career with a really, really funny tagline. Of, "We've got wieners as big as your baby's arm." I mean, the man is really, really creative, funny cat, and just extremely sharp. You fast forward a bit, Sam currently sits in San Francisco and is the founder of The Hustle and The HustleCon. The Hustle is a daily newsletter that has all of the business and tech news that you need. It is extremely thorough where he and researchers that he's outsourced and hired go out and do deep dives on different topics. I read it daily. They've got a single product, it's called Trends that we talk about here in the podcast. He also runs the HustleCon where he has speakers come out, much like a TEDx talk. They present on the stage, but it's specific to these startups and entrepreneurs You can find all of this online, YouTube, all that good stuff, but I'm going to do my best today to unpack how the hell he got all this started, how he keeps all these ideas and revenue streams afloat and in line. Without further ado, let's jump right in. Sam Parr. And here we go. The head or lead schemer himself. I'm not sure if you actually use that, but during my preparation, during the sort of research phase of this, I heard you use always be scheming several times. And so if that's not something you use internally, I'm at least gonna make it stick on my platform. But—
Yeah, no, I use scheming as a good word. I definitely take pride in it. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna run with it. I loved it. And yeah, man, Sam Parr, I really, really appreciate you doing this, brother.
Yeah, no problem. What's going on? What do you wanna talk about? Let's do it.
Yeah. Man, I guess first I'll start by saying you're a walking billboard of what I and the listeners, the folks that follow the podcast, what we're trying to achieve. Just the term, I read it on your LinkedIn of like, I think you say something around my goal is to never wear khakis again. Reaching that sort of financial independence where you could totally unplug, you've got several streams of income, you're your own boss. I'm really looking forward to the opportunity. I've got a ton of questions that I'd like to tuck into this hour. I doubt I'll be able to hit all of my topics, but before I get the ball totally rolling, I think it makes sense for myself and for the crowd, for the folks here to be able to listen to your journey. So as we get the ball rolling, whether you want to start with Moonshine Online, or if you want to fast forward a few years and go to this American Pickers hot dog stand combo. Either way, if we could sort of get a starting point and work us up to the HustleCon, I think that'd be super helpful.
Yeah. So I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. I've started a bunch of different things. I started at a very young age. I mean, I was making money on my own, maybe starting at 15 or 16. Eventually moved to Tennessee where I started a chain of hot dog stands. I started an online liquor store and a bunch of other weird things. Dropped out of school a little bit early and moved to San Francisco to start internet companies and eventually finished my degree online. But I started a couple things out here that I've sold, like a roommate matching app. After selling a few things, I started HustleCon, which is like a TED Talk for entrepreneurs type of an event. and I made it popular through a newsletter that I created. And so the event was quite successful. We've had tens of thousands of, I mean, like we could have like 10 or 15,000 attendees in a year at this point, but we've had, so we've had tens of thousands of people attend. And then in making the event popular, like I said, I started this newsletter and then decided to go all in on that. My goal is to build a massive media company the size of CNN or Fox or something really big like that. And we're just starting with email. I think that it's important to know, I mean, I've built some really cool things, I think, and I'm proud. Hopefully it's just the beginning. But you were saying earlier about like saying never wear khakis and things like that. I mean, I started doing that when I was 19. I always joke I had fuck you money when I was 17, not because I had a lot of money, but I just, it kind of has been the same attitude no matter what. So Even when I only had $1,000, I felt like I had fuck you money. That attitude, I mean, I think I wrote that when I was 20, actually, that line. So it's always been like that.
I'm 25, turned 26 yesterday.
Happy birthday.
Yeah, thank you. And yeah, man, that line punched me right in the gut. And so, I mean, it spoke to me. So you mentioned you dropped out of school early.
And I eventually graduated. So I did graduate. I left early.
Yeah. Well, I think the question I wanted to ask here is, you continued your education process. One of the things that I constantly hear through these interviews is to continue to reinvent yourself. It sounds like the traditional way of schooling, I mean, it obviously doesn't fit everyone. It doesn't sound like it was the perfect fit for you, though you went on and graduated or continued your education. What other ways do you grow or educate yourself? I mean, are you taking— Is it just online classes? Are you a book guy? Do you have mentorships or masterminds? Or how are you inventing yourself, building these skills?
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll say that, like, so I didn't do well in high school. I graduated with a 2.0. I graduated college with nearly a 4.0, partially because I didn't go to that hard of a college, but also because I tried really hard. I loved college. I left because I loved it more as a hobby. I mean, it was great. I think that, like, people hate on college. I think people should go. It's a great way to find yourself. I don't think that you should go and spend a lot of money on a poor degree, which most people do, or a poor university. I always say that if you can go to an Ivy League school, go there. But if you can't, it's probably best just to go to a state school, which is not what I did, but it's definitely best. I think that from a young age, I used to read a lot and I was always going to events. I used to do audiobooks before Audible was around. So I was always doing books on tape. When I moved out to San Francisco, I was really jealous of the people who went to Stanford and had all these amazing networks. And so I kind of wanted that. And so I eventually started this thing called the Anti-MBA, which was a book club that I started where we'd read a book a month and I would host it in person and have either the author or an expert on that book's topic come and lecture, and we would ask them questions. And that's how I kind of built my name in San Francisco and built my network was doing the Anti-MBA. And so I would read a lot. Now I don't read nearly as much, but I still read a ton. I buy courses. I attend conferences. I would say I have the best mentors and maybe mentors isn't the right word, but I have the best group of friends that you could ever imagine who are all, this is secondary, but very, very, very successful. And that has been a massive game changer in my life.
