How to Reverse Engineer Great Business Ideas (Sam Parr, The Hustle & Hampton)

Alex: What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Founder’s Journal and the first episode of Founder’s Journal rebooted. I'm your host, Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew. And as I mentioned last episode, Founder’s Journal is back and better than ever, with a new format that I believe you are going to absolutely love. Each week I am going to curate a world class entrepreneur and interview them about their one thing, their one superpower, that one thing that looks effortless to the world, the one thing that stacks the deck in their favor as they build great businesses. And today's first guest is none other than Sam Parr. Sam is a successful serial entrepreneur who's best known for The Hustle, Hampton, and the popular business podcast, My First Million.

This episode we talk about Sam's one thing, which is finding and vetting business ideas by using a collection of tools and frameworks that he has picked up over the years. And we explore these tools by using actual examples from Sam's life, how he came up with The Hustle, how he reverse engineered billion dollar businesses to launch hustle trends, how he put a new spin on the proven CEO network business model with Hampton, and a new business that he's in the middle of building right now, and it’s TBD whether he can call it a success. Without further ado, here's my convo with Sam Parr.

So you've been pretty prolific in launching businesses over the last 10 years. I want to go in chronological order and finish with your current business, which is Hampton, which is super exciting. Let's start with The Hustle. How did you find the idea for The Hustle, or what was the key insight that made you feel like it was worth your time? 

Sam Parr: So I research a lot. For The Hustle, I used research and I used ikigai. Ikigai is like that thing where it's like what the world wants, what they wanna pay for, what you're good at, what you're passionate about. And so that's important. And then once I figured out that, I do a ton of research. For The Hustle, I read the biography of Ted Turner and I thought media sounded awesome. Ted Turner's the guy who started CNN, and then I used mixergy.com. Mixergy.com is a website full of interviews with entrepreneurs and CEOs and stuff. And I saw like five people mention email newsletters. And then I had a friend named Neville and then a friend named Noah Kagan, and they were telling me how newsletters were like the most important part of their business, and I was like doing the math and I was paying attention to the news of like Facebook changing their algorithm constantly. And I thought this newsletter thing's awesome, and I kind of did the math. Most of my businesses are very, very simple arithmetic where it's like, hey look, if I can get a million or 2 million people to subscribe to this thing and if I can get ads at this rate and fill this many ads, I think this could make like a hundred million dollars a year or something like that.

I remember just doing that math; no one believed it at the time. I'm sure you went through the same process, but I was like, oh, the math is there, and I got some of the stuff wrong. But I was directionally correct. The math was there. I mean I sold earlier, so I didn't get to do it, but you guys are close to it. And so the math was there, but I used mixergy.com and then I went and cold emailed a lot of the early employees of the CEOs who I watched their interviews to like get the scoop on how these businesses are made. 

Alex: Love it. You talked about it briefly and I actually wanna spend a little bit more time on it, which is like ikigai, which is kind of your reason for being. What did you find as you went through that exercise was your ikigai, like what were the things you plugged in for yourself?

Sam: I do believe that business, I believe it's a very spiritual thing to me because I think that it's like this, it's like the ultimate Maslow hierarchy of need, like that self-actualization thing. And so to me it's like an exercise of turning dreams into reality. I find that to be incredibly intoxicating and fulfilling spiritually. So for me, I loved sharing, I loved creating information and I loved just like sharing and I loved getting, I like getting feedback and I was obsessed with like the dopamine of like seeing my Google Analytics go up and seeing comments on the blog post and moving really quickly. The cool thing about content is you're not creating a physical product and so every single day you could iterate and I just like obsessed over that.

I also felt like I kind of understood human emotion and I understood how to get a rise out of people so I understood how to make people feel sad or happy or angry. I understood how to like capture people's attention and I really enjoyed that. I also love working with like weirdos, like people who are kind of like freaks and I think I'm a little bit of a weirdo and so I really liked the idea of hiring oddballs and working with them, and content people tend to be like that. 

