Sam Parr, The Hustle // Paid Newsletters, Copywriting + Future of Media

I've heard you talk about, um, copywriting helped you convince your wife to be with you. Yeah, what do you mean by that? And like, what's the story there?

Uh, above copywriting is persuasion. So I always tell people, I'm like, dude, I don't care if you're in business or in love, like, get good at persuading people. Because like, we're gonna— I'm like, we're gonna persuade our wives or our husbands to marry us. We're gonna persuade them to go on a date with us. I'm gonna persuade my I'm gonna persuade this landlord that I'm like worthy of renting their apartment. Like, I'm gonna persuade everyone to do anything for the rest of my life. So like, get good at persuading people. And so copywriting is one below that, which is just persuading people via words, like the written word. The way that I met my wife was pretty funny. Like, I like learned how— like, there's this formula called AIDA, attention, interest, desire, action. And I just use that on my wife, who's actually somewhere in the room. She probably hears this. I used that on her, on her. So when I saw her, I like just said like the most outrageous pickup line just to be like, I didn't care if it was obnoxious. I just had to say something to grab her attention that was different than anything she'd ever heard before. And that's like a copywriting technique. And that's what I did.

Do you remember what the pickup line was? I would be doing a bad job if I didn't ask.

Yeah, it was super inappropriate, but I'll say it.

Hey Sam, welcome to the show.

What's going on? How are you?

Good to have you here, man. We've been, uh, chatting for a few months and I'm glad we got to actually get this locked in and recorded. So thanks for making the time, man. Um, so look, you're— you've been working on so many cool things over the last few years. You've built the hustle to 1.5-2 million people on your email list, the Daily Email, if people haven't heard of it. You've also got a subscription email product, Trends.co. You're really at the cutting edge of what people call new media. Um, but before that, and we're going to get into the details of all of what you're working on, before that, you, you actually had a hot dog stand business. So I'd love if you wouldn't mind just sharing like a little bit of that background, like It sounds like one of your first entrepreneurial stories.

Yeah, so I, um, I'm from Missouri where I was raised, moved in Tennessee. While at Tennessee, I, uh, opened up a hot dog stand called Southern Sam's Wieners as Big as a Baby's Arm and eventually had like multiple locations. And that was kind of like my college job. That's kind of how I paid the bills. And then I, um, like learned about making money on the internet and I was like, oh, this is way better. You don't have to be outside and like it makes money while you sleep. Like, this is just a lot easier on you physically. So I started some things on the internet, and some of them were okay. And then I eventually left Nashville and moved to California, and I started an online thing again, like, and it was acquired for a very, very small sum. And then I started HustleCon, which was a conference, and I made the conference popular by writing and blogging and emailing about the speakers. And it was cool. It made like hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first year of business. But I didn't want to do that forever because I think it's a horrible business. And I was like, whoa, what should we do next? And so I just used that money and started The Hustle.

And just curious, like the hot dog, like I love the name first of all, because that's hilarious. But like, what was the logic around that? It just, I guess it's a generic product and you need to stand out.

Yeah. Well, it was, um, you're not American, I guess, right?

I'm from the UK, but I lived there for 7 years.

But yeah, okay, so you may or may not know this, but there's a TV show called American Pickers.

Yeah, I've heard of it through hearing you talk about it.

Yeah, yeah. So it was like, it's popular if you live in the Midwest or the South and you grew up in America. And I mean, like, you know, you're in America from 2000 to 2015, you definitely know this show. And we would like buy stuff on like it through barns and like tell the history of it. And then sell it. And I worked for the guy who was like the main guy in the show, and we would have this long line of people outside of our store. And I didn't have any money. I mean, I had probably $1,000 to my name or less. And I was like, I'm going to start something. And somehow I knew a guy who had a stand that he wasn't using. And I was like, screw it. Like, that could— whatever. There's opportunity. I'll take it and we'll figure it out.

And also, I've heard you mention something about your dad. Like your dad was in kind of a traditional business as well. Like what was he doing?

My parents are hustlers. So my father and mother started a fruit stand like on the side of the road.

It's old school.

Yeah, just like I'm from, I'm not from, I lived in San Francisco for a long time. I live out here in Brooklyn right now. So like, but I'm not like from fancy, you know, a fancy upbringing. And that's what my parents did. They had like a fruit stand and Through years of hard work and going through different routes, they eventually— it turned into like a produce brokerage business, which basically just means you call a farmer and you buy $1 million of onions from a farmer, and then you call Walmart and you sell them that load of onions for $1.1 million, and then you get a trucker to move it around. And it's very not glamorous, but very essential to American livelihoods.

Looking at your background, that's definitely stood out to me because even though, like you said, you've been in Silicon Valley You've lived there for a little bit of time before this, and like you said, there's a lot of fancy traditional ways of doing it in VC-backed startup world. You've kind of had one foot in the door there, it seems, but also being able to keep it kind of real to your roots in a way.

I think that like if you're a baller in business, like you're going to be a baller if you're on the internet or if you're on the street. And if you're like really a baller, you can cross, you can play both sides. So, you know, like I would bet you that like Mark Zuckerberg, if you put him in the real estate game, would probably crush it as well.

Yeah, I've heard you talk about the dumbest millionaires are in real estate, and I know that's a slightly provocative statement. It doesn't mean everyone in real estate is dumb, it just means that you could kind of follow the playbook.

We have this podcast called My First Million, which everyone should definitely listen to. It's really fun, and it's people— for a certain type of person, which I imagine the listener right now is that person, it's quite addicting. And I made a comment on there where I'm like, look, I've noticed a pattern that like real estate industry has the highest proportion of dumb rich people that I've ever met. And I don't mean dumb like in an actually like a disrespectful way, 'cause like I don't consider myself to be like, I'm probably not a high IQ person. I'm not dumb, but I'm not like a high IQ person. But I meant like, it has like the lowest IQ to like highest income ratio I've ever seen, which is a good thing. To me, that means go to real estate, which is what I am doing.

So that's cool on your background. So let's just, just maybe paint a picture of where you are today. I mentioned some of the numbers earlier, but you've got The Hustle now. Like what exactly is The Hustle and Trends.co specifically?

Yeah, so The Hustle, the vision was simple early on. And I stole this vision from a bunch of other companies that I admire. Build up this huge audience of entrepreneurial type folks, build up that audience via email, make profits early on through advertising. Provide this audience with a ton of value by giving them business news and information and getting them to trust us and love us and eventually use that audience as well as the advertising profits to build more businesses and tell our audience about it. It's a launchpad business for me. And that's what we've done. And so now the, you know, we— I don't like tell everyone exact numbers, but I'll say the latest number that I've told people is we have 1.5 million subscribers. Who read us and consume our information every single day. We make well into the 8 figures in revenue. We've never raised venture capital, so we make a lot of profit. And I've purposely kept the team very small. I think we have 28 people. And I think that it's going to be— I think it's going to be a pretty big company. At worst, we will only grow mildly and we'll sell for $50 million probably one day soon. At best, it's gonna kind of take off and we'll have it around, have it— well, the business will be around forever.

Yeah, and that's kind of what attracted me to a lot of your work, man, is that again, kind of in this VC-backed world, and if you look at media, um, you know, legacy media or traditional media has been kind of struggling to figure out how to use the internet properly. You can say there's a few examples, New York Times maybe in recent times has done a great job when they've, when they've been leaning into podcasting and stuff like that. But what I love about what you guys do is like Trends.co. I read every single newsletter. I even listened to the audio version this morning, which is great. Your first one, highly recommend it. There's just like a certain way of writing that you guys have, which we'll dig into a little bit today. But also it's just like packed with value. Like every few lines you're like, okay, let me write that down. Like, I literally took probably 45 minutes listening to your less than 20-minute audio thing because I was going back and rewinding and I was like, let me write that down. And that's kind of what drew me to it in the first place. So I really love what you guys are doing.

That's the goal. So I'm happy that you're getting value out of it.

For sure, man. You also have an amazing team, by the way. I've been speaking to Trang and Stefan, is it?

Yeah, Steph.

Steph, Steph, sorry. Yeah. And yeah, just really talented people doing interesting stuff.

Yeah, I consider myself a collector of people, particularly I try to find people like Stefan Trung, whose stock was way undervalued when we found each other. And I bought their stock and it's risen a lot. And so that's kind of like who I look for is like these people who most everyone hasn't like, you know, uncovered.

If you don't mind me asking, digging into that a little bit more, what did you see in them that you feel like other people weren't seeing?