Yeah, I'm sure. And I read about the Anti-MBA. It looks like that sort of— it looked like that fizzled down. I'm sure it's just due to bandwidth sometime last year, but you were using that as sort of a personal blog as well. And you're kind of—
Yeah, no, that— I basically, I went hardcore for 2 years. Every week I would prepare, every single week for 2 years. So it fizzled out as I got a little older. And I mean, it was just a hobby and it's still a little bit of a hobby, but It was the greatest thing for meeting people. My company now, we make tens of millions of dollars through email newsletters and blogs, and that's what I started back then. So it's been the same thing I've just done over and over again.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned The Hustle came out of HustleCon, just an easy next step. It just made sense to build awareness and the brand around that.
It didn't seem like it made sense at the time, that's for sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Looking back on it, it makes a lot of sense. With the HustleCon, were you using the folks that worked with you at Anti-MBA to come in and speak?
No one worked with me at the Anti-MBA. That was just like a blog. It was just a blog and meetups that I would host. I mean, it made a little bit of money, but not really. But when I did HustleCon, I just— Wait, sorry. What were you saying?
I'm sorry. Yeah. You mentioned that authors were coming in and speaking for you, right? And for those that don't know, the HustleCon is, I mean, it's basically like a TEDx for entrepreneurs, right? I mean, that's more like— That's how I would put it. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it's like a big thing. It makes like Millions of dollars. It's like tens of— I mean, like, it's like a big event.
It's the real deal. And so that first swing there, when you had just started HustleCon, getting speakers and starting an event like that, that can't be easy, right? And so were you paying the speakers that come in and spoke for you? Were those people that had spoken at Anti-MBA? How did you land those, that first group of people?
Called them, I didn't know any of them. I don't think I knew one of them. I've had probably 300 or 400 or 500 people speak at my events over the past few years. There's only one person I've ever paid. So I've never paid for anyone but Casey Neistat. Besides that, no, I never paid for a single speaker, particularly then. No, I just cold emailed them like crazy. I think I launched— I had the idea, I decided to do HustleCon on June 1st, and the event was going to happen 6 weeks later. So I threw it all together in about 6 weeks and it was just off. But the first one wasn't that huge. It was maybe like 30, 350 people came and it made like 60 or 70 grand or maybe 50, something like that. Tens of thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands or millions. And it, all the people were from cold emailing. I just cold emailed like crazy. I just cold email a lot. I mean, most of my life has been built or my career has been built on cold emailing.
Yeah, man, I love that answer. And I was kind of hoping you'd give that as I feel I echo this in every one of my episodes, but That's how I'm building this. This is obviously no HustleCon, but I'm having the chance to talk with folks like you. This is simply due to educated outreach. I'm not blasting thousands of people looking to bring them on the platform. It's very specific on who I'm going after and what I'm asking for, but it is all cold. You and I had no relationship prior to this, but I'm able to get you on the phone due to that. Just getting on LinkedIn, looking up some folks, doing the research, doing my outreach, and and staying consistent with it, you can pull these sorts of folks. So I love that answer. I guess if I could sort of double down on the hustle itself, I mean, you've spent several episodes and other podcasts, and you've even spoken at events about your incredible growth there. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys went from 0 to 1 million subscribers in, I mean, just under 3 years is what I read.
Yeah, yeah. Probably 2.5 years, maybe.
Yeah. I mean, that's incredible. Obviously, that's your primary driver right now. You've got several streams of income we'll talk about in a bit, but that being your primary driver, I want to spend some cycles on that, just talking about tactics, growth, all that good stuff. Do you mind sharing? I think 0 to 1 million subscribers in 2.5 years is— I mean, that's just ridiculous. I remember reading through, it sounds like every year you and your team shifted your growth or your marketing strategies. Do you mind maybe just touching on how you were making those pivots and how you were growing at such a substantial rate through those first 2.5 years?
Yeah. Basically, the first year, I think in the first year we got some number between 800,000 and 150,000 subscribers. It was basically all from blogging. I just blogged like a madman. In our first 6 weeks of being around, we got close to 1 million unique visitors to the site. Basically, the business model— I mean, the model, not the business model, but the model for getting subscribers early on was just get millions of people to come to the site and capture 2% or 3% of them, a small amount, but it was like, we're just going to get a ton of, hopefully a ton of people to come to the site. So like at the end of the year, let's say we had 12 million people who come to the site. We only needed to capture like 3% of them to make it like a good number. So 3% of 12 million, if you average a million a month, that's 360,000 subscribers. So we must've captured like 2% of them. And so I studied how to write and I studied how to make things get popular. And I, and I just learned how to create content and I just, I would write multiple blog posts a day. I would just blog like a madman. And just writing like crazy and it worked out.
Yeah. I mean, blogging the first year, I mean, and it sounds like that was sort of your initial surge. Year 2, you introduced, I believe this is year 2, you introduced the ambassador program, which I've heard—
Well, I had built that before actually. So basically when we launched HustleCon, I didn't know how to do paid marketing. What I did was I threw together this thing where if people referred someone to join our email list for HustleCon or if they referred someone to buy tickets, I would give them a little bit of money. What we did, when we were growing our email list for The Hustle, we just said to people, "If you share this with 4 or 5 friends, we'll give you a t-shirt or a sticker or something like that." That was one of the ways in which we grew quickly.