Alex: I thought it was super interesting at the time when we were kind of at the same time building our businesses is as we were working to like scale up advertising revenue, you went in the other direction and you launched Trends, which you know obviously was not an ad-based business, it was where you could monetize your audience directly through a subscription. Can you talk about what the kind of idea and insight was for Trends and why you decided to launch it? 

Sam: So I got so much wrong about that. So Trends was a email newsletter that was $300 a year and we like deconstructed interesting companies and like predicted trends; I should have charged $30,000. I mean I got so much wrong with it, but I think in the first year it ended at like something like $5m or $6m, I forget, maybe $5 million in recurring revenue. It could have been a little more, a little bit less, I don't remember. And a few things, I hated ad sales. I think that I was always envious of you and Austin because you guys were in New York and I felt that because you kind of had a more corporate, I mean Austin barely had a job, you barely had a job. But in some, like the story I created for myself was, you guys are these corporate guys, you know how to have these meetings better than I do. You're better than me at that. And I was really envious and I was like, I can't have these meetings. I don't live in New York, like I don't play this ad world. They somehow know all these guys, they've got the CEO of Time Warner or something like that on their board. Like they have such an advantage and I am not part of that crew so I can't do that. So that was part of it. 

I also dislike advertising as a business model, at least I dislike it when it's your main business model. And then I got really interested in research, because I like to research, and so I read the biography of Gideon Gartner, the guy who created Gartner, I don't know what they're worth, $10 or something billion dollar company. And I was basically looking at like, I'm good at content creation but the business model that it's packaged in of advertising stinks. How can I have a better business model? Like what are some subscription ideas? And so I read the biography of Gideon Gartner, I talked to all the old Gartner employees, I read all, I used annualreports.com to read all about CEB. What's CEB stand for? The something executive board. 

Alex: I don't even know what CEB is. 

Sam: CEB is a research company that sold to Gartner for like $2b or $3 billion, corporate executive board I think. And so basically what I would do is I would use, so here's how it starts. I use newspapers.com. Newspapers.com is a website that archives like every newspaper ever for like in history. So like you can go back to like the 1500s, I think, and I would use Wikipedia and I found out what Gartner was. Gartner was founded, let's say, in 1975 by Gideon Gartner. I look up Gideon Gartner's name from 1970 to 1974 to figure out what he was doing pre-1975 to figure out his skill set and how he made these contacts. And then like 1975 to 1985, I figure out what's like the first 10 years like, and I map it out and I'm like, oh, Gartner bought this company called CEB, what's CEB? So I go down that rabbit hole and CEB, I believe, was publicly traded. So I used annualreports.com and I read all of their annual reports from the starting year all the way to when they got acquired.

And I used newspapers.com and I would use these resources to like deconstruct their businesses to figure out what's possible. And I would like use Excel to map out like here's every year of revenue they had. Here's the number of employees, here's what the employees were doing. I went and contacted five of their employees, here's what they told me they did, how it worked out. I read the biographies about them. I would read newspapers.com on articles about them and I would just like try to reverse engineer the whole thing. And I do that to like inspire me and like open my eyes to different ways of doing things because ultimately business is like art a little bit, where like if I'm gonna write this lovely song, I'm gonna learn like everyone else's songs and then steal like and be inspired by bits and pieces of all these other artists that I love and I'm gonna combine them into something unique.

And that's sort of my mindset. So I wanted to read everything I can about them. So I use all these resources to do that and I'll contact all the employees. What I'll also do is, CEB, you'll have to look it up right now, or look it up. But I don't know how much they were acquired for, but they list who their banker was… 

Alex: $2.6 billion.

Sam: Yeah. So I'll like call the people who bought or sold the company. I'm like, tell me everything about it. Another one is Aventa, Aventa was sort of like what Hampton is now or I guess Hampton is sort of like theirs. And they were, they sold for $300 million I think. And I'll just call all the old employees and get all their sales decks, everything. And I just like researched like crazy.