Well, I'll tell you with Trung, Trung wasn't a writer, but he had this boldness about him on Twitter. This guy, Eamon, told me about him. He goes, man, I work with this guy Trung, and he's got like some big energy. You'd like that. And I did. And he was smart and funny, and he was kind of obnoxious when I first met him. And I loved that. I was like, anyone who is this bold and confident is pretty interesting. Then he had a crazy high IQ. Like, I could tell I could tell he's like just really smart and I was like, "Oh, you are a personality. You can do this." So I like that. Steph was interesting to me because I thought that she had some amazing headlines that she wrote on her personal blog. I also loved that she was prolific. I think that my goal in business is to become like the best at hiring and I could tell that she was interesting early on because, like before I hired her, because she was just always shooting shots. And like, one bad problem with hiring people is even if they're talented and smart, if they take very little shots, they most likely are going to suck, or at least suck when working with me. And she wasn't that. She was prolific. I also noticed that she was very humble, which is the opposite of Trung. She was super humble. I thought she was too humble.

Yeah.

And I was like, you don't understand how good you are. So I'm gonna, I definitely wanna buy into that.

I just saw she also, since we're talking about her, we'll plug some of her stuff really quickly. She just wrote this book or like she pre-sold this content guide or something like that.

She's prolific. I don't know, I didn't ask, I haven't talked to her too much about that, but I'm pretty sure, I don't know if she worked on that like literally, she like had the idea for it and launched it in like 60 days or something. And I don't know if she had been working on it. She may have, but she's like, She's kind of an animal.

You've probably heard people talk about this term being at peak newsletter, right? Or like some kind of version of that. Like, what do you say to those people? Because we are all, you know, most people don't love their own email. We get too many emails, a lot of spam. Even myself, like, I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters. I don't always read all of them. So in that kind of world, how do you try to stand out?

When people say like we're at peak something or we're oversaturated with something, I always say like, yeah, maybe. But really, to me, what you're saying is that we're at peak bad stuff. And I'm like, in my head, I just think there's always room for premium, there's always room for better, and there is always room for different. So I think that when people say peak, I'm like, that doesn't mean don't do it. It just means that if you're going to do it, make it better or different, and you're probably better off making it different. But I think that's a bullshit thing to say is peak something. We are maybe not— I would never say peak. I would say we have a lot of it. Totally agree. And it was easier for me to start it then than it would be now.

So let's go into that a little bit more. You said if you were starting today, it would be different. So you obviously, because 2014 is very different, the platforms are different. You probably were writing a bunch and spreading on Facebook, which nowadays is a lot harder because organic reach is lower. So maybe we can just go into that. Like, what are some of the things you would be doing differently today versus the past?

Well, when we started, the very first month that we started, I got almost a million people coming to the website off a handful of viral blog posts. I think I would still do that, but I wouldn't even have a website. I would just try to go viral on Twitter and have a link to like an email signup to get people to give you more information. I would definitely actually continue blogging. Doing paid marketing like I was able to do, that would be way more challenging nowadays. So I don't think I would do that. The second or third thing is I would have a paid, paying pro— a paid product right away. It took us 2 or 3 years to decide to do that. And that was actually a mistake. And that you should have a paid product right away, I think. I focused only on email. I think we actually focused on it maybe a little too long. I would definitely like try to be on social and all those other— and every other platform as I could, like right away. We also didn't focus on community as much as we should. And I think that if I was starting again, I would do that a lot harder. We thought we had events early on. I would focus even harder on events, actually.

Just one last thing on kind of the state of affairs you're in right now. You talked about staying lean. And keeping most of the equity as well, which I think a lot of people following a traditional route in— sorry, I shouldn't say traditional, the kind of VC-backed, raise a bunch of money route, aren't doing a lot.

Well, we raised $1 million. So when I started the company, I just turned 24, 25. I didn't have too much money, but I made enough money early on that I could have financed the whole business. And I raised $1 million from people like Tim Ferriss, the founders of Bleacher Report, the founders of NerdWallet, all these huge companies. And so in that regard, that was beneficial. But looking back, if I could go back in time, I would own 100% of the company and never give anyone any equity. That's what I would have done. And I would hand the company down to my grandkids.

Love that.

Yeah. I think that there's a world where this business can last 100 years, just like the New York Times. But because I took money from people, I either have to buy them out. I mean, like, it's my duty to, to provide a good outcome for my investors. So, but we only raised $1 million, so they only own like 15% of the company or something. So it's no, it's not really that big a deal, but it's a big enough deal that I regret it.

And do you, do you just own the rest pretty much?

I gave some equity to early people.

That's cool.

Besides that, 15 or 20%, I forget the exact number. It's all employee or me-owned.

Yeah, the reason I bring that up is just because I think I've been trying to feature more people who are taking this approach.

I think that like raising money isn't bad. I just think that like, first of all, like we all start businesses, mostly all start businesses to make money. And also it's like fun or fulfilling or what do you want to— however you want to describe it. But I just think that in most cases you can actually get way richer and have more fun without raising money. In some cases, that is not the case. And if you want to risk it and get after it and try that, I— and you think that will make you happier or you just like have that need, I support it. I'm definitely not fundamentally against raising money. Like, the reason Uber is way bigger than Lyft is because they raised way more money. A lot of the cool shit that we have in our life, like this Apple computer, I mean, they're publicly traded and they raised money. Like, they needed a lot of capital to do that. And I'm so happy they did because they've made this amazing product that I like. But I just think that like there's way more interesting ways to build a business than just relying on venture capital that more people should consider exploring before they raise.

So let's take the other sort of players, the legacy media and some new media like Vox, let's say, as an example, because I've heard you talk about them.

Yeah, I hate that company.

Yeah. So let's go into that. So like what? And I'm not trying to get anyone sued, but we can just talk about it openly. Like, what is it about their approach that kind of riles you up?

First of all, there's like legacy media companies which are like magazines or I don't know, whatever, like pre-2010, um, then there's— or pre-2005. Then there's like the BuzzFeeds and Voxes of the world, which are like legacy digital media companies. So they're not definitely not old, but they're like some of the bigger first wave. And a lot of those companies, like I think BuzzFeed and Vox I think are just horrible companies. I think that they, um, their editorial teams care more about impressing other editorial people than they do providing value to the customer, which is the reader. I think that they aren't creative. I think it's a circle jerk of a bunch of New York people copying each other, and they're not even copying good ideas. They're copying mediocre ideas from mediocre companies. Um, I think that there's very few people who are bold and trying something interesting and new. I think that they think about their customer as some like number on their Google Analytics and not like, hey, look, I'm here to give you— I'm servicing you. I am here to be your servant and provide so much value that you're going to— you know what I mean? And I don't think they actually think like that. I think just how do I, how do I win an award? How do I make— get this byline that's fancy? And I think it's incredibly selfish and not consumer-focused at all.

I've heard you talk a little bit about like the contradiction of fake news as well, because we— and again, I'm not trying to get political at all because that's the last thing I want to do right now especially, but just that term fake news which the president has used about—

which is real, by the way. Yeah, that is real. As someone who has been associated with clickbait websites, I wouldn't say clickbait equals fake news, but I will tell you that I know how to manipulate numbers and manipulate what web traffic, which you probably do too. You worked in marketing, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, it's like, it's pretty straightforward, like how to do that. And I think it's pretty unethical, but I know how to do it and I'm telling you it's possible for sure.

Well, I think the big thing which I've seen, like companies like Trends or products like Trends, even the Athletic, which, which isn't exactly in the same mold as you, they raise a bunch of money, but they're—

which I love.

Yeah. And they're doing something which is like subscription only for sports. But just like, I'm subscribed to both of those products and I love reading Athletic now. Like, I haven't had sports journalism like this for years because their incentive is not just to get me to click onto a site, it's for me to go and engage and say after 5 minutes of reading, oh, that was really good, I'm gonna keep paying these guys money, you know.

It's a spectrum. So like, um, a subscription-based service is like on the right side, and but you could still like, you still in some sense want to give your people exactly what they want to make them happy. So there's definitely still reasons why you manipulate your content. But it's a spectrum, meaning you manipulate it less. Then on the far left side of that is like, uh, clickbait websites from like Outbrain, where you like have to have like crazy headlines. You don't give a shit if you're being honest or not. All you're trying to do is a pure ad arbitrage where you get a penny click and you hope to make 2 cents per page view. And then so you just drive page views as hard as you can. Then A little bit, a few clicks over to the right is like Facebook viral stuff. So like a BuzzFeed, like I'm gonna create these viral campaigns. I'm gonna look at what gets popular on social. I'm gonna go headline first. Then I'm gonna work my way down to just how do I fill the content to fit the headline and image? And if you're that, your, your writers are incredibly not, they're not incentivized to be truthful. Although you can be truthful, you are ultimately incentivized to increase the click-through rate through your Facebook picture.

Yeah.