Clay Finck Man, I've spent, it sounds ridiculous, but I've spent probably an hour-ish on your website, which is way too much time with how simple it is. And that's done with intention. Actually, you shared a post this morning about this exact topic. You shared Berkshire Hathaway's website, which I mean, it is the most simple thing you'll ever see. Your website, while not as, I mean, it's a little bit prettier, is written with the same intention. If we're going to capture your email, and from there, everything's going to be in your inbox. I'd like to spend maybe some cycles talking through this, just because I think those that are looking to— Last week, I had Dori Clark on the podcast, and that was her very— That was her number one takeaway is build your email list. No matter what entrepreneurial journey or avenue you're going to run with, getting your folks off of social platforms and offline and into your email list is the number one priority. So, For those that are looking to actually use that advice, I want to spend some time talking about how you started to monetize that. First, I don't think at the beginning of this I gave you the chance to maybe do a broad stroke of what The Hustle actually provides. Do you mind maybe kind of giving us your elevator pitch there?
Yeah. So it's simple. I mean, our business is almost like the Wall Street Journal, but for like 20, 30, and 40-year-olds, I mean, and mostly on tech. So basically millions of people get their business news and information and analysis from us each morning. Except instead of having a website, it's all in your inbox. It's very simple. The vision for the company when I started it was I wanted to create something big, a multiple billion dollar a year business. The goal was let's build up this massive email list and then let's monetize it with advertising. As we grow, let's use the profits that we make from advertising and launch more products and services and use our email list to get customers for all those new products and services. We make money in 3 different ways at this point, but the thing that we're most known for is still this really dead simple business of a daily email.
Clay Finck Yeah. The email is kick-ass. I'm a subscriber. I read it every single day, man. I save you guys in a folder of mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a huge fan. I mentioned the Dory Clark podcast earlier. I actually talk about The Hustle in that podcast because we were talking about email cadence and what's the best way to, as you build your list, what's the best way to exercise that list? And so I want to pose those questions to you of, you've built this list and your cadence is a daily email. Do you mind sharing any insider tips or tricks or strategies in that? Do you have a limit on the number of links you're including, the length of email, the length of sentences or paragraphs or number of images? Is there anything in particular that you guys have through your daily email and interaction and the analytics that you have? Anything that you can share that could spice up our email?
Yeah, so I think that— let's start with the first thing, which is, like, people will say, like, oh, well, what color should the button be? How many links should you have? How long should content be? I mean, the first thing is you just have to make something good. And the reality is, is that most people don't have good stuff. I mean, it's really hard to make content that people actually want for a very particular type of audience who want that thing. I mean, like, you have to pick your niche and then you have to make stuff that they truly want. So step one is do that. And that's hard. I mean, there's ways to achieve that, but that's really hard. But once you've figured that out, then it's like, okay, what length do you want it to be? How often do you want to send the email? When we first started, we would send the email 3 days a week. And at first it was 1 day a week, then it was 2 days, and then it was 3 days. And eventually we're like, oh, fuck it, let's just go 5 days a week. And when we went 5 days a week, we actually got far more engagement because it started creating a habit and people really loved it. Now I don't think that what people should read into that and say, oh, 5 days a week, that's the way I should go. Because the reality is most people probably don't have good stuff. And so that's like the first thing that you have to solve for. I mean, It's like saying, "Well, you want to be a good singer, just sing these good songs." It's like, "No, you're just maybe just not that good at singing anyway, so just avoid it altogether." So you have to get good at the first thing. And that's hard. I mean, that's a combination of just talent and then a little bit of skillset that you can learn. But no, we don't— we use— basically, if you want to get really into it, there are a certain amount of links that you should and should not use. Basically, when you're sending, we've sent I've sent nearly a billion emails at this point. I was doing the math the other day. I've sent probably 700 million emails. And what you learn, things at scale, like your emails have to be below a certain size, otherwise they get clipped by Gmail. Or you want to have, uh, you can't have too many links, otherwise you'll get clipped by Gmail or you'll go to spam. But for most people, if you have an email list below 100,000 subscribers, I say just use Mailchimp or ConvertKit and just focus really hard on creating something that people really like. And the easiest way to start that is to go incredibly niche. So a lot of people, what they do is they go kind of broad at first. And I think that's a huge mistake. You don't want to go broad. You want to— the way that I describe it is like, if you wrote a story about you and it was tens of thousands of words, you're going to read every single word of that story. So just take it just a little bit broader. So if you are going to create an email only for people in the construction industry in the South, get that specific or even be more specific if you can. But I always tell people, be as specific and as niche as possible.
Robert Leonard Yeah. Man, I've heard this echoed several times. One of my first interviews on the podcast was with a He runs Techstars out of Austin, Amos Schwartzfarb. He came and taught here in Houston over his book, Sell More Faster. One of the very first points he made in person with me as we worked on site and then on the podcast was we drilled into find your who, who are you targeting? We did it for my 9:00 to 5:00 sales role. I sell a cybersecurity solution out to the West Coast. And I was answering the questions for my cybersecurity role. I've been there 4.5 years and he kept drilling in, "That's not specific enough. Who are you targeting?" And I'm giving him, you know, CISOs on the West Coast, CISOs in the healthcare space on the West Coast. And it could not be more, I mean, that could not be specific enough for him. And I mean, you're echoing that there of the more targeted you can become and your content is focused to that and you know exactly who you're going after. You'll likely be more successful, versus trying to go grab everybody and write for the masses.