Now with Trends, I screwed up, I should have charged like $30,000 but I was like 28, I think. And my small business couldn't afford that. And so I thought I should make something for me and that was silly. 

Alex: Yeah, it's, it's funny, first of all, I feel like one of my learnings in building has just been that like I love building startups but startups are oftentimes horrible customers and like literally by going upmarket you can just charge a lot more. It's funny, on the Gartner side, I was just listening to the most recent Business Breakdowns, you know the podcast, they just did it on Gartner. And they always say it's like Gartner's in like the cover your ass business, where just like companies literally just pay this amount so that they're not caught off guard when they have to make a recommendation to leadership.

But if I remember also, I don't know how this factored in, but I heard you talk about as you were thinking about trends, you also looked at Uzabase and you went deep into Uzabase and NewsPicks. Just say a little bit more about like what you learned about that business 'cause I think no one has actually heard about Uzabase. 

Sam: No, no one has heard of it. I don't even know if that's how you say it. It's like one of those words that I read, but I don't say out loud. I don't even know. So that's another thing that I do is I like to look at foreign companies. Kevin Ryan taught me that that's how he got the idea for Gilt Group is he saw that some Gilt was happening in France and like took it into America Uzabase was or is, I think they were acquired recently. They were a publicly traded company in Japan and they had three products. I don't remember what the third one was because it wasn't relevant to me. But the second one was Speeda. Speeda is sort of like CB Insights, where they like would do research on different startups that big companies would wanna subscribe to to figure out what's going on. And then the first product they had was called NewsPicks and NewsPicks, I was gonna launch this product but we got acquired, I was right in the middle of making it for The Hustle. NewsPicks is awesome. NewsPicks was where they would show you articles based off of what was popular. And they somehow convinced all these high profile people like Richard Branson to comment on the articles and give their opinion of the articles and users would pay $10 a month to see the articles and the comments.

And I thought that was brilliant. I thought that was really cool. And so I went and read all of the iTune Apple reviews, like why do people love this? But it was in Japanese so I would have to translate all of it and I would have to do all of this work translating Japanese to English to figure out this company. And I would read their annual reports and they were like so clear to me like how this business works. And that was sorta an inspiration for Trends. But again, I got it wrong, $300, what I learned early on, is no man's land. You should either charge thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars or like 150 bucks. $300 is no man's land. I really screwed that pricing point up. And the research by the way told me I was wrong before I even started it, but I thought I could beat it.

Alex: It's funny, in a lot of the research you do for different business opportunities, in some ways you're like an annual reports nerd. But I think that, but I think the cool thing about it also is like you're not like a math nerd. You're not like a math savant. And I think that's like a good juxtaposition because I think a lot of people never look at annual reports or like financials for companies because they think it's like extremely daunting and they have no idea where to start. So when you're going to an annual report, whether it's for Uzabase or I think, what's the other website you talked about? Was it Companies House? The UK one? 

Sam: Yeah, so Companies House is awesome. It's pronounced in a funny way, Companies House, if that's basically in the UK, I think it's 10 million. If you're a privately held company with at least 10 million in revenue, you have to display your financials and put out a report and it's all free and you can like learn anything you want from them. 

Alex: When you're looking at annual reports to kind of reverse engineer business opportunities, what are the few parts that you really focus in on? 