And then, you know what I mean? So it's all about that. Then a few clicks over is email newsletters, which is my business. And I don't make more money for necessarily having more sensationalized stuff. Although, that's not true. I will say, it is less important for me to do that. Because I have to build loyalty. I have to get you to consume me every single day. And so if I get too sensationalist, then you're going to say, well, you're full of shit. I'm never going to trust your brand. Like, you're always, you're always crying wolf. But at the same time, I can definitely manipulate the headline or the subject line. And if you have advertisers that way, like you, you, you like, you still can't say some stuff. Like, otherwise it's like, oh, I might be in trouble if I say this. Then a few clicks over, you have the combination of advertising and subscription, in which, like, you could— like, with that, we do— like, I could— if any advertiser bails, I could be just like, ah, fuck them. Like, I'm not gonna not do that because this person doesn't want it, because I have money through subscription. Like, you know what I'm saying? And then I would say one click over to that, to the right, then that's where you're like a pure subscription play, where it's like, I just have to make my consumers happy. I don't have any other third party who I have to please. And in that case, like, it doesn't make sense for me to like lie a lot, um, you know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. And I think a lot of people who have— I've heard you talk about this before where you said you can create a $50 million business with, with paid-only newsletters alone with maybe 4 or 5 writers.

Oh, I think you could make— I think it could be bigger than that. I mean, there's some— I know I can tell you of some companies that are definitely, um, like, I don't really like their ethics, but they make $1.5 billion a year off paid newsletters.

This kind of model, I think I know the company you're talking about. I forgot what they're called now, but they're—

Agora.

Agora, exactly. So, and they're kind of associated with kind of like, I don't want to say scammy, but like these landing pages you'll see that are like long form, which I know you're a fan of in some ways. But I—

yeah, look, it's a huge company. Not everything they do is spammy or bad, but they did get sued recently for trying to sell a cure to diabetes as a book. So like, yeah, they're like, that's a horrible thing to do and you should go to hell for that. But that doesn't mean the entire company is bad.

We got you, man. Um, so I just want to dig into that a little bit more. So you talked about bad incentives, you know, and, and I think a lot of the time it's not even out of, you know, intention. It's just like what people know. They don't think outside the box. They don't even know it's possible to get people to pay you millions and millions of dollars in straight subscription. Um, and this— there's only a few companies I see even doing it now at that level.

I think there's more than you think. Really? That's something that has surprised a lot of people, which when I tell, 'cause I'm like a miniature historian, I like to like go and dive and break things down and understand exactly how things work. And there's more, and before I started my business, I was like, there's no way I can create a paying subscription. That's way outta my league. No one wants that. And I've learned that one, like just do the math, it's possible. Two, I could tell you loads of examples that I previously didn't know. That are huge and way better businesses. Like, look at The Economist. They have been around for probably 100 years, like, and they're small. The Economist is not big. They have a great brand, but like, they still do like $350 million a year in subscription sales. I mean, there's like, there's a ton of examples. There's The Motley Fool. The Motley Fool does $400 million a year in subscription newsletters. So like, there's way, there's a lot more examples than you think. And then there's so many examples of people who do $5 to $10 million.

For some people, they say you should start with a free product and then ladder up to paid premium. I've heard you say that you could do both and you can start straight up with just a paid from day one, but you did have the hustle to start with, right? And you'd built that up as a free. Do you still think that's the case or not really?

Yeah, so look, my opinion is I think you can start paid early on. That said, that's not what I did. So if someone criticizes me and say, well, that's not what you did, I would say, yeah, totally fair criticism. Take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because, you know, what I'm telling someone to do is not what I did. So I think that when we launched Trends, it made like many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first day in subscription revenue, which is great. And I had the hustle to do that. Had I just started it from scratch, I wouldn't have been able to do it. That said, one example, The Athletic, they did it recently. I mean, they raised a ton of money to do it. So But nonetheless, they did it. Um, some of these Substackers are doing it. I think that it would take a lot, a longer time, but I think you can do it. And I also think that like, if you have a paid product, it doesn't matter if it's information or you're selling cars, like you have to get good at sales and marketing and having a free email list like I did, that's just marketing. So, you know, build a big Twitter following, build a big social following, get good at cold calling companies and asking them to buy it from you. So like, yeah, it's totally possible. Like, because like, does— did everyone who started a software company have a huge audience at first? No, definitely not. So how the hell did they do it? They figured it out.

Let's go into that a little bit more in terms of if we were starting today and we wanted to do a paid newsletter and you weren't Sam Parr, you didn't have 1.5 million people on your list, but you were starting in 2021 even because we're near the end of the year. I've heard you talk a little bit about what— how you would start, but I'd love to go into it a little bit more detail. The first one, you're going to have to pick a niche or an area, right? So I've heard you talk about B2B because people are willing to pay for stuff. I've heard you talk about price points of $500 to $1,000 a year, which is actually— or maybe, maybe even more. So like, if someone's listening to this and says, okay, cool, I mean, I believe you, there's money to be made here.

Which topic, which industries that you enjoy learning about?

Let's say cricket, because it's very— it's like something that isn't popular here but is Globally is—

I know nothing about cricket. Does— do people get recruited out of high school to play cricket?

Uh, no, I don't think so. I don't think so.

Um, what's the business of cricket? Like, where's money to be made?

So the money nowadays— and I'm not an expert either, um, that's okay— in India there's something called the IPL, which is like, uh, Indian Premier League or something. And that is mad money with endorsements because there's like a billion people in India and everyone loves cricket. And then globally that's become a huge moneymaker. I believe.

Which company spends the most on the IP, whatever it's called, the Cricket League?

You mean like sponsors or—

No, like which part of the business? Oh, is sponsorships the biggest one?

I assume so, but I don't actually know. So I mean, I think like you see Pepsi, you see this.

Let's say it's sponsors. Let's say it's sponsors. Let's say $1 billion a year collectively is how much is sponsored through the Cricket League. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm making all of this up, but let's just say What I would do is if that is true, if that's a big enough market, is I would go out and I would, I would call all of the reps. I would look on LinkedIn and I would say, oh, Pepsi sponsors cricket. Who is the person in charge of that? And I would contact that person and I would say, look, I'm starting a news service where I'm going to talk to, let's say there's only 500 people in that whole industry. I would say, look, I'm going to get all 500 people. I'm going to get all 5. I'm going to cover all 500 of you. This is going to be like— and I would make it like a high school newspaper. And my high school is these 500 people. And each week I would say Dave from Pepsi is saying that their return on their cricket sponsorship is X, Y, and Z. What they've noticed is that the best way to optimize that is by tweeting live during the game. Here's what Dave had to say. Well, you know, so we've been doing this thing. It's been working wonderfully. We're thinking about doing this, this, and this. And then I would say at the bottom of the email, if you want to talk about Dave, he's in the private community, go ahead and click here and talk to Dave. And I would go out and I would get all 500 people. I would say, look, here's the price to join this community. It's a newsletter and community. It's $5,000 a year. And if you hate it— and I'm going to launch it next week— if you hate it in the first month and you get zero ROI, you tell me and I won't ask any questions. I'll give you your money back. And I have a feeling that if I did this, I could pre-sell 10 or 20 of these and that would finance a little bit of the business. And then as I got going, I would just dominate the whole cricket sponsorship market. And then I would say, "Hey Dave, what else you guys sponsoring?" And he would say, "What's a sport? Is cricket in India?

What's a sport in India that's popular?" I mean, they like football, soccer, football as well, I think, but I don't know how big it is in terms of League.

Great, football. So I would say, Dave, I'm gonna expand to the soccer vertical next. Um, who at your company is doing that? You doing that? Let's talk. Okay, let's get you— let's get those soccer guys signed up. I'm gonna go hire about 5 soccer reporters and I'm gonna have a new soccer community. That's what I would do.

Got you. So just to clarify, you're talking about in this case IPL, Indian Premier League, or whatever it's called, that this like a newsletter for the business people within that, not necessarily fans.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You're saying like where the money is being made.

I want to go after where the money is being made. I don't want to go because that's, that's so, it's so boring and there's so much less competition. And if I can make it kind of cool, I bet you I would crush it.

Love it.

By the way, this idea that I just gave you, someone can make $1 million a year doing that. I would bet my life.

Definitely, man. I love that. No, that's, that's a great place to start. Now, one of the questions in the Trends group that I'm in and get a lot of value from, so people listening should join it as well, which is your group. People were asking about if you were starting this B2B sort of newsletter, like who are you— if you're, if you're bootstrapping this and you don't raise money for it, like you're saying, where are you hiring writers for this?