Yeah. I mean, I think that everything is niche. Some niches are bigger than others. For example, the Kardashian girl who's famous on Instagram, she has 70 or 80 million followers, but she still has a niche, which is young women who are into pop culture and are very fashionable, or whatever her niche is. Oprah. Oprah was massive, but she still had a niche, which was basically middle America moms or women who are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. You still have to have your niche when you start, or at least, I guess you don't have to, but it's definitely a lot easier. It definitely makes success a lot less of an accident and more purposeful.
Robert Leonard You start The Hustle in 2014-ish. Clay Finck You mentioned that business was built on this email, which you guys developed a cadence for. You landed on this once-a-day email. You fast forward a bit, your first actual product that you guys sell is Trends. I guess first, do you mind telling me a bit about Trends just so the listeners have that? Then I'm going to double down on how the hell did you make money before you had a product, right? You mentioned advertising there. I'd like to maybe spend some cycles on that. But before we get there, can you talk to us about Trends?
Yeah, Trends is cool. Trends is trends.co. Basically, I'm a huge nerd and I research like crazy. Like I said, our vision was build up this massive email list and then make a lot of money off advertising and then use those advertising profits to create more stuff. Last year, I was figuring out, "All right, what's that more stuff?" I mean, eventually, it's going to be a lot of different things, but what should we start with? So I started doing a ton of research and I started Talking to people who I'm friends with and being like, "All right, check this out. I did a breakdown of how this particular company works. What if we did that, but we did it in our industry?" Or an extreme example is like, "All right, I just did a ton of research on the top 10 best hotel chains. Here's how the companies work and here's where our opportunity is on how we can deploy that to our business model," or something like that. I started showing my friends and they're like, "Oh, this is awesome. Can you keep doing more of these reports?" And then eventually I learned about this whole research industry. I mean, there's companies that make tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars collectively doing this. And I thought, "Well, maybe we should just make this the product." And I created a little landing page for it and I sent a little bit of traffic to it. And I ended up selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of subscriptions before it even was live. And that's kind of how we kind of came up with the idea. And so Trends is we have this online community that's private and only for subscribers. And then we have research and information where we dive deep on different industries and different businesses and explain how they work. And we've also built some really nifty technology that crawls millions of pieces of data and finds different fast-growing and up-and-coming trends. And we reveal them and say what they mean and how you can capitalize on them.
Clay Finck You're very entrepreneurial-driven in that I find You've got ideas just pouring out of your ears, and you don't have the bandwidth to act on all of them. I've heard you talk on your own podcast and some of your folks just in preparation, and you guys are constantly coming up with stuff and ideas and voids in the market and things to fill. I am not that. So I think Trends and The Hustle, you're opening doors. I find that I read through The Hustle, I read through Trends, When I get to the end of it, whether I've found something in there that sparked my interest and I've just dove into the rabbit hole of that topic, or I've completed the article and there are several things in there that I've been able to relay over to my life or my 9-to-5 and this podcast and what I have going on, both of them unique and extremely valuable, man. I'm a huge, huge fan of both sides.
Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, that's the idea, which is maybe a small percentage of people are actually going to invest in these interesting things that we discovered, but regardless, it's just really interesting. And so I don't plan on opening up a hotel anytime soon, but I angel invest in some companies. And if I see a company that has a similar economics as the MGM Grand, which is a really great hotel business, then maybe it will help me that knowledge. Or I kind of learned about how hotels and motels franchise. So in my head, I'm like, "Man, maybe I should franchise my event business." You think about it and it kind of could sit there and marinate. And then eventually when you have that opportunity, you could actually apply it.
Yeah, 100%. I think the question I want to sort of, as we cap this part of this discussion, is pre-trends. And obviously, I mean, I'm sure you guys are still doing this now with the Hustle, but pre-trends, PreTrends launch, how are you building wealth or making money at that point? Was it just advertising?
Yeah. And that made 8 figures a year, 7 figures a month.
And I think I heard in a podcast at one point or one of your interviews that you guys framed up the advertising or that affiliate program a little differently, which is not surprising. I mean, you guys are splashing in the market all over the place and you're looking to be different. You're looking to scheme, right? With your advertisers, did I hear that right in that most people are charging per 1,000 subscribers and I think you guys had a little different approach to that?
Yeah. I mean, look, the way the business works is if you have 1,000 people who are subscribed to your email list, you can charge $10 to $50 per 1,000 people you send an email to. And when we started, we just kind of went along with how the business worked. It's kind of weird though, because that business model was built before a lot of the tracking software that we use existed. I just kind of went along with it because that's how everyone else did it. But once we started— I mean, we're still not huge, but once we started getting into hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, we said, "Wait, why do we charge per 1,000 sends? Let's charge per 1,000 opens." For some reason, the industry still doesn't do it this way, but that's how we do it. But at first, when we first started, I mean, I didn't know anyone in this industry. I didn't know one person. I learned how to do everything from research. Then eventually I would cold email people and ask them questions. But I just did what everyone else did just because that's what I thought you just had to do in order to make it work.
Robert Leonard Now that you're using your open rate Are you able to charge a premium for that? I mean, knowing that—
Well, so kind of, but the math works out to where our open rate is 50% or above. So it's actually easy. You just double the cost per cents. But what it means is that we only make money when people actually do whatever we're being paid to do. So for example, here's an example. One time we wrote a story about FuckJerry. So in the email, we said the word fuck a lot. And so what that meant was is that we actually got flagged by a lot of people's, yeah, like we got flagged by their—
Like by their spam or whatever.
