The creator started My First Million as a networking hack while his startup was in due diligence, messaging Sam to partner and finding an editor on Twitter. The podcast hit 2 million downloads in its first year by shifting from formal interviews to casual brainstorming sessions. He argues that anyone wanting a non-traditional career should start creating content regularly, since podcasting offers low effort and high leverage.
Chapters
or hell, even if you want a job but you just want a better job, this is what I would do. First, it's been almost exactly a year since I had this idea for the podcast. So I'm looking at my messages right now to Sam. So 5/13/2019. So this is May 13th, a year ago. I messaged him, yo, I got a proposition for you. He says, yes. I said, I'm starting a podcast. It's like How I Built This. Good quality, good guests. And I sent him a list of guests that I had in mind. I said, I want The Hustle to be the publisher. I'll do all the work. You include it in the email when there's a new episode. If we start monetizing, let's share the economics. Sam says, okay, deal. I said, cool, I'll send you the first episode to preview at the end of this week. And then we go back and forth a little bit. And then, um, and then we started, uh, you know, I You know, the first thing I did was I went and found somebody who could edit a podcast by going on Twitter and writing podcast editor in the search and then looking for people who wrote that in their bio. And then I found Ishan, who was an editor for other people's podcasts. We made a cover art, we made— we figured out a name. It's funny, I'm looking at the messages here. The original name that I was thinking was— because I was basing it off of how I built this, so the name was How I Got Rich. Um, which I decided was way too, you know, I don't know, crude or something. It could have been a good name. It's at least sort of, I don't know, gets your attention. But, but I knew I'd have trouble getting guests on with that name. And in fact, My First Million also had trouble getting guests on because a lot of people who are successful don't want to come talk about money and they don't want to seem like a rich asshole. But it worked out anyways. My First Million got off the ground. We shifted off of interviews and started doing more casual brainstorm-type episodes, and that's what people resonated with. They liked listening to something where, um, you know, it gets the wheels turning in your head. It gets you to learn about a new space or a new business model or a new product that you hadn't heard of. And people like to hear two people scheming and thinking up, you know, new ideas and dreaming about what, what could be, because there's not very many podcasts to do that. And so that's what I learned along the way. I'm looking at our stats now. We have reached over 2 million downloads. We did about a million downloads in the first 6 months and a little more than that in the, in the, uh, the second half. And, um, dude, I could have never imagined that we would hit 2 million downloads in year 1. Um, that's kind of amazing. Uh, I'm like in shock even right now, just sort of looking at it because I don't really check, you know, I don't really pay too much attention to it because I'm not doing this really for the listeners. In fact, when I started this, I told Sam I said, he asked me, why are you doing this? And I said, well, our company's getting acquired. We're, it's, we're in the due diligence phase right now. And it's a lot of either lawyers or security people looking at our code, things like that. I was like, it's really boring. I want to do something. I can't start a company, but I can start a podcast during this time. And so I need, I had the itch to start something. And this was my something. And I'd always wanted to do a podcast because I like to talk. And I figured this would just be a great little networking hack. You know, when I actually started the podcast, I didn't think anybody would listen to it. My plan was, there's all these interesting people here in San Francisco, I want to meet them. Instead of just saying, hey, my name's Sean, I'm a founder of this company, you want to get some coffee? Which is annoying. I hate when people ask me, hey, can I have some of your time? Do you want to get a coffee? Do you want to do a call? Would love to chat. I'm like, what's in it for me? This is awful. I don't wanna— I don't even drink coffee, so fuck that. But if somebody invites me on a podcast or invites me to speak at a conference, I'm like, okay, cool, tell me more. And I usually say yes. And it's weird because it doesn't even matter how many people are listening to the podcast, or it could be an event that has 100 people, but still it feels good to sort of be on stage. And I knew that other people liked that too. So my goal was, this is a great way to meet interesting people and have an excuse to connect with them. And I thought, nobody will listen to this except for my mom, but I'll build a cool network of people through the podcast. That was my, my evil plan. And then I got greedy once it started growing, and now it's— now I kicked off all the guests and now it's just me and Sam talking. But yeah, my perspective changed. I think that's a good lesson too, in general. So I had one decisive reason to do it which was, this will be a great way to meet other cool people. I got that out of it. I did, you know, 30 episodes with different guests who had built awesome companies. And then, you know, I discovered a different opportunity as I was doing it, which was, hey, a lot of people are actually listening to this. Okay, instead of making this about meeting the guests, what if I made this about giving the audience content that they like, um, and being, you know, being somebody that they listen to. On a regular basis and I've, you know, sort of pivoted, pivoted from there. But anyways, it's been amazing. One year, one year since having the idea. And that's, that's pretty bizarre. I think I'll probably be podcasting for like 10 years. That's my guess because I like this a lot. And, uh, and it's been cool. There's all these different things that have come from it. And I think, you know, if you're somebody out there who doesn't create content today, it is where I would start. If I was somebody who wants to have a non-traditional career, if you don't want to just have a job, or hell, even if you want a job but you just want a better job, this is what I would do right off the bat. I would start creating content about a topic I like, either interviewing guests and networking that way, or talking about a subject, researching and talking about a subject that you're interested in learning more about, and just publishing, and just publishing regularly. Because you'd be surprised who listens. Pretty badass people listen to this podcast, and then they reach out, and then opportunities come my way. Or investments come my way or whatever. It builds trust in people. And the beauty of it is that it's low effort, right? I record once for 1 hour, but each episode gets listened to for thousands and thousands of hours by other people. So, you know, my 1 hour yields tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of listened hours. And that's amazing leverage, right? I'm getting a multiplier of, let's call it, 100,000 to 1 on my effort and time, which is kind of amazing. That's why I would produce content. And I would, and it also forces you to think about content as a product, right? So you gotta make content that people want. You gotta figure out how to distribute it to them. You gotta figure out how to monetize it. So it's a great little mini business in and of itself without any cost really. You just gotta, you know, buy a microphone. That's kind of the extent of it. It's not much more beyond that.