You might need to raise some money in the sense of like hopefully you've saved $10,000 or $20,000 and you're like, I mean, look, for any business that you start, almost any business, you need startup capital. Like even if it's as little as $500 to buy a domain name and a website builder. But like, you definitely— for this business, I don't want to say like you could start with nothing. You could, but you'd have to convince people to work for free. Or you could, and you'd have to be really good at pre-selling, but you likely would save a whole like a 6 to 12 months of time if you did have about $25,000. And, uh, for writers, I would probably just do the writing myself. If you can't do the writing yourself, I mean, if you can't do the writing yourself, you just go on LinkedIn and you look at who's the bigger, the biggest B2B media company people. And then you just contact these reporters and be like, hey, I'll pay you $200 a story. And you create like an editorial calendar and you start banging them out.

Is that how you've done it? That's how you found Stefan Truong? I mean, Truong, it sounds like you were, someone recommended him.

When we started the company, I was the writer. I wrote everything. I'm a good writer. I'm not great, but I'm good. And I'm good enough to get the ball rolling. Trung's, like Trung and Steph are great. I'm good. Good was enough to get us to a couple million bucks in revenue. Then I got, my goal is to get good at hiring.

So let's go, like we found a writer, we're writing on a weekly basis or whatever that is, right? We're doing the cold calling, we're getting those people to spread the word within their companies. You're starting to get maybe a few hundred people subscribing. What about the next kind of big milestones, like 1,000, 10,000 subscribers? Like Is that just repeating that process?

You could probably just completely wing it to get to a million, just like pure brute cold calling people.

You mean a million revenue, not subscribers, right?

Yeah, a million revenue.

Yeah.

And then to get to 1 to 10, you hire a sales team and you say, here's what I'm doing, rinse and repeat now. And then you could boot— you could get that to $10 million in revenue or $5 million probably. And then to get beyond that, you got to say, all right, Let's start innovating. And then you start innovating and coming up with new ideas, and then you tell yourself how to do it. You say, get after it. And then you, you rinse and repeat probably every $20 million in sales.

I agree with you in theory, but I'm just trying to think from the listener's point of view, who's someone who's been doing this for 6, 12 months, maybe a few years on the side, and they haven't maybe fully committed to it, or they've not seen the traction. And there's clearly obviously lots of people that are in that position, right? And maybe it's because their content isn't good enough. Maybe it's because they haven't been consistent. But like, what are the common— are there certain things you see where people are really messing up regularly and you're like, okay, I can just see clearly they're messing up here?

Pricing. Yeah, I think most people are bad at pricing. I think Trends is way underpriced, so we're coming up with more expensive things. It's really hard to scale your way with really cheap products. Like, it's hard to make a killing if you only charge $5 a month. So I would say pricing is a big mistake.

As we kind of look at growth again, you talked about rinse repeat in that process. You've hired writers, you're banging it out, you're finding some sort of traction. Are there certain indicators that you're looking for, like, that this is really resonating? Because I think everyone who's listening to this who's created something before, they might have been at a point where you're like, okay, some people like it, my mom likes it, but she's being nice to me, you know. But like, like with Trends, I just told you, I go back and I write notes, and that is not most newsletters. So are there certain things you're looking out for as indicators that you're really hitting a nail there?

Well, I'll try to be practical and tell you as specific numbers as I can, but what I'm going to have a massive caveat, which is this is totally an art and that part is very, very hard. That problem of is this working or is this not working? Answer the problem of how do I answer that question? That's super hard. That is very hard. It's a gut feeling sometimes. But in terms of numbers, I would say that if we have less than a 50% open rate, it's not that interesting. Um, now I just really want to be— say that like everyone's different. So like, I don't want this to be like a rule. Um, I would also say that like, if your NPS is not at least 70 early on, you haven't hit it.

And that's net promoter score for people who aren't aware. Like, how do you guys measure that? Is that literally just like, you know, those little smiley faces?

Yeah, we just have like a smiley face, a mild face, and then an upset face. And we do the math. And early on it was in the 90s. And I'm like, I'm like, hell yeah. Like, people like it. Like, we're on to something. And I would also say that if you talk to 10 or 20 customers, you can definitely catch a pattern. But at the same time, people— I don't care what people say they want. I try to listen to what they say they think they want, and I try to figure out why do they think they want that, and then I try to come up with a solution. I'm not listening to— like, everyone's gonna say like, yeah, like, make it a video, and I'm like, no. Like, I don't tell them that. In my head, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not making a video. Instead, I'll say, well, why do you want that? Well, the email is just too long. And I say to myself, okay, does that mean that I'm just not a good writer? Does that mean that I'm just not interesting? Does that just mean that, or does it mean like, ooh, I kind of want you to think that it's long and overwhelming because then you're gonna think that that's worth the money. Or like, do you know what I'm saying? Like I don't, and by the way, maybe the answer is yeah, I should do video. But when I listen to my customer, I don't think like, like on the Facebook group, everyone complains that they hate Facebook. And if I listened to them, I would have taken it off Facebook. But they, they don't understand that they, they maybe they hate Facebook, but they love the fact that there's so much activity in the community and that community would be completely dead if it weren't on Facebook. So, so like I try to like listen not to what they're telling me, they, the solution they think that they want, but what is, what are the problems they think they have? And I'll come up with an interesting solution to solve that problem.

Yeah, I think probably one of the best pieces of advice I've ever got was give people what they need, not what they want, because often people don't actually know what they want. And like what you were saying there is digging a layer deeper, you're finding the need because they think there's a solution they want. Like, just one example for me is like ads on YouTube, right? No one likes those stupid annoying ads, right, where you have to skip, but you basically just wait 5 seconds. But so many people will say, I hate those ads, and then YouTube Premium comes out and you only have to pay $10 a month to get rid of them, and you don't pay. So like, that's the transaction is actually in a weird way, the closest form to truth you have, you know, did you value it enough to actually pay?

And by the way, like if we ask people what they want, like Steve Jobs wouldn't have come up with the iPhone and you'd be like, hey, you want a computer in your pocket? Like, no, my computer works real, like, you know what I mean?

You also mentioned ads there. And I know that's something that you might not have done like from day one, but at some point you did and ads really helped you grow. And now I know recently Um, one of the interesting things I saw through like the summertime is our boy Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, right? Um, I saw you guys, Trends.co, actually sponsored— I think you were his first sponsor when he was doing his Davey Day trading.

We were.

And my friend Marcus and I, who listens to the show, we were texting each other saying— because we've been following Dave, what he's doing, because it's hilarious. And I was like, oh, wait a minute, that's Trends. What are they Like, I didn't even know he was doing ads. So I'd love for— could you just share that story? Like, how did that even come about? And it sounds like it worked quite well for you.

It worked. I can't take credit for it, but I can tell you what happened. It wasn't my idea. We had a guy who worked here, Adam, and he was friendly with the sales guy at Barstool. And we were thinking about doing something. And then the sales guy was just like, hey— or no, maybe we reached out to him. I think Adam reached out to him. He was like, hey, this Davey Day Trader thing is interesting. Like, what's the rate? And the guy just put something together and we, and we pulled the trigger. And the good news, it was effective. The bad news is, is that like the people who love Dave Portnoy, I mean, I love Dave Portnoy, but like he also has like a ton of like idiots who love him. And like you don't really always want those types of people joining your community.

Yeah.

But in terms of like making money, we definitely did.

Did you see a lot of those people churn?

Yeah, you did.

Okay, so that's interesting. I've also heard you talk about giveaways. Right. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but you did a Tesla giveaway.

Yeah, it was like 100,000 people.

That's crazy.

But it wasn't worth it. It was only break even.

Really? Okay. Have you done giveaways another way that you felt it has worked?

Totally. When you give away something that's unique, like, and my team never does it well and I need to talk to them about doing it. But when you give away something unique, that can work. A Tesla I thought was going to be unique, and it wasn't that unique because there's all these— there's basically a shit ton of stay-at-home moms, and they all— they do is like find— there's like giveaway websites, and they all go to it, and they like game it, and they like— these like stay-at-home moms like love this stuff. Um, they love giveaways, and like they enter all of them, and they enter with so— it's like an underground— it's like an underground like web of people who enter a contest, and a lot of them win money off of it. It's pretty nuts. But anyway, they always get a hold of our giveaways, and it sucks.

It hasn't maybe worked in the same way.

No, I would say that it's been valuable, but it's not like a home run.

Yeah, I think what's interesting is, again, it comes back to incentives and like the KPIs you're measuring, right? Because if you're— if you're— if let's say you had an investor, an investor was like, until you hit this number, you're not getting the next valuation, you might just do whatever it takes to get to that number. And but, but the incentive for you is actually, no, I want these people to keep paying forever.

And if you just want to— if you just want emails, giveaways are awesome. If you want to build a loyal audience that's so loyal they'll buy products from you, a giveaway is only okay.