Yeah, their spam filters. And so that day our open rate was garbage, but the company still paid us all this money. And that's good for us, but they were pissed off. And we were like, well, yeah, that's right. That's not actually fair. And so what we do now is people will say, we'll pay per open and we'll give you this range. Some days it's on the high end of that range and we make way more money than we thought. Other days, a little bit lower, and so we have to make it up. We don't get paid. All of our incentives are aligned that way.
Robert Leonard Yeah. You can feel me making this shift over towards the finance things. I know that you're not big on talking specifics. I won't go there, but—
Wesley Gray No, I don't mind talking some specific stuff. I don't mind talking about the past stuff. It's just when I first launched HustleCon, I revealed to people how much money it made. And it wasn't even, I mean, it's all relative about how much it is or how much, if you think it's a lot or not, but it was something like $60 grand. And I'm from like a poor part of Missouri. And I just didn't, I hated the attention. And to me it was like, it kind of like ruined the message. And so I was just like, well, I'm just not going to talk too much about specifics. Because that just ruins the messaging. And also, it can make things weird. So whether you have money or whether you don't have money, if you start bringing that into the conversation, sometimes it can ruin things, in my opinion.
Clay Finck Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, my second big topic here, and I mentioned at the top of the call, is you're a blueprint. I think I called you a billboard. You're a blueprint of what I and what we are looking to create here. My second big topic here is your revenue streams. And through research, I found you've got The Hustle, HustleCon.
Oh, my personal stuff?
Speaking, real estate, you're doing multifamily, Bitcoin, you're in beekeeping now.
Well, I don't make money off that, but yeah.
Yeah. You've got all these different pieces. Do you know how many streams of income you actually have?
No, it's hard to track. I mean, I would say I make money. Last year, or 2019, I probably had income from 10, I don't know, 10 different things. I have some real estate that I make money off of. I have my job, my W-2 income. I've invested in companies like startups that either sold or somehow pay out dividends or are going to go public, and I made money through that. What else? I'm always creating little things and a lot of them aren't successful, but I've created a guide on how to start a hot dog stand or how to find a roommate or all these other things. And those are really cheap, like $10, $20, $30. But if you have a bunch of them, it can add up to thousands of dollars a month after you've made them 10 years ago. So I make money off those things. I just have personal blogs that have affiliate links on them that will make Tens of thousands of dollars a year, or maybe like 10 or 20 grand a year. What else?
Through these, I mean, let's call it 12, 10, 12 different streams.
Speaking, consulting. It might be 10.
Maybe.
Yeah, maybe 10. Gambling. No. Yeah, maybe 10.
Are you taking on several avenues at once? Some of these build on of one another, right? Are you conquering and becoming more or less "an expert" in one stream before spinning up your second stream, or how does one go to 10?
Yeah. I own another software company. I forget. Yeah. It's hard for me. I don't really track a lot of them. So the question is, do I go from one to the other? Well, first I will say a lot of this stuff, it was just hobbies. So it's like saying before you move on to playing soccer, do you become an expert in hockey? Or are you an expert in hockey before you go to soccer? It's like, I don't know. I just play sports. I just get into activities. I just am all— You know what I mean? If you're into basketball, it's like, well, I just started playing basketball and then I got into lifting weights to help me play basketball. I don't know. It's a little bit organic. So some of the things that I have made money from, it was just spur of the moment. I got interested in it. I launched it. And just over the years, it's slowly accumulated. I would say that I prefer focus. I don't like having a lot of things going on. I've got friends that are really good at launching loads of different things. My strength is definitely not having a lot of different things going on at once. I probably could crush it way harder than I do. I just don't want to. I find it hard to focus on a lot of different things at one time.
Clay Finck Man, I can't fathom, and I thought about this last night, I thought about this morning on how I wanted to pose this question to you, but I cannot fathom, I can't comprehend how many business pitches that you and your team must hear in a given month or a year due to your public speaking, the presentations you're giving, and then obviously all the research and findings with The Hustle and Trend. I can't imagine the amount of opportunities that surface through all of this.
Cullen Roche Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, it's thousands a month.
Yeah. So have you taken on— I think you mentioned angel investing earlier. Have you taken on any of the— Have you invested in any of the businesses that you guys have found or opportunities that have surfaced? Have you actually transacted on some of those opportunities?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's definitely the long-term plan. I've made 6 figures already paid out in cash through things that I've invested in, companies that have sold or something like that. So yeah, I definitely have. Yeah. I mean, I haven't invested in that many, above 5, under 15. I don't know the exact amount. And check size range from 50 grand to $5,000, something like that. And so yeah, I've definitely— Yeah. Basically when you have a popular social presence, to me it just gives me access to things that I normally would never have had access to. Yeah, I definitely exploit that for sure.
This is— I didn't have this one written down, but have you guys thought about at The Hustle or maybe at Trends since it's more of a personable and I think it's a more targeted demographic, putting together some sort of syndicate group or pool of money?
Yeah. Yeah. I intend to do that. The plan is, do you know the company SoftBank that's in the news for making all those shitty investments at the moment? I do.
Yeah. Yeah, I do.
Well, they're not— doing awesome right now, but they have 4 decades of doing really, really well. The way they started was they had— this probably won't make sense to you, but they were the PC Magazine of Japan. PC Magazine is Personal Computer Magazine. It was just a publication on gadgets and computers and things like that. They started that in Japan, and he would then invest in interesting advertisers that he had and interesting companies because you can When you're a publisher like I am, you can see what's popular based off of what people are clicking on and things like that. And so what he would do is he would invest in companies that he found. One of them he found was Yahoo, and that's how they invested a lot of money, $20 million, and that was their first big win. And that is what SoftBank is now, which is a conglomerate that invests in various businesses. Well, when I started my company, my goal was just to copy that playbook. So that's what I'm trying to do.