Sam: So this is again is where I was envious of you and Austin was like, I didn't know how to read these and I never really truly, I don't truly understand them. I've taken classes recently on how to read the financials but I'm not great at it. But there's like so much that you can read just in the text. So like in terms of like the financials, I basically look at the cash flow statements, I look at operating income, and that's honestly it. I'm very rudimentary and not good at the financial part and like the outlook, they'll tell you like what's like what sectors, like for example, I remember for trends like 1-800-FLOWERS said “Succulents are growing amongst our millennial customers” and in Trends we wrote, “All right, well, someone's gonna create an online retailer focus on succulents,” and then like BalloonScape and like three other companies raised like tens of millions of dollars like a year later. So like the reports they'll tell you like what's happening, like we're, if we're facing headwinds because young people care more about this than that, you know what I'm saying? Like it'll tell you like what's going on. And my opinion is like a company that has billions of revenue or is a publicly traded company size, they have so much data and intel on like where the world's heading that I can just piggyback off of their intel.

Alex: I think what's really cool about the way you approach business building is like you really aren't trying to be like truly new or novel with anything like you. You reverse engineer successful businesses that have done things in a certain way and then you put your spin on it, it's kind of like a DJ that's like remixing two records on the tracks. Like they already exist but they're creating something new from the combination of multiple things. And you know, one recommendation I would just have for listeners is if they haven't checked out your ideation bootcamp they should, because like you talk about all the tools you've already talked about, but you also mentioned things like SimilarWeb, I know you use as a huge thing for looking at website traffic and where that traffic's coming from, or like Web Archive. I've used that a ton. Like I remember in the early days, I remember in the early days of the Brew or even as I built like my new businesses, like Storyarb, when I was building that, I just go back to like whoever's like the winner in the market right now. I look at three years prior when they were first starting, what the messaging was on their site. 

So I remember we did that for The Skimm, like I remember we looked at, what was The Skimm’s messaging on their site when they first started, and then we looked at it today because we were like, they've probably spent a boatload of money on paid ads to their website. So they probably really tightened up their language on their site today. 

Sam: Yeah, the name of the game is basically like, that's why I read biographies, it's just copy what others have done that's worked, and try to avoid the mistakes that cost them a lot of headache. And I'm not trying to invent anything new. I can get real philosophical and say very few things are actually new. Everything is just a new take on, you know, Facebook's just a new take on MySpace, which was a new take on this, which was a new take on that. So no, I'm not trying to invent anything new. 

Alex: Let's talk about Hampton and let's talk about how you came up with the idea for the business and how you kind of reverse engineered what you were going to build based on what exists prior to Hampton. 

Sam: So Hampton, it's a membership, it's a community. So I did something silly, which was I wanted to do my research publicly because I felt a chip on my shoulder and I felt that people would say things that I can only do things 'cause I have a large audience now. So I had the founders of Chief, I've had the founders of Tiger 21 and I think a few others on the podcast. And I didn't hide the fact that I told 'em, I was like, I'm interested in starting something in this space and I want you to come on the podcast and talk about your thing. And so I did it, my research, I did it in front of everyone and I got them to explain like the pros and cons of the business and the math behind what makes it successful and what doesn't, where the strengths and weaknesses are. I basically just did a SWOT analysis in front of like a million people and then I looked at Informa. Informa is a publicly traded company, they're like a massive B2B media company, and they talked about having these like paid communities in their, and it only made up a very small portion of their business, but I thought it was interesting.

And then there was a company called Vistage. Vistage was acquired for $2 billion or one and a half billion, something like that. They were doing a whole lot in EBITDA and I saw that they were acquired and Vistage is basically a community for like blue collar business owners. So like if you own like a $5 million like plumbing company I think is the target market. Dude, it was acquired by this private equity firm. I just looked up the private equity firm and then I went to the about page and like in the press release it said like it quoted one of the partners. So I assumed that was the guy who led the deal and his number was on the website and I just cold called him. 

Alex: That's incredible. 

Sam: And I was like, Hey man, this is gonna sound really cocky. And I mean it with all due respect, I'm not trying to be arrogant about this, but like I've got a large audience and I'm gonna launch this business and I have a feeling you might hear about it eventually. So I would just want him to build a relationship now because maybe you'll wanna buy us, but I don't know if I'll sell it, but I know you're gonna wanna buy me. Maybe you could just kinda like fill me in and help me now. 