Cool. Um, last question on, on the newsletter piece. Um, it's cool we went through the cricket example and some others that are random, but just from your perspective in the B2B space, are there a few categories that you think are really ripe for someone creating this?

Yeah, first of all, let me just say I'm not that well versed on the industries that are interesting, but a few that come to mind are— I would probably do— so the way the threshold that are like the formula in my head would be TAM multiplied by buying power, and then where's the least competition. And, um, and so by buying— oh, and then yeah, yeah, yeah, buying power. So, but buying power would mean to me is like Basically, that equation is like, if there's only 100 buyers of like 747 jets in the country, but they buy a jet at $20 million, that's like kind of interesting. But if there's only 100 people who buy like $100 uniforms, that's not that interesting. But if there's a million of them, then like, okay, that's kind of interesting. So that's like the equation I would do. And off the top of my head, I would say probably operators of nursing homes. Because I think that's actually going to grow. I would say like anyone interested in like the nursing home industry, um, anyone interested in the construction, like I would go after a niche in the construction industry because the construction industry has massive amounts of money and I could easily sell a subscription or an advertisement at a very high rate because I say to myself, look, you're buying a million dollars worth of equipment this year. If I can just help you a little bit, it's going to be worth it to you. So that's like an easy sell. I would also look at the nursing industry because there's a massive amount of nurses. And so I think I could appeal to them. And the cool thing about nursing is that the barrier to entry is relatively low. I mean, like, you don't need to be a— you don't need to get a— necessarily have a PhD to get a nursing job. Yet the salary is quite high, so the spending power is high. So that's why that's interesting to me.

I like that. And I think someone listening to this might think, oh, they're super random. But that's kind of what I love about your approaches. You're going after like sexy industry or unsexy industries a lot of the time where it makes a lot of sense when you look at the numbers and less people are playing in that market.

Yeah. And by the way, like my— the way that I would execute any of that stuff, it would be sexy. Like I would make it cool. Like I would like make it like either like so nerdy that it's kind of funny and cool. But like if I like wrote for nursing home industries, like I would make a joke like, you know, like today we're celebrating the centenarians. Like Tom, who owns this nursing home, said he has 8 people who turned 100 years old. Congratulations, Tom. Like, you know what I mean? Like I would make it like cute, like so I can make it like kind of funny.

I love that. That's a perfect segue into the next segment, which is all about something I think you're one of the best people at, and you might play it down, but I think you're a great copywriter. And I've heard you talk about the importance of copywriting. Um, before we get into the details of what that, what that really means and how to be better at it, I've heard you talk about, um, copywriting helped you convince your wife to be with you. Yeah, what do you mean by that? And like, what's the story there?

Uh, above copywriting is persuasion. So I always tell people, I'm like, dude, I don't care if you're in business or in love, like get good at persuading people because like, we're going to— I'm like, we're going to persuade our wives or our husbands to marry us. We're going to persuade them to go on a date with us. I'm going to persuade my— I'm going to persuade this landlord that I'm like worthy of renting their apartment. Like, I'm going to persuade everyone to do anything for the rest of my life. So I get good at persuading people. And so copywriting is one below that, which is just persuading people via words. Like the written word. The way that I met my wife was pretty funny. Like, I like learned how, like, there's this formula called AIDA, attention, interest, desire, action. And I just use that on my wife, who's actually somewhere in the room. She probably hears this. I used that on her, on her. So when I saw her, I like just said like the most outrageous pickup line just to be like, I didn't care if it was obnoxious. I just had to say something to grab her attention that was different than anything she'd ever heard before. And that's like a a copywriting technique, and that's what I did.

Do you remember what the pickup line was? I would be doing a bad job if I didn't ask.

Um, yeah, it was super inappropriate, but I'll say it, uh, and you guys can like bleep it out after if it's too bad. But, uh, it was, um, here, come here, Sarah, I'm doing a podcast. This is my wife. Let's look at her face when I say this. So I said, um, what's the difference between a chickpea and a lentil. I don't pay $400 to have a lentil on my face.

God.

Get it? Get it. $400 to have a chick pee on my face.

Okay, well it worked, so I think.

It worked.

That's a free one.

My kids, when you said it to me, it was like. Yeah, she was shocked. But it was so surprising that it kind of worked. See, I told you. So he's talking to me about copywriting. That was the attention-getting headline and I did it on her and it worked.

That's hilarious.

By the way, my wife is like a very sophisticated Ivy League, New York woman. So if I'm not— we're not like some raunchy— I'm not, or I am, but she's not like some crude. But that's why it worked.

No, I got you, man. No, I mean, she had a sense of humor and she knew it stood out. So you got the attention and then you got interest and you worked your way down. So let's, let's talk about ADA for a minute because I think a lot of people listening to this may have heard of it. But if you've done any kind of business or marketing 101 class, it's the funnel essentially, right? Attention, interest, desire, action, right? There's variations of that, but essentially you're kind of getting attention, you're working your way down, and then the action at the end is a CTA, call to action. Like, and maybe in this case it was to get your wife's number, or on a, on a Trends newsletter, it's like click here to subscribe, or a landing page.

Yeah, so no, Ada, grab someone's attention by, uh, stopping them in the tracks and getting them to read the second line of your copy I is curiosity. Interest is tell them interesting facts that get them to fall down the slippery slope and think this is amazing. D is desire. So tell them more facts specifically about the product that you're trying to sell and why it's intriguing. And then action is very specific steps. So for example, if I'm going to convince you to drink more water, every fact I'm just going to say is completely made up, but let's just assume it's true because whatever. If I'm going to convince you to drink more water, I'm going to say, hey, have you ever noticed big meatheads walking around with gallons of jugs of water at the gym? That's my, that's my attention-getting headline. My in my eye is they're doing that because people who drink water grow their muscles by 30% more than people who don't. So that's my one-liner that I'm going to get you interested in your head. You're like, Oh, really? Water does that? Now I'm going to make you desire water by saying, you see, when your muscles tear and they— they— let's see, when your muscles tear, they then repair themselves bigger than before. And that is what a muscle is. And they use water as the chemical to repair them faster. So the more water you drink, the bigger— in fact, the bigger your muscles get Faster. Okay, that's how I make you desire it. So if you want big muscles, you need to drink water. Now here's my A, my action. More specifically, you need to drink at least a gallon of water per 100 pounds of body weight a day. Um, you could drink any water if you want. Our water has a little bit more chemical in it that makes it grow a little bit faster. But you could drink any water. So go to the store right now and buy it at this store. And if you go right now, it's gonna be on sale. But also, if you want, just go to your, your, your sink and empty a, a, a gallon of milk that you're using, empty gallon of milk, wash it out, and just make sure you drink at least 1 gallon for every 100 pounds every 24 hours. That's how I'm gonna convince you to drink water instead of saying, drink water, it's good for you.

Got you. Got you. I think a big thing a big part of that is headline, right? You talked about like something that catches your attention. I've read one of your articles, I forgot where it was, maybe on like copywriting course or something like that. Um, it's a little old, but I actually go back to it all the time to reference it because I think it's really good. Um, you talk about like 90% of the success of an article is the headline.

Well, I would say 97% of the—

really?

Okay. Because, because, because think about it, if you're advertising this on Facebook, more likely than not, only 1% of people are going to click the article. If you do a little bit better, then maybe 3% of people are going to click it. So like the difference, you know, I'm appealing to the 3% of people who will ever click this thing, or hopefully if I'm really good, 5 or 10%. So I would say that the headline counts for 90 to 99% of the, of the success.

And so what makes a headline better? You gave an example there, which isn't just like factual, there's some emotion in it, there's maybe a change or there's something that just captures your attention. But if we were trying to be more specific about what makes a better headline, is there anything that comes to mind?

The long answer is there's like 20 to 50 different varieties that you can do that are proven to work. If I had to summarize it in one line, I would call it— I would say mind the gap. You're British, you understand. Mind the gap. It's the curiosity gap. So I want to say one sentence that my only goal of my headline is to get you to read my second sentence. And the way that I'm going to do that is minding the gap. So I'm going to grab your curiosity, but I'm not going to release the, the tension in the headline, but I'm going to make you click me or read the second sentence in order to get the release of that tension. So I'm trying to build a little tension in that first headline, and I'm going to do it by saying like a really bad example is like see what this celebrity is doing now. That's like a bad example. But there's a famous example about the Wall Street Journal that I was just looking at yesterday because I love that one. Let me actually look at the headline. It's a great headline. The Tale of Two Young Men: The Million Dollar Subscription. And then it's a story about two young men who had the same upbringing and they were friends with each other. But at the age of 18, one of them bought a subscription to the Wall Street Journal and one of them didn't. And the one that did, like, started this huge— who started this huge business. And so the headline is The Tale of Two Young Men, the, like, the million-dollar subscription. And it's like, that's very fair. Anyone who's into making money, that's it. What is it? What is this thing?