Check that out. I didn't know that, but just based off of what you guys are doing and the information you're pumping out, and I mentioned I'm just as deep as I could be in the information you guys send out, it would only make sense to, at some point, open the floor and have a phase 3 to this and pull up some capital for some of these ventures.
Yeah, that might happen sooner rather than later, but it's definitely part of the plan.
Sure. Man, if I could maybe stay on the same vein of your different streams of income and moving pieces, I've had several financial planners, certified financial planners on the podcast. Do you use any wealth experts, certified financial— Yeah, this is all yourself.
Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't know if I'm an expert or not. I definitely know how to make money. I don't know. That definitely doesn't make me an expert on planning. I for sure am good at making at least a a small amount of money. I'm definitely good at that. I don't know. I'm not an expert at— I don't know, maybe I am. I don't know how I compare. That's why I'm saying that. But I do everything myself, and I think that's the right move.
Yeah. Do you, of the 9, 10 streams that we've discussed that are flowing your way, streams of income, what's your riskiest?
I don't think any of them are risky. I think none of them, maybe some real estate stuff. I mean, If you think real estate is risky, then maybe that. I mean, a lot of my income comes from my main job. So if you think starting a company that's an email newsletter is risky, then I would say that's the riskiest.
Yeah. The hustle, definitely the most lucrative of the avenues today. I mean, obviously, because it takes your most time.
I mean, lucrative in terms of net worth, yeah, it's very lucrative. Lucrative in terms of cash flow, no, I don't pay myself that much money. I mean, I pay myself a little bit of money, but I'm not the highest paid person at my company. I made more money just off investments than I did cash flow from my business last year in 2019. Partially that's because the stock market just crushed it and any idiot could have made a lot of money. I fall in that category where— Investing is very lucrative, but I don't think anything's risky. I think I partially have a high risk tolerance because I've been poor before and I've made money before and I don't mind losing it again. But at the same time, I don't think that the way that I view money is weird, but maybe some other people think of it as weird. But to me, starting a company or investing in something, I just don't think it's very risky most of the time. I mean, I just don't find it to be risky at all. I believe that it's actually risky to not take advantage of some of these opportunities. I think it's risky to only have one stream of income. So I don't find it risky at all.
That, man, that is almost verbatim what Dori last week said of it's almost more risky to not have multiple streams. You're almost doing yourself a disservice.
Well, I don't think almost. I mean, I think for sure. I mean, like, here's what I don't understand is I tried buying this property recently and the bank was hassling me where they wanted to see my, they basically wouldn't approve me for this mortgage, this particular broker, because They said that I was a high-risk applicant because I owned more than X% of certain businesses, which means you make your income on your own. I was like, "Do you say the same for anyone who is employed anywhere? Because they can just get fired or the business that they work for can go out of business. The difference is that I own these things, and so I'm the one who's responsible, whereas their companies, they can just get fired." So They're like, "Well, no, that's not as risky." I'm like, "How on earth is that fair?" If one of my employees all can get mortgages, but I can just go and fire them today, and I'm in California, I don't need a reason. I can just fire them just because I'm in a bad mood. Most people, I don't think, agree with me, but that's personally how I feel about it is I don't understand why it's riskier. I think it's probably more risky to not do it that way.
Robert Leonard Yeah. Coming from your side of, that's my neck on the line, I'm putting food on the table for my side, why would I be considered more of a risk when this is— I'm giving my all for this. If this failed, then I'm failing. This is your food on the table here. So yeah, that's an interesting— I've never heard of that. That's an interesting sort of brain train.
Yeah. If you're an entrepreneur, I can get mortgages for buying income-producing property really easily, but getting a mortgage for a home that you want to live in is really hard if you're an entrepreneur. Yeah, it's notoriously hard. For example, if you just have a normal job, and you live in Texas where you can get real estate for pretty cheap, you can get a first-time home loan for 3% down. But if you're an entrepreneur and you own more than 25% of a business, a lot of times they won't lend you money or they'll make you put down 50% or 60%. And so it's really, really hard to get a— and I'm not trying to get a mortgage to— I don't want to buy property to live in, but if you wanted to, it's really hard.
Robert Leonard You mentioned you manage your own portfolio. Do you have a set framework or structure of 10% to my emergency fund, 10% into real estate, 25% into Bitcoin, or is it more of just kind of free flow? Does maybe each avenue feed back into itself? As real estate produces revenue, that goes back into more homes. How do you handle that?
Cullen Roche First started making money, my goal was to have 6 months of liquidity available. And then I'm paranoid. I was like, "I want 3 years." So at first it was like, any point, I want to be able to click a button, whether that means going to the ATM or selling stocks and having the money in my account in an hour, I want to have at least 3 years of liquidity. And so that's always been important to me. Some people say that's too conservative, but I always want 3 years of liquidity. And then I'll usually put probably 10% of my annual income or 10% of my liquidity, however much money I have liquid, I'll put that into super risky investments like startups or Bitcoin. And then right now I'm probably going to put 20% or 30% into real estate. Yeah, maybe 20%. The rest is in the S&P 500. I'm pretty heavy in the S&P 500, which it could or could not— I mean, the other day when it dropped 5%, I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean, it was not good, but I didn't even log in to look. I don't care.