Alex: Did he help you? 

Sam: Yeah, he was like, oh, that's funny. And look, I was like, I realize this sounds just totally arrogant. So I just wanna let you know, all due respect. But yeah, he helped me. He was like, a lot of people make these mistakes and he like listed all the mistakes and what we do well is this and that. And he like didn't tell me anything breathtaking because he couldn't. And then I also used Tegu, you know Tegu, they're on Invest Like the Best, like they permanently sponsor Invest Like the Best. It's like the greatest tool ever.

Alex: Is it expensive? I haven't signed up 'cause I thought it was like really expensive. 

Sam: It's expensive. So look, because of like I do have an audience, I am able to get some of these tools for free or well, so I like knew that I knew how to do community with Trends and I knew that I messed up a ton, but I got a lot of parts of it really right. I knew I wanted a business that could get to like at least a hundred million in revenue, although I think this could be a lot bigger. I have no idea. Like how it’s the greatest business ever where basically you pay something like $500 and you tell them, hey, I wanna talk to someone who worked at Vistage, get me on the phone with them. And then you get 'em on the phone and then a week later your interview is published. So if you're a subscriber, you're able to watch these interviews and listen to these interviews. And so I'll either pay money to interview someone or I'll watch or read the transcripts of other people. And so the name of the game for me is just how do I just increase my hit rate at a really, like significantly higher rate than if I'm just like saying, this is cool, let's do this. 

Alex: And so when you were thinking about launching Hampton and you thought about like your goals, your ikigai, like how did you know like this was a bet that you wanted to take? 

Sam: Well, so I like knew that I knew how to do community with trends and I knew that I messed up a ton, but I got a lot of parts of it really right. I knew I wanted a business that could get to like at least a hundred million in revenue, although I think this could be a lot bigger. And so I just was like, well YPO does that, Vistage does a hundred million plus in profit. So like, all right, I know the market's big enough, and that was basically it for like sizing the market. And then I was like, I think I'm good at it. I have got an audience that matches those people. I think this is a problem that needs to be solved. I think that I talked to a bunch of members of all these other communities and they told me I wish I had this or this or whatever. And I was like, all right there, I've spotted the opportunity now I just need to execute. And that's what we did. And then I can give your audience like a more real time example.

Because this actually has, this one hasn't proven itself yet. So it's called Sam’s List. Samslist.co. And what I've noticed, so you probably saw this at Morning Brew; these B2B advertisers crush it, like they would get so many clicks and they could pay a lot of money per click or whatever to acquire a customer because their products are tens of thousands or more a year versus like a deodorant brand. They can only spend $3 or whatever to acquire a customer. And what I noticed in Trends and in Hampton, some of the most common questions are, does anyone have a good lawyer, or which agency is great for growing my personal brand on Twitter, and I've always been fascinated with the NerdWallet business model of creating content that recommends products and how you can do it and be as transparent and truthful as possible and get a fee if someone signs up for the service that you recommend.

And I notice that accountants for me are challenging. So are lawyers, but accountants are challenging because you have to spend like a year with them before you know they suck. And changing is a pain in the butt. And how do you find an accountant? Right now it's just word of mouth, like basically like you can't like research it. And so what I did was I was like, I think I wanna start a review website for professional services. I'm gonna start with accountants. And so I just tweeted out, who has an accountant that they love? I got 300 replies, I called all of them and I asked them like one by one, how much do you charge? What's your like ideal customer, which customers do you hate? Like all these like qualifying questions that you would ask if you were gonna hire them.

And then I spent $10,000 and I built a website called Samslist.co. We used Bubble and I listed all the people there and then I said, if I send you a customer, will you give me, like how much will you pay me? And like I got a handful to like commit to something. And then we made this website where you go to it and you answer these questions, you do a quiz where it's like, I have this much in revenue, here's the industry I'm in, here's my preferences, and then we'll recommend three or four or five accountants. And the business has only made $15,000. I think it's made maybe $10,000 in the first month. But the way that I researched it was I looked at Thumbtack, I read a ton about Angie's List. Angie's List is also publicly traded.