And I think that brings up, like, I had— I don't know if you've seen the Instagram account or Twitter account Visualize Value, where the guy—

yeah, yeah.

So I had him on last week. Yeah. So, um, and we talked about something similar, which was like a good story often has a change, right? Like, so, so there's— if you look at like the traditional like diet pill ad, right, is look at this person, or like a fitness program before and after, like, or the transformation of a person. The other big thing is like finding ideas to write about. And, and in this article you've, you've talked about like some sources you've used in the past, like Reddit, Quora, CrowdTangle is one which I haven't used before. Um, that— but this was a few years ago, so I'm curious, like, if you're looking for interesting stuff and your team finds the most hilarious and interesting unique stuff, like, where are you guys looking for this and finding it on the corners of the internet?

I would say that's definitely like an art, so that's hard to teach. But if I had it— I mean, if I had to like give simple tips, I would say Reddit's definitely the best. The, the comments section of Reddit I think is the best. The comments section of any articles I think is the best. Like, for example, here's a— here's something I would create today if I wanted to go viral, but I don't give a shit about this topic, so I would never do it. But what I love to do is every single morning I go to Fox News and I go to HuffPo, which are like, I think, opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of news, political spectrum. And for every popular article, I scroll over and I click the comment section. There was a trend on Fox News where every single top comment on all of the articles about Trump was, as a Democrat, I hope that Trump recovers. I wish ill will on, on no one or something like that. And so, like, apparently— so apparently with that conservative crowd, there was this sentiment and it was— these were all of the most popular comments by upvotes. There is this sentiment, there's this idea of like someone from the other side being like, I may disagree with you, but I don't want you to be sick. So I like— again, I don't care about this demographic. I don't care about this audience. But in my head I go, if I wanted to go viral, I would write an article and I would say 10 Democrat senators, all massive anti-Trumpers, wished Trump well during his illness. Here's who and what they said. And I would bet my life based off the validation of those Fox News articles that that article would go popular.

Uh, for sure. Now, Reddit, I think, is such a—

I mean, was that a good example? Yeah, that was a good example.

I like that because there's two extremes as well, and just how, how they would be different. Um, you— I've heard you talk about kind of like a big third step in this is making it readable, right? And I think I've got a quote here about editing somewhere that Ogilvy said, said something along the lines of, I'm not a great writer, but I'm a great editor, or something like that. Um, and Ogilvy is like one of the fathers of advertising, one of the OGs. So I've heard you talk about like the best sort of articles you've seen spread are either less than 500 words or more than 2,000. Like, why is that? Why is that the sweet spot from your experience?

So we do these things, we do these— well, that's, that's just a data-driven— I mean, that's a—

yeah, that's, that's just one part of it.

Yeah. Well, I would say that like that 500 to 1,000 thing, that was just like that. I made that point because I looked at, or someone looked at, like 10,000 articles and like the data showed that. So that's not like me making it up, but I will say that that's a little bit outdated because it's harder to go viral now. But like quick hit stuff that's headline driven goes viral, and then things that also go viral tend to be like really, really long in-depth reads. So if we were to go and look at thehustle.co and look at which of our things get the most search, it's all of our articles that are like 5,000 words. Like, and the reason why that's the case is because out of 100 people who visit, maybe only 20 will— like, okay, so if 100 people visit a website, or if 100 people visit an article that's 500 words or less, maybe 90% of them will read the whole article, but only 1% of the 90, so What's that come out to be? Let's say 10% of the 90, so 9 people will share. So 9 people share that article. Now, if it's a long-form article, maybe only 25% of them are going to read all 5,000 words, but I bet 90% of those 25 people will share. So you now have, I can't do math, but 22 shares.

Yeah, got you, got you.

So you got 22 people to share something versus just 9. So that's typically why the longer stuff will do the best because yeah, less people will consume it, but the people who do consume it totally love it and the engagement's higher and they share.

Yeah, no, it's actually one of the reasons I love like podcasts is because there's a, people look at views and numbers, which of course are really important, right? But like there's a certain amount of, connection you make with a listener or a reader when something is deeper. And if someone's still listening to this after an hour, like, they really love this, that they've stayed on this long, you know. So I think there's an interest in— and I think it's also an anti— it's the opposite of another trend that we've had for the last 10 years, which is everything summarized, everything shorter, which of course shorter is generally better if there's excess stuff. But that also didn't give any room for nuance.

I agree with you. And I never say that long or I do joke. I mean, I do say long is better for copywriting, but what I really mean is this sounds paradox, like a paradox, but it's not. And that's you never, you don't want to have one useless word. Every word has to serve a purpose and you want to trim everything that's excess and not important to your copy. But that doesn't mean do it short. A lot of times you need a lot of space to explain something or a lot of space to sell. So don't make it longer than you need, but for sure, always trim the fat. And it's just like sometimes you've trimmed all the fat and it's still like 5,000 words. Okay, then it's 5,000 words.

Yeah. No, that's exactly how I feel. It's like it should be as long as it needs to be, but as, as short as it can possibly can as well.

That's a better— that's a far better way to say it. Yeah.

Last part of this on the copywriting side. Thanks for sharing this. In this article that I was mentioning that you wrote, there was the last part is distribution, of course, like maybe one of the most important parts. And this is a few years old, but you said that email is the best form of distribution. At the time, Facebook was the second best method of distribution. Maybe that's changed now. And you said Twitter more like shitter. At the time. But I know you've been more active on Twitter.

That's so funny.

Yeah, that's funny. I love how you probably don't remember writing this by this point.

No, I mean, I do. That's hilarious. I did used to call it Twitter shitter. Twitter has had a massive resurgence, so I would say that is no longer shitter.

Yeah, got you.

Facebook is shitter. Email, I think, is is still number one. I know, and I would also put like, uh, I would put Facebook at the bottom, and I would put— I would go probably— it depends, like, for my audience, Twitter's best. In order of which I would rather have: an email audience, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok.

And I, I think someone was asking this online recently, and I replied to it as well. Why email? I think it's straightforward. It's owned. You can deliver 100%, and maybe 50% of people open or whatever it is. Direct relationship, you own it, no one could take it away from you. What about the next ones? Why, I think you said Twitter next.

No, I said YouTube next.

Oh, YouTube, okay. Yeah, I agree with that as well. Why YouTube?

Because when people watch, people watch YouTube on their computer, phone, and sometimes TV. The attention on YouTube is nuts. I mean, I could have a 30-minute video on YouTube and like capture people's attention. It's hard to do that on Twitter.

Yeah.

And the, the value of, uh, uh, the enterprise value of attention is minutes spent a day or minutes spent a month, we'll say, multiplied by number of people who consume, multiplied by the value of the person. So like you need 100 sports fans to probably equal like 10 doctors, you know what I mean? So like if you have like a ton of doctors watching you, that's far more value than having the equal amount of just sports fans, because doctors will have all have one interest that it's a have high buying power. And so with YouTube, you can like reel someone in for like 30 minutes. So like people who watch Casey Neistat, they genuinely feel they know him, and that's very valuable.

I agree. And I'd add one more thing to that, which is discoverability. So I actually tweeted about this last night, which was, you know, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. and people, a lot of people don't realize that. And like, so I did an interview with Rahul from Superhuman, and if you type in Rahul's name on internet, on YouTube, or even Google search, my interview with him shows up. If I try to rank for that in organic SEO, and I used to work at Google and YouTube, heads up as well, so my, uh, I'm slightly biased, but like, I love YouTube.

I love YouTube. I pay for it.

Me too.

I love it. I think YouTube is like the greatest news platform. I think YouTube is just the greatest thing. I think the kids on YouTube who crush it are like the most talented people of, uh, in our generation.

It's so difficult as well because I think especially when you're starting off, like I'm still pretty much starting-ish on YouTube as well, and you know, it's still a lot to learn. But you can just see the, like, even in the last month I've had a lot more people finding the channel and it's just because I've been posting more regularly I've been doing some other stuff as well. Um, but just, yeah, there's, there's just a discoverability that you don't get on Instagram anymore. And Twitter, you get a little bit of it. TikTok, you do get it to a certain extent while the algorithm's still good. Instagram used to be amazing for that, like maybe 4 or 5 years ago. Um, but I think it's like any of those patterns. Like you mentioned Facebook before, Facebook used to be amazing for that, and then they wanted you to pay for ads. So now the organic reach is 1 to 2%.

When did you work at YouTube?

For 7 years. So 2010 to 2017.

Damn, you got paid, brother. Yeah. Then you weren't there when this young— there was this young girl, Janelle Alana.

Okay.

Okay.