Yeah, that was my advice. I had a buddy of mine send me an email of, "Have you looked at your 401?" I messaged him back, "I don't plan on it." Yeah, that's years away, brother. I don't plan on it.
I literally did not. I have not logged in to see, part because I just didn't want to get rattled. Yeah.
I don't want the stomachache. Let's just, yeah. I'm going to, my last time to echo this, but, you know, 10-ish streams of income there. Do you have a—
It could be as low as 5 in some years.
Yeah, of course.
But it's definitely not 1. Yeah.
Do you have a recommended getting started avenue? Right? Let's say most of the listeners here have that just one primary stream of income and they're looking for a second. I'd ask, "What's your riskiest?" to maybe push them away from that. But I think I'll flip the question on, as I look to start or we look to start our second stream, do you have anything that maybe you'd recommend, whether it was a little bit easier to get started, maybe it's lower overhead, you feel everyone could have success? Go ahead.
I'm not an expert on this. So whether people want to listen to me or not, that's on them. I am not claiming to be an expert. I would say that what I'm a pretty— I think I'm an expert at is judging risk. I think I'm an expert at starting things and making money off of them very quickly. So I don't think that makes me an expert at finance questions, that's for sure. But for me, what I view as risky, I personally right now view real estate as risky. And the reason why is my mentality has always been that my income is going to dry up. And I don't think that's a particularly healthy way to look at it, but that's the reason I look at it is because I start I'm self-employed. And so I remember when I sold one of my companies, I had to go work at that place for a little while. I would have a calculator that, or a spreadsheet that showed how long I could live with zero income. And I still have this fear that maybe tomorrow all of my income's going to go away. So I have to be able to live off just my investments. And so in that case, I prefer liquid stuff. So I haven't bought anything that involves a large outlay of cash, like real estate where you need sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars down, I think that's risky personally. I prefer— What I think is not risky is creating information products that cost single-digit hundreds of dollars, so like $100, $200, $300 just to build a simple website and to sell stuff online. To me, that's the easiest, least risky thing you could possibly do. Now, some people think real estate is the least risky because People always need a place to live. I get that. But personally, I think the least risky is to create information that someone wants to give you dollars for. I think that's the least risky.
Robert Leonard I know I'm coming tight on time here. What are you working for? It's the question I'm headed towards here. You've got 8, 9 streams. You're running a podcast. I mean, your brain is going nonstop. You've got 3 years of an emergency fund I think if you unplugged today and you decided to take a backseat at the hustle and you had all these other streams of income flowing in, you'd be fine. Do you have an end goal, whether it's a monetary, or a number in mind, or a number of businesses, or what are you grinding for?
I used to think that there was a number and I've hit those numbers before. Then I'm like, hitting this number doesn't make me happy. I don't really have a number. I don't have a number in that where it's like, I'll let off the gas pedal if I hit that. I do have numbers kind of like if you lift weights where you're like, all right, this season I want to be able to bench 300 pounds. And you hit that and then you probably chill for a week and you're like, see if next year I can get to 350. And you're not really truly a different person. You just have different goals. And so I don't grind because I have to. I grind because Partially, it's an obsession and it's pretty unhealthy. It's kind of like, why does a dog chase a rabbit? It's just like this OCD compulsive disorder where it's kind of hard not to. And it's actually quite painful because you're like, "I don't want to have to do that, but I can't not do it." And it's really hard and it causes a whole lot of pain in my life. But then the other part of it is I think it's fun and it's exciting to me. I learned at a young age that you can To me, I'm not chasing money. I'm chasing what I learned at a young age, which was the world is very malleable. I can shape the world and bend it around what I want it to be. And one of the best ways for me to do that is through capitalism and business building. And I just think that's cool. So what I think is neat is John Rockefeller got really rich, and once he wanted to get rich just because he wanted to let every American— he wanted them to have easy and cheap access to kerosene so they could have candles in their home and have light. And then once he got rich, he said to himself, "I don't like how people are getting sick." And so he invented the world's first university hospital, which was basically a research hospital, which is how hospitals are— it is how hospitals are now, but he invented that. That's now called the University of Chicago. And he helped get His contributions helped get rid of a lot of different diseases, or his wife was like, Black women are not going to college and that's not great. And the reason they aren't is for various reasons rooted in racism and sexism. Let's make sure they go to school. So she created Spelman College and allowed Black women in the 1800s to go to university. And those are two examples of how they just kind of willed different things into existence and shaped the world to their opinions and to their dreams. To me, that is incredibly fascinating, that process. Whether you're creating a song and you can turn it— The fact that someone can just start humming something in their head and then over time, that can turn into them performing in front of hundreds of thousands of people, to me, that creation process of taking ideas and making them movements or making things that are quite large, To me, that's incredibly fascinating and very, very addicting. That's what I grind for each day, which is like, I have this idea, how do I take risk and gather people around this idea and get them all to believe and buy into it and to get them to shape their worlds around it? Then for them to convince other people to do it, to me, that's just a drug and it's really, really exciting. It's like going skydiving or going mountain biking. It's just like once you realize that you can take nothing and turn it into something and get other people to buy into to it and have it be part of culture, I find it to be incredibly intoxicating and something I seek on a daily basis. That's fun. I love doing it, but it's definitely exhausting. I mean, I wish that I could just chill and not want to do that a lot, but that's my drug of choice, I guess.
Yeah. As I hear you talk about it, it reminds me of when Joe Rogan interviewed Elon Musk. I don't know if you watched that, but—
Yeah, I did.