They're owned previously by, what's Barry Diller's company? IAC. And so like I learned all about like the pricing of how they do things. And then interestingly, a lot of early Silicon Valley companies, like these founders, there's a few of them, but they started what I'm doing now but for lawyers. And so there's like super lawyers.com, I think it's called. And a lot of 'em raised hundreds of millions of dollars and only a few of them had massive exits. But I realized that like these professional service websites can be like where you review like they could be huge businesses. I researched all of NerdWallet to like figure out how like affiliate business models work.

And then I use a website called HA reps, I actually don't know if that's how you say it, but it's HARef. And I looked up like what's the search traffic, how hard is it to rank for like an accountant company? And then I called all these accountants asking how much they would pay if I sent them a customer. And that's basically how we discovered if this could be an opportunity. Now I don't know if it's gonna work, this one may not work, but I feel confident that it can work. 

Alex: I wanna finish with one thing, which is, you obviously, like of course it is easier for you to launch and grow businesses today because of the audience you have. And so I just know a question that listeners are inevitably gonna ask is like, okay, that's great, Sam reverse engineers these businesses, he builds them and he gets them to a million dollars super quickly because he has, you know, 250,000 followers on Twitter and he has the MFM audience. So how would you break it down? Like if someone is listening to this, they wanna build a business and they want do it in Sam's way, like with the Sam’s playbook and they want to get it to a million dollars as fast as possible, how would you break down the way in which you would approach it if you didn't have the audience you had? 

Sam: Well, I knew that people would say that, and they're right. It's easier that you and I both have audiences, but Hampton had a million dollars in the bank account before I even shared it online. We didn't even have a website. And the way that we got customers is the exact way that I would advise anyone to do, I just cold emailed and DMed people and I got 'em on the phone. And so usually the way that I try to get to a million in revenue is I act like a small business owner, as if I own a convenience store or a restaurant, where like I'm not like doing anything scalable or like I'm literally just getting someone on the phone and trying to convince them to purchase my thing. And if they don't want to purchase it or they have resistance, I'm like, okay, well that's really useful feedback. What would change your opinion? And they'll just tell me. And I'm like, all right, I have to iterate my offering to like fit what the customer wants. But a lot of times I used to call it a zebra calendar, meaning my calendar would have 15 like 20 minute meetings and it'd be like stripe, five minute break, stripe, five minute break, stripe. And I'm literally just like cold emailing people. 

And what I found was, you know, like there's this old Chris Rock story where he tells the story of like, if you're just sitting on the side of the road with your broken car, people will just drive by you. But if you're on the side of the road and you're pushing your car, people are a lot more likely to get out and help you. And so I just try to come to these customers with like a sense of like, yeah, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I think this will work and I'm gonna just try and solve your problem. It's not that they feel sorry for me, but it's like, oh this sounds exciting, like you're doing something interesting. And so I usually just cold email people when I'm doing my research for the product and I'm talking to the employees; they're like, I'll always end like who's three other people I should talk to? And they'll introduce me and they'll introduce me. And so after like two months, I have a network of people in the industry and I'm like, all right, this thing's officially on. I'm launching this. Let me, let me try to convince you why you should join or partake in this product. And I've already got them on the phone and I've done that so many times. And then I'll literally just send them a PayPal link with a buy now button. And I always have the same promise, which is I'm gonna sell this for a whole lot more money because you're taking a chance on me. I'll give you a discounted rate and at any point if you hate it, just tell me and I'll give you your money back. No strings attached. And it's nothing personal. And so I always give them a really easy out and I'm able to like get customers pretty quickly that way. 