This girl, I probably will recognize it. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. This girl is like me and my wife, like, watch this woman for like hours. Like she made a video and then on day 3, she's a nobody. Like she's a— she's just a She was a nobody. She had no audience. And on day 3, she had a— like, she went from 0 to 1 million subscribers in like 4 days. And, uh, there's this young girl, she uses her iPhone and she lives in a van, and she's just so cute and like articulate for— and funny and wonderful. I love this young woman. And, um, she went— she now— she has 2.4 million subscribers. Crazy. You got this. It's pretty nuts.

And you know what's cool is that most— let's say 99% of people listening to this maybe have never heard of her, which I love because that means there's this like long tail. It's not even that— oh, it's really cool, by the way. Yeah, um, it's this long tail of people that have a million subscribers or more, and then it's even a longer long tail of 100,000 or more. And people just get so used to these crazy numbers, like 100,000 people is a stadium full of people, like that's a big stadium full of people, right? So People don't realize like how many people that is. And the other big thing is I think people compare Instagram, Twitter, etc. with YouTube and not realizing if you've got 1 million subscribers on YouTube, that is so valuable for the reasons you said before, versus just like someone who's willing to double tap to like a picture or like someone who likes a tweet. This is like deep engagement. The way I've kind of described it, and I stole this from someone else, Avinash Kaushik, who was on the show as well. He always talks about owned versus rented channels. And of course, like email is the closest we get to own channels right now. And there's the kind of a question of like platform risk is what some people describe it. So if you had built your business on Facebook 5, 6, 10 years ago, you got wiped out like a lot of the gaming companies did.

I still think you should do it like every— not every— many, many, many big companies had that same problem. And it's like, it's— I think it's okay to have that problem as long as you can get off of it. Amazon was Google's biggest spender. Amazon got built on Google. Wish.com, you know Wish?

Yeah, crazy.

Many people probably have no idea what they are. They're probably worth $20 billion. They make billions a year in sales. They're like an online dollar store. The only reason why they got famous was because they were the world's best Facebook ad marketers and they spent all of their money on Facebook and now they're a name brand. So like, I think that platform risk is good.

It's a good problem to have, I guess. But you need to think about it, I guess.

But on the converse side, on the other side, I have a friend named Joe Spicer who had this— he's one of my investors and a good buddy. He had this blog called Little Things, and he went to $0 to $40 million a year in sales in 3 years because he was the most viral website on Facebook. Also, the year it did like $40 million in sales. Literally a month after that, it went out of business because Facebook changed their algorithm. And he goes, uh-oh. And literally they went from 100 million uniques a month to like 2 million.

Yeah, that's kind of the big thing I think people don't even think about because at that time we have to also think like Facebook was kind of a new— there weren't many platforms like— well, there wasn't a platform like it at time that grew to that size. You know, there was MySpace and Hi5 and Bebo and stuff like that, but not like obviously Facebook scale. Now we're seeing the same pattern play out. Like, even with Instagram, we saw that like people growing and growing, and then things change and people aren't necessarily prepared for it. So I think the same will happen with TikTok and others as well. I think the same will happen with YouTube to a certain extent too, but I think the big difference with YouTube is there's just such a universe of of content out there. And it's— there's— I think there's more room for the long tail there because there is a straight up search engine, you know, versus just a feed.

Well, I like YouTube because even though that, like, everyone at Google, like, they're probably wonderful people, but as a company they're definitely pricks and they want to, like— they're out for themselves, right? Just naturally. They do a wonderful job because they realize it's in their best interest to do it. I guess what I mean is everyone is going to look out for their best interests and YouTube, I think, has learned that it's in their best interest to make the creators happy. And, or at least, at least they've done a better job than many other— like, they've done a better job than Facebook, that's for sure.

Yeah.

And, and even though the many creators hate YouTube, like, they've still done the best job of like cultivating that, you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, you would know more than everyone, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think from my experience, and I, I'm not an expert on it, but from my time there and speak— some of my best friends are still still in the team there. One of my clients was the head of, uh, YouTube product basically as well. So I know a little bit from that side that I just think that they, they optimize quite early on for time spent on site, you know. Like, so a lot of people don't realize, like, your algorithm, you know, it's not just about number of views you get on your video, it's about like how many people completed the video, how many people actually stay around and then go on to the next video and stuff like that. So That's why you'll see these clips will work quite well. So even for Joe Rogan, who's the biggest podcaster in the world, he really killed it on YouTube, not just because he had these 2-hour long-form interviews, but also because he was— they were putting up those little clips and they get shared and stuff like that.

And by the way, let me ask you a question. So you started working at Google in 2000, May 2013, or wait, no, you're looking at stock price or what? May, uh, January 2010. And you worked on YouTube?

Well, I worked in— I was in like the core Google sales team, which we covered YouTube, display, programmatic, search, everything.

What was that like seeing that? I mean, the reason I'm looking at— well, in 2010 you guys were already like a massive corporation.

It was a big company for sure. But it went from— yeah, are you asking like what was it like experience the big change?

Yeah, because you bought YouTube in 2009, right?

It was before I was there. So I think it was maybe even a year or two before. I can't remember the year. YouTube started in 2005.

So you kind of would have seen— YouTube go from like pretty popular to like, like the most popular.

Yeah. And I remember like one of my best friends, uh, I won't say their names just in case I say something I'm not supposed to, but they were managing like KSI, if you've heard of him, the guy in the UK.

Yeah, I love that guy.

Yeah, he's great. He's so— oh well, you're a big fighting fan too, right? And he did the boxing and stuff. So I remember KSI when he had like maybe tens of thousands of subscribers, and that was already quite big. And I remember hearing like he's playing FIFA and I'm like, well, I'm— I love FIFA, you know, like I can do this, you know. And I didn't, but— and I was just like, man, like what the hell is this? And I was only 20, I was like 21 when I joined, so I'm 32 now. So, um, and I remember just being like, who the hell is watching this stuff? And then just seeing it explode was kind of crazy. And then I remember there was a time when YouTube was investing, I think it was like $50 million in like doing originals with a lot of those guys and it's been cool. But what I've also loved are these other kind of channels. I had a guy, Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks, if you've heard of him, on the show, who's— they were the biggest news channel on YouTube and online when I interviewed him. And they— this guy was just recording in his kitchen for years, and now they've got like 6 or 8 or 10 million subscribers. So just to see that growth and the discoverability element is really cool. And then the last thing I'll say is just the entertainment side. Like, there's people that people listen to have never heard of who are making tens of millions of dollars around the world touring because they're stand-up comedians. And like, most people don't follow them, but they've got— like, there's one guy I'm thinking of, Andrew Schultz, who does a podcast with Charlamagne.

Uh, brilliant. I love him.

Yeah, he's great. And I don't know exact numbers, but like, they were selling out shows all around the world. They've got the number one Patreon in the world for comedy right now as well. So I just see people like them, their comedy is so flagrant, as they call it, that you can't, you can't really— they have advertisers, but they can't rely on just advertisers. So they kind of had to go down that route. So yeah, I definitely saw that. The other thing I'd mention is when I joined, I think like Google Chrome was only like a few single-digit percentage points, or I think Android, sorry, is what I'm thinking of. It was 4% market share, and I saw that grow to 80%. And I was on these threads every week and I would read and I would just be like, why don't people read these emails? And actually I heard you mention this recently that there's Facebook employees that don't even go to the all hands.

Yeah, my wife worked there and I was like, I was like, Sarah, like, are you crazy?

Like, yeah, it's crazy.

Like, like I was like, let's use business people because that's who I admire. I'm like, if, if Rockefeller hosted this thing every week, I would be there so often that he would get to know me and there'd be a 1 in 100 chance that he would eventually ask me to like, you know what, young man, you're kind of smart. Come here. I'd love you to lead this project. Like, are you crazy? I can't believe people— sorry, what were you saying?

No, no, no. Completely. I completely agree. And even honestly, beyond just making a connection, which is one thing, it was just like, these people built something that changed the world. Like, and I know we don't like saying that phrase anymore, but they generally, they've got satellites in the sky and we all use Google Maps every day. Like, these guys are real genius-level people. And just hearing them, the internal stuff that they would share, which now is becoming a problem— like, I would get these emails on the Android, from the Android team. I wasn't even on the Android team. I could just receive it because it was like open. And I was like, this— these guys are gonna like take over the ecosystem in certain regions unless I get to see close up like what they're doing. It's kind of crazy. So, um, that was one of the best things about being there, because beyond your core job, like, you can learn a lot in your core job, but for me The benefit of being at those companies is you get to see stuff you can't see elsewhere if they're open about it.

My last question for you, did you— because I tell a lot of people, like, I'm like, man, you should probably just work at a huge company, you'll knock it out the park. Did you make a lot of money because of your stocks? Um, your stock?