Yeah. At one point, he says, "I just want to know what it's like in your brain." or something like that. And Elon says, "You don't want to be in my brain." Yeah, look, I'm definitely not Elon Musk.
Anyone who has OCD, it's not always fun. You can use it, for example, maybe Michael Phelps has OCD. I have no idea, but he definitely has some type of weird obsessive disorder. It just so happens that in the lanes of swimming, in the lanes of that pool, that disorder helps him a lot. Now, when he's outside of the pool, he suffers from depression a lot, and it's actually hurt him a ton. I think that's the same way with a lot of people, or at least the same way with me. I consider myself a creator. I imagine it's very much like that with creators. There's a reason why comedians have an incredibly high likelihood of being very depressed and suicidal. I think it just comes with the territory.
Preston Pysh Man, I was going to use that exact example of comedians. Damn, man. Hey, brother, I know we're here up on the hour. Have I missed anything? We covered several topics. I've tucked as much as I can into 60 minutes here. Is there any closing comments, statements, anything worth covering or discussing here before I wrap this thing up?
I don't think so. I mean, you tell me. I mean, look, I'm not in a hurry. Is there anything that we haven't covered that people want?
Man, I came in with an hour tight full of stuff here. I'd be honored at some point to circle back and have you on again, but man, as far as As far as what I wanted to jog through today, I've checked my boxes. As far as where the folks can come, I guess, find you, talk to you, grab your content, what's the best way to get ahold of you, man?
Yeah. If you Google The Hustle, you can go to thehustle.co and sign up for The Hustle. That's our daily email. If you want, go to Trends. Trends is freaking awesome. I love it. It's a product that I made for me, and we've hired people to work on it, and I love using it. Sign up to that. You can sign up for a buck, and if you don't like it, just hit cancel and you're only charged a dollar. But if you do like it, it then costs $300 a year. And then if you want to contact me, don't email me. I won't reply most likely because my email inbox is a mess. But if you message me on Twitter or DM me or whatever it's called, like me on Twitter, @thesamparr, I'm very responsive there at the moment.
Preston Pysh Yeah. Very active on the social media platforms. Everything that we've discussed, topics, articles, links, it's all going to be linked in the show notes, including to The Hustle and Trends, which I'll continue to support and back and echo and probably mention in future episodes. Man, I really appreciate you doing this, Sam. I know we had a really brief prep call and I mentioned then, man, I'm a huge fan of yours and I consume almost everything you produce, man. So I appreciate your time today. For the folks that have tuned in to the podcast, can't thank you enough for your ears. As always, reach out with any comments, feedback, concerns, questions that may have surfaced through today's interview. If there's something I can maybe capture in a future interview, feel free to reach out. That's info@roadstowealth.com. If nothing else, appreciate all your ears and stay on that grind. Clay Finck I mentioned here in the introduction that Sam was an absolute beast. The man does not— He doesn't settle for anything less, does he? I mean, he is incredible. I really, really enjoyed that interview. Hearing not only his journey, but his expectations and goals moving forward. I mean, he's got 1.5 million subscribers today on The Hustle. He mentioned there in the interview, made over 6 figures in returns on his investments, and made over 8 figures a year in advertising from The Hustle. They are absolutely crushing. And to hear where he expects to go in making this giant media corporation with all these different branches and the business plan he's following, following after this SoftBank model, I thought that was just really, really interesting. And I appreciate him slowing down and walking through all that with us. We spent a lot of time talking through the HustleCon, The Hustle, his initial product there of Trends. If The Hustle interests you, you can find that link there in the show notes. Trends is a product of theirs. There's a cost associated to it. I believe the list cost of that, it's just under $300 a year. In saying that, Sam and team have hooked me up with a promo code, gives you $100 off. All capital letters, R-H-O-D-E-S, my last name. So Rhodes in all capital letters, get you $100 off that, which I thought was really nice of them. All in all, I mean, Sam rattled off 10 different streams of income, was willing to get extremely granular in the breakdown of his portfolio and his journey and their methodology and how they hit their customers, what they hit their customers with. I mean, There was nothing there that he wasn't willing to share with me and sort of lift the covers up for. So I really appreciate his time. As always, the listeners, I appreciate your time and your ears, your attention. Any feedback, comments, questions you have, please reach out info@roadstowealth.com. I would appreciate any, uh, reviews, comments, subscribes, as that's sort of what drives this channel and allows me to continue to get these kick-ass guests on the podcast. If nothing else, stay on that grind.
I do it for health. Yeah yeah! It's the road to wealth. Yeah yeah! For my kids and my spouse. Yeah yeah! Shit! The road of wealth— I do it for help. My kids and my spouse financially sound. Bad day. The world of wealth— I do it for help. With my kids on my spouse financially sounds good. If life about purpose, Iggy. Something to seek in. I've been setting cash goals financially speaking. I've been finding blessings through all of these demons. I pray to God I give you something to reach with. Say I give you something to leave with. It's life about goals and achievements. Your eyes on the prize, the hate out your mind. And pray to whatever beliefs in, teach on the way. Know that your beach on the way, got to shine hard in the teacher's water. Know that little seed, they going to grow tomorrow. So every day Gotta come with us. Shit, you starting to stand on, make the falls soft when you land wrong, make you put some new friends on. It's the road to the wealth. I do it for help, my kids and my spouse. I financially sound. Bad dad. It's the road to the wealth. I do it for help, my kids and my spouse. Financially sound.