Alex: Love it. Yeah, I think honestly for me, the biggest thing that stands out is like your, let's call it, you know, three businesses into this journey. But like you've had so many other things you've tinkered with, from like Copy That to Sam's List to like MFM is a business in its own right? So like you've been like just in the game doing things for a long time. 

Sam: By the way, MFM had no research, that was total luck. But what were you saying? 

Alex: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. No, but I was gonna say that even though you've had some level of success and like you, you know, you could kind of sit back and coast in some ways. Like I think you kind of approach building your businesses with like the same level of like urgency and just like complete fire. And you just, what I found is especially for like people who are graded zero to one, they are like Tasmanian devils with like willing a business into existence. And so I think w with Hampton, right? It's like sure, could you have posted that to your audience? Yes. But also you wanted to make sure the product was right, you wanted to make sure the community was really well curated and so you did cold outreach to people. You also had a network, which everyone has some level of network that you can always tap into. And I even think about like with Storyarb, which I've been building up, like sure I can post about it, but like honestly, the thing that I've been doing is I go speak at events now for like marketers and B2B marketers, and I found when I speak at an event and then I go cold LinkedIn DM, everyone who attended that event after the hit rate is significantly higher. It's like 50% response rate. And I get all of those people on a call and I say to them, I'm not trying to sell you on my product, I'm not trying to tell you to sign up for Storyarb, I just want to learn more about your business. I am building this product for you and I just wanna tell you about it. I want you to tell me how this can be better for your needs. And that's it. And I think when people just feel like they're not being sold, they're way more likely to do something for you. 

Sam: Yeah. And so, all right, what's the public number for Morning Brew’s latest revenue? 

Alex: I think $70m. 

Sam: All right. So Alex has started a $70 million a year business. I don't know what that's worth, but it's probably worth somewhere between $200 and $300 million. Okay. How many people read Morning Brew or like, do you guys touch like a monthly, like 50 million or a hundred million? 

Alex: Yeah, north of 50. 

Sam: Okay, so you guys are touching 50 million people a month. And there's two takeaways that I think people should have. Number one is like, a, you're like incredibly successful and wealthy before the age of 30 or 31 or something like that. And yet you're still doing these like really manual things. And number two, I know that when Morning Brew started, so you guys have, you guys are, you have 50 million plus users who you're reaching every month. When you started, I know the story of how you were handing out, you would go to these like classes at University of Michigan or whatever and like hand out flyers and like write Morning Brew on the chalkboard and like do this hand-to-hand combat stuff. And like, so I think that when people listen to this they're like, well that hand-to-hand combat stuff works when you have a product that charges tens of thousands a year. But it's like, no dude, Morning Brew did this for a product that has 50 million users. And that stuff really works. 

Alex: It works. And it's funny, I think if you were to, you know, in the future turn the mic and interview me about my one thing, I think it would be just shamelessness. It's like I really have taught myself to be desensitized to feeling embarrassment when it comes to making my business grow and thrive. 

Sam: And it doesn't matter if you're the man like you are, like you still do that. And it still is really effective and now it's easier for you because what I say is, even if you don't have an audience, you have a reputation. So people will trust you more because you're a doer. But that still works, that hand-to-hand combat stuff like really works and it's still really effective and it's not that hard to get to a million a year in revenue doing that stuff. If you give it six months of like every day, 40 hours a week. 

Alex: Totally. Sam, as always, this has been awesome. Anything that you want to point listeners to in your world before we hop?

Sam: I'm on Twitter, @theSamParr, Hampton, joinhampton.com. Samslist.co is my new project. Don't submit a lead if you're not actually serious about getting an accountant. These are gonna ruin my numbers. And I have a podcast called My First Million. 

Alex: Love it. Sam, thanks so much for joining. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation with Sam Parr and let me know what you think about the new Founder’s Journal format and if there are any entrepreneurs that you would love to see me interview on an upcoming episode, shoot me an email to Alex at Morning Brew dot com. And thank you again for listening and I'll catch you next episode.