I made a decent amount of money. Well, I sold some throughout the years, but one of my friends who's actually moving here, I think he still hasn't sold, and he's been there now 10, 11 years. So that he's, yeah, doing great. But I sold it over the years because, you know, at the time I didn't want to have 50% of my net worth in just one stock. So I would kind of liquidate and then I'd buy like the S&P 500. And I actually bought Facebook stock too and all the others as well. So yeah, thankfully it worked out all right. But yeah, definitely still need to work. So not at that level. Just switching the gears for the last part now, um, is this part is kind of called Behind the Mind and is hopefully stuff I haven't heard you talk much about. Um, we'll just get straight into it. I've heard you talk about being emotionally stable is one of the most important things in being an entrepreneur or starting things and sticking to it. But I'm just curious, like, what are your— why do you think that's so important? And what, what have you done to get better at that?

Yeah, so what I tell people is, like, Bill— like, maybe some of the guys at Google and Android were geniuses, but like a lot of times the business part and product part is not like crazy intellectually challenging. Like, it's like, well, like this might work, and then if that doesn't work, this might work, this might work, this might work. And then it's like, all right, well, let's try this. All right, let's make that one. Like, oh, let's look at it. Oh, it didn't work. Okay, let's try the next. Like, it's just like a— it's not that hard, like, to think about stuff. I mean, like, you have guys like Elon Musk and they're like legit geniuses, and like Jeff Bezos is, but like you can legitimately become hundreds of millionaires and billionaires by like being like, it's like just straightforward, right? Like real estate is not like that challenging. You just got to have some balls and a lot of perseverance. But the hard part is the emotional, like, can I do this? Can I pull this off? Like, is this a good idea? Like, should I try this? Like, oh my God, I did it. Oh, this is going to fail. Everyone's going to think I'm stupid. How do I do this? There's— I'm way out of my league. No one's going to trust me. I'm going to look like an idiot. That part is the hard part.

Yeah, wears you down every day.

You, you, you've worked with probably like legit smart people who you're like, oh my God. But maybe, I don't know, is it true? Did you work with some people who weren't that smart but were pretty successful?

No, I think even just from my own work since, like, I, I think there's probably 3 to 5% of those businesses like Elon Musk, even Google to a certain extent, like parts of what they did early on was quite computer science heavy. I mean, all of what they do is computer science heavy, but you know, like, you do need to have a certain level of intelligence. But for 98% of business, you just need to be smart enough, which I think if you're listening to this, you probably already are that level, right? So, and I think actually some of the smartest people I found overcomplicate things, and then they didn't have the mental side. And that's kind of why I ask about it, because most of the people I know at Google who's still there, really smart people don't always love their job, but they kind of got the golden handcuffs, right? They've got the stock coming in, they're making $250,000, $500,000 a year by this point, maybe more, and they're just like, okay, I'm chilling. And like, they don't want to get into the trenches if they wanted— if that's something they want to do. If they want to stay there, that's completely understandable because it's a great option. But there's a lot of them, a lot of my really good friends, they say, I want to leave, but it's becoming harder. And then they get a kid, then they buy a house, and just become very difficult. So I think there's an element of you have to be smart enough, but really the harder part is like sticking to something, which sounds so cliché, but it really is. It's like when— so for example, when I post a video and it gets 3 views, I have to not care. Like I have to be like, all right, well, that's where I'm starting. That's where everyone's starting. But if I only care about, oh, my friends are going to think you left a big comfortable job at Google and you did this and now you've got 3 views. Then that's stupid, you know, and that's a natural thing to think. So I'm curious, like, have you— like, it sounds like you've had to deal with this, and I've even heard you mention, if you don't mind me going into it, like, I think you might have done therapy. I think you've even talked about having antidepressants, I think, at one point. Um, if you— I don't know if that—

yeah, I'm very, very transparent.

Yeah.

Uh, yeah, look, like, I, I, I will say that I think a lot of successful people, probably most, are definitely crazy, and I would say I'm crazy. I'm not saying I'm successful, but I'm crazy. And the reason you're crazy is you kind of got to be a little bit crazy in order to, like, put yourself through a lot of the pain and to have the courage to, like, keep going and to, like, have this weird obsessive disorder where it's like you have to do something. So anyway, yeah, like, it sucks. Like, it's, it's, it's, but it's Like I say, I don't find the work that I do to be particularly intellectually challenging, but like, just like having— being like, I gotta do it, I gotta do it. Or like, even though I hate myself, I— this is gonna suck, like, I just gotta fucking do it. And like, that part is really challenging.

Where do you think that comes from though? Because from my experience interviewing lots of people who've done this, um, like from, you know, people who are just starting out and making a good living to like billionaires I, I find a lot of them have a chip on their shoulder, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Do you think you have that as well?

Yeah, and what I was going to say about when I hired Steph is I like to find people who have chips on their shoulder. I would say I have a massive chip on my shoulder of like thinking like I'm inadequate, I'm not good enough, and it's like, okay, I'm gonna prove it, you know what I mean? Uh, so yeah, I think it's— I think my entire existence in career is driven by trying to prove people wrong who made fun of me.

Do you feel like you can— this sounds a bit woo-woo, but it's just kind of real talk— like, do you think you can be happy with that feeling? Because I, I'll give an example. I looked at like the Michael Jordan documentary, which I'm sure you probably saw, and you're like, wow, this guy was the greatest sports person of all time, potentially the greatest competitor. But like, I don't know if I would necessarily want to be like him in that way because he seems super miserable.

So I think at the current pace, no, I will not— I will never truly be happy. and let— and I have to like figure out how to find happiness. I think that once you— I have children. Do you have kids?

Not yet. No, no, no.

I think once I have kids it will change, but I would say no, I definitely don't have true happiness, but I do have contentment. Yeah, yeah. I can't find satisfaction at the moment.

Got you, man. Well, that's, that's interesting. I guess like I've struggled with this where I felt too comfortable at times, and then I'm like, okay, well, I'm content and I'm I'm living a good life, I've got lots of time, I can do what I want, I choose what I want to work on. But then the other part of me is like the, the 16-year-old Bilal, which was kind of where I— you don't know my full story, but like I started an e-commerce business when I was 16, and not a huge one, but that's kind of where I started loving business. And that was the same reason, man. I was like bullied and made fun of when I was 12, and then I was 16 and I was like, oh, I found something I'm good at. I'm like I've got some swagger, I'm selling hats at school, I've got like a little franchise of people selling SIM cards. I felt like a G, do you know what I mean? So it's the same, but now I've got rid of a lot of that because I feel pretty good as myself, you know. But then you kind of lose a bit of that fire because I'm not really necessarily trying to prove anyone wrong anymore. So it's kind of a hard balance.

I think rage and hate is like such a wonderful thing in that it motivates you. Uh, not hate, but you know, like, you know what I'm saying?

No, I get it. It can fire you up in the— if you use it in the right way, but it can also take over your life. Now, thanks for sharing that, man. Um, so yeah, just to, just to close things out, I'll ask you this, and what you kind of talked about a little bit there, like, if money was no obstacle, which, you know, you're probably in a position where you could probably sell the company, make a good amount of money, $50 million plus. Maybe more, and you could probably just chill. Like, what kind of keeps you going right now? Why don't you just do that at the moment?

I can do that now. And why don't I do that? I think that I would do that for like 6 months. So I did do that after I sold my last one. I did it. I did it for 6 months. If I sold the company today, which we've had the opportunity to do that, and I've said no every time because I went through this exercise If I sold the company today, I would take a month off. I would tell myself I'm going to take a year off. No, I would tell myself like, you know, whatever happens happens. And I would try to get like super fit and like eat well, which I should do anyway. And I normally do. But, and then after about 30 days of doing that, I would start like projects and I would start tinkering and then that would turn into a business and I would be working in 3 months. Um, that's just inevitably what would happen. And then I would probably start something in the media space, and then I would get 6 months in and be like, oh shit, I'm building my company, like the same thing again. And so I was like, well, I'll just keep it the same cycle.

Okay, I got you, man. Well, listen, man, I know you gotta go soon, so thanks again for taking the time, man. We did an hour and a half of this, so I think there's some cool fun stories in there and stuff you haven't covered before. So looking forward to getting this out to people, man.

Yeah, and I hope they like it. Um, and tell them to tweet at me, @thus_saying_parr, if, uh, this was good or if it sucked. Let me know.

Definitely. And we could send also people to trends.co as well, is the other big thing people should sign up.

Yeah, trends.co, come and sign up, we would love to have you.

All right, Sam, appreciate it, man. Thanks for, uh, for doing this, man. Definitely want to stay in touch.

Thank you very much.